Latest News - Page 2598

After 2013's disappointing 'Star Trek: Into Darkness', Paramount are following up with another feature timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the franchise. Sadly, by the looks of this first trailer, it's going to have precious little in common with the somewhat cerebral sci-fi that the series is known for. But don't just take my word for it, watch the first trailer below and make up your own mind.

'Star Trek: Beyond' returns Chris Pine as Captain Kirk, along with Zachary Quinto as Commander Spock, Simon Pegg as Scotty and Karl Urban as Bones, which is also expected to feature Idris Elba as a Klingon bad guy.

The film hits cinemas in 2D, 3D and IMAX in July 2016.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens releases in just four short days, and gamers everywhere are finding ways to inject a little Star Wars into their lives. With that spirit in mind, ligthsabers are now available in Fallout 4. About time, right?

If you're like me, then lightsabers are a must-have in any Bethesda RPG. These death-dealing laser-swords are essential to any Fallout or TES mod collection, and represent that free "why not?" spirit of wacky chaos that mods inject to any game. During my adventures, I used Darth Maul's double-bladed Sith-saber in Oblivion, sliced and diced baddies with Luke Skywalker's lightsaber in Fallout 3, and finished it all off by spreading terror and red death as Darth Vader in New Vegas. Finally, gamers can now continue this long-running tradition in Fallout 4.

The mod isn't just about bringing havoc and hilarity to the Commonwealth. It actually fills a very noticeable void: the lack of energy weapons in Fallout 4. "How can we have no energy melee against energy ranged?", asks the mod's creator Invalidfate. We'll likely see more lightsaber mods in the future, complete with Kylo Ren's fearsome claymore lightsaber.

Fallout 4 doesn't look that great on its own, especially after some of the games that we've seen released in the last couple of years. It looked like a spruced up Fallout 3, and while that's not a bad thing - we have magnitudes more GPU and CPU horsepower in our PCs these days - so I blame the consoles.

But, this is where the mods come into play, such as the latest version of ENBSeries. ENBSeries' members 'dpeasant', 'iriarsham', 'Kobalk', and 'Strix2206' have created something truly incredible with their mods for Fallout 4, which makes the game look insanely beautiful. There are a range of screenshots that we've attached, so enjoy!

If you want to recreate your own screenshots, try tinkering with the ENB mod presets over at Nexusmods. The official ENBSeries forum uses these kinds of mods for their photos and you can even sign up to learn more about the process.

If you've always wanted to get into Destiny but have been put off by the game's $59.99 price tag, then today's your lucky day.

Amazon is currently offering Destiny: The Taken King Legendary Edition for just $30 as part of its daily sales. The sale applies to all platform versions, including PS4, Xbox One, PS3 and Xbox 360. This version is the retail edition that features the complete package of Bungie's MMOFPS, including the base game Destiny as well as its three DLC packs, The Dark Below, The House of Wolves, and massive The Taken King update.

As someone who spent $120 total on Destiny ($59.99 for the base game, $20 per each of three expansions), I envy new gamers who are given the opportunity pick the game up for just $59.99, let alone the ultra-cheap $30. Be forewarned that once you fire the game up you'll be flooded with updates and patch downloads before you can jump in and play.

The Outlook team recently sent out an e-mail to some users indicating Windows Live 2012 will no longer work soon unless you install this update (which some users report breaks things, so probably hold off).

The interruption in service is due to changes being made to Microsoft email services in a few weeks; the email doesn't specify what the changes are, but Slipstick reports the plan is to move everything over to the Office 365 infrastructure.

The full email is below.

Released as version 3.1.5, Microsoft has released an update for its Windows Device Recovery Tool, including "bug fixes and improvements" to help Lumia 550, 950 and 950 XL users.

Some, not all, users have been sent a push notification to install this update, with others having to manually find the install path themselves. The Windows Device Recovery Tool is designed for users to roll back their OS to a previous version, often used in order to provide greater OS stability should an update take an unexpected negative turn.

If you haven't been given the update already, you can do so at the following auto-download link.

If you were wondering exactly how some Star Wars technologies may become feasible things in the real-world, Michigan State University has published another episode of its 'Chillin' with Chewie' series, aiming to explain Star Wars technological advancements to the public with the help of real life scientists.

While some technology in Star Wars may never come to light (pun intended), this series aims to cover many technologies ranging from real to fictional and from Carbonite to light sabers. With this educational tool further explaining a possible time frame for some of these cool technologies to become reality, it's a must watch for any Star Wars fan.

An article by Gizmodo pointed out that that this series explains that "TIE fighters' thrusters are a million times more powerful than anything we've ever developed," giving you an insight into some things you may learn by watching this series for yourself.

Last week Taylor Swift played the Sydney leg of her 1989 World Tour, seeing approximately 76,000 fans flock to the ANZ Stadium to enjoy one of the world's biggest artists in her prime. If you missed out on the action or want to re-live the experience, Taylor Swift has once again entered an Apple Music exclusive deal, offering this content solely to subscribers of this service.

