Latest News - Page 2495

Samsung has today announced its addition to the SSD market, the PM1633, being no less than a gigantic 15.36TB SSD designed for the enterprise storage market. Marked as the world's largest in its class, Samsung has packed some serious performance within.

Based on a 12Gb/s SAS interface and measuring in as a 2.5-inch form factor drive, this new product will further be released in 7.68TB, 3.84TB, 1.92TB, 960GB and 480GB editions. Boasting "random read and write speeds of up to 200,000 and 32,000 IOPS respectively," the recently issues press release also makes note of read and write speeds being boosted up to 1,200MB/s in this model.

This product release is said to be part of Samsung's plight to become more competitive in the SAS SSD market, helping completely overturn the use of hard disks in some server operations.

Actor Morgan Freeman single-handedly adds gravitas to nearly every role, with his buttery dulcet tones having become a comforting hallmark of quality. Now the actor has finally lent his million dollar vocals to a GPS app, drivers everywhere can be assured they're going the right way. Because Morgan Freeman says so.

According to Time, Freeman's voice is now available for the Google Navigation app Waze, in a tie-in for the 'Olympus Has Fallen' sequel, 'London has fallen'.

if this sounds like a pretty good deal, you'd best be advised to get in quick as Google say the promotion is strictly available for a limited time. Update the Waze app from the iTunes store or Google Play now.

The 1954 Japanese masterpiece 'Seven Samurai' directed by Akira Kurosawa frequently shows up in just about every best film of all time list, (currently enjoying the 19th spot on IMDB Top 250), which is a shame that the film's is not in the best condition owing to the fact that the original 35mm negative is missing. But that's all about to change as Japanese studio Toho embarks on a painstaking new restoration.

According to Kotaku, the studio has scanned a duplicate 35mm negative in 4K resolution and is digitally repairing over 60 years of damage, including scratches and film artefacts, as well as restoring the full opacity of the original black and white image which had faded in parts. The project is being supervised by Teruyo Nogami, one of the few remaining people alive today who worked on the film.

There's no current word on when the remastered film will be available, but it seems a pretty good candidate for the 4K Blu-ray format sometime in the near future.

Astronaut Scott Kelly returned from his year in space mission yesterday, which NASA is commemorating with a look at his achievements during the long voyage.

To say the least, it was a very social voyage, with Kelly hosting the first NASA TweetChat, Tumblr AnswerTime, and Reddit AMA from space. He also Instagrammed the whole time at the President's request. Obama was also sure to give him a warm welcome on his return home.

Non-social achievements for Kelly: harvesting lettuce and zinnia flowers in the VEGGIE facility, the latter of which will assist scientists for deep-space missions and the upcoming Mars mission.

A few slip-ups and accidentally leaks takes some of the mystery out of the infinitely procedural space sim No Man's Sky.

The last update we heard about No Man's Sky was an official June 2016 release date for PS4. Since then, the devs at Hello Games have been pretty much under the radar, busily hacking away at their ambitious project to ensure it's ready for the impending release. Thanks to a blunder from Sony, however, we know that the space sim indie will be priced as a full PS4 game at $59.99, and pre-orders may open up tomorrow.

If that wasn't enough, Amazon might have leaked the game's official release date. The online retailer sent an email to redditor ChaosZeroX saying that No Man's Sky will release on June 21, 2016.

DisplayPort 1.4 is now official, with the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) publishing their new DP1.4 standard. DisplayPort 1.4 allows for huge advantages over DP1.3, with higher resolutions and refresh rates supported.

DP1.4 will also make use of USB Type-C and Thunderbolt connectivity, which will allow smaller devices like laptops to make great use of the higher resolutions. DP1.4 includes 32.4GB/sec of bandwidth, which opens the flood gates to 8K @ 60Hz (with HDR Deep Color), and 4K @ 120Hz (with HDR Deep Color) as well as many other technologies. These include:

What does this mean for gamers? Well, AMD's upcoming Polaris architecture supports DisplayPort 1.3 - allowing for 8K resolution support at 60FPS, as well as 4K @ 120Hz with HDR enabled (and 4K @ 240Hz). NVIDIA will unveil their new Pascal-based architecture next month at their GPU Technology Conference.

Daedalic Entertainment is breaking into the console market with a delightful adventure game called Deponia Doomsday. As the name implies, the only endgame option is to blow up the world to save. There's just no other way.

The game utilizes hand-drawn 2D comic graphics, a very spicy and humorous dialog and melds that with a point and click type adventure game. Within the 20 or so hours of gameplay you'll come across some unique, oddball characters, all part of the actual story that's unfolding.

You're Rufus, and when you wake-up you find out that Elysium (the magnificent flying city) has fallen from the sky and a new species, the Fewlocks, have started taking over the ruins of the entire planet of Deponia, and of course there's only one choice. And you get travel through time to do it. Each decision you make in time will have consequences that echo through the other time periods that you'll get to see. And there's even going to be an alternate ending coming soon as well.

Kanye West was recently considering legal action against those pirating his new Life of Pablo album, which makes it all the more amusing to learn yesterday he too was pirating.

