Latest News - Page 687

NVIDIA's RTX 4090 remains a highly sought after graphics card in China, even though Team Green has deployed an alternative 4090 D model.

The RTX 4090 D is only marginally slower than the full-fat RTX 4090 which is now banned in China - NVIDIA has previously said the difference in performance is only 5% or thereabouts - yet still the original Lovelace flagship remains popular on the black market.

Wccftech reports that various Asian countries are seeing a huge spike in sales for the RTX 4090, and that includes Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam, because the buyers are selling them on to the Chinese market.

It wasn't very long ago that Microsoft announced it was killing support for its most popular operating system, Windows 10, which was a clear bid to move users from the older operating systems onto the company's newer versions.

Now, Valve has released Steam's latest hardware survey that showcases trends from December 2023, which shows users are moving away from Windows 10, Microsoft's currently most popular operating system, to Windows 11. While Steam's hardware survey does show a shift toward Microsoft's latest operating system, the wider market hasn't responded as quickly as Windows 10 still dominates, with a 67% market share compared to Windows 11 at just 26%.

However, looking at Steam's hardware survey for December we can see Windows 11 is used by 44% of surveyed users, compared to Windows 10 with 51%. A move of 4% represents millions of gamers shifting operating following Microsoft's end-of-support announcement for the operating system, which will occur on October 14, 2025.

Chinese migrants are flocking to the United States through the Mexican border, and according to a recent report by 60 Minutes, most are using TikTok as their guide to locate passages that are unguarded.

In a new video posted to the 60 Minutes YouTube channel, CBS journalists observed nearly 600 migrants crossing the border through a small gap located at the end of one of the border fences near San Diego. Some of the migrants who passed through the border spoke to 60 Minutes and were asked how they knew about the small gap in the fence, to which they replied they were informed of the location via multiple videos on TikTok.

Journalists working on the story said they reviewed some of these videos, which gave detailed instructions on how migrants can hire Mexican smugglers and where the gap in the border is located. Notably, some of these migrants were required to travel through multiple countries to make it through this very gap, with some stating they had to travel through Turkey, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, and then Mexico.

Japan's lunar lander landed on the lunar surface with extreme precision and regained power after a full nine days.

Upon landing, JAXA announced the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) nearly tipped upside down, and now reports indicate the SLIM lander is going dormant while it endures the long lunar night. According to JAXA the SLIM lander has captured an eerie photograph of the impending lunar night, which it might not even wake up from.

The photograph showcases the Shioli crater right before dusk, and according to reports, the lunar night lasts for two Earth weeks, and temperatures reach below -200 degrees Fahrenheit. Notably, the SLIM lander is solar-powered, and according to JAXA, it wasn't designed to withstand the long duration of the lunar night.

The building blocks of life have been discovered within asteroid samples recovered by Japan's Hayabusa2 mission that returned to Earth back in 2020.

The Hayabusa2 mission involved a lengthy trip to the asteroid known as Ryugu, a near-Earth asteroid that is nearly 3,000 feet wide and was originally discovered in 1999. JAXA, Japan's version of NASA, sent a spacecraft to collect samples of the asteroid, and since those samples arrived back on Earth, they have undergone analysis by multiple researchers and scientists.

Now, a team of researchers has discovered evidence the samples contain organic matter, providing further weight to the theory asteroids were the transportation system of organic molecules to planets such as Earth. The team behind the study explained that since Ryugu has no atmosphere, it's prone to enduring micrometeoroid impacts that change the surface composition and the minerals within the asteroid.

Joe Rogan signed on for an exclusive deal over at Spotify in 2020, which was reportedly worth up to $100 million, but now the world's biggest podcast will be staying over at Spotify for an undisclosed amount of time and for reportedly much more money.

"The Joe Rogan Experience" will be staying over at Spotify, but according to reports from The Wall Street Journal, the new deal will include a revenue-sharing model based on ad sales that will enable Rogan to publish his podcast on multiple platforms. Under this new deal, Spotify will be able to control ad distribution across the multiple platforms the "The Joe Rogan Experience" will appear on.

Rogan confirmed the show was returning to YouTube in an Instagram post celebrating the new deal, "In addition to being available on Spotify, the show will soon be available on additional platforms like Apple, Amazon, and YouTube." The podcast has more than 2,200 hundred episodes and has featured a wide range of guests, each chosen by Rogan himself based on his personal interest in the guest.

Apple's Vision Pro is on sale now and people across the United States have now spent their first few days with the mixed reality headset. As part of that, we're learning more tidbits about a spatial computer the likes of which few have had the chance to use and some of the things we're learning are odd, to say the least. Those things include the fact that the Vision Pro doesn't support Bluetooth mice or trackpads.

That was confirmed via an Apple Support document that was first spotted by MacRumors, with the suggestion being that there is little guarantee that any third-party Bluetooth accessory will work - and even some of Apple's own won't, either.

In fact, Apple says exactly that in the support document that says people who have trouble connecting their Bluetooth accessories to the Vision Pro should contact the device's manufacturer for help.

