Latest News - Page 867

Apple is expected to bring USB-C to the iPhone 15 later this year, ditching the Lightning cable for the first time. It isn't doing it by choice though, with the company being forced to make the move by a European Union directive. Now, it seems that there might be more trouble on the horizon for Apple's hardware design team.

Another new rule which was approved earlier this week will see all phones forced to have more easily removed and replaced batteries. What that will mean for phone makers including Apple remains to be seen, but it's unlikely to be good for a company that is notorious for making it difficult for people to repair their own devices.

The new rule will make it a requirement for portable batteries in appliances like phones to be made in such a way that consumers can easily remove and replace them, and the iPhone will obviously fall very squarely in that bracket. But it isn't just Apple, with other phone makers also expected to have to make design tweaks to abide by the new EU requirements.

If you looked at the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and thought that it was too expensive, there might be some very good news in store about the Galaxy Z Fold 5 that will replace it.

While Samsung is yet to formally announce the Galaxy Z Fold 5, that's expected to happen soon enough alongside Galaxy Z Flip 5. And when that happens there is course for optimism among those who might consider picking one up. According to a new leak, the Galaxy Z Fold 5 is going to retail for less than the phone that came before it.

It's of course unusual for a new phone to sell for less than the model that it replaces, so this is particularly interesting. It's also notable that the leak by Twitter leaker @Tech_Reve also claims that the Galaxy Z Flip 5 will sell for the same price as its predecessor. The fact that only one of Samsung's foldables is going to get cheaper suggests that the savings are in something bespoke to that model, possibly the displays or hinge assembly.

AMD could be cooking up an RX 7800 XT graphics card to arrive sooner than many expected, if the GPU grapevine proves to be on the money.

This leak comes from a regular on Twitter, Harukaze5719, who spotted ASRock filing a couple of RX 7800 XT models with the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC).

The graphics cards in question are the ASRock RX 7800 XT PG 16GO and the RX 7800 XT PGW 16GO. As you can see, this is a weighty clue that the GPU will be equipped with 16GB of video RAM (as previously rumored).

Authorities have launched a widespread search both above water and below for the submersible Titan that contains at least five individuals that were on a journey to see the Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean.

So, what happened? Tour firm OceanGate charges approximately $250,000 per guest it takes on an eight-day expedition to observe the famous Titanic wreck located 12,500 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. Participants are then crammed into a submersible vehicle called Titan, which is equipped with anywhere between 70 and 96 hours of emergency oxygen, and then dropped into the ocean to begin its dive to the bottom of the ocean.

According to reports, the Titan sub lost communication with the vessel Polar Prince an hour and 45 minutes into its dive. Who was on board? So far, we know the sub had five people on board, three of which have been confirmed to be Hamish Harding, a 58-year-old British businessman and explorer, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman Dawood. It's believed French explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet and Stockton Rush, a chief executive at OceanGate, are also on Titan - however, this isn't confirmed.

Apple is attempting to secure the exclusive rights of depictions of apples in a long-standing effort from the company to be given the exclusive rights of owning all apple imagery.

A new report from Wired UK states that Apple has been attempting to acquire a trademark for an apple in Switzerland since 2017 while simultaneously making the same application in other countries such as Japan, Turkey, Israel, and Armenia. Reports indicate that Apple submitted an application to the Swiss Institute of Intellectual Property (IPI) for the exclusive rights to a black-and-white depiction of a Granny Smith apple.

The application was partially awarded by the IPI in 2022, with the regulatory body citing the legal principle of generic images of common goods, such as fruits, or in this case, apples, which are considered to be public domain.

Mercedes-Benz has taken to its website to announce new features coming to Mercedes vehicles, and according to the German car company, Mercedes owners can expect an AI-powered upgrade.

The company explained in a blog post that it will be rolling out updates to its Hey Mercedes voice assistant, and that customers will be able to opt-in to the beta program by simply saying, "Hey Mercedes, I want to join the beta program". Once the correct words are spoken, the vehicle will initiate an over-the-air update that will upgrade the MBUX Voice Assistant with OpenAI's extremely popular chatbot, ChatGPT.

Mercedes says on its website that ChatGPT will "greatly improve natural language understanding and expand the topics to which it can respond. Soon, participants who ask the Voice Assistant for details about their destination, to suggest a new dinner recipe, or to answer a complex question, will receive a more comprehensive answer." Mercedes says this new ChatGPT integration with its vehicles was made possible through Microsoft, a massive investor in OpenAI, the developers behind ChatGPT.

A new report has revealed that encrypted Chinese chips are being used by multiple U.S. government agencies as well as NATO and the U.K. military.

A new report from Wired has revealed these encrypted chips were supplied by Hualan Microelectronics and were used to store confidential information related to the agency's responsibilities. Notably, the report states that in 2021 the U.S. added Hualan to its "Entity List" written by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), which states Hualan has been sanctioned for "acquiring and attempting to acquire US-origin items in support of military modernization for [China's] People's Liberation Army."

