New Batman game may star Damian Wayne, Batgirl, set in Court of Owls

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Oct 21, 2019 3:41 PM CDT

The next Batman game may be called Arkham Legacy, and feature a perspective-shifting campaign starring multiple heroes.

New Batman game may star Damian Wayne, Batgirl, set in Court of Owls

Warner Bros. Montreal has been working on a new Batman game for a while now, and it seems to be set in the Court of Owls story arc with a few unexpected twists. The studio has yet to confirm anything other than cryptic teasers and is likely holding off for a big reveal at The Game Awards 2019.

But new potential info hints multiple characters in the Wayne family will be playable, possibly Damien Wayne, Batgirl, and of course the Caped Crusader himself, hence the rumored Arkham Legacy title. The info comes from infamous Smash Bros. and Nintendo leaker Sabi, who tweeter the Arkham Legacy name and said the reports of a playable family in the next Batman seem legit.

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New Terminator FPS looks rather boring and tedious

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Oct 21, 2019 1:23 PM CDT

The new Terminator Resistance game includes pretty much everything you don't want in a Terminator shooter, including lots of sneaking, a crafting system, inventory management, and an RPG skill-up pane.

New Terminator FPS looks rather boring and tedious

I didn't have high hopes for the new Terminator shooter right out of the gate. It's being developed by Teyon, the same devs behind the disastrous Rambo game, but Terminator Resistance is looking a bit rough.

A new gameplay trailer for Terminator Resistance pretty much highlights the opposite of what you expect in a shooter. There's lots of evading enemies and tedious hacking, collecting materials, and an overall feeling of helplessness. In the full 27 minute trailer, the player doesn't fire a single shot or get into a gunfight. They just get shot in the back by a T-800 and die right away, or spend most of the time crouch-walking through an area and playing through a Frogger-like hacking mini-game.

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Diablo 4 confirmed by artbook advertisement

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Oct 21, 2019 8:14 AM CDT

Diablo IV has been outed by an artbook advertisement, confirming the game will be revealed soon.

Diablo 4 confirmed by artbook advertisement

German games magazine GameStar stole Blizzard's thunder, confirming Diablo IV's existence in an advertisement ahead of its huge Blizzcon 2019 reveal. The ad itself is for a new hardcover Diablo artbook that's slated to release November 3, days after Blizzcon begins. "Featuring over 500 artworks from Diablo, Diablo II, Diablo III and Diablo IV, this book features many noteworthy artworks created for Blizzard Entertainment's iconic action role-playing game that has given generations of fans everlasting nightmares," GameStar magazine reads.

We've known Diablo IV has been in the works for a while now, so this isn't a surprise. Blizzard started hiring for the new game back in 2016, and sources tell Kotaku that Diablo IV has been rebooted at least once. The current version of Diablo IV is more grim, malevolent, and bloody than Diablo III.

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Obsidian Entertainment releases PC requirements for 'The Outer Worlds'

Jak Connor | Gaming | Oct 21, 2019 8:04 AM CDT

The official system requirements for The Outer Worlds have been released, detailing what PC gamers are going to need to run the title.

Obsidian Entertainment releases PC requirements for 'The Outer Worlds'

Obsidian Entertainment has taken to their forums to release the PC requirements for their upcoming title The Outer Worlds. From the releases specs we can see that the game won't be hitting PC very hard at all, while also not taking up a lot of storage space. The minimum PC requirements indicate that users will need to have at least a GTX 650 Ti or an AMD HD 7850 to play the game.

Recommended PC requirements are a GTX 1060 6GB or a Radeon RX 470. For those wondering how much storage is going to be required to install the game, The Outer Worlds comes it at a quite reasonable 40GB. I have listed all of the released PC requirements below, and if you wish to visit the official Obsidian forums you can find that here.

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iPhone users who have enabled Dark Mode get 30% more battery life

Jak Connor | Mobile Devices, Tablets & Phones | Oct 21, 2019 7:10 AM CDT

It was only a couple of weeks ago that Dark Mode for iOS and Android devices was rolled out, and since then users have been wondering if using Dark Mode affects the devices battery life. Tests have been released and it seems that it does.

iPhone users who have enabled Dark Mode get 30% more battery life

Tests conducted by PhoneBuff indicate that for iPhone users who have upgraded to iOS 13 and have enabled Dark Mode will be given 30% more battery life. The set of tests conducted by PhoneBuff were with robots who did a bunch of predefined tasks that included typing out messages, scrolling Twitter, using YouTube and Google Maps. The phones that were used for these tests were two iPhone XS Max's that were brought to the same level of brightness to ensure fair testing.

The tests were recorded over a two hour period and what they found that was that the light mode killed the battery that much that the testing in Google Maps couldn't even be concluded. Dark Mode on the other hand still had 30% of its battery remaining. Why does Dark Mode give better battery efficiency? Well that's actually quite simple. When an OLED display is showing black it means the tiny pixel on the display is completely off, not draining any reserved power contained in the battery. To the contrary, when an OLED display is at full brightness more power is being drained due to the pixels being powered on, you can probably see where this is going.

