Latest News - Page 2641

In case you didn't know, Microsoft has the rights to install system software updates to your installation of Windows 10, whether you want to, or not. Some experts don't agree with this stance from Microsoft, but it is leaving some users completely baffled about what is being installed onto their systems.

Microsoft recently spoke with The Register, where it confirmed that the "only time it will detail the type of updates it pushes down to users machines will be for significant updates", reports BGR. Microsoft continued: "As we have done in the past, we post KB articles relevant to most updates which we'll deliver with Windows as a service. Depending on the significance of the update and if it is bringing new functionality to Windows customers, we may choose to do additional promotion of new features as we deploy them".

The Register added: "Updates that offer minimal information about their functions don't inspire confidence. They should inspire the opposite - suspicion - not least because of Microsoft's historic sermonising about trust". And we would have to agree. Not knowing what is being installed into the operating system of your machine, if it were by someone else, would be malware, a trojan horse, or similar. Microsoft is definitely not providing confidence in users installing Windows 10, that's for sure.

LG Electronics will show off the G Pad II 10.1 tablet during the IFA 2015 tech conference in Berlin, offering both an LTE and Wi-Fi version.

The LG G Pad II 10.1 features a 2.26GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 CPU, 10.1-inch display (1920x1200), 16GB eMMC, 2GB RAM, and microSD. The device runs Google Android 5.1.1 Lollipop. The device features LTE and Wi-Fi connectivity, and 5-megapixel rear camera and 2-megapixel front-facing camera.

Pricing information and an official release date will be announced during IFA 2015.

Let's face it, our smartphones do not last throughout the day for most users. I've tried all varieties of the iPhone, multiple Samsung, Sony, HTC and other handsets, but I just do not get through an entire day without worrying.

Well, hydrogen-powered batteries could alleviate this, with a British company teasing that hydrogen-powered smartphones could last for an entire week under heavy usage. The company has even shown off a working iPhone 6 prototype smartphone powered by a hydrogen battery. The fuel cell inside of the prototype is the same size as the iPhone 6 chassis but is so thin that it can "fit alongside the conventional battery without any alternations" reports Digital Journal.

Better yet, the hydrogen battery is recharged using the headphone jack on the iPhone 6, which was modified solely for this purpose. Intelligent Energy is the company behind the idea, where it said that production devices are still "a couple of years out". Intelligent Energy CEO, Henri Winand, said: "To our knowledge this has never been done before. We have now managed to make a fuel cell so thin we can fit it to the existing chassis without alterations and retaining the rechargeable battery. This is a major step because if you are moving to a new technology you have to give people a path they are comfortable with".

It was only two days ago that we reported that Samsung was offering iPhone users a 30-day trial of its new Galaxy smartphones for just $1, but the South Korean giant has received "overwhelming demand" and has, for the time being, stopped the test drive.

Samsung was offering iPhone users the chance to test drive one of their new Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S6 edge+ or Galaxy Note 5 smartphones for just $1. The company has now put up a note on their promotional page, thanking people for the huge demand. Samsung said: "Due to the overwhelming demand, we are temporarily out of test drive phones. Please keep checking back for available phones".

I think Samsung needs to pull out as many phones as it can to bring the offer back, as it was obviously quite the lure for iPhone users bored or looking to change over from their Apple smartphone.

What we already know about Optane and 3D XPoint: We know that Optane is Intel's brand name for storage using 3D XPoint, and we know that XPoint consists of layers (known as stacks). Each stack has wires that run perpendicular to each other (they are silver/gray in the image).

Between each set of perpendicular wires are a selector (yellow) and a cell (green). By providing varying amounts of voltage to the selector it can write or read to the cell. The benefit here is that the cells don't use transistors, and theoretically (depending on the size of the cell) you could squeeze much more of this into a given space than you could with the traditional transistor.

