Latest News - Page 739

Ark: Survival Ascended players will know that the servers have been having issues galore, but recognition from Studio Wildcard boss Jeremy Stieglitz saying they're complete "ass" would make Ark players feel a little bit better.

During a recent Extra Life charity stream, Studio Wildcard co-founder Jeremy Stieglitz said: "The servers are ass. They run like ass. And their stability is ass. We need to improve it. It's going to be improved". He said the developer would fix the Ark: Survival Ascended servers, but it would take time.

The original Ark: Survival Evolved was a huge hit when it launched years ago, with Ark: Survival Ascended being a remake of the original game using Epic Games' delicious Unreal Engine 5 technology. It launched in October on the PC through Early Access and then in November for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles. The game sold over 600,000+ copies in its first two weeks on the market, which is a damn good feat.

Minisforum has just announced its new AR900i MoDT motherboard, which packs a high-end Intel Core i9-13900HX "Raptor Lake-HX" mobile processor built-in, with an integrated cooling system supporting up to 100W configurations.

The motherboard itself comes with a CPU and coolers preassembled, so all consumers will need to do is install their RAM and SSDs and then throw the Minisforum AR900i MoDT (Mobile on Desktop) motherboard into a case with a PSU installed. You're ready to rock and roll. The pre-installed Intel Core i9-13900HX processor features 24 cores and 32 threads of CPU power at up to a rather high 5.4GHz with 36MB of Intel Smart Cache included.

There's also a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot for allowing users to add in a high-end desktop graphics card or even an AIC card with a bunch of super-fast M.2 SSDs installed. You can really do it all and have a Mini-ITX system that packs a considerable amount of power with a fantastic CPU included, 4 x M.2 SSD slots, PCIe 5.0 x16 support, and more.

NVIDIA is reportedly working on a refreshed GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card that has been customized for the Chinese market, with the upcoming GeForce RTX 4090 D... the "D" stands for Dragon because it's the Year of the Dragon in 2024 for the Chinese New Year.

We've heard that NVIDIA will be using a tweaked AD102-250 GPU for the RTX 4090 D, which will feature less CUDA cores than the AD102-300 GPU that powers the RTX 4090. The new RTX 4090 D will also have a lowered 425W TDP down from the RTX 4090 and its 450W TDP, but new information is here about the GPU and power consumption: the RTX 4090 D will NOT support overclocking.

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 4090 D being locked away from overclocking makes sense, given that it needs to not go over the US government and its constantly updated GPU restrictions in China, so these limitations need to happen. CUDA core counts, GPU clock speeds, TDP, and overclocking support for the RTX 4090 D will be what sets it apart from the RTX 4090.

Analyst's general consensus is that Grand Theft Auto 6 could sell tens of millions of copies in its first year of availability and generate nearly $3 billion in revenue.

GTA 6 is gearing up to be the most anticipated game in the last 10 years. Rockstar officially announced the game with an explosive trailer that has broken 122 million views in just 2 days. Gamers want to play now, but they'll have to wait: GTA 6 won't be here until 2025.

Analysts in the interactive entertainment field are busily updating their models for with GTA 6's projected performance and trying to fit their predictions into Take-Two's telegraphed earnings forecast. According to video games industry expert Joost van Dreunen, who cites various reports, analysts expect GTA 6 to sell about 38 million copies in its first 12 months on the market.

As per the $3.7 billion acquisition contract, Sony can take over Bungie and dissolve its internal board of directors if certain earnings targets aren't met.

New investigative reports from IGN's Rebekah Valentine shed more light on the current situation at Bungie. Sources tell IGN that the studio's independence hangs in the balance of ROI targets mandated by Sony. The $3.6 billion acquisition has squeezed Sony Interactive Entertainment's margins--the company has delivered low operating profit margins for the last three consecutive quarters as the games division pays for Bungie's buyout cost.

