Latest News - Page 759

Apple Pay is a great way for people to pay for items and services using their iPhone or Apple Watch, but it isn't a feature that lets you accept payments. It's purely designed for paying for things - unless you have Apple's Tap to Pay feature enabled, that is. That feature allows iPhone owners to receive payments either via Apple Pay or contactless cards like those from Visa and Mastercard.

The Apple Tap to Pay feature isn't available in every country that has Apple Pay, but Apple has now announced that it's come to France for the first time. The feature is live for businesses who want to make use of it so long as they have an iPhone X or newer and are using one of the supported platforms.

Those platforms include the BPCE Group (Banques Populaires, Caisses d'Epargne, and Payplug) and the companies Adyen, myPOS, Revolut, SumUp, Viva Wallet, and Worldline at launch while BNP Paribas, Crédit Coopératif, Market Pay, Stancer, and Stripe will all come on line soon. What's more, Tap to Pay is already available in Apple Stores in France while retailers including Christian Dior Couture, belonging to the LVMH group, Dyson, Rituals, and Sézane are also online.

The iPhone 15 Pro Max sits at the very top of Apple's iPhone lineup, so ordering one isn't a cheap endeavor. But receiving it from the courier should be a good day, not one filled with hassle - unfortunately, that isn't always the case. Especially if the iPhone 15 Pro Max that you receive isn't even an iPhone.

There have been reports of iPhones being swapped out for nondescript items by couriers for years, with the buyer receiving something they didn't order and then having to take the matter up with the courier and store they bought from. But this latest tale of woe from one UK-based Redditor hits different, because this iPhone was ordered from Apple. And what they received was something we haven't seen before.

That's because Reddit user /theEdmard says that they received what appears to be an Android-powered fake iPhone 15 Pro Max. The box that it was received in appears to be genuine, but it looks like it was unsealed and then resealed with the fake device inside. When powered on, the iPhone is clearly running Android with an iOS-like skin over it, and it's a good job that the buyer noticed before entering any details like their Apple ID credentials. The fake iPhone even had a screen protector preinstalled - the wrong one, at that. It also seems that the display had been replaced with one that has a chin, unlike the real iPhone 15 Pro Max.

The Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro take some of the best photos around right now, but they can still require a little post-processing depending on how you like your images to look. In those cases, your best bet is to take photos in the RAW DMG format, and if you do you can now edit those files in Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom.

That's thanks to the news that Adobe has added support for those two particular phones to its list of Adobe Camera Raw devices alongside other handsets like the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro.

The RAW DNG files capture more information than a standard JPG file while appearing more flat and muted before processing. However, because of the additional information collected that processing can be used to create an altogether more impressive photo than might otherwise be possible. Professional photographers shoot in RAW to give them the most possible flexibility when editing in apps like Photoshop and Lightroom. And now owners of the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro can do that as well.

It's fair to say that Threads is the darling of the social network world right now, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently claiming that there are around 100 million people using the platform right now. That means that you've probably been tempted to take it for a spin and even if you haven't, it's probably only a matter of time before you do. And now you can do without the fear of losing your Instagram account if you don't like it.

Because that's a very real problem that some people have had to deal with to date. Until now, there was no way to delete a Threads account without also deleting the accompanying Instagram account which is less than ideal. However, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri has confirmed that a change has been made that now allows people to delete only a Threads profile while keeping the associated Instagram account intact.

That was a long-standing feature request for people who had taken Threads for a spin but later decided that it simply wasn't for them. The option to just let the account lay dormant was always there of course, but that has its own problems and should never be the only option. Now, it isn't, and that's great news for people who might have been on the fence about taking Threads for a test drive.

When Apple announced the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max in 2022 both phones ushered in a new era for Apple's phones. The notch was gone for the first time since its introduction with the iPhone X in 2017, replaced with a new Dynamic Island. Now, a new report claims that Dynamic Island could be about to get its biggest refresh yet.

While Apple brought the Dynamic Island down the lineup to the standard iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus in 2023, it's still the setup that includes a hole + pill configuration to house the camera and Face ID technology. However, a new leak claims that Apple is now testing a change that could come to the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max.

That leak comes via Majin Bu in a post to X, the social network previously known as Twitter. According to them, Apple is testing a new iPhone 16 Pro hole punch setup that would presumably place the Face ID technology beneath the display for the first time. The hole would remain for the selfie camera, however.