West accidentally outed himself on Twitter when he posted a screenshot of his browser to promote a Sufjan Steven song he was listening to; background tabs showed he had been searching Piratebay for a popular $200 music production program plugin called Serum. Even better, the plugin was developed by XferRecords, a company co-founded by fellow artist deadmau5.

Deadmau5 responded to the tweet with understandable anger, which West then retorted to with a series of bizarre "jokes" like the one below.

If you play Quantum Break on PC, you'll need a persistent internet connection to stream the game's live-action cutscenes. Xbox One players, on the other hand, get the option to download the videos.

Remedy Entertainment revealed that Quantum Break's cutscene segments won't be included on-disc, meaning the game could potentially be a nightmare for gamers with slow connections. Quantum Break is separated into four different acts, and as you beat each section, a live-action video segment will play depending on the actions and choices you made. Remedy says that they chose to stream the video remotely in order to cut down on hard drive and disc space, affirming that the live-action video segments will have a ton of different outcomes and permutations based on player's decisions.

"We have 40 different variations of the show in total where basically your choices get to make it evolve and change whether it's from a junction choice or we have these things called 'Quantum Ripples' which essentially unlocked sort of deleted scenes from the show," Quantum Break narrative designer Greg Louden told Game Informer.

The whole premise of Roller Coaster Tycoon World is making some of the craziest and most unusual rides that you've ever seenm

Roller Coaster Tycoon World has some very big shoes to fill since it's the first PC game of the franchise in nearly a decade. And with the advent of the Steam Workshop and the big focus on modding in the PC community with a lot of other games this could be the perfect platform to show Atari's attention to the PC crowd again. The beta tests have provided some invaluable insight into what fans want, and one of those is user-generated-content. Being able to take an insanely over-engineered masterpiece and slap it into your own park.

This UGC functionality is Atari's answer to a new generation of Roller Coaster Tycoon players on the PC that have embraced this personalization and want ways to truly customize content on their own. It integrates directly with Steam Workshop and lets anyone decorate and plan the best-looking park you've ever dreamed of. You may not have the time it takes to make some of the more complex rides, and we expect people to be very imaginative with their creations, so why not be able to share what you've made and use other's to make your park unique among all others. This is a great development, and it does show their commitment to making PC gaming a priority for Atari.

First we saw Coca-Cola convert 12-pack cartons into DIY virtual reality headsets, now the fast-food moguls at McDonald's are doing the same thing with their Happy Meals.

Big Macs and golden arches may be the furthest thing from your mind when you think about VR, but for a limited time, McDonald's is transforming its legendary Happy Meals into a Google Cardboard-style VR HMD. The kit, called Happy Googles, folds together to make an enclosure to slide in your mobile phone, and comes with a lens pack to simulate VR.

Unfortunately, Happy Googles may not see a widespread roll-out. McDonald's plans to ship some 3,500 units in Sweden later this month to accompany the country's "Sportlov" holiday, and a special VR skiing game will be released as well. If things go well in Sweden, we could see the kits ship overseas.

Torn Banner Studios, the folks behind Chivalry: Medieval Warfare are hard at work on their next game, and it looks like it'll take the multiplayer warfare madness from their first game and morph it into an enchanted adventure.

It's short, and the full teaser won't be until next week, but what we're shown is a fast-paced and bloody, combat-centric multiplayer game rendered in Unreal Engine 4. They want to branch into the high-fantasy realm and the magical effects look pretty dazzling so far. We can't wait to see the official reveal coming up on March 9th.

If it's anything like Medieval Warfare, then we're bound to have an interactive and unique online game That is, if the underlying community doesn't become toxic and ruin the experience for those just wishing to have fun.

I've always thought that crossbows fit extremely well into the Fallout universe, and was super bummed when Bethesda didn't add them into Fallout 4. Luckily modders once again have our collective backs, and now we can channel Daryl Dixon's deadly arrow-slinging prowess in the wasteland.

Crossbows of the Commonwealth introduces actual working bolt-shooting crossbows into Fallout 4, meeting a very real demand among players. The crossbow is crank-fired like the laser musket, and must be reloaded manually after each shot. It's a neat idea, but in execution, the weapon leaves much to be desired unless you're playing on lower difficulties. Of course, you can fully kit it out with upgrades and even Legendary stats.

After installing the mod, raiders will randomly start using crossbows, and certain merchants will sell bolts as ammunition. Or you could just use the "help crossbow 4" console command to get the spawn code, and manually add them to your inventory. The closest thing we've seen to actual crossbows is Geralt's Witcher Gear mod, but that one fired actual bullets instead of bolts.

Written in conjunction with Simon den Bekker

Counter-Strike Global Offensive has a strange internal economy that's driven in large part by the weapon skins created by the community. It also attracts a lot of attention and players to the game. In essence, it's the backbone of the game, a reason why people play. To have these digital works of art and display them in-game. These player-contributed and professionally contributed works of art (and sometimes non-art) are sometimes a source of great pride among players, as they compare and compete in order to win or open a case with an expensive and sometimes beautiful looking weapon skin. Also, people can make money from these.

