Microsoft has confirmed that an outage to its cloud servers was a result of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack and that the attack can be traced back to a malicious hacking group called Anonymous Sudan.

Microsoft's servers experienced an outage earlier this month that knocked out key Microsoft services such as Outlook and OneDrive, while also affecting other areas of Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform. While the servers were rocked, Microsoft kept quiet about the situation until it spoke out over the weekend, confirming the attack was a DDoS attack and that it appears Anonymous Sudan's claim of being responsible is true.

Microsoft has yet to say how many customers were affected by the outage, but with services such as Outlook and OneDrive offline, you can expect it to be at least in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Microsoft explained that it tracked the activity of what it identified as "Storm-1359" and found that the perpetrator appeared to be "focused on disruption and publicity".

On January 25, 2023, Adult Swim announced that Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland would no longer be voicing Rick or Morty, following a myriad of serious incriminating allegations that have since been dropped.

Roiland was accused of domestic battery, corporal injury, and false imprisonment by menace, fraud, violence, or deceit against his former girlfriend in 2020. These accusations led to Roiland being dropped by Adult Swim, and the show announcing that Rick and Morty would continue and that staff are still continuing to work on season 7.

Roiland's lawyer at the time this matter was on track to being dismissed by the district attorney's office, then in late March, California prosecutors dropped the charges against Roiland, citing "a lack of sufficient evidence beyond a reasonable doubt".

Scientists have used stem cells to create the world's first synthetic human embryo, raising important scientific and ethical questions among fellow researchers and the public.

A new report from The Guardian revealed that a team of researchers from the University of Cambridge have manipulated stem cells to create the first completely synthetic human embryo. The researchers were able to grow the human embryonic stem cells into cells that lead to the creation of a placenta and a potentially functional human embryo, completely bypassing the need for sperm and eggs.

Notably, this scientific achievement raises important ethical as well as legal questions, especially in the US as there currently isn't any laws or regulations specifically for stem cell derived models of human embryos. It should be noted that these synthetic human embryo models were in the very earliest stages of development, meaning there was no beating heart or brain. Additionally, international law currently states that the embryo's can't be grown for more than 14 days.

A new report claims Google is warning its employees about the dangers of AI-powered chatbots and how they should go about using them.

Reuters has reported that four people familiar with the matter have informed the publication that Google is warning its employees about chatbot dangers, which includes the company's own AI-powered chatbot, Bard. The warnings from the company are similar to what other companies have told their employees, which is to refrain from entering any confidential information, whether that be personal or company IP, into any chatbot as the information.

Why is entering confidential information into an AI chatbot a bad idea? Researchers have found that confidential or personal information entered into AI chatbots can and is read to by human reviewers and that the chatbot is also capable of bringing up this information when prompted appropriately. These facts mean that any AI chatbot is a potential information leak risk.

With the GeForce RTX 4060 non-Ti GPU set to launch on June 29, MSI has revealed its line-up of cards ranging from the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 VENTUS 2X BLACK 8G OC to the premium MSI GeForce RTX 4060 GAMING X 8G.

Both options sport twin fans using MSI's latest cooling, TORX Fan 5.0 for the Gaming X and TORX Fan 4.0 for the Ventus, as well as a minimal two-slot look that is compact and tailor-made to fit in most cases and builds. Plus, very little in the way of RGB lighting.

The MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ventus 2X comes in two flavors, representing the entry-level models from MSI sporting the black and grey look of the Ventus line-up. You're getting ample cooling with large fans, a heatsink, and a reinforced backplate - with the OC model featuring a 2490 MHz boost clock that can go up to 2505 MHz via MSI Center.

The new ZOTAC GeForce RTX 4090 PGF OC Edition, where the PGF stands for Prime Gamer Force, is the company's most premium RTX 4090 model and, at this stage, looks exclusive to the Chinese market. With a physical design reminiscent of Zotac's AMP Extreme series with the use of funky curves, it also happens to be one of the biggest GeForce RTX 4090 models to date.

