Latest News - Page 2885

Before confirming the order, a buyer found out that Dell was charging an amount to install a free and open source web browser 'Firefox'. It was found that the PC builder has an option to install Mozilla Firefox on behalf of the buyer for a new PC if the buyer agrees to pay £16.25. Dell even put this as an option to select in its 'additional software' pre-purchase custom options selection list.

The Mozilla Foundation has started investigating once they've received this report. The company behind Firefox said that they are consulting with legal teams, though the process is in a very early stage.

As of now, Dell did not make any comment.

Twitch made an announcement recently that they've released its mobile software development kit which will allow developers to add livestreaming and screen capture functionality in its mobile games. This will allow mobile gamers to livestream their mobile game online via Twitch and even capture screenshots.

"Our vision is to provide the Twitch community with the ability not only to view, but to broadcast live video game content wherever they are, whether they're on the go or in the living room," VP for marketing Matthew DiPietro said. "We've achieved that with our PC and console integrations, so the trifecta will soon be complete with our deep and concerted foray into mobile broadcasting."

Twitch said that its is already installed in more than 10 million times for Android and iOS. The SDK will allow mobile game developers to build this as an inbuilt functionality.

GIGABYTE has just taken the wraps off of its new high performance server motherboard, the GA-6PXSVT, the company's first single Socket 2011-based workstation motherboard that features 10GbE.

The GA-6PXSVT supports the Intel Xeon E5-1600 V2 and E5-2600 V2 processors, up to 256GB of ECC memory, and all of the usual features you would find on a high-end workstation motherboard. First we have the single SFP+ 10GbE port that is coupled with two additional GbE ports, making the GA-6PXSVT quite the networking performance powerhouse.

The GA-6PXSVT features Intel's third generation 82599EN 10GbE controller with a low latency SFP+ interface, which means that users benefit from an on-board package which delivers higher bandwidth, lower thermals and footprint, and cost performance compared to the traditional method of adding 10GbE capacity through a PCI-Express expansion card.

Sony has been winning the performance and resolution war with its PlayStation 4, but it did tout that Killzone: Shadow Fall was "a 1080p 60 FPS monster" but has only half delivered on that promise.

When Killzone: Shadow Fall is in single-player mode, it runs at 1920x1080 - or Full HD/1080p. Back in November before the game launched, Sony wrote in a blog post that Killzone: Shadow Fall "runs at native 1080p and 60 fps," but it turns out this is not true. In multiplayer mode, the resolution drops heavily in order to maintain the 60FPS frame rate.

CraveOnline explains: "Killzone: Shadow Fall outputs at 1080p in single-player and multiplayer, but it isn't native. It uses a unique processing method that blends 960 x 1080 images together. Therefore, the 1080p advertised on the box isn't inaccurate. Sony's imprecise marketing is still valid, though". As you can imagine, some PS4 gamers are pretty angry over this, with an excerpt from a post titled "Shame On Sony For Lying To Consumers" by a gaming enthusiast on the blog Crappy Reviews:

Today, Samrat Sharma, senior online producer for Guerrilla Games took to Sony's PlayStation Blog to announce the details of the new multiplayer DLC expansion pack for Killzone Shadow Fall. Titled the Insurgent Pack, the DLC includes new features for multiplayer including a brand new Character Class, 3 new abilities, 3 new weapons and 2 new game modes.

In the DLC we learn that the Helghast government has been covertly providing funding The Black Hand, whose operatives have been infiltrating Vekta City. The DLC allows these insurgents to be playable for the first time in the games history, and is what the DLC is centered around. Rather than type out all of the new details, I have pasted the full list provided by Sharma below.

Grinding Gear Games today officially released its free update to Path of Exile, the free Sacrifice of the Vaal mini-expansion much to the delight to current Path of Exile gamers. TweakTown was able to take the game for a test ride last week during a special briefing in San Francisco, and was initially impressed on gameplay.

This is the first mini-expansion to Path of Exile, with the original game being released in October 2013, and includes numerous improvements to keep players engaged. During TweakTown's meeting with game developers, there was a large amount of emphasis placed on the craftable chests that are now available in the Ambush league. Gamers can modify the chests and unique bosses and items will drop if the player is able to kill all of the bosses.

The expansion gives gamers the chance to try and defeat Atziri, returned Queen of the Vaal civilization, though beating her isn't a requirement - and from how badly TweakTown's Michael Hatamoto and his developer partner were getting killed, best of luck to Path of Exile: Sacrifice of the Vaal gamers!

Lulzbot is one of those companies that blaze the trail in innovation and openly share their findings with everyone else. Their philosophy of Free & Libre, hardware and software is a business model that I feel more companies need to follow. Recently Lulzbot released a new video showing their new Taz 3 3D Printer printing with the companies new Ninja Flex Thermoplastic Urethane-based flexible 3D printer filament.

NinjaFlex is the stretchiest 3D printing material on the market at the moment and Lulzbot offers it in several colors including Red, Pink, Green, Blue, White and more. Because the NinjaFlex filament is so stretchy, Lulzbot has had to design an entirely new extruder to allow the filament to be completely constrain the filament as it enters the heat chamber. Lulzbot is calling this the new Flexstruder, and has based it on a Greg's Wade-style design.

