Latest News - Page 795

Cooler Master's Sneaker X all-in-one custom PC is something that we covered a few months ago as it represented one of the company's first all-in-one desktop PCs - that, and the fact that it looks like a giant sneaker in PC form. Cooler Master partnered up with JMDF to create the design, and after taking it on the road and showcasing it at events, the Sneaker X is available for purchase starting from USD 3,499.00.

Available in two tiers, Enthusiast or Professional, a lot of what you're paying for here is the custom chassis and cooling system to support the unique size and shape - with variations depending on the region. And it's surprisingly more spacious than expected, supporting up to 3-slot GPUs.

The Sneaker X is available to pre-order via Cooler Master's CMODX platform with the 'Enthusiast' USD 3,499.00 variant featuring an Intel Core i7-13700K CPU, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 GPU, Z790 ITX form factor motherboard, 32GB of DRR5 memory, 2TB of storage, and Cooler Master PSU and cooling.

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has appeared on the Lex Fridman podcast to demonstrate bleeding-edge technology currently being developed at Meta.

When Zuckerberg first announced the creation of the Metaverse, the market didn't necessarily respond as well as the Facebook creator may have anticipated, especially following the release of Meta-created VR experiences that were cartoonish, lacked detail, and overall very barebones. However, Zuckerberg is seemingly on the way to reversing that bad taste in your mouth when you hear the word Metaverse with the release of a new technology that enables seamless communications with photorealistic avatars.

The Facebook creator sat down for a podcast with Lex Fridman to demonstrate the technology, where Zuckerberg and Fridman can be seen wearing the Meta Quest Pro headset and communicating with each other through photorealistic avatars from different cities. So, what is exactly happening here? Zuckerberg explains that he and Fridman were required to take a computer scan in Pittsburgh, which mapped all of the individual's facial expressions, muscle movements, aesthetics, and more to create a custom codec.

XPG's Battlecruiser II chassis is here and has been designed to enhance the DIY process with support for more hardware and a long list of improvements based on community feedback the company received after releasing the first BATTLECUIRSER.

The XPG BATTLECRUISER II Super Mid-Tower features four glass panels for an open look, removable and easy-to-clean magnetic dust filters, an adjustable GPU holder, and a Smart Cable Management system. And for those looking for full, in-depth RGB lighting, a version of the BATTLECRUISER II ships with the XPG PRIME BOX - a hardware and software solution for lighting and thermal control for PWM fans and RGB accessories.

The biggest change for system builders comes with the additional 65mm height, which allows for better spacing and the ability to house a 360mm radiator on top and a 420mm radiator in the front. And to celebrate the DIY aesthetic, the entire design of the BATTLECRUISER II has been revised for too-less assembly.

A full-cover monoblock for the Sony PlayStation 5 is not something that we'd thought we'd ever see, let alone one that you can buy and mod yourself. But that's exactly what you've got here, thanks to the water-cooling masters over at EK with the new EK-QuantumX CoolingStation Monoblock for PS5.

This full liquid cooling solution covers the length of the PS5's PCB, cooling "all the critical components on the front and back." A total transformation for the PlayStation 5, and with the EK-QuantumX CoolingStation Monoblock's ATX stand-offs, you can then put the water-cooled PS5 into an mATX case. This is another wild idea: cooling a console and making it look like a high-end custom gaming PC.

This means that the standard DC power connector of the PS5 is converted to dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors that will then connect to a PC power supply. So you'll need an ATX PSU and a pump and radiator.

Authorities in France raided NVIDIA offices in Paris last week as part of an anticompetitive investigation in the "graphics card sector." The unannounced seizure operation was carried out to gather information and potential evidence. France's Competition Authority disclosed very little about the situation other than that it was part of a broader investigation into the cloud computing sector.

Thanks to innovation foresight and investment in AI for several years, NVIDIA's GPU hardware, like the A100 and H100, are so far ahead of the competition that the company has secured over 80% of the market. This is a massive lead over rivals like Intel and AMD and one that also has the European Commission formally looking into potential unfair and monopolistic practices in the AI space.

With hardware sales going through the roof for the company and orders reportedly backed up through most of 2024 - the French raid and the EU's investigation are all about understanding NVIDIA's role, its pricing strategies, and more to determine if there's anything potentially shady going on.

WhatsApp is currently testing a new feature with iPhone owners that allows them to more easily create new stickers without having to do it manually. The new feature is also being tested with a limited number of Android beta testers, too.

The AI sticker feature was first reported by the WhatsApp watchers over at WABetaInfo and appears to allow people to create new, unique stickers using nothing more than a few words. It's available to some of those who are on the latest WhatsApp TestFlight beta, but it isn't yet known when we can expect the update to roll out to everyone who gets the app via the App Store.

WABetaInfo reports that users can click a new "Create" button that appears in the stickers section of the app. Once they do, they are presented with space to enter a description of the sticker that they want to create. Once done, the WhatsApp app creates the new sticker and it can then be used as required. The feature means that people no longer have to be able to manually create their stickers in order to get something that isn't already offered.

