Latest News - Page 2630

Turing Pharmaceuticals is in the headlines today for all the wrong reasons, increasing the price of their HIV/AIDS medication from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill, overnight - an increase of an insane 4100%.

Daraprim, the medication in question, has been on the market for 62 years now, and is the "standard of care for food-borne illness called toxoplasmosis caused by a parasite that can severely affect those with compromised immune systems. Turing purchased the rights to the drug last month and almost immediately raised prices", reports The Washington Post.

The story gets worse, with consumers taking to Reddit to boycott the company's products, saying that they want new laws that would prevent this price gouging from happening in the future. The editor daily newsletter on the industry, John Carroll of Fierce Biotech, asked Turing's CEO, Martin Shkreli about the huge price increase. Things took to Twitter, where Carroll asked: "Let's see if we can get a statement from @MartinShkreli. Martin, your co. just hiked the price of an old drug - new to you - by 5000%. Why?". The response from Shkreli was explosive, where he straight up said: "You are such a moron".

With this summer's 'Jurassic World' now the third highest grossing film of all time, it's no surprise that a sequel is on the way - in fact it's already been announced for 2018. What might be a surprise is that 'Jurassic World' was always planned to be the opening act for a trilogy of films, with the roadmap already laid out.

Speaking to Flickering Myth, Director Colin Trevorrow elaborated slightly on the next installment, which he won't direct, but will write.

"We looked at it as a trilogy from the very beginning. We designed the whole thing that way. And, honestly, the whole trilogy is articulated in Jurassic Park. Jurassic World is all based on Ian Malcolm's quote: 'you stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you knew what you had, you'd packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox and now you want to sell it.' That, to me, is Jurassic World. That's why I had all the product placement, that's what it was. So with Jurassic World 2 it's: "dinosaurs and man separated by 65 million years of evolution have been thrown back into the mix together - how can we know what to expect?'. That's not the exact quote, but you get the idea."

Samsung has just announced the latest SSD in its range, the new 950 PRO SSD. What makes the Samsung 950 PRO special? It's the first NVMe M.2 form factor consumer SSD with V-NAND technology, with some insane performance to boot.

The new drive arrives on a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, in various sizes. The Samsung 950 PRO will come in 256GB and 512GB capacities, with the 512GB version featuring insane sequential read speeds of 2.5GB/sec, while it can write at 1.5GB/sec. Random read performance is just as impressive, hovering at 300,000 IOPS while we have write speeds of up to 110,000 IOPS.

Samsung is using its second generation MLV V-NAND 32-layer 128Gb die with UBX controller and magician software to make the 950 PRO, while we also have AES 256-bit Full Disk Encryption that will protect your data. Dynamic Thermal Guard will protect your drive and data in environments of between 0-70C, and it can take a physical shock of up to 1500G/0.5ms and vibrations of up to 20G. So if you want to take it up in your fighter jet, you can.

BenQ has been all over the competitive gaming scene in the last five years, sponsoring most of the biggest gaming organisations, gaming events and tournaments alike. This strong commitment to the eSports scene has been further extended, seeing this Taiwanese company announce that it has "strengthened holdings in the research and manufacture of gaming equipment by investing in the player trusted brand ZOWIE."

Further stating that BenQ and ZOWIE's passion and mission for business both strongly align with its own, this fact makes this renewed collaboration being only logical. Back in 2010 these two companies co-branded a professional gaming monitor, with this partnership to extend now into 2015, seeing BenQ help out ZOWIE in peripheral research and development.

Said to be further making products for casuals and professionals alike, there is no saying just yet exactly what products these two companies will make together, however the press release does mention First Person Shooter games being a particular focus.

Why haven't aliens contacted us? Encryption. That's at least the reason NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has given, which is his explanation to the Fermi paradox.

Snowden had a chat with Neil deGrasse Tyson on his StarTalk podcast (where we're hoping Snowden used encryption, pun intended), where he said that our need for highly encrypted information could be the reason aliens haven't contacted Earth. He said that their communications could be so encrypted that they would be nearly impossible to distinguish from the surrounding noise.

