Latest News - Page 624

AMD's APUs will soon be using RDNA 3+ for integrated graphics, and it seems like Team Red intends to stick with that technology - and not move on to RDNA 4 - for a long time.

We're just talking about APUs here, of course, and the rumor comes from Golden Pig Upgrade on Weibo (as VideoCardz flagged up), with well-known leaker Harukaze5719 bringing wider attention to the speculation on X (formerly Twitter).

As stated, the contention is that AMD will stick with RDNA 3+ - meaning refreshed RDNA 3, sometimes referred to as RDNA 3.5 - all the way through to 2027. Golden Pig Upgrade actually hints that RDNA 3+ could have a shelf life even longer than 2027, but you get the gist - RDNA 3+ will be the integrated graphics engine for Team Red's APUs for a long old time.

US Congressman Adam Schiff is attempting to force AI companies to outline any copyrighted data used to train AI models.

On April 9, Schiff introduced the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act that, if passed, would require AI companies to file all relevant data used to train their AI tools with the Register of Copyrights at least 30 days before the tool is introduced to the public.

The bill would also be retroactive, meaning any AI tool that is currently available to the public would fall under the same new requirement. If the company doesn't comply with the new laws, it will face a financial penalty from the Copyright Office proportionate to the company's size and violations.

Bethesda Game Studio's post-launch support for Starfield has been slow; in seven months, the studio has only managed to release a handful of patches focused on bug fixes and a few tweaks. Granted, a few of these patches have been massive, with hundreds of fixes and updates, but it's all MIA in terms of new content, overhauls, or even official mod tools.

Enter TGs Galactic Colonies Expanse from TankGirl444 (available via Nexus Mods), a new DLC-sized mod that expands the game's building and Outpost systems. Apparently, this modder took a month or so to put together (with help from other mods), and it's the most exciting Starfield news in months.

It dramatically expands the game's Outpost mechanic, revamping how materials are gathered and adding more detailed buildings, new structures called biodomes, and even a farming system, which can then be processed to create new food and recipes and a way to earn credits.

At this point, we're all accustomed to a 'nudge' or 'recommendation' in Windows 11 -Microsoft's suggestions that are basically veiled adverts of one kind or another - and sadly there might be more of this coming in the pipeline.

PhantomOfEarth, a regular leaker and Windows 11 tester, shared a discovery on X (formerly Twitter) of a new flavor of recommendation which has appeared in Window 11's Start menu, specifically the 'Recommended' section.

In a preview version of Windows 11, alongside the normal content here (of frequently used software and the like), there are now 'app promotions' - which as you can see in the case of the tweet consists of prodding the user to adopt the Opera web browser. (Although we suppose that is a twist on the usual pushing and shoving to gee up Edge adoption).

EA and DICE have provided an update on Battlefield 2042 or an announcement confirming that the current season will be its last. Season 7, Turning Point, added a new map set in Chile, new weapons and gadgets, and continued to right the wrong that was Battlefield 2042's disastrous launch.

"It is now necessary for us to turn from the present to the future," the post writes. "What this ultimately means is that Season 7 will serve as the final season for Battlefield 2042. After Season 7 concludes, we will continue to support the game with new in-game challenges, events, modes, and, of course, ongoing maintenance, but we are moving away from delivering official seasons."

You can probably guess what this means. DICE, Criterion, and Ripple Effect are now focusing on the next multiplayer and single-player Battlefield experiences, with a new team from Motive (Dead Space Remake, Star Wars: Squadrons) joining the Battlefield team.

When it comes to Samsung TVs, we think about QLED, Quantum Dot, and 8K. And when it comes to TVs in general, Samsung is one of the market leaders across all sizes, budgets, and even display technologies. Samsung joined the OLED party a few years back - after sitting out for a while - and in 2024, its OLED range is leveling up.

Samsung is taking a different approach this year thanks to the introduction of OLED Glare-Free technology. What this means is pretty simple: instead of the traditionally glossy and reflective glass-like finish that compromises most, if not all, modern 4K and 8K TVs, Samsung's new S95D OLED TV features a matte, non-reflective finish.