The Google Pixel Watch 2 is expected to be announced during an event on October 4, with Google also set to show off the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro officially for the first time. Expectations are high for the whole lineup, and now new leaks show just how much of the Fitbit DNA is starting to appear on the Pixel Watch 2.

The Pixel Watch 2 will be Google's second attempt at building a top-quality smartwatch and it didn't do a bad job with the first model that was released last year. However, this new model looks set to lean heavily on Fitbit by adding some key new features that will be familiar to Fitbit wearers.

As noted by 9to5Google, the most obvious is a new Body responses screen which is expected to use a new EDA sensor to help with stress tracking for the first time. We also see new images, shared by X leaker Evan Blass, which show a redesigned interface for heart rate monitoring with a "target zone." It isn't clearly mentioned what that feature will do, although talk of pace training might give us a hint.

With Apple releasing iOS 17.1 to developers earlier in the week we got our first look at a new Wallet feature that puts bank balances and transactions with into the app. The kicker was that the feature was only available in the UK thanks to its Open Banking API, but it now appears the same feature could be on the way to the United States as well.

The news comes after one software researcher noticed that the fine print of the setup process in the UK includes mention of Apple Payments Services Ltd (UK). But there was also a mention of the new Apple Processing LLC (US) as well, suggesting that the feature will appear on Apple's home turf as well.

Then, MacRumors took that information and found a reference to the same legal entity on Apple's website in relation to Connected Cards, the new feature that makes this Wallet magic happen. The document found on Apple's website again points to Apple Processing LLC being the entity through which the US banking system will funnel data into Wallet.

Apple has become the go-to destination for those looking to enjoy Major League Soccer thanks to its MLS Season Pass while Major League Baseball is also covered off via the Apple TV app. What's next? A new report suggests that we might see Apple turn its attention to motorsport.

That new report comes via the Business F1 magazine and was picked up by 9to5Mac. If a deal is done, it's thought that it could cost Apple around $2 billion per year to become the exclusive rights holder for streaming Formula 1 sport around the world.

However, the move would take time to come to fruition. It's noted that there are already F1 deals in place that would need to expire before Apple would be able to swoop in, including an ESPN deal that runs until 2025. The report claims that Apple would look to sign a seven-year deal, with the global rights becoming available around five years into that timeframe.

If you're a user of Apple CarPlay and either have a new iPhone 15 or have one on the way, you might want to start thinking about how you're going to plug it into your vehicle. Because it seems some people are finding that to be more problematic than you might think.

MacRumors reports that there are a surprisingly large number of people experiencing issues when connecting their USB-C iPhone to their car, most notably whenever they have a car that doesn't have a USB-C port. That means that they have to use a USB-A to USB-C cable and that, it appears, is where things start to go awry.

The MacRumors piece linked below includes a number of examples of people finding that they can't get USB-A to USB-C cables to work when they try to use Apple CarPlay. It would appear that the cable will charge the iPhone as expected, but the CarPlay connection isn't being initiated.

Xbox has had a capture problem for two console generations, and Microsoft's solution isn't a great fix.

Capturing screenshots and video on Xbox is fairly straightforward. You press the button, and the console will record what happened in video or picture form. Unfortunately for gamers, the Xbox Series consoles will automatically overwrite and/or delete captured content that is stored natively on the SSD if storage runs low. The console does not notify users that this is happening; screenshots and video will just disappear.

Users had some choices to help mitigate this. The most convenient solution was to just have the console upload screenshots and content to the Xbox network. These files were safe once they were uploaded. You could even fire up the Xbox Console Companion App and download any screenshots or videos that were stored on the Xbox network.

Fortnite makes billions of dollars a year and is one of the most popular video games ever made. So why is Epic Games firing hundreds of workers due to overspending? The answer lies in Epic's multi-faceted ambitions.

Epic Games is one of the most interesting companies in the video games industry. While Epic is the maker of Unreal Engine, one of the most widely-used multimedia graphics engines on the planet, this engine doesn't define Epic's ambitions. The reality is that Epic wears many hats. It's not just an engine-maker that licenses its tools out to a sizable portion of games, films, TV shows, and even cars; Epic is also a major disruptor for video game economics and pledges to shake up the status quo.

Epic appears to follow the whims of CEO Tim Sweeney, a legendary programmer who created the Unreal Engine. Sweeney is staunchly opposed to certain games industry trends, including the business practices of Valve, Google, and Apple, the last two of which constitute a "mobile duopoly" on gaming's most lucrative billion-dollar platform. Sweeney has been vocal and consistent in his opposition of these companies, and Epic's specific business decisions have followed Sweeney's beliefs.

Epic Games, the company who has spent millions of dollars fighting Apple in court, today announced it has laid off hundreds of employees.

2023 is a year of exceptional volatility in the games industry, and not even the world's biggest companies are safe. Today Epic Games announced it would lay off around 870 workers in an effort to reduce costs. Epic's decision follow thousands of tech sector layoffs made throughout 2023, including gaming jobs that were pared back at Xbox, Electronic Arts, Activision, and the Embracer Group.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says the company is simply "far short of financial sustainability," and confirms that Epic is spending more than it makes. Epic will divest--or sell off--recently-acquired subsidiary Bandcamp and spin off most of its SuperAwesome media division.

