Latest News - Page 2598

The Duke Nukem franchise hasn't been in a good spot for quite a while now, with 3D Realms, Gearbox Software and Interceptor Entertainment "voluntarily ended all litigation between them".

It has all been quite messy, with the announcement of Duke Nukem Mass Destruction back in February 2014, which was an isometric view shooter for the PS4 and PC. 3D Realms had bought in Interceptor to develop the game, but after the teaser site for the game opened up, Gearbox sued them. Gearbox wanted full rights and control over any Duke Nukem game, with 3D Realms then countersuing, stating that it had the rights to develop Duke Nukem games, saying that the Duke Nukem trademark was its property.

Interceptor acquired 3D Realms the next month, in March 2014, with Interceptor's Mike Nielsen placed into the CEO chair. Nielsen has said "When Interceptor acquired a license to develop Duke Nukem Mass Destruction [or Duke Nukem Survivor, its working title] from 3D Realms, we did so in good faith and were not aware of any conflict. We never intended to cause any harm to Gearbox or Duke, which is why we immediately ceased development after Gearbox reached out. To secure the future of Duke, 3D Realms has agreed with Gearbox that a single home serves the IP best".

IDF 2015 - One of the new features of Intel's Skylake architecture is that it is always listening for your voice, ready for voice commands to wake your PC up, similar to how Cortana works in Windows 10, or Google's various voice-controlled features in Android.

Intel has packed a new digital signal processor (DSP) into the Skylake processors, where you can wake your PC up by talking to it. The feature was shown off at the Intel Developer Forum, where you can wake your PC up from sleep, or have a program launched - all with your voice. The chipmaker hasn't mentioned if any additional hardware will be required, obviously outside of a microphone, but integration of this technology will work perfectly in most laptops.

The question is, will people want this feature turned on by default? Do you want your Skylake-powered PC to be always listening out for your voice? What type of security is there? There are more questions being raised over security, than it being just a cool feature for Intel's new processors.

Microsoft is quite happy with the addition of Xbox One backward compatibility able to support Xbox 360 games, but the company may not just stop there. When asked by someone on Twitter about backward compatibility so Xbox One gamers could play original Xbox titles, here is what Xbox chief Phil Spencer said:

Current Xbox One Preview Program members are able to test out Xbox 360 games, with a public rollout expected in November. Looking ahead, all Xbox 360 games with Gold titles will automatically be playable on the Xbox One.

There are plenty of things to work out with supporting Xbox 360 titles on the Xbox One, but it's interesting to hear Microsoft not shutting the door on original Xbox game support.

Gearing up for the upcoming launch of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, PlayStation Japan has launched a 2-minute "A history of METAL GEAR and PlayStation" video:

Since Metal Gear Solid was made available for the original PlayStation, there has been a Metal Gear Solid game available for each PlayStation home and mobile platform.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is scheduled for launch on September 1, and will be available for the Sony PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PC. Metal Gear Online will not launch until October 6 for console gamers and next January for PC gamers.

GPS manufacturer Garmin has launched the VIRB X and VIRB XE next-generation action cameras, available to consumers in Australia.

The VIRB XE is able to record HD video at 1440p/30fps or 1080p/60fps with super slow motion, image stabilization and various zoom levels. Meanwhile, the VIRB X records HD video at 1080p/30fps and 720p/60fps with slow motion and zoom.

Both cameras are waterproof up to 50 meters without an external case, and has the ability to capture crisp underwater shots. Both units support Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, ANT+, G-Metrix, GPS, accelerometer and gyroscope.

Thecus Technology has launched the 7-bay N7770-10G and 8-bay N8880U-10G NAS units, aimed at helping businesses increase their storage abilities.

The 10G NAS features Intel Core i3 (3.3 GHz), 8GB DDR3 ECC RAM, and a 10G PCIe card - offering SATA drives with NAS stacking. Each unit has 6 USB 2.0 ports, and USB 2 x 3.0 ports, 1 HDMI port, with support for 3.5" and 2.5" SATA HDDs or SSDs.

Both the N7770-10G and N888U-10G run the Thecus OS5 software, a Web-based OS making advanced data management easier. More than 700 apps focused on data backup, content management, multimedia, and other critical business features are available in the Thecus App Center.

Intel only launched its Skylake-based Core i7-6700K processor just recently, with a professional overclocker already pushing it up to just under 7GHz, sitting at 6998.88MHz.

The achievement was done using an ASRock Z170 OC Formula motherboard, where Hong Kong overclocker Chi-Kui Lam used an engineering sample of the Core i7-6700K, an overclock of 74.9% from its stock frequency of 4GHz. G.SKILL provided the RAM chops with Ripjaws 4 DDR4 RAM, alongside a 1300W PSU. The processor was keeping cool under LN2, which is normally required for these insane CPU overclocks.