Length-wise, you're looking at 381mm or 38.1cm, which makes it one of the biggest GPUs to date - and that's saying something considering that most, if not all, GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards are massive. The bigger size does reflect the new cooling deployed by Zotac, which includes three 110mm or 11cm fans, a vapor chamber, and a 24+4 phase VRM design delivering a total of 525W via a single 16-pin power connector.

The full dimensions for this monster are 381mm x 154mm x 74mm.

The Ryzen Z1 Extreme-based ASUS ROG Ally has had a lot of eyes on it of late, with the impressive Windows PC gaming handheld giving Valve's extremely popular Steam Deck a run for its money in terms of performance and capabilities. Though, if you're one of the early adopters, you might want to hold off on updating the device to the latest 319 firmware - as reports out there point to it lowering in-game performance.

The update, available via the MyASUS app, fixes some bugs concerning the ASUS ROG Ally and its software, causing issues regarding everyday gaming on the handheld. In fact, the 319 update was intended to improve performance when using the 9W low-power preset.

Instead, you're getting overall performance degradation with the latest firmware, with the YouTube channel The Phawx showcasing that even across the various power modes, the benchmark results are noticeably worse, especially when it comes to things like 1% Lows, which are great for gauging the overall stability of a game.

Overclocker CENS has pushed the clock speed on a GeForce RTX 4090 to new heights, passing the 3900 MHz barrier to hit an impressive 3930 MHz and sustain that for over 46 seconds. The number surpasses the previous best set by CENS of 3825 MHz and now sits in the top spot in HWBOT's GPUPI 3.3 32B ranking.

The GPUPI benchmark isn't about pushing graphics or visuals but about observing peak frequency through complex mathematics. Interestingly, the Top 10 results are all GeForce RTX 4090 overclocks, pointing to NVIDIA's flagship GPU as the most powerful in raw performance and potential boost clock speeds. AMD is basically nowhere to be seen here.

Still, it's an impressive showing and another step towards a single GPU hitting 4 GHz, which this result is just 70 MHz shy of!

ViewSonic is launching a new home theatre projector with the X2-4K, though what makes this different from other similar products is that it has been designed for the Xbox Series X|S consoles and even carries a "Certified for Xbox" tag.

Visually, the black look features a couple of green flourishes to add Xbox flavor to the design, but the underlying specs make it sound great for big-screen console gaming. The X2-4K LED Projector for Xbox supports native 1440p at 120 Hz or a 4K 60 Hz using DMD and TI XPR technology.

The X2-4K is a short-throw LED projector, meaning it can be placed fairly close to where the image will be projected, but perhaps the most exciting aspect is that in addition to the bright 2,900 LED lumens for the lamp, you're also getting a 4.2ms ultra-fast response time. With response times in most 4K projectors being okay or passable for most console gaming, this puts the X2-4K in the same category as LED monitors designed for high refresh-rate gaming.

As games become more complex, consumers can expect to wait half a decade or longer for new entries in their favorite franchises.

Games take a long time to make. Some, like mega-blockbuster hits like Naughty Dog's The Last of Us, Halo Infinite, or Starfield, can take quite a while. The AAA market demands a certain level of near-perfection in order to achieve multi-million sales, and gamers are quick to pick up on any bugs, issues, or monetization strategies. In this age of social media, controversies can spin up and out of control very quickly and doom a game before it even releases.

The advent of new games engines and enhanced technologies are believed to help accelerate game development, but as Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick rightly tells investors (FY23 call transcript), these new tools have only increased game development production cycles. Teams are simply able to do more than they ever have before, and that gives them more freedom to add more complexity to interactive experiences.

2023 is one of the best years in modern gaming. We've gotten and are getting so many high-profile titles this year (Resident Evil 4, Dead Island 2, Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, Diablo IV, Street Fighter 6, Final Fantasy XVI, Alan Wake II, Phantom Liberty, Starfield, Spider-Man 2..the list goes on and on) that gamers may have trouble keeping up.

We're seeing multiple publishers fire off some heavy-hitters, and Ubisoft is among them. Following a few years of declining performance, the French games publisher is set for a big come back with its substantial new AAA game release slate.

