Latest News - Page 998

The founder of Oculus, which was bought by Facebook several years ago, has voiced his thoughts on what Mark Zuckerberg has created with his virtual reality technology.

Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus, which was acquired by Facebook back in 2014 for $2 billion, spoke at The Wall Street Journal conference Tech Live where he discussed his thoughts on what Zuckerberg is creating at Meta, formerly Facebook, specifically Meta's core virtual reality product Horizon Worlds. Luckey said, "I don't think it's a good product", and further explained that it's currently "not good" or "fun". Adding, "most people on the team would agree it's not a good product".

Despite Luckey's criticisms of Meta's metaverse project in its current form, the Oculus founder does want to see Zuckerberg succeed and believes he is in the best position out of anyone in the world to create a viable metaverse that attracts millions of users. Luckey explains that Zuckerberg is the "number one virtual reality fan in the world" and that he is and will "put the money in to do it. They're in the best position of anyone to win in the long run."

Mark Zuckerberg's decision to pivot his entire company toward the Metaverse was met with skepticism at first, but then the public saw what he was working on and became even more skeptical. Now, big-name investors in Meta are voicing their concerns publicly.

Meta has already invested more than $10 billion into creating Zuckerberg's vision of the Metaverse, which so far has received heavy criticism from users following its first public reveal, as well as a dwindling player base. Recently leaked internal documents from Meta revealed that Meta's Metaverse is essentially failing in slow motion, with the company's original player active user/player target being 500,000 monthly users, which was quickly reigned back in to 280,000 monthly active users. Unfortunately, Meta is struggling even to reach 200,000 monthly active users.

Now, Brad Gerstner, the Founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital, an investment firm that owns hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Meta shares, has penned an open letter that explains Zuckerberg and Meta's board of directors have "lost the confidence of investors". Gerstner says that the company's core business hit a wall last fall, which resulted in the "team hastily pivoted the company toward the metaverse", followed by missed financial marks and underwhelming performance throughout 2022.

A group of astronomers has penned a newly published paper that details a mysterious object which currently doesn't fit into any academic definitions, hence its mysteriousness.

The study published in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy earlier this week details a very unusual neutron star that is believed to be the lightest known neutron star found so far. According to the paper, this particular neutron star has a radius of just 6.2 miles and a mass of 77% of the Sun, which is extremely weird because most neutron stars with a similar radius have a mass of 1.4 times the mass of the Sun.

Astronomers were left scratching their heads at their own observations, with team lead astronomer Victor Doroshenko of the Eberhard Karls University of Tubingen in Germany even going as far as to suggest that it could be a new type of star yet to be fully explored. Notably, neutron stars form after a supergiant star has gone supernova, with its core collapsing in on itself and all of its mass becoming extremely dense. To illustrate just how dense these objects are, researchers estimate that a single teaspoon of a neutron star would weigh about 2.2 trillion pounds.

NASA has shared a Halloween-themed image taken by the famous Hubble Space Telescope, and the photograph showcases a "ghost" out in deep space.

Originally posted to NASA's website in 2020, but re-shared to the space agency's NASA Goddard Twitter account on October 26, is a photograph of the nebula officially known as IC 63. This nebula located 550 light-years from Earth within the constellation Cassiopeia the Queen has been nicknamed the "Ghost Nebula" for its shape and appearance.

NASA explains in its blog post that the brightest stars within nebulae give off large amounts of radiation that eats away at the large clouds of hydrogen gas, which is the raw material used to create stars. This interaction between radiation and hydrogen gas causes an "etching process" that creates gorgeous landscapes such as the one seen below.

The bombarding saga of Kanye West, now officially known as Ye, is continuing with another major world-leading brand cutting ties with the rapper.

Following Ye's antisemitic remarks made on his now-locked Instagram and Twitter accounts, the rapper is experiencing world-leading brands distancing themselves from him, resulting in multi-million deals falling through and an overall drop in his net worth.

The latest company to cut ties with the famed rapper is Adidas, which recently stated on Tuesday that Ye's recent comments on Jewish people along with his actions have been "unacceptable, hateful and dangerous". Adidas further explained that these comments "violate the company's values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness."

With the completion of the first season of Amazon's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and the massive divide between those who enjoyed the show and those who didn't due to lore inaccuracies, many Tolkien fans are looking for some new Middle-Earth media to get excited about before the next season comes out two years from now.

Introducing, The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria, developed by Free Range Games and published by North Beach Games. Return to Moria is a survival crafting game that is based in the fourth age of Middle Earth. The game focuses on the race of the dwarves and follows a group that deems it time to reclaim their legendary home of Khazad-dum, later called Moria (black pit), after the Balrog or Durin's Bane is awoken by dwarves delving too deep.

The trailer for the game was released back in June, but the creators behind the game recently appeared on the Nerd of the Rings YouTube channel to dive into its inner workings, what inspired the selected location for the survival crafting game, and how much of what players will see while exploring will be accurate to Tolkien's writings. Corey Olsen, a Tolkien scholar, is consulting on the game, and as explained during Nerd of the Rings' roundtable discussion, the content that players will experience in Return to Moria will be heavily based on Tolkien's writings.

