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The wildly successful Gears of War franchise is getting three new titles in the near future, including Gears 5 which is set for a 2019 debut.

Also announced were Gears Pop! and Gears Tactics. Gears Pop! brings the Gears of War experience to iOS and Android devices in a Funko Pop! style. Gears Tactics is a Windows PC exclusive title. It is described as a "turn-based tactics games combining signature fast-paced brutal action and character-driven storytelling with customizable squads, upgradable weapons, and of course, massive boss battles."

Most importantly though was the announcement of Gears 5. While Gears of War 1 - 3 featured Marcus Fenix as the protagonist, and then Gears of War 4 featured his son JD Fexix, Gears 5 features Kait in the leading role. She is seen in the trailer battling an internal struggle while also attempting to unravel the origins of the Locusts.

Wow, yet another year has passed and we're once again celebrating our site's birthday. This hobby-project-gone-mad of ours is officially 19 years old as of today.

It is absolutely mind-boggling to think that when our site was launched back in 1999, the most popular search engine in the world was AltaVista, term "social media" meant something like watching TV with your friends in same living room and millions of people were still using modems to connect to the Internet.

During these years, we've seen it all: the good times, the bad times and the absolutely horrific times (bursting of the dot-com bubble wasn't pretty..). But we're still here.

Technologies have changed - we started AfterDawn as a source of information for people interested in MP3 technology and software.. The ways how people consume news have changed: nowadays more than half of online traffic is mobile and social media is the force that drives the traffic to websites.

But over the years, we've adapted. During the past 12 months, we've switched our site to use HTTPS, meaning that all the communcation between your browser and our site is now encrypted and secure. Couple of months ago, we finally launched our official AfterDawn app for Android to make it easier to read our news with your phone.

The eagerly anticipated Crackdown 3 will not ship this year and has been pushed back yet again to a later release date, Microsoft confirms.

Crackdown 3 has been in development for years as fans eagerly await to engage in its general mayhem and chaos. Originally slated to be released around the summer of 2016, Crackdown 3 ran into some development issues and slipped its predicted release dates.

While a newer trailer was revealed for Crackdown 3 at E3 last year, there has been very little info leaking out about the game from its developer Sumo Digital, prompting some concerns over the fate of the project.

Following rumors, Microsoft has confirmed to Windows Central that the game's release has slipped to early 2019.

"Our fans' response to the signature antics and explosive gameplay of "Crackdown 3" has been incredible. To ensure we deliver the experience they deserve, "Crackdown 3" will be launching in Feb 2019. We look forward to sharing more on "Crackdown 3" this Sunday during the Xbox E3 2018 briefing."

Google AI technology will not be developed and used for military weapons or to enable unreasonable surveillance on civilians, according to Pichai.

In a blog post that sought to make clear Alphabet / Google's priorities in the emerging AI space, chief executive Sundar Pichai made it clear that Google AI software will not be permitted for use in weapons systems and other controversial programs. This follows recent internal protests at Google about some of the projects it was involved in, including one that used AI to identify objects in drone footage.

Responding to the understandable concern that such technology could be used for more efficient killing of human beings, Pichai made it clear that the firm will not design or deploy AI for technology that is likely to cause overall harm.

"Where there is a material risk of harm, we will proceed only where we believe that the benefits substantially outweigh the risks, and will incorporate appropriate safety constraints," Pichai writes.

He went on to specifically rule out the use of Google Ai in "weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people."

Amazon has secured streaming rights for Premier League football matches starting from the 2019 / 2020 football season.

The Premier League auctioned off seven packages for the live broadcast / streaming of football matches, of which Sky bought four and secured 128 matches per season over three seasons from 2019/20 to 2021/22.

BT Sport bought two of the packages, securing 52 live fixtures per season over the three year period. Amazon bought the remaining package, gaining the rights to stream 20 football matches per season over the same period of time.

Of course, Sky and BT has secured the best fixtures while Amazon will stream mostly mid-week fixtures in the December and Christmas period. However, it signals that online platforms are interested in purchasing the expensive packages in the UK for Premier League football, and will eventually be in a position to bid for more expensive fixtures.

"We are always looking to add more value to Prime, and we're delighted to now offer, for the first time, live Premier League matches to Prime members at no extra cost to their membership," said Jay Marine, Vice President of Prime Video in Europe.