Bungie remained an independent subsidiary after the acquisition, complete with its game publishing branch. Two Sony executives--Head of Worldwide Studios Hermen Hulst and Sony SVP Eric Lempel--would get seats at Bungie's board of directors, sitting alongside three other Bungie execs. Part of the acquisition contract also included terms that allowed Sony to dissolve Bungie's board and take full control over Bungie's operations should the developer not hit specific earnings requirements.

Apple might have only released the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro models earlier this year but the company is already working on getting what comes next ready for primetime. That of course will be the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro and they are both expected to arrive next year. Now, a new report appears to suggest that all four new iPhones are going to have one big new feature that could improve Siri for those who use it. But if you're thinking that feature will be a ChatGPT-like large language model chatbot, you're sadly mistaken.

That's because Ming-Chi Kuo, a supply chain analyst who has proven to be well connected with these kinds of things int he past, says that Apple intends to release all four new iPhone 16 models with a significantly upgraded microphone setup. That setup will apparently allow for the iPhone to better hear when people talk to it - making it much better at understanding Siri commands and requests. The same speaker upgrade is also expected to offer additional water resistance, although that seems likely to be a happy accident rather than the main reason behind the change.

The report says that AAC and Goertek will be the two companies that benefit from the microphone upgrade, with the cost of each part set to be considerably higher than the microphones used in the iPhone 15 family of devices.

Ever since iOS 17 was released in the middle of September we've been hearing various reports of charging strangeness, especially when trying to wirelessly charge iPhones in a car. First, there was an issue that caused the NFC chip to stop working in iPhones that were charged in specific vehicles, including those from BMW and Toyota. Apple later fixed that problem with the iOS 17.1.1 update. But another issue remained.

That issue saw multiple iPhone 15 owners find that their device wouldn't properly charge when placed on their car's wireless charging pad. It wasn't clear why the problem had started, and sometimes the charging process would begin only for it to stop again. No amount of restarting iPhones seemed to fix things, leaving people to charge their iPhones using a cable or not at all.

Last month it was confirmed by General Motors that it was aware of an issue and that it was looking into it, and now MacRumors reports that the upcoming iOS 17.2 update is set to squash this particular bug for once and for all. The iOS 17.2 update is currently in the hands of beta testers and has been for a number of weeks.

Apple has been working on a slew of software updates for release before the end of the year, and while all of the attention might be on the upcoming iOS 17.2 update, the tvOS 17.2 update might actually be one of the biggest changes of all. The software will be released on the Apple TV before Christmas, we expect, and it will remove some of the most familiar apps when it arrives.

That's as confirmed by Apple TV expert Sigmund Judge in a post on X, the social network previously known as Twitter. Judge shared details of what we can expect to see when the tvOS 17.2 update drops and it seems that beyond a newly redesigned interface, there will be plenty going away.

Judge notes that not only will Apple remove the iTunes Movies and iTunes TV Shows apps, but also a number of features including theatrical poster art, library number counts, and user and Rotten Tomatoes reviews. Apple TV owners can also expect to lose the correct display of TV show season, and the display of owned title resolution, too.

Some of those using Google Drive's desktop app experienced a very worrying issue recently - namely a chunk of files disappearing from their cloud storage locker - but the good news is that there's now a fix.

As flagged up by The Verge, Google outlined the steps you need to take in a support post, giving affected people (some of whom lost six months of files, or more) several options for recovering their files.

By the way, we're told that only a small number of Drive for desktop users were affected (those running version 84 of the app).

The Logitech G Astro A50X Lightspeed Wireless Gaming Headset is the company's new flagship audio product, and it's a headset and base station combo that features the new and unique PLAYSYNC technology. It works like an A/V receiver for a home theatre setup - you connect the HDMI 2.1 from your PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and USB-C from your PC into the base station that handles seamless and quick switching between devices. Plus, it charges the headset.

With audio signals carried over HDMI 2.1 for default console audio output, it's an interesting and clever way to add support for multiple devices and the ability to switch between them without having to sync up dongles or deal with different wireless protocols. Granted, it makes the base station quite high-tech as it supports full HDMI 2.1 passthrough (with 4K 120Hz HDR, VRR, and ALLM).