Cells can be written and read to at the same speed since you can find any point in space with only three points of reference. Now 3D X-Point fills a spot in the current memory market, right in between DRAM and NAND based SSDs. Its latency is 10x slower than DRAM but 1000x faster than NAND. It has similar density compared to NAND SSDs, which means its 10x denser than DRAM. All the speeds and density aside, 3D XPoint also offers non-volatility, which means it can store data even when it is powered off.

The graphics in The Division have been watered down over the years since it was first revealed, almost to the point where anyone can tell that it has been downgraded. But now there's news that there will be post-release patches that will make the visuals better, but is that good enough?

YouTube channel 'Open World Games' has talked about this exact topic, as you can see in the above video. The graphics in The Crew were downgraded as well, yet another Ubisoft title by the way, with the graphics improving with patches. The Division on the other hand, is already capped at 30FPS because of the lackluster hardware in the Xbox One and PS4, but now we're having to wait for years before the graphics get to as good as they were in 2013.

The video above is the best example of this, which compares The Division from 2013, to 2014 and then into 2015. As time goes by, you can see that the visuals have been severely watered down. This shouldn't be new for anyone familiar with Ubisoft titles, as it has happened to the biggest games under their umbrella for years - including Watch Dogs, The Crew, Assassin's Creed, and many more titles.

Some of you may have seen this robot from IDF on our front page, a robot which not only looks like it's smart, but which can image the world around it in real-time in 3D. This ability comes from the RealSense camera, whose output is on the screen in the background. Intel's RealSense Technology offers 3D scanning and imaging with a wide variety of uses.

The technology is already present in many high-end products from manufacturers ranging from Creative to Dell. It uses a 2D camera and an infrared camera and wide range infrared emitter. It uses a specially designed Intel chip to capture and process the 2D image and infrared data about the image to provide depth to images. There are two main versions, the first is a front facing camera used in video conferencing which can omit anything past a certain depth, and the second is a "world-facing" camera which is capable of things such as producing 3D images. You can even have your picture taken and then printed in 3D, but there is even more the camera can do such as real-time tracking of objects and even things as small as fingers. It allows for effective tracking, even enough for proper gaming as was demonstrated.

Here an Intel employee uses a hacked nerf gun and puts himself in the gameplay with RealSense technology. He is able to move through the game and shoot using this custom rigged apparatus. There are many possibilities that 3D depth sensors can give to a game, just look at the X Box Kinect, but pairing one with a high-quality camera can produce many more possibilities. RealSense is not only excellent for putting yourself in the game, but it is also capable of adding objects into the game.

Save the cheerleader, save your HDD space: PS4 exclusive 'Until Dawn' is now pre-loading, requiring some 46GB of the HDD space on your PlayStation 4 console.

Until Dawn is one of the few PS4 exclusives launching this year, especailly now that Uncharted 4: A Thief's End has been delayed into 2016. Until Dawn stars Hayden Panettiere of Heroes fame, as well as Peter Stormare who kicked some ass in Prison Break, and many other TV shows and movies. Where Until Dawn is new, is that it features an unpredictable and dynamically adaptive story, where gamers' actions within the game can have a huge impact on how Until Dawn pans out.

The developers explain: "Featuring innovative choice mechanics and the Butterfly-Effect Interface, gives players the chance to see the path of their story amid the thousands that are possible. Seemingly insignificant choices as well as huge moral dilemmas that will question your sense of fairness, good and evil, can have major unforeseen consequences. Using the power of the superior rendering capability of the Killzone Shadowfall Engine, and the power of the PlayStation 4 together with proprietary major enhancements in lighting, camera, and animation systems, Until Dawn brings emotional and credible performances of a talented Hollywood cast to life in its realistically terrifying environments".

Swatch is taking a relatively cautious approach to the smartwatch market, in an effort to avoid directly competing against the Apple Watch, Motorola Moto 360, and other smartwatches. However, the Swiss watch company has plenty of growth for its smartwatch product portfolio - while providing individual smartwatch features in its devices.

