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The seemingly endless saga that is Musk’s ongoing spat with Twitter took another twist on Monday when the Tesla boss did a U-turn and decided he would buy the company at the original agreed price, almost three months after he backed out of the acquisition over allegations there are a lot more fake accounts on the site than Twitter claims. It’s suspected that Musk changed his mind, again, as it was looking increasingly likely that the law would be on Twitter’s side in the upcoming legal battle....

It’s not too far-fetched to imagine a world where all we need to carry around with us is a single do-it-all device. NFC could allow our smartphone to pay for products, open doors, as well as act as our personal ID or a virtual ticket for transport and attractions. Say goodbye to your keys, wallet, cards and any extra weight in your pockets. Of course, there are loose ends that will need to be worked out before the technology actually catches on, like ensuring the proper infrastructure is there and addressing any security concerns....

Watch Dogs 2 is a visually beautiful game but like a lot of Ubisoft games it tends to push the CPU and GPU hard. Here we are once again seeing a 50 percent improvement to 1% low framerates and these framerates push above 30 FPS (just) for the first time. Still, we’re limited to GTX 1060 performance here. Mass Effect Andromeda runs well on the GTX 1080 + i7-8550U combo, doubling the 1% low framerate we saw last time with the older eGPU combo....

Testing at 1680x1050 with the very high quality preset and no anti-aliasing revealed that Far Cry 3 is still very demanding. For an average of 60fps or higher, you’ll need at least a Radeon HD 7870/7950 (62fps). If you can get by with less than 60fps, the GTX 660 would be a fine pick with 55fps, a fraction slower than the GTX 580. Speaking of previous generation flagship cards, the HD 6970 averaged 51fps, slightly faster than the 7850, which matched the 5870 and GTX 480 with 46fps....

The Galaxy S6 executed nearly all of the same tasks a bit faster, but the difference isn’t nearly as large as you might expect. While the Galaxy S6 crushes the Moto E in synthetic benchmarks, the difference in performance also doesn’t come close to matching the difference in price. The Galaxy S6 is 2.4x faster in CPU-limited benchmarks, and 2.5x faster in on-screen graphics benchmarks, but the flagship handset costs a whopping 5....

The Federal Trade Commission recently hosted a public forum on Commercial Surveillance and Lax Data Security Practices, an online-only event where experts and industry insiders could make their voices heard. Among the most disapproving positions, Karen Kornbluh had some scathing words to say about the modern “data driven” economy and its consequences on security. A former US Ambassador at the OECD during Barack Obama’s presidency, Kornbluh is an expert on communications policy and international trade and is currently serving as Director of the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative at the German Marshall Fund think tank for transatlantic cooperation....

Features like Google’s single-camera simulated background blur have been blowing people away with its results, but in 2018 a new challenger has appeared in the Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+. Both pack upgraded camera systems in an attempt to retake the crown. The Plus model in particular - and the focus of this article - moves to a Note 8-like dual camera solution with several significant additions, along with improvements to image processing....

On the bright side, apart from its green components, the Nvidia edition is essentially identical to the original HAF X we reviewed last year. At the time, we deemed the HAF X be one of the best value full tower cases available, with few competitors offering the same build quality and features for around $200. The HAF X’s dimensions are typical for a full tower case, measuring 233mm wide, 599mm long and 550mm tall....

The Acer Aspire Predator G7750 is currently the only gaming system listed on Acer’s website and it’s available though third party retailers in a single non-configurable version. At the heart of the system is a liquid cooled Intel Core i7 930 processor operating at 2.8 GHz. The water-cooling system looks identical to the one on Puget’s gaming desktop and I believe they are both the Asetek 550LC. Also included is a whopping 12GB of DDR3-1333 memory from Samsung, 1....

Gateway loads the OS with their custom theme which features a gray smoke background along with the company’s name and logo. Unfortunately they also include quite a bit of software you won’t necessarily use. The default desktop icons reveal some of it: Creative EAX Gadget, eBay shortcut, Gateway Games, Microsoft Office 60 day trial, Microsoft Works, Nero 9, Netflix shortcut, Norton Internet Security 2009 60-day trial and CyberLink Power Director....

As things stand today, availability for new GeForce and Radeon GPUs is not great though we are starting to see things improve for the RTX 3070 in particular, as we’ve found a few models in stock as of writing. The hope is that early next year availability for both the RTX 3070, RX 6800 and other next-gen GPUs will improve to the point where both will be relatively easy to purchase....

Incredibly, despite guzzling so much electricity, Gigabyte’s custom cooler keeps the GTX 580 SOC at just 63 degrees when under full load, not to mention the fact that it’s remarkably quiet. Compared to a run-of-the-mill GTX 580, the manually overclocked GTX 580 SOC was 19% cooler (66 degrees) and much easier on the ears.

Follow up: February 2022, March 2022, April 2022, May 2022, June 2022, July 2022, August 2022, September 2022, October 2022, November 2022, December 2022 Of course, what everyone wants to know is if GPU prices are going to be better in 2022… and when. Not sure we’ll be able to provide that information for you just yet, but we will get into the pricing breakdown later in this article to see how January is playing out....

Two Brazilian YouTube channels have uncovered signs that crypto miners are trying to sell used graphics cards by passing them off as more lightly used than they are. A surprising new tactic is to disguise signs of wear on the GDDR memory. When a GPU has been under heavy load for extended periods, such as for mining cryptocurrency, the heat can give the memory chips a yellow tint. Iskandar Souza (below) and TecLab recently posted videos analyzing cards appearing to have paint on those chips....

Rockstar launched GTA: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and Windows last November. The bundle, which includes Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, arrived with much anticipation but fell short of expectations due to a buggy landing. Some players that purchased the PC version were unable to play it, prompting Rockstar to remove it from their online store....

Currently in post-production and set for an April 7, 2023 release, the upcoming animated film is being co-financed by Universal Pictures and Nintendo and worked alongside Illumination, best known for Despicable Me, Sing, and The Secret Life of Pets franchises. The plot is a given: a plumber named Mario travels through an underground labyrinth with his brother, Luigi, trying to save a captured princess. Fun fact - the original Super Mario Bros....

Positioned as GMC’s halo product, it is a showcase of incredible new features that will trickle down into more mainstream vehicles. One small part of the technology found in the Hummer EV will have a significant impact, spreading to many cars over the coming years. For the first time, the Unreal Engine will be used in a consumer automobile, as all displays in the new GMC Hummer EV are powered by the very same software that enables some of the most popular and visually stunning video games on the market....

For the first time in the history of Sense, HTC’s custom experience actually blends in well with the other elements of Android 4.4.2, which the handset runs out of the box. The designers at HTC have finally realized that the gradients of Sense don’t mesh well with the flat, modern look of Android 4.0+, so you won’t find one in the software of the HTC One. Everything is now flattened and looks surprisingly slick....

Details are light but in the video, you can make out what appears to be small charging contacts in the cradles that line up with metal points on each earbud. Presumably, the smartwatch serves as a charging case for the buds when they aren’t being used. The buds attach to the underside of the display with magnets. Whether or not Huawei’s creation will be a hit with consumers remains to be seen as it faces some obvious challenges....