Latest News - Page 2705

Not quite the next Angry Birds, but Indie developers Hipster Whale have burst into the app scene with a big bang - seeing over 30 million global downloads and topping $1 million in profit since launching their game Crossy Road late last year.

Seeing them officially form only four months ago, Hipster Whale are certainly an indie success story - with ten million of their total downloads occurring in the last fortnight alone, seeing this free game draw in massive profits through in-app purchases and advertising. It's reported that users will pay between $1.29 AU and $3.99 AU to purchase new characters for use alone, alongside the various advertising avenues taking place.

Co-founder Matt Hall said to reporters that "we wanted a game that was influenced by popular culture and crazy. We put a lot of effort into a game that people want to share," further mentioning that they didn't heavily promote or advertise Crossy Road - simply relying on social media networks, user reviews and recommendations to push their product to the masses.

We recently published an article stating that former-Epsilon CS:GO team member Robin "GMX" Stahmer dug up some dirt on his ex-team mates - claiming that they threw a match on purpose in order to win in-game items in a bet against themselves on CSGOLounge.

Stahmer has taken to Facebook, explaining how he believes that his former teammate Adil "ScreaM" Benrlitom wasn't involved in the scandal - stating "I did this under anger, and in this act, I forgot to say that my former team mate ScreaM, didn't know about this throw. I've talked a bit with Adil [ScreaM], and in my anger, I forgot he didn't know about it. I don't know yet if they told him about it or not, but I didn't."

Stahmer went on to express his sympathy and regret, stating "I want to apologize toward the community, and toward ScreaM who doesn't deserve all this hate."

We're seeing a massive trend here - yet another Cooler Master modified case jam-packed with Bitspower rigid tubing watercooling goodies.

H²OC Project has just shared their Silencio 652S Edge Mod - now with newly added blue dye in the watercooling and more strips of LED lights.

Supported by Cooler Master, Bitspower and Avexir Memory, this case features four sticks of RAM coupled with a single GTX 780, rigid tubing throughout and custom sleeves on all cables. As you can easily tell by the pictures, blue is the common theme here - with all watercooling and LEDs being blue in color, accentuating all parts of the case whether metal or acrylic.

This brings the term "keyboard warrior" to a whole new level. The front lines are most commonly publicized, however what's going on behind closed curtains? Here's an insight - The British Army have just implemented a whole battalion of soldiers described as "Facebook Warriors."

Named as the 77th battalion, this number has some historical background. Claimed by the Financial Times as a "guerrilla unit led by the swashbuckling British commander Major General Orde Wingate, one of the pioneers of modern unconventional warfare. They operated deep behind Japanese lines in Burma between 1942 and 1945 and their missions were often of questionable success."

This new battalion will be responsible for implementing "'reflexive control', an old Soviet tactic of spreading specifically curated information in order to get your opponent to react in the exact way you want them to," as described by Gizmodo.

Recently there was a massive match-fixing and betting ring scandal that rocked the whole North American and Canadian Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) scene, seeing numerous players and a manager be banned for life from all Valve major events, ESEA tournaments and more.

In recent news, French-based eSports organization Epsilon has suspended their whole CS:GO division pending a current match-fixing investigation.

Their world-class CS:GO squad has been unearthed by former teammate Robin "GMX" Stahmer, with him stating that his old team purposefully lost a match on the ESEA platform against rivals OverGaming in order to profit from weapon skins. These skins were achieved through bets made against themselves on the popular website, CSGOLounge.

The world has been waiting to see what Microsoft would do with the Devices and Services division of Nokia, but it looks like we'll be waiting a little bit longer to see the fruits of that expensive labor.

According to the latest reports, the first Microsoft-branded Lumia smartphone will be unveiled at Mobile World Congress, which isn't too far away. We're being told that the Lumia 1330 will be unveiled, while the more affordable and mainstream Lumia 830 will also be shown off. These will be the first Microsoft Lumia smartphones, with Windows 10-powered handsets rolling out their own devices later in the year.

