Latest News - Page 393

The corpse of a dead star approximately 20 times the size of our Sun has been showcased by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

In a new post on the ESA's X account, the space agency explains how the Hubble Space Telescope has been used to lift the veil on the supernova remnant known as the "Veil nebula". According to the ESA's website listing for the image the Veil Nebula was a star that was approximately 20 times the size of our Sun that sadly came to the end of its life about 10,000 years ago. The star ended its life in a fiery and cataclysmic explosion, leaving behind the incredible remnants we are observing today from 2,400 light-years away.

The Veil Nebula is located in the constellation Cygnus, and the above image is comprised of three different filters by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 instrument. The instrument has captured only a small fraction of the Veil Nebula and has highlighted some of its most prominent components, such as the presence of hydrogen, sulphur, and oxygen atoms. Researchers estimate if a person was looking at the Veil Nebula without a telescope ,it would be about as large as six full Moons placed side by side.

The threat of trade tariffs from President Donald Trump has pressured Apple to invest half a trillion dollars into the United States across the next four years, with the company saying on Monday it will hire as many as 20,000 new workers.

According to a new article by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple said on Monday that it will be spending $500 billion over the next four years in the US, and at least part of that money will be dedicated to the construction of new server manufacturing facility slated for Houston, a new supplier academy in Michigan, and additional spending being funneled to current US-based suppliers. Notably, Apple pledging this $500 billion comes only days after Apple CEO Tim Cook met with President Trump in the Oval Office.

Trump said shortly after the meeting that Cook is "investing hundreds of billions of dollars," insinuating the company wants to avoid the new tariffs Trump has threatened to implement, which include a 10% tax on items imported from China - the location of where Apple builds the majority of its iPhones and many other products. Gurman writes that Apple's pledge of a $500 billion investment across four years marks the biggest commitment Apple has made to the US to date.

Every now and again, a product comes to market that makes you ask the question - who is for exactly? And who has been asking for it? ASUS unveiled that product and it's a combination of a standard PC mouse and fragrances.

Introducing ASUS' new "Fragrance Mouse MD101," and at first, I thought this was an extremely early April Fool's joke, but no, this is real, with ASUS explaining its new mouse in a new website listing that states the company's first mouse that "boasts an internal fragrance compartment with a refillable vial for aromatic oils and scents." Yes, you read that correctly. A mouse that has a compartment and a refillable vial for "aromatic oils and scents". According to the website, buyers are able to personalize their workspace with a specific scent thanks to the Frangrance Mouse.

I'm not exactly sure who has been asking for a mouse with a compartment for their fragrance oils, but I'm morbidly curious about its effectiveness. As for its other features, ASUS has packed the Fragrance Mouse with a 2.4GHz wireless and Bluetooth technology for robust connectivity, along with an assurance of a 10-million-click lifespan. Moreover, ASUS claims the power saving technology within the mouse enables an entire year of use off a single battery.

The latest issue of EDGE Magazine included a feature on DOOM: The Dark Ages. Featuring discussions with ID Software's studio director, Marty Stratton, and Creative Director Hugo Martin, the piece provided some detailed new insights into the gameplay & inspiration behind the highly anticipated title.

The column explored how the gameplay is "quite literally, more grounded."The Doomslayer will no longer sport a double jump, and instead, the prequel opts for a bulkier, tank-like approach to its main character. The developers also reference Batman Year One and The Dark Knight comics as influences for their approach to the Doomslayer this time around, with gameplay catered more closely toward brute-like power.

The shield-saw, in Captain America-like fashion, will complement this playstyle - allowing players to launch it sharply and swiftly with a squeeze of the left bumper. It'll also react differently in combat depending on whether it hits flesh, armor, or energy-based surfaces. Similar to Kratos's Leviathan axe in the recent God of War games, the shield will also provide ways to interact with the environment-for example, dislodging chains to discover hidden areas or jamming the shield into machinery to activate openings.

If you're a GeForce RTX 50 Series early adopter and have a GeForce RTX 5090 or GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, there's a slight chance that it might not be performing as it should. After some users reported slightly slower-than-expected performance and discrepancies in their GPU specs versus the official specs, NVIDIA has confirmed that an issue affects the first run of RTX Blackwell cards.

In an official statement, NVIDIA has confirmed that 0.5% or 1 in 200 GeForce RTX 5090, RTX 5090D, and RTX 5070 Ti are shipping with fewer ROPs than specified. "The average graphical performance impact is 4%, with no impact on AI and Compute workloads," NVIDIA's statement reads. "Affected consumers can contact the board manufacturer for a replacement," it continues, adding that the "production anomaly" has been fixed.

