Latest News - Page 2708

The hottest news item on the web tonight is undoubtedly the new teaser trailer for the hotly anticipated Christmas release of the 'Star Wars' sequel 'The Force Awakens'. But a small bit of Christmas has come early. If you haven't already seen it, take a look below. If you already have - watch it again. You know you want to.

The latest trailer, released during the 2015 'Star Wars' celebration in Anaheim has gotten fans well and truly excited, with the first glimpse of classic 'Star Wars' iconography, including Darth Vader's burned helmet, crashed Star Destroyers and an exciting TIE fighter battle. But the best shot of all is kept to to the end - the return of Han Solo and Chewbacca. It's enough to bring a tear to the eyes of fans.

'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' opens worldwide in 2D, 3D and IMAX screens on December 18th, 2015.

In the United States, smartwatch ownership will reach nine percent of adults by 2016, putting increased pressure on fitness activity trackers, according to The NPD Group. Activity tracker ownership will peak at 32 million users by the end of 2016, after four years of significant growth.

"The smartwatch will clearly begin to take a bite out of the activity tracker market moving forward," said Eddie Hold, VP of Connected Intelligence at The NPD Group. "The fact that the health and fitness apps on smartwatches are a key marketing focus will help draw consumers away from the simpler trackers."

A whopping 40 percent of fitness tracker owners stop using their selected device within six months - and with the rise of the smartwatch - will force a drastic evolution of fitness trackers.

Russian intelligence agents are now sharing sophisticated malware created for cybercriminals and organized crime to use in their efforts to conduct cyberespionage.

"Russian nationalism and organized crime are being assisted by Russian state security," said Ray Boisvert, former assistant director and the head of intelligence for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), in a statement to The Register. "The red lines have gone because of Ukraine. Organized crime is being told they can disrupt Western interests."

Russia has been accused on multiple occasions of providing support to organized crime and hacker groups, willing to conduct cyberattacks against foreign targets. However, trying to catch perpetrators and hold them responsible for data breaches, cyberespionage, and other similar crimes is extremely difficult for US authorities.

Facebook decided to purchase Oculus VR and has shown a serious amount of dedication towards developing the virtual reality market. The company expects great things from VR, including its Oculus Rift headset, while promoting what users can expect from the surging market.

"It will be pretty wild," Zuckerberg recently said when asked by Facebook members. "Just like we capture photos and videos today and then share them on the Internet to let others experience them too, we'll be able to capture whole 3D scenes and create new environments and then share those with people as well."

VR was described as "potentially world-changing and incredibly cool" by Oculus chief scientist Michael Abrash during the F8 Facebook Developer Conference last month.

Apple's decision to reportedly work on a vehicle makes sense, as the Silicon Valley company looks to jump into a market that has more than $1 trillion in yearly sales, according to Sanford C. Bernstein analysts.

In their "5 Reasons Why We Believe Apple May Indeed Be Looking to Build a Car," analysts Toni Sacconaghi and Max Warburton also noted that Apple isn't afraid to enter an established market - and can rely on its established business ties in China to help foster possible car manufacturing capabilities.

In addition, Apple has a large amount of financial resources it can invest, and even with a high luxury price tag, the auto industry is expected to see luxury models increase sales in upcoming years.

Around six percent of adults in the United States plan on purchasing the Apple Watch smartwatch, a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

A specific breakdown found that nine percent of men and less than four percent of women find the Apple Watch interesting - indicating Apple could sell around 15 million units, assuming survey respondents actually follow through.

Tech industry analysts previously provided a great number of estimates, ranging from 10 million up to 32 million units sold in 2015 alone.

Crytek was showing off a demo that was impressing everyone at the Game Developers Conference last month, but it has only seen the light of day outside of GDC 2015 just now.

The "Back to Dinosaur Island" VR demo is embedded above, and was shown off at GDC 2015 on the Oculus Rift to showcase Crytek's impressive VR technology inside of its CryEngine. The environment and attention to detail on the dinosaurs is pretty impressive, with Crytek Producer Fatih Özbayram taking to Twitter to describe the demo:

"Our demo has a variety of interactions. One of them is the interaction with a Hollywood feel T-Rex which mimics your head movements. The narrative [of] our demo is you being a baby dinosaur sitting in the middle of a nest of other dinosaur babies about to hatch. We've chosen dinosaurs as we wanted to nod to the origins of Crytek".

