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From January 24, 2023, the following games will see all of their online services disabled unless otherwise noted: Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition Unreal Tournament 2003 Unreal Tournament 2004 Unreal Tournament 3 (Epic plans to bring back online features via Epic Online Services in the future) Unreal Gold Unreal II: The Awakening 1000 Tiny Claws Dance Central 1-3 (Dance Central VR online multiplayer will remain available) Rock Band 1-3 (Rock Band 4 online multiplayer will remain available) Green Day: Rock Band The Beatles: Rock Band Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars...

It’s hard to believe we are heading into the third year of the new PlayStation and Xbox lifecycles. In years past, this has historically been when console developers hit their strides as they get used to the hardware’s capabilities. Typically we have seen a marked increase in performance and volume of games by this time. Unfortunately, Xbox and PlayStation game production has been comparatively sluggish so far. While next-gen upgrades of last-gen games and shovelware have been plentiful, we have yet to see the high numbers of triple-A and original titles we usually do by this time in the cycle....

First, I should note that performance can vary significantly depending on the display driver used, the software client used, and the configuration of the graphics card, so please take this as a rough performance guide. Initially I started testing with the go-ethereum client but started to find mixed results with certain GPUs, I wasn’t sure why that was and couldn’t solve a few issues, so I scrapped the results and moved on....

The European Union this week announced the European Chips Act which is going to help fund the region’s semiconductor production capabilities. This comes just as the global race for advanced chip production is intensifying amid soaring consumer demand and a desire to create a more resilient tech supply chain. The initiative will unlock €15 billion ($17.15 billion) that will go towards public and private investments in chipmaking capabilities until 2030....

The facility, located in Cottingham, East Yorkshire, UK, was overseen by renewable power company Harmony Energy Limited and utilizes Tesla Megapack technology. The system can store up to 196 MWh (megawatt hours) of electricity in a single cycle and will provide balancing services to the energy grid while also allowing for fossil fuel sources to be replaced by renewable energy sources like solar farms and wind turbines. The battery energy storage system was built adjacent to the Creyke Beck substation, which is where the Dogger Bank offshore wind farm is slated to go live next summer....

On Tuesday, construction tool startup Reekon Tools launched a Kickstarter campaign for its newest gadget, the T1 Tomahawk. The T1 is a somewhat bulky tape measure, but it makes up for the bulk with so many handy features that it’s hard to complain. At its heart, the Tomahawk is a high-end 25-foot professional tape measure with all the features you would expect, like an omnidirectional magnetic hook, a blade lock, and replaceable blade....

Insider reports that Meta’s human-resources chief, Lori Goler, sent a memo to staff warning that the company has started to operate with “increased intensity” and that it plans to “transition” low performers out of the company, which is probably the nicest way to say people are being fired. The memo also tells managers to build high-performing teams, ruthlessly prioritize, and make the most of synchronous and asynchronous time with teams....

Cryptocurrencies continued to tumble on Wednesday as the FTX exchange implodes. Crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried’s trading platform experienced what is commonly referred to as a “bank run” after the US Federal Trade Commission announced it had opened an investigation into whether FTX Trading illegally handled customer withdrawals earlier in the week. A bank run is when a large number of depositors go to take their money out of a bank....

The GTX 760 averaged 53.5fps when playing Medal of Honor Warfighter at 1920x1200, a 14% lead over the GTX 660 Ti and 16% over the 7870, but 1% behind the 7950. When measuring frame time performance, the GTX 760 took on average 20.8ms between frames at 1920x1200 – still 1% slower than the HD 7950 but 18% faster than the 7870 and 20% faster than the GTX 660 Ti....

According to the Wall Street Journal, GameStop has put together a 20-strong team to focus on NFTs and crypto. It is reportedly in talks with cryptocurrency/blockchain companies and game developers/publishers to push forward with its plans and integrate non-fungible tokens in games, with a marketplace launching later this year. GameStop is also reportedly in discussions with partners about creating a number of funds, of up to $100 million each, to invest in NFT content creators and gaming companies....

