Latest News - Page 416

The Solar Orbiter is on a journey toward the Sun, and last year, in March, it reached the halfway point where it snapped twenty-five images of our local star, which have now been stitched together to form an insanely high-resolution image of the Sun.

For those that don't know, the Sun is preposterously large compared to Earth, with its diameter measuring 1.39 million km across (863,705 miles), compared to Earth's diameter of 12,769 kilometers (7,926 miles). Given its massive size, the Sun is responsible for 99% of the mass in the Solar System while also being the anchor point that all objects in the Solar System orbit due to its intense gravitational pull. The Sun has been doing this for the past 4.6 billion years, and while it can be violent and unpredictable at times with its constant outbursts of charged particles, without it, we wouldn't have life on Earth. Check out the image here.

Despite its necessity, we still don't know everything about the Sun, which is why the European Space Agency (ESA) has sent the Solar Orbiter on a journey to investigate it, with the space probe tasked to capture high-resolution images of our local star as it progresses. The Solar Orbiter was launched in February 2020 and is equipped with high-resolution imaging equipment, along with instruments to measure the Sun's magnetic fields and solar wind. The Solar Orbiter will come within 42 million km (26,097,590 miles).

Neuralink, the Elon Musk-led brain chip company, announced its preparing its next round of experiments, and this time around patients will be able to control a robotic arm with their thoughts.

Neuralink took to its official X account to announce a new "feasibility trial" that's goal is to expand the company's Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) offerings. Notably, the new trial will use the N1 implant, which involves controlling "assistive robotic arm". Neuralink writes the new trial has the objective of taking one of the first important steps to not only restoring digital freedom but also physical freedom for those suffering from paraplegia and other physically debilitating ailments.

Along with a description of the new trial, the company posted a link to its patient registry, which suggests Neuralink is still looking for the right patient. While Neuralink has never attempted this kind of trial before it has been conducted others in the past, with reports indicating that Caltech researchers implanted what was described as a "neural prosthetic device" into the brain of a paraplegic man. The device was connected to a robotic arm that he was able to control with his thoughts.

With Black Friday Sales in full effect, the Steam Autumn Sale has also started and will run until December 4 at 10 a.m. There are countless game deals worth revisiting, from recent releases to award-winning titles to indies and classics.

With up to 95% off discounts, you'd be hard-pressed not to find a game worth clicking on that 'Add to Cart' button. You can also save big on the Steam Deck, with Valve currently offering a 25% discount on the Steam Deck 512GB LCD, bringing its price down from $449 to $336.75. This is a great deal because the Steam Deck is still one of the best PC gaming handhelds on the market.

With that, we've decided to go through Steam Autumn Sale deals to find the best deals under $10 and $5, from classics in franchises like The Elder Scrolls, Assassin's Creed, The Witcher, Mass Effect, Halo, and Fallout to indie hits like Valheim and Subnautica, which are getting sizeable discounts.

Amazon has reportedly developed a new video AI model codenamed Olympus, a new generative artificial intelligence (AI) that can process images and videos (as well as text) according to The Information.

The outlet reports that Amazon's move with its new video AI model will reduce its reliance on Anthropic's chatbot, Claude, which is a popular model that Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers. The Information talked to two sources, who said that the new large language model (LLM) is codenamed Olympis, and will be capable of understanding and processing scenes in images and videos, helping people look for specific scenes for their video.

This can include making the best coffee, raindrops falling to the ground, and so much more with easy text prompts according to The Information's sources. Amazon's new Olympus video AI model could be announced as soon as next week, with the annual AWS re:Invent customer conference according to The Information's source.

Even though NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel are all prepping to launch brand-new GPUs in the coming months featuring brand-new architecture, new features, and a generational improvement in performance, there are still great deals on currently available cards.

With Black Friday Sales fully underway, several GeForce RTX and Radeon RX gaming GPUs are currently on sale at Newegg and Amazon. Several Ada Lovelace and RDNA 3 models have been discounted from their original MSRPs.

Is buying a brand-new GPU a few months before the new stuff arrives a bad idea? There's a definite risk; however, early rumors and leaks suggest that new GPU prices will increase in 2025, so we might spend more to get that better performance. Either way, the following GPUs are still great to game with in 2024, so let's get to it.

