Latest News - Page 2153

For a spy agency that has the word 'security' in its title, the National Security Agency seems to be worse than a teenager downloading MP3s from LimeWire. The NSA has been busted again exposing top secret data to people, this time on the cloud.

UpGuard Director of Cyber Risk Research Chris Vickery discovered back on September 27 an Amazon Web Services S3 cloud storage bucket that was configured for totally open public access. This means that anyone can enter the URL and see what's inside of trhe bucket, which was located on the AWS subdomain "inscom". This folder had 47 viewable files and other folders inside, three of which could be downloaded.

INSCOM is the intelligence command that is controlled by both the US Army, and the NSA. The worst part of this news is that the folder wasn't password protected, which seems awfully stupid (there are worse words) of the NSA.

Despite Battlefront II's hotly contested live services, EA's Chief Financial Officer says the game will get a massive array of new content to accompany The Last Jedi's release in theaters. Just how much will EA bring to the table? More content than any of their games has ever seen--or so the CFO says.

During Credit Suisse's 21th Annual Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference, EA CFO Blake Jorgensen discussed not only the future of Battlefront II but the major ethos that drives the publisher. Spoiler: it's online-based live services, microtransactions, and games that last for six years, not six weeks.

"The great news is this is one of the best games we've ever built. We're hearing that from the players who are actually playing the game and engaging every day. The day-over-day retention in Battlefront II is almost better than we've seen in any of our games, and we'll be adding in the next couple of weeks more content than we've ever added in a game before. And the reason for that is the content comes around the Disney movie, and as [The Last Jedi] comes out in theaters there'll be all sorts of new gameplay that comes around that," Mr. Jorgensen said during the event.

Sony's PlayStation 4 console is a juggernaut that's dominated sales charts for years now, and has consistently one-upped itself as time goes on. Now the Japanese games-maker has broken another sales milestone for Black Friday 2017.

This year has been huge for the PlayStation brand. Sony has shipped 63.3 million PS4's to date, and hardware sales were up 29% year-over-year during the period. The tech titan reported stellar growth with a massive 739% net income spike during Q2'17 as well, and the PlayStation brand was a major driver for earnings.

Now Sony reports that it just sold more PS4s during 2017's Black Friday than in its entire 22-year history.

Global entry! We have teamed up with nerdytec to give away an awesome Couchmaster CYCON with some Logitech goodies to one lucky winner!

Nerdytec is giving away a completely equipped Couchmaster CYCON including Logitech peripherals for a total value of about $400. Experience optimum comfort for the best gaming experience or working on the TV with the handcrafted system made of high quality materials. Due to its ergonomic design with back-friendly posture, the CYCON is also ideal for long sessions and thanks to its softly padded support cushions it provides comfortable support for your arms and the entire neck area.

Mouse and keyboard find their place on the generous support surface. The mouse can be stored safely in the freely positionable front pocket. The integrated USB 3.0 hub can connect and power up to 4 devices simultaneously. All cables simply disappear in the interior of the support case. An extra power cable is not needed - simply connect the included 5m USB 3.0 cable to the PC, connect it to the TV and play.

Square Enix is planning big things for Final Fantasy's 31st anniversary, and one of them might be an AR mobile game set in the landmark franchise.

In a recent interview with YouTube channel Edamame Arcade, Final Fantasy head Shinji Hashimoto said 2018 would be a "big year" for the beloved RPG series. Mr. Hashimoto also confirmed that multiple Final Fantasy games are currently in development, and some of them will ship in 2018 (but most likely not Final Fantasy VII: Remake).

Interestingly enough the publisher stated that it would like to tap the AR mobile gaming market with a few new games. In Square Enix's recent financial 2Q brief, company CEO Yosuke Matsuda affirmed as much: "Players have become extremely discerning about game quality. Providing new experiences is also important, and to that end, we would like to make proactive efforts in the mobile AR space."

SpaceX has added a newly updated funding round to this year's summer collection. Adding $100 million on to it's already $351 million funding round bringing the total to around $450 million, putting Space X's total post-money valuation to $21.5 billion.

James Gleeson, the spokesperson for SpaceX has replied to the amended filing by saying: "This filing simply discloses that SpaceX received an additional $100 million of investment as part of the last funding round which was disclosed earlier this summer."

SpaceX has massive ambitions, outlining plans for a trip to Mars in 2022 and launching satellites for the U.S military using its Falcon 9 rocket. It's clear why investors see SpaceX as a trustworthy investment, the track record for Elon provides its benefits of reassurance.

David Karp the CEO and founder of Tumblr since it's release back in 2007 will be stepping down from his company by the end of the year. Karp lead the company to a billion dollar status with Yahoo purchasing the company for $1.1 billion back in 2013.

This year Verizon acquired Yahoo, combining both Tumblr and Yahoo's AOL service to create the digital media organization called Oath. Oath said in a statement to The Verge: "David founded Tumblr 10 years ago as a space for the world's creators, and we thank him for his commitment and passion driving the growth of the platform to almost 380 million blogs and over 155 billion posts."

