Latest News - Page 954

Twitter owner Elon Musk has confirmed that Twitter Blue will soon get a more expensive option for users that wish to remove advertisements from the platform entirely.

The news came from Musk, that took to his personal Twitter account to announce that advertisements are "too frequent on Twitter" and are "too big". The Tesla CEO went on to explain that development teams are tackling both of these issues in the "coming weeks" and that there will be a "higher-priced subscription that allows zero advertisements". These announcements of new revenue streams from Musk come at a crucial time as the company is suffering from a dramatic loss in advertising expenditure from big-name advertisers and ad agencies.

Notably, reports from last week indicated that Twitter wants its old and new advertisers so badly that it's giving away $250,000 in ad spend to specific companies that spend $250,000 on the platform. This means a company would get $500,000 in ad spend on Twitter if they bought $250,000 of ads. Advertisers left or temporarily stopped spending on Twitter following Musk's takeover in late October, with many former advertisers citing Musk's unpredictable behavior on the platform, changes to the platform's content policy, and layoffs.

A group of scientists have created a high-power laser beam that they claim lightning will follow for a period of time.

Physicists have published a new study in the scientific journal Nature Photonics that explores the use of a high-powered laser beam to control where lightning strikes in what seems to be the successor to the still-in-use lightning rod. The idea behind the laser beam is to protect areas such as airports, rocket launch pads, and other infrastructure that is vulnerable to electrical damage from rolling thunderstorms that spawn lightning strikes.

Benjamin Franklin first proposed the lightning rod that is still widely used today to protect buildings from lightning strikes in around 1750. The rod or lightning conductor is a large metal rod mounted on a structure that routes lightning into the ground, protecting the building from any electrical damage. While Franklin suggested the idea, the design of the lightning rod was perfected by Nikolas Tesla.

The US airline CommuteAir reportedly left a federal "No Fly List" on an unsecured server that was then accessed by a Swiss hacker.

The exclusive report comes from The Daily Dot that claims US airline CommuteAir left an unsecured server open that contained a large quantity of sensitive information. This server was accessed by a Swiss hacker that goes by "maia arson crimew" who wrote a blog post titled "how to completely own an airline in 3 easy steps," where they explained that they stumbled across the sensitive server by accident and through boredom.

Essentially, the hackers were just looking around through a search engine called Shodan when they discovered the server and a file titled "NoFly.csv". The file was opened, and the hackers discovered a 2019 version of a federal No Fly list that includes first and last names as well as dates of birth. The Daily Dot reports the list contained the names and aliases of many high-profile people, such as the recently-freed Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout and his 16 aliases.

Researchers have discovered that Saturn's moon Enceladus was far more tectonically active than previously thought after analyzing recent measurements of material from the moon's surface.

A new study published in the scientific journal Icarus details measurements conducted on the material that coats the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus. According to the study, the material is called 'regolith' and has an appearance very similar to snow found on Earth. However, Enceladus' snow isn't formed the same way normal snow is formed on Earth.

The researchers explain that the regolith is created through snow cannon-like plumes, or ice geysers erupting and shooting large quantities of particles up into the atmosphere that then fall back down to the moon's surface. Smaller particles launched by the eruption are shot into space and eventually become part of Saturn's iconic rings. While scientists are quite sure that Enceladus' snow is coming from surface eruptions, the researchers are in the dark when it comes to the physical properties of the regolith material.

Several researchers are using motion capture technology that is commonly used to capture the movements of actors playing roles in films, such as Avatar, to track the progression of rare diseases in patients.

The new technology has been in development for over 10 years, and according to recent reports, it has been tested in two separate studies where it monitored patients with Friedreich's ataxia (FA) and Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). So, how does it work? According to the team behind the project, the AI system analyzes the body movements of the patients and then provides a diagnosis while also giving a prediction of the progression of the disease. With this information, medical professionals are able to diagnose disorders twice as fast as the best doctors.

