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How to make a retro arcade out of a NES cartridge
The maker/modder community is always cooking up some awesome homebrew tech: we've covered the the SNES Pi Boy Portable, and the tiny 70's themed Gameboy that fits in your pocket--but now a DIY tecchie has made his own NES console out of a classic Nintendo cartridge.
Since Nintendo has done such a horrible job getting the NES Mini out to consumers, leading to insane $200-300 eBay auctions from scalpers, many gamers are looking for ways to get their nostalgic gaming fix.
Introducing the Pi Cart, a fully-fledged classic gaming console packed into an old NES cart. The Pi Cart was made by Zach from Howchoo, and is (you guessed it) powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero as well as RetroPie software. You can actually make one yourself with about $30 and a bunch of emulated games, and Zach even shows you a step-by-step guide with all the tools you need to make your own Pi Cart.
Continue reading: How to make a retro arcade out of a NES cartridge (full post)
HTC 11 could feature 8GB of RAM and Snapdragon 835
The HTC 11 should be unveiled sometime next year, possibly at MWC at the beginning of February, or shortly afterward like they did with the HTC 10.
Not much is known about the phone at this point, but a photo of the HTC 11 recently leaked on the Chinese social network Weibo. Have in mind to take the photo and the leaked specs with a grain of salt since they can not be confirmed at this point.
The leaked photo shows that HTC 11 features a dual rear camera with 8MP selfie camera. The post says that HTC 11 will have a beefy 3700 mAh battery, an improvement from 3000 mAh battery that HTC 10 has.
Continue reading: HTC 11 could feature 8GB of RAM and Snapdragon 835 (full post)
NASA postpones launch due to equipment malfunction
The planned launch of NASA's CYGNSS spacecraft aboard an Orbital ATK Pegasus rocket has been postponed. According to the company, a hydraulic pump aboard the Orbital ATK L-1011 Stargazer aircraft, which is required to release the latches holding the Pegasus in place, was not receiving power.
The three-stage Pegasus XL will be used to deploy eight small satellites for NASA's Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) mission into a Low-Earth orbit. Pegasus is carried aloft by Orbital ATK's Stargazer L-1011 aircraft to approximately 40,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean, where it will be released and free-fall for five seconds before igniting its first stage rocket motor. With its unique delta-shaped wing, Pegasus will deliver these satellites into orbit in a little over 10 minutes.
CYGNSS will be used to study hurricanes and to learn about their rapid intensification.
Continue reading: NASA postpones launch due to equipment malfunction (full post)
Thermaltake reveals Core X71 tempered glass PC case
Thermaltake has announced the Core X71 Thermal Glass Edition PC case, featuring a tempered glass window to show of your rig, modular components, and a spacious full-tower chassis with plenty of room for high-end enthusiast hardware.
The Core X71 Tempered Glass Edition is a modified version of the Core X71 case that features 4 mm-thick tempered glass side windows. The chassis features a dual-compartment optimized for easy installation and modular expandability, and fits bigger HPTX/XL-ATX/EATX motherboards and video cards above 350mm. Users can also install a AIO liquid-cooling solution into the Core X71 as well as a multitude of fans for air cooling.
"Designed for high-end gaming system compatibility, the Core X71's modular drive racks allow users to easily install up to seven data storage devices, a dual expansion slot VGA of up to 420mm in length, and a tower CPU cooler as high as 180mm. Even with a high-wattage PSU stretching to 220mm in length, the Core X71 still leaves plenty of interior space for cable management. Moreover, a 480mm radiator can be installed at front of the chassis, delivering superior cooling performance."
Continue reading: Thermaltake reveals Core X71 tempered glass PC case (full post)
Electric car that has a garden and turns into an office
Rinspeed, a Swiss car manufacturer, is famous for its exotic concepts that don't enter into production but attract a lot of attention.
At CES, the company will introduce a self-driving electric car called Oasis that also has a small garden plot behind the windshield. Yes, a garden. I guess if you are stuck in traffic you can plant or water your flowers or something?
With its large glass areas and shrouds on the front wheels, the refined and swift two-seat runabout looks rather futuristic. The company says they found the inspiration for this concept in the famous Star Wars icon R2D2 because their car can also turn on its wheels with almost a zero radius thanks to a special steering angle, two in-wheel electric motors and torque vectoring.
Continue reading: Electric car that has a garden and turns into an office (full post)
Microsoft: you have to 'fudge' info to market 4K HDR
Since 4K HDR gaming is something you have to see to believe, marketing it can be very difficult: you literally can't see the differences unless you already own the requisite 4K HDR displays, making the next resolution jump quite nebulous for Sony and Microsoft to sell. Due to this roadblock and difficulty, Microsoft exec Albert Penello says companies "have to fudge things a bit" in order to sell 4K HDR gaming.