Due to her pulling all content of Spotify, it seems that Taylor Swift and Apple Music have now become best buddies, offering up this new experience on December 21, local time.

While Taylor Swift is certainly one of the biggest artists on the globe right now, her sole streaming rights with Apple Music must be an extremely good deal to keep her around, seeing other services like Spotify and Rdio left in the dust.

A Twitter account with no profile photo and just over 2,000 followers called 'Cturt' has confirmed a Sony PlayStation 4 jailbreak success recently, telling the public that the "PS4 kernel exploit [is] finally working! Thanks to everyone involved!"

This jailbreak is said to enable a few interesting and helpful features, with CTurt explaining that this new breakthrough will enable users to "successfully dump RAM from other processes (like SceShellUI) using ptrace," further explaining that he will next be working on patching RAM.

While there is no posted guide, links or information as to how users can complete the same process on their consoles, there is a GitHub page of the same name, linked in the Twitter, where this information may surface in the near future. This news is exciting for developers looking at making custom firmware for the PlayStation 4, further opening up many other coding possibilities for community advancement of this device.

A recent hack and theft of Government files sent a US Government department into a frenzy in recent past, with further developments urging a spokesperson to inform the public that not every victim has or will be notified of this data breach just yet.

While the Government is meant to be notifying each victim of this breach from May 2014, around 7 percent of the 1.5 million people in danger are currently unable to be contacted. This is said to be due to them moving house or being without a Government-recorded address. Confirmed by the Office of Personnel Management, being the place that was hacked, this notification system is obviously not flawless.

The original hack was traced back to China but wasn't discovered or announced until one year after its occurrence, with the names, addresses, social security numbers and various other pieces of information about employees, contractors and job applicants being now in the hands of an unverified source.

The world of DayZ is already dangerous enough, but to make the challenge all that harder, the team has announced that predatory animals are making their way into the game.

The latest devblog has teased that wolves are coming, and just like the zombies in the game, wolves and other animals will try to attack you. But, if you're good enough you could capture these animals and cook them so that you can use them to your benefit. The devblog has added that non-perishable food is about to become very scarce, thanks to the introduction of growable food, and soon, animals.

Also, dirt bikes and traditional pedal-powered bikes are also making their way into the world of DayZ - which should be interesting, to say the least.

Due to the uncovering of some recent patents, more plans for the Nintendo NX have been revealed. This time around it's about the controller, revealing that a patent from June secured the rights for this technology giant to create a controller featuring virtual buttons on a touchscreen.

The image above makes the controller look something similar to a smartphone-emulated Nintendo title, with the NX controller being published on the US Patent and Trademark office website in the last 48 hours. The image above isn't an official release from Nintendo as it's a mock up of the patents laid down by Nintendo, but you could very well be looking at Nintendo's new poster child console controller as it stands in prototype form.

The official patent mentions holes for real control sticks, but will utilize touchscreen technology for the actual buttons. If you're wanting to look at the 'nitty-gritty' of the whole patent, head here.

If you want to make Fallout 4 look better, you might want to try out these insanely awesome looking mods - but if that makes you thirsty from all of those graphics, you'll want to buy a Nuka-Cola.

Fallout's official Twitter page has teased that a bottle of Nuka-Cola will cost $2.99, versus 50 caps in the game itself. If you've purchased Fallout 4 or the DLC season pass, you'll get your Nuka-Cola for free. Nuka-Cola Quantum IRL was introduced on November 10, but sold out incredibly quick.

Jones Soda makes Nuka-Cola, which is just a repackaged version of its berry lemonade flavor. As Polygon reports, "it does not completely restore all your health", so keep that in mind.

According to the latest rumors, Intel is positioning itself for a new NUC launch in Q1 2016. Intel has teased that the new NUC is "the most powerful NUC yet... now with Intel Iris Pro graphics" and that it's "coming Q1 2016".

Now, Q1 2016 is an interesting time frame because we have the Consumer Electronics Show kicking off in early January, but Computex is in Q3. As for the NUC itself, it should rock Iris Pro 580 graphics on the flagship Skull Canyon-based NUC. Intel's Iris Pro 580 graphics features 128MB of eDRAM (which acts as super-quick L4 cache) and houses the 72 Execution Units (EUs) on the die itself.

We're expecting the core clock on the chip to hit 1GHz, but it could change closer to release. If we put this into perspective, we're looking at similar graphics performance to NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 750. The new Skull Canyon NUCs should sport Intel's Skylake-U series processors, replacing the Broadwell-U series parts in the current NUC lineup.

Google and NASA revealed on Wednesday that they've found a critical piece to the enigmatic puzzle of quantum computing that could usher in a new generation of ultra-efficient computers.

For the past two years, Google and NASA have combined their scientific might via the Quantum AI team to study the mechanics and possible advantages of quantum computing. It's taken quite a while, but the team has finally tapped the power of its D-Wave X2 system to demonstrate just how powerful quantum computing really is.