This move is not known to be permanent or temporary but Karp has addressed his friends and colleagues in a letter before he abdicates. Within this letter it is expressed that this decision didn't come lightly and took "months of reflection on [his] personal ambitions."

Imgur has fallen victim to a data breach attack, following the recent hack and cover up from Uber, usernames and passwords have been compromised, totaling to 1.7 million user accounts.

This breach on Imgur has been reported to of happened in 2014 and only has just come to company's attention now. Responding quickly, Roy Sehgal, Chief Operating Officer released a statement on behalf of Imgur, saying that the company is investigating the origin of the hack and that it is possible that the hack occurred due to an "old algorithm that was used at the time."

"We are still investigating how the account information was compromised. We have always encrypted your password in our database, but it may have been cracked with brute force due to an older hashing algorithm (SHA-256) that was used at the time. We updated our algorithm to the new bcrypt algorithm last year. We recommend that you use a different combination of email and password for every site and application. Please always use strong passwords and update them frequently."

Criminals will exploit anything they can get their hands-on and the most recent online marketplace to be corrupted is sadly Airbnb. According to a Daily Beast report, Russian scammers are using the service to launder dirty cash through stolen credit cards. This would be done through the use of corrupted hosts which are being recruited through Russian-language crime forums across the web.

The process of which the crimals use the service as a money laundering system is not even a complex one. The criminals are purchasing or creating Airbnb accounts and then use them to request bookings through the colluding hosts which will then send back a cut of the profits made from the transaction. Instead of actually going to your rented apartment or house this transaction requires no people to move and can move up to $3000 at a single time dodged by any identification checks made by usual Governments.

In response to these allegations made by Daily Beast Airbnb has said it has extensive algorithms as security against any "suspicious activity". The company continued by expressing that it uses "micro authorization friction and 3D-Secure to verify if a credit card is being used by its owner and assess the level of risk associated with a transaction."

Samsung is ready to take a step into the world of MicroLED by showcasing their upcoming display at this years Consumer Electronics Show which takes place in Las Vegas in January 2018.

Taking the step forward from QLED, Samsung will be showing off a massive 150-inch MicroLED panel which use solid state LED elements that are engraved into a silicon-substrate. These substrates are less than 100 µm in size and act as the individual pixels.

To make a general analogy, imagine modern day GPU transistors and the size of them and imagine if LEDs were built on that scale but are instead lights that each individually turn on and off.

AMD has just released their latest Crimson ReLive Edition 17.11.3 HOTFIX for Radeon RX Vega drivers, which weigh in at 318MB for the Windows 10 drivers and a much bigger 440MB for the Windows 7 version. Download them here.

The new drivers fix an "intermittent crash issue may be experienced on some Radeon RX Vega series graphics products", as well as bunch of other known issues being squashed. This is what you can expect the new drivers to fix:

Google built a special next-gen photography chip that laid dormant inside of the new Pixel 2 smartphone, something that has just been activated for the first time ever in the new developer preview of Android 8.1.

The secret photography chip inside of Pixel 2 is called Pixel Visual Core, and is the first processor designed by Google in-house, with the search giant also having some help from Intel. The 8-core processor speeds up the software side of photography, providing Pixel 2 owners with impressive HDR+ processing and other AI-powered tasks.

Google says that the Pixel Visual Core inside of Pixel 2 is capable of being "five times faster" handling HDR+ photos then traditional processors, like the Snapdragon 835 from Qualcomm - the SoC inside of Pixel 2. Third-party developers will be able to tap into the Visual Pixel Core, meaning apps like Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat could be updated to handle the additional camera horsepower and abilities.

Bitcoin has done it, it has reached a new all-time high of $10,000. The leading cryptocurrency has a market cap of $160 billion, making it bigger than some of the biggest companies and even countries in the world.

Bitcoin started out the year at $1000 before reaching $5000 half way through the year, but it met some resistance once it reached the $7000-ish range and then it has really just been jumping up in leaps and bounds. There are plenty blown away at it hitting $10K, while others call for its doom. No matter what, even if it does drop to $5000 overnight, BTC has reached this new milestone and you can't take that back.

Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency are here to stay and they're years early, which is why there's this huge interest and hype around them. We might not see Bitcoin accepted everywhere yet, but that's what millions of people said in the cash world about credit. The same people said smartphones and the internet wouldn't change the world, and look at us now. We have 'invisible' money on our tap-and-go credit cards and NFC-enabled payments with smartphones.

Twitter has been acting up over the last few months, with President Trump's account being disabled for 11 minutes last month, and even the international account of The New York Times experiencing troubles in the last 24 hours.

But there are big changes cooking with the social networking giant that are taking place on December 18, with Twitter announcing a couple of weeks ago that it will be monitoring its users' behavior... wait for it... "on and off the platform". Twitter will suspend an account if they are affiliated with violent organizations, even if they aren't causing any trouble on Twitter. George Orwell would be proud at Twitter's move, that's for sure.

