Latest News - Page 3102

DICE are constantly tweaking Battlefield 3 and the latest news comes from Alan Kertz, Gameplay Designer at DICE, who has stated through a post on Reddit that there will be several changes to weapon attachments in Battlefield 3.

He listed various stat changes for the bipod, foregrip, suppressor, heavy barrel, and flash suppressor. Now we just need some more maps like the ones included in Back to Karkand, which feel like proper PC-made maps, well, because they are. The game is slowly getting perfected, which shows some strong commitment to longevity of the game from DICE. The full change list is below (and in the full story):

If only this was approved to grubby gamers across the world. Well, it's starting with a company called Vioguard, which was started by two Microsoft Hardware veterans and their business partners. Vioguard have received U.S. Food & Drug Administration approval for use of its self-sanitizing computer keyboard in both hospitals and other healthcare settings.

Where this is different to the old "pick it up and shake it all about", Vioguard's keyboard can be retracted automatically into an enclosure to be bathed in germicidal ultraviolet light from two 25-watt fluorescent lamps. The enclosure also doubles as a monitor stand (how convenient), and the mechanism for retracting and ejecting the keyboard works hands-free via sensors.

Vioguard states that the technique has been proven effective in killing a minimum of 99.99-percent of harmful bacteria and viruses, inclusive of the flu, MRSA and other nasty bugs that can spread through hospitals. The intent of this new keyboard is to provide healthcare facilities an alternative to manually cleaning a keyboard.

Imagine you wake up tomorrow, pull your smartphone or tablet from your bedside table, click the Facebook icon and wait for it to load. It loads, and shows you a simple page of "We have taken Facebook down in support of SOPA, if you're against the act, please call X" and with X is your local representative, or whoever Facebook decide to redirect you to.

You think, no wait, there's no way this is happening. You Google the issue. Google's page doesn't load and a similar site is up. Your heart sinks and you think Skynet have finally taken over. A T-101 will step through your door and ask if Sarah Connor lives there, before shooting your home up.

Well, that was a great introduction into what could be the biggest arsenal that the Internet has against the crap that is SOPA. According to Markham Erickson, head of the NetCoalition trade association, there has been talk of a so-called "nuclear option", where Google, Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo! would all simultaneously go dark to protest SOPA and to highlight the fundamental danger the legislation poses to the function of the Internet itself.

This is kind of out of the norm, but Officeworks are now offering free in-store Wi-Fi Internet access to all of its customers. The new offer has been rolled out to all Officeworks stores across Australia.

The service does have restrictions, where it blocks illegal content, and has a time limit for all logins to enable multiple customers to get connected without overclogging their network. In order to access the free Wi-Fi, you'll also need to agree to a terms and service in your device's browser every time you connect.

I doubt this will attract customers to their store, but it could be a move like Amazon have used recently. Where they will offer deals in the store if you use their apps for price comparison, etc. Officeworks are definitely thinking outside the square with free Wi-Fi. What next, coffee?

A HP employee has sent The Verge a new video showing off a new ultra-think notebook from HP. The video has dramatic music that really, er, sets the mood for the launch of a new MacBook Air competitor.

Is it thinner than the MBA or the upcoming ultrabooks? There's nothing more than a 30-second tease, and then "Spectre" at the end. One thing is for certain, is if HP are showing off (well, at least have a video that an employee can "leak") then the Spectre must be close to release.

CES is next week, so we might actually see some Spectre action in Las Vegas. The Verge reports that it may be the 14-inch HP Envy 14 Spectre, which showed up at the FCC just two weeks ago. Only time will tell, and when that time comes, HP will either hit or miss.

ASUS released their Tegra 3-packing Eee Pad Transformer Prime before Christmas last year and they are pretty quick out of the gates in 2012 to deliver Android 4.0/Ice Cream Sandwich on January 12.

ASUS also released an update yesterday which improves focus issues with the Prime's camera and provides better touchscreen response and GPS performance. ASUS used Facebook to announce the update, and to thank customers for their ongoing support and address some of the growing issues that the Transformer Prime is experiencing.

The first issue ASUS address is the GPS problem, claiming the issue stems from the metallic unibody design meaning that the material may affect the performance of the GPS when receiving signals from satellites. ASUS reminds users that the Transformer Prime isn't a professional-grade GPS device and that signal strength can be influenced by a number of additional factors.

Nokia's entry-level value-priced Windows Phone is currently rolling out across the world: Lumia 710. It has virtually the same insides as the Lumia 800, sporting a 1.4GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 (WCDMA) processor, 512MB RAM, a rear-facing 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, 3.7-inch CBD LCD display and weighs in at 126 grams.

