Latest News - Page 2842

The Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been busy submitting reporting pirate links for removal on Google, recently topping its 50 millionth URL. The RIAA and music studios report millions of links each month - most of them directed to Google - with the filestube.com search engine receiving two million requests alone.

Google acts quickly to remove infringing links from the massive search engine's index, but the RIAA has voiced numerous complaints about the process. It's a difficult battle to deal with for the RIAA, because foreign websites ignore takedown notices, or slightly alter the URL and go back online immediately.

Just a few months ago, the RIAA take down requests number sat at 10 million, with the trade group always scanning for online music piracy locations.

Nintendo has been seeing great headlines lately, with a 400% surge in Wii U sales thanks to Mario Kart 8. Not only that, but Mario Kart 8 has helped Nintendo push Sony up against the wall in Japan when it comes to console sales.

There was a rumor that Nintendo was poised to unveil a next-gen console at E3, something that never happened, but now we have the Nintendo of America President, Reggie Fils-Aime affirming that Nintendo is sticking to the Wii U. The Nintendo America boss says that the Wii U "has a very long life ahead of it. It's got great content coming that will help define the platform".

Nintendo has Sony as its only next-gen competitor in its home country of Japan, as Microsoft hasn't launched its Xbox One in the country just yet. The Xbox One lands in Japan on September 4, which isn't too far away. Nintendo seems to be doing better this year with the help of Mario Kart 8, but the company still has Hyrule Warriors, Super Smash Bros. and Splatoon to reach the Wii U, something that Fils-Aime says will have similar sales effects to the Wii U that Mario Kart 8 had.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the leading movie copyright group in the United States, wants to invest $20,000 in research towards an "unbiased" report focused on online piracy. Following past published reports that claimed piracy harms sales, there was a public backlash that the trade group reportedly wasn't expecting.

"We want to enlist the help of academics from around the world to provide new insight on a range of issues facing the content industry in the digital age," said Chris Dodd, former U.S. Senator and MPAA CEO, in a statement. "We need more and better research regarding the evolving role of copyright in society. The academic community can provide unbiased observations, data analysis, historical context and important revelations about how these changes are impacting the film industry and other IP-reliant sectors."

It's refreshing to hear the MPAA wants to better analyze the current state of online piracy - a shift in strategy, when just a few years ago the MPAA was hesitant to embrace online solutions. However, past efforts to crack down on piracy only led to confusing legal legislation and ineffective, costly strategies.

After a week of Ubisoft fighting a losing battle about watering down the PC version of Watch Dogs, EA is on the offensive for PC gamers. First, offering up Titanfall for free for 48 hours, second - unlocking all of the weapons and gadgets in its beta of Battlefield: Hardline, and now - stating that the PC version of Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare is not a console port.

Justin Wiebe, the game's Creative Director, took to PopCap Games' (which is owned by EA) developer diary today, where he explains: "It's not a port. Everything from our UI to how the mouse-driven controls are going to work - everything has been looked at from PC gamers' POV". When Garden Warfare launches on PC, it will include a new map, Jewel Junction, which features a world event that affects gameplay.

In this map, a train runs down the middle of the map, which should be an interesting turn for the game. Jewel Junction will be a timed exclusive for PC. Right now, you can pre-order Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare on Origin - with the Standard Edition costing $29.99, while the Digital Deluxe Edition costs $34.99. Garden Warfare launches in just three days time, on June 24.

For fans of Dead Rising, you might be surprised that the zombie game is being turned into a "full-length digital feature" That will first hit Sony's service, Crackle. There's no director tied to the project just yet.

Legendary is producing the film, but it will not be hitting theaters, with the company's Chief, Tom Lesinski explaining: "Dead Rising has a built-in fan base and rich characters and plotlines that are ideal for digital storytelling and on target for Legendary's brand. Crackle and Content are adept at distributing cutting-edge digital content and we look forward to delivering a highly engaging and cool series for a global audience".

Once the Dead Rising movie has hit Crackle, it will move on to disc media, TV and VOD. Most people are probably thinking "ugh... why" - but a theatrical release of this movie might have not been that great, a smaller budget and the movie being a "digital feature" might play in its favor. It means that the movie doesn't need to target a mass audience to make its profits, meaning it could be gorier (it is a post-apocalyptic zombie game after all) with all of the things that have made the Dead Rising games so much fun.

