Latest News - Page 972

Today's Google Doodle is something that all gamers should check out to learn the origins of the early video games industry.

Before the days of next-gen consoles, 8K gaming with raytraced visuals, and always-connected multiplayer, there was a simpler time when arcades, wood grain, and pixellated graphics were all the rage. The early days of video games in the 1970s was an era that's hard to capture--it was something you had to be there to experience--and all too often today's gamers miss out on important history lessons from that early age.

Google has provided a neat little interactive history lesson that tells the story of one of gaming's most iconic creators: Jerry Lawson, who in 1976 helped create the world's first video games cartridge.

Discord has officially launched its Server Subscription program to all eligible creators in the United States.

Today Discord made history by offering new monetization options for creators in the form of Server Subscriptions. The new feature was in testing phases but is now widely available, and it's essentially a content delivery system that allows creators to monetize followers on their servers in the form of multi-tiered offerings. It's kind of like a combination of Patreon and Discord.

Creators have sole discretion in pricing and the content offered on each tier, which gives lots of flexibility and room to brainstorm new ideas. Discord has included a few examples from Bella Poarch below:

After monstrous sales on the Nintendo Switch, Capcom's behemoth-slaying mega-hit is coming to Xbox and PlayStation in 2023.

Monster Hunter Rise will launch on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S consoles simultaneously on January 20, 2023, Capcom has announced. The biggest surprise is that Monster Hunter Rise will also release day one on Xbox Game Pass, which doesn't typically happen. Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak is also coming to consoles in Spring 2023.

Capcom's sold 21.3 million games in the first six months of this fiscal year, and releasing Mon Hun Rise on Game Pass could affect game sales on the Xbox platform--but Rise also has microtransactions so this may help offset any potential loss in game sales. Capcom is also likely to get a nice royalty bonus for including the game on Game Pass as well, and there's a good chance the game will rotate out in 3-6 months. Plus, Sunbreak will not be included, as is customary for most Game Pass titles to not include expansions.

After 2 years of support, Assassin's Creed Valhalla is about to ride off into the sunset with its final content drop, and Ubisoft has teamed up with Bungie and Capcom to send the game off with a bang.

Destiny is no stranger to collabs--the game had a surprising Fortnite crossover this year--and now another epic crossover is happening with the Assassin's Creed franchise. Bungie and Ubisoft have announced both games will be getting AC and Destiny content in the form of buyable cosmetics.

Destiny 2 and Assassin's Creed players will be able to buy packs that include crossover content from each game. Assassin's Creed Valhalla will get some awesome armor sets that allow Eivor to transform into two of the most iconic Guardians in Destiny history, Lord Shaxx and Saint-14. The Valhalla pack includes 2 armor sets--Lord Shaxx and Saint-14--swords, a mount, and more weapons.

Valve will give away over 180 units of the hottest handhelds on the market in just a few days.

Valve has announced that it will give out a Steam Deck PC handheld every minute that The Game Awards is streamed. Last year's show was 3 hours and 30 minutes, and The Game Awards 2022 is expected to be "roughly three hours," which means that Valve should give out at least 180 Steam Deck systems.

To enter you just have to sign in to this link and then watch The Game Awards showcase live through the Steam platform.

Kindred Motorworks recently showed off its latest creation, the Kindred Chevy 3100 pickup truck - a late 40s-50s era truck with an electric drivetrain. Interested buyers will need to wait a couple of years and can expect to pay at least $159,000.

Kindred used Chevy 3100 models built from 1947 to 1953 and packed in a 294hp direct drive electric AC motor electric powertrain. The 74 kWh battery provides a 200-mile range - with a 6.6 kW on-board charger with 120v and 240v support. Charge time with a level-2 charger will take nine hours.

The interior features a bench seat with custom leather upholstery with headrests and center seating. There is an EV-specific style gauge cluster, a touchscreen infotainment system with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay support, and a wireless charging dock. Overall, the exterior also underwent a full restoration, so Kindred put in the effort to refurbish the old school truck.