The new report states that U.S. governmental agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the U.S. Navy, and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) all purchased these potentially compromised chips. Security researchers have warned that these Chinese-supplied chips may have a hidden backdoor that enables China's government to access the encrypted data on each of the microchips, which, if true, essentially makes them all compromised.

Apple is only a few months away from officially unveiling the iPhone 15, but analysts are already discussing what the company is reportedly planning on putting in the iPhone 16.

Ming-Chi, a supply chain analyst known for his past accurate predictions, has posted a new report that states Apple is planning on adding Wi-Fi 7 support into next year's iPhone. While a bigger number is typically better in the tech world, what does that mean for general users?

According to reports, Wi-Fi 7 is expected to be a large upgrade in the maximum data throughput speeds, or the amount of data that can be processed in any given amount of time. Reports indicate that Wi-Fi 7 will boast more than 40Gbps, and if this is true, it would mean Wi-Fi 7 is four times faster than Wi-Fi 6 and almost six times faster than Wi-Fi 5.

A YouTuber has decided to take on the task of constructing a AT-AT walker from the original Star Wars movies, and the results are quite impressive.

James Bruton, a mechanical engineer that runs a YouTube channel that has amassed more than 1 million subscribers has taken on the challenge of building a custom AT-AT walker, or more specifically called, All Terrain Armored Transport (AT-AT). Bruton points out that the first toy version of the AT-AT walker were capable of walking but required a human to manually move the toys legs. Other toy versions of the AT-AT could walk, but struggled to do so given their limited design.

Bruton teaches his viewers how he went about building the AT-AT, mentioning that the design he implemented is statistically stable as the AT-AT is able to lift one leg off the ground and remain balanced. The custom AT-AT features a quadrupedal locomotion system, with each leg powered by three servo motors. Notably, the mechanical engineer published all of the resources used to constructed the AT-AT on GitHub for anyone that is looking to recreate the iconic Imperial armored transportation.

Since early December 2022, the public has been patiently waiting on the edge of their seat to see when Neuralink, Elon Musk's brain chip company, will conduct its first human trials.

Musk made the announcement that Neuralink was ready to begin human trials on December 1, 2022, and during that announcement, the Tesla CEO outlined what the brain-chip-interface company intends to achieve with its product, what Neuralink wants to solve in the future, and where the company is expected to be six months from the announcement.

It's exactly six months from the December 2022 announcement, and Musk has appeared on stage at the VivaTech event in Paris, where he gave similar statements to the announcement from six months ago. "Neuralink is ready for humans," and he expects a human trial will happen sometime "this year."

Inno3D has formally announced that its new GeForce RTX 4070, GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, and GeForce RTX 4060 Twin X2 and OC White Edition graphics cards will feature its new Stealth Cable Management system. We spotted this a little over a week ago, but Inno3D's official announcement outlines that the company is serious about improving cable management and bringing these new models to a wider audience.

"By placing the power connectors on the back of the GPU, these graphics cards offer a cleaner and more aesthetically pleasing look for custom PC builds," Inno3D writes, noting that the hidden cable trend seen at Computex 2023 is the beginning of a big change for overall GPU designs.

Putting the power connectors on the back of these new GPUs, with an added removable backplate for more stealth action, makes cable management cleaner but also helps simplify the installation process. And it just looks better.

The tumultuous debacle between Redditors and Reddit just got a whole lot more interesting as a ransomware group has claimed they have 80GB of confidential company files it's prepared to release if demands aren't reached.

Reddit has certainly kicked up a storm after the company announced changes to its Application Programming Interface (API), and these changes would essentially make it impossible for third-party developers to continually support third-party apps and tools used by millions of Redditors. Many of these apps improved the general Reddit experience, and many third-party tools were used by volunteer moderators to speed up their moderation process.

Apollo, the most popular third-party Reddit app, said it would no longer be able to keep running as it would be unable to pay the $20 million a year that Reddit's new pricing now states is a requirement. In response to these changes, thousands of subreddits decided to go offline in an almost platform-wide blackout. This digital protest prompted a response from Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, who said in a recent interview that the API changes are here to stay and that subreddits going dark will eventually pass.

The NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPU is built for AI workloads, designed to work alongside a string of other H100 GPUs, and costs around USD 40,000 a pop. It's a general-purpose GPU and AI accelerator, so it is not designed for graphics or gaming - it lacks any display output.

Still, you might be wondering how it handles gaming workloads because, after all, if you had access to an NVIDIA supercomputer or high-end AI GPU, you'd probably be wondering how it handles something like Cyberpunk 2077 and its cutting-edge Ray Tracing Overdrive Mode.

