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The entire heist started as an experiment to see if fish could complete Pokémon Scarlet and Violet unassisted. To do it, Japanese YouTuber “Mutekimaru Channel” set up a webcam focused on his fish bowl. Motion-tracking software monitored the fish as they swam across an overlaid grid populated with controller inputs. If a fish paused or changed direction, the correlating controller input registered in the game. Mutekimaru had done this experiment before....

As usual, the update is completely free and features a hefty roster of tweaks, improvements, and bug fixes outside of the headline additions of HDR and FSR. Interestingly, though, it wasn’t Quake II RTX’s developers that were entirely responsible for the addition of the latter two upgrades. Instead, Lightspeed Studios pulled code from Github user Res2k and added it to Quake II RTX’s live development branch. If you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t heard of FSR yet, it’s AMD’s alternative to Nvidia’s AI-assisted “DLSS” upscaling tech....

The GTX 980 Ti only consumed 16% more power once overclocked which is quite impressive since we regularly saw performance gains of at least 20%. Moreover, with a total system consumption of 341 watts, the overclocked 980 Ti only consumed the same level of power as the standard Fury X. Speaking of the Fury X, given how small the performance gains were, it doesn’t make sense to overclock this graphics card, especially when the total system consumption is increased by 18%....

The only major difference being that we were forced to test the 4GB capacity with a single 4GB stick and this meant using single channel memory. We don’t have 2GB of DDR4 memory and since we already know 4GB isn’t enough we didn’t waste any time or money to acquire a dual-channel kit. But still be aware of this. First up we have Assassin’s Creed Origins and these results were recorded using the very high quality preset at 1080p....

I’ve seen plenty of premium speaker companies put out headsets, after all they’re just tiny speakers (gross oversimplification alert!), but rarely have I seen a company that’s built a reputation for headsets make the transition to speakers. Acoustics are easier to master when only a single pair of ears is involved. So it’s daring of Razer, the mouse, keyboard, headset and incredibly skinny laptop maker, to branch out in this direction, especially when the branch is a $200 black bar that makes noise....

The Republican National Committee (RNC) has filed a lawsuit against Google for allegedly engaging in unlawful discrimination by filtering Republican campaign emails to its users’ spam folders. According to the suit filed with California’s Eastern District Court on Friday, the RNC accuses the search giant of “throttling its email messages because of the RNC’s political affiliation and views.” The RNC is particularly concerned about what it considers suspicious patterns in the timing of spam filtering for RNC communications....

It doesn’t end there, however, as buyers also get the Resident Evil 0 prequel and the episodic Resident Evil: Revelations and Resident Evil: Revelations 2 Deluxe Edition. Humble is also throwing in a 50 percent off coupon for Resident Evil Village. The 11-item bundle has a reported value of $275 but can be yours for as little as $30. If you’re not looking to spend that much, a slimmed-down version of the bundle featuring six games can be had for just $10 or you can shell out a single buck in exchange for three titles: the HD remake of the original, Revelations and Revelations 2 Episode 1....

According to a new report, a Moscow court has fined several Western companies for refusing to store personal data collected from Russian citizens on servers located in the country. Airbnb, Pinterest, and Twitch have reportedly been fined 2 million roubles ($38,113) each, with UPS receiving a 1 million rouble ($19,057) fine. These sums sound a bit ludicrous considering that all of these companies reported multi-billion dollar revenues last year....

First up we have the dual-channel results using the 2200G and these figures were recorded in the CS:GO benchmark at 720p. So all the previous testing was done using DDR4-3200 memory and here we can see that’s the optimal speed. I was able to get this kit to 3466 but I had to lower the timings and this reduced the performance benefits of operating at a higher memory speed. What we can quite clearly see here is that dropping down from 3200 to the official 2933 spec reduced the average frame rate by 6%....

Next we have the CrystalDiskMark random 512K results and as you can see the read performance is average. Here we found the Samsung 470 256GB to be significantly slower than the Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB, while also lagging behind the OCZ Vertex 2 Pro 100GB and ADATA S596 Turbo 32GB SSDs. However, once again it is the write performance where the Samsung drive shines boasting an incredible throughput of 255....