The Ford Mustang Mach-E electric model has reached 150,000 models produced, with the US automaker expanding sales. The Mach-E already is available in 37 countries, with Ford adding new markets starting in 2023.

Ford first introduced the Mustang Mach-E on Nov. 17, 2019, and the 2021 model hit the market in December 2020. Ford wants to step up to 600,000 EVs produced by the end of next year - and 2 million made annually by 2026.

Here is what Deborah Manzano, director of manufacturing at Ford, said in a press statement: "The plant is buzzing. There's a new battery line, new chassis line, additional assembly line, we're literally maxing out the space to make more Mustang Mach-E vehicles. We most recently added a new paint shop, too. Nothing is standing still for long!"

Neuralink announced at its event in California on Wednesday that it's preparing to implant its brain chip into human patients.

Neuralink, the Elon Musk-founded brain-computer interface company, recently conducted a "show and tell" event this past Wednesday where the company gave an update on its status and its plans for the future. Musk appeared on stage to present the overall summary of the event, giving the goal of the product, what Neuralink wants to solve in the future, and where it expects to be within the next six months.

According to Musk, who wrote on Twitter, Neuralink has reached a level in internal testing that the team is confident that "the Neuralink device is ready for humans", and that the company is currently engaged in discussions with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to get regulatory approval. Now, Neuralink has set a target of the first human trials beginning within the next six months.

Kanye West, now officially known as Ye, has revealed on a podcast that the Internal Revenue Service has frozen four of his bank accounts.

The rapper appeared on the Timcast IRL podcast on Monday hosted by Tim Pool to promote his 2024 presidential campaign. During the podcast, West revealed that his "finance people" informed him that he's going to "have to pay a lot of taxes", and the morning of the podcast, he found out that "they were trying to put me in prison this morning." Ye goes on to say that the IRS put a "$75 million hold on four of my accounts" and that it took him six hours to find out just how much "a lot was".

The rapper further revealed that "a lot" was around "$50 million", and admitted that he isn't the most "financially literate person on the planet" and that, given even his current position, he's going to have to "learn how to run a company". Notably, Ye has received quite a lot of negative press following his antisemitic comments, which resulted in the dissolving of extremely lucrative brand deals with top brands such as Adidas, Balenciaga, Gap, and more.

The saga of the collapse of what was the world's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange, FTX continues, with reports now coming out about FTX's top lawyers trying to take control away from former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

Over the course of one week, the world's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange collapsed in slow motion over a liquidity crunch closely tied to FTX's sister company Alameda Research. Now that the implosion has occurred, the fallout is being felt throughout the cryptocurrency industry, with companies such as BlockFi recently filing for bankruptcy as the FTX fallout severely impacted them. Additionally, more details about the events behind the scenes leading up to the implosion are coming out.

According to new reports, as FTX was in the midst of crumbling, top FTX lawyers reportedly attempted to take away control of the company from former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), who ignored messages from the lawyers that requested SBF prepare for bankruptcy and halt exchanges. Ryne Miller, a top FTX lawyer, wrote in an email to Mr. Bankman-Fried and other staff on November 10, "The exchanges must be halted immediately. The founding team is not currently in a cooperative posture."

NASA's Orion spacecraft is currently conducting extremely valuable scientific operations while orbiting the Moon, and while it was at its further point from Earth, it snapped a photograph of our pale blue dot.

NASA writes on its blog that the Artemis 1 mission is proceeding as expected, with the team recently pushing the "go" button for Orion to exit its distant retrograde orbit, where it has been since November 25, to begin its journey back to Earth. Throughout its time orbiting the Moon, teams back at NASA were and still are collecting valuable flight test data that will be used to reduce the risk of danger for future crewed flights.

