10-year-old war film shoots its way into Netflix's global top 10 chart

Jak Connor | TV, Movies & Home Theatre | Feb 8, 2024 12:30 AM CST

The 2014 war film Fury, directed by David Ayer and starring Brad Pitt, has made its way on Netflix's Global Top 10 chart this week with over 3.3 million total views.

10-year-old war film shoots its way into Netflix's global top 10 chart

The film follows a five-man American tank crew who are tasked with going behind enemy lines to complete a dangerous mission in Nazi Germany during the final weeks of World War 2. Brad Pitt's character leads the team as a rough, tough, and battle-hardened tank commander, Don "Wardaddy" Collier; he stars alongside Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Pena, Jon Benthal, Jason Isaacs, and Scott Eastwood.

As of this year, the film is a decade old and is still finding new success on the streaming site Netflix. Between January 29 and February 6 of this year, Fury has been watched a total of 3.3 million times; that's a whopping 7.3 million hours! It ranked ninth in Netflix's Global Top 10 for the week, just ahead of Dennis Quaid's sports film The Hill, which is in its second week of the Top 10.

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NASA zooms in on the final resting place for its dead Mars helicopter

Jak Connor | Science, Space, Health & Robotics | Feb 8, 2024 12:15 AM CST

NASA's Mars rover has pointed its instruments at the downed Ingenuity helicopter sitting in its final resting place.

NASA zooms in on the final resting place for its dead Mars helicopter

The Mars helicopter was initially sent to the Red Planet as a technology demonstration with the goal of seeing if flight on another planet was possible. The demonstration was a success and Ingenuity became the first human-made object to take flight on another world.

The Mars helicopter went on to perform more than 70 additional flights, serving as a reconnaissance helicopter for the Perseverance rover. However, on flight 72, the helicopter had a rough landing, causing damage to its rotor blades and ultimately ending its mission.

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Renowned Harvard scientist claims real alien technology has been discovered

Jak Connor | Science, Space, Health & Robotics | Feb 8, 2024 12:00 AM CST

Harvard scientist Avi Loeb, known for claiming the interstellar object known as 'Oumuamua that passed through our solar system in 2017 was an alien probe, has backed up his claims from last year that pieces of alien technology were discovered in the ocean off the coast of Papa New Guinea.

Renowned Harvard scientist claims real alien technology has been discovered

It was back in July last year that Avi Loeb claimed his team discovered fragments of alien technology at the crash site of the meteor that entered Earth's atmosphere in January 2014. The team sifted through meteor data and discovered the meteorite known as IM1 was traveling "too fast" to have come from within our solar system, meaning it was an object that came from outside of our solar system.

The team ran a magnetic sheet over the seafloor, and what was recovered is claimed to be made from material that is stronger than "all space rocks cataloged by NASA over the past decade," per Loeb. Notably, the Harvard scientist went on the record saying the tiny spheres recovered from the crash site looked like miniature Earths as they contained distinct colors of blue, brown, and gold.

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Patriot Memory unveils its new Viper PV553 PCIe Gen5 SSD with blower fan cooling

Kosta Andreadis | Storage | Feb 7, 2024 11:31 PM CST

Patriot has unveiled its latest storage solution with the new Viper PV553 M.2 2280 PCIe Gen5 x4 SSD, arriving in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB flavors, featuring what the company calls an 'innovative active cooling system.'

Patriot Memory unveils its new Viper PV553 PCIe Gen5 SSD with blower fan cooling

The Viper PV553 offers next-gen SSD performance, with read/write speeds of up to 12,400MB/s and 11,800MB/s, and the promise of consistent cooling and thermal performance even during extended usage during gaming sessions.

Alongside the slim 16.5mm aluminum heat shield and thermal sensors, you can find a small fan - with Patriot confirming that this is its first SSD to incorporate a blower-fan design. Make no mistake, though, you can barely see it. Regarding SSDs with active-colling go, the Patriot Viper PV553 looks stunning - with a sleek sports vehicle-like design that would look great in a PC gaming build.

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Indie dev using its game engine to faithfuly remaster original PlayStation games in 4K 60 FPS

Kosta Andreadis | Gaming | Feb 7, 2024 10:33 PM CST

The Last Night, from indie studio Odd Tales, is a visually stunning 2.5D game set in a post-cyberpunk world that blends retro and modern visuals. It's a game we've been waiting to play for years, and even though it's still in development, there's no word on when it might come out. Tim Soret told PCGamer a few years ago that the team was taking its time building the world and tech "brick by brick," but we haven't heard from the team in a while.

Indie dev using its game engine to faithfuly remaster original PlayStation games in 4K 60 FPS

Yesterday, we got a new thread by Tim Soret over on X that doesn't so much provide an update on The Last Night as it does showcase how the studio is using its tech stack to remaster original PlayStation games, presenting them in widescreen 4K HDR at 60 FPS. To demonstrate, he presented footage of the original Metal Gear Solid, switching between the original and remastered visuals, and the results were fantastic.

"I'm very unhappy with PSX remasters," Tim Soret writes. "Either lazy (MGS) or disrespectful (Tomb Raider). Changing the art assets is not preservation [and] pure emulation is lazy. PSX aesthetics can look absolutely gorgeous in 4K HDR with special techniques to retain the charm of the era."

