Latest News - Page 2596

Spotify tried to quietly change its privacy policy, but issued a public apology after members and subscribers voiced their displeasure over the changes.

The policy change requested access to pictures on mobile devices, phone contacts, voice controls, and location information - but Spotify justified the changes.

Users are able to choose which images they choose with Spotify, and have control over how the images are stored and used. The location identification is to help personalize recommendations, along with share information about trending music in a user's area. Spotify might include voice controls so it's easier to control playlists, and isn't interested in accessing a user's microphone without permission.

Avid Life Media has suffered a major PR disaster after hackers were able to spend a lengthy amount of time stealing data from the Ashley Madison website. The Impact Team hacker group, reportedly made up of "very" experienced hackers, has collected information from Ashley Madison "over the past few years."

"Bad. Nobody was watching," The Impact Team told Motherboard, when asked about security protocols. "No security. Only thing was segmented network. You could use Pass1234 from the Internet to VPN to root on all servers."

The group also has plenty of other information taken from Avid Life Media, including "300GB of employee emails and docs from internal network. Tens of thousands of Ashley Madison user pictures. Some Ashley Madison user chats and messages. 1/3 of pictures are dick pictures and we won't dump. Not dumping most employee emails either. Maybe other executives."

During the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco, Intel spent a lot of time promoting the "Maker" craze in the current world. Intel corporate strategy officer Genevieve Bell believes it's a great time in the maker movement, with Intel interested in supporting new technology ecosystems created by developers.

Intel is a supporter of the Maker Faire and of Make magazine, with growing popularity in the print publication and global maker events.

"It's never been a more exciting and accessible time to invent the future," Bell said during IDF. "It's about changing the world, in small ways and big ways. It's about breaking the rules. Possibilities and disruption. Hard work. Solitary or collaborative. It's not always clear what you are doing. It involves curiosity. It certainly involves failures. It is exhilarating. Sometimes people resist it. To me, that is making."

After reports that Apple Music members are jumping ship, Apple has issued a statement saying just 21 percent of users have stopped using the streaming music service.

The MusicWatch survey indicated around 48 percent of people testing the service are jumping ship. In its survey of 5,000 users, 28 percent are Spotify Premium members, 11 percent use Spotify free users, and six percent listen to ad-supported Pandora.

In late July, it was reported Apple Music had 10 million users - and Apple reported 11 million users in early August - are currently enjoying a free three-month trial of the new streaming service. Spotify has 20 million paid subscribers and about 55 million free users.

It's not a surprise that federal agencies have fully embraced mobile technology like smartphones and tablets, but there is great concern that 40 percent of government employees put sensitive data at risk by ignoring agency policies.

A recent study from mobile security firm Lookout discovered employees rooting, jailbreaking and sideloading applications, while still having direct access to work documents, work email, and other possibly sensitive data. The study also found 49 percent of federal employees don't have any form of anti-malware or anti-virus security solution installed, and employees use unsecured devices while handling sensitive data.

Not that the policies used by government agencies should be followed in the private sector, but gives decision makers guidelines on behaviors that don't work - and how to avoid them.

Bethesda has grown considerably over the years, evolving from a dev studio to a titan reigning over a consortium of studios and IP's. The company wants to start firing on all cylinders for the future, but first it plans to dethrone Skyrim and crown Fallout 4 as its most popular game release.

In a recent interview with MCV, Bethsoft exec Pete Hines discusses the company's most important game for the next year or so: "I think Fallout 4 can top Skyrim [to become] our biggest release ever. But we will see. It is part of my job to build the megaphone that we hold up to the game, and the game decides how loud it goes. Just how big it is going to be is hard to say. Skyrim was a massively big deal."

Although Fallout 4 will be the nexus of Bethsoft's attention for quite some time, it still has a number of other projects like Doom 4 and Dishonored 2 in the works. Hines went on to say that the studio wants to find a consistent stride that involves "releasing up to three to four games a year", but Bethsoft isn't about to release first-party juggernauts like Elder Scrolls and Fallout together in the same period. This push towards more production isn't going to jeopardize the studio's carefully cultivated image of quality over quantity and Hines affirms that we don't have to worry about Bethesda becoming another Activision or Ubisoft.

Although not in-game footage specifically, this trailer is "inspired by the emotional experience of Until Dawn" and features one young woman's bid to free herself from the clutches of serial-killing madmen.

This R18+ PlayStation 4 exclusive title is 'Road Not Taken - Until Dawn' and is based on a classic poem by Robert Frost. The video itself is produced by the PlayStation Australian team and depicts some of the sequences of gameplay you can come to expect in Until Dawn, deciding the fate of your character depending on action you take.

The main character, Sam, is played here by Hayden Panetierre, and this short film showcases ways that you might go about escaping or confronting your masked killer, trying all options available through a process of trial and error.

2K Games and Firaxis Games have released a new 12-minute gameplay video of XCOM 2, with action taking place 20 years after XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Humans lost the war with the aliens, and viewers can take a look at the custom mobile HQ, customization systems, and upgrade paths for weapons, armors, and other characteristics.

