Latest News - Page 2591

Naughty Dog has done the unthinkable, they've delayed Uncharted 4 again until the 27th of April for the US and the 29th of April in the UK. But the news isn't necessarily all bad either.

Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley wrote an official statement on the PlayStation Blog, and talked about where the project is and why they've decided to delay the release of one of the most anticipated games in the history of the series. "Essentially, it's because they want to further polish it before it's released to the public."

But hearing the news of having such an anticipated game delayed, once again, isn't easy to take. And it apparently wasn't an easy decision for the co-directors to make either. They want tot show off their most ambitious game just as much as we want to play it, but they don't quite think it's ready for primetime. And thus, they "humbly ask you to wait a bit longer."

Stuart Grey has created a great animation that shows a time-lapse of all of the wonderful things we've shot into space. It's gorgeous and downright terrifying if you understand the implications.

Space debris flying around our beautiful blue and green planet is a real threat to us and our future ventures in space. We've put a tremendous amount of stuff into space, and a lot of it is still there. In fact, almost 20,000 pieces of debris, or inactive and non-used space objects are still out there today.

Just imagine what happened in Gravity actually happening in real-life. We track a lot of the stuff up there, but there's just so much that one day it's possible that something will slip through and actually hit a communications satellite or GPS satellite that you're using. Whoops! Thankfully there are some efforts underway to clean some of it up, before it falls into peoples homes.

With the debut of Adam Sandler's first show on Netflix, 'Ridiculous 6', the comedian is back in the headlines in a very big way. Something we seemed to have missed when the deal went through between Sandler and Netflix, is the reason why he signed with the content streaming giant.

Back in October 2014, Sandler said that when Netflix called him up with the deal, he "immediately said yes for one reason and one reason only. Netflix rhymes with Wet Chicks". Interesting reason, Mr. Sandler. The full statement from Sandler was "When these fine people came to me with an offer to make four movies for them, I immediately said yes for one reason and one reason only. Netflix rhymes with Wet Chicks. Let the streaming begin!!!!"

Netflix Chief Content Officer, Ted Sarandos, said "People love Adam's films on Netflix and often watch them again and again. His appeal spans across viewers of all ages - everybody has a favorite movie, everyone has a favourite line - not just in the US but all over the world. Sandler also reportedly makes $80 million per movie in Hollywood, and Netflix has pockets deep enough to keep handing over servers full of money to the creator of huge hits like Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore.

While The Force Awakens has made $610 million worldwide so far, there is one fan that would be the biggest Star Wars fan of all time. Jim Barden from Austin, Texas enjoyed a 30-hour Star Wars marathon, afterwhich he was named the biggest Star Wars fan.

The Alamo Drafthouse declared Bardin the biggest Star Wars fan after they invited nine people from around the United States to sit through the original Star Wars trilogy, the prequel trilogy and then various screenings of The Force Awakens. Barden has now seen The Force Awakens nine times, taking out the award of the biggest Star Wars fan ever.

The Hollywood Reporter spoke with Barden, asking how he managed to stay away, and to not go crazy after the huge Star Wars marathon. Barden said: "I guess I took a sort of scientific approach. I planned accordingly". Barden snacked on peppermint chewing gum and smelling lime wedges to keep himself awake, instead of chowing down on energy drinks and heavy meals that can push you into a food coma.

With all of the news headlines glued to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which has just passed $610 million worldwide breaking countless records in its process, James Cameron has come out talking about his Avatar sequels.

Cameron said in an interview with the Montreal Gazette that Avatar 2 will be released in Christmas 2017, he said: "Christmas of '17 is the target... At least, that's what we've announced. But I don't consider that to be as important as the fact that when we get all three films done, we drop them a year apart. I call it a meta-narrative that runs across the three movies. Each film stands alone, but it also tells one much larger story".

