Latest News - Page 2680

A union representing federal employees claims that cybercriminals were able to successfully steal Social Security numbers and other personal data of every federal employee. Following news that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was hacked, suspected by "the Chinese," it's turned out to be a bigger issue than the Obama Administration publicly stated.

Hackers were able to compromise the Central Personnel Data File, which holds records for current federal employees, retired personnel, and as many as one million former federal employee records. The data files reportedly have up to 780 data points about a federal worker - an alarming amount of personal information that wasn't properly secured.

"We believe that Social Security numbers were not encrypted, a cybersecurity failure that is absolutely indefensible and outrageous," said J. David Cox, president of the American Federal of Government Employees, in an open letter to the OPM. The group has described the OPM breach as "an abysmal failure on the part of the agency to guard data that has been entrusted to it by the federal workforce."

The Nintendo 3DS has surpassed 15 million units sold in the United States, boosted by a strong library of game titles, Nintendo said. The Japanese gaming company launched the 3DS to US consumers in March 2011, and had to refresh efforts immediately due to disappointing early sales.

However, the addition of Super Mario, Mario Kart, Smash Bros., and Pokemon has helped boost sales. To date, the 3DS has sold more than 52 million units worldwide, as Nintendo continues to cater to a niche gamer group.

"While crossing 15 million units is certainly a significant milestone, we are equally excited about the new momentum we've created in 2015 thanks to new hardware and an unrivaled library of software," said Scott Moffitt, marketing executive at Nintendo, in a statement published by GameSpot. "With more great games on the way and a hardware system for every type of gamer, 2015 is shaping up to be one of the stronger years yet for Nintendo 3DS in the United States."

There are plenty of smartwatches and other wearables hitting the market, but most consumers just don't seem interested enough to buy them, according to a report from eMarketer. Industry forecasts look good, and consumer awareness of wearables is increasing, but trying to convince us to actually purchase a wearable remains difficult.

"Even though the Apple Watch has had early sales success, consumer survey data suggests manufacturers, specifically their marketing teams, have significant work to do in convincing the average person that a smartwatch is as worthy of their time and money as tablets proved to be," said Cathy Boyle, analyst at eMarketer, in the report.

Boyle also admitted that it's difficult trying to gauge the current wearables market, as more products hit the market - and what is categorized as a wearable also tends to change. Even with consumer doubt at the moment, it looks like the future still looks good for manufacturers creating wearables. In February, the Gartner research group said there was 38 percent year-over-year growth - and that trend will likely continue in the future.

We all know how incredible the minds over at Dyson are, but their new CSYS line of lamps will run for 37 years. How? The CSYS lamps use Heat Pipe technology, similar to what is used on satellites, in order to keep the eight LEDs cool.

The heat is ripped away from the bulbs, and down into an aluminum heat sink that runs the entire span of the CSYS lamp's shaft. Each LED sits in a conical reflector, where it cuts down on glare, and the usual eye strain. Dyson has baked in 3 Axis Glide Motion that lets you position the CSYS vertically, horizontally, and rotationally, with a quick flick.

Dyson has also provided touch-based dimming, so you can adjust the brightness to your personal liking very easily. The company will be charging $649 for the CSYS, with a taller floor model to be made available for $899.

Epic Games has teased that there will be performance improvements to Unreal Engine 4-powered games on the Xbox One thanks to DirectX 12. The news was revealed by Ray Davis, the General Manager of Epic Games, during an interview with Gaming Bolt.

Davis said: "The most intriguing aspect of DirectX 12 to me is the notion that it's a concerted effort to remove as much cruft from between the developer and the hardware itself, which means out of the box we're able to immediately do more for free, essentially. Microsoft has done a great job with the updates, and it's also worth mentioning that they've been a great partner in soliciting feedback from the developers to help guide the future design. Hopefully we'll see the official launch soon so players can start seeing the benefits firsthand!"

Davis continued, adding that DX12 and UE4 could deliver even better looking, better performing games on the Xbox One: "Unreal Engine 4 already does a great job of showcasing what the Xbox One is capable of and with the advent of DirectX 12 we're excited to see developers squeezing even more out of the hardware. Several internal Microsoft teams are using UE4 for games development so it's made it incredibly easy to closely partner with them and to ensure that Unreal Engine is a great development tool for the broader Microsoft ecosystem".

The Sony PlayStation 4 has retaken its console sales lead over the Microsoft Xbox One after a strong month of May, according to The NPD Group.

"As we head into E3, we would like to thank gamers for making PS4 the top-selling console and the leader in software sales in the U.S. in May," a Sony spokesperson told GamesBeat. "We are truly humbled by this success and we look forward to sharing what's next for PS4 at our E3 press conference on June 15."

The PS4 has dominated the Xbox One so far in 2015, outselling the American manufacturer every but April - and Sony has continued to solidify its strong lead. In addition, the PS4 versions of the top 10 game titles in May outsold their Xbox One counterparts - well, except for Minecraft.

