Latest News - Page 993

German automaker Porsche hopes its Taycan can evolve into a direct head-to-head competitor with the Tesla Model S Plaid model. Porsche definitely wants to create high-end luxury models that offer a super fast driving experience paired with next-generation electric technology.

The Taycan Turbo S grade has a maximum 616 horsepower and 774 lb-ft of torque - and can accelerate 0-60 mph in just 2.6 seconds - with a maximum speed of 162 miles per hour. Interested buyers have battery options of 79.2 kWh or 93.4 kWh, based on the grade they select.

A Taycan Turbo GT grade may be available and is rumored to reach closer to 1,000 horsepower, but we will have to wait to hear more from Porsche. Since there have been reports of a grade with significant aerodynamic modifications made, it's quite possible this is a sporty luxury car that will arrive in the future.

EA is making a bunch of new games for Disney, including new Star Wars games and three new projects set in the Marvel universe.

Today EA announced that it's making not one, not two, but three action-adventure games for Marvel. The first game is a new Iron Man singleplayer third-person project from EA's Motive studios, the team behind Star Wars Squadrons and the excellent vehicle combat in the newer Star Wars Battlefront titles.

EA says that each of the new projects will have their own original story and be available for consoles and PC. No other details about the remaining two games were discussed, but sources have told Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb that one of these games will be a Black Panther project targeting a 2025 release.

United Airlines knows full-size passenger planes will take a while for long-term adoption but is jumping further into electric focused towards regional travel. Smaller EV planes purchased by United could be in use as early as 2028, with lower price tags than competing aircraft with regular jet engines.

United Airlines has teamed up with Heart Aerospace to purchase electric 30-seat electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) airplanes. The smaller aircraft will hopefully entice regional travelers to take a quick flight instead of travel by car - especially hoping business passengers will support the effort.

Heart Aerospace unveiled the ES-30 aircraft in mid-September, with the plane already receiving interest from several other airlines.

South Korean automaker Kia recently announced the 2023 Kia Sorento midsize SUV with improvements across each trim. Kia increased the price $400 of the base Sorento LX trim and it now has a starting price of $31,285.

The base LX trim uses Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) which has added rear cross-traffic collision avoidance, safe exit assist, and blind spot collision-avoidance. Both LX and X have a 2.5-liter, four-cylinder engine powering 191 horsepower and 181 lb-ft of torque - the EX and SX have a 2.5-liter, four-cylinder engine powering 281 hp and 311 lb-ft of torque.

Every other trim will have added convenience features that were previously offered as optional - a wireless smartphone charger is added to the S, the EX has an 8-way power front passenger seat, and the SX now has power-folding exterior mirrors and a 12.3-inch color digital instrument panel.

At $68.7 billion, the Microsoft-Activision merger is 7x bigger than any other major acquisition in the games industry. That kind of weight is enough to keep anyone up at night, even Phil Spencer, who is still confident the deal will go through.

Microsoft apparently isn't getting off easy with its proposed buyout of Activision-Blizzard. Regulators like the FTC, CMA, and European Commission are closely scrutinizing the deal and asking "good, honest questions" while Microsoft lays out its intentions, plans, and data for worldwide regulators. Some, like Saudi Arabia's GAC and Brazil's CADE have already approved the deal.

This is likely a stressful time for Microsoft and the Xbox division, but it's also an exciting point of potential transformation. With the help of Activision's teams, Microsoft hopes to exponentially grow its Xbox gaming division to reach all platforms and significantly boost its overall content value. Even still, it's enough to keep major Xbox executives like Phil Spencer up at night.

The Defense Department's growing interest in electric and hybrid-electric vehicle technology continues to expand on a wider scale. Specifically, the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) will work with the US Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Army Reserve to install EV charging solutions on eight military bases located in the United States.

As stated by Benjamin Richardson, the DIU energy portfolio director: "By increasing the number of chargers on military bases, DOD is creating the infrastructure needed to expand EV usage, which will minimize carbon emissions in the long run. Upon successful completion of the pilot, DOD partners intend to roll out chargers to other bases across the United States."

Since many of the EVs are work vehicles, there is the potential of mixing fast chargers along with slower chargers designed to recharge vehicles overnight. The DOD partnered with TechFlow, a California-based company specializing in renewable energy projects - and other vendors are scrambling to show off their wares for government officials.

Phil Spencer assures frustrated Xbox gamers that 2023 will deliver big new titles as 2022 slips by with very few first-party games.

Both Xbox and PlayStation make most of their money from third-party games (Call of Duty is the best-selling franchise on both platforms, for instance), but Sony has typically released more first-party titles than Microsoft. Team Green usually has a lot of projects in early development or incubation due to the sheer size of its teams, including a wealth of new interesting games like a new Perfect Dark title, a new Indiana Jones project from MachineGames, or The Elder Scrolls VI from Bethesda.