The lineup includes three main titles that should help turn the tides in Ubisoft's favor: The return-to-roots Assassin's Creed Mirage in October, the explosively-beautiful action RPG Avatar Frontiers of Pandora in December, and the surprise galactic scoundrel sim Star Wars Outlaws in 2024.

Ubisoft's new Star Wars Outlaws game takes players to the seedy underbelly of the galaxy, and we should be interacting with some of the most notorious criminals in the franchise...possibly even Jabba The Hutt.

Star Wars Outlaws was one of the biggest surprises of last week's big E3-timed events. Ubisoft kept the game under wraps pretty tightly, so most of the reveal was a total surprise. No one expected Outlaws, which looks to be a kind of Han Solo simulator with a brand new face, Kay Vess, taking the helm and forging her path into the realm of scum and villainy. Kay doesn't bring the suave, nerf-herding demeanor like Solo, but she does have a vigilante skill set that makes her one half femme fatale, one half cat burglar. It's an interesting combination, and players will be able to shape her story based on the choices they pick through dynamic dialog sequences and how they tackle missions.

There's a distinct push and pull between the syndicates and the corruption of the Galactic Empire, and players will need to pick who they choose to side with along the way--going full Imperial could close the door on syndicate missions, but the opposite could be true for the Empire, and could cut Kay off of the credits that she needs to clear her name.

Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser has launched Absurd Ventures, a new startup specifically aimed at telling stories across all media.

Following his departure from Rockstar back in 2020, Dan Houser is back in the media spotlight with Absurd Ventures, a new company that wants to write scripts and stories for games, TV shows, film, graphic novels--the works. Having penned most of Rockstar Games' biggest hits, Houser has proven his ability to create unique and gritty stories across multiple genres and settings. Now he wants to bring his skills to a wider market and help create new IP across different media sectors.

"We are building Absurd Ventures to create new universes and to tell great stories, wherever and however we can," Houser said. The company's debut YouTube video is an enigmatic pastiche of pop culture references and iconography with a three-word tagline that feels straight out Natural Born Killers or A Clockwork Orange: "Storytelling, philanthropy, ultraviolence."

Microsoft apparently has no plans to immediately raise the price of its Xbox Game Pass subscription service if the merger with Activision is approved, even with the significant added value of day-and-date Call of Duty games.

In the past, Xbox CEO Phil Spencer has indicated that Microsoft could eventually raise the price of the Xbox Game Pass subscription in an effort to keep up with rising games industry costs. Right now Xbox Game Pass has two tiers: The base tier that costs $10 a month on either console or PC, and then Ultimate for $15 a month, which offers bonuses like EA titles, access to both console and PC, and cloud streaming. So what happens if the Activision merger closes, and a bulk of Activision-Blizzard games arrive on the service?

According to a new court filing, it appears that Microsoft could keep the price of Xbox Game Pass at its current rates on a post-merger basis. This is surprising given the significant added value that big games like Call of Duty and even Diablo IV will add to the service, however the strategy could work in Microsoft's favor and help surge Game Pass signups. This provision is also a means of protection, as regulators and courts may disapprove of an immediate price jump following the merger's closure.

Microsoft has no intention of disruptive Activision Blizzard King's creative operations if the two companies are allowed to merge.

Microsoft's service-first model will disrupt Activision's core business, but to what extent remains unknown. Game Pass subscriptions have been proven to cannibalize and/or reduce sales of premium games. This effect is the exact reason Activision has kept its games off of value-oriented multi-game subscription services like Game Pass--the publisher very strongly relies on full game sales in its annualized Call of Duty franchise, a series that has amassed over 425 million copies and generated over $31 billion in revenues to date. Diablo IV's recent success also underlines this disruption; the game managed to make $666 million in just five days based on game sales alone, a feat that may not have been possible if the game was release on Xbox Game Pass on a day one basis.

While the Microsoft-Activision merger will undoubtedly disrupt Activision's core business model in terms of game sales, Microsoft does not want to shake up the publisher's creative process (unfortunately, this could happen regardless due to the subscription-based business model, which could lead to a change in how games are made, alongside layoffs that are typical after consolidation).