Like it or not, consoles are forging ahead to the new realm of 4K HDR gaming. Sony's pushing into this territory with its new 4K-ready mostly-upscaled PlayStation 4 Pro, and has even enabled HDR for base PS4 consoles. Microsoft, however, has two consoles for 4K HDR gaming: the new $299 Xbox One S, which upscales regular Xbox One games to 4K on UHDTV screens and supports HDR, and its "monster" Project Scorpio, which will enable native 4K gaming with its (likely) AMD Vega GPU. But when Sony announced the PS4 Pro in September, it was very difficult to actually sell the console on its merits, as you literally can't even its main selling point unless you already have the required 4K display hardware.
So how will Microsoft and Sony get around this very obvious roadblock? By "fudging" the details. "Showing people what 4K and HDR looks like is really hard when you're not watching the thing in 4K or in HDR," Microsoft exec Albert Penello said on Major Nelson's recent podcast. "How do we market that and be honest. You have to fudge things a little bit to show the differences, but you want to do it in a way that's honest. So even telling customers what it looks like, we have to go through that journey."
Continue reading: Microsoft: you have to 'fudge' info to market 4K HDR (full post)
TSMC's new $15.7 billion fab will make 3nm, 5nm chips
TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) announced that it will spend $15.7 billion on a new facility to create 3nm and 5nm chips.
The new facility will be based in Taiwan, and may use the Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography process to fabricate 3nm and 5nm chips. Back in July of this year, TSMC affirmed it's made strides in its EUV technology, implementing 125W EUV source into its ASML NXE:3350 equipment.
"We're asking the government to help us find a plot that is large enough (123 to 197 acres) and has convenient access so we can build an advanced chip plant to manufacture 5 nm and 3 nm chips," TSMC spokesperson Elizabeth Sun told TechPowerUp.
Continue reading: TSMC's new $15.7 billion fab will make 3nm, 5nm chips (full post)
Decima engine will 'rocket Death Stranding to Jupiter'
Awesome things are happening on the Sony front: Hideo Kojima's new Kojima Productions studio is collaborating with Guerrilla Games to foster an amazingly powerful and dynamic new games engine called Decima, which will push Sony's new 4K-ready PS4 Pro to its limits.
The Decima engine is powering both Kojima Pro's new Death Stranding game and Guerrilla Games' excellent-looking PS4 exclusive Horizon: Zero Dawn. In other words, two dev teams are pouring their heart, soul and know-how into a single unified engine. "It's a full blown collaboration. They are using a merged code base, it's the same code," PS4 architect Mark Cerny affirmed in a recent interview (see above).
Kojima is so impressed with the Decima engine and the collaboration that he says Death Stranding will fly way past its original goal: instead of landing on the Moon, Kojima will take his new mysterious game all the way to Jupiter. "We decided to make the rocket by reforming their engine. And by doing so it enables us to go to Mars but even to Jupiter," Kojima said in a series of metaphorical Tweets.
Continue reading: Decima engine will 'rocket Death Stranding to Jupiter' (full post)
AMD announces Radeon Instinct, the beginning of AI
We are in for a wild freakin' ride in 2017, with AMD kicking things off today with the announcement of something radically new: Radeon Instinct. What is Radeon Instinct? There's no easy answer to that, but it is the next big thing in cloud computing - something being touted as the machine intelligence era.
Back in the 1960s, the big thing at the time were the massive main frames that would take up entire buildings, requiring radical amounts of cooling and physical space - while not providing much power (compared to the insane amounts of data crunching power we have now).
In the 80s and 90s it shifted to client-server operations, and then in the last 15 years we've seen a massive shift towards cloud computing.
Continue reading: AMD announces Radeon Instinct, the beginning of AI (full post)
New HDMI 2.0b spec announced by format working group
Ahead of next month's CES event in Las Vegas, the HDMI forum, which consists of the major players from consumer electronics companies, mobile devices and cable manufacturers have ratified a major update to the HDMI cable specification, dubbed version 2.0b.
In an announcement today, the HDMI forum revealed the update to the format includes the following capabilities:
While some of these features were enabled in earlier specifications by individual manufacturers, the ratification by the working group should mean improved functionality throughout the sector. Thankfully, the updates is also fully backwards compatible with the HDMI 2.0a specification, with no need to purchase new cables to unlock the new features. Expect to see more about HDMI 2.0b at next month's CES event in Las Vegas.
Continue reading: New HDMI 2.0b spec announced by format working group (full post)
PS4 developers explain their single platform focus
Sony has been making moves throughout 2016 to secure more of the gaming console space, with over 50 million PS4s sold, you could definitely say they're making the right moves.