"Our product is called Touch Zero One and that gives enough room for Zero Five, Zero Nine," said Nick Hayek, CEO of the Swatch Group, according to the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper in Switzerland. "The Touch Zero One is not the end of the progression."

The Swatch Touch Zero Two will launch during the Rio Olympic Games 2016 next summer in Brazil.

After the Ashley Madison data dump, which featured more than 33 million accounts, it was no surprise that the fallout would ensnare plenty of people that would need to explain themselves. One political leader already claimed he used the site for "opposition research," and now Florida State Attorney Jeff Ashton publicly apologized after his name was discovered on Ashley Madison.

Ashton described his decision to sign up for Ashley Madison as a "bad, childish, stupid error" and he "did not commit a crime" by using the site. Ashton claims he typically logged in using a personal laptop and through public Wi-Fi networks. He reportedly didn't meet anyone via the site, and didn't have an affair.

"While I indulged my curiosity about the site it never went beyond that," Ashton said during a press conference. "These were incredibly stupid choices." In addition, Ashton won't step down and plans to return back to work: "I think I've humiliated myself enough for one weekend. Tomorrow morning I go back to work."

As China develops new space technologies, including anti-satellite capabilities, it's up to the United States to prepare for a possible space race against China and other rivals, political leaders believe.

"We must treat space for what it is, it is a domain in which we must be prepared to fight and win," said Henry Obering, EVP at Booz Allen Hamilton, in a statement during the Hudson Institute conference. "We should dramatically expand our investment in the battle space [that] is growing into space."

China, which became the third country after the United States and former Soviet Union to send men into space, has dramatically ramped up space technology research. The country developed an anti-satellite interceptor missile capable of hitting targets in low-Earth orbit, and missiles reportedly able to hit high-Earth orbit targets.

Researchers from Germany and Korea are developing a new exoskeleton able to be controlled by the wearer's brain waves.

Using electroencephalogram (EEG) technology, wearers are able to move forward, turn left and right, or sit and stand while looking at a computer screen. The five flickering LEDs operate at different frequencies, which are identified in an EEG readout - once the signal is accurately identified, the exoskeleton is able to operate normally.

"Exoskeletons create lots of electrical 'noise,'" said Klaus Muller, a researcher and author of a paper published in the Journal of Neural Engineering, in a statement published by Phys.org. "The EEG signal gets buried under all this noise - but our system is able to separate not only the EEG signal, but the frequency of the flickering LED within this signal."

Avid Life Media and Avid Dating Life are not going to have a fun time following the fallout of Ashley Madison's data being publicly dumped to the Internet. Thousands of Canadians had their privacy violated following the breach, which included personal names, email addresses, home addresses, and message history - and the lawsuits are going to roll in.

Charney Lawyers and Sutts, Strosberg LLP filed a $578 million class-action lawsuit on behalf of Ashley Madison members located in Canada. The lawyers won't try to include the Impact Team in the class-action lawsuit, as seeking damages from a foreign-based hacker group would be difficult.

"Numerous former users of AshleyMadison.com have approached the law firms to inquire about their privacy rights under Canadian law," the law firms said. "They are outraged that AshleyMadison.com failed to protect its users' information. In many cases, the users paid an additional fee for the website to remove all of their user data, only to discover that the information was left intact and exposed."

All signs are pointing to Bungie making Destiny available on the PC in the near future, with the developer hiring a "PC Compatability Tester". Bungie has the job listed on its website.

The description reads: "The PC Compatibility Tester will evaluate PC hardware-specific features and ensure various systems work together across multiple PC configurations to provide a great experience". The developer is looking for someone that is "experienced and comfortable with building PCs from scratch".

Back at E3 2014, Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg teased three months before Destiny launched, that the PC version of the game was "something we're talking about and looking at very carefully". Earlier in 2014, Bungie writer Eric Osborne teased: "We have a lot of people who play on PCs. We have a lot of appetite to build that experience".

