Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg often starts the year off with a particular challenge, one that is publicly announced near the start of it. While previously the founder has pledged to read more books or meet more people, in 2016 he wants to turn his attention to artificial intelligence, leveraging his …
Read More »Activision now owns Major League Gaming
Major League Gaming, one of the longest standing pro-Esports organisations, is now owned almost entirely by Activison, after the board of directors agreed to sell the publishing giant most of the company's assets for $46 million. This has annoyed some share-holders, as the move was approved – legally – without …
Read More »George Lucas seems at odds with new Star Wars movie
Nobody expected the sale of the Star Wars franchise to Disney to sit easy with original creator George Lucas. Letting go of anything you've worked on for decades is always supposed to be a difficult parting, but in an interview conducted with talk show host Charlie Rose, Lucas seems a …
Read More »Samsung will show off new ‘Rink’ VR motion controller at CES
CES is going to have a lot of virtual reality hardware and software on show. HTC/Valve will probably showcase the final version of the Vive headset, Oculus is expected to announce the final price and specifications of the CV1 Rift and Samsung has now announced that it will be showing …
Read More »Elon Musk confirms Space X Falcon 9 booster landed unharmed
Although there were many great scientific breakthroughs in 2015, the most exciting for some came at the tail end of it. Space X's landing of a first stage rocket booster after separation represents a real turning point in space travel efficiency and thankfully, it looks like the rocket touched down …
Read More »U.S. army halts plans for Big Dog automated robot deployment
The Big Dog robot developed by the now Google owned Boston Dynamics, has been exciting and scaring robotics fans for several years since its original test videos were released to the public. While initially expected to be a helpful pack-animal for the U.S. military though, the army contract has now …
Read More »Uber hits the billion journey mark in just five years
Uber is laying claim to having completed more than a billion journeys with its ride sharing, app-based taxi service in just five years since it began operation in 2010. Although it has faced stupendous opposition from traditional taxi firms and transport authorities, and makes giant losses every quarter, it continues …
Read More »Ashley Madison hails four million new users, despite hacking dump
While there were a lot of big hacks of various organisations in 2015, the most publicised has to have been Ashley Madison.com. The infidelity ‘dating' site had details of its millions of members revealed, only for the world to discover that many accounts were not real. Despite that and some embarrassment …
Read More »Microsoft to warn users if government might be hacking them
If Microsoft thinks that intelligence agencies or governments from around the world are attempting to gain access to one of their user's email accounts, it has promised to issue a warning to that person to let them know it's happening. This move follows similar announcements by other major tech firms like …
Read More »BBC entire online presence is down
If you tried to visit BBC News, watch iPlayer or use any of the BBC's online services this morning, you will have found them surprisingly unresponsive. Since the early hours of the 31st, most of the BBC's online presence has been down, though the BBC News Facebook page has remained …
Read More »Oculus Rift will come with another free game: Lucky’s Tale
Even though it developed the first truly viable, commercial virtual reality solution, Oculus has known from day one that content is king. Which is why it's bundling so much of it with the CV1 headset when it releases in Q1 2016. Along with the already announced Eve: Valkyrie, it's now been …
Read More »Hateful Eight screener leak group apologises to Tarantino
A group claiming responsibility for the leak of several high-profile movies, some pre-release, has apologised to director of The Hateful Eight, Quentin Tarantino. It didn't mean to hurt anyone it said, though did add the caveat that it believed the hype generated from the pre-release leak of the movie has now …
Read More »John McAfee wants to kill remembering passwords with digital key
Passwords are problematic for many reasons. You know that, I know that, and John McAfee certainly knows it; digital security has been a major part of his presidential campaign after all. Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising then that he wants to kill them off: with EveryKey, a BlueTooth connected device that decrypts …
Read More »Consumer Oculus Rift will have built-in DAC and headphone amp
One of the more noticeable (read: exterior) changes from the Oculus Rift DK2 virtual reality headset, to the CV1 launch model, is the inclusion of built-in headphones. Provided earcups don't have much of a reputation for strong sound reproduction with other products, but Oculus assures us the Rift will do, …
Read More »C&C and Lord of the Rings dominate in ModDB 2015 PC awards
The kind of mods that usually make headlines are the ones that Valve started charging for, or add crazy things to GTA V, but It turns out those aren't the ones people remember or love the most. In-fact, the player-voted best mods of 2015 are almost unanimously for much older …