Lead Architect of the PS4 and PS4 Pro, Mark Cerny was interviewed with IGN alongside Guerrilla Games' CEO Hermen Hulst and Hideo Kojima where he said: "I think one of the things you're seeing is just the benefit of focus on a single platform".
He continued: "You can know the technology down to the tiny hardware details and then take advantage of them in your engine. And that really pays off. I mean, I was sitting there this morning at the keynote at PSX 2016 and it's clear that Guerrilla and Naughty Dog have somehow found the button you push that makes more polygons come out".
Continue reading: PS4 developers explain their single platform focus (full post)
Hit the road with 'David Brent' in our Blu-ray giveaway!
To celebrate this week's release of 'David Brent: Life on the Road' on Blu-ray and DVD, we have 5 Blu-ray prize packs to give away thanks to our friends at eOne Home Entertainment.
'David Brent: Life on the Road' sees the highly anticipated big screen debut of one of comedy's best-loved characters, David Brent (Ricky Gervais). The star of the hit BBC series The Office, Brent hasn't given up on his dream of rock stardom. Assembling a group of musicians who are just in it for the money, and a talented rapper in an attempt to gain some street cred, Brent embarks on a selffinanced tour - a last ditch effort to find fame and fortune. Featuring original music by the man himself, David Brent: Life on the Road returns Gervais to his most iconic character, once again pushing the boundaries of comedy with hilarious, excruciating and surprisingly moving results.
To go into the running to win a prize, simply correctly answer the following question:
Continue reading: Hit the road with 'David Brent' in our Blu-ray giveaway! (full post)
Watch Dogs 2 peak players drop by 47% already
Oh, Ubisoft - you can't catch a break, and there's no one else to blame. Watch Dogs 2 was released onto the PC two weeks after its launch troubled launch on the PS4 and Xbox One, but the numbers aren't looking good at all.
According to the latest report from our friends at GitHyp, Watch Dogs 2 player base is suffering already, falling behind the concurrent players of even The Division and Rainbow Six: Siege. Paul Curtin from GitHyp writes: "Watch Dogs 2 debuted one week ago with a peak of 18,113 players in a single hour (less than half of the original's 47k peak) and the player counts have already dropped 47% to a peak of only 9,604 players today. The players per hour average is brought down even further with the game dropping to slightly under 5,000 users per hour when factoring in prime after school/work hours in the U.S. each day".
Ubisoft is trying to put out the fire, explaining to PC Gamer: "We expect both week-two and week-three sales to be above traditional sales patterns. There is a trend toward games, especially high-quality games, having stronger and longer 'tails' as favorable reviews and word of mouth spread. Watch Dogs 2 is already considered a tremendous addition to the open-world action adventure series and we're confident that millions of players are going to love it".
Continue reading: Watch Dogs 2 peak players drop by 47% already (full post)
The 'Fate of the Furious' revealed in first trailer
With its predecessor 'Furious 7' blowing up the box office to become the sixth highest grossing film of all time, Universal aren't keen to let the franchise lay dormant for long. Enter 'The Fate of the Furious'.
Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson reprise their lead roles for the eighth iteration of the franchise, alongside Jason Statham, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Nathalie Emmanuel, Elsa Pataky and Kurt Russell. Franchise newcomer Charlize Theron is set to add some extra credibility as a mysterious woman who reintroduces Diesel's character Dom back into the seedy underworld.
'The Fate of the Furious' hits cinemas worldwide on April 14, 2017.
Continue reading: The 'Fate of the Furious' revealed in first trailer (full post)
AMD Radeon RX 460 unlock, free 12.5% performance gain
AMD has hit the mainstream pretty hard this year with the Polaris-based Radeon RX 400 series, but now the Radeon RX 460 represents even better value for money with a BIOS unlock that unleashes 12.5% performance boost.
Over at the overclocking.guide, author der8auer has unlocked a Radeon RX 460 graphics card from its original 896 stream processors, to 1024 stream processors. The TMUs also get a boost, jumping from 56 to 64 TMUs - providing around 10-12% more performance, a great upgrade considering its free.
ASUS Radeon RX 460 Strix and the SAPPHIRE RX 460 Nitro have both been tested with the BIOS upgrade, and they worked - offering increased performance.
Continue reading: AMD Radeon RX 460 unlock, free 12.5% performance gain (full post)
ARK dev: PS4 Pro performance equal to $900 gaming PC
Studio Wildcard has been hard at work on ARK: Survival Evolved since it was released, with the game finally hitting the PS4 earlier this year after enjoying great success on the PC.