NASA's database has confirmed that the "devil comet," officially named 12P/Pons-Brooks, is on its way to Earth, and throughout its journey, it has erupted, sprouting some pretty interesting "horns".

The last time that 12P/Pons-Brooks came this close to Earth was more than 70 years ago, as its orbit takes it far away from our planet to the outer reaches of the solar system before it makes its slow, but steady journey back around the Sun. So, what makes 12P/Pons-Brooks a "devil comet"? Firstly, 12P/Pons-Brooks poses no danger to Earth, and astronomers have nicknamed it a devil comet for outgassing, which is caused by the Sun heating up its interior, resulting in a large amount of pressure building up under its icy crust.

This pressure then breaks through the icy shell, causing gas and dust to surround the comet, which is technically called the comet's coma. These outbursts of the comet's insides result in "horns" forming, or at least that is what it looks like to astronomers who are observing the comet from the perspective of Earth. Notably, 12P/Pons-Brooks is a massive comet, measuring 10.5 miles across, or the approximate size of two Mount Everests stacked on top of each other.

Wrapped in gold foil, the latest custom Xbox controller from Microsoft is an edible block of chocolate - with the company calling it the "first-ever official edible Xbox Controller made of 100% pure chocolate." The reason why there's a chocolate Xbox controller is to celebrate the release of the new Warner Bros. "Wonka" film hitting cinemas this December. The promotion also extends to a custom Wonka-Inspired Xbox Series X.

The good news is that the Xbox Series X that looks like a giant chocolate bar isn't edible; it's a fully functioning console with Wonka aesthetics. The custom console is bundled with a console display stand modeled after Willy Wonka's chocolate store. "While the console may look like one of Wonka's famous chocolate bars, the Wonka-inspired Xbox Series X is not edible," the announcement writes.

Best of all, Microsoft, Warner Bros., and the Xbox team are giving away these one-of-a-kind creations via X (formerly Twitter) as part of the latest Xbox sweepstakes competition open to all Xbox regions and markets around the globe.

While most things in space are rocks, dust, planets, nebulas, and other astronomical objects - some are less interesting but are a little closer to home, such as a tool bag.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) accidentally dropped a tool bag in space that managed to get away from them during a spacewalk. With no hope of ever retrieving the tool bag, it has now become a new object that is visible from Earth. The tool bag got away from NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O'Hara on November 2, 2023, as they were conducting a spacewalk.

As for the tool bag now, it's visible orbiting Earth slightly in front of the ISS with a visual magnitude of around 6, per EarthSky. The visual magnitude is a ranking of how visible an object is, and the instance of the tool bag, it's approximately the same brightness as the planet Uranus. Due to its size and brightness, the tool bag isn't visible to the naked eye but can be seen with a pair of binoculars.

Samsung has announced that it has jointly developed an advanced 3D spatial audio technology alongside Google called IAMF or Immersive Audio Model and Formats. Not exactly the most elegant name, but the open source-based audio technology aims to become the leader in the 3D audio market, including Dolby Atmos, Sony's 3D Tempest Audio on PlayStation 5, and DTS. And when it finally makes its way to the public, it could be called 'Samsung Sound.'

3D Spatial Audio, instead of traditional surround sound, is about highlighting positional audio. IAMF can express audio vertically, so you get sound from the left, right, rear, and above and below. In creating this 3D sound profile, IAMF uses AI and deep-learning technology.

"IAMF makes sound more realistic by allowing listeners to hear audio in front, behind, or to either side and above or below them," said WooHyun Nam from Samsung Research's Visual Technology Team. "When IAMF technology is applied to home TV speakers and sound bars, it allows listeners to hear sounds such as birds flying over their head on their TVs at home."

With the launch of the 14th Gen Intel Core CPU series that includes the new flagship Intel Core i9-14900K, we've seen a notable increase in PC performance - down to memory and storage. Colorful Technology Company Limited, creator of high-performance graphics cards, motherboards, all-in-one solutions, and storage, has just announced two stylish, feature-packed motherboards for the 14th Gen Intel Core CPU range.

The COLORFUL iGame Z790D5 FLOW in white sports "wave-shaped cooling armor" and overall aesthetics inspired by the movement of water and the flow of waves. This design can be seen on everything from heatsinks to the patterns on the PCB. The COLORFUL iGame Z790D5 ULTRA, also in white, features holographic flourishes to match COLORFUL's ULTRA series of graphics cards. Plus, RGB lighting on its chipset heatsink.