As a result, the first-party lineup for 2022 has been quite sparse. It seems like a lot of the most interesting Xbox experiences are always on the horizon. This has lead to lots of complaints from Xbox gamers that Phil Spencer and Xbox Game Studios execs have heard loud and clear.

Microsoft reiterates its point that it does not intend to take the $30 billion Call of Duty franchise away from PlayStation, and that it wants to continue selling new Call of Duty titles on Sony's platform.

A bit ago, Microsoft told the UK regulators at the CMA that it wants to treat Call of Duty similar to Minecraft. This statement was a bit confusing, especially since Minecraft and Call of Duty are very different games. In a Wall Street Journal interview, Xbox's Phil Spencer adds more clarity to Microsoft's post-merger vision of Call of Duty with affirmations the franchise will be expanded to new screens and platforms; "I'd love to see it on Switch," Spencer even said.

Now fast-forwarding to a new interview with the Same Brain podcast, Spencer confidently says that Microsoft will ship Call of Duty to PlayStation "as long as there's a PlayStation to ship to." These words are certainly more impactful than the previous comments that Microsoft has made on the topic.

Modern Warfare 2 has broken a new sales record on PlayStation and the game made the largest PlayStation debut in Call of Duty history.

Today Sony confirmed that Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is officially a mega-hit. The game has achieved the "biggest PlayStation Store launch ever for a Call of Duty game," beating out Modern Warfare in 2019 and Black Ops Cold War in 2020, the latter of which released with the introduction of the new PlayStation 5 console.

This reaffirms my predictions that 2022 will be the best-ever year for Call of Duty earnings. The franchise managed to generate $3 billion in 2022, accounting for 42% of Activision-Blizzard's total earnings, thanks to the combination of Call of Duty Mobile, Black Op Cold War's mainline release on two console generations and monetized multiplayer, and the strong introduction of Warzone.

American automaker Dodge is ready to help send the Challenger and Charger models off into the sunset, announcing six "Last Call" editions for car buyers to choose from. The 2023 models will be the last versions of each car, with Dodge discontinuing them as the automaker continues a transition toward electric vehicles.

The Dodge Last Call models include the following: Dodge Challenger Shakedown, Dodge Charger Super Beer, Dodge Challenger, and Charger Scat Pack Swinger, Dodge Charger King Daytona, and the Dodge Challenger Black Ghost.

Dodge has rolled out almost all the 2023 Dodge Challenger and Dodge Charger models to dealerships, including the entry-level SRT Jailbreak automatic and manual transmission editions.

American electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian has all-electric SUV and pickup truck models available, with feedback continuing to cover how each vehicle runs on the street.

The R1S is an all-wheel drive (AWD) vehicle that can accelerate 0-60 mph in just 3 seconds, and tow up to 7,700 pounds. The dual-motor AWD features a single motor located on the front and rear axles, with power integrated towards a single drive unit.

During a trial run, Car and Driver found some of the perks and downsides of the R1S - "blistering acceleration, attractive inside and out, capable off-road," but with "occasionally stiff ride and wonky dynamics, disappointing real-world range, nosebleed PR."

Elon Musk is on a rampage right now, tweeting out that Twitter and its lawyers deliberately hid evidence from the court... and now the social networking giant will slice its business away from law firms Cooley and Perkins Coie now that the SpaceX and Tesla boss is running the show.

Musk has come out swinging accusing the former board of directors of Twitter, and their lawyers of "deliberately" hiding evidence from the court. The law firm in question is Wachtell, Rosen, Lipton and Katz, where the SpaceX and Tesla CEO tweeted out just hours ago that the law firm and Twitter board "deliberately hid" evidence from the court and that the world should "stay tuned" because there is "more to come". Oh boy.

What's this all over? Well, Musk included a screenshot from Yoel Roth, who is Twitter's head of safety and integrity, where the screenshot sees a Twitter staffer called Amir, who Roth accused of using Objectives and Key Results that were "based on fraudulent metrics".

US automaker General Motors hopes to entice traditional truck drivers with its 2024 Sierra EV Denali Edition 1, a more luxurious offering than the GMC Hummer EV. Interestingly, GMC is going to roll out the most expensive Sierra EV version first, then release lower-priced models at a later date.

Although the GMC Hummer EV and Chevrolet Silverado EV share similar technologies, its more familiar pickup shape and other features may make it more enticing.

The Denali Edition 1 has 754 horsepower and 785 lb-ft of torque along with an estimated 400 miles of range on a full charge. In addition, fast charging will make it possible to add 100 miles of drive capacity in just 10 minutes.

Popular auto resource Edmunds took the Rivian R1T and Ford F-150 Lightning electric vehicle pickup trucks and wanted to test their actual towing capacity. During the test at Truck Mania in Sacramento, California, the test involved a pull of a 30,000-pound sled.

During the test, the driver seemed impressed with the results from each drive, even though there is clearly some work left to do later down the road.