With the base station handling all audio processing and passthrough, audio will automatically switch back to the TV side when you're not using the headset. Again, it's a unique and impressive wireless audio solution for gamers with multiple devices - but it's also costly.

In 2020, Meta, which at the time was called Facebook, announced it was going to merge direct-messaging between Instagram and Messenger, in a bid to unify the instant messaging experience. Now, three years later, the company is moving to disconnect it.

The severing of chatting across Instagram and Messenger comes from a new support page update that states cross-app chatting between the two aforementioned apps will no longer be available as of "mid-December 2023".

The support page details what the end of support (EOS) means for users that were taking advantage of the feature; users won't be able to start new conversations or calls with Facebook accounts from Instagram, existing chats will become read-only, Facebook accounts won't be able to view your Activity Status or "seen" in messages, and any existing chats with Facebook accounts will move to your inbox on Facebook or Messenger.

NASA has taken to its blog to announce that 25 years ago, on December 6, the first two modules of the International Space Station (ISS) connected, beginning the space station assembly era.

The space agency has taken to its website to give a brief summary of the events that took place to create what we call today the International Space Station. NASA explains that the two modules, Zarya and Unity, were mated during the STS-88 mission of the space shuttle Endeavour.

The space agency writes that Endeavour's Canadarm robotic arm grappled to Zarya, which had been in orbit for two weeks at that time, and connected it to Unity, which was stowed within Endeavor's payload.

At the end of October 2023, a new island appeared on the surface of the Pacific Seas off Japan, and now satellites have imaged its continuous growth.

The new island has been officially called Niijima, which translates to "new island" in Japanese. According to the University of Tokyo, the new island was caused by an underwater volcanic eruption that occurred on October 21, 2023, and then on October 30, magma interacted with the ocean water, producing a massive explosion. This interaction created massive rock chunks several feet long, with reports indicating some were hurled more than 160 feet into the air.

The European Space Agency's Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite snapped the below image of the new island on November 27, which shows the underwater volcanic activity is still proceeding. On November 27, the Japan Coast Guard took to X to share footage of the island being rocked by a following volcanic eruption, which is still ongoing. Notably, Japan Meteorological Agency's volcanic division expert Yuji Usui spoke to AP and said that the survival of Niijima may depend on its rock composition.

HBO's House of the Dragon season 2 will be released in the Summer of 2024, and ahead of the new season, the creator of the books, George R. R. Martin, has warned the new season may make you cry.

The writer of the famed series Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin, took to his blog called "Not a Blog" and revealed he has seen the first two episodes of the new House of the Dragon season, expected to be released sometime in the summer of 2024. According to Martin, the first two episodes he saw were only "rough cuts," but from what he saw, he can distill that they are "dark, mind you. Very dark." Additionally, Martin warned, "They may make you cry. (I did not cry myself, but one of my friends did)."

Furthermore, Martin described both of the episodes as emotional, gut-wrenching, and heart-rendering, which he says is "just the sort of thing I like". For those that aren't familiar with House of the Dragon and have only seen Game of Thrones - House of the Dragon is set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones and is based on Martin's book Fire & Blood, which tells the story of House Targaryen.

A new paper published on November 30 in the journal Science details the discovery of a planet that is more than 13 times as massive as Earth.

What is interesting about this planet's discovery is that it shouldn't exist, or at least according to the researchers from Penn State University that discovered it, as this massive planet is orbiting an "ultracool" star called LHS 3154, which is only one-ninth the size of our Sun. The mass ratio between the newly discovered massive planet and the star LHS 3154 is more than 100 times the mass ratio between Earth and the Sun.

The press release posted on the Penn State website states that the discovery of this planet orbiting the coolest and smallest star in the universe goes against current theories that would predict planet formation around small stars. Notably, this discovery marks the first time a planet with such a high mass has been discovered orbiting such a low-mass star.

Overwatch 2 players are struggling on the PlayStation 5 as numerous gamers are reporting framerate drops down to single digits.