Unsealed federal court documents revealed almost 600 storage accounts may have been compromised as part of the infamous 'Celebgate' hacking scandal. Stolen images from Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Hope Solo and other actresses and models were posted on 4chan, and then spread elsewhere on the Internet.

Apple iCloud accounts belonging to 572 unique accounts were accessed, some of the accounts visited six times.

In other news, the FBI has traced the hacker to the South Side of Chicago, in the Brighton Park neighborhood. FBI agents seized computers and other documents from the house, but no one has been arrested. Two email addresses allegedly belonging to 30-year-old Emilio Herrera are tied to the investigation, but he hasn't been named as a suspect.

Audio company Phiaton has launched the BT 100 NC earphones, a Bluetooth 4.0 headset that features active noise cancellation. The product is geared towards athletes with water- and sweat-resistance functionality for athletes, commuters and people enjoying the outdoors.

The BT 100 NC use an "around the neck" design with inline controls that allow wearers to manage music and calls. The earphones are available for $119.

"In today's market, there are few options that balance superior audio performance with the need for a durable headphone that can withstand the rigors of exercise and other daily activities," said James Baik, president of Phiaton. "The BT 100 NC is designed to fill this need and provide an all-around superb experience for users."

Exclusive: According to our industry sources, AMD is going to have just 30,000 units of its HBM-based Radeon Fury and Fury X video cards. This is not many at all, considering that the only other cards that AMD will be releasing will be rebrands of its Hawaii-based Radeon 200 series cards.

The HBM-based cards will have short supply thanks to the limited supply of High Bandwidth Memory itself, which isn't AMD's fault exactly, but it's going to hurt them. Limited stock of a super hot new, next-gen card is going to look quite bad, if our source is correct. The Radeon R9 390X is going to be rocking 8GB of GDDR5, but is just a rebrand and slight overclock of the Radeon R9 290X that launched in late 2013.

AMD could have more than 30,000 units of its HBM-based cards, but with yield issues popping their head up this early, we could be in for some trouble if the rumors are true. The issues could subside moving into 2016, as the yields of HBM improve, but with HBM2 right around the corner... well, things could get messy.

Oculus VR might have just announced the Oculus Rift CV1, but it is the partnership with Microsoft that has me interested the most. This partnership is a huge direction shift for Oculus, as it means that it isn't the balls-to-the-wall VR headset that we had hoped for.

Xbox One owners will be able to play their games in a 'virtual cinema' within the Rift, using the Xbox One controller that comes in the box. This is thanks to Microsoft and DirectX 12 with Windows 10, so we should see some massive collaborations between Microsoft, the PC, Xbox One and the Oculus Rift moving into 2016.

Oculus VR took to Kickstarter nearly three years ago now, but the company has now just announced the Oculus Rift. It looks just like the leaked shots that we posted yesterday, but what's happening inside?

Brendan Iribe from Oculus VR, said that the Oculus Rift features a custom display and optics system with two OLED displays, low persistence, as well as "no motion blur, no judder, no pixels" without mention of the resolution of the display. Iribe added that it "feels like you have just put on a pair of glasses" and the Rift has a "wide field of view".

CV1 features a new "constellation tracking system" which is "precise, low latency, and it has head movement" so that you feel like you're there. Another large part of the Rift CV1 is that it features built-in headphones.

Elon Musk has asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission for SpaceX to built a constellation of 4,000 satellites that would blast Internet to even the most remote regions of Earth.

The plan would see SpaceX turn into an Internet service provider, a company that would compete directly with giants like Verizon and Comcast. Musk teased the plan earlier this year during a SpaceX event, but he didn't formally ask the FCC's permission until just last month. SpaceX would use their Falcon 9 rocket to launch the satellites into orbit, and then start broadcasting Internet signals to various points around the planet.

SpaceX is requesting permission from the FCC to test out if their antenna technology is strong enough to blast signals to devices on Earth, and if their permission is granted, they could begin testing this out by next year. If the testing all goes to plan, SpaceX could be your ISP within the next five years.

LG has been killing it in the display business this year, with the incredible 34-inch ultrawide curved monitor (with our review on the 34UC97 available here) but now the company has unveiled a new 27-inch 4K-capable monitor in the 27MU67.

The new monitor features an IPS panel for the best color clarity and viewing angles, with its 26.3-inch panel featuring a 3840x2160 resolution. The 4K monitor features a 60Hz refresh rate with support for AMD FreeSync, which eliminates screen tearing and stuttering. It's also one of the fastest monitors available, with its Dynamic Action Sync (DAS) mode taking down input lag to just 9.7ms. The full specifications are available below:

Key Specifications:

Oculus is set to unveil the Rift CV1 headset in under 12 hours, but next week at E3, virtual reality headsets are going to be all the rage. Sony is another big contender, with the Japanese gaming giant set to go for the 'big push' on its Project Morpheus headset for the PS4.