The Core i7-6700K at 6.9GHz was only on a single core, with the other three physical cores and the four Hyper-Threaded cores being disabled. So we're looking at a single-core 6.9GHz, which had its voltage cranked up to 1.88V, compared to the 1.2V on the stock CPU.

The argument surrounding the use of encryption has placed tech companies and Internet users against national governments desperately trying to find ways to access data. President Barack Obama reportedly wants an open discussion with Silicon Valley leaders, but it looks like both sides aren't even close to coming to terms about encryption.

"We support the privacy rights of individuals," according to law enforcement officials in the United States, UK, Spain, and France. "But in the absence of cooperation from Apple and Google, regulators and lawmakers in our nations must now find an appropriate balance between the marginal benefits of full-disk encryption and the need for local law enforcement to solve and prosecute crimes. The safety of our communities depends on it."

However Google, Yahoo, and other tech companies are ready to fight for the rights of Internet users - and that means preventing government intrusion - and built-in backdoors for government and law enforcement access.

Popular websites like Drudge Report and Weather.com posed a threat to visitors by serving poisoned Web ads, installing CryptoWall ransomware or ravaging victimized machines with adware. The problem spread to even more websites, with reports saying eBay, AOL.com, wunderground, and other popular sites also posed a threat to site visitors.

"The same cybercrime lowlifes that infected the Yahoo website a few weeks ago have struck again, and were serving poisoned Web ads which either dropped CryptoWall ransomware or infected the PC with adware," said Stu Sjouwerman, CEO of KnowBe4.

To block these types of infections, KnowBe4 recommends click-to-play mode for Adobe Flash - if not disabling it completely - and making sure anti-virus and anti-malware software is updated. Of course, educating employees on various forms of cybersecurity risks is an important step, which could at least alert them to potential problems.

The hotly anticipated Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 multiplayer beta is now live on PlayStation 4, and thousands of gamers are fragging it up as I type, but more than a few gamers have been left out in the cold thanks to a system glitch that prevents installation of the beta files. Luckily there's a simple fix.

Gamers affected by the glitch have taken to Reddit and GameFAQS looking for answers, explaining that they are able to redeem the beta code and start downloading the 12GB beta, but the download interrupts at 90-95% with an "cannot install" error message.

The fix is simple: all you need to do is update your PlayStation 4's firmware to version 2.57 and the beta should install and startup just fine. Apparently the installation error pops up on PS4's running v2.55 due to compatibility issues, and neither Sony or Treyarch have Tweeted any mentions of the glitch or how to fix it. Considering a good portion of these gamers pre-ordered Black Ops 3 to get into the beta it would behoove the devs to get the word out as quick as possible.

With the race being on for all RAM manufacturers to release the fastest clocked DDR4 memory to the public, one company leading the charge is G.SKILL with its TridentZ Series DDR4 8GB (4GBx2) kit which claimed to run at 4266 MHz.

These claims have been put to the test at Intel's Developer Forum 2015 (IDF 2015), with G.SKILL proudly displaying these two Z170 Chipset based rigs, paired with "Skylake" Intel processors and an ASRock or ASUS motherboard.

If you're interested in the need for speed, keep reading TweakTown for consequent RAM brand releases - it's an ongoing process at this stage as manufacturers are trying to push DDR4 into the mainstream enthusiast market.

The gaming market seems to be quite healthy, and there are a lot of potential customers that game developers and hardware manufacturers can aim to reach. There are a reported 1.8 billion gamers worldwide, with 48 percent women gamers, and the average age of players at 35 years old, according to numbers presented at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF).

In every US household, there is an average of two gamers, and four out of five US households have at least one device used to play video games.

Analysts have taken a close look at PC, console, and mobile gaming, as studios and hardware designers look for new business opportunities. A whopping $34 billion was spent on PC games in 2014 alone - and the industry seems to be growing.

Making good on their threat from last month, hacking collective The Impact Group has released nine gigabytes of Ashley Madison user data, which includes upwards of 37 million users details, onto the dark web

The hacker group was demanding that Avid Life Media, owner of Ashley Madison, as well as two other sites; Cougar Life and Established Men was to be taken offline or else the data would be released. Avid Life Media confirmed the leak, but kept the site online. Gizmodo have confirmed the availability of the dump, which includes email addresses, credit card transactions and profiles.

If you've ever use the site in the past, best to either fess up and get some flowers on the way home, or lawyer up.

Riding back on the news that AMD has lost a considerable chunk of the discrete GPU market this quarter, this news of AMD spending less and less on research and development is not good to hear.

AMD shares dropped 13% last Monday without any new information or reasoning behind the huge dip in share prices, but it could be a result of NVIDIA's better than expected financials, or it could be the fact that AMD has lost more market share to NVIDIA, even after the release of its first next-gen GPU in nearly two years.