The eighth Overwatch 2 season went live on Tuesday, and since then, gamers have been taking to Blizzard's own forums, along with Reddit, to voice their concerns with the performance of the game, specifically on the PlayStation 5. Checking the Blizzard forums, you can see dozens, potentially hundreds of players reporting framerate drops following the update. Some players reported their framerate dropped below 20 fps, rendering the game "unplayable".

Engadget reports they encountered the same issue as it took a few seconds for their character to turn around, which is undoubtedly a critical component in a competitive shooter such as Overwatch 2. Engadget described the framerate drop as "almost like playing GoldenEye 007 at 12 fps all over again." Blizzard seems to be aware of the issue as they released an update on Tuesday that states, "We are investigating reports of performance issues for some platforms."

Meta has published a new website called Imagine, the company's new artificial intelligence-powered text-to-image generator.

Meta is making it clear that it's fully getting onto the artificial intelligence-powered train that many big technology companies are quickly adopting. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg even said earlier this year that the company would be integrating AI into "every single one of our products," and this recent announcement is a reflection of that. The new image generator will be using Meta's Emu model and will be capable of generating four images every prompt.

Notably, these images each have a visible watermark located in the bottom left corner. This watermark appears on every generated image and informs viewers of the image it was created using Meta AI. However, this visible watermark isn't likely to last long as Meta says they are currently in the process of testing an invisible watermark technique that is "resilient to common image manipulations like cropping, color change (brightness, contrast, etc.), screen shots and more."

Microsoft has taken to its website to announce that Windows 10 has reached its end of support (EOS) phase, meaning Microsoft will sever support with the operating system.

It was only early last month that data from StatCounter revealed that Windows users are currently migrating to Windows 11 from Windows 10, with earlier operating systems such as Windows 7 and Windows 8 taking up a small percentage of total Windows users. Notably, Windows 10 remains the dominant Operating System with a massive 71.64% market share. More interestingly, Windows 10 market share hasn't changed for the past year, as figures from September 2023 are identical to September 2022.

Microsoft announcing its ending support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025, is clearly a move to get users off of old operating systems onto new versions, and with this recent announcement, the move is likely going to work as users will want to be running the latest security updates. Microsoft writes, "Ensure that your organization isn't left running unsupported software that is no longer receiving security updates. Organizations running legacy software are vulnerable to significant security risk and potential compliance violations."

AMD just announced its new Ryzen 8040 series APUs codenamed "Hawk Point," which have improvements in generative AI workloads, with Ryzen AI on board and helping out through a next-gen NPU (Neural Processing Unit). But after this, we've got the next-gen "Strix Point," which will have over 3x the generative AI NPU performance.

AMD itself is promising that its next-gen Ryzen 9000 series APUs codenamed "Strix Point" will have "more than 3x generative AI NPU performance" compared to Strix Point with its new XDNA 2 AI architecture.

Right now, the Ryzen AI cores inside of the Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix" APU series have around 10 TOPS of compute performance for generative AI, compared to the upcoming Ryzen 8040 "Hawk Point" APU series that has 16 TOPS of compute performance for generative AI.

TSMC is too busy pumping out 3nm chips for Apple's new M3 series processors, with the Taiwanese giant to see capacity utilization decline at the beginning of 2024, but in the second half of 2024, things will pick up as other 3nm customers will join the party. This includes AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and MediaTek.

According to Ctee, we are to expect TSMC's current 3nm capacity utilization rate to drop to 65% before things pick up in 2H 2024. US foreign investors are mostly optimistic about TSMC and its generative AI, semiconductor recovery cycle, 2nm technology leadership, and sped-up overseas factory expansion, so they are "optimistic about the long-term investment value" in the company.

Intel will be using TSMC's new N3B process for its next-gen, low-power architecture in Lunar Lake MX (LNL), while we'll also see Intel's upcoming Arrow Lake-H and Arrow Lake-HX processors made on 3nm, which will be "used to significantly fill TSMC's production capacity".