Last week we revealed the surprising news that the BBC was working on a telemovie drama based on the 2003 legal wranglings between activist lawyer Jack Thompson and Rockstar Games over the release 'Grand Theft Auto III', with 'Harry Potter' star Daniel Radcliffe in the lead role. Now it seems they've also found their lawyer.

James Cameron regular and 'Titanic' star Bill Paxton has stepped into the role as Jack Thompson, according to Deadline Hollywood. The eccentric lawyer became the butt of jokes in the gaming community for his increasingly outlandish commentary, which ultimately saw him disbarred in 2008.

The same report confirms that 'Harry Potter' star Daniel Radcliffe has been cast in the role of Rockstar Games founder Sam Houser. The feature is due to start filming later this month.

Zack Snyder: if you're reading this, please stop. Snyder, the director of Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, has just released a few seconds of the trailer to one of the biggest movies of 2016.

Snyder has confirmed we're to receive the official trailer to Batman v Superman next week, but before then there's a 15-minute "Batman v Superman IMAX Trailer Event" happening at particular IMAX theaters on Monday, April 20. But at 9am tomorrow morning on Twitter, there will be five seconds of footage from the movie - so prepare yourselves, and set an alarm on your phone.

What worked this season, what didn't work? Can we shed any dead weight and can we poach some of the best? All questions that many CS:GO teams ask within themselves at the end of a season in order to improve their performance.

With the end of the CyberGamer Premier league here and Team Streamline taking the title (securing $2670 into their back pockets), the team shuffling has commenced.

Now that Australian CS:GO has some financial backing, international appearances and company support, it is starting to become counted as a much more legitimate addition to the local and global gaming scene - previously being completely overshadowed by League of Legends and Starcraft II thanks to their developer and Australian Cyber League support.

If you're on a contract with Optus or iiNet there's a possibility that you've been enjoying watching quota-free Netflix content in recent times, thanks to the online streaming giant signing deals with these ISP's in order to secure unlimited viewership for their customers down under.

In a recent statement, Netflix reflected on these past signing and have commented that "we should have avoided that and will avoid it going forward."

According to an interview with Gizmodo, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is a strong believer in data cap abolishment worldwide. Claiming "there's no reason for data caps. We want to make the internet unmetered. Period. The capped model is antiquated: we want to make it about speed."

Cybercriminals had an extremely successful year in 2014, and are constantly looking for new ways to compromise businesses and users. Last year saw "far-reaching vulnerabilities, faster attacks, files held for ransom and far more malicious code than in previous years," according to the Symantec 2015 Internet Security Threat Report - and information security is becoming more important for companies.

There were 317 million new pieces of malware written in 2014, while ransomware attacks aimed at breaching user files increased 113 percent. Data breaches remained a major problem, with millions of US consumers compromised, as the total number of incidents increased 23 percent.

"The criminals are getting better," said Kevin Haley, director of security response at Symantec, in a statement published on NBC News. "Success breeds success and other criminals want to get into the game, so we need to step up our game in terms of protecting our information and keeping it safe."

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is showing increased concern that hundreds of commercial aircraft are vulnerable to possible cyberattack from remote operators. If done successfully, hackers would be able to possibly install malware on flight control computers, take over control of the aircraft, compromise navigation systems and warning systems.

Air traffic control also is increasing to support Internet-based solutions, giving criminals another pipeline to tamper with flights. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and several senators wish to read over the full GAO report - and expect the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to make necessary security protocols mandatory.

"Modern communications technologies, including IP connectivity, are increasingly used in aircraft systems, creating the possibility that unauthorized individuals might access and compromise aircraft avionics systems," the GAO report says. That level of IP connectivity, however, is what could create a link between aircraft and cybercriminals - posing a threat to the aircraft, its crew and passengers.

Dell has announced the Ubuntu-powered version of its impressive XPS 13 laptop, giving consumers the option of grabbing the Windows, or Linux-based version of its 13-inch laptop at the time of purchase.

The company took to a blog post to announce that since the launch of its XPS 13 back in January, it had the idea of launching a developer-friendly version of its laptop, but it wanted to make sure that it could offer the best possibly product to anyone who purchased one. Dell said: "There were issues with the touchpad and a repeating keystroke that took longer to address than we, and others, would have liked".

