Latest News - Page 2811

As an avid Hangouts user, the news of a new desktop version excites me. Google has announced a new Hangouts Chrome app for Chrome OS, as well as Windows, which brings a slew of improvements and changes.

First and foremost, is now Hangouts looks much like Facebook Messenger with its Chat Heads, meaning you won't need to open up Chrome or Hangouts to see your chat. With the updated Hangouts app, your contacts and chats are now combined into a separate toggle window, which is super easy to get to. Google explained on its blog post: "You'll get all your messages as long as you have the app running, and your chats will sync across Hangouts on all your devices".

Better yet, the new Hangouts app includes voice and video calling, which makes it a one-stop-shop for all things communication with Google. Google added: "We recently announced you can make phone calls to any number in the world (via Hangouts dialer) and now you can do this right from your desktop. If you use Google Voice, the app includes complete Google Voice support, so you can make and receive calls, and get your voicemails and SMS messages directly in Hangouts".

It was reported earlier that AMD Radeon R9 290 and R9 290X GPUs are now available with a reduced price of $299 and #369 respectively. But as its turned out, the price cuts are made by AMD's AIB partners who manufacture these cards.

It was also pointed out that these price cuts are not permanent. The GPU manufacturers have introduced these price cuts to promote the sales of these cards, while the stocks last.

Though the timing of providing price cuts is considered to be a response to NVIDIA's Maxwell-based GTX 980 and GTX 970 GPUs that was launched not too long ago. Its unclear if AMD would be tempted to make these price cuts from their side irrespective of cards. AMD may even throw in a new Never Settle bundle along with it to sweeten the deal as they did before. As of now, GTX 970 can be purchased with a price tag as low as $329 to as high as $409 (for the Zotac GTX 970 AMP! Edition 4GB). R9 290X could be found for $369 to $399, and some AIB partners have bundled Star Citizen and Alien: Isolation as a limited offer.

Lenovo has the best Windows notebook on the market, where I totally fell in love with, and still gloss over, the Yoga 2 Pro. The company has just unveiled its successor, the Yoga 3 Pro, which improves on the small amount of things the Y2P had problems with.

The Yoga 3 Pro is 17% thinner, and 15% lighter than the Y2P, with Lenovo claiming that the change in results has it "weighing less than a bottle of water". We still have the 13.3-inch 3200x1800 QHD+ display, which was super crisp on the Y2P. Lenovo has spent time improving the already great hinge design, with the Y3P featuring a "watchband" hinge that Lenovo claims is "hand-assembled from more than 800 individual pieces of steel and aluminum".

Inside, we have Intel's Broadwell-based Core M-70 processor running the show, backed up with up to 8GB of RAM (still no 16GB, Lenovo?), and up to 512GB of SSD. The company has fixed the Wi-Fi issue on the Y3P, baking in a new 5GHz 802.11ac chip into the Yoga 3 Pro. Lenovo has also improved the software inside of the Y3P, with something it calls "Harmony" that automatically adjusts settings to optimize whatever software you're using. If you were to be reading an e-book for example, Lenovo's Harmony software will "change the brightness and color temperature according to the environment lighting". If you are watching a movie, Harmony will automatically adjust the audio settings to give you a better sense of immersion.

As the battle against the Islamic State (IS) rages on in Iraq and Syria, government officials hope to begin battling the extremist group where they have excelled: the Internet. Unlike the Taliban and Al Qaida before it, IS has successfully used social media outlets to spread its message, while also reaching curious observers. Twitter and other social media networks are working to remove official IS accounts, but many other accounts have popped up.

"This is the most socially-mediated conflict in history," said Shiraz Maher, from the Kings College London. "You literally have thousands of foreign fighters from all over the world using social media in order to convey the message about the jihad that they are fighting."

In addition to spreading messages of jihad, the Islamic State has successfully recruited new members - and spread propaganda - largely catching intelligence officers unaware of the Internet strategy.

The lack of backwards compatibility between the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Xbox One isn't lost among Microsoft designers, and will be something that could lead to a solution later down the road.

"Back compat is always a hot topic at the turn of a generation, and I get why, especially on [Xbox 360] so many people bought so much digital content and it means that a lot of us, we're holding on to our 360s," said Phil Spencer, head of the Microsoft Xbox division, in a recent interview. "I get the question. I totally respect the question. There's nothing I can say about it right now, but I'll just say 'I hear you.' I definitely hear you and I'll continue to try to work to build something that can help people out."

The problem is probably less significant for Sony with its PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 owners - as the Japanese console dominates sales charts - and allows gamers to play older titles using PlayStation Now. The Wii U supports backwards compatibility but hasn't been as popular among hardcore gamers.