Additionally, teams on-ground monitoring Orion are learning how the spacecraft operates and performs while doing what it was designed to do. While Orion was at its furthest point from Earth, at a distance of 268,563 miles, which broke the record for the furthest spacecraft built for humans has traveled, it snapped several photographs of Earth and the Moon. In one of the images, it appears the Moon is eclipsing Earth.

Scientists have analyzed a meteorite that fell to Earth in 2020, and it's been discovered that it contains two minerals that aren't found on Earth.

Meteorites fall to Earth everyday, but since the majority of the planet is covered in water, most of the space rock fragments fall into the ocean, and the remaining fragments that are lucky enough to make it to the surface are rarely found. However, in 2020 a meteorite fell in Somalia and was handed over to researchers for analysis.

According to a press release, the meteorite weighing about 2.5 ounces, was sent to the University of Alberta for classification, which was later concluded to be an Iron IAB complex meteorite, which is a space rock composed of meteoritic iron and silicate inclusions. Typically it takes quite some time for scientists to confirm a new mineral, but the process was sped up as the two new minerals identified in the meteorite had already been synthetically created on Earth before.

Lamborghini typically focuses on luxury sports cars able to rip up the track or street, but the Italian automaker has a concept car designed away from the road. Even the design of the car forced engineers to convert the automaker's DNA to push different boundaries that they usually never had to worry about. Here is action of the first Huracan Sterrato driving on the open road:

The car was designed and equipped specifically to handle off-road driving - the tires are wider with increased sidewalls, drastically improving grip and shock absorption. Lamborghini first showed off the concept in 2019, though was confirmed as a production model starting over the summer.

Between the V10 5.2 I engine and a physical design tailored for adventures, there is a modified departure angle and increased ground clearance - with a front frame and underbody that have been reinforced. The integrated aluminum is covered with an aluminum bulkhead while drivers conquer dirt-road surfaces.

Overwatch 2's upcoming Season 2 update isn't far away now, where Activision-Blizzard will be unleashing its new transforming tank hero "Ramattra" and so, so much more.

The new Season 2 update will also include a new map called Shambali Monastery, which is Tibetan-themed, as well as a new limited-time mode called Battle for Olympus, on top of a bunch of Greek mythology-themed cosmetics (of course, it's Blizzard, gotta make that dosh with skins).

The new tank in Ramattra is a powerhouse, with Ramattra being the first tank that can completely change forms as part of its kit, where it can alter its abilities and playstyle at any moment in the game. It'll be an interesting turn of events in Overwatch 2, which is already radically different -- as well as beautifully familiar -- to the original Overwatch.

GIGABYTE's new mid-range B760 AORUS Elite motherboard has been spotted, the first custom B760-based motherboard so far... check it out:

The new GIGABYTE B760 AORUS Elite motherboard isn't a high-end board, with no support for DDR5 memory and in its place DDR4 memory... so it is the perfect motherboard for someone who is looking at a new CPU like Intel's mid-range Core i5-13600K processor, but didn't want to buy DDR5 memory, too.

AMD has been struggling to sell its new Ryzen 7000 series CPUs given that consumers need to buy a higher-end X670 or B650 motherboard, which require DDR5 memory for the most part... but if you're waiting to upgrade to Intel's new 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" CPUs and didn't want to invest in DDR5, there are new motherboards on the way.

GALAX has broken another world record with its custom GeForce RTX 4080 SG graphics card, pushing the AD103 "Ada Lovelace" GPU up to the very lofty heights of 3.6GHz.

Now that EVGA has exited the GPU business, GALAX has been rather busy scooping up a bunch of world records, where it has already secured itself 34+ world records using its flagship GALAX GeForce RTX 4090 HOF "Hall of Fame" graphics card. But today, the company has announced through its official Twitter account that its GeForce RTX 4080 SG has been pushing the AD103 GPU clock frequency up a rather big hill.