Outside of clear differences in the overall aesthetics, both motherboards feature near identical specs and come equipped with an 18+1+1 power phase (90A Dr.MOS) design, Aerospace-Grade Tantalum Capacitors, and DDR5 memory support that can reach 8200MT/s (OC) speeds thanks to using 30μm gold-plated contacts.

There are several annual awards for games, but The Game Awards, hosted by Geoff Keighley, is probably the biggest. A celebration, concert, and showcase event where announcements are made (it could be the venue where we get to see Grand Theft Auto VI for the first time), this year's The Game Awards 2023 is set to take place and broadcast live on Thursday, December 7, 2023, at 4:30 pm PT.

The big award for what many view as the Oscars for games is the annual Game of the Year Award, which this year includes six games going head-to-head for the statue: Alan Wake 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Resident Evil 4, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

As far as nominations go, Alan Wake 2 from Remedy and Baldur's Gate 3 from Larian Studios lead the pack with a massive eight nominations each across 31 categories. The fact that Alan Wake 2 has only been out for a few weeks makes its appearance in multiple categories slightly surprising.

Apple recently unveiled its new M3 family of processors inside of their new wave of 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro laptops, but now we're hearing a little rumble going on with the M3 Ultra chip being teased.

As it stands, the Apple M3 Max is the highest-end version of the new M3 chips from Apple and features a 16-core CPU and 40-core GPU with support for up to 128GB of unified RAM. The new rumors on Apple's crazier M3 Ultra chip would feature a 32-core CPU and 80-core GPU supporting a much larger 256GB of unified RAM.

The news of the beefier M3 Ultra is coming from the latest "Power On" newsletter written by Mark Gurman for Bloomberg, in which he said that the M3 Ultra could have a "whopping 80 graphics cores". But the word "whopping" when the M2 Ultra had a 76-core GPU? Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, we'll be looking at double the CPU cores and double the GPU cores from the M3 Max to the M3 Ultra, as it's pretty much 2 x M3 Max chips interconnected, sharing resources through Apple's UltraFusion process.

AMD has just introduced its new Radeon PRO W7700 workstation graphics card, powered by the Navi 32 GPU and 16GB of GDDR6; the new offering will cost $999.

Inside, the new Radeon PRO W7700 workstation GPU features 16GB of GDDR6 with ECC memory on a 256-bit memory bus with the GDDR6 clocked at 18Gbps, we'll see up to 576GB/sec of memory bandwidth. The Navi 32 GPU clocks at up to 2.3GHz and will have 48 Compute Units, which makes for 3072 Stream Processors that will deliver up to 28.27 TFLOPs of single-precision compute performance with a 190W TBP delivered by a single 8-pin PCIe power connector.

AMD uses a tighter dual-slot design for its Radeon PRO W7700 workstation GPU, measuring in at just 26.7cm, too.

AMD will be unveiling its new Instinct MI300X and MI300A accelerators at its upcoming "Advancing AI" event penciled in for December 6, with some truly awesome specs, including up to 192GB of HBM3 memory.

NVIDIA's just-announced H200 Hopper AI GPU features an increased 141GB of HBM3e memory from Micron, up from the 80GB HBM3 memory used on its industry-leading AI performance monster H100 AI GPU. AMD will trump that with a whopping 192GB of HBM3 memory, which should prove to be some interesting performance battles between NVIDIA and AMD, given that AI workloads require lots of fast on-board memory.

AMD will be using a chiplet design for its MI300X and MI300A accelerators, compared to the monolithic H100 and H200 Hopper AI GPUs, using advanced packaging technologies over at TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company). AMD's new Instinct MI300X will feature a blend of 5nm and 6nm IPs with a huge 153 billion transistors.

NVIDIA's new H200 Hopper AI GPU was just announced -- while at the same time as teasing its next-gen B100 Blackwell GPU -- with the new H200 AI GPU coming in 2024 with the world's fastest HBM3e memory from Micron. NVIDIA also announced that its Grace Hopper Superchips would power the new Exaflop Jupiter supercomputer.

The new NVIDIA H200 GPUs feature Micron's latest HBM3e memory, with capacities of up to 141GB per GPU with up to 4.8TB/sec of memory bandwidth. This is 1.8x more memory capacity than the HBM3 memory on H100, and up to 1.4x more HBM memory bandwidth over H100. NVIDIA uses either 4x or 8 x H200 GPUs for its new HGX H200 servers, so you're looking at a huge 1.1TB of HBM3e memory with up to 4.8TB/sec of memory bandwidth. Impressive numbers, NVIDIA.