The Apple Vision Pro is the biggest news of the year so far and it might remain that way for some time, too. Now that the headset is available to buy Apple has started to share new documents that outline some of its key features, how they work, and what users can expect. One of those features is the Mac Virtual Display, a feature that allows a Mac's desktop to be viewed and interacted with in 3D space.

Previously, some had believed that Apple's Mac Virtual Display feature only worked on MacBooks which isn't the case, while it was also posited that a Mac running an M2-series chip was required as well. However, Apple's new support documentation confirmed that isn't the case, either, and that any Mac that can run macOS Sonoma can work with the Vision Pro just fine.

The support document, reported by MacRumors, explains that all Macs that run macOS Sonoma or later are good to go although those with Apple silicon inside do enjoy something that Intel-based Macs don't - 4K support. Those with an Intel Mac can use the Mac Virtual Desktop feature but only with up to a 3K resolution.

Donald Glover has shared news about the highly anticipated Community movie, stating the script of the film has been completed.

During an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Donald Glover was asked if he knew much about the upcoming Community film, which has had little information and has been fading in and out of Hollywood consciousness for years now.

Official updates have been like sprinkled breadcrumbs, but Glover confirmed the cast just has to contend with scheduling conflicts now and that he is definitely "all in" on the project if they can make it work.

Although its hype days may be over, the intruder game Among Us is still widely popular, and CBS Studios has just released a first-look teaser image for its upcoming animated series based on the game.

The series will be a collaboration between CBS Eye Animation Productions and Among Us creators Innersloth. The Among Us official social media accounts shared the new teaser spanning all platforms, offering a small glimpse into the new adaptation. The image shows the cafeteria from the original Among Us map, the Skeld, with what looks to be a ruined crew pizza party, including balloons and a hanging banner splashed with blood reading "We're Dead."

The series was first announced in June of 2023 with the developer on board for the project and storyboard artist Owen Dennis, who, as per his deal with CBS, will spearhead the project as its creator and executive producer. This new adaptation will mirror the game's original premise: crew members will face the challenge of trying to sniff out who among them is not who they seem while said shapeshifter wreaks havoc among the spaceship and crew.

Apple's Vision Pro headset is finally on sale after months of waiting since its June 2023 unveiling. The headset's launch brings with it a slew of new Apple support documents surrounding its various features and capabilities, with one of those being the Optic ID security feature.

Optic ID is a security feature that works similarly to Face ID and Touch ID which means that any apps that support those features also support Optic ID without the need for developers to do any additional work. That's a key fact when we remember that there are more than a million iPad apps already available for the Vision Pro headset. Now, Apple has detailed the headset's security feature to confirm how it works and what it can do.

In use, the Optic ID feature is what the Vision Pro uses in order to authenticate the wearer and ensure that they are the person whose Apple ID is associated with the headset. That allows the Vision Pro to block access to apps and data if it doesn't believe that the person wearing it is its owner. Apple also notes that Optic ID is sued when authorizing Apple Pay purchases as well as signing into apps and accessing personal data.

Last month, news surfaced regarding the release of an unofficial PC port of Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and just last week, the modding team behind the port released a new version of it.

While the port is imperfect, we have 25 minutes of PC gameplay footage to share. Watching the gameplay footage, you can notice missing textures, shaders, and some effects. However, it is already looking much better than its original launch version.

In regards to gameplay mechanics, most appear to be in place, the settings UI works rather smoothly, the HUD looks great, and the cutscenes are working nicely. Even the game's opening boss fight with The Sandman seems to work well despite some visual lag and stuttering.

Apple's Vision Pro is now on sale and people are using the mixed reality headset across the United States right now. We're now beyond the Vision Pro's first weekend and we're learning more and more about it as more people spend longer with their new spatial computer. There are also a number of members of the press who are using loaners from Apple as well, and some of those have started to set something of a trend by taking part of the headset off and using it naked.

That part is the light seal, a component that comes in a couple of different sizes to ensure that people have the right fit. It's designed to prevent light from leaking into the headset's view from around the wearer's eyes and face, all while also providing a cushion to ensure the Vision Pro's hard contours aren't in contact with the wearer's skin. But as some people seem to have figured out, removing that light seal does have its benefits.

As noted by CNET's Scott Stein and Inverse's Ray Wong, removing the Vision Pro's light seal allows for a lighter headset, making it less heavy against the wearer's face. It also has the added benefit of increasing the field of view as well - notable given the fact that some reviewers noted the Vision Pro's field of view is notably less than some competing headsets.

If you ask some people, Skyrim is one of the best games of all time, and a testament to that claim is the dedicated community behind it that has been providing mods and adding extra content to enjoy for many years after its release.

If you are still enjoying the world of Skyrim, a new mod called Lordbound is something you should keep your eye on. Lordbound is a new DLC-size mod for Skyrim that will largely change the game, adding a brand-new region with more than 40 quests, 50 new dungeons, and more than 60 hours of additional content.

