Latest News - Page 5

A part of NASA's "We Asked a NASA Professional" series on YouTube, the space agency has answered the following question - "Is there oxygen on Mars?"

The short answer is "yes", but it's hardly the amount that we have here on Earth and definitely not enough for a human to breathe while walking around on the surface. To put it into perspective of how little oxygen Mars' atmosphere contains, NASA says the amount of oxygen present in Mars' atmosphere is 0.13%, compared to 21% in Earth's atmosphere. What Mars' atmosphere is rich in is carbon dioxide, which can be useful.

NASA technologists have created a piece of technology called MOXIE, or the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment. NASA has equipped Perseverance with a MOXIE, and only a few months ago, the rover was able to successfully extract oxygen from the carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere. The amount of oxygen that was extracted was only small, but the experiment proved the concept works.

Microsoft has just unveiled its next-gen Surface Pro 8 which delivers upgrades in virtually all areas, and especially in its operating system department -- Windows 11.

The new Surface Pro 8 features a lush 13-inch "PixelSense Flow Display" offering a smooth 120Hz refresh rate, a larger, faster display than any Surface Pro before. We also have Dolby Vision and Adaptive Color Technology on the display, with the Surface Pro 8 running at 60Hz by default, and only ramping to 120Hz when performing specific tasks or using the pen accessory.

Microsoft is tapping into the Dynamic Refresh Rate feature built into Windows 11 to increase battery life, because having the display at 120Hz the entire time would suck the battery down considerably.

GIGABYTE is working on a plethora of 600-series motherboards, ready for Intel's unleashing of its 12th Gen "Alder Lake" CPUs that are not too far away now.

We have the flagship GIGABYTE Z690 AORUS EXTREME motherboard which will feature what should be a beautiful, kick-ass monoblock and rock out with its new RAM out in DDR5 support. There'll also be AORUS MASTER and AORUS TACHYON motherboards, exclusive with next-gen DDR5 RAM.

GIGABYTE will be looking after DDR4 owners with the AORUS ELITE, AORUS PRO, and AORUS ULTRA which will all include DDR4 RAM support. GIGABYTE is reportedly introducing a new model in the AORUS ELITE STEALTH, so expect to see more on that over the coming months.

AMD has just launched its RDNA 2-powered Radeon RX 6600 XT graphics card and now we're ramping up into the Radeon RX 6600 non-XT launch.

AMD's new Radeon RX 6600 has already been teased but we're expecting AMD to require all AIB partners to list their samples by last week, on September 15 -- these samples can start shipping on September 29, but they're not allowed to arrive before October 4.

The NDA for the Radeon RX 6600 is reportedly October 13... and the GPU itself will feature 1792 Stream Processors and 28 Compute Units on the kick-ass RDNA 2 graphics architecture, with 8GB of GDDR6 memory joining the mid-range 1080p gaming GPU party.

Bitcoin has been hovering at around $50,000 for a while now but BTC flash-crashed down to just $5402 on Pyth Network oracle's BTC/USD feed... the problem caused liquidations to happen on an insane, flash-crashed price.

BTC was staying at the $50,000 or so during the first week of September 2021, before dropping down to $45,000 or so last week, and now down to $40,000 or so this week before climbing back up to $43,000 at the time of writing.

The price of Bitcoin flash-crashed to $5402 between the hours of 12:21 and 12:23 UTC on Monday, while BTC was trading for $43,500 on most centralized exchanges. The Pyth Network is a Solana-based oracle network that acts as a bridge between blockchains and real-world data, adding that the flash-crash down to $5402 was caused because two of its data sources published a near-zero price, and received a relatively higher weight from the network's aggregation logic.

The United Nations has cranked its fear-mongering blaster that has been fixated on the planet for a while now, to 11, with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warning the world and the nations that attended the 76th General Assembly session -- with Bill Gates even attending -- that all 193 member states need to do what Neo was asked to do by Trinity in The Matrix and "wake up" as solidarity is the only way out of this. Right.

Guterres said: "We are on the edge of an abyss. We face the greatest cascade of crises in our lifetimes".

He added: "Human rights are under fire. Science is under assault. And economic lifelines for the most vulnerable are coming too little and too late -if they come at all. A surplus in some countries. Empty shelves in others. This is a moral indictment of the state of our world. It is an obscenity. We passed the science test. But we are getting an F in Ethics".

Call of Duty: Vanguard is enjoying its extended open beta right now, but Call of Duty: Warzone and Black Ops Cold War is about to enjoy Season 6 and its huge launch in October, the month before Vanguard launches.

We should expect to see Call of Duty Season 6 drop somewhere around October 7, with Season 6 most likely being the last slab of content for Black Ops Cold War since Vanguard launches on November 5. Warzone will see the injection of WWII-based settings, weapons, and more -- including a new Warzone Pacific map later this year.

Warzone just enjoyed its Hardcore mode "Iron Trials 84" mode, but the new Season 6 update will include the usual tweaks to the battle royale mode. Season 5 added new modes, operators, weapons, and more. -- so we should expect Season 6 to continue that with new weapons, a new battle pass (like every other season) and many cross-over bits with Vanguard.

Blizzard is giving away an ultra-demonic custom Xbox Series X to celebrate Diablo 2 Resurrected's incoming release.

After 20 years, Diablo 2 is coming back. D2 Resurrected launches tomorrow on PC, consoles, and Switch, and Blizzard has been celebrating with some awesome giveaways. The first phase included two custom high-end PCs, and the second one, which is live now until 3AM EST, offers up a custom Series X with the Lord of Hatred himself slapped on the case.

You can enter for a chance to win by sharing your most prized Diablo possession via a Twitter response. Winners will be contacted via direct message, and Blizzard says the custom Mephisto-themed Xbox Series X console retails for a huge $889 USD.

Nintendo should reveal its mysterious new Switch controller during tomorrow's special showcase.

Right on cue, Nintendo confirms a special Nintendo Direct stream tomorrow at 6PM EST. The news is rather timely; just yesterday users spotted the FCC confidentiality agreement for Nintendo's mysterious new controller will lift on the 24th, which usually means a reveal would happen the day of or the day before.

Nintendo registered the device for FCC testing a bit ago, and the filing confirms it's a new controller peripheral. The controller model HAC-043 doesn't match up with any existing models, but the HAC moniker confirms Switch connectivity, and the filing diagrams also confirm the device uses USB-C and can be hooked up to the Switch's power supply.

The PS4's latest update may be bricking consoles, but it's also fixed the controversial CBOMB CMOS battery issue.

PS4 v9.0 firmware is trading one brick for another. The system update is reportedly soft- and hard-bricking PlayStation 4 consoles, leading to tons of errors, and other headaches for players to navigate. There's a silver lining, though: v9.0 has fixed an issue that turned every PS4 console into a brick by default.

Multiple users including YouTuber ModernVintageGamer report that Sony has fixed the PS4's CMOS battery issue which effectively prevented owners from playing games while offline. Sony used the PS4's built-in clock as a security mechanism, and if the clock was reset, the system would have to re-connected to the PlayStation Network to sync up. If the console couldn't connect, then it would go into lockdown mode and prevent users from playing both disc-based and installed games.