The task the Lumia 710 has is to allow greater penetration of the Windows Phone platform into the middle segment of the market. And since it shares hardware with the Nokia Lumia 800, it can be considered a second-generation Windows Phone, from the best value for money.

Because the Lumia 710 uses a plastic design, it cuts off some of the weight the usual premium handsets have, but with no consequences to build quality. It also features swappable back covers, in case you want to change things up, old-school Nokia style. You could have black or white Lumia 710 with back colors ranging from blue, pink, yellow and others.

RIM have taken a leaf out of HP's book and dumped their Android-powered BlackBerry Playbook to $299 in the U.S. and that's not all. The PlayBook is on sale through to February 4th.

RIM's official webstore is offering the 16, 32 and 64GB versions of the PlayBook for just $299. Yes, that's $299 for any size. Who would want to buy a 32 or 16GB model for $299 if you're able to get your hands on the 64GB model for the same price?

On top of this, if you want to access the proper Android Market on the PlayBook, the people over at CrackBerry have been good enough to detail the process, which requires a rooted PlayBook, WinSCP, the latest version of Cyanogen Google apps and a tad sprinkle of patience. Not all Android-native apps will work, but there are a bunch that you'll get access to.

With the on-going SOPA crap that the old fogies in the Government somehow think is a good idea, a team of hackers plan to launch their own communication satellite into space. The plans were detailed at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin.

The Hackerspace Global Grid (HGG) want to send at least one satellite into low orbit to communicate with various ground stations, creating an independent network. Activist Nick Farr has said:

Samsung's bulky, but sexy Galaxy Note smartphone will arrive in the U.S. sometime in the next 6 months. The Galaxy Note AT&T model will sport something a little surprising when compared to its European brother from the same mother, NFC.

The Galaxy Note sports a 5.29-inch Super AMOLED screen with a Full Touch Bar, Google Android 2.3 Gingerbread (and not Android 4.x Ice Cream Sandwich), an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with LED flash, a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, the usual BlueTooth, USB, Wi-Fi, and then, NFC (Near Field Communication).

The most surprising thing in that spec list is that a premier Samsung product launching in 2012 not including Ice Cream Sandwich, but this may change between now and release. At the moment, the processor type is unknown, another strange thing about this release. For a full spec list:

HP's TouchPad has gone through a million and one things, and another piece of the puzzle has leaked out that they tried to palm off its Palm/WebOS properties to potential buyers for a very nice $1.2 billion.

That is the same price HP paid for the company back in 2010, and even then, were criticized by analysts for the expensive buyout claiming the deal sorely overvalued Palm and that was over a year ago now. HP tapped the wallets of Amazon, Intel, Facebook and even Samsung to offload Palm. No one was willing to make such a large investment though.

Not only did HP put a $1.2 billion price tag on the property of Palm/WebOS, they insisted they maintained rights to use WebOS in their printers. Most companies would look away once they realised HP were flogging off the property for the same price, with preconditions and stipulations stuck to it. After being unable to rid themselves of Palm/WebOS, HP sent the project to the open-source bin so it can evolve, free of obligations from the company.

The Wikimedia Foundation has reached its goal of $20 million USD in donations for Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation announced today they had reached their goal and the banners that appeared asking for your donations will be removed.

A Wikipedia blog post by Jay Walsh noted that over one million donors from around the world collectively contributed toward the $20 million campaign. Walsh also stated that the 2011 total surpassed the 2008 total of a "meager" $4.5 million. Sue Gardner, Executive Director for Wikimedia Foundation, said the following in a message:

Originally, I didn't want to use the headline with a swear word in it, but it does look catchy. Now that you're reading this news, the latest news out of the UK will interest you in regards to Apple's iPhone 4S personal assistant, Siri.

A demo version of the phone was on display in Tesco, where a 12-year-old kid was testing it and asked Siri "How many people are there in the world?" Siri replied with "Shut the f**k up, you ugly tw**." Wow. Just wow, Siri.

UK-based newspaper, The Sun, had an exclusive story, where the mother of the child is obviously rather shocked and annoyed with Siri's response. She told The Sun:

Nintendo's next-generation console, the Wii U, is only a few months away from our grubby little paws. With this thought, The Daily has learned that Nintendo plans to implement a "full-blown app store" for the system.

At the moment, Nintendo mainly use repositories that act as "light" app stores: The DSi Shop for its portables, and the Wii Shop for the current Wii console. Most of the apps found on the 'stores' are just quite basic, and don't serve customers what they want like the Android Market and App Store on the smartphone/tablet devices.