If the latest rumors are true we can expect Samsung to unveil the entire Galaxy S24 lineup at an event in January of 2024, which is only a few months away. that lineup will of course include the range-topping Galaxy S24 Ultra, and a new leak appears to have shown us exactly what that phone will look like.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra will be the best Android phone you can buy in a lot of ways, and now we can see what the new flagship offering will look like. Unfortunately, this leak shows the phone in a rather dull black color, but we can expect more interesting options once the phone is official.

As for what the new renders show, there isn't an awful lot changing beyond some tweaks here and there. Those tweaks begin with the Galaxy S24 Ultra's new, smaller bezels which will make for an overall more appealing look. The display will be a 6.8-inch WQHD+ affair, the Smartprix leak claims, while around the back we will find a quad camera setup. There will also be a place for the S Pen to live, too.

AMD's Zen 5 chips will perhaps be a more modest step forward than some rumors indicate - though we should be very cautious about performance predictions anyway.

That's the gist of the most recent video uploaded by YouTuber Moore's Law is Dead, with the leaker going to great pains to make a few things clear.

Namely that we won't see a fundamental shift in architecture and design until Zen 6. While Zen 5 is a major redesign for AMD, the overall layout remains the same as Zen 4 (and it may still suffer from some of the issues that this layout entails).

Cyberpunk now has its Phantom Liberty expansion - with patch 2.0 update in tow - and some benchmarking of the game has produced some surprising results in terms of a Linux distro performing much faster than Windows 11.

Okay, so upfront, we should note that this is just one test, and the conclusions we can draw are limited - but the difference is quite eye-opening, when running Nobara (a spin on Fedora) compared to Windows 11 on the exact same PC.

YouTuber Maximum Fury conducted the test runs which found that Nobara was just over 30% faster than Windows 11 at Full HD resolution (high textures).

The iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro lineups both come with new USB-C ports as had been rumored for months, but while it's great to be able to charge everything with a single cable, the switch hasn't been without its issues. Including reports that some battery packs simply can't charge the iPhone 15 or iPhone 15 Pro models.

The issue has been pointed out by a number of people on social media and then picked up by MacRumors, with the situation appearing to be related to the way the iPhone's USB-C port handles reverse charging. The iPhones can charge other devices that are plugged into its USB-C port, but in some instances that appears to be confusing some battery packs - including ones made by Anker.

As MacRumors notes, one customer contacted Anker about its PowerCode Slim 10K PD battery pack after they were unable to charge their new iPhone using the USB-C port on the battery itself. In a response, Anker reportedly told the owner to use the USB-A port for now, while Anker continues to investigate if the issue is being caused by its battery packs or the iPhone 15.

Bing might not be the default search engine on Apple's hardware but that doesn't mean that the company isn't well aware of its existence. In fact, Apple was reportedly so aware of Bing that it considered buying it from Microsoft as recently as 2020.

That's according to a new Bloomberg report which describes tentative discussions surrounding the possibility of Apple buying the Bing search engine, with Apple services chief Eddy Cue reportedly involved in talks. Cue is also the person who wound up doing a deal with Google that saw it continue its years-long deal to be the default search option on the iPhone.

It's that deal that saw Cue wind up in court this week, appearing as a witness in an antitrust suit brought by the United States against Google. The US argues that Google unfairly dominates the search market. For his part, Cue argues that the billions of dollars Google pays Apple to be the default option was part of a deal agreed on merit, adding that Google is the best option out there.

Hot on the heels of Netflix's change of stance on password sharing in an attempt to drive up subscriber numbers, Disney+ looks set to become the next streaming service to follow suit. That's after the news that the streamer will start to crack down on password sharing starting from November 1, with Canada being the first to make the change.

The news comes after Canadian Disney+ subscribers began to receive emails warning them that password sharing will be a big no-no from November. The email says that Disney+ will begin to implement restrictions on account sharing.

The email, first reported by MobileSyrup, included notification of a new agreement that warns Disney+ may limit or terminate access to its service if people are discovered to be sharing their password with people outside their household. Disney+ says that the household is defined as a collection of devices associated with a primary personal residence and that are only to be used by people who live in those residences.

The iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro went on sale last week in some lucky countries, but there are 20 new ones getting the handsets today. Apple's iPhones have proven popular in the countries where they have already gone on sale, and they're sure to follow suit in these new ones, too.

The new countries that receive the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro today, September 29 include Brazil, Georgia, Macao, Malaysia, Turkey, and Vietnam but Apple hasn't yet confirmed a full list of all the countries involved. Pricing will also vary in different locations based on local exchange rates and inflation, too.

Alongside the new iPhones Apple is also releasing the much-maligned FineWoven iPhone cases and MagSafe Wallets, although we'd perhaps suggest that buyers should consider going with the silicone options or a third-party solution. Apple might not be making leather iPhone cases anymore but there are plenty of third-party companies that are, with tons available already.