Hardware-wise, it's a beast, with 14592 CUDA cores and 80GB of HBM3 memory with an effective bandwidth of 2TB/s. It also uses the PCI Express 5.0 interface, something that's still not available on the GeForce RTX 40 Series. But there's no cooling because it is data center rack-based and has no display, so getting it to run games requires some work.

Downloading pirated software, especially an operating system, is not something you should consider - especially in light of this new report from Doctor Web. They've found multiple pirated copies of Windows 10 Pro feature a hidden trojan app called Trojan.Clipper.231 that steals cryptocurrency by substituting crypto wallet addresses in the clipboard with different addresses.

These unofficial and pirated builds of Windows 10 feature the malicious apps built into the OS, so it's not something you'd be able to spot when doing a clean install. Looking into the issue, Doctor Web quickly found five versions of Windows 10 on torrent tracker sites with the malicious trojan app.

The good news is that they have identified the malicious apps in the system directory.

Corsair's latest gaming mouse is all about performance, with the new DARKSTAR WIRELESS featuring a tried and true ergonomic shape and the addition of a side button configuration that stands out.

With 15 programmable buttons, this one is aimed at MMO and MOBA players looking for deep customization and plenty of options for additional buttons on their go-to gaming mouse. The six buttons on the side of the mouse are arranged in a circular pattern that we haven't seen before, and based on images, look large enough to make knowing what to press and when a breeze.

Performance-wise, the DARKSTAR WIRELESS uses Cirsair's 2,000Hz hyper-polling sub-1ms SLIPSTREAM WIRELESS technology for high-end responsiveness with the addition of Bluetooth for versatility in the devices it can connect to. Closing out the top-line features is the impressive 80-hour battery life and play-and-charge functionality over USB.

The new MAG GL Series power supplies from MSI are both PCIe 5.0 ready and ATX 3.0 compatible, though it's the addition of 16-pin connectors designed in yellow - the 12VHPWR for new GPUs in the GeForce RTX 40 Series - that feels like a great design choice.

This comes down to the 12VHPWR adaptors and cables burning out, an issue that became a big concern around the launch of the new GeForce RTX 4090 and GeForce RTX 4080. Ultimately, most of the issues were around cables not being connected properly on the GPU side. Hence, adding yellow-colored 16-pin connectors for the MAG GL Series means you'll have visual confirmation that the connection is secure and fully seated.

"Examining the reported cases of power supply connectors being burnt when paired with high-end graphics cards, we've identified the main reason," writes MSI in the MAG GL Series power supplies announcement. "The connectors not being plugged in properly, and the connector pins [are] suffering from fallouts. With this new cable, we successfully tackle both issues head-on."

Some very interesting developers are involved with Skydance New Media's upcoming Star Wars game.

Five years ago, EA shut down Visceral Games and cancelled an ambitious new Star Wars game. 10 years ago, LucasArts cancelled Star Wars 1313, an action game based on Boba Fett's exploits in the layered criminal city-world of Coruscant. Now two of the main creatives behind both of these projects--Amy Hennig and Dominic Robilliard--are under the same roof working on a new Star Wars game.

In a recent LinkedIn post, Dominic Robilliard announced that he will serve as game director on Skydance New Media's upcoming Star Wars game. It's a fitting placement, considering Robilliard was the creative director of the famously cancelled Star Wars 1313 project.

Xbox's management downplays the importance and significance of cloud gaming as regulators use the nascent tech as a lynchpin to their anti-merger arguments.

In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty shared an interesting perspective on cloud gaming. According to Booty, the tech isn't a big part of Xbox and is more of an experimental and additive part of Microsoft's gaming focus. Despite entering private testing in 2019 as Project xCloud, and moving to public beta in 2020 as Xbox Cloud Gaming included as part of an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, Microsoft apparently considers its streaming service to be highly experimental.

"For us, to be clear, it is a very, very small market. I'm not even sure you would call it a market yet, in fact. It's very small usage and very small audience," the Xbox Game Studios boss said.

Sony's new mobile gaming segment loses the head executive that oversaw business development.

Sony has big plans to tap the mobile gaming segment using its lucrative and popular PlayStation IPs. The company is investing heavily into new segments including PC expansion, live services, and mobile, with around 20% of its new games lineup aiming to launch on mobile by FY25. To help kickstart its fledgling efforts, Sony conscripted Nicola Sebastiani, an industry vet who helped establish Apple Arcade, to serve as VP and head of mobile for PlayStation Studios.

After 2 years of helping build the PlayStation mobile initiative, Sebastiani's LinkedIn confirms that he's leaving Sony.

AMD has a new tech on the boil that might just prolong the battery life of your laptop considerably.

Phoronix.com reports on the sighting of FreeSync Panel Replay in a new patch for AMD's Linux display driver.

In theory, if it comes to fruition, FreeSync Panel Replay will mean less power usage for AMD Ryzen-powered laptops.