NVIDIA didn't mention the GeForce RTX 5080 in its statement; however, a new case over the weekend on Reddit points to the ROPs issue potentially affecting RTX 5080 cards, too. With this in mind, let's break down how to check the ROP count on your GeForce RTX 50 Series GPU and the correct values you should see.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50 Series launch has been plagued by issues, from availability to pricing to the return of melting power cables and connectors when trying to game on the new GeForce RTX 5090 flagship. The past few days have seen the RTX 50 Series make headlines for another issue: GPUs being shipped with missing ROPs.

Raster Operators (ROPs) are a key part of the render pipeline and are dedicated bits of hardware that make up the specs of a modern GeForce RTX graphics card. The new flagship GeForce RTX 5090 ($1999) ships with 176 ROPs; however, some early adopters noticed that their cards only reported 168 ROPs - and that performance was not where it should be.

NVIDIA released a statement to confirm that this issue has been corrected and that those affected can contact their board manufacturers for a replacement. According to Team Green, 0.5% or 1 in 200 GeForce RTX 5090, RTX 5090 D, and RTX 5070 Ti cards are affected. The company didn't mention the GeForce RTX 5080 in its statement, but over the weekend, Redditor "gingeraffe90" reported that GPU-Z was listing their RTX 5080 as having 104 ROPs instead of 112.

The Pentagon is moving toward investing in autonomous killer robots and less in artificial intelligence, according to a senior Pentagon official who spoke to Defense One under anonymity.

In a recent interview, the Pentagon official revealed the possibility of a shake-up of internal offices that will involve combining parts of several innovation-fostering offices to form a new office that focuses solely on purchasing cutting-edge products from companies. Notably, the official said the Pentagon is looking to spend less on research and more on tangible arms and gear, such as weapons systems and business systems.

Additionally, an unnamed Pentagon official said there's currently work being done to shift the "business model" of the Pentagon from the government paying, for example, $100 million for the research and a company building a prototype to the Pentagon paying $2 million less and the company building the prototype. Essentially, the Pentagon wants to shift the research and development costs onto the private sector, or in this case, defense contractors.

Evidence of a new Xbox controller has resurfaced, with leaker eXtas1s analyzing new entries found in Xbox Cloud Gaming files. While the controller was first detailed in Microsoft's 2023 court leaks, the latest findings suggest it is still in development.

The leak was first uncovered by dataminer BetX Cloud, who uncovered new codenames in the XCloud source code. These findings were then reported by eXtas1s, who posted the details on X and later provided a full breakdown in a YouTube video. The codenames include Sebile, a controller that was first referenced in the 2023 Activision-Blizzard trial, and Actium, a codename that has previously been linked to a next-generation controller - possibly an Elite model or a modular split controller.

In his long-form video explainer, eXtas1s highlights that the controllers represent an entirely new system of controllers. While he clarifies that no release date is confirmed, he speculates that they could be compatible with the next-generation Xbox and might even launch before the new console generation.

The world's most powerful space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, has turned its sensitive instruments on the center of the Milky Way galaxy and the supermassive black hole located there called Sagittarius A*.

Most celestial objects are gravitationally bound in one way or another to Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole located at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. To put in perspective the sheer size of Sagittarius A*, researchers estimate you could fit 4.1 million Suns in the supermassive black hole in terms of total mass, and if you lined Suns side by side, about 17 Suns could fit across the event horizon. It's fair to say it's big. Sagittarius A* is about 26,000 light-years away from Earth, and researchers decided to point Webb at it to observe its chaotic impact on the surrounding space.

In a new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers write Webb's observations revealed incredible flares of light ejecting out from the supermassive black hole. These observations from Webb mark the most detailed look researchers have been able to make around the Milky Way's central black hole, and according to the study, these flares of light are coming from the inner edge of the accretion disk, which is a disklike flow of gas, plasma, dust, or particles around any astronomical object, and in this case Sagittarius A*.

If you miss the days of pure co-op experiences, mark your calendars for the release of Split Fiction, the new title by EA and Hazelight Studios.