Now the developer is talking about Sony's new 4K-ready (but mostly upscaled) PS4 Pro console, as well as possible PSVR support in the future. Before that, what type of experience are we getting on the PS4 with ARK? During a recent interview with WCCFTech, we now that the developer is aiming for: "30-45 FPS for the regular PS4 (which renders ARK's environment at either at 680p or 720p depending on whether you have "Detailed Graphics" selected)". As for the PS4 Pro: "60 FPS at 720p,or 30-60 FPS at 1080p, depending on "Detailed Graphics" setting".
The team was asked about their thoughts on the performance of the PS4 Pro, where Lead Programmer and co-founder of Studio Wildcard Jeremy Stieglitz replied: "Very impressed with its performance, at a very reasonable price. We estimate it would cost at least $900 to build a similarly powerful PC, and that's if you were custom-building it with extreme cost control. We estimate its raw GPU performance is similar to an NVIDIA 970, and along with CPU improvements and overall more memory, it's a really high benchmark for console performance. Hats off to Sony for "crossing the Rubicon" of console hardware updates (bonus that it tends to improve performance in just about every existing title in the PlayStation 4 library)!"
Continue reading: ARK dev: PS4 Pro performance equal to $900 gaming PC (full post)
Crytek staff claim they haven't been paid in 3 months
Crytek have been through a few financial troubles over the years (that's what you get when you abandon PC gaming and want some of that console cash) and here we are again - Crytek developers are saying they haven't been paid in over 3 months. There were big issues in June 2014, which you can check out here.
Sources from Let's Play Video Games have said that Crytek employees haven't been paid in the last 3 months, with the studio informing their staff the issues would be resolved with a bank loan in Germany, where Crytek HQ is. This was meant to be done over a month ago, and it hasn't happened yet.
The payment delays are affecting all staff, ranging from entry-level through to management. Another alleged Crytek employee has taken to Reddit, saying they work at the German-based studio and haven't been paid in 6 months. The user said: "I'm not sure where else to turn at this point. This has happened in the past a few times, but never for this long. Management never gives anyone a heads up, and it isn't clear to me if they are getting paid or even informed from the owners".
Continue reading: Crytek staff claim they haven't been paid in 3 months (full post)
It's 'War' in new 'Planet of the Apes' teaser trailer
Before Charlton Heston and that terrible Tim Burton reboot, 2011's 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' took the franchise right back to where it all begun, as the human race began it's downfall. Its 2014 follow-up 'Dawn of the Planet of the Apes' chronicled the war with humanity's survivors. Now, the third entry is set to continue bridging the gap.
Andy Serkis dons a motion capture suit once again to play Caesar , the ape leader who spearheaded the rebellion against the humans, while Woody Harrelson plays a new character called the Colonel, a ruthless army veteran who commands the last vestiges of the human armies.
'War for the Planet of the Apes' is set to hit screens worldwide from July 2017.
Continue reading: It's 'War' in new 'Planet of the Apes' teaser trailer (full post)
Final Fantasy XV: How to master attacks and combos
Tired of mashing buttons in Final Fantasy XV? Pull off some awesome attack, but not sure exactly how you did it? Luckily we have your back: in this helpful how-to guide, we break down the anatomy of Final Fantasy XV's combat and teach you everything you need to know to pull off epic combos in every single battle.
For expediency, we won't cover every facet of FFXV's combat, including Link-Strikes, Breaks, Blindsides and all the other dynamics. We're just trying to teach gamers not to mindlessly button mash to beat their foes!
With Final Fantasy XV, Square Enix broke the mold and introduced a dynamic action-based combat system. The game's combat now feels more like Devil May Cry than a traditional turn-based Final Fantasy game, complete with combos, timed strikes, effects, and directional blows. In many ways the game takes on the scope of a fighter like Tekken, with reaction time and consistent understaning of combos and weapons being incredibly important throughout.
Continue reading: Final Fantasy XV: How to master attacks and combos (full post)
Huawei Mate 9 goes on sale in the US on January 6th
Huawei's latest flagship, the Huawei Mate 9, should go on sale in the US on January 6th, according to Evan Blass.
The phone was unveiled in Berlin at the beginning of November, with no specific date of the launch in the States given, although it was speculated that it could happen by the end of the year. However, the date given by Evan Blass makes sense since Huawei will be present at CES, and they could use that event for their official launch in the US.
As for the phone, the Mate 9 features Huawei's newest chip the Kirin 960, comes with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, and is expandable to 256GB with a microSD card. The phone has a 5.9-inch full HD display, 4,000 mAh battery, fingerprint sensor and rear dual camera system - 20MP (monochrome) + 12MP (color) with an aperture of f/2.2. The front camera is 8MP with an aperture f/1.9.
Continue reading: Huawei Mate 9 goes on sale in the US on January 6th (full post)