We don't know much about the new Lumia smartphones except for the fact that they'll be rumored to sport a "3D-Touch" feature that will let you use your smartphone with your hands, without touching the display itself.

Just how is 4K gaming affecting AMD internally right now? According to Robert Hallock who is part of the Technical Communications division for AMD Radeon graphics, he said that gamers are adopting 4K gaming nicely, but the R&D department for AMD is already planning for the future.

For Hallock, the Radeon R9 290X was a major step in that direction, allowing for gamers to play at 4K with a single GPU. Lower-end parts of the market aren't quite there yet, so GamingBolt asked him some questions where he replied with the future of 4K gaming is an evolution of GPU horsepower, which is something AMD is working on. He said: "If you think back to the launch of the AMD Radeon R9 290X, our video card marked arguably the first time anyone could reasonably expect to play games at 4K on a single GPU. Sure, there were some games that needed two for peak image quality, but one was and is pretty solid for the majority of titles. We were also the first company to offer full support for 4K SST displays in our driver".

"4K adoption is very popular amongst the elite enthusiasts, but understandably slower being adopted in lower-end segments. I couldn't characterize the rates with hard numbers as that's not my area of expertise, but this is the sense I'm getting from interacting with the AMD community every day", he continued. Hallock added: "Ultimately, the evolution of GPU horsepower is the biggest factor in driving 4K forward. Graphics being such an important part of our business, of course, you can count on great progress on that front as the years wind on".

Ye olde trusty wooden pirateship has sailed back! The Pirate Bay, hailed as "The galaxy's most resilient BitTorrent site", is now back online at thepiratebay.se. This long hiatus has come to an end after a Swedish police raids shuttered the site, and employee infighting led to several of the original cast and crew heading for bluer waters.

The latest Pirate Bay saga began when Swedish police raided the servers, which were housed in a converted nuclear shelter in Nacka, Sweden. The Pirate Bay was taken offline and its web ratings plunged from being the 88th largest website in the world to 176. In recent weeks a timer appeared that counted down to the time that the site came online, letting the world at large know that The Pirate Bay may have been down, but it certainly was not out.

The familiar pirate ship logo can still be found throughout the site, but upon resurfacing The Pirate Bay is sporting a new homepage logo with what appears to be a Phoenix, which is unsurprising since The Pirate Bay has once again sprung from the ashes.

Islamic extremist groups still enjoy using the Internet and social media to spread propaganda and recruit, but are becoming more skilled in flying under the radar. Intelligence experts are collecting information from previous reckless Internet posts, and that is something the terrorists want to avoid in the future.

To help share propaganda, the groups are largely turning to the Dark Web - and using Skype, WhatsApp, and software that isn't as open. ISIS went a step further by issuing guidelines to its members posting on social media, such as blurring out faces, ensuring geographic tagging is disabled, and being careful what information they are providing on current operations.

"We realize that the people we are interested in are increasingly specialized in computing," said Philippe Chadrys, the head investigator of France's judicial police responsible for fighting terrorism, in a statement to the AFP. "They master encryption software and methods to better erase data. That makes our probes much more complicated."

A new cyber threat victimizing users is the 'RansomWeb' attack, which leaves compromised websites encrypted - and they will remain that way until the victim pays a ransom to cyberattackers. The threat was first detected by cybersecurity firm High-Tech Bridge, investigating a client website, which displayed a database error.

The cybercriminals demanded a $50,000 ransom in exchange for decrypting the database, despite it being compromised six months prior. A closer inspection found that several server scripts were edited so data was encrypted before it was submitted to the database, and data was decrypted after being pulled from the database.

Instead of an immediate ransom demand - like ransomware attacks against business users - the cybercriminals patiently waited until backups were also overwritten.