Working under the alien regime following a major war, a human resistance is tasked with trying to overthrow the alien race's power.

XCOM 2 is scheduled for release in November, and will be available for PCs, Mac OS, and Linux. A console launch for the Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4 is still possible, but 2K and Firaxis Games haven't announced anything.

Once a week my parents would buy the newspaper in order to get a TV guide for the next 7 days. I'd groan as a flip the pages and realize that there is actually nothing worth watching for a whole week, so I'd run off to tinker with computers a little more. This old technology has been largely replaced by online guides which are live updating and cover hundreds more channels - so why not have something like this for eSports events?

Well, the guys at FolloweSports.com thought exactly the same thing, so they went out and something to fix this issue. It's free to use and covered all major eSports titles - loading up the webpage quickly I can see all tournaments that are currently or soon to be happening, complete with prize pools, bracket information, event naming, game titles and more.

Without signing in, all game times are tailored towards my personal time zone and each game has a direct link to the stream when live. There's a bunch of filters and searches you can conduct to find something specifically if you wish.

With news already coming out that the Ashley Madison hack has seen over 700 Australian Government employee email addresses named, sitting alongside members of the White House and US congress and even dirtying the name of Sao Paulo due to the sheer number of accounts within, there is now even more to add to the plate.

This latest update comes in the form of yet another information dump, being twice the size of the last one. Released onto the dark web, this information leak is largely targeted at Noel Biderman, the CEO of Ashley Madison's parent company, Avid Life. Alongside including many of his business emails, this leak is coupled with a statement which reads "Hey Noel, you can admit it's real now."

Measuring around 20GB, this leak is said to be focused mainly on internal operations and information - quite possibly to ensure people take this leak seriously and removing the possibility of Ashley Madison calling it off as a hoax.

The Aussies are in trouble, with the latest Ashley Madison hacking scandal unveiling over 700 Australian Government email address' linked to the affairs website, but it looks like they aren't the only ones. Looking further into the data, The Big Story published an article outlining that members of the White House and US Congress were also involved in the mix.

Including those holding high positions in multiple Government offices (including law enforcement), the hacked and published list includes some powerful titles which The Big Story explained as; "at least two assistant U.S. attorneys; an information technology administrator in the Executive Office of the President; a division chief, an investigator and a trial attorney in the Justice Department; a government hacker at the Homeland Security Department and another DHS employee who indicated he worked on a U.S. counter terrorism response team."

Although you may view it as morally unjust, there will be no legal action taken against these Government employees, sources say. This inaction is due to there being no elected officials involved, nor have these people committed a felony. Further to this information, the names have not been publically posted or confirmed by the US Government.

IDF 2015 - Intel has laid out predictions for a marked rise in DDR4 RAM adoption following the widespread availability of Skylake-powered servers, notebooks and desktops.

Right now mainstream support for DDR4 RAM is rare, and it's mostly found in Intel's Xeon-powered servers and in enthusiast grade PC's powered by X99 chipsets. But according to analyst firm IHS, whose findings Intel touted on stage, DDR4 will already start to overlap production of DDR3 as early as next year.

IHS further lays out a timetable for desktops and servers that shows the projected transition period from DDR3 to DDR4. Servers have been using DDR4 since late 2014 thanks to the Xeon E5 v3 processor, and the platform will continue to account for a bulk of memory usage throughout this year and well into 2016. By the end of this year alone IHS predicts that DDR4 will account for 60% of all server memory shipments, and jump to 90% in the same time next year.

Alienware has just announced its latest and greatest gaming notebook, the Alienware 18, with what I would call the single most best, cringe-worthy announcement video of all time. Check it out below.

The new Alienware 18 gaming laptop kicks off with a minimum of a Core i7-4710MQ at 2.5GHz, but you can opt for the Core i7-4910MQ or Core i7-4940MX if you want some added CPU performance. There's four DIMM slots inside, with a stock 16GB of RAM upgradeable to 32GB. The stock model includes a 500GB HDD, while the 1TB model costs an insane 1TB more. Very strangely, there's no SSD here which is super disappointing and somewhat of a showstopper for me.

GPU wise you can have up to two NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M or GTX 980Ms in SLI, which will more than handle the 18.4-inch 1920x1080 display and any game you throw at it. Connectivity wise, we have a Killer Ethernet port, Broadcom 802.11ac Wi-Fi, 4 x USB 3.0 ports, a miniDisplayPort, HDMI (in and out) and more. Dell has also packed in 20 LED lighting colors across 10 separate zones for the ultimate customization.

The cult 1980's animation 'He Man and the Masters of the Universe' looks set to be re-imagined for the big screen, as Sony Pictures orders a new script from comic book writer turned screenwriter Christopher Yost.

Previously bought to the screen in the ham-statistic 1987 turkey, which starred Dolph Lundgren and Frank Langella. While the picture bombed - failing to recoup it's production budget - Sony are no doubt hoping that the world will look on the Prince of Eternia just a little bit kinder. With development on the film still in early stages, the film isn't expected to be launched until 2018 at the earliest.