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Deep learning AI beats expert scholars at deciphering ancient texts

Jak Connor | Artificial Intelligence | Oct 21, 2019 6:09 AM CDT

Researchers at the University of Oxford built and trained a neural network to be able to fill in the letter gaps of ancient texts, and now the AI is better than expert scholars.

Deep learning AI beats expert scholars at deciphering ancient texts

The researchers tested the AI on ancient Greek inscriptions that were on objects such as stones, ceramics and metal. The texts are dated back to 1500 and 2600 years ago, and according to a report out of New Scientist, the AI creamed the humans in a head-to-head speed test at deciphering the artifacts. "In a head-to-head test, where the AI attempted to fill the gaps in 2949 damaged inscriptions, human experts made 30 percent more mistakes than the AI. Whereas the experts took 2 hours to get through 50 inscriptions, Pythia gave its guesses for the entire cohort in seconds."

New Scientist says that the AI which has been titled as Pythia was able to recognize and remember patterns in 35,000 different relics that amassed over 3 million words. It was also able to pick up patterns and include context such as the shape and layout within its descriptions. Pythia gives scholars predictions for missing letters or words within the text and rather than returning to the scholars with a single prediction Pythia gives multiple predictions and its level of confidence for each one.

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Amazon sellers are shipping grossly 'off' food and its not their fault

Jak Connor | Business, Financial & Legal | Oct 21, 2019 5:07 AM CDT

A new report out of CNBC has stated that third-party Amazon sellers are shipping out expired food to buyers much to frequently.

Amazon sellers are shipping grossly 'off' food and its not their fault

According to the report, numerous Amazon customers are receiving foods and products such as baby formula, coffee creamer, beef jerky, granola bars and more well past their sell-by-date. Interviews have been conducted with the Amazon third-party sellers, consumers and consultants and majority of the formulated opinions point the finger at Amazon for having numerous system loopholes.

CNBC also states in their article that an analytics firm that specializes in the Amazon Marketplace combed over the sites 100 best-selling food products. They found that out of the 40% of sellers, more than five customer complaints were lodged about expired goods. It seems that as Amazon grows and expands its food business so does the amount of problems that arise. According to some safety advocates these issues will only increase as Amazon doesn't have accountability for its products due to the previously mentioned system "loopholes".

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Google becomes the 1st company in the U.S to deliver packages by drone

Jak Connor | Drones | Oct 21, 2019 4:08 AM CDT

Alphabet, Google's parent company has a subsidiary company called 'Wing', Wing has now become the first company in the United States to deliver a package by drone. Achievement unlocked!

Google becomes the 1st company in the U.S to deliver packages by drone

A small town in Virginia is home called Christiansburg is home to Wing's testing grounds as residents can order products as per normal but instead of getting them driven by FedEx, they can get a drone drop off. Families can use the Wing app to order products, and one family who has already used the app bought Tylenol, cough drops, Vitamin C tablets, water and tissues.

The Wing drones are capable of transporting a maximum of three pounds of goods to a consumer that is located within six miles of the drone loading center called the "Nest". You are probably wondering how the dropping off transition happens, so once the drone has arrived at the marked address it hovers above the house and instead of landing it lowers the cargo via a cable to purchaser.

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NASA makes history with a successful first all-female spacewalk on ISS

Jak Connor | Science, Space, Health & Robotics | Oct 21, 2019 3:03 AM CDT

NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir made history this past Friday with a successful spacewalk mission to replace a broken part on the International Space Station's (ISS) power grid.

NASA makes history with a successful first all-female spacewalk on ISS

The astronauts main goal was to replace a faulty 19-year old charge-regulating device for one of the new batteries that was installed last week. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine spectated the historical event from the NASA's HQ in Washington, here is what he had to say about the achievement "We have the right people doing the right job at the right time. They are an inspiration to people all over the world including me. And we're very excited to get this mission underway."

For those that don't know, the astronauts aboard the ISS are replacing old nickel-hydrogen batteries with new next-gen lithium ion batteries that are expected to last the rest of the floating laboratories lifespan. If you are after a more in-depth explanation at what these batteries are powering, check out my breakdown post here. In summary, congratulations to both Christina Koch and Jessica Meir for this achievement, women around the world are no doubt looking up to them both.

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Twitch 'Watch Parties' allows streamers & viewers to watch Prime Video

Jak Connor | TV, Movies & Home Theatre | Oct 21, 2019 2:02 AM CDT

It seems that Twitch have started testing a brand new feature that will allow for streamers to share a selection of Amazon Prime Video content with their viewers.

Twitch 'Watch Parties' allows streamers & viewers to watch Prime Video

This new feature is called 'Watch Parties' and according to an email sent to Travis Shreffler, a content creator and author, Prime Video has asked him to test this new feature that will allow for selection of Prime Video and movies to be shared on his channel while he is streaming.

The email also says that this feature will only be available for viewers who already have Prime Video, and to kick off the new feature Amazon will be making Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Mission Impossible: Fallout and Pokemon available. Amazon also says that after some more testing time they will continue to add more titles to service, but for the time being it will only be available in the US and with the previously mentioned titles.

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