Luxury automaker Lotus has shared confirmed pricing and specifications for its upcoming Eletre luxury hyper-SUV. The Lotus Eletre will be available in three different trims: Eletre, Eletre S, and Eletre R.

Full pricing details for all three trim models for UK and European markets:

Thousands of interested buyers have already secured deposits to ensure they have an Eletre trim to purchase, according to Lotus.

Japanese automaker Toyota has spiced things up a bit with the 2023 Toyota Corolla Hatchback, including all of the safety and multimedia upgrades from the sedan model. Toyota promises "mischievous fun" able to complement the "stylish yet practical sporty machine."

The 2023 Toyota Corolla Hatchback has 169 horsepower at 6,600 rpm with 151 lb-ft. Peak torque at 4,900 rpm.

The 8-inch touchscreen featuring Toyota Audio Multimedia Standard is available for all models, with premium audio using an 800-watt JBL 8-speaker system is standard for the XSE grade. Both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility are available to drivers and passengers - and rear-seat passengers have access to two USB-C ports - with a total of four throughout the vehicle. Both touch and voice activation controls will be provided.

Manli has released its new custom GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card with 8GB of GDDR6 memory, with virtually identical specs to the GeForce RTX 3060 with 12GB of GDDR6 memory.

The new GeForce RTX 3060 has 8GB of GDDR6 clocked at 15Gbps but it's on a smaller 128-bit memory bus with up to 240GB/sec of memory bandwidth. Manli makes a GeForce RTX 3060 LHR (Lite Hash Rate) graphics card with 12GB of GDDR6, with this card being identical to the card except for the less VRAM, and slower memory bus.

The higher-end GeForce RTX 3060 with 12GB GDDR6 memory is on a wider 192-bit memory bus, with far higher memory bandwidth of up to 360GB/sec, so the cull down to 8GB GDDR6 + 240GB/sec memory bandwidth is significant.

Memtest86+ v6 has been released, with support for the new Intel 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" CPUs and AMD's new Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" CPUs... but more importantly: DDR5 memory support.

The latest version has support for Intel and AMD's latest families of CPUs so if you need to test your RAM -- most consumers and gamers don't really need to -- but, if you are a system builder then you've got some new memory testing goodness to use on your DDR5 memory.

Memtest86+ v6.00 final has been rewritten from scratch and is "back to active development" after the last non-beta version from all the way back in 2013. As VideoCardz notes: the standalone app boots with the PC without all of the overheads that your operating system (Windows for the most part) and is capable of discovering more errors than the built-in tools in some motherboards and their BIOS.

AMD released its CDNA-based Instinct MI100 accelerator nearly two years ago now, back in November 2020, and while the third-gen CDNA architecture is nearly here, the first-gen MI100 accelerator has hit eBay... in the nude.

The AMD Instinct MI100 accelerator is based on the CDNA architecture and made on TSMC's 7nm process node, with its GPU codenamed "Arcturus" packing 7680 FP32 cores and 32GB of HBM2 memory. The card has a 300W TDP, chewing down its power from dual 8-pin power connectors -- but not regular PCIe power connectors, but rather the EPS ones that go into your motherboard.

The card was posted on eBay in non-functional order, with a price of 500 EUR (about $500 USD or so) which is a rather huge price drop from its MSRP at the time of $6400. The card doesn't work, just to be sure you know that, so this would be a collector's item. But man, in the nude the AMD Instinct MI100 accelerator is a beautiful card under that cooler.

TSMC is gearing up to mass produce Apple's next-gen M2 Pro and M2 Max SoCs for future-gen MacBook Pro laptops, with TSMC's next-gen 3nm process node being used.

The last we heard was that Apple had booked TSMC for its next-gen M2 Pro and M3 chips, but now a new report from the Commercial Times reports that Apple has booked TSMC for its 3nm node, mass-producing M2 Pro and M2 Max chips. We did hear previously that Apple would have to switch to 5nm for its chips, but it looks like TSMC will provide its new 3nm node for Apple's new MacBook Pro laptops.

Apple's new M2 Pro is reportedly codenamed "Rhodes Chop" and will house a 10-core CPU and 20-core GPU, while the beefier M2 Max is codenamed "Rhodes 1C" and will rock up to a 12-core CPU and chunkier 38-core GPU. TSMC is "racing against time" to get orders in for Apple for its higher-end M2 Ultra and M2 Extreme SoCs.

AMD has confirmed that its next-gen Radeon RX 7000 series "RDNA 3" graphics card will NOT be using the new PCIe Gen5 "12VHPWR" power connector... which is something we kinda knew already, but now 100% confirmed from AMD themselves.

Scott Herkelman, General Manager for AMD Radeon (and ex-NVIDIA GeForce exec) confirmed on Twitter with Kyle "HardOCP" Bennett, where he said that the Radeon RX 6000 series and upcoming RDNA 3 GPUs will "not use this power connector".