By now I'm sure you've read about the VRAM issues surrounding the GeForce GTX 970, and AMD taking a stab at NVIDIA because of it, but now the former is offering gamers special discounts if they return their GTX 970s and pick up a Radeon card.

AMD's Roy Taylor has taken to Twitter, offering GTX 970 owners who return their cards special discounts if they swap them out for Radeon cards, including the R9 290 and R9 290X. Taylor tweeted "Anyone returning their GTX970 and wanting a great deal on a Radeon with a full 4GB please let us know" and even tagged the @NVIDIAGeForce Twitter account at the time.

Are you a GeForce GTX 970 owner? Will you be trading in your GTX 970 for the Radeon R9 290X?

The UK may have anywhere from 4 million up to 5.9 million CCTV cameras in use, but many of the cameras are useless and there must be concern so the region doesn't 'sleepwalk' towards becoming a surveillance state, according to UK Surveillance Camera Commissioner Tony Porter.

"You can still maintain the balance of excellent surveillance but not have a propagation of surveillance that is actually useless," Porter recently said on BBC Radio 5. "Surveillance can be an extremely good thing and run well, it's a useful tool for society. But to quote a former information commissioner, 'we should not sleepwalk into a surveillance society.'"

Broken, damaged and older analog cameras aren't effective to enhance public safety and deter crime, Porter also added. In the future, Porter wants better interaction with the public, especially regarding regulation so cameras are not simply being added just for the sake of purchasing and installing new cameras - especially if there is no benefit to the public.

Microsoft has been slowly unveiling some exciting stuff lately, where we have Windows 10 and HoloLens to look forward to, the company is now hiring new staff, including a Senior Software Engineer position for something even more 'magical'.

A job listing has popped up on the Microsoft Careers spage for a Senior Software Engineer who will help the development team built "magical, delightful and disruptive consumer experiences for the next generation of technology (from the creators of the Kinect: Alex Kipman & Kudo Tsunoda)" and the company is "looking to make significant contributions to the early stages of a project with huge growth potential".

This could mean we'll see it reach the Xbox One, or something new is coming. I would peg it on HoloLens, but we could see it reach the Xbox One or even Windows 10. The Xbox One for me, is kinda dead ass you can't add some magical peripheral to it like VR as the system isn't fast enough to deliver the experience Microsoft will need to beat Oculus VR and the Rift. But something for HoloLens and Windows 10? Now you're talking.

Don't ever click porn links on Facebook - it's a very good rule to follow in general, however if you're looking to get a porn fix through this popular social media, you need to be extremely alert and aware. Reportedly infecting over 110,000 Facebook users within two days, not everyone is as smart as you might have hoped.

Disguised as a Flash update, this disguised-malware post will tell you to quickly download and run an update in order to see a withheld porn video - doing so will download a Trojan directly onto your system, allowing a hacker to take control of your keyboard and mouse. This virus will then start linking multiple similar links on your wall and tagging up to 20 friends with each post.

Facebook have released an official statement on the matter, saying "we use a number of automated systems to identify potentially harmful links and stop them from spreading. In this case, we're aware of these malware varieties, which are typically hosted as browser extensions and distributed using links on social media sites." In order to cull the wave of infections, Facebook is "blocking links to these scams, offering cleanup options, and pursuing additional measures to ensure that people continue to have a safe experience on Facebook."

With fans eagerly awaiting the return of the long running fantasy drama series 'Game of Thrones' on April 12th, HBO have now released the first trailer from the upcoming fifth season of the George R.R. Martin adaptation.

The two-minute trailer sheds some light on the upcoming plot twists and reveals some of the new characters, including cast memebrss Alexander Siddig, Toby Sebastian, Nell Tiger Free, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Jessica Henwick, Rosabell Laurenti Sellers, DeObia Oparei, Jonathan Pryce, Hannah Waddingham, Enzo Cilenti, Michael Condron, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje who join the cast for the first time.