Now that 4K is much more established than it was a few years ago, 8K is now appearing about the place with Sharp displaying the first retail 8K TV on a massive 80-inch 8K TV.

Sharp's new LCD-80XU35A is a massive 80-inch 8K TV, with a native resolution of 7680x4320 - a huge jump on 3840x2160, the native resolution of Ultra HD, and 4096x2160 of '4K'. Even though 4K is generally referred to as 3840x2160, that's actually 'Ultra HD'. Anyway, Sharp's new TV is different to the usual 4K TVs on the market, where the 80XU35A features a "new generation of four-color technology" as well as an "X8-MEP professional image processing engine".

The new four-color technology that has been deployed on the 8K TV has a fourth color, yellow, which joins the usual RBG (red, green, blue) color spectrum. This allows the 8K-capable TV to reach a wider color gamut and more clarity than a 4K TV - on top of the huge pixel increase. These technologies, on top of the native 7680x4320 resolution, will have a massive increase in picture quality for both video content, and gaming.

The Electronic Sports League (ESL) is teaming up with NVIDIA, contributing all GeForce GTX GPUs for PCs used in the ESL One event. The massive Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament features some of the best teams in the world competing for more than $250,000 in prizes.

"GeForce GTX is our de facto standard for professional eSports events," said Ulrich Schulze, VP of pro gaming at ESL, in a statement. "CS:GO players require extremely high frame rates and as low latency as possible. NVIDIA GeForce GTX and G-sync technologies deliver on all fronts."

As eSports grows, with even more people viewing live and recorded streams over the Internet, it's a great opportunity for the NVIDIA logo to be prominently displayed. There were almost half a million people watching the tournament yesterday and there should be large amounts of viewers throughout the rest of the weekend.

The six crew members stationed aboard the International Space Station (ISS) became the first humans to eat space-grown food, after munching on a harvested crop of red romaine lettuce.

Using technology built with partner company Orbital Technologies, the lettuce was grown without soil in an air or mist environment. Growing plants aeroponically, they don't require as much water or fertilizer, grow faster, and tend not to have a high rate of disease.

Prior to eating the lettuce, astronauts used citric acid-based sanitizing wipes to clean their fresh veggies. This is an important glimpse towards the future, as NASA looks for new ways to provide a sustainable food supply that can be created aboard the space station.

Researchers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are researching new ways to get things to stick in space, and have found inspiration from geckos.

Unlike tape, which loses its ability to adhere objects together after several uses, geckos have tiny hairs on the bottom of their feet so they are able to easily cling to objects over and over again. Researchers now hope a new material with thin synthetic hairs is able to make the material stick to desired surfaces - even in space.

The new technology has a great advantage over Velcro, a popular solution used in space, as it doesn't leave residue and there is no mating surface required on intended targets. The new gecko-inspired gripping technology is being tested during microgravity tests, including on a 20-pound cube and 250-pound person.

It looks like Bethesda is looking forward to the launch of the latest Doom video game, and has high hopes for its entrance into multiplayer action.

"It has some old school sensibilities but it is doing it in a very modern, fresh next-gen way," said Pete Hines, VP of PR and marketing at Bethesda, in a statement to MCV. "The multiplayer is not your traditional first-person shooter multiplayer. IT is not one shot and the other guy is dead, it is not about who has the fastest trigger finger or reactions."

Hines also said Doom could battle "toe-to-toe" against other "really big shooters," as the multiplayer dynamics offer "something you're not going to get from many other first-person shooters."

Louisiana GOP Executive Director Jason Dore confirmed his name was one of millions exposed in the Ashley Madison data dump.

The Republican Party statewide director used his full name and former personal credit card billing address, but claims he was doing a bit of research for his Doré Jeansonne law firm:

"As the state's leading opposition research firm, our law office routinely searches public records, online databases and websites of all types to provide clients with comprehensive reports," Doré; told The Times-Picayune. "Our utilization of this site was for standard opposition research. Unfortunately, it ended up being a waste of money and time."