We've been hearing about AMD's next generation GPUs for a while now, but it looks like they're beginning to take more form. It's being reported that AMD's upcoming 'Greenland' GPU will be an entirely new microarchitecture, with development on Greenland starting some two years ago.

But more interestingly, rumor has it that it's not just going to be yet another Graphics Core Next architecture (GCN), but it'll feature a new ISA (instruction set architecture) that will be so different to GCN, that it will be very exciting. On the surface, it'll be like previous generation Radeon products, with so much more happening underneath.

Greenland will reportedly usher in twice the power efficiency of GCN, where we can expect these GPUs to be made on the 16nm FinFET or 14nm process, with a serious jump on the number of stream processors when compared to the Fiji architecture. Fiji is the GPU behind the Radeon R9 Fury and R9 Fury X cards, powered by High Bandwidth Memory, or HBM. More importantly, it's being reported that Greenland will pack HBM2, with enthusiast level and professional cards packing up to 32GB of HBM2. The consumer orientated Greenland-powered Radeon cards will come in two flavors: 8GB and 16GB, both of the next-gen HBM2 technology.

It looks like the High Bandwidth Memory game is about to receive a very big new player in the form of Samsung, with the South Korean electronics giant announcing at IDF 2015 that it will begin mass production of HBM early next year.

Right now HBM1 is limited to just 4GB and 512GB/sec, but HBM2 will be capable of driving far past 8GB and sitting at around 1TB/sec memory bandwidth. We should expect new video cards to feature up to 48GB of HBM2, with consumer cards most likely sitting at around 8-12GB of HBM2. With NVIDIA dominating the GPU market share with no signs of slowing down, next year is going to be one of the biggest for GPUs.

HBM2 is going to usher in more changes in the next 12-18 months than I think most people can even predict, especially when we begin seeing professional video cards (think video professionals, servers and the like) with GPUs packing 48GB of HBM2 with up to 1.5TB/sec of memory bandwidth. Even the fastest GeForce cards right now only feature 334GB/sec of memory bandwidth, while the HBM1-powered Fury X from AMD packing 512GB/sec bandwidth.

A new slim Xbox One model is rumored to be part of Microsoft's planned barrage of new hardware for October, including the Surface Pro 4, Lumia 940/940 XL and Band 2.

According to rumors the compact Xbox One, coined as the Xbox On Mini, is able to hit the smaller form factor by nixing the Blu-ray drive altogether and shaving off a considerable chunk of space--about 1/3 of the current massive VCR-sized monstrosity. This will turn the Xbox One Mini into a digital-only machine, and the excising of the drive will also lead to a nice price drop to boot.

News of a slim Xbox One circulated as far back as October of last year when AMD shrunk the console's 28nm APU to a smaller, cheaper and more efficient 20nm factor. The 20nm APU, which is 1.9 times more dense than the previous model, could lead to speeds up to 30% faster with 25% less power draw.

In the next update for GTA V, console gamers will be able to create, share and download customized mods, adding in a massive dollop of freshness to the game.

Rockstar Games didn't exactly break the news with a full-on announcement--instead it was cleverly embedded in a blog post about the Ill-Gotten Gains modding contest, where the devs pretty much sneaked in a confirmation.

"The upcoming launch of the Rockstar Editor for PS4 and Xbox One as the next update to Grand Theft Auto V and GTA Online means the next Rockstar Editor Contest will be the first one with entries across all three platforms - so the creative competition will be fiercer than ever. Stay tuned for info about that contest and forthcoming update."

Sony wants to enlist everyday PlayStation 4 gamers to help beta test new updates and features for the console, and plans to implement its own form of Microsoft's Xbox One preview program.

Interested users can sign up here and in addition to new exclusive access to new features, testers will be able to share feedback with Sony on a special section of the PlayStation community forum. Testers will be able to try out the PS4's next major PS4 v3.0 update, which brings YouTube broadcasting, a new events and communities section, and even the ability to upload video clips to Twitter.

The initiative is a great idea considering Sony's past blunder with the PS4's ill-fated v2.0 blunder which locked gamers out of the console with a rest mode glitch, and it'll be another way to squash bugs while collecting feedback in the process.

Bethesda previously admitted it had to "dial" down some of the graphics, and many gamers weren't necessarily happy with the news. The studio has offered a public statement regarding the mini controversy, with one official noting the criticism "definitely doesn't upset us."

"As with most forms of entertainment, you never get 100 percent agreement on anything," said Pete Hines, marketing chief at Bethesda, in a statement to Metro. "And so, at the end of the day, whether it's what the graphics look like or whether the gameplay is what you want or whether you like the setting, or whatever it is, everybody is entitled to their own opinion."

The need to dial back graphics was done to benefit game consoles, with Fallout 4 expected to run at 1080p/30fps on consoles - but there will be no PC restrictions. Even if some people are angry, Fallout 4 is expected to be a gaming blockbuster that has drawn incredible interest from PC and console gamers alike.