Let’s talk some basic specs. This is a 49-inch 5120 x 1440 VA monitor, that’s a 32:9 aspect ratio equivalent to two 27-inch 2560 x 1440 displays stitched together side by side. The display is seriously huge, measuring in at over 1 meter wide, so you’ll need to make sure you have plenty of desk space available for this beast. In addition, Samsung are using the same 1000R curvature as the Odyssey G7, which at this width is extremely noticeable....

With new PCIe SSDs out and about, budget-focused SATA 6Gb/s SSDs are starting to look slow in comparison. Still, with an on-disk copy speed of 235MB/s, the Samsung SSD 850 Evo 2TB is worlds faster than a mechanical hard drive. Although the 2TB model was 12% slower than the 500GB model in this test, it was still able to outpace the Crucial BX100. Although the 850 Evo 2TB model was 12% slower in our single large file copy test, in the program copy test we found that it was 14% faster than the 500GB model, making the 850 Evo 2TB just 9MB/s slower than the SanDisk Extreme Pro and Plextor PX-G512M6e....

The T1 brings performance gains when handling lots of small files as in our ‘program’ file transfer test which moves 6104 small non-compressed files totaling 2.75GB. The T1’s download performance was 40% greater than the fastest thumb drive we’ve seen and almost four times faster than a conventional 2.5" hard drive. Moreover, the upload tests showed the T1 to be five times faster than the quickest thumb drive we’ve tested while it was 42% faster than the Kingston HyperX Max 64GB portable SSD....

As per the SCMP, Huawei reported revenue of 301.6 billion yuan, or around $44.7 billion, for the first half of 2022, marking a 5.9% year-on-year drop. That’s an improvement over the first quarter results, which saw revenue down 13.9% YoY. Its profit margin declined to 5%, dropping by almost half compared to H1 2021. Huawei said the results are “in line with forecasts.” In the middle of May 2019, with US-China trade war tensions rising, Donald Trump declared a national emergency that effectively banned US companies from buying and using telecoms equipment from “foreign adversaries....

It was interesting that the FT03 was different than previous Fortress models, and despite the steep asking price, the chassis did well as Silverstone followed up with the FT03-Mini, a Mini-ITX version that was even smaller. Two years later, the much anticipated Fortress FT04 has made it to market. Upon first glance this latest version looks a lot like the FT01 that was released back in 2008. The FT04 shares similar dimensions to the FT01, with a slight increase in size that we assume simply means it can fit drives and longer graphics cards more comfortably....

Now, because we have tested with the Radeon HD 5870 here which essentially eliminates any GPU bottleneck, especially at 1680x1050, this means slower graphics cards are unlikely to run into issues, even when paired with slower processors (within reason).

The Atto Disk Benchmark is great for analyzing how file sizes affect performance, and we have used 4KB, 8KB, 16KB, 32KB, 64KB, 128KB, 256KB, 512KB and 1024KB transfer sizes. First we have the read performance, and based on what we’ve seen already we know this is where SSD drives shine, even with smaller files. When dealing with 64KB and larger files, the OCZ Vertex was the best performer, taking out even the mighty Intel X25-M....

Microsoft’s rewards program remains popular among users, letting them earn redeemable points through activities such as using Edge/Bing, taking part in quizzes, and playing titles via PC Game Pass—read more about that here. Sony’s PlayStation Stars appears to imitate some of the game-based elements of Microsoft’s program. Membership will be free when it launches later this year, and users will be able to earn points through various activities, including playing at least one game once per month, winning tournaments, earning specific trophies, or even being the first person to play a major game release in a particular time zone....

On the upside, Sony has finally perfected the waterproof smartphone design, leaving both the 3.5mm audio jack and micro-USB charging port uncovered. The Z5’s appealing glass-cross-metal design improves upon the Xperia Z3 from a visual perspective, though falls slightly behind in ergonomics. The new fingerprint scanner performs well, though it’s far from perfect. In short, it’s a classic Xperia design that continues to have a place in the 2015 market....