This weekend, 'Game of Thrones' hits select IMAX theatres in the US, with two episodes from the fourth season; 'The Watchers on the Wall' and 'The Children' remastered utilising IMAX digital technology.

We've been covering various large and small PC builds over the last few weeks, trawling the internet looking at rigid-tubing, SLI setups, crazy colors and massive overclocks, so here's something a little different - the Sour Apple.

Modder Gardnerphotos has taken a boring old PowerMac G4, slapped a #PCMasterRace array of components within and made it his own.

Modified to fit an ASRock Z87m OC Formula motherboard, an Intel i7 4770k and an AMD Radeon 7990 - the yellow and black themed interior is all cooled by 3x240mm radiators connected to hard acrylic tubing containing Mayhems Pastel Sunset Yellow coolant.

With 1.3 million employees under their wing during peak production time, Foxconn Technology Group, the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer and maker of Apple devices, recently let slip that plans are being put into place to reduce their global human workforce, favoring a robot alternative.

Currently sitting as one of the largest private employers in the world, Foxconn reported slows in revenue growth over the last few years, coupled with rising Chinese wages. Group spokesman Louis Woo has stated that this is a concern for his company. Without mentioning a specific time frame or target for this operation, he noted that labor costs have over doubled since 2010. Speaking to media, Woo stated that "we've basically stabilized (our workforce) in the last three years. We would like to stabilize our employee headcount no matter how fast we are growing in the future."

When Woo was asked if Foxconn was looking to reduce its overall employee number, he answered that there were internal targets for long term cuts, however he was unable to disclose any figures, adding "it depends how successful we are in terms of introducing the process automation and also the robotics."

There are plenty of opportunities for consumers and companies embracing the Internet of Things (IoT), but trying to secure connected things will be extremely difficult. Vendors must embrace continuous testing programs to verify their services are secure - and consumers will need to utilize available security protocols, while pushing for new securities in the future.

Regardless of potential privacy and security concerns, expect to see a number of new connected things in the coming years - with everything from smart energy meters to security, lighting and air conditioning expected to be connected. There will be over 28 billion things installed in households and apartments by 2020, according to IDC.

"IoT is a very fast moving space, and the pressure on companies to get new things to market almost invariably comes at the expense of proper security practices," said Casey Ellix, CEO of Bugcrowd cybersecurity firm, in a statement published by Forbes. "On top of this, many of the devices are built on top of open source libraries and components, which themselves have vulnerabilities which are discovered on a regular basis."

Ukrainian forces are overwhelmed by drones and electronic jamming from pro-Russian separatists, as electronic warfare shows how devastating it can be on the battlefield. Ukrainian soldiers lack proper training and equipment to stop continued artillery strikes, and cannot communicate with one another due to radio signals being jammed.

"It is very difficult for Ukrainian forces to be able to operate on radios, telephones and other non-secure means of communications because their opponents have such an exceptional amount of jamming capability," said Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, commander of US Army Europe, in a statement to reporters. "Even if you can acquire where mortar or rockets are coming from, to be able to do something about it is very difficult if you can't communicate."

In addition to electronic warfare, pro-Russian fighters are using drones to conduct surveillance operations - collecting intelligence on Ukrainian military defenses and locations. The drones likely originated from the Russian government, and have become vital in coordinated artillery and mortar strikes against Ukrainian soldiers.

Google Android may dominate the smartphone software market with 81 percent control, but it looks like the Apple iPhone clearly has strong grip on the smartphone hardware market.

The company sold a massive 74.5 million iPhones during Q4 of 2014 - and has 42 percent of the US smartphone market share, according to comScore. Trailing behind Apple is Samsung (29.7 percent) and LG Electronics (7.6 percent), as both companies struggle to close the gap.

Despite iOS holding a significantly smaller share of the software market, it looks like current iPhone owners are willing to upgrade their devices sooner than Android smartphone owners.