As the company describes, the result is an OLED TV that can be used in bright and dark rooms. At the recent Samsung 2024 TV launch event in Sydney, we had the chance to check out the new Samsung S95D with OLED Glare-Free technology.

It doesn't take too much imagination to assume that Apple is getting ready to announce the new iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro later this year and we've been hearing various leaks on and off for months now. The latest centers around the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus, with Apple reportedly ready to up the ante in terms of the color options that will be available to buyers.

According to leaker Fixed focus digital on the Weibo social network, a post that was picked up by MacRumors, Apple will increase the number of colors this year to seven - up from the five of the year before. That means that iPhone 16 buyers will have two extra colors to choose from, assuming this leak is accurate.

Interestingly, the leak itself mentioned the iPhone 16 Plus specifically, although we suspect that the iPhone 16 will also be included in this expansion of color options. Historically, the two devices have both been identical in every way beyond the size of display and we see little reason for that not to be the case this time, too.

We've been hearing rumors of a number of new iPad updates happening within the next few weeks of late, and May is now expected to be the timeframe that Apple will finally share details about the new tablets. There are expected to be updated iPad Pro and refreshed iPad Air models unveiled, and the former may have now leaked ahead of time. What's more, that leak appears to have come via Apple itself.

Specifically, a new 9to5Mac report says that the new iPads have appeared as references in the latest iPadOS 17.5 beta which has been made available to developers. According to the report, references to the iPad16,3, iPad16,4, iPad16,5, and iPad16,6 can all be found. More interesting is the fact that these references are all related to new display firmware which appears to add credence to reports that the new models will all switch to OLED displays for the first time.

It's believed that the four models cover both the Wi-Fi and cellular versions of the 11-inch iPad Pro as well as the same Wi-Fi and cellular versions of the 12,9-inch iPad Pro. The firmware also appears to suggest that the new iPad displays will be produced by two different companies.

Apple has developed something of a reputation for announcing a new iPhone color during the spring, alongside new cases and Apple Watch bands. It's been doing it on and off for a few years starting with 2017 with the iPhone 7 and the last time it happened was last year - the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus received a new yellow color to mark the spring refresh. The move is thought to be a way for Apple to regenerate interest in the new iPhones around six months after they went on sale. But it now looks increasingly likely that we shouldn't expect such a refresh to happen with the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus.

That's according to a new report by the Weibo leaker Instant Digital who says that there is no new spring color refresh in the cards for the iPhone 15 lineup of models. However, it isn't yet clear why Apple might have chosen to have taken this decision.

Apple is well aware that the latest iPhone sales start to slow down around the mid-cycle point and that's what makes launching a new color worthwhile. Early adopters are quick to buy the new iPhones within the first few months of their launch while sales slow as we get through the cycle. Towards the end of the cycle, Apple knows that people are then more likely to wait for whatever the next model will be, especially with the company known to favor a September launch. The closer we get to September, the more sense it makes for people to wait - either for the new model or to pick the slightly older model up and save some cash in the process.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has pointed its sensitive instruments at a spacecraft passing by, capturing the below image.

The space agency took to its blog on April 5 to showcase some photos captured by the LRO, which has been orbiting the Moon for 15 years now. The satellite captured several images of Korea Aerospace Research Institute's Danuri lunar orbiter, which is the nation's first spacecraft at the Moon. The images were captured last month as both spacecrafts passed each other in opposite directions between March 5 and March 6, 2024.

The relative velocities between the two spacecrafts were about 7,200 miles per hour, making it extremely difficult for NASA teams at its Goddard Space Flight Center to hone in on the Republic of Korea's satellite. Despite the LRO's camera exposure being set to a very short 0.338 milliseconds, the Danuri still appeared smeared in the image and is about 10 times its actual size. This smear was caused by the extremely fast velocities between the two spacecraft.