Given that there are multiple reports of GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards MELTING, it makes sense that AMD won't use the power connector. We've known for a while now that AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 7000 series flagship GPU will be using 2 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors, but now we have official confirmation from AMD themselves.

Raijintek is about to unleash a new aftermarket cooler for AMD's entire stack of Radeon RX 6000 series "RDNA 2" GPUs as well as NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 30 "Ampere" and even the new GeForce RTX 40 "Ada Lovelace" series GPUs.

Introducing the Raijintek Morpheus 8069 VGA cooler, which has been leaked in product renders before its unveiling and launch on November 1. It's quite a beast, with an absolutely gigantic heat sink and 12 x 6mm heat pipes running through it. The coldplate will sit on top of the GPU and memory, but it won't cover the VRMs.

Raijintek includes 5 x copper and 4 x aluminum heat sink that will cool your PCB and other chips on your AMD Radeon RX 6000 series and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 + GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs.

Microsoft kicks off its new Fiscal Year 2023 period with record Xbox revenues.

Xbox gaming just made history for the time this year. On the heels of generated a record-breaking $16.2 billion in total earnings last year, Microsoft's games platform has generated $3.610 billion in its Q1'23 period. This is a new all-time Q1 high that continues the platform's earnings streak.

Xbox content and services revenues were down 4% year-over-year, implying revenues of about $2.797 billion. Hardware was the main driver for these record Q1 results with a strong 13% increase in revenues, driven by higher premium costs of the newer Xbox Series S/X consoles.

Bayonetta voice actress Hellena Taylor claims the franchise has made $450 million in lifetime revenues, but that's not the case...and no one is really sure where she got the figure.

On October 15, Bayonetta actress Hellena Taylor published three videos that alleged she was only offered $4,000 to portray the heroine in Bayonetta 3. To illustrate the game's success and underline the alleged lowball offer, Taylor claimed the entire Bayonetta franchise "made an approximated $450 million dollars not including merchandise."

Most gamers would squint at this and understand the information isn't correct, and Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, who uncovered that Taylor was actually offered $15,000 to play Bayonetta in the third game and not $4,000, says the franchise figure is "fiction and frankly absurd."

It's official: The 2012 release of Dark Souls is now an offline game on PC.

Today Bandai Namco and FromSoftware confirmed that the PC version of the Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition will be now be permanently offline singleplayer experience. The game's online multiplayer servers have been retired due to the age of the online infrastructure.

Bayonetta voice actress Hellena Taylor admits she was offered $15,000 to portray the heroine witch in the third game, not the $4,000 rate she had originally said.

A bit ago, Bayonetta's Hellena Taylor issued allegations of unfair pay against PlatinumGames and Nintendo. Taylor had released three videos on Twitter that alleged PlatinumGames offered her $4,000 US dollars as a "final offer to do the whole game as a buyout flat rate." Taylor had strongly-worded responses and called on fans to boycott Bayonetta 3.

Shortly after the claims were made, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier uncovered the full story: Taylor was actually offered $15,000 to lend her voice in Bayonetta 3. Now the voice actress has amended her statement, agreeing with the figures provided in the Bloomberg report.

Microsoft reportedly regrets not partnering with Chinese developer miHoYo before Genshin Impact became a billion-dollar sensation.

The old saying is true, hindsight is indeed 20/20. Sources have told Reuters that Microsoft feels that it missed a valuable opportunity by not partnering with miHoYo to bring Genshin Impact to Xbox. On paper, this certainly seems true: Genshin Impact is a mega-hit that has generated $3.7 billion on mobile devices alone, and was one of the five free-to-play games to generate $2 billion on Sony's PlayStation Network.

According to the report, Microsoft was unable to reach a deal with the Chinese game developer, miHoYo, who chose to partner with Sony and bring Genshin Impact to PlayStation instead. This sense of regret and loss is apparently a big motivator driving Microsoft's efforts to recruit Chinese game devs to bolster its Xbox Game Pass subscription network.

Kanye West officially changed his name to Ye, and following the public comments made by the rapper, companies have made stark decisions to back away from him.

The parent company behind one of the largest fashion brands in the world, Balenciaga, has officially cut ties with Ye. This news was recently confirmed by Balenciaga's parent company, Kering, which stated that the prestigious fashion brand no longer has a relationship with Ye or has any future projects in the pipeline that are related to him. Balenciaga isn't the only prominent brand backing away from the esteemed artist as Mark Breitbard, the president and CEO of Gap Brand, wrote in an email that it has made the decision to "wind down the partnership" because their "vision is not aligned."

Notably, Vogue has dropped Ye, and now the latest companies to reveal their newfound distance to the rapper are film and TV studio MRC as well as famed talent agency CAA. According to MRC studio executives Modi Wiczyk, Asif Satchu, and Scott Tenley, who announced the news via a memo, the recently completed documentary on Ye will officially be shelved as the company has decided not to "support any content that amplifies his platform".