NVIDIA also promises that its new H200 AI GPUs will be compatible with its existing HGX H100 systems, which makes it easy for customers to upgrade their systems. NVIDIA has partners like ASUS, ASRock Rack, Dell, Eviden, GIGABYTE, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Ingrasys, Lenovo, QCT, Wiwynn, Supermicro, and Wistron. NVIDIA will have updated solutions when the H200 GPUs are made available in Q2 2024.

NVIDIA's next-generation B100 Blackwell GPU has been teased, and this time it's not coming from a leaker... but from NVIDIA themselves, teasing 4x the AI inference performance over its already industry-leading H100 Hopper AI GPU.

At the recent SuperComputing 2023 Special Address, NVIDIA provided some slides that compare its A100 Ampere AI GPU against their H100 and H200 Hopper AI GPUs, against the next-gen B100 Blackwell AI GPU with some mind-blowing results. NVIDIA showed GPT-3 175B inference performance where 1x is the baseline with A100, leading an 11x increase with the H100, a larger 18x increase with the H200, which will be released in 2024, and then it looks like a gigantic leap with B100 in 2024.

I've edited the photo and used the 11x performance with H100, showing that NVIDIA is teasing at least 3x the performance in GPT-3 175B inference performance with its next-gen B100 Blackwell AI GPU.

Sony wants to ship an ambitious 25 million PlayStation 5 consoles this fiscal year, and it still has nearly 17 more consoles to ship in order to hit the target. Based on what Sony management has said to investors, this sales plan hinges on the new PS5 Slim console revision.

The new PlayStation 5 slim revision is more important than consumers think, at least for Sony. The updated consoles make significantly changes to weight, size, and overall form factor, while transforming all base PS5 models into digital-first editions through the sale of an optional disc drive. All of these things are calculated moves on Sony's part, and the PS5 Slim was mainly created to maximize the PlayStation 5's overall profitability.

The Slim's weight reductions translate to lower freight shipment costs, whether exporting directly from Japan's console manufacturing plants like the one Kisarazu, or exporting from other worldwide facilities. Right now the yen is in a depreciated state, meaning Sony could make lots more revenue from console exports as USD and Euros currently yield higher yen values.

The latest update for Starfield - and note it's a beta release - helps to seriously boost the frame rates you'll get on an NVIDIA GPU, thankfully.

The game has, of course, been a source of controversy due it being optimized for AMD graphics cards, and not supporting DLSS out of the gate - fortunately the mentioned patch does add DLSS support (and that includes frame generation or DLSS 3).

What's also eye-opening is that optimization elsewhere has raised the performance level of NVIDIA graphics cards in general with this new patch.

The rise of Threads as a competitor for X and Mastodon continues to be an impressive one, but Meta has been doing some things to try and raise its profile yet further. Part of that meant that Threads posts would often appear on Facebook, something that not everyone wanted to happen. Now, it seems that there has been a change made that gives users the option to finally stop it from happening.

The new toggle has appeared in the Threads app under the Privacy option. The toggle in question is actually two, with the 'Allow your posts to be suggested on:' portion of the settings allowing people to choose Instagram and Facebook independently. That's a more granular option than some might have expected and it's good that people now have more flexibility. Some might want their Threads posts to pop up on Instagram but not Facebook, for example.

It will be interesting to see whether this change has an impact on Threads' growth. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last month that Threads had almost 100 million monthly users at the time, and we can expect that to be more by now. However, it's a small number compared to the more than 500 million users that Elon Musk claims X currently has, although it's important to remember that Musk has been known to say things that aren't entirely true before.

Sony is still selling its current PlayStation 5 console family at a profit, but total financial gains from console sales have 'deteriorated' over time. Why is that? Sony management explains.

Sony's latest Q2 financials delivered impressive results, with the period delivering a record-breaking $6.6 billion in revenues. Console sales were a significant part of these earnings; Sony shipped a strong 4.9 million PlayStation 5 consoles in Q2'23. This led to hardware generating about 30% of quarterly revenues, or nearly $2 billion.

Despite these revenues, though, Sony's total operating income for the period was mostly flat quarter-over-quarter at $339 million--a far cry from the coronavirus boom years of 2020 and 2021. There's multiple causes for this operating income drop, including amortized payments towards the $3.6 billion Bungie acquisition (and other buyouts). Another big reason lies in the current value of Japan's domestic yen currency.