Snowden said: "When you look at encrypted communications, if they are properly encrypted, there is no real way to tell that they are encrypted. You can't distinguish a properly encrypted communication, at least in the theoretical sense, from random noise. So if you have an alien civilization trying to listen for other civilizations, or our civilization trying to listen for aliens, there's only one small period in the development of their society where all of their communications will be sent via the most primitive and most unprotected means"

Despite a previous report which suggested that Michael Bay and Mark Wahlberg were planning on exiting the fifth entry from the multi-billion dollar 'Transformers' franchise, a number of outlets such as ComingSoon are claiming that the director and star combo are looking at making a comeback.

With Bay's next film '13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi' in the can, the director is looking forward to future projects and whilst he has taken to Twitter to deny he's officially the 'Transformers 5' director, he has said he's met with Producer Steven Spielberg to thrash out a story.

'Transformers 5' has previously been announced for a 2017 release date.

Frontier Developments, the studio behind Elite: Dangerous, have just announced that their game will have support for Steam VR thanks to the HTC Vive headset.

Elite: Dangerous already has VR support thanks to the Oculus Rift, but this is a very good announcement for the Vive. HTC is set to unleash the Vive sometime in November in a very limited run, with more headsets being made available early next year. Creative Director of Frontier Developments, Jonny Watts, explains: "Back in December 2013 we were among the first to support virtual reality with a triple-A game, and for me, exploring, trading and fighting throughout Elite Dangerous' 1:1 scale Milky Way remains an unequaled virtual reality experience. We have been working closely with Valve to bring Elite Dangerous to HTC Vive, and we are delighted with the quality we have been able to achieve".

The big difference between the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive is that the Rift is more of a sitting experience, and while the Vive can be used in the same way, if you've got the room for it, it's going to offer a much better VR experience. You'll be able to achieve this if you have a 15x15-foot room, with the Vive sporting its 'Lighthouse' base station. This blasts sensors into the room picking up an entire VR space that you can play in.

Virtual Reality represents a whole new dimension for gaming, and Sony is extremely confident that the PlayStation VR will help usher in the new age. In a recent interview, Sony corporate exec Shuhei Yoshida went so far as to call the PlayStation VR an "ultimate weapon" for developers.

"Using [PlayStation] VR tech, it's so easy, it's almost unfair. It's like an ultimate weapon," Yoshida told at TGS 2015. "I think it's going to be a hugely powerful weapon for game developers to create new and exciting experiences for consumers."

Sony has said that it wants small bite-sized experiences for PS VR that appeal to a wide-spread audience. Developer's are encouraged to market their games as "simple, passive experiences" rather than huge AAA narratives. "Because VR is such a new media, you can create totally amazing experiences with very very limited resources if you have the right idea," Yoshida said, highlighting a popular soccer indie called Headmaster.

Sony has quietly added the PlayStation 4's first paid early access game to the platform, a move that could pave the way for cross-platform game testing and development.

Although Dungeon Defenders II is still in development, it will be available on the PlayStation 4 on September 29. Trendy Entertainment's arena sequel has been on Steam's early access since late 2014 and is now coming to Sony's PS4 in a "pre-alpha" build state.

Curiously enough Sony hasn't exactly billed the game as "early access". To be a part of the pre-alpha testing players will have to buy an in-game microtransaction bundle to get in, which start at $14.99. "Please note that Dungeon Defenders II is still under development," Trendy Entertainment's Philip Asher said in the update. "During this time some features, like local co-op and controller support, will be ahead of the PC version, but other features and content will be rolling in after they are released on PC."

As Sony's direct competitor in the console war, Microsoft has kept up with the old mantra of "know thy enemy" quite well. As a result, Xbox division head Phil Spencer has made some predictions on Sony's next move, and "fully expects" that Sony will expand the PS4's recent price cut overseas to the west.

"When I think about the playbook they've used in the past, I fully expect [Sony] will drop [the PS4's] price," Phil Spencer told IGN in a follow-up interview. "If history tells, then we'll see a price drop from them coming."

DICE has confirmed that Star Wars: Battlefront will indeed have dedicated servers to power the game's new skill-based matchmaking system, putting the fears of a peer-to-peer system to rest.

"We'll still have dedicated servers [in Battlefront], absolutely," DICE's Jamie Keen told PlayStation Lifestyle at TGS 2015. "It's one of the hallmarks of making sure we deliver an unparalled online service for the game." Given Battlefront has the 40-player Walker Assault mode, most gamers assumed DICE would go with dedicated servers. Then again the Frostbite engine has P2P support "baked in" and has been used for Battlefront 3's co-op missions.