The new GALAX GeForce RTX 4080 SG graphics card has its 1-Click OC feature that was pushed up to 3615MHz, passing the original 1-Click OC frequency by a rather impressive 40%. The factory GPU clock out of the box for the GALAX GeForce RTX 4080 SG sits at 2565MHz, while the 1-Click OC clock hits 2580MHz, but with the manual overclocking applied, the huge 3615MHz GPU frequency was hit. Wowzers.

EK has just announced its new enterprise-grade GPU water block for the NVIDIA RTX A5000 workstation GPU, using a CNC-machined, nickel-plated copper base with a beautiful laser-cut stainless top for a robust metal cooling solution... fitting into a tight single-slot solution.

The new EK-Pro Rack GPU water blocks fit the standard Full Height Full Sidth (FHFW) server chassis form factor, with the company saying it makes their new water block for the NVIDIA RTX A5000 workstation GPU the perfect drop-in replacement for dual-slot active, and passive air coolers.

The new EK-Pro GPU WB RTX A5000 - Nickel + Inox Rack water block was purpose-designed for the NVIDIA RTX A5000 workstation graphics cards, with the water block directly cooling the GPU, VRAM, and VRM (voltage regulation modules) as the cooling liquid is channeled right over the critical areas.

Phison originally teased its next-gen E26 PCIe Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD controller in September, alongside AMD and its tease of Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" processors... but now the next-gen PCIe 5.0 SSD controller has been delayed.

Phison was originally meant to have its next-gen PCIe 5.0 SSD controller out by now, but there are no Phison E26-powered SSDs on the market, reviewed, or ready to go at all. During the Flash Memory Summit 2022 a couple of months back, Phison and AMD teased the E26 PCIe 5.0 SSD controller running at a huge 12.5GB/sec reads.

The new Phison E26 controller will have 3D TLC memory, offering a bandwidth of up to 2400MT/s alongside those huge 12.5GB/sec+ read speeds in PCIe 5.0-enabled motherboards. Back in May 2022, Phison announced in a blog post that it would be expecting mass production of PCIe 5.0 SSDs in Q3 2022, but the third quarter is finished, and we're now in the final month of 2022 and yet no Phison E26-powered SSDs are here.

NVIDIA's next-gen workstation GPU has been unleashed, with the new RTX 6000 "Ada Lovelace" workstation GPU starting at $7350 and begins shipping in the next couple of weeks.

The new NVIDIA RTX 6000 workstation GPU is different to the RTX A6000 -- notice the "A" there -- with the new RTX 6000 based on the new Ada Lovelace GPU architecture, whilst the RTX A6000 is based on the previous-gen Ampere GPU architecture.

NVIDIA's new RTX 6000 workstation GPU is based on the AD102 "Ada Lovelace" GPU with 142 Streaming Multiprocessors, meaning that two of them are disabled from the full silicon, spitting out a CUDA core count of 18176 CUDA cores meaning the new RTX 6000 workstation GPU has around 11% more CUDA cores than the AD102-based GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card.

NVIDIA has announced that Portal with RTX will be launching on December 8, acting as an upgraded remaster of the original Portal made by Valve. NVIDIA pushed the remastered Portal with RTX during its GeForce RTX 40 reveal event in September, and now it's nearly here.

Portal with RTX has NVIDIA's new Ada Lovelace GPU-powered DLSS 3 technology flowing through it, but if you don't have a GeForce RTX 4090 or GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card... don't worry, you've still got DLSS 2.0 to give you more image quality or frames per second, whichever you prefer.

You can expect a huge upgrade in visuals with Portal RTX featuring full ray tracing support and beefed up graphics for that beautiful 4K gaming experience, with NVIDIA recommending its GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card to achieve 4K 60FPS... and that's with DLSS 3 enabled. NVIDIA recommends an Intel Core i7-12700K or AMD Ryzen 9 5900 processor with 32GB of RAM, for 4K 60FPS for the Ultra preset on Portal with RTX.