Fresh from the news that Godzilla director Gareth Edwards is to helm the second of the announced 'Star Wars' spin off movies, Looper director Rian Johnson is to direct Episode VIII and IX (that's 8 and 9 for you numeral-haters), which will follow the 2015 release of the as yet untitled 'Episode VII' under director J.J. Abrams.

Whilst Johnson only has three prior features to his name; the little seen 'Brick' and 'Brothers Bloom' alongside the higher profile 'Looper', he also has helmed multiple episodes of TV's 'Breaking Bad' and 'Terriers'.

Episodes VIII and IX have not yet been officially dated, but are expected to launch in 2017 and 2019, respectively. It's crazy to think that over a span of nearly 30 years we only have six 'Star Wars' movies today, yet there's a further five movies in various stages of production. Whatta world.

We all know that Facebook is in business to make money. It's easy to forget that the social network isn't there just to let you quote random saying from the web and let you keep in touch with people you probably don't want to see in the real-world. Yesterday Facebook was down for about half an hour, and for some it was the longest half hour of the day.

The short outage reportedly cost Facebook $500,000, which suggests that the site rakes in about a million dollars an hour during normal operation. That $500,000 figure came from Facebook's quarterly earnings report for Q1 that showed $2.5 billion made in ad revenue, working out to about $1.16 million an hour.

Facebook says that the outage was the result of an issue that occurred while updating the configuration of site software. Users who went nuts while Facebook was down can feel a bit better about the potential for this to happen again in the future, the social network vows this problem will never happen again.

We've known for a while now that the new premium Nexus device could be something called the Android Silver experience, but now it looks like this is being confirmed - by the phonemaker behind the Nexus 4 and Nexus 5, LG.

LG's Communications Director, Ken Hong, has said that Google has not contacted LG regarding a new Nexus smartphone. According to Hong, he is the person at LG that would be contacted if Google were to request a next-gen Nexus. So unless Google is going with another company to make its Nexus 6, I think we can expect the Android Silver program to replace it - something I hope we see at Google I/O next week.

Ubisoft has released an official statement on the website for Watch Dogs about claims that the company gimped the PC version of the game, where it said that "notion that we would actively downgrade quality is contrary to everything we've set out to achieve".

The company has said that the PC version does actually include "some old, unused render settings that were deactivated for a variety of reasons, including possible impacts on visual fidelity, stability, performance and overall gameplay quality". Ubisoft has said that the mod that unlocks the better graphics and settings that were gimped and cut away on the PC version can cause issues.

Ubisoft explains: "Modders are usually creative and passionate players, and while we appreciate their enthusiasm, the mod in question (which uses those old settings) subjectively enhances the game's visual fidelity in certain situations but also can have various negative impacts. Those could range from performance issues, to difficulty in reading the environment in order to appreciate the gameplay, to potentially making the game less enjoyable or even unstable".

AMD has quite the claim for the future, where the chipmaker wants to see the power efficiency in mainstream processors increased by 25x, with a goal of 2020 to reach this point. The company wants to see laptops and other devices with "several days of battery life" according to AMD Researcher Sam Naffziger.

Naffziger says that larger gains for the world are capable with more power efficiency in its processors, noting that there are over 3 billion PCs in the world that consume 1% of the entire power output of the planet, with 20 million servers consuming another 1.5%. Naffziger also said that power management is improving so quickly that soon a CPU will be capable of shifting into low-power between user keystrokes, or between frames in a video.

This concept, is something called "race to idle" which turns off portions of the processor rapidly, or as quick as possible following a processor-intensive job. Mark Papermaster, AMD's Chief Technology Officer says that this is a big move away from the process-based improvements that we have been seeing until now, something that makes up the framework of Moore's Law. Papermaster says that power management and efficiency improvements are "going to have a big impact on the industry".

The United States accounted for 23 percent of online banking malware attacks during the first quarter of 2014, according to security company Trend Micro's "TrendLabs 1Q 2014 Security Roundup" report. It's not a surprise to find the U.S. is the most popular target, with a growing number of malware-related bank attacks.