For those who don't know, Hazelight Studios are the developers of successful titles such as It Takes Two and A Way Out, two titles that are pure co-op experiences. During PlayStation's recent State of Play, we got a look at the newest title from Hazelight Studios, Split Fiction, which will take players on a journey about friendship through Mio and Zoe as they encounter strange gravity-defying situations. Split Fiction will be launching on March 6 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on Steam, Epic Games Store, and the EA App for $49.99.

Since Split Fiction is co-op focussed, it will be arriving with the Friend's Pass, which means anyone who owns a copy of Split Fiction can invite a friend to play the entire game with them for free, even if they don't own a copy. Here's how it works. One person needs to own a copy of Split Fiction, and the friend needs to install Friend's Pass on their chosen platform (cross-platform play is enabled). The owner of the game then sends the friend an invite to play Split Fiction and bam, both players are enjoying the co-op adventure.

A new report from financial analyst and reporter Dan Nystedt and Taiwanese news outlet Commercial Times suggests that NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5070 and RTX 5060 Series GPUs are experiencing production delays.

Although the GeForce RTX 5060 has yet to be formally announced, the GeForce RTX 5070 is still on track for a March 5, 2025, release with a starting price of $549 USD. With full production for the GeForce RTX 5070 pushed back until mid-March, this could lead to another GeForce RTX 50 Series launch (like the RTX 5090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5070 Ti) with limited stock and availability.

The GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, which launched last week, is currently sold out on Newegg, with all models listed as "Out of Stock. "According to this report, NVIDIA discovered "performance issues in the chips" for the GeForce RTX 5060 and RTX 5070, which required a fix.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was released late last year - a first-person adventure that wowed fans and critics alike with its fantastic take on the iconic cinematic hero. The first-party Xbox Game Studios title from Machine Games and Bethesda was built using a custom version of id Software's id Tech engine called Motor. On PC, the game shipped with a stunning Full Ray Tracing or Path Tracing mode - making it one of the best-looking PC games currently available.

Late last week, the game received its highly anticipated Update 3, which not only fixes a long list of outstanding bugs and minor issues but also adds full DLSS 4 support. This includes the new transformer-based AI model for Super Resolution and Ray Reconstruction, dramatically improving the game's image quality when running Full Ray Tracing. It also adds Multi Frame Generation support for GeForce RTX 50 Series owners.

There's great news for AMD Radeon and Intel Arc GPU owners, too. Update 3 also adds FSR 3.1 Super Resolution and Frame Generation and Intel XeSS 1.4 upscaling support. Interestingly, Intel XeSS 2 with Frame Generation isn't included.

Physical copies of Assassin's Creed Shadows have surfaced early, with users sharing screenshots and gameplay footage online. Multiple listings for the game - set to release on March 20 - have appeared on Facebook Marketplace, though the source of the leaked copies remains unknown.

X user @DannyStevens was among the first to share images of the unreleased title, posting photos of the box art and PS5 installation screen. Ubisoft has been quick to issue copyright strikes against leaked footage, but once it's out there, the risk of widespread spoilers and early gameplay circulation remains.

The users claim to have acquired the copies on Facebook Marketplace. Listings have also appeared on Mercari, where copies were sold for $100 USD. While such listings included photos of installation screens and packaging, it's important to note that there's a significant risk of scams associated with fake copies. We advise users to report any suspicious listings to the respective platform.

As reported in an exclusive by The Direct, Insomniac Games' voice actor Yuri Lowenthal attended MultiCon, an LA wildlife recovery benefit. During his interview with Russ Milheim, he touched on Peter Parker's role in Spider-Man 3, confirming that despite stepping into temporary retirement at the end of Spider-Man 2, Peter will still play a very active role in the next game.

Lowenthal's comments are one of the first real details we've received regarding Spider-Man 3. The ending of the second game left Peter's future somewhat ambiguous, with the character stepping away from his Spider-Man duties to attend to his personal life and focus on the Emily-May Foundation. With Miles Morales taking the mantle as the sole protector of New York, the ending raised questions as to how the protagonist's duties will be handled in the next entry.

Apple recently announced the iPhone 16e, the company's "budget" smartphone offering, which has posed a difficult decision for consumers looking to upgrade.

The iPhone 16e is intended to be a budget smartphone offering, but the price tag of $599 has created a difficult decision for consumers looking to upgrade to the latest generation of iPhone as the iPhone 16e is just $200 less than the standard iPhone. So, should you buy the iPhone 16e or save up a little longer to buy the standard? Below is a list of all of the concessions you will make if you want to save a few dollars and buy the iPhone 16e.