Lulzbot has also just released a new 3D Printing Filament Guide that walks customers through each of the filaments that the company carries and offers unique tips on how to achieve the best prints with each filament type. I have linked to this guide in the source links below. Stay tuned to TweakTown for our upcoming review of Lulzbot's Taz 3 3D Printer, and even more 3D printing content!

Google's Nexus 5 smartphone has only been on the market for 5 months now, but that does not stop the rumor mill from cranking out new rumors about its successor. Today Gizmodo Germany released a report that suggest that Google will release the Nexus 6 later this year alongside its first Nexus smartwatch.

The rumor states that LG is sticking around as the manufacturer of the Nexus 6 which make perfect sense as it is also the manufacturer of the Nexus smartwatch. The reoport says that the Nexus 6 will be a "lightweight" version of LG's G3 flagship which also falls inline with the previous Nexus smartphones from LG that were versions of the Optimus G and G2 smartphones. With the news of the new Nexus 6, the report also suggest that it will be June before we see the LG G3 launched and October before the Nexus 6 arrives.

While rumors of DirectX 12 have been circling for over a year now, no one knew exactly when it would debut into the public's eye, but today the new Graphics API has been all but confirmed buy a new Twitter account and webpage that has popped up onto the internet. While no official word from Microsoft has been released, the Twitter account did say that "Rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated... #DirectX12 is coming to #GDC." Which means that AMD's Mantle will have a very giant competitor to deal with at GDC 2014.

The website appears to be legit as well since it is hosted on Microsoft's MSDN blog site and includes heavy hitting graphics companies like AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm. The latter suggest that DirectX 12 has been developed for mobile devices too and there is a big chance that we could see it arrive on the next Windows Phone 8.1 update that is slated for April. If the website is correct then DirectX 12 will make its debut at 10AM on March 20th at the 2014 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

Things just got a lot worse for former Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox. Today a Russian leakster announced that he has accessed then entire source code that ran Mt. Gox's operations. The code is only 1,700 lines long, so it is highly unlikely that the entire thing is there, but it does provide enough information to show how Mt. Gox handled Bitcoin transactions, and the methods used to transmit and receive Bitcoin hashes.

Along with the source code, the leakster / hacker claims to have a 20GB data dump of customer and employee information that includes passport scans, and every piece of contact information customers and employees entered into the system. With a breach this big, it leaves us to wonder how many other exchanges were using a part of this source code, and how many are now venerable to even more attacks now that the information is public? If you are interested, the source link below has links to the stolen code.

It's incidents like this that further undermine the security and trustworthiness of Bitcoins as a viable digital currency. This is the exact reason that US Congressmen are calling for Bitcoin trading to be banned in the us. With such a large economy growing around the virtually unregulated Bitcoin market, a simple crash like Mt. Gox experienced, or major Bitcoin heist like Flexcoin experienced over the weekend could send the entire market crashing down and millions of people would lose everything they have invested in Bitcoins.

Comcast is planning to use its customer's Wi-Fi routers to act as a Wi-Fi hotspot in Chicago. The Internet Service provider has started to convert a large number of Wi-Fi routers in homes into Xfinity hotspots using its existing equipments.

The company will be using a separate Wi-Fi signal and sending it through Comcast-owned wireless routers. Such signals from Comcast's home equipments can be identified by Comcast Xfinity's Wi-Fi mobile app. According to Comcast, by using such measures, it will not affect its subscriber's speed and privacy.

Comcast earlier did a test to see if they can do so, and made sure that such concerns are dealt with. During the time of testing, few users were found the need to opt-out of this service. Nagel said that Comcast provided a manual setting on the router should the customer choose to de-activate it. But by default, the Xfinity Wi-Fi signal will be switched on.

This week, Roku unveiled a new version of its Streaming Stick, a major upgrade from the $99 model it released in late 2012. The major difference is that the new Roku Streaming Stick will work with any TV with a HDMI port instead of only working on models that are deemed "Roku Ready."

The Roku Streaming Stick works on the same principal as Google's Chromecast, and features both iOS and Android apps to control the device. Not everyone likes using their tablet or smartphone to control their TV though and Roku has included a remote for those who still like to use them. The stick is basically an HD version of the Roku 1 that fits into a package the size of a large USB thumb drive and has more than 1000 channels of video programming.

The Roku Streaming Stick retails for about $50 which is $15 more than the Chromecast, and it includes major players like Showtime, HBO, Netflix, Hulu Plus, PLEX, and many more. It is up to you to decide if the extra $15 is worth it to you or not, but with Google recently opening up its SDK for the Chromecast, there is bound to be a wealth of apps arriving for it as well.

There is a security transition from defending against various virus and Trojan formats to sophisticated malware, and anti-virus programs are "totally useless," according to Mohammad Mannan, Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering assistant professor.

In a recent survey from Visa, almost 92 percent of respondents said they have been targeted by attempted phishing attempts - and the complexity of these attacks continues to evolve.