In total, the PC-K63 supports three 5.25" devices, six 3.5" drives and two 2.5" drives. There are two removable drive cages and each support three 3.5" devices and one 2.5" device. The cages mount sideways, allowing you to install hard drives with data and power cables facing the door. There are also eight expansion slots, seven of which feature a simple tool-free mechanism. The PC-K63 comes with five fans, including three with blue LEDs: two front-mounted 140mm LED fans, a single rear 120mm LED unit, and two 140mm top-mounted fans....

Nvidia will reveal its next-generation architecture, now-confirmed to be called Ada Lovelace, at its GPU Technology Conference (GTC) during the GeForce Beyond keynote event hosted by its leather jacket-loving CEO, Jensen Huang. We still don’t know which RTX 4000 cards will be unveiled, but it seems the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 are pretty much certainties, and the RTX 4070 is more than likely going to be on show, too....

Most people looking to play games on their PC will examine a few options. Desktop PCs are the best choice from a price and performance perspective, but they aren’t portable. A desktop will require an external monitor and peripherals, and simply can’t replace what a laptop does. Gaming laptops are a portable equivalent and surely they’re getting better, but for the most part they’re always larger and heavier than an ultraportable for a decent level of power; plus they tend to be pretty expensive....

Metro 2033 makes heavy use of Tessellation and this gives the new GeForce GTX 500 series graphics cards a clear-cut advantage over the rest of the competition. Although the GeForce GTX 570 was 18% slower than the GTX 580 at 1920x1200 it was still 21% faster than the GTX 480, which is huge. This led to a 52% advantage when compared to the GeForce GTX 470 while the GTX 570 was also 57% faster than the Radeon HD 5870....

I’ll start by discussing the thermal performance. Clearly Gigabyte’s two fan solution with minimal vents is not good enough for cooling a 45W CPU and 75W GPU. With a combined 120W of power to dissipate, the body takes on a significant amount of this thermal load, causing some parts of the laptop’s underside to exceed 60°C while gaming. With the body getting this hot, the P34W v5 is essentially unusable on your lap, especially with any sort of direct skin contact....

The list of achievements is different from the one that accompanied the canceled GoldenEye 007 remake for XBLA last year. In total, there are 55 achievements adding up to a Gamerscore of 1,000. Games based on movies (and vice versa) are usually pretty terrible, but GoldenEye 007 was a rare exception. The single-player campaign and gameplay mechanics were great, as were the graphics. Where the game really shined, however, was in four-player local multiplayer....

Google is bringing Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox feature to Android, target technologies that it acknowledges are different but will benefit users and advertisers across web and mobile platforms. Although the tracking mechanisms in Privacy Sandbox for Android will take at least two years to finalize and implement, according to Google, the idea is to develop a privacy-focused approach for users that doesn’t rely on device-level identifiers and limits covert tracking by advertisers....

Initially, 12 US states and five territories launched antitrust litigation, including Alabama, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Wyoming, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. In 2021, Attorneys generals in those regions claimed that the search giant used monopolistic power and fear to persuade customers to buy apps through Google Play at “artificially inflated” prices when they could have gotten the same apps for less via other venues....

Google says that Little Signals is a design study that explores how humans might stay up to date with digital information while maintaining ‘moments of calm.’ The experiment considers new ways of interacting and relating with technology by making subtle changes to the environment to deliver information, similar to how a whistle from a kettle or the moving hands of a clock keep us informed. The idea is implemented through six different modules, each of which communicates in a distinct way....

Google’s latest desktop effort is a new version of Chrome OS called Chrome OS Flex that can supposedly install within minutes on a variety of PCs and Macs. The company is positioning it as a business and education-oriented operating system that can breathe new life into older machines, but it is otherwise a similar experience to what is offered on Chromebooks. The idea behind this is simple — a lot of what we do on a computer nowadays happens in a web browser, so running a full-fat operating system like Windows or macOS would be overkill....