Using a processing called quantum annealing, the Quantum AI team was able to prove that the quantum computer not only works but represents tremendous gains over traditional problem-solving systems. The scientists discovered a new quantum annealing algorithm that processed and solved complex binary workloads over 100 million times faster (10^8) than methods simulated on single-core non-quantum computers. Essentially this means that Google's D-Wave X2 system can serve as a major tool to understand, define and experiment with the realm of nanoscale quantum computing.

We've seen previous mods for Star Wars Battlefront which look great, but the "real life" for EA DICE's first-person shooter looks absolutely incredible. YouTuber Jack "jackfrags" Mason has blown us away, but you really need to check out the video that we've embedded below.

The clip has Star Wars Battlefront running the "real life" mod at 4K 60FPS, so if you've got the display and Internet chops to watch it, make sure you're watching it at 4K 60FPS. The footage itself is absolutely beautiful, with the track behind it also sounding great - with Mason using Maxence Cyrin's piano cover of Pixies' "Where is My Mind", which totally adds to the experience.

Mason said that he used a "modified version of SweetFX" to achieve the look of Star Wars Battlefront "real life", with SweetFX being a bunch of post-processing shader effects like specialized anti-aliasing and sharpening.

For a time the highest grossing picture in history before being pipped by 'Titanic' a little more than a year later, the aliens of 'Independence Day' have come back to finish the job they started, before being felled by the one-two punch of an Apple-borne computer virus and fighter pilot Will Smith. Twentieth Century Fox has today premiered the first teaser trailer of footage for what looks like one of 2016 biggest blockbusters in the making.

While Will Smith is absent this time round, returning starts Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, Judd Hirsch and Vivica A. Fox will be joined by newcomers Liam Hemsworth, Maika Monroe and Jessie Usher in welcoming the alien hoarde back to Earth. Expect explosions and general mayhem as the future of the planet is decided.

'Independence Day: Resurgence' hits 2D, 3D and IMAX cinemas worldwide in June 2016.

If you haven't watched Mr. Robot, I highly suggest you do, as it was one of the biggest surprises of the year for me. The show is very unique, with a 'Fight Club' vibe to it, but deeply entrenched in the world we live in today that is dominated by corporations, governments, spying, and technology.

The second season of USA's hit show will debut next year with the show's creator, Sam Esmail, set to direct every single episode. Variety is reporting that Esmail plans to direct every episode of the second season, which will show massive confidence in Esmail from USA as a writer-director. Esmail earned great acclaim from the first season of Mr. Robot, as he also directed three episodes, and now proven himself as a film director with 'Comet'.

As for Mr. Robot's second season, it was teased earlier this year at New York Comic Con that the second season will "get really f***ing dark" - which is interesting to hear, as the first season was pretty damn dark as it was. Rami Malek, who plays the main character Elliot on the show, said that when it comes to preparing for the second season, he said it's "going to be tough". Not only that, but series creator Sam Esmail added: "We should learn more about Elliot's relationship with his sister and follow fsociety member Darlene, and how that relationship fits in with the origins of the now infamous hacker group society".

We've heard about Intel's incredible new Core i7-6950X processor, which features 10 x CPU cores joined by 10 x Hyper-Threaded cores for a total of 20 threads, but it looks like we'll get a better look at Intel's new CPUs at Computex in June 2016.

Intel's new 14nm Broadwell-E offerings will arrive next year with a slew of different SKUs, ranging from the 12-threaded CPUs to 20-threaded CPU beasts. The Core i7-6950X will lead the pack with 20 threads of 14nm CPU goodness, with a Base frequency of 2GHz, 25MB of cache and support for DDR4. It'll feature a 140W TDP, and up to 3.5GHz on Turbo Boost.

The Core i7-6900K will feature 16 threads at 3.2GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) and 20MB of cache, with the Core i7-6850K featuring 12 threads of CPU power at 3.6GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) with 15MB of cache. The last CPU to be unveiled should be the Core i7-6800K with 12 threads at 3.4GHz (3.6GHz Turbo Boost) with 15MB of cache.

We all know that Elon Musk has some doubts about artificial intelligence, with the SpaceX and Tesla founder saying that AI could be "more dangerous than nukes" back in April 2014. In October 2014, Musk warned the world about AI once again, saying that it's like "summoning the demon". It was only earlier this year that Musk said that AI would treat us "pet Labradors", a future that I don't want to live in.

These are some strong warnings from Musk, who has joined forces with some of the world's brightest minds, creating OpenAI. OpenAI, as explained on Medium, is a nonprofit that was funded by people like Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel and Amazon Web Services - just to name a few. These people are collectively pledging more than $1 billion to counteract large companies, or even governments that might gain too much power in the world of artificial intelligence.

As it stands, companies like Google are pretty open with their research into AI, but Y Combinator CEO and OpenAI founder Sam Altman says that as we get closer to the level where AI surpasses human intelligence, there's a large concern over how much these companies will share. OpenAI promises to make its results public, offering its patents royalty-free.