The PlayStation 4 exclusive VR headset will take up 'around half' of Sony's booth at E3, and with Sony's booth being quite big as it is, this means that Project Morpheus is going to have a large presence at the gaming show. As for games being shown off by Sony, a source of VRFocus has said that the games on display will be "first-party and exclusive Morpheus titles".

We haven't seen any first-party games for Project Morpheus announced or shown off yet, so that's exciting. The only content that has been unveiled or shown off for the PS4 virtual reality headset has been third-party content, and some technology demos.

Oculus VR will be announcing the first consumer Rift headset in around 12 hours time, with Futuremark jumping in early to announce VRMark. VRMark is a new benchmark that will test your entire system, both hardware and software, to measure VR performance.

The company explains VRMark as "a VR benchmark that uses a combination of software and hardware to measure VR system performance, latency, and accuracy, the key components in creating convincing and comfortable VR experiences". VRMark is in development right now, with some initial tests to be released to Futuremark's industry partners later this year.

We know that the shift over to 16nm is going to be an incredible one, but AMD is really aiming for some super jumps in power efficiency.

During an interview with Tom's Hardware, AMD said that the move to 16nm FinFET will have a possible 2x energy efficiency improvement over previous generation GPUs. 16nm is going to be a large jump for both NVIDIA and AMD, but we are going to see HBM2 used at the same time. NVIDIA's use of HBM2 will be the first time they will use High Bandwidth Memory, but it'll be AMD's second time, since Fury X will be powered by the next generation RAM.

We've teased that the Radeon R9 490X (which we guess might change now, and possibly to Fury X II) could have up to 1.2TB/sec memory bandwidth (1200GB/sec) up from the 336GB/sec that is found even on the super-fast GeForce GTX 980 Ti.

Valve has updated TweakTown on what to expect for the next couple of months in the ramp up to the launch of Steam Machines, SteamOS, Steam Controller, SteamVR, Steam Box, and everything else Valve-related.

Doug Lombardi, VP of Marketing for Valve, said that the "get it early" offer for the Steam Controller "is available to everyone who pre orders, but only while supplies last. As of this writing, we have sold over 35% of the limited quantity available for early delivery in Oct".

Lombardi added that: "All Steam Machines offer full support for Steam's In Home Streaming, in addition to offering support for native Steam OS games. This means they can transmit and receive In Home Streams, and allow them to play all the games on Steam when paired with Steam PC".

We have been posting AMD Radeon news all week, but as we get closer to the announcement next week, the details become more clear. VideoCardz.com has posted some 3DMark FireStrike results, showing that the Radeon Fury X can keep up with the Titan X from NVIDIA.

As you can see, the Fury X scores 7873 while the Titan X is just a tiny bit better with 7989. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti is only a little bit behind Fury X with 7781, but it's the CrossFire performance that we should be looking at. Two of the HBM-powered Fury X cards in CrossFire push out an incredible 13,925 - but still ultimately lose out to Titan X in SLI with 13,964.

The Radeon Fury X will feature 4GB of High Bandwidth Memory on a 4096-bit memory bus, the first video card to ever be released with HBM. The CrossFire scaling on Fury is is pretty damn good, sitting at around 176% - but most dual GPU setups in synthetic benchmarks always push 150-180% scaling. It'll be interesting to see the CrossFire scaling on more mature drivers, in actual games.

It feels like I'm reporting on the next-gen AMD hardware everyday now, which we pretty much are, but the latest we have on the Radeon Fury X is in the form of some new photos. We have previously reported that Fury X is around 50% faster than the R9 290X, and it beats the Titan X in a single OpenCL benchmark.

The new shots show off the liquid cooling on Fury X, the backplate, and the red LED Radeon logo on the card. In the above shots, we can see the Radeon logo lit up beautifully, and in the second shot, we can see it in more detail. Above the glowing Radeon logo is a dual BIOS switch, so you can overclock until your card fails, and then switch over to the good BIOS.

AMD will reportedly have a 300W TDP on the Radeon Fury X, with the card powered by two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. All of this will arrive in a much smaller card than we've ever received for a flagship GPU. Around the back of the Fury X, we have some tubing coming out of it for its watercooling, as well as a matte black PCB and backplate.

If you haven't upgraded from the Sony PlayStation 3 or Microsoft Xbox 360, you'll still have the opportunity to play Call of Duty: Black Ops 3. The game is expected to launch on November 6.

"However, we know that there are still some fans that haven't made the transition to the new console hardware, which is why we're happy to share that we're working with developers Beenox and Mercenary Technology on Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3," Activision noted in a blog post.

Of course, the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game will feature campaign, multiplayer and zombie modes, but some features will be unavailable to previous generation console owners - such as the campaign mode will support two-player - not four-player - cooperative play.