Just a few years ago, if a user was infected with malware, it was a major disruptive problem that directly led to PCs running poorly. However, malware is largely being written by cybercriminals aiming to either hijack compromised devices, or steal personal information and make money, so malware runs in the background a lot more efficiently.

We first talked about the LG G Pad 8.3 tablet back in September of last year when it went official. If you like the idea of that tablet, but want one with baked in LTE connectivity Verizon has just announced exactly what you are looking for. The LG G Pad 8.3 will land on the Verizon network on March 6.

The tablet will cost $99.99 with a new 2-year contact between March 6 and March 10. After that, the tablet will sell for $199.99. If you want one of these, you should really pick it early up and save the hundo. The tablet can be added to a More Everything plan for $10 per month.

The tablet has a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor and an 8.3-inch screen. The screen has a native resolution of 1920 x 1200. Other hardware features includes 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and a 5MP rear camera.

We are pretty excited about Titanfall around here. If you are an Xbox One gamer or a PC gamer, you should be excited too. We think that Titanfall is going to be a strong contender for game of the year even though it's very early in 2014. Some new tidbits about the game have surfaced today.

A rumor was going around that Titanfall might not have a season pass. That has been proven false after Respawn's Vince Zampella talked recently about the game. Zampella said that Titanfall would indeed get a season pass option. That means paid DLC is coming to the game.

Another interesting tidbit is that the developers will offer free feature updates to gamers. Zampella says that there were things that the team wanted in the final game that didn't make it. Those features will be added for free at a later date.

Yesterday Warner Bros. announced the next title in the Batman: Arkham franchise and we were one of the first sites to break the news. Today WB has unveiled the first trailer for Batman: Arkham Knight, and after watching the three-minute long video, it appears that the rumors were true. Batman: Arkham Knight could be the best Batman game ever made.

Batman: Arkham Knight will be a PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One only title, and is rumored to take full advantage of HD and Ultra-HD resolutions depending on which platform you prefer. The developers are able to take full advantage of today's graphics power by choosing not to launch on the PS3 or Xbox 360, and will allow them to take the franchise to the next level. More importantly, Rocksteady Studios is back at the helm which should make up for Batman: Arkham Origin's short falls.

The game will center around a villain named Hush, who will be accompanied by Scarecrow, Penguin, Harley Quinn, and Two-Face in an effort to take over Gotham City and clip Batman's wings forever. As I mentioned in my previous post, the Batmobile will finally be driveable a first for modern Batman games, and if anyone can pull it off, Rocksteady is the studio to do it.

Kingston has unveiled a new storage device that will make getting large video files off your Android device quick and easy. The storage device is called the DataTraveler microDuo. The duo in the name comes from the fact that the flash drive is able to work in a USB port or a microUSB port.

If you are an Android smartphone or tablet user, odds are that microUSB port is all you have. If your device supports USB OTG, you can plug the microDuo directly into that port and use a free app to move files to and from the storage device.

The drive is offered in 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB capacities. The flash drive is very small and compact and should be easy to take with you on the go. Since it works with regular USB ports as well, transferring files to and from your smartphone and computer will be easy.

NASA is always-on the lookout for asteroids that are coming close to the Earth to ensure that we have some warning of one if them is going to hit the planet and to study ones that pass nearby for science. Today an asteroid that is about 90-feet in diameter is going to streak by the planet between the Earth and moon's orbit.

That sounds close if you don't keep in mind the vast distances in space. The asteroid, called 2014 DX110, will be about 217,000 miles from the Earth at its closest point. It is actually very far away from the planet, even though on a cosmic scale this is a close call.

The asteroid will pass the earth at 33,000 mph. At 217,000 miles away from the Earth, it is about 9/10ths of the distance to the moon from the Earth. The asteroid will be at that distance from the planet for about seven hours.

phA recent study conducted by a coupon website is lending some valuable insight this morning into how much knowledge Americans have about tech-related terminology. Published by the LA Times, the study consisted of 2,393 men and women of 18-years of age or older, and were asked a series of questions about several common terms used in every day technology. As someone who lives and breathes tech, the results were quite shocking to say the least.

When asked what HTML was, 11-percent thought that it was a sexually transmitted disease rather than the coding language that powers the internet. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language, and is the main markup language for creating web pages and other information that can be displayed in a web browser such as Chrome, Internet Explorer or Safari.

27-percent of respondents thought that a GIGABYTE was actually an insect found in South America. In reality, a GIGABYTE is the term used to describe 1024 Megabytes when using the base-2 system of computational measurement.

One of the cool things about Dish Network is that with its Hopper Whole home DVR system you can watch your favorite shows from anywhere using apps. The apps let you catch up with shows you miss on the road and were previously offered for Android and iOS devices only.

Dish has announced that it is now supporting another popular platform with a new Dish Anywhere app that has just launched. The app is now available for the Kindle Fire HDX line of tablets. The app is available now on the Amazon Appstore.

The app gives Kindle Fire HDX tablet users the ability to watch their DVR recordings, TV programs, and on demand titles away from home. The app only works with the Hoppe DVR that has Sling built-in. The app will work when the table is connected to Wi-Fi or mobile broadband.