We still don't have any concrete details on how Battlefront's new matchmaking system works, but DICE has made the extremely unpopular decision to cut out server browsers entirely on PC. This led to considerable backlash from the PC gaming community that sees server browsers as a must-have for games like Battlefront, giving users the freedom to pick and choose the type of maps and sessions they want to play.

Intel isn't far away from releasing its Skylake Purley-powered Xeon processors, with the new platform set to feature a huge 28 Skylake cores, and thanks to Hyper-Threading, a total of 56 threads of CPU power.

These new Xeon processors are not destined for the consumer desktop, as they will include multi-processor setups. The new Xeon E5 and Xeon E7 processor ranges will see the Xeon E5 range packing between two and four CPUs on a motherboard, while the Xeon E7 steps it up, considerably. The upcoming Xeon E7 range will pack an 8-socket design, allowing for an insane amount of CPU horsepower, especially when each CPU has 56 threads.

Intel will be unleashing its new Omnipath Architecture inside of the new Skylake-powered Xeon processors, something it calls Storm Lake (Generation 1). This new PCH will be codenamed Lewisburg, where it will include updated Ethernet controllers. The Skylake Purley update will also pave the way for Socket P, with a TDP that's configurable between 45W and 165W. The PCIe slots will have 48 lanes of bandwidth to play with, but this could change at any time.

Bungie and Activision are sending a clear message with Destiny's new The Taken King expansion: if you don't want to buy it, then there's no reason to play. Rather than moving away from the controversial paid DLC models, Destiny has embraced them in a whole new way for Year 2, which offers a decidedly shocking look at the future of the franchise.

Destiny's The Taken King isn't just an expansion: it's a whole new game. Bungie has finally made Destiny into the game we always wanted. But even with all of these new additions and changes, Activison and Bungie are still up to the same old marketing tricks.

Just as I was starting to have faith in Bungie again, I'm reminded how exactly Destiny works. The game is built upon a ridiculous paygate scheme that literally forces gamers to purchase new expansions if they want to continue onward. With every passing DLC, little bits and chips of the core game are locked off: Xur selling expansion-only gear, daily heroic missions and weekly Nightfall strikes featuring DLC-only missions.

The rumours of a release of the original, non-special edition release of the 'Star Wars Trilogy' have been swirling ever since the purchase of Lucasfilm and all its properties by the Disney corporation back in 2012, even thought the new owners failed to release the product before 'The Force Awakens' launch in December. But according to Director John Landis, Disney will do what fans have been demanding for years.

Filmmaker John Landis, director of dozens of films and music videos such as 'Animal House', 'The Blues Brothers', 'An American Werewolf in London' and Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' has been a friend and colleague of 'Star Wars' creator George Lucas for decades and his words hold far more weight than an anonymous sources.

While this is far from official confirmation from Disney, I'm very hopeful that fans will recieve a surprise ahead of the 40th anniversary of the saga in 2017.

It was only last week that AMD effectively spun off its GPU division into Radeon Technology Group, and now the chipmaker is in the headlines again as it has lost another high-profile employee in the form of its Chief Architect of Microprocessor Cores, Jim Keller. Keller is leaving AMD to pursue other opportunities.

Keller is known for his work with AMD in their early days of CPU dominance, as he was a key player in the creation of the original Athlon architecture, the K7. After that, he was the lead architect on the K8 architecture, and played a large role in developing the world's first native x86-64 bit architecture. Keller left AMD for Apple to help make its A4 and A5 processors, joining AMD once again in 2012 to lead the development of the Zen architecture.

An AMD spokesperson talked with HEXUS, where they said: "Jim was responsible for overseeing the teams defining the roadmaps for AMD's CPU cores, systems IP, and server and client SoCs". Obviously some people might be worried about AMD losing a key player of theirs, so the spokesperson added: "Jim helped establish a strong leadership team that is well positioned for success as we enter the completion phase of the "Zen" core and associated system IP and SoCs. Jim's departure is not expected to impact our public product or technology roadmaps, and we remain on track for "Zen" sampling in 2016 with first full year of revenue in 2017".

Now that we know the official name of Project Morpheus, we're finding out about what price point PlayStation VR will launch at. During TGS 2015, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Andrew House said that PlayStation VR would "be priced as a new gaming platform", reports Bloomberg.