The Rivian R1T has 835 horsepower with 908 lb-ft of torque and quad electric motors, while the F-150 Lightning has 580 hp and 775 lb-ft of torque with its dual electric motors. The Rivian has a max towing capacity of 11,000 pounds max tow capacity and the F-150 Lightning has a 100,000 max tow capacity.

BIOSTAR has just unleashed its new flagship Z790 VALKYRIE motherboard, featuring Intel's new Z790 chipset which includes support for Intel's just-launched 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" CPUs and PCIe 5.0 GPUs and PCIe 5.0 SSDs of the future.

The new BIOSTAR Z790 VALKYRIE motherboard joins the rest of BIOSTAR's new 700-series motherboards, featuring a beautiful design that the company says "exuberates the pinnacle" of BIOSTAR's product design and technical prowess.

We have support for the new LGA1700-based Intel 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" CPUs, DDR5 memory that BIOSTAR says the new Z790 VALKYRIE is good for up to 128GB of DDR5-7800 memory with some insane overclocking. You'll want a high-end Intel Core i9-13900K processor to go along with it, especially if you're pushing up to that insane DDR5-7800 point.

Elon Musk is making some rather big changes at Twitter in succession, with the social networking giant making changes to its paid subscription service: Twitter Blue.

Twitter Blue costs $4.99 per month right now for the subscription, unlocking some new abilities -- but now Musk has given Twitter staff an ultimatum -- the SpaceX and Tesla (and now Twitter boss, or Chief Twit) boss says meet his deadline for paid verification on Twitter, or leave.

Musk wants to see Twitter charging $19.99 per month up from the $4.99 per month for Twitter Blue, one of the things he wants to do is to revamp how Twitter verifies users and handles the insane bot situation on the platform. Musk recently tweeted about the Twitter Blue verification system, tweeting: "The whole verification process is being revamped right now".

Intel has just announced that its new Data Center GPU Flex Series cards have been added to their family of PluggableDevices, something that is called Intel Extension for TensorFlow.

Intel Extension for TensorFlow is an open-source solution that runs TensorFlow applications on Intel AI hardware, allowing the high-performance deep learning extension for the TensorFlow PluggableDevice interface. It will allow Intel XPU (GPU, CPU, and more) devices to be readily accessible to TensorFlow developers.

With the new Intel Extension, the company says that developers can train and infer TensorFlow models on Intel AI hardware with "zero code change". Intel Extension for TensorFlow is built on the foundations of the oneAPI software components, with most of the performance-critical graphs and operators being highly optimized by Intel oneAPI Deep Neural Network (oneDNN) which is an open-source, cross-platform performance library for Deep Learning applications.

Netflix has announced that they're making The Witcher S4 but without Henry Cavill, as he's leaving the show and will be replaced with Liam Hemsworth.

Cavill has been absolutely stellar in the role of Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher on Netflix, but now Thor's brother -- Chris Hemsworth plays Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe -- and now his brother, Liam Hemsworth, will fill the boots of Geralt of Rivia on The Witcher starting in Season 4.

The news comes right on the heels of Cavill announcing that he's coming back as Superman... and then days later Cavill is finished with The Witcher for Netflix. I guess he's just spared up a hell of a lot of time for another Superman movie, given how Warner Bros. has an "intense desire" for Henry Cavill's Superman in a Man of Steel sequel... days later, Cavill was confirmed to be playing Superman again.

Intel has its new Arc A770 and Arc A750 graphics cards in the wild now, with the flagship Arc A770 Limited Edition from Intel packing 16GB of GDDR6... except, Intel launched it with some issues... the GDDR6 memory wasn't at the right clock speed.

Intel's new Arc A770 Limited Edition packs 16GB of GDDR6 memory that's meant to be clocked at 17.5Gbps, but gamers were noticing it was only clocked at 16Gbps. This results in lower memory bandwidth, with the 16GB of GDDR6 memory at 17.5Gbps meant to deliver 560GB/sec, but at 16Gbps the memory bandwidth drops to 512GB/sec.

The company said there was a "gap" on their side, but don't worry, the multi-billion-dollar corporation has put "two checks in place in our validation to ensure it doesn't happen again moving forward". I really hope it doesn't, as this is a seriously sloppy move by Intel to ship out its flagship Arc A770 Limited Edition graphics card with 16GB without the "gap" or whatever that means.

GIGABYTE has a bunch of custom GeForce RTX 40 series GPU designs on the way, with a few new GeForce RTX 4080 16GB graphics card designs in the works that have now been leaked. Check them out below:

We have the AORUS GeForce RTX 4080 Xtreme Waterforce graphics card, which is a new water-cooled GeForce RTX 4080 (duh, it's kinda obvious) while we have a new series from the company in the new "AERO" with a white theme.

The company is using a totally new design for its custom AORUS GeForce RTX 4080 Xtreme Waterforce graphics card, with a pre-installed water block... and we'll have to make it clear that this is the first RTX 40 series graphics card with a pre-installed waterblock. Very... very cool to see, pun intended.