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Popular AI models were put into a war games scenario, and GPT-3.5 and Llama 2 went nuclear

Kosta Andreadis | Artificial Intelligence | Feb 7, 2024 9:32 PM CST

Generative AI and autonomous agents will make their way into government-run programs, including the military, so this little experiment with some of the most well-known LLMs is interesting... to say the least. Like the classic 1983 film WarGames, various AI models were pitted against each other in multiple wargame scenarios to see how they'd react and make decisions.

Popular AI models were put into a war games scenario, and GPT-3.5 and Llama 2 went nuclear

You can read the full results of the experiment in a new paper titled 'Escalation Risks from Language Models in Military and Diplomatic Decision-Making' from several high-profile universities and institutes. Eight different "autonomous nation agents" using the same LLM were put in a wargame scenario - with a separate AI model summarizing the simulated world's outcomes, consequences, and state.

Turn-based tabletop gaming, except to see what would happen if AI was in charge of every military asset, including nuclear weapons. And yes, a few of the LLMs went nuclear and started dropping bombs.

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ASRock's new BIOS update for Intel motherboards improves 14th Gen CPU performance by up to 10%

Kosta Andreadis | Motherboards | Feb 7, 2024 9:02 PM CST

ASRock has released a new BIOS for its range of Intel 600 and 700 Series motherboards, with the new BIOS set to "drastically improve CPU performance" on 14th Gen Non-K processors. According to ASRock, the Intel Core i7-14700 sees a performance increase of up to 10% in Cinebench R3 benchmark tests with the new update.

ASRock's new BIOS update for Intel motherboards improves 14th Gen CPU performance by up to 10%

Suppose you wonder what's happening and where ASRock found this additional performance. In that case, it all comes down to Intel's latest microcode update - and ASRock is the first to implement it alongside additional optimizations across its wide range of Z790 motherboards.

The update improves performance for Intel's 14th Gen non-K CPUs, which feature lower TDPs of 65W compared to the unlocked K variants. In addition to the new microcode, the BIOS updates from ASRock include additional optimizations to boost CPU performance further.

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Zephyr's new GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER Valkyrie has 280mm AIO cooler, sweet metallic style

Anthony Garreffa | Video Cards & GPUs | Feb 7, 2024 8:37 PM CST

Zephyr is a name you probably have never heard of when it comes to graphics cards, but the company is preparing its first-ever liquid-cooled graphics card, starting with the upcoming GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER with an AIO cooler.

Zephyr's new GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER Valkyrie has 280mm AIO cooler, sweet metallic style

Zephyr has worked with Valkyrie, which provided a new all-in-one liquid cooling solution with a dual-slot GPU featuring a dual 140mm radiator (280mm total). Zephyr's new GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER Valkyrie graphics card features Valkyrie RGB fans connected to the GPU through white-braded tubing.

The company is using a super-stylish silver theme across the card, looking really mean and tough -- with a beautiful RGB mirror effect in the bottom right-hand side -- and no fans on the card, that's all handled by the 280mm radiator and dual fans away from the card itself.

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Intel loses patent fight in Germany, some Intel CPUs are now banned in the country

Anthony Garreffa | Business, Financial & Legal | Feb 7, 2024 8:01 PM CST

A regional court in Germany has ruled that Intel infringed on a patent covering an integrated voltage regulator technology that belongs to R2 Semiconductor, which could see select Intel processors banned from being sold in Germany. It's not just Intel but also Dell and HP products that use the affected Intel processors in the patent dispute.

Intel loses patent fight in Germany, some Intel CPUs are now banned in the country

Intel has bitten back at R2 Semiconductor, accusing the Palo Alto, California-based company of using a low-quality patent and that it would appeal the decision. The regional court in Dü Dusseldorf, Germany ruled against Intel on Wednesday, issuing an injunction against sales of Intel Core series CPUs, including "Ice Lake," "Tiger Lake," "Alder Lake," and Xeon Scalable "Ice Lake Server," processors.

Intel 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPUs are still out in the wild, so these processors might disappear from the market if Intel isn't successful in its appeal. It doesn't mean that the 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPUs will disappear from the market overnight, so there's no need to worry right now.

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Superman actor Henry Cavill says working on Warhammer 40K 'greatest privilege' of his career

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Feb 7, 2024 7:20 PM CST

Amazon Studios finalized a deal with the maker of Warhammer 40,000 -- Games Workshop -- late last year that would see the world getting Warhammer 40K movies and TV shows with Superman and The Witcher actor Henry Cavill.

Superman actor Henry Cavill says working on Warhammer 40K 'greatest privilege' of his career

Henry Cavill will star in Warhammer 40,000 productions including TV shows and movies, and is personally a huge fan of the game. He was recently interviewed during his press junket with Argyle director Matthew Vaughn, where Cavill said being involved in Warhammer 40,000 "is the greatest privilege of my professional career to have this opportunity".

Cavill continued: "I can't say too much, again, it's early days still. But to have this opportunity to bring it to screen, and be at the tiller so it can be faithful, is key to me".

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