Black Friday deals are already here, and some of the two best online marketplaces to pick up new gadgets and technology is Amazon and Newegg.

Christmas is just around the corner, and now is a fantastic time to cross some of the names of the present list as prices have been slashed across a variety of products. Included in the long list of items that are discounted is Sony's PlayStation 5 and its controllers, which makes sense since the company just released its PlayStation 5 Pro.

Notably, the Slim version of the console that comes without a disc tray is the variant that's discounted, with buyers able to save just over $100 on Amazon and Newegg if they choose to purchase it during the Black Friday deal period. Additionally, if you already have a PS5, or recently purchased a PS5 Pro, now might be a good time to pick up an extra controller for cheap, as Amazon and Newegg are listing the PlayStation DualSense Wireless Controller for 28% off, dropping its price from $75 down to just $54. Below are the listings for each of the online marketplaces.

Elon Musk has tagged Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, pointing to a post on X where Microsoft's gaming division is actively NOT hiring "crusty white dudes" with Musk saying "this is illegal".

Ian Miles Cheong posted on X saying: "Microsoft's gaming division is excluding whites from being hired to work on their video games. ALl of their new hires are unqualified queer and black people because the company's executives have an explicit mandate again 'crust old white dudes'".

This was a reply to a post on X from Grummz, who was posting from Asmondgold's video, calling out the Art Director at Obsidian Entertainment, who posted on Bluesky something from Matt Hansen, the Art Director at Obsidian Entertainment, who said: "Reminder to Black artists out there who are looking for portfolio reviews or job advice. My DMs are open, and you will always have my priority. We got too many crusty white dudes in this field, please let me help you replace me one day - I want to go back to living in the woods".

Sony is developing a handheld gaming device that will play PlayStation 5 games, sources have told Bloomberg.

In a bid to expand its foothold on the hardware market, Sony is now experimenting with a new handheld that is capable of playing PS5 games while out and about. Sony is aiming at delivering console quality gaming while on-the-go, potentially similar to the range of handheld PCs from Valve and other major hardware-makers like Lenovo, ASUS, and MSI.

The device, sources tell Bloomberg's Takashi Mochizuki, would be a major iteration of the existing PlayStation Portal handheld with a significant power leap. The $199 PS Portal has become a hit for Sony, who has said their line of accessories is "highly profitable" for the games division.

It was only recently that Kadokawa, the parent company of renowned video game development studio FromSoftware, confirmed Sony officially expressed interest in purchasing the company, and now more details have emerged about the ongoing discussion.

In a new article by Bloomberg, Sony and Kadokawa are currently engaging in discussions about a potential merger, which would add FromSoftware and its catalog of established video game IPs, such as Elden Ring and the Dark Souls franchise, to Sony's portfolio of first-party offerings. However, the Bloomberg report states Sony is only interested in purchasing select Kadokawa IP, and the company has massive ownership over the Japanese anime and manga industry in Japan, which Sony is currently after in this deal.

The article states Kadokawa is only interested in the deal if Sony purchases the entire company and all of its assets rather than selling over select IP. Sony's reported push to acquire Kadokawa's anime and manga assets falls right in line with the company's previous acquisition of Crunchyroll in 2021 for $1.2 billion. It appears Sony is after more of the anime market, which makes perfect sense considering it is one of the fastest-growing sub-entertainment industries, with Japan's anime industry doubling over 10 years to $19.5 billion in 2022.

The big end-of-year game releases are slowing down, but a few notable PC games are still adding NVIDIA DLSS support this week - new additions to the over 600 games and apps with RTX technologies.

The first is Void Crew from developer Hutlihut Games and publisher Focus Entertainment, a 1 to 4-player co-op roguelite that has exited Early Access and is now available in version 1.0 form. It's a sci-fi game where you explore the universe alongside friends, man the turrets, perform repairs, exit the spaceship to go out on missions, and participate in epic battles amongst the stars.

Void Crew has a Very Positive rating on Steam. Many of the reviews praise its co-op gameplay, with one stating that it's "like Sea of Thieves and FTL had a baby." If you've played either of those games, that's some pretty high praise.

It was only last week The Onion announced it was purchasing Alex Jones' InfoWars website from the media moguls bankruptcy auction, following the more than $1 billion in damages Jones was ordered to pay after being found guilty of spreading misinformation about the Sandy Hook shooting.