The Lordbound Dev Team is working hard to bring their DLC-sized mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to life. This fan-made expansion promises to have the biggest main quest ever played in Skyrim, with choices that matter and consequences that change the state of the valley around you. The mod will also include fully fleshed and voiced NPCs, as well as a totally original soundtrack. This is truly an ambitious project.

Path tracing requires powerful hardware to run, even with tools like DLSS and Frame Generation. Rendering fully path-traced environments shouldn't be possible yet, but here we are - with the path-tracing transforming games like Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake II, and Portal with RTX. The latter is a mod created by NVIDIA using its new and powerful RTX Remix platform - and when it debuted, you needed a GeForce RTX 4080 or RTX 4090 for it to be playable.

At a higher resolution with 'ultra' settings, that is, because someone managed to get a playable version of Portal RTX running on a Steam Deck - Valve's portable gaming PC handheld powered by a custom AMD mobile SoC.

The video demonstration by NightSightProductions is a great reminder that when you can tweak settings, you can get a demanding game to run on a wide range of hardware. However, in the case of Portal with RTX, there's some serious tweaking going on alongside the resolution being dropped to 864 x 486 to hit a playable 30 FPS.

NVIDIA's RTX Remix was released into Open Beta this month, giving PC modders some incredibly easy-to-use and powerful tools to remaster and essentially remake classic games with the help of AI and RTX technologies like DLSS and ray-tracing. With the ability to add path tracing to older games (something NVIDIA showcased with its Portal RTX remaster), the result can be like looking at a brand-new game.

However, this level of ray-tracing is incredibly taxing on GPU hardware - to the point where some of the playing certain RTX Remix mods at high resolutions might be limited to graphics cards like the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER and GeForce RTX 4090.

Take this example of Rockstar's iconic Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, given the RTX Remix treatment.

The biggest Starfield-related news today has to be the current rumorpointing to Microsoft bringing Xbox-exclusive titles like Starfield and the upcoming Indiana Jones game to the PlayStation 5 - a bombshell revelation if true. There's no official word from the Xbox team to back this up, so we'll shift our attention to the world of Starfield PC updates - namely, patches.

The game recently received its largest post-launch update, with hundreds of fixes, including several changes to how lighting works and looks across various locations and scenarios. As part of Bethesda's plan to roll out substantial updates, fixes, and new content every six weeks for Starfield in 2024 - the good news is that PC gamers are getting a smaller update very soon.

And that is one that finally adds in-game AMD FSR 3 support, which will bring dedicated frame generation support to the game on Steam (via the Steam Beta branch this week) for all non-GeForce RTX 40 Series owners.

ASUS announced the ROG Falchion RX Low Profile 65% compact (and wireless) gaming keyboard at CES 2024, and it immediately grabbed our attention based on its sleek and stylish design. Also, it's not every day that you see a low-profile keyboard designed for gaming - with the ROG Falchion RX Low Profile using ASUS's new pre-lubed RX Low-Profile switches.

The Red Linear version features a 1.0 mm actuation point for fast input, with a feel and rebound designed to provide the feedback you're after in a keystroke and paired with two layers of dampening foam, a touch panel, and tri-mode connectivity (wired, Bluetooth, and ROG SpeedNova wireless), the hardware here sounds impressive. Of course, a big part of the appeal here is the look.

With a white, grey, and reflective surface appearance, the ROG Falchion RX Low Profile looks futuristic, sleek, and stunning. Somehow, ASUS managed to fit the 65% form factor and key layout in a 60% frame, so there's not a millimeter of wasted space.

The new BOOG75 from BOOM+GAME is a new enthusiast gaming keyboard for those looking to bring cutting-edge design and tech to their PC gaming. It certainly ticks many of the right boxes with fully adjustable magnetic switches with rapid trigger functionality, gasket mounting, sound-dampening foam, and low-power LED lighting.

The BOOG75, per the name, is a 75% keyboard, one of the most popular form factors for gaming keyboards. Although compact compared to a full-sized board, the 323.6 x 145.78 x 34.73 mm dimensions, 5-degree typing angle, and around 3kg weight make it a robust and solid unit.

The design here is premium through and through, with an aluminum case with an anodized finish (that extends to the backplate) and Gateron KS37B switches with a magnetic hall sensor. Magnetic switches work because actuation points are determined by distance that you can adjust - and here, you can do so on a per-key basis ranging from 0.1mm to 4.0mm.

Last week, we reported on the HPE Spaceborne Computer-2 making its way to the International Space Station, hitching a ride on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and mission. Having the computing power of a data center in orbit is an invaluable tool for space-age information processing, research, and scientific experiments, and sitting at the heart of the HPE Spaceborne Computer-2, you've got the latest in KIOXIA SSD storage-130 TB (terabytes) in total.

Supercomputers and SSDs in space, and all with off-the-shelf technology readily available on Earth. Breaking down the 130 TBs of storage, you've got eight 1GB NVMe SSDs and four value 960GB SSDs. Throw in four enterprise SAS SSDs, each with 30.72 terabytes, and you've now got 130 TBs of storage floating in space. It's the most data

storage to travel to the space station on a single mission.