Latest News - Page 2357

Google has made its new Pixel smartphone official, teasing it will rock a 12.3MP camera that Google calls the "best smartphone camera ever made" - a huge claim, for a company pushing into a hardware in a new way.

The new Pixel smartphone features the 12.3MP sensor with f/2.0 and HDR+ technology, with some beautiful images taken on Pixel shown during the unveiling. Google said that the speed of the camera app is 'really important', with a smaller capture time than any other smartphone Google has tested.

Pixel has some incredible video stabilization technology, with some amazing results shown by Google. It was actually pretty incredible to see, almost like a 3-axis stabilization system.

Media streaming on Xbox One might get a whole lot better thanks to Microsoft's new universal platform.

VLC has been submitted to the Xbox One's UWP app storefront, and if approved, users will be able to reap all the benefits including expansive playback support. Right now the Plex app is currently meeting the needs of media streamers, but VLC supports UPnP network share browsing, HTTPS streaming, and a galaxy of codecs for all kinds of different media files.

I don't see Microsoft standing in the way of VLC showing up on the Xbox One app store, and I hope to see tons of other useful desktop apps arrive on the console to add even more functionality to the system. UWP, after all, is one of the Xbox brand's major benefits and Microsoft would be wise to take full advantage of all the apps they can muster.

Google has finally made its new Pixel smartphones official, with their new Google Assistant at the heart of the new Pixel smartphone, the first smartphone on the market with Assistant built in. Pixel will be completely unlocked on the Google Play Store.

Google is putting a big push behind Pixel, with the industrial design to the user experience has been designed by Google. The rear glass provides 'personality and character' to Pixel, with a subtle edge from t op to bottom keeping the smartphone thin where your hand grips it - oh and no camera bump, with Google making a dig at the iPhone.

And yes, Pixel rocks a headphone jack.

Google boss Sundar Pichai is on the stage right now talking about Google, its past and its future - teasing that the company is 'very excited' about moving towards an AI first world.

Where are we now? We're in a mobile-first world, but Google is wanting to change that up with artificial intelligence. Google has just unveiled the Google Assistant, which you can ask questions - it seems like a more powerful Google Now, and that's not a bad thing at all. Google Now is one of Google's best secret weapons.

On stage, Google Assistant was used with near instant replies and information - providing details on some plays at a local theater, taking in contextual information from the screen through an SMS message. The voice that Google Assistant uses is much more organic, feeling like an actual person replying versus a robotic human voice.

Facebook is shifting in a new direction with its introduction of Marketplace, a new place where Facebook users can buy and sell goods in their local communities. The social network says that 450 million people usually utilize buying or selling groups in order to buy stuff.

Marketplace is an easy-to-use extension of Facebook through a simple shop icon in the bottom of the tab of Facebook, this tab will display the items that people are selling, near to where you live. You can also run a search for a specific item that you're after, with the items sorted in various categories like Household, Electronics, and more.

Tapping a listing of a product will display more details on it, with photos and a description from the seller. If you want to keep an eye on a product, you can save it for later, but you'll need to personally contact the seller for payment details. You'll also need to work out the delivery of the item yourself, too.

Many of us have used one of Nokia's phones at one point in our lives. The Nokia 3310 is still mentioned as an indestructible phone with amazing battery life. The popularity of Nokia phones is best shown in the sales numbers - both the Nokia 5110 and Nokia 3210 have been sold more than 160 million units.

Compared with today's luxury smartphones, these old models look very modest. Especially if we compare the size of the screen and its resolution. In less than two decades, we have witnessed major changes in the dimensions and quality.

Apple's iPhone 7 Plus has a 514 times higher screen resolution than the Nokia 5110, which was launched in 1998.

Tens of thousands of cyber attacks occur every second, but it's hard to imagine and visualize the number of attacks. Norse, a company from California that provides intelligence to many different companies, has created an interactive map where users can watch the cyber attacks in real-time.

The attacks are shown with colored lines that connect the source and the target of the attack. Norse tracks these attacks with the help of more than 8 million sensors located in 47 different countries.

The map looks really impressive, but also worrisome considering how much of our personal information and financial records are stored online.

It's just hours before Google's big new Pixel and Pixel XL smartphone reveal, and we've received even more fresh leaks on the potent handset duo.

Thanks to recent leaks, Google's new Pixel and Pixel XL smartphone announcements have been spoiled and we already know most of the important info, including the duo's beefy specs--4GB of onboard RAM, Snapdragon 821 processors, roomy storage, etc. But Google still has some surprises up their sleeves, and they could be, well, magical.