The Onion announced it purchased the Infowars website and said its goal of the acquisition was to "end InfoWars' relentless barrage of disinformation for the sake of selling supplements and replace it with The Onion's relentless barrage of humor for good". The Onion didn't reveal how much it paid for InfoWars, or if the deal included the website's social media accounts, which have now been brought into relevancy as X has filed a limited objection to the transfer of ownership of InfoWars' X accounts to The Onion.

X Corporation cites its own Terms of Service (TOS) agreement in its objection that was filed in a federal Bankruptcy Court on Monday. The objection states the following, "Because the X accounts are governed by the TOS, the TOS make clear that X accounts are X Corp.'s 'exclusive property." According to X's TOS, accounts cannot be transferred, gifted, sold, or assigned to other parties "without express written consent" from X.

A new report from Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson has claimed Ubisoft is working on an Animal Crossing-style game that will also have building similar to Minecraft.

The report states Ubisoft has been developing the title codenamed "Alterra" for approximately 18 months, and that it was born out of a cancellation of another that uses voxel creation, the process of building 3D models using 3D pixels or cubes. The rumored title is described as a social simulator that allows players to live on an island on which they can build structures, gather materials, and interact with NPCs called Matterlings.

Additionally, the publication states sources have informed it that players can leave their island and visit other worlds, each of which will have different enemies, Matterlings, biomes, materials, etc. Insider Gaming writes it was able to see images of the Matterlings and said the NPCs resemble Funko Pop characters by their physical design, as they have large heads and smaller bodies.

From developer Machine Games, the studio behind the acclaimed Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a new cinematic first-person action game launching on December 8, 2024. The first-party title, developed alongside Bethesda Game Studios' Todd Howard, also releases day one into Xbox Game Pass on PC and Console.

In a new rapid-fire interview with YouTube channel MinnMax, creative director Axel Torvenius and design director Jens Andersson were asked a wide-ranging number of things related to the game, including news that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is "the biggest and longest game that Machine Games have ever done."

Although they didn't discuss how long a typical playthrough will take gamers to complete, they confirmed that the game has around 3 hours and 45 minutes of cutscenes - almost two Indy films' worth of story.

TeamGroup's new T-CREATE EXPERT P32 Desktop External SSD is an absolute monster regarding storage capacity, with up to 16TB on offer. This is a consumer-facing product for creators and enthusiasts looking for the sort of external SSD with which they don't have to worry about data management - unless they decide to install their entire Steam library.

Available in 8TB and 16TB configurations, the T-CREATE EXPERT P32 features a USB 3.2 Type-C interface compatible with USB Type-C and Thunderbolt devices that delivers up to 1,800 MB/s transfer speeds. For creators, 16TB is equal to 672 minutes of raw 120FPS 4K video files.

The sturdy little unit's outer shell is crafted from aluminum. The company's patented graphene heat dissipation pad for silent operation cools the internal SSD. And it comes with a 3-year warranty for peace of mind.

Samsung is reportedly prepping to launch the world's first 27-inch OLED display with a blisteringly fast 500 Hz refresh rate. The 1440p display and QD-OLED panel would surpass the current maximum refresh rate of 480 Hz, as seen in LG's UltraGear 27GX790A-B and ASUS's ROG Swift PG27AQDP.

Going from 480 Hz to 500 Hz might not seem like a massive jump, but it's an important and notable milestone nonetheless. Samsung's QD-OLED panels, which combine Quantum Dot and OLED technologies, deliver exceptional color accuracy and contrast compared to standard LCDs. A wide range of brands adopt the company's panels, so we could see several 500 Hz OLED displays hit the market in 2025.

According to the report, this new 500 Hz panel is in the final stages of development. The first gaming monitors to feature it are expected in the first half of the year, so we might see it in action at CES 2025.

The new OneXFly F1 Pro is a premium gaming handheld with a 7-inch 1080p 144 Hz OLED display with a peak brightness of 800 nits and the first to feature the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor with RDNA 3.5 graphics. It looks fantastic, too, with a stylish design, and OneXPlayer describes it as a "gaming beast."