According to the team that tested the AI technology on FA patients, the new system was able to predict the progression of the disease worsening over the course of twelve months, which is half the amount of time a typical industry expert could. Notably, another team tested the AI system on twenty-one males with DMD and found that the system was able to predict how each of the patients' movement would be impacted six months in the future. Additionally, the prediction by the AI was reportedly much more accurate than a doctor.

Artificial intelligence has created a new 1980s "Matrix" starring Jeff Goldblum as Morpheus, Viggo Mortenson as Neo, and Tommy Lee Jones as Agent Smith.

The team behind the project are self-proclaimed science fiction enthusiasts that have used artificial intelligence to create what they call the world's first AI-created magazine. The magazine is called Infinite Odyssey and looking at the recent Instagram post on the official Infinite Odyssey Instagram account, we can see a selection of images that the AI created. Typically AI-generated images come with several abnormalities that stand out to the viewer, and sometimes these abnormalities make the viewer think, 'something is off with this image'.

However, Infinite Odyssey's images don't necessarily give this reaction at first glance, but after a detailed inspection, a viewer with a keen eye will be able to spot the minuscule AI errors. In the above image, you can see the AI has added far too many fingers to Agent Smith's hand. Besides this error, the AI has captured the idea of the Matrix, the art style, the coloring, and the seamless inclusion of different actors at a very impressive level.

Many people were expecting AMD's flagship Radeon RX 7900 XTX to compete or trade blows with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4090 when it came to in-game performance that didn't include ray-tracing. As per AMD's pre-release unveiling and launch day reviews, its performance was closer to NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4080 than the RTX 4090.

Not only that, but its power draw and efficiency were a step behind the competition and not in line with claims of a 50% increase in performance-per-watt compared to RDNA 2 and its flagship GPU the Radeon RX 6900 XT.

And with that, many began speculating that somewhere along the way, something went wrong. AMD's high-end RDNA 3-based GPUs feature groundbreaking multi-chip designs, which is the next significant leap forward. So teething problems aren't unusual. This is not to say that Radeon RX 7900 XTX performance isn't impressive; per our review of the reference model, it's a powerful triple-digit frame-rate 4K card.

The Apple Lisa home computer first hit the scene forty years ago, and even though it launched for USD 9995 in 1983, which works out to be over 30K with inflation, it brought several ground-breaking additions to the world of PCs. It introduced the idea of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to interact with a desktop home computer, plus a crazy new concept called a computer mouse.

Thanks to the Computer History Museum (CHM), you can grab the complete source code for the Apple Lisa, which includes system and applications software. As part of the announcement, the CHM mentions one of computing history's most talked about stories. That time Steve Jobs and Apple visited Xerox and saw it was sitting on a potential killer feature in the form of a GUI. And so they "borrowed" the idea for the Apple Lisa.

The simple idea of windows for different applications, folders, and point-and-click navigation was something that the Apple Lisa brought to the masses. And it did all of that with only 1MB of RAM. That's not a typo; we're talking 1 Megabyte of memory - which was considered huge at the time. It also featured a 32-bit Motorola 68000 processor and a 364 x 720 resolution bitmap display.

The NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada workstation GPU has been listed with a price point of USD 6800, representing a 46% increase over the previous Ampere-based NVIDIA RTX A6000. Dropping the 'A' in naming the new graphics card it's aimed at the workstation market and not enthusiast gamers.

Though one assumes you'll be able to use it for gaming even though it uses NVIDIA's Pro driver suite.

The NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada specs are higher than the flagship consumer-focused GeForce RTX 4090, with its 18,176 CUDA cores presenting an 11% increase over the RTX 4090's 16,384 CUDA Core count. It also features more memory in the form of 48GB GDDR6 over a 384-bit interface - though it's clocked slower than the RTX 4090's 24GB of GDDR6X memory. The difference in specs points to some headroom for an eventual GeForce RTX 4090 Ti.