We don't have a concrete price yet, but I would say that a 'gaming platform' is around $400 if you look at the price of the PlayStation 4. When it comes to Sony's future, the Japanese giant has been shifting from TVs, and towards games, image sensors and movies. The company wants to fight harder against Microsoft and the Xbox One, with PlayStation VR being a very big part of that.

House added: "VR rewrites the rule book on how you can create games. You're seeing a large amount of interest and work happening among smaller teams, because it's possible to create something in VR that is very simple but still very magical". Better yet, we're hearing about how many games PlayStation VR will launch with. At TGS, Sony is showing off 10 playable titles for PlayStation VR, which I think is the amount of games, maybe a little more, that we'll see launch with the VR headset.

Reports indicate that Konami has finally thrown in the towel for AAA games development, and is no longer willing to gamble on franchises and game releases outside of the safety umbrella of the Pro Evolution Soccer sports line.

The reports come straight from two French game outlets, which was then verified by Eurogamer that Konami is indeed shutting down all plans for future AAA releases--except for PES games. The news was reinforced by the departure of Julien Merceron, Konami's worldwide technology director, and it looks like Konami will completely focus on mobile games from hereon out.

That effectively means that Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, which is simultaneously lauded as a masterpiece and seen as an unfinished game by the community, will be the last Meta Gear Solid game. Konami prepared for this move when it fired Hideo Kojima and dissolved his development team, a move that ushered significant backlash from its own audience. Gamers also watched in horror as reports of Konami "imprisoning and exploitating" its employees with unfair working conditions surfaced on the web.

The upcoming 'Steve Jobs' has been both praised and pilloried by those who knew the man best, but with the film beginning its worldwide release next month, fans will get to weigh in themselves. Today, distributor Universal Studios has released the final trailer for the film which samples the three major timelines that the film hones in on.

Michael Fassbender portrays Jobs in the film, which is already generating strong Oscar buzz. 'Steve Jobs' hits cinemas in United States on October 23rd, but has been delayed in Australia until January 2016.

On the heels of the revamped Apple TV, Amazon throws its hat into the Android micro-console ring with the $140 Fire TV Gaming Edition that merges 4K video streaming with set-top box gaming.

The Fire TV Gaming Edition only supports 4K video streaming and doesn't do 4K gaming--which isn't a surprise since it runs mobile games. Under the hood it packs 2GB of RAM, a MediaTek quad-core processor at 2GHz speeds for "75% more processing power than previous models" and a Power VR GX6250 GPU for grpahics. 8GB of onboard memory storage is included along with an equipped 32GB Micro SD card in the expandable memory slot. The hybrid gamebox can hit 4K video streaming at 30fps and 60fps in 1080p, but we're not sure if the latter resolution is for gaming or not.

Amazon boasts that the Fire TV Gaming Edition "has more games than Apple TV, Roku, or NVIDIA Shield" and every unit comes with a free copy of the amazing 8-bit platformer Shovel Knight and Capcom's DuckTales remake. The Fire TV microconsole can be connected to the internet via ethernet or MIMO Wi-Fi over 802.11a/b/g/n/ac networks. The set-top box also supports Bluetooth 4.1 and has the standard fare of ports consisting of HDMI out, DC power, ethernet, Micro SD and USB port in a compact 4.5in x 4.5in x 0.7in form factor.

Fallout 4 has been built from the ground-up as a layered experience with deep customization and RPG elements, but Bethesda has also made some significant strides in the action department with the help of FPS masters at id Software.

"If you were to pick it up and play it, it does feel like a modern shooter," Bethsoft exec Todd Howard said in an onstage interview. "The guns feel great and you can aim down the sights...you can play it in first-person, or third-person and then we also have VATS. Since id Software was part of our company the first thing we did was call them and said 'we're going to do this from scratch, so give us some tips.'"

Usually in multi-faceted RPGs there's more emphasis on level-ups and skill trees rather than the gunplay, but Bethesda wanted the whole package for Fallout 4: deep character customization, a huge webwork of skills and perks, a massive crafting system and smooth, fluid firefights. "We didn't want to [compromise] the game's action because it's a role-playing game. We felt we could do this and layer the game's stat system ontop of that--let's have our cake and eat it too."