Latest News - Page 455

A new study has outlined how a specific protein within a genetic sequence can, if altered, extend the life of a species by up to 30%.

The new study published in the scientific journal Nature Communications has identified a protein within the cytoskeleton of a cell sourced from a fruit fly. The cytoskeleton is the structure that helps maintain the shape of the cell and is comprised of a network of interlinking protein filaments. The researchers were able to identify a protein called F-actin as the catalyst for extending life and looked at the relationship between F-actin and how it accumulates in the brain as the aging process continues.

The researchers found that as F-actin builds up in the brain, it slows down the cellular-level self-cleaning process, which ultimately leads to a build-up of cellular waste within the brain. The researchers tweaked the genetic sequence of the F-actin within a group of fruit flies and found that because the F-actin wasn't accumulating in the brains of the flies, hindering the cellular clean-up process, the flies' lifespan increased by up to 30%. Additionally, the researchers state the reduction in F-actin in the brain led to the flies displaying increased overall health benefits and signs of other organs improving.

NVIDIA has surpassed Apple for the second time to become the world's single most valuable publicly traded company after the GPU maker's share price rose nearly 3%.

NVIDIA's market cap reached $3.43 trillion, putting it just a smidge above Apple's $3.4 trillion. As for NVIDIA, the company has seen extreme growth that can be attributed to it supplying the demand for hardware to conduct artificial intelligence-based tasks. Additionally, NVIDIA was extremely well-positioned to capitalize on the early opportunity of AI, which has proven very beneficial for it as the company has been able to maintain its extraordinary growth and it's dominating lead in the GPU market.

For context, NVIDIA's share price has skyrocketed an astounding 2,700% over a 5-year period, with the company's share price having almost tripled in just 2024. As for Apple, the company's share price has increased 17% this year, with some industry analysts predicting Apple's share price could increase when Apple Intelligence is fully deployed. Additionally, Apple was the first company to reach a $1 trillion and $2 trillion market cap, and NVIDIA briefly surpassed Apple's market cap back in June.

Hogwarts Legacy recently surpassed 30 million in sales, making it the best-selling game of 2023 and one of the best-selling games ever. Warner Bros. Discovery, the new publicly traded company formed in 2022, is looking to capitalize on the Harry Potter franchise with new TV shows and other new things. However, Hogwarts Legacy 2 is one of the company's biggest priorities.

"A successor to 'Hogwarts Legacy' is one of the biggest priorities in a couple of years down the road," Warner Bros. Discovery's CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said. "So there is certainly a significant growth contribution from that [games] business in our strategic outlook here."

For a brand as big as Warner Bros., you'd expect a video game to sit lower on the list of things to focus on after movies and television, but that's not the case here. Even after the failure of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League earlier this year, the company's games division is a "strategic asset" - and Hogwarts Legacy 2 will play a role in shaping the future of the Harry Potter brand.

Bethesda Game Studios is one of the most celebrated RPG game development studios ever, thanks to iconic releases like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 3. Although its games can be rough around the edges, they offer players a level of freedom and customization that is rarely seen.

The studio's most recent game, the sci-fi epic Starfield, is arguably its most ambitious - with a thousand planets to explore, factions to discover, companions to enlist, and spaceships and outposts to build. However, it's also Bethesda's most polarizing release to date, thanks partly to how the studio's aging Creation Engine makes space exploration feel disjointed and cumbersome.

The big problem for many was that Starfield felt like a never-ending sequence of loading screens. In Skyrim and Fallout, entering a city or building brings up a loading screen, too, but in Starfield, there were exponentially more due to the sheer size and scope of the game. Modder PanConKeso is looking to fix that with the new Seamless City Interiors mod, which turns interior locations into exterior locations, removing the need for a loading screen.

Researchers at "Which?," a UK organization that's a subsidiary of the Consumers' Association, discovered that some air fryers may be sharing their owners personal information and sending it back to China for marketing purposes.

The researchers at the organization looked at three air fryer brands and found that all of them requested permission to record audio through the user's phone, but didn't specify the reason why the microphone permission was necessary. More specifically, the air fryers were from brands such as Aigostar and Xiaomi, both of which were found to be sending their buyers personal data back to servers located in China.