And with that, its cutting-edge hardware and top-tier performance don't come cheap. The AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 model with 32GB of LPDDR5X-7500 memory and 1TB of M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD storage is priced at $1,339.00 USD, which is the early bird price; the regular MSRP is $1,499.00. The cheaper AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 365 model starts at $1,009.00 USD.

The OneXFly F1 Pro is available to order now, with shipping expected to commence at the end of November. The company has also released a video showcasing Black Myth: Wukong and Cyberpunk 2077 benchmarks, comparing the OneXFly F1 Pro to the ROG Ally X from ASUS.

A large portion of PC gamers are utilizing Steam as not only a marketplace to buy and collect a library of games, but also for the data it provides on the games themselves.

While the specifics of exactly how many players are playing, have bought, or have flagged a title aren't blatantly public on the Steam listing for a game, an approximation of that data can be found on websites such as SteamDB or Steam Charts. Gamers typically use these websites to see how many players are playing a game at a specific time, to track the price of the title on Steam, and to see how the game was received by the public. All of this information is then used to make an informed decision about purchasing a title.

Despite the value these websites provide gamers by shining a light on the typically hidden performance stats of games, Ubisoft insiders have claimed the company isn't a fan. According to a post on the FandomPulse Substack, which quotes insiders at the company, Ubisoft, along with "other companies" want Valve to disable or restrict the APIs that are used by tools such as SteamDB and Steam Charts. The Ubisoft insiders said this was a direct response to the failure of Star Wars Outlaws, which Ubisoft themselves confirmed didn't reach internal expectations.

Microsoft is currently working out several key problems with Windows 11 24H2, the company's latest version of Windows 11.

According to Redmond, the latest Windows 11 24H2 update contains several bugs that result in some issues presenting themselves within the operating system. Users have previously reported that if administrative privileges weren't granted, it would be difficult to change the time zone in the Date & Time view, which Microsoft confirmed was the case but only within the Settings app. This problem, along with others widely reported by users on Microsoft's community forums and Reddit, was confirmed by Microsoft in a Windows health release on Friday last week.

Some of the most prominent issues were related to USB connectivity issues, which Microsoft has responded to by blocking the Windows 11 24H2 update on computers with USB scanners that support the eSCL protocol, which is a driverless scanning protocol that works over Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and USB connections. Windows 24H2 users began reporting compatibility problems with a wide list of devices approximately a month ago, and the list covers devices such as multi-function printers, scanners, modems, and network-connected devices that utilize the eSCL protocol.

Last week, telecommunications executives sat in front of the Biden administration and discussed the exponential frequency of cyber attacks from China on the United States, with one Senator saying the attacks from China make severe cyber security events such as Solar Winds caused by Russia-affiliated bad actors look like "child's play."

The details come from Senator Mark R Warner, who spoke to the press and said that "my hair is on fire" with the ramping cyber attacks from China, which started increasing well before the recent US election. Additionally, the Senator stated the presence and nature of the attacks may require the replacement of "literally thousands and thousands and thousands" of routers, switches, and other potentially infiltrated hardware.

Furthermore, the Senator warned that the extent to which these attacks have affected US networks is currently unknown, describing the situation as follows: "The barn door is still wide open, or mostly open." More specifically, US telecommunications networks that have been infiltrated may provide Chinese state employees or affiliated hackers with the means of listening in on phone calls, even as high as President-elect Donald Trump.

Microsoft deservedly received criticism over its unveiling of Windows Recall, the company's latest AI feature that enables users to "recall" what they were doing on the PC by asking via natural language or scrolling back through a provided timeline.

When Recall was first unveiled, it was met with heavy criticism from security experts as the new AI tool works by indiscriminately taking screenshots of a user's desktop and then storing those images locally within a folder. This means Recall would also capture user passwords and other sensitive information, and since all of that data is stored in a single folder, a hacker or bad actor gaining access to that folder would compromise all account information, potentially leading to fraud, theft, and other cybercrime.

Microsoft responded to these concerns by pulling Recall right before the rollout of its new Copilot+ PCs and then announcing additional security layers for users. After what was meant to be only weeks of delay, Microsoft re-released Recall this month, but this time to Windows Insiders who have Copilot+ PC hardware. Since the release, Windows Insiders have been reporting problems with the new feature, with the main problem being a delay in the time Recall takes snapshots of the desktop, which results in there being gaps in the feature's memory or timeline over the course of a session.