Adding custom cooling to a GPU or even changing the thermal paste to improve the cooling using an existing design is something modders have been doing for years. With several different thermal pads and paste solutions, choosing the right one can be tricky, which makes an in-depth report showcasing the result of various brands and options an invaluable tool.

A user over at the ComputerBase forums has done this, except that they've thrown in results for several things you wouldn't normally associate with cooling high-tech bits of silicon. We're talking ketchup, cheese, toothpaste, and even little slices of potato used as a thermal pad.

The tests were carried out on a Radeon R7 240 with a 30W TDP running Furmark for five minutes. Using an older GPU makes sense in terms of avoiding destroying something newer, plus the added benefit of not creating a grilled cheese and silicon sandwich.

A Redditor has used the Midjourney AI image generator to create some potential PC case designs, and the results are very cool, with some funky spherical designs. On that note, Hybective (the Redditor in question) has said that one of the prompts they used was "Sphere ITX PC build hyper realistic" and that "sphere" was a standard input based on their desire for a cool-looking spherical PC case.

This answers the question as to why a decent percentage of them are round. With 28 AI-generated PC case designs, many of them could inspire some case modders to take steps to make them a reality or even prompt case makers to add similar designs to their lineups.

The rise of AI in design and image generation has been something to behold of late, and seeing a powerful tool like Midjourney AI used in this way makes much sense. With AI a vital part of the software and hardware side of gaming PCs and creator rigs, thanks to NVIDIA tools like DLSS and Broadcast, the next step is to use AI for physical designs.

Recently we reported that a German retailer received a batch of older Radeon RX 6000s GPUs (RX 6800 and RX 6900) that had failed with cracked GPUs that were beyond repair. It was a concerning sample size at the time, with 48 GPUs out of 61 showcasing the same problem.

All cards were received over three weeks, and using the latest AMD graphics drivers from December 2022 was seen as a potential issue or starting point for the investigation. This was born from the fact that all users were using the cards differently, not simply pushing them to their limit when gaming.

It turns out it wasn't a driver issue after all, with KrisFix finding out that many of the cards were sold by a single seller where it's presumed they were being used for crypto mining. Getting a second-hand GPU that was previously used for mining is not uncommon, and when it comes to the health of a GPU in the long term, it's generally understood that mining wouldn't lead to the sort of failure rate seen here. That is, GPUs that are destroyed and cracked.

The Last of Us is one of Sony's most popular video game series...and now it's also a mega-popular TV series.

The new Last of Us TV adaptation is pulling in big numbers. HBO has confirmed that over 10 million people tuned into the series premiere, including subscribers across HBO Max and cable. Based on current numbers, this means that roughly 20.5% of all HBO subscribers watched The Last of Us' first episode.

"The series premiere of The Last of Us has now reached over 10M viewers in two days across linear and HBO Max platforms in the United States," the streamer wrote on Twitter.

Media outlets Giant Bomb and GameSpot have been hit with layoffs as Fandom takes control over the two websites.

Fandom, the Wikipedia of the nerd world, purchased popular games media sites Giant Bomb and GameSpot from Red Ventures in October of last year. Back then we reported that no one was losing the jobs, and that was technically true at the time. But that isn't the case now.

Now three months later, workers from both Giant Bomb and GameSpot have been let go. The layoffs include writers as well as graphic designers and video producers that were responsible for actual shows, with many saying that the separations were a complete surprise. Games media veterans have banded together to help find roles for those affected. Some like IGN's Kat Bailey, who previously ran US Gamer before it was shut down, notes that GameSpot in particular has great traffic and consistently strong views on its video content.

UPDATE: 343 Industries studio leader Pierre Hintze confirms that the team will continue working on Halo games.

343 Industries is reportedly no longer actively developing Halo games and will instead be a gatekeeper that oversees new Halo games from third-party developers.