Joining the United States were the following countries: Japan (10 percent), India (9 percent), Brazil (7 percent), Turkey (4 percent), France, Malaysia, Mexico, Vietnam, and Australia all with three percent. Online bankers are warned to make sure they run anti-virus and anti-malware security, along with directly accessing their bank accounts - and to avoid clicking on suspicious emails.

Security experts struggle to keep up with the large volume of overly sophisticated attacks targeting their networks - and customers are increasingly finding themselves in the cross-hairs.

Worldwide PC monitor shipments saw a meager 0.4 percent drop year-over-year during the first quarter of 2014, totaling 33.7 million units. Not surprisingly, LED backlit monitors had 92 percent market share, increasing 16.4 percent year-over-year, research firm IDC found.

Monitor sizes at least 21" wide continued to lead the way, racking up its sixth consecutive quarter, capturing 20.5 percent of the market. Dell (14.9 percent) is the No. 1 manufacturer with Samsung (13.2 percent) trailing in the No. 2 position, while Hewlett-Packard (11.5 percent), LG (10.5 percent), and Lenovo (7.8 percent) trail behind.

"Despite the overall decline, the shipment totals were stronger than the forecast of 31 million units," said Phuong Hang, IDC Worldwide Trackers Program Director, in a press statement. "Geographically, Japan and the Middle East and Africa (MEA) regions delivered the largest gains during the first quarter while Dell and HP both experienced solid shipment growth."

Ubisoft is taking heavy fire right now, especially from us here at TweakTown, where we're bringing you all the latest in gaming news. We've already told you that Far Cry 4 on PC on Ultra High settings will be no different from next-gen consoles, that The Division is locked at 30FPS on consoles, and that Ubisoft seems to have deliberately gimped Watch Dogs on PC, holding back some graphics. How could Ubisoft dig any deeper? Read on.

Ubisoft's CEO, Yves Guillemot, during an interview with CVG, talked about Microsoft and Sony releasing new consoles - yes, not the 'next-gen' Xbox One and PS4, but entirely new machines. Guillemot was asked about the PS4 and Xbox One sales, and whether he thought the new consoles would remain solely for the 'core' gamer, to which he responded: "Both machines started fast, because gamers had been waiting for eight years for them. People were really anxious about having something different".

He continued: "I hope this gen will go more quickly also. My feeling is that because PC is growing fast and lots of people are trying to pick up the business on TV, that will put pressure on [platform holders] to not wait eight years next time. I think they will wait a lot less than that. First they need to make sure that they can sell the current machines at a lower price, so that there are enough games sold and enough extra content so that their platform is profitable. This will help the market".

T-Mobile is putting a lot of pressure on other mobile carriers in the US with a number of offerings that make the smallest of the major carriers look very appealing to customers. T-Mobile in the past made it much cheaper for people to get a new device on its network with cheaper service plans. The carrier has also been paying a large portion of the early termination fee for users to leave their current provider and swap to its service.

At the T-Mobile Un-carrier 5.0 event held this week, T-Mobile unveiled a new music offering that is different from what other carriers offer. You can stream unlimited music on unRadio just as you would on the music services offered elsewhere, the big difference here is that the streaming music doesn't count against your data allowance.

That means you can stream all you want and your data allowance stays the same, which is a big deal for heavy music streamers. This isn't T-Mobiles own music streaming service, rather it works with existing apps like Pandora, Rhapsody, iTunes Radio and others. T-Mobile doesn't count data used while streaming music from these apps against the user's data allowance. All T-Mobile users on Simple Choice plans get unRadio and the service is available now.

It looks like $500 million doesn't buy much these days, with Destiny locked at 30FPS on all consoles. The makers of Halo, Bungie, are behind the new franchise, which will reach the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3 and PS4 later on September 9.

But even with the increased horsepower found in the next generation consoles, they'll still be locked at 30FPS - but will contain graphical advantages. Destiny's Senior Environment Artist, Jason Sussman, said during an interview with VentureBeat: "It's a lot of different things. I could get really technical, but I'd bore you to death. A lot has to do with performance. We're cross-platform, so we had to be very delicate with all four consoles, making sure they have the same experience, that it looks as good as it possibly can on all these consoles. A lot goes into that, from geometry to textures to post effects to particles to how many players you get on the screen. We're always balancing that out to make sure everyone gets the same experience".