Intel has just deployed a new Wi-Fi driver for Windows 11 users (and those on Windows 10) which alleviates a few issues, including a problem whereby the wireless module can cause Blue Screen of Death crashes.

The new driver is version 23.40.0 and it provides the cure for Wi-Fi-related BSoDs with a "low occurrence" - although any blue-screening isn't welcome, of course. So, if you have been experiencing crashes with the wireless adapters that this driver is for, it's going to be well worth installing the update.

This covers a range of adapters include Intel's Wi-Fi 7 BE202 and BE 200, as well as the following Wi-Fi 6 products:

Millions of Americans looked skyward on April 8, 2024, when the Moon passed between the Sun and the Earth, creating an extremely rare phenomenon that only happens a few times in a lifetime.

But what if you were instantly teleported from seeing the total solar eclipse in North America to space? The spectacle wouldn't have been that impressive if you had looked at Earth, and if you had looked at Earth, you would have seen a large ominous shadow slowly moving eastward across the planet. NASA was able to capture this point of view of Earth from the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), which is located on the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite.

The satellite is located 1 million miles away from Earth and captured views of Earth being doused in a lunar shadow between 16:02 and 20:32 Universal Time (12:02 and 4:32 p.m. Eastern Time). As you would probably agree, the view of the solar eclipse is much better from Earth's surface, which grants viewers located in the path of totality a rare view of the Sun's active outer atmosphere, or corona. According to Michael Kirk, a NASA research scientist in the Heliophysics Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, "This view of the corona will never happen again, ever."

Microsoft is preparing to release a new family of Arm-based laptops that insiders are saying will be more powerful than Apple's current line of M3-powered MacBooks.

A new report from The Verge has detailed that Microsoft is preparing to fully unveil its goals with AI PCs at an event scheduled to take place next month. The company is said to be very confident in the performance of these new AI laptops as insider sources speaking to The Verge have said these laptops will beat Apple's line of M3-powered MacBooks. These new Windows laptops will be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite processors, which Microsoft is extremely confident in when it comes to taking the crown from Apple in terms of raw CPU performance.

The publication reports these new processors from Qualcomm will be faster than Apple's M3-powered MacBook Air in CPU tasks and will arrive with "faster app-emulation than Rosetta 2," which is the software layer Apple uses to bring over apps designed for Intel processors to new Apple silicone such as the M3 chip. The same process applies to Windows laptops, with The Verge writing that native Arm applications are integral to increasing performance across this new line of laptops.

The solar eclipse of April 8, 2024 was a total solar eclipse, meaning the Moon passed between Earth and the Sun, obscuring our vision of our local star.

Millions of Americans across North America experienced day briefly turn into night when the Moon passed between Earth and the Sun, creating a dramatic effect that thousands, potentially millions of people captured with their smartphones. Looking at the Sun during any period of time can cause eye damage, which is why scientists recommended people interested in observing the Sun during the eclipse to pick up a pair of eclipse glasses that are designed to filter out the dangerous light rays.

But what about your smartphone camera? Camera sensors, much like human eyes, can easily be damaged by the Sun, which is why many photographers that want to capture images of the Sun and don't want to damage any expensive gear decide to purchase a solar filter, which serves the same purpose as solar eclipse glasses for humans.

It was only a few days ago that YouTube's CEO put out a warning directed at OpenAI reminding the company that using any data acquired from its video platform will be a violation of its terms of use.

Now, reports are surfacing from The New York Times that OpenAI has trained its most advanced AI model, GPT-4, with more than a million hours of transcribed YouTube videos, according to sources that spoke to the newspaper and told it audio and video transcripts were fed into the company's latest AI model. Moreover, these sources also said that Google, the owner of YouTube, has also used audio and video transcripts to train its AI models, both of which are clear violations of YouTube's terms of use.

A spokesperson for Google, Matt Bryant, told the NYT that any "unauthorized scraping or downloading of YouTube content" is prohibited. It should be noted that the NYT has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, alleging the company took the newspaper's content without permission.

