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One of the most talkked about games of this year must be Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. Its ability to recreate landscapes, buildings and entire cities by combining AI, machine learning and actual scenery footage is simply amazing.

Sure, it has its flaws, but that seems to be part of the lure - online communities have been filled with Flight Simulator screenshots from landmarks and regular homes all over the world.

Now, a Reddit user has set his virtual flight's coordinates to 38°15′00.5″N, 122°24′38.9″W and managed to take a photo there.

Those coordinates mark a significant piece of computing history, as there is the spot where the original Windows XP background photo was taken. The photo - taken in Napa Valley, Northern California - that once was the background image on more than one billion computers has a history of its own, as you can read from here. News about the MS Flight Simulator image was first spotted at Chinese ITHome website.

original Windows XP background image

The fight between Epic Games and Apple has grabbed the headlines lately. And Epic is making sure that the legal case wont be forgotten.

Company is now launching a short, one-day tournament dubbed as #FreeFortnite. Prizes include "everything that is not made by Apple" and players using Apple products to play Fortnite aren't eligible to participate.

All of your friends. Fabulous prizes. And one bad apple. We're droppin the #FreeFortnite Cup on August 23.

Check out our blog for full info: https://t.co/BFpiMQoWID

-- Fortnite (@FortniteGame) August 21, 2020

Prizes include OnePlus 8 phones, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One X and Playstation 4 consoles and more. Furthermore, players can also win new skins to the Fortnite game - that obviously mock Apple and its products. Tournament will be held on 23rd of August, 2020.

World's most popular email service, Google-owned Gmail is in serious problems. Thousands of people are reporting outages worldwide as of now.

Problems seem to be widespread and affect different users differently. For most users, sending emails through Gmail seem to be failing. For others, using file attachments is failing. And for those who are using Gmail mobile app to connect to other email providers, aren't getting their messages downloaded.

Pic 1: When I hear gmail is down
Pic 2: When I realize I won't get work mails now.#gmaildown #Gmail pic.twitter.com/28ZDdLjXrZ

-- Rahul Panwar (@therahulpanwar) August 20, 2020

We tried Gmail just a moment ago here in Finland and our problems were related to the IMAP account that was being polled by Gmail's mobile app: message headers came through (that is, subject line and the sender name), but the message itself was missing. Google has announced that it is aware of the outage, but hasn't informed yet what has caused the problem.

World's leading music streaming service is having issues at the moment. Spotify has been down for users in United States and Europe.

Down detector's outage map reveals that reports have come from mostly Europe and US east coast – central and pacific US are still waking up.

At this point Spotify hasn't issued any statements via its social media platforms, and there's no scheduled maintenance we are aware of.

While the app on both desktop and mobile don't stream music currently, the web players found at spotify.com seems to function properly. It's also worth noting that this probably doesn't affect all users

We'll continue to monitor the situation, and there's likely going to be a shift correction to the problem from Spotify.

Edit: Readers have confirmed that the service has also been down in Asia.

Epic Games has received support from gamers and from other firms as it takes on Google and Apple in court over their App Store policies.

Epic recently offered Fortnite players a 20 percent discount on its in-game V-bucks currency if they paid Epic Games directly. Bypassing Apple and Google's internal payment systems meant that Epic could avoid paying the standard 30 percent fee to the tech giants.

Apple was the first to retaliate by kicking the megapopular Fortnite off of its App Store, meaning there is nowhere now for Apple products' users to install the game. Epic seemed to be primed and ready for Apple's action and released a parody video of Apple's icon 1984-themed advert.

Epic Games has defied the App Store Monopoly. In retaliation, Apple is blocking Fortnite from a billion devices.

Visit https://t.co/K3S07w5uEk and join the fight to stop 2020 from becoming "1984" https://t.co/tpsiCW4gqK

-- Fortnite (@FortniteGame) August 13, 2020

Japanese electronics giant has no presence left in laptop and PC market where it was operating for three and a half decades.

Toshiba transferred its remaining 19.9 percent stake in Dynabook to Sharp earlier this month. The transfer was enabled through a share purchase agreement reached between Sharp and Toshiba in 2018 when Sharp initially acquired 80.1 percent of Toshiba Client Solutions Co., Ltd (TCS).

TCS changed its brand name to Dynabook in January 2019.

The action means that Toshiba - a consistent name in PCs and laptops since 1985 - now has no presence left in the PC market, while Dynabook has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sharp.

Toshiba's first laptop was the T1100, released in 1985. Over the decades it had considerable success with its Satellite, Qosmio, and Protege devices.

Press release: toshiba.co.jp

Leaked packaging and materials for Xbox controller confirm the existence of the "Xbox Series S" console.

There has been growing evidence that Microsoft plans to release a cheaper, possibly disc-less version of its upcoming Xbox Series X next-gen console. The codename for the project is well known - Lockhart - and now its actual name may be confirmed as the Xbox Series S.

Twitter user Zak S obtained a white next-gen Xbox controller on OfferUp for $35 and The Verge verified its authenticity. The packaging and materials that come with the controller mention both the Xbox Series X, and the Xbox Series S.

Earlier in the summer, leaked documents also showed that the Xbox Series X devkit (codenamed Dante) includes a Lockhart mode. The Lockhart hardware is expected to have 7.5GB of RAM (down from 13.5GB in the Series X) and a lower performance GPU. While it will pack the same CPU as the Series X, it's likely underclocked. Series S would be expected to be part of Microsoft's Xbox All Pass subscription push.