Until now, Avatar 2's release date had been rumored for 2014, 2015 and even 2016 - waiting another two years shouldn't hurt too much. As for whether Cameron and his team will reach the promised Christmas 2017 window, he said: "We have design more or less finished, which is an enormous task. It's been about a two-year task. [We've finished] all the creatures and the landscapes, and the new world's within the world of Pandora that you see. The writing is ongoing, but almost finished. Technical development is done. Stages are done. Infrastructure. So we're really poised to start after the first of the year".

The holiday season is here, and ASUS Australia has really struck a chord with us here at TweakTown by having their handover event for a new gaming PC for a disabled Australian gamer.

16-year-old Kieren Watts has Congenital Muscular Dystrophy, which is a general term for a group of genetic muscle diseases that occur at birth (congenital) or early during infancy. ASUS Australia teamed up with the Australian departments of Cooler Master, NVIDIA, Intel as well as community members like Good Gaming Fun (GGF, run by Stuart Tonks), Simple Modz (run by Alex Ciobanu), Mods by ACS (Drew Lawrence), IMFACEROLL Gaming (Corey Gregory) and members of the "Australian PC Gaming and Enthusiasts", and the "Australian PC Modders and Enthusiasts" Facebook groups.

Everyone came together to build a rather kick ass gaming PC, which consists of the following components:

The latest v1.021 patch for Just Cause 3 on the PC offers improved memory management, as well as fixing up the stability when you exit to the desktop from the game. The new patch is just 99MB in size.

Avalanche Studios only just released the v1.02 patch for the PC and consoles last week, with the PC patch weighing in at 132MB - but the consoles were slapped with a huge 3GB patch. The v1.02 patch offered improved loading times, performance improvements and more. Avalanche explains the improved stability when exiting to the desktop: "As some of you will be aware, there was an issue that would sometimes cause the game to crash when exiting to desktop. The cause of this issue has been identified and addressed with this update".

The studio explains the memory management improvements: "In addition to fixing the exit to desktop crash, this update also improves Just Cause 3's memory management across a variety of hardware configurations. Some systems will feel this beneficial impact more than others".

Star Wars: The Force Awakens continues to print money, with Disney's latest blockbuster flying past $610 million in worldwide ticket sales. In the US alone, it has become the fastest movie to hit $250 million.

The Force Awakens has outperformed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 for Saturday sales, in a big way. Star Wars: The Force Awakens has broken pretty much every record possible: largest Thursday preview, global IMAX opening record, largest Friday, largest Saturday, largest Sunday, largest Monday, largest 4-day gross, biggest domestic opening, biggest worldwide opening and so many more records.

The latest news is that The Force Awakens will beat the current #1 box office champion: Avatar. Considering Avatar pulled in $580 in its first week, The Force Awakens is definitely doing a good job towards its battle to the #1 grossing movie of all time. Avatar sits at the top of the worldwide gross of $2.78 billion, which I think The Force Awakens will beat in the end.

We know that the Oculus Rift would be released in early 2016, with pre-orders opening up "soon after New Year", but now the Oculus founder himself, Palmer Luckey, is providing more concrete details on the VR headset.

Luckey took to Twitter, where he said that preorders "are coming soon after new year. Enjoy a stress-free holiday, we won't launch preorders without warning!" Luckey said in another tweet "thrilled to share some news: Manufacturing continues to go well, and we are still on-target for an awesome Rift launch in Q1!"

The first Oculus Rift rolled off of the production line earlier this year during the Oculus Connect developer conference in September, which you can see in the above image. Oculus Hardware Project Manager, Stephanie Lue, said on stage at Oculus Connect: "We set a date out for ourselves for when we wanted to build the first product and we hit that date on the nose. Our hardware teams are pouring our hearts and souls to get it just right for the experience and for manufacturability so that we can get this out to as many people as possible. It's definitely worth the wait".

After promising that their dual GPU video card would be released in late 2015, AMD has delayed its Radeon R9 Fury X2. The reason? Because they expected the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive to be out in late 2015, but both VR headsets were delayed into early next year, forcing AMD to delay its dual-GPU efforts.