A new bit of info from a now-pulled Verizon listing mentions something called "Google Magic," which could refer to Pixel-exclusive software or unique gesture-tracking features. Google is expected to unveil its new Daydream mobile VR headset at today's reveal event, so I'm thinking "Google Magic" has something to do with Daydream.

Facebook has announced a "lite" version of its Messenger app - Messenger Lite. The app is designed for older phones that run on slower internet connections.

Messenger Lite will initially launch in Kenya, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Tunisia and Venezuela, but it will come to other countries as well. The app will have basic Messenger features like sending messages, photos and stickers but compared to the official Messenger app some features will be left out.

The app will be available for Android devices and there is no information if a version of Messenger Lite will be launched for iOS.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided launched back in August without a huge impression left on gamers, but now the console versions of the game have been updated with support for HDR.

HDR support for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided has reached the Xbox One S, PS4 and the upcoming PS4 Pro. The full patch notes:

The following features have been added:

Sony is set to launch its new PlayStation VR headset in just 10 days time, while its faster and more capable PS4 Pro goes on sale in around a month from now. Before that, we're finding more details out on the upcoming PSVR headset, and it kinda sucks.

The upcoming PS4 Pro will be capable of HDR, which is a big deal for Sony's refreshed console, but if you've got your PSVR headset plugged into your console, you'll need to unplug it for your HDR-capable TV to work. This is because the PSVR headset hooks up to the PS4 through an external box called the Processor Unit, which acts as an HDMI splitter. This allows the PS4 to output images to a second screen, like your TV - and it also handles the audio processing for 3D sound.

This means the PSVR headset is hooked up to the PS4 through USB, connecting to the Processor Unit with a hybrid HDMI and auxiliary cable, and then that box connects to the PS4 and TV with separate HDMI cables. Blurgh. The big issue here is that Sony has confirmed the Processor Box's passthrough functionality does not support HDR, at all. If you want to play HDR content from your new PS4 Pro console, you'll need to unplug the Processor Unit, and thus your PSVR headset, completely.

Gears of War 4 is nearly upon us, with The Coalition unleashing the pre-loading of the PC version of the game. The developer is urging gamers to update their Windows 10 installations before pre-loading the game.

Remember that you'll require a monster amount of HDD space to install Gears of War 4, with a 73.3GB download for the game. The new update for Windows 10 that you'll require is the KB3194496 update, released yesterday - and if you don't have the update, you should be restricted from downloading Gears of War 4 - at least until you update Windows 10.

Gears of War 4 launches on October 11 for both the Xbox One and Windows 10-powered PCs, with the Ultimate Edition dropping a few days earlier on October 7.

Australia is a great country, but the states, cities, and towns aren't connected well enough - but this could all change with the introduction of Hyperloop, from Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. Rob Lloyd, former Cisco boss, now runs Hyperloop One, with engineers from companies like NASA and Boeing, with them working on "passive magnetic levitation technology".

Hyperloop One is an LA-based company that secured $80 million earlier this year, publicly teasing its propulsion system, the closest yet that we've been to Musk's vision of transportation for the future. Hyperloop One's VP for Worldwide Business Development, Alan James, talked with The Australian, where he said: "We're very keen to explore the potential for doing proof of operations in Australia and the reason for that is there's a clear long-term need for ultra-fast transport on the Australian east coast".

Hyperloop has been teased at taking passengers across distances that would otherwise take hours upon hours, at speeds of up to 621mph (1000kmph), all in freight pods that zoom across large distances in low-pressure tubes. James continued: "Melbourne to Sydney is the third busiest air corridor in the world and we can give you Melbourne downtown to Sydney downtown in 55 minutes. So we would be looking, either in NSW or Victoria, or possibly in ACT, to develop the first section of that route, to prove the operation of Hyperloop, to get regulatory approval".

We were the first source in the world to announce that NVIDIA's unannounced Pascal-based Tegra would power Nintendo's next-gen NX console, and it seems more and more outlets are confirming this news - including the latest leak on NX.

According to Direct Feed Gaming, Nintendo NX will be 3-4x more powerful than the Wii U (in raw Gigaflops numbers), adding that game developers won't have too much trouble porting over their Xbox One and PS4 games to NX. Nintendo's new NX console will support Unreal Engine 4 and other mainstream gamer engines, making game ports much easier.

Nintendo will most likely skip on 4K and HDR support for NX, and that the "hybrid" side of the console might be interesting, but all of the other crazy rumors are supposedly just that, rumors.

