Latest News - Page 2597

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.

Millions of people have been exposed following the recent data dump of stolen Ashley Madison accounts, though there is something a bit frightening to consider: the possibility of people committing suicide, or being injured or killed.

The Impact Team released data of 37 million users of the popular infidelity website, and details include names, email addresses, and sexual preferences.

"We have to be very cautious and I think sensitive to this," cybersecurity specialist Brian Krebs told the Guardian. "There's a very real chance that people are going to overreact. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw people taking their lives because of this."

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's chance at creating some type of plea agreement with the US Justice Department is not likely - and a possible agreement window is rapidly closing. Snowden's attorneys and the government haven't spoken about a deal in almost one year, according to sources speaking to Bloomberg.

The US government isn't in dire need of gaining information from Snowden, because they have a much clearer picture of the data he took. However, the American said he would like to one day return to the United States, but that hasn't seemed like a plausible scenario for quite some time now.

"Many people in government believe that the journalists who received Snowden's material are not capable of protecting it from a competent and committed state level adversary service," said Ben Wittes, a Brookings Institution national security law specialist, told Bloomberg. "Even if Snowden did not give the material to others, they argue it would have bene ripe for the picking."

It looks like the US government and police agencies are looking for some type of counter-drone system, able to protect vulnerable sites from rogue drones.

One test conducted by the New York Police Department relied on a microwave-based system designed to send the drone back to its operator. There were problems with the test, such as interference from local media broadcasts. Even though trying to shoot down drones would be fairly simplistic, it leads to public safety hazards - and there is more interesting in finding ways to send drones directly back to the operator.

"We can't shoot it out of the sky," said a source speaking to Reuters. "We have to come up with something that's kind of basic technology so that if something happens, the drone or device will just go right back to the operators. It won't crash."

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush believes the United States government needs broader surveillance capabilities, and tech companies shouldn't be fighting back about encryption.

"There's a place to find common ground between personal civil liberties and NSA doing its job," Bush recently said, as published by the AP. "I think the balance has actually gone the wrong way."

Bush also noted that recent Patriot Act changes forcing an end to bulk collection of American phone records wasn't the right idea - and was done with "no evidence" Americans' civil liberties were violated.

Released recently, the latest update for Microsoft's technical preview of its new Windows Server 2016 operating system has seen the inclusion of containers for apps, explained by iTnews as "created and managed with the open-source Docker set of tools."

This feature is said to be more efficient than virtual machines of the past, allowing the use of shared resources from a host OS, rather than relying on a numerous virtual machines to process apps separately. This means that applications running within the container will be able to function separately as if they were running on different operating systems, but be contained within one single OS.

Microsoft has promoted the flexibility of these containers, promoting use towards open source operating systems and applications. The idea of running apps separately isn't exactly a new one, but this is a large step towards easy integration into a base operating system.

Don't worry, no asteroids will be slamming into the Earth in September, NASA has confirmed following a recent viral video caused a bit of a stir.

In the video, it was falsely reported that an asteroid would impact around Puerto Rico, with the incident expected to take place from September 15 to September 28 - but there is no immediate threat to Earthlings. The video made it sound like there would be a threat to the United States, Mexico, Central America and South America.

"There is no scientific basis - not one shred of evidence - that an asteroid or any other celestial object will impact Earth on those dates," said Paul Chodas, manager of the Near-Earth Object office for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Today NVIDIA unleashed the GeForce GTX 950 card aimed at gamers who want to play PC games at 60fps 1080p without breaking their wallets.

The Maxwell-based GTX 950 has an entry-level price point of $159 and packs in 768 CUDA cores clocked in at 1021 MHz that can be boosted to 1188 MHz, and sports 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM operating on a 128-bit bus clocked at 6.6GHz. Power will be supplied via 6-pin connector, and the card will draw 90 Watts of power.

Standard NVIDIA performance tech is compatible with the GTX 950 including SLI, V-Sync adaptive sync, and PhysX. This budget model will fully support the new DirectX 12 API and will be able to play DX12 games when they become available.