Air fryers weren't the only device the team looked at as it also conducted an analysis on smartwatches, smart speakers and smart TVs. Starting with smart speakers, the researchers found that Amazon's Echo device was more consumer-friendly as it has the option to skip various requests to share data. However, Amazon and Google accounts are required to use the Echo Pop or Nest Mini, which contain trackers that users cannot opt out of.

Steam Game Recording is out of Beta and available for all Steam users as part of the latest client update. It is similar in functionality to something like NVIDIA's ShadowPlay for GeForce GPU owners, AMD's Adrenaline Software, or the Xbox Game Bar.

Steam Game Recording allows you to record and share gameplay clips using NVIDIA or AMD GPU hardware encoding with Background Recording and On-Demand Recording modes. However, there's a lot more to it than that. Valve has developed some innovative features for its take on recording gameplay as it's built into Steam.

The first is the ability to bring the Steam Overlay and the new Steam Timeline to 'jump back in time' and review your recent Background Recording as if it were a sports broadcast replay. The second feature is the ability to quickly clip footage that you want to keep with a simple, lightweight interface.

China space officials recently unveiled a new rocket design that is strangely close to SpaceX's design for the recently successful Starship rocket.

The similarities between the two rockets were pointed out in a recent article by Ars Technica, which states the design for its Long March 9 rocket, an ultra-heavy launch vehicle that is designed to transport the first Chinese astronauts to the surface of the Moon sometime in the 2030s. However, the new design appears to be heavily inspired or directly ripped off from SpaceX's Starship launch vehicle, as the new Long March 9 rocket has the same two-stage, fully reusable configuration as SpaceX's rocket, the same aerodynamic flaps to assist in landing, and more.

Notably, and as Ars Technica points out, this isn't the first time Chinese officials have copied designs from SpaceX, as it was only last week a Chinese space launch company called Cosmoleap published a promotional video that copied SpaceX's Mechazilla tower and its two chopstick arms. Additionally, a separate Chinese space startup called Space Pioneer announced its plans to develop a new rocket with a design suspiciously similar to SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has sat down for a lengthy discussion on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast, where he touched on the rumors that Tesla is developing a smartphone behind closed doors.

It has been long rumored that Tesla is developing a smartphone that will separate itself from the duopoly of operating systems, Android and iOS. However, these rumors have been just that, rumors, and have mostly been unfounded or simply murmurings. In fact, Musk has brought up the topic before as the Tesla CEO said in November 2022 that if Apple and Google decided to "boot" then-Twitter, and now X, from its respective app stores, Musk said there would be no other choice but to "make an alternative phone.

Now, on a recent episode of the JRE podcast, Musk was asked if there is any credibility to these rumors, or if he has ever considered making a smartphone. Musk responded quickly by saying, "No, we aren't doing a phone". When asked if he had ever thought about making one, Musk said, "We could do a phone. The operating system of a Tesla is Linux-based, but we have written a massive of software on top of that."

Corsair has announced that its new MP700 Elite SSDs are now available to buy.

The MP700 Elite is a PCIe 5.0 SSD using 3D TLC NAND that benefits from read speeds of up to 10,000MB/s and sequential writes of up to 8,500MB/s, with the drive available in 1TB or 2TB flavors.

Corsair observes:

Amazon's latest feather in the cap of its Prime Video service is a feature that recaps a series you're watching that's powered by AI.

It's called X-Ray Recaps, and the capability uses generative AI to create brief and easily digestible summaries of seasons of TV shows, Amazon explains.

We've all been there, and what with gaps of a year between seasons (or longer in some cases), it's easy to forget what was going on in the various subplots and threads of relationships in the show you were watching.

Apple is rumored to be heavily considering releasing a pair of smart glasses with augmented reality (AR) capabilities, according to a renowned Apple insider and Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman.

Gurman wrote in the latest edition of his Power On newsletter that he is hearing rumblings of Apple "seriously considering" releasing AR glasses. Most notably, these AR glasses wouldn't be completely independent as they would be tethered to an iPhone that would provide the glasses with any necessary processing power. Additionally, these glasses will reportedly transform into an accessory for watching movies, while also retaining a stylish look.