Read More »Leaked Hateful Eight screener copy linked to Hollywood executive
Whenever a movie shows up on torrent sites before it's even released in cinemas, you know the authorities are going to take it seriously. Which is why the FBI has been investigating the torrented copy of Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, which turns out, came from a ripped copy of a …
Read More »Pharma price hiker Martin Shkreli’s other companies are collapsing
Easily competing for this year's most hated person, Martin Shkreli drew a lot of disgust when his company purchased rights for an aids treatment drug, only to hike its price by 5,556 per cent to more than £500 a pill in the U.S. However he also drew attention from federal …
Read More »Palmer Luckey hints that Oculus Rift CV1 may be quite expensive
While we won't be getting an Oculus Rift pre-order option this side of Christmas, we're not far away from being able to put money down on a first-generation, commercial VR solution. That stack of cash may be a bit taller than we initially thought though. In a number of tweets over …
Read More »ASUS and Gigabyte may launch own VR headsets in 2016
Internal component, system and peripheral manufacturers, ASUS and Gigabyte, are working on their own takes on virtual reality headsets according to a new report. Expected to debut in 2016, the headsets will come from ASUS internal developments we're told, while Gigabyte's will come out of a partnership it has with Chinese …
Read More »Corsair Gaming Scimitar RGB mouse review
If you ever thought that most gaming mice do not have enough buttons for you then Corsair's new Scimitar MMO/MOBA mouse is probably what you need. It incorporates 12 side buttons as well as the usual ones at the front end. The optical sensor has a class leading 12,000 DPI …
Read More »GAME’s Christmas sales fall from last year
It doesn't seem that long ago that GAME, like a number of high-street gaming and technological chain stores, was bankrupt and needed to be saved by outside finances. Since then it's had some measure of recovery, but it's not doing amazing. Christmas sales have not been as strong as expected …
Read More »1984 eat your heart out: China has gamified government loyalty
Ah China, such a wonderfully helpful tool in discussing impeaches of privacy and personal liberty. It's like the ball pit at the bottom of the slippery slope. The government there has created a tool that uses data collected from retailers, social networks and messaging applications, to rate a web user's …
Read More »Schools to begin stricter filtering and monitoring to target extremism
The British government's Department of Education, has called for new filtering and content control systems for school computers accessing the internet. Not only does it want better monitoring to make sure that no one is looking at things they shouldn't, but it wants more content blocked at the source, in …
Read More »Google Ford partnership could mirror Baidu BMW deal
Google and Ford are said to be in talks to partner over the development of automated vehicles according to sources that are said to have been “briefed on the matter.” Although yet to be officially detailed, the partnership could well be similar to the deal struck between Chinese search giant …
Read More »Amazon’s Bezos sends snarky tweet to Musk over Space X landing
It looks like no matter whether you're in the school playground or a billionaire CEO of a space-faring company, the size of your rocket matters. Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon.com, has sparked a heated response from Space X fans, after sending a tweet to Elon Musk, in a …
Read More »Courts rule Kim Dotcom to be extradited to the U.S.
Kim Dotcom is to be sent to America to faced charges on conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, money laundering and fraud, as per the whims of the New Zealand court that presided over his extradition trial. Although the German entrepreneur has promised to appeal, him and his co-defendants have all …
Read More »PlayStation VR’s external processing box unveiled
When it became clear that Sony was working on a virtual reality solution for the PlayStaton 4, those who had experienced early VR with the DK1 and 2 were a little worried. The PS4 could barely handle 60 FPS at a decent resolution, let alone the 75+ it would need …
Read More »Revenant, Hateful Eight leak on torrent sites pre-release
The pre-release leaking of The Expendables 3 was one of the biggest stories of 2014 and eventually led to arrests of those said to be responsible. No doubt authorities will be on the hunt for new torrent leakers in the near future too, as big name releases like Quentin Tarantino's …
Read More »Flash’s dead horse beaten again – Facebook just dropped it
Adobe's Flash Player is continuing its steady demise with another major blow to its usage: Facebook has now killed off all flash videos on its site. With more than eight billion views a day, the switchover to HTML 5 will see the number of flash videos watched every day immediatly decline …
Read More »Apple voices more concerns for Investigatory Powers Bill
Apple has once again raised concerns about the British government's plans to introduce the Investigatory Powers Bill, waiting until the final moments of the public consultation to submit its eight page brief on its problems with the snooping act. It joins a number of consumer groups and other tech firms …
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