SEGA has recently announced a free and limited trial of Company of Heroes 2: The British Forces to be launched on Steam in America and Europe, beginning 7PM CET on August 31 and concluding 11pm CET on September 2, 2015.

Exclusive to Steam, this trial will see up to 55,000 total players involved, allowing access to the British army and the ability to control 15 new units, six new commanders and eight new multiplayer maps. Alongside these are the four factions and base commanders as seen in all previous Company of Heroes 2 titles.

Self-claimed as "one of the most comprehensive World War II RTS games available," Company of Heroes 2: The British Forces is set for full release on September 3 for $12.99 as a stand-alone package, with 10% off given for pre-ordering customers.

As we quickly approach the start of the NFL football season, it looks like LG Electronics is preparing to help us hear the games better with new wireless audio products. LG showed off the P5 (NP5550), P7 (NP7550), and SoundPop 360 speakers, LG X-Boom Theater, and OM7550 Cube Speaker System.

The LG Music Flow P5 is a 10-watt wireless speaker with up to eight hours of battery life, while the LG Music Flow P7 is a 20-watt speaker with up to 10 hours of battery life. The LG SoundPop 360, similar in design to a drinking tumbler, is a cylindrical speaker providing 360-degree range â€" and up to 20 hours of battery life.

The LG X-Boom Theater has a pair of tower speakers with up to 1000-watt total audio output, built-in subwoofers, and is paired with a 3D Blu-ray player including LG Smart TV functionality. The LG Cube Speaker System supports a 1000-watt speaker and subwoofer, two USB ports, portable audio input, Multipoint Bluetooth, and NFC.

Will robots steal our jobs? There seems to be mounting fear that the human labor force will face pressure from robotic automation, though a new report from Deloitte indicates job creation among the creative, care, tech and business service sectors make up for jobs lost in agriculture and manufacturing.

"It's been very easy to identify where jobs have been destroyed," said Ian Stewart, chief economist at Deloitte, in a statement to CNBC. "Job losses generally are very conspicuous, whether it's a middle manager replaced by software, or checkout staff displaced by auto terminals, whereas job gains [are] harder to identify."

Machines help drive down production costs, and consumers are more willing to spend on new consumer goods and services. Researchers point to increasing sales for things like short holidays, morning cups of coffee at a local café, and other luxuries consumers may not be able to splurge on.

The Electronic Sports League (ESL) wants to crack down on the use of recreational and performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) used by its competitors. Many of you balked at the idea, especially when marijuana is on the list of banned substances, though the ESL has a long-term goal in mind: legitimize eSports worldwide.

"The popularity and visibility of eSports has grown exponentially in recent years, but this combined with the increasing size of prize pools has also made the temptation of rule-breaking even greater," the ESL previously wrote. "ESL has an ongoing commitment to safeguarding both the integrity of our competitions and that of eSports as a whole."

It looks like ESL is most concerned about the use of Adderall and similar drugs that can be used to help enhance gameplay. ESL will work with the German Nationale Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) - which oversees anti-doping coordination and promoting anti-doping measures. WADA, of course, is best known for its role in athletic sports - but with a growing global image and prize money on the line - eSports wants to follow suit.

In further shocking news, the Ashley Madison hacking scandal has not only seen Australian Government employees damned by the leak, but there has further been an investigation into statistics based around the findings.

This investigation came in the form of locations, naming how many Ashley Madison accounts were linked to major cities around the globe. Topping the list of 25 cities by a large margin was Sao Paulo, sitting at over 370,000 accounts in total, backed up by New York at 268,171 in second place. These results were certainly not locked to a single continent either, with London and Melbourne (Australia) both ranking quite highly.

As reported by News.com.au, these numbers also don't take total population into account. So not only are you looking at places like Perth (Australia) having 88,697 total Ashley Madison members, but this city has 1/10th of the inhabitants when compared to the #1 ranked Sao Paulo.