Google wants to offer a wireless service to people in the United States, but it looks like their plans of unveiling this as a semi surprise have been popped.

A recent look at the firmware image for the Nexus 6 has teased that there will soon be a service that offers consumers the option of paying for only what they use, with the future service provided with a logo, and a temporary name: Project Fi. Android Police noticed an app called "Tycho" that housed numerous clues to Project Fi, with the app looking to provide the option of activating the service, but giving consumers additional options, too.

These options include putting the account on hole, resuming it, or closing it down completely, without needing the consumer to call a customer care number. Project Fi users can also port their own number to the service, or they can use their number from a separate Google Voice system, too.

Samsung released its Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge smartphones last week, but the S6 edge is selling many more units than the South Korean giant had initially expected, according to reports out of Korea.

Before the launch, the Galaxy S6 edge was poised for around 20-30% of the sales of the Galaxy S6, but the numbers are closer to 50% of the Galaxy S6, worldwide. Korean publication Yonhap News reports that the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge sales "have been much higher than expected", with the new smartphones due to real an all-time high when compared to the launch of any of the other Galaxy S smartphones.

We've reviewed the Galaxy S6 edge and fell in love with it, so it comes as no surprise to us that the S6 edge is doing so well.

Slightly Mad Studios is finally close to releasing Project Cars, which is one of the best looking games this year, and some would even say it's one of the best looking games this year.

We have found out the resolution that it will be rendered at on the current gerneation consoles, with the PS4 pushing it out at 1080p 60FPS, and the Xbox One at 900p 60FPS. The PC, can go magnitudes higher, all the way up to 12K and whatever framerate your PC can spit out at that resolution.

On the PC, you're going to need an Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 or AMD Phenom II X4 940 at a minimum, with 4GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 or ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB of VRAM. The studio recommends Project Cars players to have a Core i7 3770 processor, or an AMD FX-8350. The recommended requirements also bump up the RAM requirement to 8GB, and the VGA card to a GeForce GTX 600 series, or Radeon HD 7000 series card with at least 2GB of VRAM.

It looks like we should begin to get excited for Forza Motorsport 6, which according to the latest rumors, will feature support for DirectX 12. The news is coming from a new trademark application for the game, something GameSpot picked up.

Microsoft has told GameSpot that it has "filed a trademark application for ForzaTech, which is Turn 10 Studios' proprietary graphics and simulation engine for Forza". The company will be showing the game off in greater detail at E3 2015 in June, but Microsoft is going to have multiple new titles to show off at E3 2015, which is only going to help the Xbox One. These titles include Gears of War 4, and a few new titles from Rare.

Back to Forza Motorsport 6 and its new visual capabilities, Turn 10 Studios used a new game engine for Forza Motorsport 5 when they released it two years ago now, which was enhanced for Forza Horizon 2. But with increased competition in the graphics department from driving games like Driveclub and Project Cars, Microsoft needs all the help it can get for its Xbox One title.

With Avengers: Age of Ultron out next week here in Australia and on May 1 in the US, what better time for Warner Bros. to spin up the marketing campaign for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, than now?

We're being told that we're going to see the sure-to-be epic trailer to Batman v Superman on April 20, as it'll be attached to Mad Max: Fury Road, but we're to expect some new footage, as soon as this week. Zack Snyder, the Director on Batman v Superman, will reportedly release a few seconds of the trailer on Thursday, an hour before the new Star Wars trailer arrives during the Star Wars Celebration event.

Snyder will release the footage at 9am PST through Twitter, so be sure to follow his Twitter account.

Victims of the CoinVault ransomware have another option when trying to retrieve information - and not paying a ransom to hackers. Cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab has partnered with the National High Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) of the Netherlands' police, providing decryption keys and a decryption application online.

Using information collected from a CoinVault command & control server, Kaspersky Lab, NHTCU and the Netherlands' National Prosecutors Office hope victims will be able to retrieve files without paying a ransom.

"If you get infected with the CoinVault ransomware, please check noransom.kaspersky.com," urged Jornt van der Wiel, security researcher for the global research and analysis team at Kaspersky Lab. "We have uploaded a huge number of keys onto the site. If we do not currently have records for a particular Bitcoin wallet, you can check again in the near future, because together with the National High Tech Crime Unit of the Netherlands' police we are continuously updating the information."