Furthermore, AMD has been scaling back R&D spending over the last five years, with Pacific Crest analyst Mike McConnell chiming in, with the following: "When I talk to investors about AMD, there's some concern - I mean, we've seen a decline by close to 40% versus levels we were at in the beginning of the decade". AMD CTO Mark Papermaster has said that the PC market is shrinking, and that AMD is putting less R&D effort into that part of the business.

The last time we had GPU market share numbers, NVIDIA was dominating AMD with 76% of the discrete GPU market, leaving AMD with scraps. This was back in Q4 2014 (with our article released in February 2015), where NVIDIA's best video card was the GeForce GTX 980.

This was before the release of the Titan X in March, and before the GTX 980 Ti in June. At the time, AMD had its Hawaii architecture inside of the R9 290X, and the dual-GPU in the form of the R9 295X2. At the time, all signs pointed to the R9 390X turning things around, but the R9 390X ended up being yet another rebrand, while the R9 Fury X was discovered with our world exclusive during Computex 2015 in June, powered by High Bandwidth Memory.

Fast forward to now, where we're in Q3 2015, and AMD has multiple new products on the market: the R9 Fury X, R9 Fury, R9 390X and a bunch of rebranded 300 series video cards. According to Mercury Research's latest data, NVIDIA has jumped from 76% of the discrete GPU market in Q4 2014 to 82% in Q2 2015. This leaves AMD with just 18% of the dGPU market share, even after the release of multiple new products from Team Red.

Intel wants to have a go at Hollywood, partnering with the United Artists Media Group and Turner to create the "America's Greatest Makers" TV show. Ideally, Intel wants to help inventors use Curie to develop "the next big wearable or smart-connected device."

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich was joined onstage during the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) by UAMG CEO Mark Burnett, as they announced the show. America's Greatest Makers will debut during Q1 or Q2 2016, and will feature technology inventors fighting it out for a $1 million cash prize.

To help promote the show, expect to see trailers and teasers across Turner networks, such as TNT, CNN, HLN, TruTV, Adult Swim, and Bleacher Report.

At IDF 2015 Intel has revealed Optane Technology, a new hardware brand built around its new XPoint high-performance 3D flash memory.

Intel's new XPoint-powered Optane hardware is planned for a release in 2016, marketed across an array of form factors including standard SSD's and will even be compatible with Xeon systems via DIMM. Intel affirms that the high-density Optane tech isn't just a conventional storage solution and can be used to help power and optimize datacenter servers and Xeon workstations that require low-latency and high-bandwidth performance.

Last month Intel shed light on the next-generation Xpoint (pronounced Crosspoint) 3D memory with an number of impressive specs; since its 10X more dense than traditional SSD's, Xpoint boasts speeds up to 1,000 faster than traditional NAND storage and offers a whopping 10TB+ in SSD storage capacities (Samsung has already hit 16TB SSD's with its own 3D memory solution).

The US government plans to expand UAV flights over the next few years, expanding daily drone sortie operations away from just the Air Force, according to officials.

The number of UAV flights will increase from around 60 every day up to 90 by 2019, though there are significant manpower and financial budget issues that must be addressed.

The global demand for UAV flights must expand, as the Air Force fleet continues to face trained pilot shortages. As the US combat mission in Afghanistan finally came to an end, the US military planned on reducing the number of combat drone flights by its Air Force staff. However, the rapid rise of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq has caused an uptick in reconnaissance and targeted strikes.

In late 2014, Intel and watchmaker Fossil Group announced they were going to develop fashionable smartwatches, and we've finally received glimpse of the wearables.

During IDF, Fossil showed off three Intel smartwatches, powered by Google Android Wear, with all three expected during Q4 this year. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and Fossil SVP Gregory McKelvey announced the watches during the opening keynote of the 2015 Intel Developer Forum (IDF).

Designed for consumers seeking fashionable, yet tech-centric smartwatches, it looks like Fossil wants to take aim at the Apple Watch. One watch looks quite similar to the Motorola Moto 360, and features a silver finish, leather straps and a black bar type look that many of you may already be familiar with.

Ubisoft today announced that Rainbow Six Siege has been pushed back from its initial October release to December 1, 2015 across all platforms and regions.

"This wasn't an easy decision, but based on the feedback we've received, and based on our own internal tests, we felt there are adjustments and improvements we can make, including improving the co-op experience across all game modes, weapon and gadget balancing, as well as menu and interface navigation," the studio said in an official blogpost. "We're taking a little more time to make these changes, and we think it's the right call."

With the original release date in October, the devs would have less than a month to digest and implement feedback from testers. Simply said that's just not enough time to optimize a game, especially a tactical multiplayer shooter with dynamic elements and modes. Most games in the genre get more than two testing phases--the alpha runs, the closed beta that usually unlocks with pre-orders, and of course the final open beta where the devs apply what they've learned.