Valve oddly makes betting incredibly easy in the game itself. One can buy cases that have randomly won weapons upon opening, which the keys to open also cost money. Those weapon skins can be easily transferred to third-party pools, or websites, to be either sold or put into a 'pot' to be won by betting on different professional and semi-professional CSGO matches. There is a wide variety of websites that offer ways to use your weapon skins as collateral, and currency, to gamble and place bets.

Someone has integrated an actual, working electrocardiogram onto a small business card. You heard right, a company called MobilECG has done something startlingly clever, giving the diagnostic power to everyone. And it's an open-source design that anyone can play with.

The card uses sensors built into it that measure the electrical signals created by the heart through your thumbs. It's not quite the most accurate way to do it, but as a first-line diagnostic tool when you're not quite feeling well, it might be a life-saver. A blog post from the company says that it should be accurate enough to provide cursory information from the P, Q, R, S and the T waves to prompt people to go to the hospital.

The innovation coming from different startups for integrated and smaller technology is just astounding. Just imagine where medical devices can go if something like this is just on the boundary of our imagination. At the moment, they're gauging interest in their product, and you can request one if you'd like. They'll sell you one for $29, or less if more people start showing interest.

Pirating just became a whole lot easier thanks to the Internet. A group of sea-going pirates were able to hack into the content management system of a shipping company to pinch the shipping manifests and schedule to better plan their brazen heists.

According to a new security report by Verizon, the Internet, and hacking in general, is becoming an ever increasing resource for the seafaring thieves. Based on the evidence, however, it appears that the pirates themselves are carrying out the attacks because of the sloppy way in which they're going about it. It's proven easy to trace the activity completely to its source.

Pirating is evolving. It once was a primarily physical activity, but now they're becoming more efficient and careful. Why waste resources physically looking for ships on the open sea when you can just track precisely where they'll be by taking a look at the schedule. It's a bold move, especially when they don't seem to care that they get caught. Their mobile nature makes that point moot anyhow

As a die-hard fan of the Diablo ARPG series, I'm incredibly excited to report that Blizzard may be making a new chapter of the landmark franchise.

A batch of new job listings pretty much confirm that a new Diablo is in the works, with Blizzard hiring a senior concept artist, a lighting artist, and a senior character artist for an "unnannounced project". Blizzard pretty much gives it away by explicitly stating that the ideal candidates will be responsible for molding the Diablo universe.

"Blizzard Entertainment is seeking exceptionally skilled and passionate senior concept artists to help drive the vision of characters and world's in our next hit game! We're looking for artists that are self-starting, versatile, and enjoy being part of a collaborative environment. The ideal candidate shares our sensibilities, loves dark medieval world's, and feels there are countless stories left to tell in the Diablo universe!"

An adrenalin charged trailer for Io Interactive's upcoming Hitman was just released, and it shows off some of the settings and missions we'll be exploring when it releases on March 11th.

The first "season" as they're calling it is going to have a variety of very different and engaging missions to go through. Agent 47 is back and in the prime of his career in this new, live and almost re-imagined game. The amount of free-will and choices you'll have should be astounding. Even the beta, as short as it was, had a great many possibilities in how to accomplish it.

The episodic way that they're releasing this will give you new, fresh contracts and challenges to complete every week as well as new, major content appearing every month until the season ends. The plan for them is to continue to support the game with fresh content for quite some time. The base-mechanics are already in-place, and they're pretty good.

Acer has a number of awesome gaming monitors under their belt, with the 27-inch 4K monitor in the form of the XB280HK, as well as my personal favorite and current workstation and gaming display - the Predator X34 (34-inch 3440x1440 w/NVIDIA G-Sync).

Well, Acer has done it again by unveiling their new Predator XB321HK, a new 32-inch 4K gaming monitor. The new Predator XB321HK features a 32-inch 4K panel with 100% sRGB coverage, 178-degree viewing angles, 10-bit color and NVIDIA's G-Sync technology. Acer also notes that the Predator XB321HK features 4ms response time, 350 cd/2 maximum brightness, and dynamic mega-contrast ratio.

Acer also has its EyeProtect feature which reduces blue light emissions, and its GameView technology which dynamically adjusts the display to the type of game you're playing. The Acer Predator XB321HK has DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI connectivity as well as a USB 3.0 hub and is priced at $1299.

Steam is an oft-hacked platform for a number of reasons. The internal economy and lack of proper controls for trading the strangely valuable items makes it a very sweet target for scammers and hackers alike. Valve is committed to helping stop that from happening and is rolling out some new ways to help prevent you from outright losing your inventory.

On March 9th, a Steam update will add a number of new features to the trading mechanism to make it more difficult for scammers to steal from their intended victims. These changes are in response to the nearly 77,000 accounts that tend to be hacked or otherwise compromised in some fashion each month.

And for goodness sake, use Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator, it's relatively easy to setup and it helps tremendously. 2FA is a very effective tool in preventing both hacking as well as enabling a safer and more effective trading environment.