Hardware.fr talked with AMD, which said: "The product schedule for Fiji Gemini had initially been aligned with consumer HMD (Head Mounted Display) availability, which had been scheduled for Q415 back in June. Due to some delays in overall VR (Virtual Reality) ecosystem readiness, HMDs are now expected to be available to consumers by early Q216. To ensure the optimal VR experience, we're adjusting the Fiji Gemini launch schedule to better align with the market". AMD continued: "Working samples of Fiji Gemini have shipped to a variety of B2B customers in Q415, and initial customer reaction has been very positive".

AMD has reportedly sent out key people their new dual Fiji card, with these lucky people including DICE god Johan Andersson. We should expect AMD to show off the "Gemini" dual-GPU card at CES hopefully, but I think we're going to see an April-June launch - possibly at Computex in early June 2016.

In an effort to bolster account security, tech giant Google has confirmed that it's testing a new login system that doesn't require passwords.

Google is currently testing a new authentication method that could pave the way to password-free accounts in the near future. Google's method is very much like Yahoo's Account Key logins, which uses smartphone push notifications instead of manual passwords to log into Google accounts. The company's new sans password login method with a small batch of users, and one Reddit user has shared a few details on the new system.

According to an early access tester, the new method is pretty simple and is very much like linking a smartphone to a Roku to use a remote, or tethering a phone to an Xbox One to use Smartglass. Once your phone is linked and authorized to login to your Google account, the app sends a code that's shown on both screens, and users must type the same code to link the devices. Once that's done, users are logged in and can freely use their accounts. Basically Google's new method hinges on syncing, meaning you'll be matching digital pairs rather than typing in a per-session password.

There seems to be some chatter among Taiwanese supply-chain suppliers that GIGABYTE is also going to attempt to enter the VR headset market, along with ASUS.

But we already knew ASUS was interested in their own solution for use with their gaming notebooks, because that would allow for a first party solution to their products that would let consumers use an ASUS only ecosystem.

According to DigiTimes GIGABYTE is going to work with VR developer 3Glasses, which already have a few interesting and competitive VR solutions in their product lineup. The above is their flagship D2 Vanguard Edition with a 2K screen and latency that's less than 13ms, something needed for a good VR experience.

A new rumor suggests that Nintendo will show off its new NX console at a closed session at CES 2016 in Las Vegas.

So far Nintendo has kept its promise not to release new information about the NX until 2016, leaving the community to piece together details from patents and rumors. Although we've been given clues on what the NX might be, a new rumor circulated by Nintendo Enthusiast claims that Nintendo is inviting third-party developers to show off what the system has to offer. This means we might see a slew of new information release as early as January 2016, even if Nintendo pushes NDA's to attendees.

The publication was also told by a trusted source that the Nintendo NX will be on par with the Xbox One in terms of hardware power. This is an attempt to keep the console at a competitive price point when pitted against Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4. The Japanese gaming giant has said in the past that the NX will be "unique and different" and that it'll be truly next-generation in power, however the Xbox One itself is quite limited. Like the Xbox One and PS4, AMD is believed to be making the NX's APU chip.

Capcom developer "wbacon" has confirmed in the Steam forums for Dragon's Dogma that the upcoming PC version of the game will feature customizable hot keys, among other juicy bits.

"Content wise, the port team stuffed everything else they possibly can into the base game plus some extra features fans had asked for," he writes. "That includes new Achievements for high level players (most are post game & BBI-related), customizable item hot keys, graphics and performance enhancements, and other nice-to-have nips and tucks that greatly improves the overall Dragon's Dogma experience."

You can see the customizable keys in action below (Lantern toggle is bound to NUM1; NUM2 is bound to healing regen items; NUM3 is bound to stamina regen items; NUM4 is bound to Eternal Ferrystone), which wbacon notes are "very handy, especially in the heat of combat."

An industry insider has indicated to the Korea Electronic Times that Samsung will be mass producing Greenland graphics chips for AMD starting in the second quarter of 2016. This follows the recent news GlobalFoundries will be producing for AMD, so it has two partners on its hands as of now.