The Wii U's as-yet-unnamed store will definitely offer more, proferring a wider variety of apps, according to a person familiar with the matter. Wii U owners will be able to use apps that operate on the Wii U itself, such as MLB.TV, and others that run independently on the Wii U's controller. Considering that the Wii U's controller is a beast in itself, sporting a 6.2-inch touch screen, one can imagine the possibilities it can bring to the table.

I fondly remember the first Paranormal Activity, I followed it for a while and had an early viewing of it and loved it. It wasn't the best horror movie, but it did what it was made to do: be super cheap on budget, be a decent movie and compared to Avatar, made a crap tonne of money-to-budget ratio.

According to a Paramount press release, there's a fourth Paranormal Activity coming out this year. Now, the second one (to me) was the peak of the series, I have a newborn at home now and those scenes are just... powerful. I mean, what would you do? If it were you? The third one, while good in explaining the back story, just didn't have enough scares.

A fourth one, I'd love to know what direction it would take. Here's the press release from Paramount:

Last month we visited the Thermaltake HQ in Taipei where we stumbled upon a few products where we got the chance to film them on video in this pre-CES 2012 preview of some new cooling products from the Taiwanese company.

Starting off in the air department we have the Frio Extreme which is similar in design to past Frio series air coolers from Thermaltake, but the Extreme version which will come out sometime in Q1 2012 takes things to a whole new level being able to provide up to 250 watts of CPU cooling ability.

Included on the cooler are two 120mm cooling fans and two aluminum heat blocks with six heatpipes. This cooler also comes with a new fan controller attached to it which allows you to adjust the fan speed in a small little black unit.

The world may be going through some changes, and I really think we're just beginning to scrape the surface of a real GFC, but Taiwanese foundries are talking about slicing prices by 10- to 15-percent for wafters built on mature node processes.

These wafters have lower production costs, so the foundries are passing on the savings to you and me, the customer. The move is said to build consumer confidence in building their inventory after a shaky 2011 in the U.S. and European markets. DigiTimes reports that although there is slow demand for mature process manufacturing, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) continues to see orders build up for the advanced 28nm technology (such as the great Radeon HD 7970 from AMD), according to sources at non Taiwan-based chip suppliers.

This is only a good thing, savings on technology. It also allows vendors to buy cheaper, and pass those savings onto the customer, too. All we need now is a drop in the mid to high-end range of GPUs and I'll be happy. Give me some HD 7970's for under $500 AUD and I'll be a happy chappy.

The first picture of a non-reference design AMD Radeon HD 7970, which comes from Gigabyte. The GV-R797OC-3GD is a factory-overclocked card, which makes use of Gigabyte's Ultra Durable VGA+ PCB and custom-design triple-fan WindForce cooler.

The Ultra Durable VGA+ PCB uses a 2oz copper layer for better electrical stability and heat distribution, ferrite-core chokes, low RDS (on) MOSFETs, hand-picked high-performance GDDR5 memory chips, and more. The cooler sports a combination of heatsinks and aluminum fin arrays to feed heat from the GPU, memory, and VRM to its copper heat-pipes and ventilated by three fans.

Gigabyte make use of a non-reference design, using non-reference cooling assembly, but most likely a reference design PCB, except, it's red. No details on clock speeds or pricing yet.

In the January 2012 issue of UK magazine PSM3, they suggest that the fourth major instalment in the PlayStation-exclusive God Of War series is coming at the end of this year and will feature online co-op play.

Co-op has been popular lately, with Resistance 3, Dead Island, Gears of War 3 and Portal 2 all sporting the amazing feature. Not that it's new, but it seemed to disappear when next-gen consoles and their seemingly watered-down games started coming out.

GoW IV's development news is nothing new, but the co-op nugget is. GoW IV will see players breaking out of Hades, with the two protagonists will be a dearly-departed Kratos and his equally undead brother, Deimos. I hope to see some more on this soon.

Welcome to 2012, where the end of the world is higher TV prices. This is what TV manufacturers such as LG want to bring, after being hit by profit declines over the years, this year will start with even thinner and lighter TVs in the hopes of sparking new customer interest and driving the average TV price, higher.

LG said on Friday that it plans to sell a 55-inch TV that is just, wait for it, 3/16 of an inch thick and only weighs 16.5 pounds. Samsung are expected to unveil a similar TV at the industry's biggest trade fair, Consumer Electronics Show, in just a few days time in Las Vegas.

Both companies have yet to discuss the thing we rub between our fingers as a gesture for... money. Of course, this new technology is expected to have a nice premium. NPD DisplaySearch estimates the new 55-inch TV models will begin at around $8000 in Q3 2012, and fall below the $4000 mark by the end of 2013 as sales volume increases and companies find new ways to manufacture the TVs less expensively.