The Bloomberg reporter also writes that if Apple released these glasses, it would reinforce the iPhone as the center of its ecosystem, providing even more value to the device and potentially making it even more popular, especially considering the massive price reduction compared to the $3,500 Vision Pro, Apple's latest wearable venture. Now, Gurman has said that Apple has already started gathering feedback from employees in focus groups about the possibility of smart glasses.

You probably saw the launch of Nintendo's alarm clock (called Alarmo) recently, and if the immediate question on your lips was 'Can it run Doom' we've now got a definitive answer - yes.

The latest in the long line of attempts to get the weirdest gadgets and pieces of tech playing the classic 30-year-old shooter (yes, it really has been that long - actually just over three decades) has been shown off by GaryOderNichts on X.

You can see Doom running on the Alarmo in the above post, with it being the shareware version of the shooter (albeit with the WAD compressed and then uncompressed to the memory upon boot, to get around USB loader memory size limitations, we're told).

Insomniac Games, the developers of the popular Spider-Man games, and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, have highlighted what they believe to be the best feature within the soon-to-be-released PlayStation 5 Pro.

In a recent video published to the PlayStation YouTube channel, Insomniac Games has sat down to discuss PS5 Pro Enhanced and what that means for gamers. With only a matter of days until the release of the PS5 Pro, Insomniac Games, a Sony-owned studio, has highlighted the PlayStation 5 Pro's PSSR, or PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution as its best feature. This new feature is Sony's version of the upscaling technology being used by PC gamers, such as NVIDIA's popular DLSS, or AMD's FSR.

The new upscaling technology frees gamers from having to choose between Performance and Quality mode in games, which, on the PS5, forces gamers to decide between smoother gameplay and less visual fidelity or more visual fidelity and rougher gameplay. However, that is no longer the case, as pointed out by Jahrain Jackson, Principal Engine Programmer at Insomanic Games, "What excites me the most about the PS5 Pro is that you're basically getting both Performance and Fidelity in one package. There's no fear of missing out on something by choosing one or the other; it's really a game-changer."

The City of Columbus has confirmed that at least 500,000 people have been affected by a ransomware hack that potentially leaked a collection of personal information.

Ransomware traced back to the group known as Rhysida was detected on systems over the summer and now the City of Columbus, Ohio, has confirmed at least 500,000 people's data such as first and last names, dates of birth, home addresses, bank account information, and more, were leaked online. Reports indicate that Rhysida published approximately 3TB of stolen files on its blog after it failed to obtained a ransom from the city for the stolen data.

Letters were sent to the potentially affected individuals and were delivered to addresses around October 7. Notably, the confirmation didn't state how many victims received letters, or the specifics of the data that was leaked online, and is more than likely accessible somewhere on the dark web. Furthermore, security researcher Connor Goodwolf, legally called David Leroy Ross, said after downloading the stolen data from Rhysida he discovered one of the sources for the hack was the city's prosecutor.

Ubisoft plans to address its swaying away from the original story of its immensely popular Assassin's Creed franchise. The franchise was popularized through the story of Desmond Miles, a descendant of numerous familial lines that had sworn allegiance to the Assassins he rein-bodies through a device called the Animus.

Assassin's Creed boss Marc-Alexis Coté recently sat down for an interview where he reflected on Ubisoft's past installments into the Assassin's Creed franchise, and how the games released more recently have become somewhat detached from the meaningful past, present, and future connection players derived from the earlier titles. Coté goes on to say it was a difficult decision to end Desmond's storyline in Asssasin's Creed 3, and since then, the studio has struggled to find its footing.

The studio plans to fix this as the Assassin's Creed boss plans on making Assassin's Creed Shadows, which was recently delayed to next year following controversial artistic choices, will be the foundation for the new direction of the franchise. Assassin's Creed Shadows was originally planned for launch in October, but following major pushback from fans of the franchise Ubisoft decided to officially delay the title and push back its release to February next year.

Meta's plan to construct a nuclear-powered data center to support its exponentially growing AI ventures was foiled when a species of bees was discovered.