Remedy has not had a good experience with the PC version of Quantum Break, and now that the Steam version has been released, people are testing the game on both DX11 and DX12. It seems that DX11 is performing better than DX12, and we shouldn't be surprised.

Eurogamer has a detailed report on Quantum Break performing better on DX11, running a GeForce GTX 970 and seeing an increase from 33FPS on DX12 to 44.7FPS on DX11. On the newer GeForce GTX 1060, the performance jumps from 39.5FPS on DX12, to 47.5FPS on DX11. It's far away from 60FPS, but details can be adjusted on DX11 on a mid-range card like the GTX 1060, and still hit 60FPS.

As for the DX12 performance, we should expect that as Microsoft and nearly every developer releasing DX12-capable games seems to have dropped the ball. Some games are scraping through, but games like Quantum Break are massive AAA titles that should have performance completely locked down on APIs like DX12, instead we're met with a myriad of issues on the Windows Store version of the game, and now gimped performance on DX12.

Hello Games set its own price for No Man's Sky on PS4 and PC--Sony and other business partners had nothing to do with it.

For the longest time, I thought that No Man's Sky's $60 price tag was a result of some business decision between Hello Games and its distributors, including Sony and iam8bit. But that doesn't make a lot of sense considering No Man's Sky is $60 on Steam and GoG, too.

Still, I thought it wasn't as simple as Hello Games arbitrarily deciding to charge that much for their indie game--it just didn't seen possible for them to be that greedy. I mean who in their right mind would put the highest possible pricetag on a product that barely resembles the game you spent years hyping?

French digital security company Oberthur Technologies has developed a revolutionary new bank card that should make it very difficult for fraudsters to do any damage to your account. Called Motion Code, the technology sees that three digit PIN on the back of your card change every hour for three years, meaning anyone who steals your card or acquires the digits will have minimal time to spend your money.

Most fraud occurs hours or days after cards are stolen, but no doubt the criminals will catch on and spend the money quicker upon recognizing a Motion Code card.

The downside is added difficulty in using your card remotely: no longer will you be able to memorize the PIN and use it regardless of whether you have your card on you or not. But for most, it's likely well worth it.

Despite all the lies, gamers might finally have an honest resolution from No Man's Sky developer Sean Murray.

On his new YouTube Gaming LIVE showcase, games personality Geoff Keighely delivered an inside perspective on No Man's Sky. Keighley says that Sean Murray is "open" to coming on the show to discuss the game and what went wrong, and why he lied--it'd be like a sort of confessional, so to speak.

Since No Man's Sky's backlash launch, Sean Murray has basically quit the internet: he hasn't tweeted anything for over a month, and has yet to actually address the lies and deception. In fact, Hello Games is currently being investigated by the UK's Advertisement Standards Agency for misleading advertising.

Have you ever wanted to make your own portable emulator arcade out of an SNES controller? Well, now you can.

DIY tech modder Anthony Caccese has created a DIY on how to stuff a Raspberry Pi Zero into an Super Nintendo controller, effectively letting you make your own all-in-one emulator and controller solution. The SNS-005 can be easily plugged into a TV via an HDMI cord, and is powered by its own 3.7v 500mAh internal battery that last about 2.5 hours, and can be charged up at any point via Micro USB.

This project is for all aspiring DIY tecchies out there who've always wanted to tinker with a Raspberry Pi and make something awesome. I have to say that this invention is pretty nifty, especially since mini emulator arcades are typically small handhelds or tiny set-top boxes you connect controllers to, so it's really neat to see an all-in-one solution made out of a controller.

Resident Evil VII isn't actually fully exclusive on Sony's PlayStation VR: Capcom's deal with Sony is timed exclusive, so the horror game could come to other VR headsets in the future. But there's one catch: we'll have to wait a full year.

Capcom's new Resident Evil VII is touted as the first "full VR experience" on Sony's new PlayStation VR, meaning you'll be able to play the entire base game in VR. Normally VR games are "smaller, passive experiences" that focus on quality versus game time, and PSVR's games are no exception (Batman Arkham VR only lasts 2.5 hours on PSVR) . So a full-scaled VR game is a great selling point for the PSVR, regardless how sick it'll make you.

But it looks like Resident Evil VII's exclusivity lease is up in 2018, and it could jump to other VR headsets like the Oculus Rift and Vive at that time. The key word here is could, and it all depends on whether Capcom thinks there's a market for it or not.