There is one aspect the iPhone 16e has over the standard iPhone 16, and that's battery life. With its reduction in graphics cores and perhaps the inclusion of the new in-house Apple modem, the iPhone 16e has 26 hours of video playback versus the iPhone 16's 22 hours. In summary, the iPhone 16e is a cut-down iPhone 16 standard and omits a range of features that some consumers might find unnecessary anyway. But which one should you choose? That depends on your current smartphone and intended payment method.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is going to be far more than just a video game, with developer Rockstar working on Project ROME (Rockstar Online Modding Engine) that will see GTA 6 turned into the next big metaverse.

In a post on X by "GTA 6 Countdown" that links to multiple reports from the last couple of months, former FiveM staffers claim that Project ROME has been internally in development before the company acquired Cfx in 2023, replacing FiveM inside of GTA 5. Not just that, but Rockstar is reportedly in contact with some of the biggest Roblox and Fortnite content creators about creating custom experiences inside of GTA 6.

The post adds articles that cover some of the topics, with a question about FiveM being dead, and "long live ROME" to which the post explains: "Last year, GTA Focal spoke with ex-FiveM staffers who claimed a FiveM killer was being made internally at Rockstar before the company bought Cfx.re. Since then, the project has reportedly been brought back from the dead and is called ROME (Rockstar Online Modding Engine). In the summer of 2024, Rockstar had put a new public_mission_creator file inside of a GTA Online update".

TSMC is reportedly experiencing healthy development progress with its next-gen 2nm process node, with monthly production capacity expected to hit up to 80,000 wafers before the end of the year.

In a new report from UDN, we're learning that TSMC could hit 50,000 to 80,000 wafers per month by the end of the year, with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei mentioning that his company continues to expand its advanced process and advanced packaging capacity in Taiwan. This includes 3nm expansion in Tainan, 2nm expansion in Hsinchu and Kaohsiung, and the expansion of multiple advanced packaging capacity in multiple locations across Taiwan.

TSMC's cutting-edge 2nm process node has reportedly entered an intensive trial production phase, with estimations that its Hsinchu Baoshan plant having a monthly production capacity of 5000 to 10,000 wafers of new 2nm chips, with its Kaohsiung plant starting a small-scale trial production.

Thailand's DIY market is totally exhausted of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs, with a retailer telling customers that they'll be waiting until at least July for new Blackwell GPUs.

In a post on Weibo, "UX_thoughtful" said that the DIY section of a retailer in Thailand says that there no NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs whatsoever in the country, reporting that "come to Thailand to see the market, there is no 50 series graphics cards. In the DIY area, and the clerk said to wait until July".

NVIDIA launched its new GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 a few weeks ago now, with the RTX 5070 Ti launching days ago... we're not even into March yet, but Thailand has zero stock of the new RTX 50 series GPUs and it'll be a few more months to wait at the very least. Saddening day for PC gamers in Thailand.

Released as part of the season 2 update for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, the single-lane' Bullet' map is one of the new additions that's grabbing attention. Featuring 6v6 battles packed into a fast-moving bullet train, the map has quickly made a name for its distinctive design and the chaotic battles spawning from its absurd layout.

From a level design perspective, the map has garnered feedback ranging from it being the best thing ever, to being called 'one of the worst designed maps' players have ever seen. After all, having 12-player gameplay across a single corridor is certainly bound to lead to some interesting gameplay outcomes.

However, a fun aspect of the map is its parallels to famous train sequences from Hollywood films. With battles from within first-class cabins to the fast-moving exterior, the experience is very much like something out of an action movie. Some fans have drawn comparisons to Bond films, while others cited the train scene from The Wolverine (2013) as one of the immediate examples. But perhaps the most fitting comparison is Bullet Train (2022), starring Brad Pitt.

In another advancement for robotics, Figure AI has introduced Helix, a new Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model that enables humanoid robots to see, understand, and interact with the world in real-time. Unlike traditional robotic systems, Helix allows robots to pick up objects they've never seen before, coordinate with other robots, and even understand natural language instructions, like putting away groceries in the right place.

In the footage, Helix-powered robots are presented with common grocery items - like eggs, fruit, and ketchup - and tasked with figuring out where they belong. Unlike conventional robots that require extensive programming or thousands of pre-recorded examples, Helix enables these robots to make real-time decisions based on their environment and natural language commands.

The robots move slowly throughout the demonstration, taking their time to process each object in the scene. However, they very carefully and deliberately identify each object in the scene, and carry out the task as assigned.