Microsoft recently laid off 10,000 workers including Xbox game developers like 343 Industries, Bethesda Softworks, and The Coalition. 343 Industries was apparently affected the most by the layoffs with the studio's workers essentially being halved: "Along with almost half of the staff at 343, my team and I were impacted by the layoffs at Microsoft," Lead technical mocap animator Angel Wylie said on LinkedIn.

Recently it was reported that the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti would launch with a TGP power rating of only 160W - which would be 20% less than its Ampere counterpart. We also got a potential glimpse at the more mainstream Ada card's specs - the AD106-350-A1 chip, 4352 CUDA Cores, and 8GB of GDDR6 memory.

Even though being a 160W card would make it super efficient compared to the rest of the Ada line-up. It will still use the new PCIe Gen5 12VHPWR connector, which would point to NVIDIA, making this the norm.

The most significant point of contention with the specs is the news that the memory bus would only be 128-bit, with an effective bandwidth of 18 Gbps/288.0 GB/s. This brings into question the card's capabilities, alongside 8GB of memory, when playing games in 1440p and 4K. That said, the 32MB of reported cache represents a significant increase over the RTX 3060 Ti.

Ubisoft developers angrily call out company CEO Yves Guillemot for controversial comments that damaged employee morale.

Ubisoft isn't doing great right now. The company has cancelled 7 games and shocked investors with a 500 million Euro loss target for FY23. If that wasn't enough, Ubisoft's CEO Yves Guillemot kicked the hornet's nest and aggravated lots of his workers with comments made in an internal memo. Developers have pushed back and now Guillemot has apologized.

In the memo, Guillemot told developers "the ball is in your court" to turn Ubisoft's fortunes around. It was meant to be an inspired speech that rallied and emboldened developers to work harder. Instead, developers who had been pressured for years to deliver massive games amid company-wide sexual harassment controversies saw the comments as a slight.

Crystal Dynamics has reportedly ended development of all new content for the failed Marvel's Avengers live game, sources have told Exputer.

Marvel's Avengers was an expensive bomb that shook Square Enix's financials. The game's failure was a big reason that Square Enix sold the developer and shed itself of the Marvel license. Now it looks like Crystal Dynamics and the Embracer Group aren't so enthusiastic about continuing development of new Avengers content.

According to a new report from Exputer, Crystal Dynamics plans to announce that it will no longer be supporting the Avengers live game with new content. It's not that the creators don't have a bunch of updates and DLC actually in development--Crystal Dynamics apparently had a bunch of ideas like new modes, features, boss battles and even major campaign expansions planned for Avengers. It's just that content has effectively been cancelled likely because the game isn't performing well enough to justify the expenses.

The Switch is still going strong after seven years of sales and Nintendo plans to keep momentum going by accelerating hardware production.

Nintendo's Switch platform has been incredibly lucrative. The system has shipped over 114 million units and has already likely beaten the PlayStation 4's and the Game Boy's lifetime shipments throughout holiday 2022. Nintendo has made $62.26 billion from Switch hardware, software, and subscription sales so far and some of the company's best-selling games have been on the Switch itself.

With numbers like these it's no surprise that Nintendo would want to keep the Switch's strong sales going for as long as possible. But how long can Nintendo ride the wave?

The new Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition is now available on Steam...but the game is still apparently buggy on PC.

Over a year after the game's original launch, the latest GTA remastered collection has arrived on Steam. On first glance it looks like a great deal. Rockstar is currently holding a special sale and entire collection has been discounted by 50% and costs $29.99 on Steam, reflecting recent sales prices from the holiday season.

Sadly it looks like neither Rockstar Games nor the collection's actual developer Grove Street Games have released new update patches for the PC version. Users are reporting this is the exact same version that is available on the Rockstar Launcher, complete with wonky animations, bugs, and some optimization problems. The game apparently doesn't run great on the Steam Deck either with significant frame rate fluctuations in unlocked FPS modes on the handheld-PC hybrid.