Yoshi-P regrettably announced that Final Fantasy XVI will have a day one patch on PlayStation 5, but the game is still playable fully offline.

Square Enix originally wanted to release Final Fantasy XVI as a complete game that didn't need a day one patch. Now the devs at Creative Business Unit III have announced the game will actually have a day one update that addresses very specific bugs, but this update won't be required to play the base game.

Anyone who owns a disc version can still play Final Fantasy XVI fully offline, as well as gamers who already have FF16 installed onto their PS5. The update is not mandatory in order to start playing the game. The update will be 300MB in size and will release on June 20th, just 2 days before the game's final release.

Quantum computers are extremely powerful, but are famously unreliable in providing a user with the same result. However, that may very well all change, according to scientists at IBM.

So, what is quantum computing, and how is it different from regular computing? The barebones of quantum computing rely on two phenomena or principles of quantum mechanics, superposition and entanglement. Superposition is the principle that a particle, in this case, a qubit, or a bit of quantum information, can be in two separate states at the exact same time. Entanglement is the principle that two particles can share the exact same location at the same time, despite a perceived distance between the two.

The difference between classical computers and quantum computers is that classical computing uses binary, or 1 and 0's. Qubits are able to be both 1 and 0 simultaneously, enabling much faster calculations to be performed as many calculations can be performed at once, compared to a classic computer that performs each calculation individually. Unfortunately, one of the main problems with quantum calculations is the inconsistency with results.

During a conference in Paris, Tesla CEO Elon Musk joked about purchasing Twitter for the staggering figure of $44 billion.

Musk explained on stage during a conference on Friday his mentality behind carrying out the purchase of Twitter, something he has done since the acquisition was finalized and the rollercoaster of a takeover began to settle. Musk said that he was "concerned" that Twitter was going in a direction that would have a "negative" or a "corrosive" impact on society, and that while the social media platform was admittedly "expensive," he wanted to make sure it would be a "positive force for civilization".

Looking from the outside in it may be hard to wholeheartedly determine that Twitter is in a better place than it was, but if you were to ask Musk, he would say that the platform is in a much healthier state post-October 2022. Musk said he thinks that any regular Twitter user would say their "experience has improved" as there has been a mass reduction in the number of bots and scams on the platform. Additionally, Musk points out that Twitter has removed "95% of child exploitation material on Twitter, which was a shock to see ... some of what was going on for 10 years."

A Diablo IV player has taken to Reddit to share the total amount of XP required to reach max level 100, revealing that half of that total XP would make the player level 85.

Blizzard Entertainment seems to have taken a page out of Jagex's book when it comes to calculating the total amount of XP required to reach a maximum level. RuneScape is notorious for having long grinds of a specific skill or multiple skills, and for a player to commit to reaching the maximum level in a specific skill, the player must be prepared to spend tens or, more typically, hundreds of hours of grinding.

In OldSchool RuneScape, for a player to hit the maximum level in a skill, they must reach level 99, or earn 13,034,431 XP. For a player to hit level 92 in a skill, they must earn 6,517,253 XP, meaning level 92 is technically halfway to level 99. Diablo IV is similar, with Reddit user Aganod44 pointing out that at level 85, a player will have around 243.5 million total XP, and the maximum level requires 487 million XP.

Ubisoft's new Avatar game may deliver one of the most captivating storylines of the year.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has an interesting aim. The game wants to meld first-person Far Cry-like action combat and free-roaming exploration while threading an interesting storyline through the experience. The result could be a compelling interactive journey into one of the most colorful worlds of modern entertainment.

Based on what we know about Frontiers of Pandora, the game will take on classic archetypes and motifs like the traditional Hero's Journey adventure that was first posited by Joseph Campbell. The game will have a distinct fantasy mythos undercurrent that carries the entire storyline; in Frontiers of Pandora, you play as a Na'vi that was specifically trained by humans to kill other Na'vi. Eventually you break away from the RDA and have to discover yourself, your culture, and to truly understand what it means to be Na'vi.