"The Premier League is the most watched sports league in the world. Over these two December fixture rounds Prime members will be able to watch every team, every game, so no matter which Premier League team you support, you're guaranteed to see them play live on Prime Video."

On the heels of the WSJ report that Instagram would soon allow videos of up to one hour on its service, TechCrunch is reporting it will launch a video hub very soon.

According to the TechCrunch sources, the Intagram video hub will be a home for long-form video content, typically in portrait view (vertical) and in up to 4K quality. It would rival services like Shapchat Discover, featuring scripted shows, music videos and more.

The report dates June 20 for an announcement from Instagram which would be flanked by launch partners comprising popular social media stars and content publishers.

Like the WSJ report, the sources told TechCruch that regular users will be allowed to upload videos of up to an hour in duration, up from the current 60 second limit (excluding livestreaming, of course).

Source: TechCrunch

According to Billboard, Spotify is offering financial advances to Indie artists and managers to license music directly to its streaming service, cutting out publishers.

The report cites sources in reporting that the music streaming giant is offering advances to a number of managers and Indie acts for a direct licensing agreement, which will also result in both parties getting a larger share of revenue. In some cases detailed by Billboard by the sources, managers and acts can take home 50 percent of the revenue per stream of licensed songs.

While this is less than the average of 54 percent paid to major record labels, it would still result in a larger cut for the artists and managers who may typically only get between 20 percent and 50 percent of the major label's share. Additionally, Spotify is not looking for exclusivity or rights to the content beyond the right to use it on its service, meaning the Indie acts can also license their music to rivals like Apple Music. Indeed, the sources even told Billboard that Spotify has urged participating Indie acts not to describe themselves as being "signed to Spotify."

According to the Wall Street Journal, Instagram will soon allow hour long video uploads to the service.

As it stands, Instagram caps video uploads to a duration of no longer than a minute. Only those livestreaming video can go beyond the minute mark. According to the Wall Street Journal, Instagram is planning to increase the video duration limit from one minute, to sixty minutes.

It is also in talks with content creators to provide exclusive, long-form video content exclusively for Instagram, according to the report.

This move would sync up with Instagram parent Facebook's intent to get more involved in the video space. It also provides a new potential ad revenue source, particularly as Instagram could seek to lure its younger users with exclusive content.

Facebook has been getting more into the video space in recent years, particularly when it comes to live broadcasts of sporting and other events.

Following the news earlier this week that Microsoft is to acquire GitHub, rival GItLab saw a huge increase in developers shifting to its platform.

Microsoft will acquire GitHub in a $7.5 billion all-stock deal as it seeks to take on rivals in the cloud computing arena. Some developers at GitHub were not thrilled with the news and have reportedly switched rather quickly to GitLab, another rival coding platform.

"It has been crazy in the last twenty-four hours. We are seeing thousands switching, tweeting about it," GitLab Chief Executive Officer Sytse Sijbrandij, told the Reuters News Agency.

"There is at least a 10 times increase than the usual number of people switching to GitLab."

The firm - which is targeting an IPO in 2020 - also took advantage of the situation by offering up to 75 percent discounts on subscription plans for developers looking to switch platforms.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sought to ease any concerns about the acquisition earlier this week by insisting that GitHub will remain an open platform. GitHub counts as many as 28 million developers on its platform.

Qualcomm unveiled the new Snapdragon 850 chip at Computex this week, designed specifically for Windows PCs.

The Snapdragon 850 is about 30 percent faster than the similar Snapdragon 835. The main difference between the 10nm design chips is the former pushes the clock speed up to 2.96GHz, taking advantage of the extra space and better heat dissipation of PC and laptop devices compared to mobile devices.

Samsung Electronics will release a 2-in-1 always-on, always-connected Windows device using the new Snapdragon 850 chip. The aim is for laptop devices to have similar battery life and connectivity to smartphones and tablets. According to Qualcomm, the power-efficient architecture of the Snapdragon 850 can provide up to 25 hours of continuous usage or multi-day battery life under "normal usage conditions."

The 850 boasts 3X AI performance over the previous generation, as well as up to 1.2 gigabits per second LTE connectivity speeds.

"Building on the portfolio of Always On, Always Connected PCs established over the past year, we are thrilled to work with Samsung to help offer consumers true mobility combined with the productivity and entertainment features of Windows 10," said Alex Katouzian, senior vice president and general manager, mobile business unit, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

Apple chief Tim Cook moved this week to refute claims that the company received private user data from Facebook.