It feels like we're very close to the Radeon R9 300 series of GPUs, with AMD dropping the price of its Radeon R9 290 and R9 290X GPUs in the last week, but now news is floating around of the Pirate Islands-based architecture, AMD's next-generation GPU.

The news is coming courtesy of AMD's just-released "AMDGPU" Kernel Driver, which is something that will form the base of Closed Source (Catalyst) and Open Source (Gallium3D) drivers for Linux. Within all the deep-dive on the technical side of things, AMD mentions that the AMDGPU kernel driver is being tested on Sea Islands, as well as unreleased hardware.

The current DRM driver for Linux is known as 'Radeon' which won't be supported by the upcoming AMD GPUs, with the driver not supporting current, or older generation cards. This means that AMD must be in the testing phase of its Pirate Islands GPUs, which will arrive to us as the Radeon R9 300 series, with the flagship card being the R9 390X. We could hear AMD announce these new cards before the end of the year, with a roll out in early 2015, we hope.

Straight up: Ubisoft, whatever you are smoking, please share it with me. Maybe it'll help me with the stress of what I'm about to report to the world. Ubisoft has confirmed that Assassin's Creed Unity, the first game in the series to be built from the ground up for the new consoles, will be running at 900p and 30FPS on both the Xbox One and PS4.

Worse than that, is what Nicolas Guérin, World Level Design Director on Unity, told TechRadar. Guérin said that decision of 30FPS was to give the game world of AC: Unity a more cinematic feel. He said: "At Ubisoft for a long time we wanted to push 60 fps. I don't think it was a good idea because you don't gain that much from 60 fps and it doesn't look like the real thing. It's a bit like The Hobbit movie, it looked really weird". He continued: "And in other games it's the same - like the Rachet and Clank series [where it was dropped]. So I think collectively in the video game industry we're dropping that standard because it's hard to achieve, it's twice as hard as 30fps, and its not really that great in terms of rendering quality of the picture and the image".

Guérin had backup from the 30FPS camp, with Assassin's Creed Unity's Creative Director, Alex Amancio chiming in, saying: "30 was our goal, it feels more cinematic. 60 is really good for a shooter, action adventure not so much. It actually feels better for people when it's at that 30fps. It also lets us push the limits of everything to the maximum. It's like when people start asking about resolution. Is it the number of the quality of the pixels that you want? If the game looks gorgeous, who cares about the number?".

HTC has made its Desire Eye smartphone official, confirming that the best selfie-taking smartphone is now here, featuring dual 13-megapixel cameras. That's right, a 13-megapixel camera graces the rear, which isn't too special, but the 13-megapixel up front should have selfie-taking lovers opening their Eyes at this smartphone, geddit?

The new Desire Eye features a 5.2-inch Full HD display, 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor, 2GB of RAM. 16GB of flash storage expandable by microSD, and then of course, the dual 13-megapixel cameras. Both of the 13-megapixel cameras feature wide-angle lenses, and dual-LED flashes. Stereo BoomSound speakers are found on the Desire Eye, three microphones, a 2,400mAh battery, and Android 4.4.4 KitKat.

HTC wasn't scared of the fact that the new Desire Eye is made from plastic, but it's not cheap according to BGR who attended the Double Exposure event. The site reports that "the Desire Eye has a smooth and sleek design that is surprisingly impressive. There are no seams despite the band of color that surrounds the perimeter of the handset, and it feels good in the hand despite its large size". One of the stand out features on the Desire Eye is the new camera software, which comes with six main add-ons which make the selfie-taking experience, well, better.

Today Samsung announced mass production of 3-bit per cell 3D vertical NAND (TLC V-NAND). This shouldn't come as a surprise since Samsung first started talking about the new TLC version just days after releasing the 850 Pro SSD with MLC V-NAND. Even though the surprise is lost, that doesn't mean this isn't a technical achievement that can profoundly impact the consumer and enterprise cold storage SSD markets.

The press release doesn't mention by name the long rumored 850 EVO SSD but does say that something, maybe even a couple of somethings are coming.

The full press release:

Apple has announced a new media event scheduled for next week, with the October 16 event to be held at the Town Hall auditorium at Apple's Cupertino-based HQ. The company has now sent out media events, but probably not ComputerBild.de, with the tagline of "It's been way too long".

What can we expect Apple to unveil at the event? We should see some new iPads unveiled, with the iPad Air 2, and maybe a new iPad mini. Updated iMacs should also be introduced, sporting a high-resolution Retina display. We should also see the company tease the final overview of OS X Yosemite, before it hits the public.