According to a new report from The Financial Times, Meta was negotiating a deal with an owner of an already established nuclear power plant, but the deal fell apart due to environmental and regulatory problems. The deal was for the operator of the nuclear power plant to provide electricity to a presumably nearby soon-to-be-constructed data center. The publication didn't reveal the location of the proposed data center, or the nuclear power plant operator, but it did reveal a rare species of bees was discovered on the land the project was meant to be built.

The FT report stated Mark Zuckerberg discussed this point at a company meeting last week, where he said the discovery of the bee species complicated the project, and contributed to the ultimate cancellation. The unfortunate setback for Meta won't stop the company from finding a new building location, along with a clean energy supply. With the rise in AI data centers and the incredible amounts of power needed to fuel them, nuclear power has been thrown back into the conversation as a viable solution.

NVIDIA's next-generation GeForce RTX 50 series "Blackwell" gaming GPUs aren't far away, with a reputable leaker saying "we will meet GeForce or Blackwell soon" on X just hours ago. Check it out:

The post is coming from leaker "kopite7kimi" with a simple "We will meet GeForce of Blackwell soon" which goes against previous rumors that NVIDIA would be introducing its new GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs at CES 2025 in January. We had heard not too long ago that NVIDIA was reportedly preparing the GeForce RTX 5090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5070 reveals at CES 2025 with releases staggered through January, February, and March 2025.

NVIDIA has hosted pretty large events for each new generation of GeForce graphics cards, so a big reveal at CES 2025 while a million-and-one other things are being announced, means that Team Green won't be the star of the show.

Meta has seemingly responded to the recent reports that top Chinese institutions linked to China's government have taken Meta's publicly available Llama model for military purposes by granting US government agencies access for defense purposes.

The announcement from Meta came after a report from Reuters claimed six researchers from three Chinese institutions, including two under the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) leading research body, used an early version of Meta's powerful AI model called Llama. The report claimed Meta's AI model was used by the researchers as a base for what is called "ChatBIT," and that this AI model was "optimised for dialogue and question-answering tasks in the military field," according to a paper reviewed by Reuters.

Notably, Meta's Llama model is open-source, meaning it is publicly available. However, Meta prohibits the use of any of its Llama models for military purposes, and, under its own guidelines, lists the following prohibited use cases for its AI models - "military, warfare, nuclear industries or applications, espionage". These guidelines fall in line with the push from the US government not to fall behind in the race to develop the most sophisticated AI model, as providing adversial countries with the tools to develop more sophisticated systems would jeopardize the US's substantial lead in the space.

Microsoft has been put in a tough position as the severance date for support for the world's most popular operating system is approaching, and users don't seem to be upgrading at the rate the Redmond company would like.

We have known for quite some time that Microsoft plans to officially cut support for Windows 10, the world's most popular operating system, in October of next year. Following the cut-off date, Windows 10 machines will no longer receive security updates from Microsoft, putting them at exponential risk of security breaches. It was only recently that Microsoft began offering users a $30 one-year continuation of Microsoft updates, with Enterprises needing to pay $61 and the education sector $1 (for the first year).

There is also the massive looming issue of what happens to all of the Windows 10 machines that don't meet the system requirements for Windows 11. Those machines will effectively be rendered useless as they will no longer be eligible to receive critical security updates. There are an estimated 240 million working computers soon to be thrown into landfills, according to technology firm Canalys, which issued a warning about this very problem back in December 2023.

Apple only just released iOS 18.1, which included the company's first slew of Apple Intelligence features. The new iOS update is currently being rolled out in different regions around the world, and we have already got a taste of what iOS 18.2 has in store.

We already know that Apple plans to release new Apple Intelligence features in the coming months, as the company stated in its announcement that Genmoji, Image Playground, and other AI features would be arriving at an unannounced date in December. Now, iOS 18.2 beta has been released to developers, and judging by what's included the coming iOS update will include some new Apple Intelligence features and improvements to the one's that have already been released.

According to reports the iOS 18.2 beta version includes additional improvements to the Camera Control button on iPhone 16 models, such as the inclusion of focus and exposure lock controls. Moreover, iOS 18.2 will include an update for the Find My app that allows the sharing of lost AirTags and other items with anyone. Apple has also enabled users the choice of upgrading to ChatGPT Plus, a subscription program to ChatGPT that enables larger image and file uploads, real-time conversations with AI, and various other features designed to improve AI interaction.