Recent report showed how data such as a users' relationship status, religion and even political leanings were shared with at least 60 device makers. Cook wanted to be absolutely clear that Apple does not receive, and does not request, such information in its relationship with Facebook.

"The things mentioned in the Times article about relationship statuses and all these kinds of stuff, this is so foreign to us, and not data that we have ever received at all or requested -- zero," Cook told NPR's Steve Inskeep and Laura Sydell.

Instead, cooperation with Facebook amounts to making it more convenient to do things within an operating system, like share photographs more easily.

"We weren't in the data business. We've never been in the data business," Cook stressed.

The Apple boss has been vocal about the collection and use of users' personal data by some silicon valley firms, and declared that he believes private to be a fundamental human right.

Apple introduced yesterday the updated version of macOS. The 10.14 version carries the name macOS Mojave, and brings along a few interesting improvements.

Perhaps the most requested, and most visible, update is the new dark mode. People have been requesting a dark theme for quite a while, and now Apple provides us with a mode with both darker navigation elements and windows but also a custom dark wallpaper of the Mojave desert that obviously inspired the name of the release.

While dark mode might be the most visible new feature, it might be Desktop Stacks that are the most significant. Stacks are like folders, except with a click they explode on your desktop and when you click again they stack up again to clean up your desktop.

There are also improvements to Finder with a new Gallery view to show larger pictures and more metadata details as well as Quick Look now supports quick edits to both pictures and video.

Following Microsoft's suit Apple has updated their screenshots to have a quick link to edit and share straight after a screen grab has been taken.

Continuity on the other hand got a Continuity Camera feature which allows you to use your phone camera to take pictures for macOS devices and embed them easily to documents you are editing.

Apple announced yesterday the new iOS 12 at WWDC in San Jose, California. The new version of Apple's mobile operating system will be available later this fall to all Apple devices released in 2013 and later.

One of the key focus points for Apple has been improving performance. According to the company, iOS 12 brings along speedier operation, more responsive experience and more performance to those apps that truly need it.

Apple has sped up app launch 40-70 percent from previous iteration. Under higher stress the platform performs even better compared to earlier versions being up to twice as fast.

Another big improvement, also extensively demoed on stage, is the AR support in iOS. Apple released a new augmented reality file format called USDZ. This allows companies like Adobe us it in their software, including Photoshop of course. Apple, and Lego, showed off the AR capabilities in a multiplayer games as well with the new Measure tools that allows users measure real life object from their iOS device's screen.

Obviously iOS 12 brings along updated apps with improved functionality. One of these apps is Photos that got a little bit smarter with some AI capabilities. One of the bigger improvements is the grouping of notifications, which has been highly requested for a while now.

SpaceX will not send two private tourists around the Moon by the end of 2018 as originally planned, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Last year, SpaceX had revealed that two private citizens would be sent on a trip around the Moon by the end of 2018. The plan would utilize a Falcon Heavy rocket and a human-rated Dragon v2 capsule. It would send the two private space tourists on an automated trip around the Moon and then bring them back to the surface of Earth.

However, doubts circulated about the plan for a number of reasons. At the time, the Falcon Heavy rocket had not flown at all and made its first test flight in February of this year. SpaceX had also detailed its plans to develop the BFR ("Big Falcon Rocket") in the meantime, which will eventually replace the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.

It was reported that SpaceX would not seek to have the Falcon Heavy human rated at all. The Falcon 9 Block V is currently undergoing the process to become human rated and the plan is to ferry astronauts to the ISS with it.

The WSJ report confirms that SpaceX definitely will not send private citizens on the planned trip around the Moon until mid-2019 at the earliest. It may take quite a while longer than that as SpaceX develops the BFR.

Several sources claim that Microsoft is about to announce its acquisition of GitHub later today.

GitHub is a de facto open source distribution and code management service for thousands and thousands of developers and open source projects. Site allows anyone to start a Git code repository for free, invite others to participate and to manage the project development.

For end users, it is also the place to download the latest releases of various open source projects.

According to sources, including Bloomberg, Microsoft has been in talks with GitHub to buy the company. Sources claim that the discussions have reached the point where Microsoft is about to announce its acquisition of GitHub later today.

GitHub's latest funding round back in 2015 valued the company at $2 billion. While Bloomberg doesn't state the price the Microsoft is willing to pay for the service, it is highly likely that the price is much higher than the 2015 valuation.