Word is AMD will be "fluidly regulating" how many chips are produced by each company based upon yield and other factors.

It's said Greenland, which is based on the 14nm FinFET process technology, is twice as efficient as the 28nm Fiji. It's also said that shortly after Greenland begins production, Zen production will begin, and will also see production split amongst Samsung and GlobalFoundries facilities.

Following Google's discovery driverless cars are a bit too good at driving for their own good, the company is said -- according to three sources aware of the plans -- to be partnering with classic car maker Ford to make new ones. This news is in line with what co-founder Sergey Brin said earlier in the year: it wants manufacturing partners interested in its self-driving technology.

The deal is said to be non-exclusive, meaning it can partner with other companies if it pleases. As well, it's understood Ford will not be liable for any accidents to come out of the venture.

The Ford deal makes sense because the head of Google's self-driving car project, John Krafcik, worked 14 years at the company. Other employees attached to the project have history there, too. More, Ford's previous chief executive Alan Mulally is on the Google board as of 2014. Giving additional credence to the rumor is Ford CEO Mark Fields consistent support of a future where it sells cars as "on-demand services".

The UK government's Home Secretary Theresa May has proposed an Investigatory Powers Bill with the aim of bolstering intelligence agencies and law enforcement in surveillance. But, like the Patriot Act in America and Bill C-51 in Canada, it's being criticized for going too far.

Apple has joined the opposition in an effort to see the bill rewritten, saying in a rare public statement that it makes the "personal data of millions of law abiding citizens [...] less secure". Part of its issue is how vague the bill can be, thereby opening it up to abuse of current privacy rights, not just in the UK, but elsewhere, too.

The bill specifically affects Apple in that it may force them to remove the encryption featured in their iMessage and FaceTime apps, thereby allowing authorities to better spy on iPhone users as they see fit. It notes that while authorities may only be interested in select persons, once the public opens their private messages up, they're open to everyone.

While we wrote that relatively small 'Western Nations' such as Australia are under possible infrastructure hacker threat due to low-security measures, news has come to light that a New York dam was infiltrated by Iranian hackers back in 2013.

With the dam being located no more than 20 miles from New York City, this Iranian hack likely came around thanks to Leon Panetta, ex-Defense Secretary, calling out Iran's hacking prowess in October 2012, putting Governments on high alert for possible hacker threats. With this hack taking place and being kept under the covers until recently, it's just one example of how infrastructure infiltration is a very real threat.

This classified dam is one of the very few public accounts of infrastructure control loss, with all major suppliers of electricity, sewage, water and more all linked to the internet.

Microsoft has developed software, called predictive policing, that's able to predict whether inmates will end back up into jail within six months from release with a 91% accuracy rate. Check out the video presentation here.

It might sound like the program that was depicted in 2002's silver-screen adaptation of Philip K. Dicks 1956 Minority Report, and it mostly is. Just without all the special powers. Instead of having gifted humans predict the future through the Force, or similar powers, the piece of software actually under development is instead a complex algorithm that uses historical data and trends to predict future trends.

It's not magic, but it's based on science and statistics in order predict the probability that someone will repeat their behavior. Past behavior, as they say, is the greatest predictor of future behavior, as much as we'd like to believe that we can change drastically, sometimes it isn't necessarily so for everyone. And we are ultimately a predictable lot, prone to patterns.

Seemingly not too interested in carrying its own project on any longer, messaging app startup company Talko has dropped its plans and headed over to Microsoft, in a buyout announced just recently.

This company purchase by Microsoft is in order to improve Skype and Skype for Business products, programs known to often deliver issues based around hefty battery drainage and poor optimisation for many users. This also marks the death of Talko's own project as we know it, with users being given the opportunity to say good-bye and download past conversations, voice files, text and photos before they are deleted completely.

This isn't the first time Microsoft has bought out a company like this and it's the second purchase in under seven days for this tech giant, here's hoping that the Talko team can work some Skype miracles and give us a stellar program.