Amateur astronomers around the world are preparing to view an astronomical event that only occurs once every 80 years, and it's expected to happen between now and September this year.

The event can be traced back to a binary star system within the constellation Corona Borealis, also known as the "Northern Crown." This star system is too dim to see with the naked eye, but after taking a closer look with space-observing instruments, astronomers find two stars: one massive red giant and a smaller white dwarf. Both of these stars are locked in a gravitational tug of war and represent different stages in a star's life. The red giant is a star that has burnt through all its hydrogen, expanding it massively and is actually what's expected to happen to our own Sun.

The other is a white dwarf, which is much further down the road in the death of a star as all of its atmosphere has been completely blown away, leaving behind an incredibly dense core. The once-in-a-lifetime event is a result of the interaction between these two stars, as matter ejected from the red giant gets gobbled up by the white dwarf, slowly building around its surface. Reports indicate that once the white dwarf has accumulated approximately the same amount of matter as the Earth, it creates a thermonuclear reaction.

microSD cards are still one of the easiest and most convenient ways to expand the storage of portable devices, from tablets to handheld gaming consoles and PCs like the Steam Deck, ROG Ally, and Nintendo Switch. This week, Samsung has announced its latest iteration of EVO Select and EVO Plus microSD cards, which it states have been designed specifically for handheld gaming consoles.

This means the latest generation of Samsung EVO Select and EVO Plus microSD cards has seen their transfer speeds increase by 23% to 160 MB/s - making them great for storing games, large files, and media like photos and videos.

To double down on the gaming side of these new microSD cards, Samsung adds that it's planning to release 1TB EVO Select microSD cards later this year - perfect for the age of PC games requiring tens of gigabytes of storage to install.

Fans of Nintendo consoles will be saddened to hear that the end of an era has finally come as the company has officially axed its online services for the Wii U and 3DS.

While many gamers knew the decision to end online support for the two consoles was coming it still doesn't make the news any easier to read, as iconic titles such as Mario Kart 7 and Splatoon have now become single-player experiences. If that didn't make you upset, the original Super Mario Maker is now officially redundant as as players will no longer be able to download new community created levels.

As for the consoles themselves, the 3DS had a bit of a rough start after it was released, but it eventually found its success due to the slew of popular titles that were released on the platform. The Wii U, on the other hand, never quite made it and is widely considered the moderately-sized black duckling of Nintendo's line of gaming consoles, with only 13.56 million total unit sales since its release.

Ubisoft has announced the release date for the highly anticipated Star Wars Outlaws, which will be available on August 30 for PC and consoles. Earlier today, we reported on how Ubisoft has partnered with Intel on the game for the PC release. Still, for those looking for the latest and greatest in PC graphics, you'll be pleased to learn that it's also set to support all of the best game-enhancing RTX technologies.

Ubisoft Massive leads development on Star Wars Outlaws, which will feature real-time ray-tracing, DLSS 3 Frame Generation, Super Resolution, and NVIDIA Reflex for smooth and responsive performance and controls. The game runs on the studio's impressive Snowdrop engine, which was last seen in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and, before that, The Division 2.

As an open-world planet-hopping action-adventure, Star Wars Outlaws sees you take control of "cunning scoundrel Kay Vess and her loyal companion Nix" in a story that takes place between Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

The new Logitech G PRO X 60 LIGHTSPEED Gaming Keyboard is the company's latest flagship keyboard for competitive gaming. The overall design and features were tailored with insight and input from over 70 pro players. According to Logitech, developing the new PRO X involved eight rounds of research and testing and the creation of 30 or more prototypes.

The Logitech G PRO X 60 LIGHTSPEED Gaming Keyboard falls into the 60-percent form factor range, the preferred size for portability and compact performance. Pro gamers gravitate toward this form factor because it also leaves ample room for mouse movement.

As a 60-percent keyboard, it's missing several keys, but all those features and more can still be accessed via Logitech's new remapping and secondary functionality KEYCONTROL system.