Destiny isn't the only game to be locked at 30FPS on next-gen consoles, with Ubisoft's The Division being locked at 30FPS, too. But don't even get us started on the problems with Ubisoft, as Far Cry 4 doesn't look like it will be any special on the PC, and Watch Dogs has already been gimped on the PC, big time.

I've been a fan of the Resident Evil movies since the first one, and while the others may not have been as good - the series is a fun thing to watch. Series Director and Producer, Paul W.S. Anderson, has announced that another Resident Evil movie is in the works, currently known as Resident Evil: The Final Chapter.

Anderson has said that he's on the final draft of the script, with the producers now having to work out a shooting schedule once the draft is done. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter will be the sixth movie in the franchise, and will go down the 3D route again - this time, with Anderson shooting the film in 3D this time, instead of converting it to 3D in post-production.

During an interview with Collider, Anderson said: "I approach my films right from the inception, I kind of write action scenes and pick out locations that I think and know because I've done so much of it will translate very well into 3D. Then when we build the sets, we build sets that I know will shoot well in 3D. It's really, even from this point, 3D is something I'm definitely thinking about".

If you thought the 1Gbps on offer from Google Fiber was impressive, well, that would feel like dial-up compared to what the private pipeline the US Department of Energy recently tested - bursting out an incredible 91 gigabits per second between Denver and Maryland.

The reason behind the uber-fast Internet access is that the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) and NASA officials having to deal with copious amounts of data, but with access to this 91Gbps connection, that is a thing of the past. Even faster transfers have been benchmarked, but these were done over direct connections.

We reported earlier in the year that Alcatel-Lucent and BT smashed a huge 1.4 terabit connection, but this was a direct connection between London and Ipswich. ESnet does have a goal in mind, where it hopes to see transfer speeds increased to as high as 1Tbps, where it has already started work on a 400 gigabit network. Where do I sign up?

If you've got a spare $21,900 burning a hole in your pocket, you could always slap down that house deposit on Vertu's Signature Touch smartphone - a decent Android-powered handset available for slightly under $22,000.

The Signature Touch features Qualcomm's Snapdragon 801 - so we have a 2.3GHz quad-core processor on-board, a 4.7-inch 1920x1080-pixel display, 64GB of on-board storage, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera backed up by a 2.1-megapixel selfie-shooter, a 2275mAh battery, Qi wireless charging, NFC and LTE capabilities.

What makes the Signature Touch from Vertu stand out from the rest, and begin to justify its $21,900 price tag? Well, we have Vertu's new Lead Designer, Ignacio Germade, using a masculine "V-spine" design with a D-ring latch for popping the SIM tray open, a ceramic ear pillow that is smaller, with a titanium chin instead of a metallic bezel. Stereo speakers make the cut, thanks to a partnership with Bang & Olufsen.

After being out for a while now, Ubisoft is only just now rolling out a patch to Watch Dogs - something that PC gamers should receive in the next few days, while PS4 gamers get it today, and Xbox gamers receiving it sometime next week.

But now I have a question: will TheWorse/E3 2012 mod still work after this patch? Ubisoft has already alienated and pissed off the PC gaming community with its deliberate gimping of Watch Dogs on PC, but this would just be yet another strike against the publisher. Hopefully the mod still works, so gamers get an even more stable game with bug fixes, with better graphics than they had before.

Here's a full list of what to expect:

Sir Iain Lobban, the chief of British spy agency GCHQ, has publicly attacked the Guardian over its role in publishing information leaked by ex-NSA agent Edward Snowden.

He asserted that GCHQ and its sister agencies in British intelligence are protecting the UK "despite the best efforts of some of the media." According to the Telegraph, Lobban said at the IA14 cyber security conference: "GCHQ has some world-class intellectual property but you'll understand that even in these revelatory times we really do need major parts of that to remain secret. But we are working to share where we can, including contributing it to the open source community to encourage further development."

He went on to claim GCHQ's reputation - despite the role the media has played in exposing its part in the worldwide, online surveillance dragnet - is "helping UK industry." "Allies around the world want to talk to us about cyber security and they want to do business with companies that we can vouch for," he said.