Just as I'm writing an article on Acer's new NVIDIA G-SYNC powered 28-inch 4K monitor, I read about Sharp's new 8K TV that is preparing to enter the market in 2018. This is when Japan Broadcasting Corporation will begin broadcasting content in 8K.

Sharp's 8K-capable TV is a mammoth 85-inch set, with a 120Hz refresh rate, with the company being the first in the world to have an 8K TV that is compliant with NHK's requirements. NHK has been working on 8K, which by the way is a crazy 7680x4320 - four times as many pixels as 4K, and 16x the amount of pixels as 1080p, since 1995.

NHK has plans to start testing 8K Super Hi-Vision broadcasting in 2016, with the first translations of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. NHK will start commercial 8K broadcasting at 7680x4320 with multi-channel audio in 2018. What good is this TV without proper content, apart from TV broadcasts? Well, both Sony and Panasonic are working on a new optical disc technology which will have 300GB of space on it, at least, which is set to be released late next year.

Ever enjoyed a Red Bull, but wondered why you didn't grow wings? Well, so did Benjamin Careathers, who has sued the energy drink company. Careathers filed a lawsuit last year with the US District Court of the South District of New York, arguing that Red Bull mislead him and consumers about their claim that "Red Bull gives you wings", as well as the claims of increased performance, concentration and reaction speed.

His suit argued: "Such deceptive conduct and practices mean that (Red Bull's) advertising and marketing is not just 'puffery,' but is instead deceptive and fraudulent and is therefore actionable". The result of his lawsuit? Red Bull agreeing to pay $13 million to settle the US class-action lawsuit, for his claims of false and misleading advertising.

The settlement includes many millions of people who had purchased at least one Red Bull in their life, over the last 12 years. Red Bull has offered class members the option of either a $10 reimbursement, or $15 worth of Red Bull products, which probably won't give you wings. This means that if you've purchased one if their energy drinks between January 1, 2002 and October 3, 2014, you can claim either of the two options from Red Bull, without proof of purchase required.

Earlier on today we reported about The Evil Within on PC being locked to 30FPS for the reason of it "Makes more sense for a survival horror game" but now Bethesda has come out and discussed the upcoming horror game on PC, and much more detail.

Bethesda has now addressed the 30FPS lock on the PC version, saying that the developers have locked the frame rate at such a low point because the game was built around that, as the quote above says, but it can be unlocked through debug commands. A FAQ on the game reads: "Shinji Mikami and the team at Tango designed The Evil Within to be played at 30fps and to utilize an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 for all platforms. The team has worked the last four years perfecting the game experience with these settings in mind. For PC players, we'll provide debug commands on how you can alter the framerate and aspect ratio, but these commands and changes are not recommended or supported and we suggest everyone play the game as it was designed and intended for the best experience".

The developer has aimed for 1080p as its resolution, but 4K is supported. PC gamers have the option of turning off the cinema-like letterboxing in order to render it at full screen, but this option is not fully supported. PC gamers do get a few additional graphical options to play with, which include fullscreen or window support, AA settings (FXAA, MLAA and SMAA), Shadow Quality (High, Medium, Low), Motion Blur, SSAO, and Reflections.

Oculus VR did demo its Oculus Rift headset using 'Alien: Isolation' during E3 2014. It looked very promising and gave a taste of the good things to come. But nobody knew if Creative Assembly's latest sci-fi survival horror game was just few keystrokes away from making the game work with Oculus Rift. Although this counts as 'unofficial' Oculus Rift support, the company behind the game did say that the game won't be supporting VR at the time of launch.

That didn't stop a group of Reddit users to com together and see if they can make the game support VR. As it turns out, they didn't really have to make a lot of efforts since the coding was already present. There are few issues, but as an end result VR works nicely for a game which doesn't have official VR support. The game also has positional tracking as seen during the demos of Oculus Rift's Development Kit 2.

Neither SEGA nor Creative Assembly said anything about the latest finding by the Reddit users, but the unofficial support is far from perfect, as expected. According to latest updates by the Reddit user, the game crashes due to a CPU problem from their end.

Microsoft, Sony and Activision want to see the forthcoming Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare become to best-selling Call of Duty yet, with Activision announcing a cross-buy deal.

This cross-buy deal sees the digital versions of the Xbox 360 and PS3 including a Xbox One or PS4 version, for free. Better yet, this includes all of the purchased DLC and season passes, and all of the stats you will tally up on the previous-gen hardware. Once you've secured yourself a copy of the looks-like-Titanfall-meets-COD first-person shoote,r you just need to enter in a code that you'll receive with your copy.