Twitter wrote in an update to its policy: "You also may not affiliate with organizations that - whether by their own statements or activity both on and off the platform - use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes".

It was barely a year ago that the Core i7-7700K was the gaming CPU king, and then the rumors of its successor in the Core i7-8700K began earlier this year. Well, before we wrap up 2017 the rumors are now starting on the next-gen Core i9-9700K, Intel's next-gen mainstream CPU king.

Intel's upcoming Core i9-9700K will reportedly feature 8C/16T of CPU power and will be made on the impressively-small 10nm Cannon Lake CPU architecture. We shouldn't expect the new 9700K to beat the 8700K in brute CPU clock speeds, but it will beat it when it comes to multi-tasking because of its 8C/16T versus the 8700K and its 6C/12T.

If the rumors of the Core i9-9700K are true, we can see AMD has directly impacted Intel with its push into the world of mega-tasking with a heap of CPU threads. The previous-gen Core i7-7700K was a 4C/8T chip, the 8700K was a 6C/12T, and now the 9700K is reportedly an 8C/16T chip. Bring it on.

Can you believe that we're edging closer to $10,000 per Bitcoin right after Thanksgiving, which will end 2017 in a spectacular fashion. It was only yesterday that I was writing that Bitcoin hit a record price of $9483 and here we are again, with a new record price of BTC.

Bitcoin started off the year priced at under $1000 and reached a new peak of $9739 today, just $261 short of the $10,000 milestone. Back on November 12 the price of Bitcoin dropped down to $5857 with many thinking it was on its way back down to sub-$5000 as it had just reached its then-record peak of $7458 on November 8.

Just weeks later, and we're now edging close to $10,000. Amazing. Just don't be this guy, who threw away a HDD with over $71 million of Bitcoin away.

Following PUBG's massive sales spike on Steam and Tencent's major push in the mobile market, the Battle Royale craze is just ramping up...and some surprising publishers are entering the space.

Today 505 Games announced its new free-to-play mobile PUBG-like game Exile: Battle Royale. The game features 60-player last-man-standing shooter action on Android handsets, but the game isn't yet finished and is currently in beta phase. Nevertheless the Google Play page says the shooter will have microtransactions that range from 99c to $99.99 in cost.

The goal is to engage (and monetize) players who are away from their PCs and get them to continue playing battle royale experiences while on-the-go. In this same vein, Tencent today announced that it will be publishing an official mobile port of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds in the Chinese market, which represents a significant boon for both Tencent and Bluehole. It's fairly interesting to see 505 Games, who typically publishes indies and games like Payday 2, making a splash in this widening ocean.

Bungie wants to get more players into the world of Destiny 2, so what better way of doing that than with a Free Trial period starting... well... right now.

Destiny 2's new free trial will let gamers try out the campaign, explore two worlds, and compete in Crucible matches. Bungie explains: "So, you're new to Destiny 2? Enjoy the free trial and jump into the cinematic campaign on your own or with friends. Want to battle other players? Enter the multiplayer arena and put your skills to the ultimate test. You are one of humanity's last Guardians. Your home and your power has been taken from you by a brutal invader - Ghaul. With humanity on the brink, it's up to you to fight back and reclaim our world".

The developer continues: "Take on rewarding side missions, level-up, earn loot, and discover two new worlds through Adventures. Battle other players in the Crucible with full access to the Quickplay playlist. Carry over your progress from the Trial with purchase of the full-game".

We've known for some time that Playground Games is making a new open-world action IP, but now the studio drops some new hints--along with acquiring some of the best talent in the industry.

Forza Horizon developer Playground Games just opened its second huge office in Leamington Spa and has assembled a team of industry vets including Sean Eyestone, who worked on Metal Gear Solid V and Star Wars: Battlefront II, Will Kennedy who worked with Rockstar North for 8 years and helped make GTA V, and Juan Fernandez di Simon who worked on Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.

The studio also told GamesIndustry.biz that the new IP is an open-world action RPG, which certainly changes things a bit. It'll be interesting to see if Microsoft is funding this new project or not given the studio's long-standing affiliation with the games-maker.

In addition to the PC port, Tencent will help bring PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds to the huge 700 million-strong Chinese mobile market.

Tencent and Bluehole today announced yet another major move to rake in tons of cash: PUBG is coming to mobiles in China, a region that will generate an estimated $27.5 billion in 2017. Tencent already dominates the Chinese mobile market with games like Honor of Kings--in fact the publisher had 8 out of the 20 top Chinese mobile games and apps in November. The publisher recently announced that it will be assisting developer Bluehole to bring PUBG's PC port into China.

In a joint statement Tencent and Bluehole execs affirm PUBG's mobile port will be genuine and authentic. The port will launch in the near future on Chinese mobile platforms.