In recent news, dating and affairs website Ashley Madison was hacked and user information posted on the dark web. Among this information were over 700 Australian Government email address' ranging from members of parliament to high-held positions in the police force. With more uncovered members said to be found soon, the Queensland Government wants to know exactly how its workers ended up on this list.

With these 'Queenslanders' holding positions such as detective, government official and regional Councillor, the Queensland Government's IT section are reportedly conducting a full investigation in order to find out exactly how these email addresses came to be included in these lists.

There is a possibility that some emails were signed up by other people in a bid to inconvenience a worker they don't like, however, that's not likely to be the case for all members on the list.

Co-branded with ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG), the Lian Li PC-Q17 is a mini-ITX chassis designed to neatly house the ASUS ROG Maximus impact line of miniature motherboards.

Complete with a sloped brushed aluminum front panel and large acrylic window in order to show off the tech within, this case is interestingly trapezoid in shape when viewed from the side. Further exterior features include a large LED ROG logo sitting on the storage cage, helping tie together a nice looking product.

Complete with 2-slot expansion support and clearance for video cards up to 27cm in length, there is further support for CPU coolers up to 14cm in height, power supplies up to 15cm in length and support for a 240mm x 120mm radiator up top (see image below). Last up are two front panel USB 3.0 ports and a weigh in at 2.7kg.

In a bid to win over eSports enthusiasts and those looking to transfer into this scene, Blizzard has recently announced the addition of automated tournaments within its gaming client.

Complete with an easy-to-access tournaments button in the main menu, the two tournament formats on offer in this beta testing period will be 3-round tournaments in single elimination and 6-round tournaments in a group stage to single elimination bracket.

This is a great way in order for Blizzard to push more players towards the eSports scene, alongside giving competitive players a viable way to hone their skills on a regular basis. However, small tournament organizers who are looking to learn some tips and tricks in order to move onto bigger and better things may find this addition an issue as it basically kills their target audience.

Most people will remember the iconic VAIO brand that Sony had, but sold the rights to in early 2014 to investment firm Japan Industrial Partners, which is ramping up to launch a new VAIO tablet in the United States in October.

The company started off selling products locally, but now they want VAIO products selling across the world. VAIO CEO Yoshimi Ota said that the reason VAIO was so unprofitable when Sony had the rights was a focus on market share. Under the ownership of Japan Industrial Partners, VAIO won't be pushing any cheap or unprofitable devices. This is where the new Canvas Z steps up to the plate.

The new VAIO Canvas Z is a "monster tablet" rocking a 12.3-inch 2560x1704 display, a massive Core i7-4700HQ processor, up to 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. The Canvas Z rocks a built-in kickstand, stylus, and a detachable keyboard.

With the Ashley Madison affair website being hacked recently, seeing user information leaked on the dark web, news has just come to light that some Australian Government officials and employee's have been using their email address' for more than just business meetings and proposals.

This pastebin list contains over 700 leaked Australian Government employee email address', ranging from members of the New South Wales Police force to the Australian Defense Force and even the Victorian Education Department. Reportedly "copied from a post on a forum on the darknet," these email addresses are just some among millions now readily available to the public.

Wondering if you or your friends have been exposed? You can enter your (or another persons email) into this website to see what comes up.

Samsung has only just unveiled its new Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 edge+ handsets, but DisplayMate has put them both under the test awarding the new Galaxy Note 5 with some serious praise for its display.

Most people would think that the display on the Galaxy Note 5 being the same size and resolution, would not be that much of an upgrade, but DisplayMate says quite the opposite. President of DisplayMate, Dr. Raymond M. Soneria, said that the Galaxy Note 5 is the best performing smartphone display the company has ever tested.

The display in the Galaxy Note 5 breaks new records in various categories, including highest absolute color accuracy, peak brightness, and highest contrast rating in ambient light, and that's not even all of the categories the display in the Note 5 wins in. The new Galaxy S6 edge+ was also given some praise, with Soneira saying that the fact that the flexible plastic substrate used in the dual-edge display is now essentially the same as traditional glass substrate.