This deal expires at the end of March 2015, so you'll have plenty of time to get your free current-gen copy of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. This is how the companies should be dealing with all games, as it encourages people to buy a new console without having to fork out the money for it right now. Better yet, I don't see why you couldn't buy this on the Xbox 360 or PS3 for yourself (or a friend) and then use the code for a Xbox One or PS4 version. I guess we'll find out more details on this deal closer to the release of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.

The Government of India's Commerce and Industry minister said that the government will investigate Flipkart over numerous complaints made during and after the e-commerce site's 'Big Billion Day' sale on October 6th. These complaints are accompanied by several hashtags like fraudkart, Big Scam Day and Big Billion. The company co-founders did issue a statement of apology via its company blog, but it didn't have any affect on most consumers.

Numerous consumers and potential buyers complained that Flipkart was luring in consumers. Throughout the day of the sale, many said via Twitter that Flipkart already increased the prices of products before the sale. It was followed with complaints for lack of stock for several items that was listed as available in search results and website outage complaints.

Besides the consumers, retailers and traders have also serious concerns over Flipkart's 'predatory discount'. They've claimed that the e-commerce is damaging many small and larger retail businesses that find it impossible to compete with Flipkart's unrealistic discount offers. The Confederation of All-India Traders also pressured the Commerce and Industry Ministry to intervene in this matter, and implement procedures to monitor and control such predatory pricing and allegedly unrealistic sales. The Enforcement Directorate will also be investigating Flipkart after an order from the Reserve Bank of India.

Warner Bros and DC Entertainment are making the virtual reality version of the Batcave so that you can check out Batman's underground crib in VR, with the help of the Oculus Rift.

The Dark Knight's VR Batcave is based on classic '90s cartoon series called 'Batman: the Animated Series'. The VR interaction will also be made compatible with other VR devices along with Oculus Rift. The company that will be responsible for this project is Otoy, but the series' original producer Bruce Timm is also involved in the project.

Warner Bros' Sam Register said "We are continuously exploring new and exciting ways to tell stories and share experiences with audiences around the globe, and we're excited to be working with Otoy on this cutting-edge adaptation from Batman: The Animated Series". He continued, "More to the point: It's super-cool, eye-popping stuff, and fans are going to love it. We can't wait for them to have the chance to see the Batcave from the show again - for the very first time."

Worldwide PC shipments during Q3 did better than expected, dropping just 1.7 percent instead of the previously estimated 4.1 percent drop, according to the IDC research group.

Lenovo now has 20 percent of the global PC market, ahead of Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Acer and Apple - as each company look to revitalize the struggling market. Companies are struggling to try to adapt to an increasingly mobile market - and while PC hardware continues to evolve - many consumers and businesses don't need to upgrade current PCs at the same rate they did just a few years ago.

"Reaching the 20% mark in global PC share is a great milestone for Lenovo - and we got there even faster than expected," said Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo CEO, in a statement. "While others have been looking for a game plan that works, we have been executing ours and the results speak for themselves. Not only have we reached another record high and solidified our PC leadership position for the 6th straight quarter, but we have diversified our business at the same time."

Millions of network-connected electricity meters used in Spain are susceptible to cyberattack by hackers, according to security researchers. The vulnerabilities could lead to electricity being terminated - or billing fraud - if hackers are able to access the smart meters.

The Spanish government has relied on these electricity meters to improve national energy efficiency, but didn't put a large enough emphasis on security efforts. The memory chips in the smart meters are reprogrammable and include flawed code, though the researchers won't outline what they did specifically until the problems are fixed.

"Oh wait? We can do this? We were really scared," said Javier Vazquez Vidal, a security expert involved in the smart meter research. "We started thinking about the impact this could have. What happens if someone wants to attack an entire country?"

AMD would be announcing its next generation notebook APU Carrizo-L in December. The processor is based on a 28nm quad-core architecture based on their Excavator core.

The notebook APU will have support for 2133MHz DDR3 memory. The news reported pointed out that Carrizo-L will succeed AMD's Beem and Mullins APU which is currently positioned for entry-level notebooks and tablets. It was also pointed out that this will also be 'officially' compatible with Windows 10. The rest of the operating systems, such as Windows 8.1, Ubuntu and SLED operating systems were added on the list.

The APU is designed for entry-level notebooks and will be placed to compete against Intel Pentium and Celeron series processors. But as far as mainstream segment is concerned, AMD would not be releasing the full-fledged Carrizo APU before March 2015 which will be succeeding after the long running Kaveri APUs. According to another report, Carrizo will be supporting both DDR3 and DDR4 along with an on-package memory die. It is also speculated that Carrizo series will have a desktop APU variant, which will be using the existing FM2+ socket motherboards. The expected timeframe for the desktop variant is also assumed for March 2015 launch.