The focus of the Series X is also suggested to be on 1080p and 1440p resolution gaming, rather than 4K.

Apple has clarified that Microsoft's cloud gaming service won't be available for iOS devices because it breaches its App Store rules.

Microsoft's xCloud gaming service is expected to launch on September 15, having been in beta testing since November of last year. It will allow users to stream games across a variety of devices from the cloud.

While it was available for testing on Apple's iOS devices, it will not be launching for them next month. According to Apple, the problem is that xCloud violates numerous rules enforced on developers.

Firstly, Apple's rules stipulate that all games that would be made available through the App Store are submitted to it for checks. This is an issue for xCloud because a large number of titles would be available through an interface on the app, with many games becoming available the same day as they launch for purchase.

Secondly, games must also appear in the search on the App Store, but that would not the case with the xCloud app. Furthermore, games available in the xCloud app would not appear in charts.

Microsoft is pushing back against Apple's explanation, however, pointing out that all the games available in the xCloud library would be probed by games' rating bodies like the Entertainment Software Rating Board in America, and that further checks should not be required on Apple's end.

World's leading chip manufacturer Intel has been a target of hacking, says a swiss software engineer and leak hobbyist Till Kottmann.

Kottmann received leaked Intel documents from an anonymous hacker that contacted him via his Telegram channel. The 20 gigabyte package was uploaded to Kim Dotcom's Mega cloud storage site.

Some of these documents were marked confidential or restricted secret, and some are clearly just marketing material or manuals.

According to ZDNet's unnamed expert, the leak seems authentic and there are indeed confidential information among the leaked documents. This includes schematics for unreleased Tiger Lake platform, silicon and FSP source code packages, as well as encrypted Intel Boot Guard SDK.

There's no sensitive information about Intel's customers or employees, however.

Social media is once again in turmoil as a new Chinese-owned contender TikTok has gained foothold in the US. President Trump and the administration aren't happy about the national security aspect of TikTok, and in fact are going to enact a ban unless control changes.

The administration has given TikTok just over a month to figure out how to restructure the ownership of TikTok's US business or else they will institute a ban on the app.

Microsoft has been in talks with TikTok owner ByteDance for possibly buying the US business, but that might not be the only thing on the table.

According to Financial Times, the deal might be far bigger and Microsoft might be looking to acquire the entirety of TikTok's international operations, excluding China.

If Microsoft could acquire a successful social media it would elevate its business beyond what Apple or Google has managed.

However, sources have told Business Insider that Microsoft is not going to extend the deal. Microsoft has already admitted that it has started negotiations about the operations in US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Sony has today announced new closed back headphones to its award-winning and popular WH-1000X series. The new WH-1000XM4 are the fourth generation, as the name suggests, in Sony's flagship headphone series.

While much of Mark 4 looks like its predecessor – and for a good reason, after all why try to fix something that isn't broken – there are some improvements.

Sony has improved upon what already was the market-leading active noise cancellation. While the chip itself is the same, Sony has worked on especially the high and mid pitches sound removal algorithms.

The noise cancellation uses two microphones on each ear cup to produce the best ANC experience yet. This process also uses a new Bluetooth Audio SoC feature to analyze data over 700 times a second.

As with WH-1000XM3, the new model features ANC optimizer that analyzes the users head size as well as the effect of hair, glasses and so on to provide the most accurate noise cancellation. This also includes air pressure optimization when flying.

Tinder, the world's most popular dating app, has introduced a new subscription tier, dubbed as Tinder Platinum. The new subscription level adds on top of the existing tiers (Tinder Gold and Tinder Plus), introducing two important new features to the app.

First and foremost is the feature called Messages without a match, which basically allows one to send a short message (max 140 characters) to the recipient even when there's no match between the two.

In order to send such message, sender must be subscribed to the Tinder Platinum. Message is then attached to a super like that user sends to the recipient. The recipient sees the superlike, along with the message and then decides whether to like the sender or not.

If the recipient doesn't like the sender back, sender wont be able to send further messages. If recipient likes the sender back, a new Tinder match is formed and the two can then continue chatting as normal Tinder matches.

Samsung's this year's Unpacked virtual event ended with a bang as the company unveiled their next-generation foldable smartphone. After the introduction of Galaxy Note20, Galaxy Tab S7, Galaxy Buds Live, and Galaxy Watch3, the company had a "one more thing" in their back pocket.

They officially unveiled the new Galaxy Z Fold2, the successor to last year's immensely controversial Galaxy Fold. The company's initial failure to produce a foldable smartphone was obvious last year after reviewers found out that dirt could fairly easily enter the hinge mechanism and even under the display and break the whole thing.

After a callback and few more iterations of development, the Galaxy Fold was finally launched, although not many probably actually bought one.

Samsung announced yesterday two new Galaxy Note20 smartphones as well as two Galaxy S7 tablets. In addition, the company introduced some upgraded peripherals, like Galaxy Buds Live earbuds and Galaxy Watch3, which we're going to take a look at here.

The new smartwatch offers an upgraded design that inches it closer to traditional watch in many respects. It is smaller, thinner, and lighter while still managing to improve upon the specs ever to slightly.

According to the company, Galaxy Watch3 is 14 percent thinner, 8 percent smaller, 15 percent lighter than its predecessor Galaxy Watch. Nevertheless, they've managed to include slightly larger, 1.4 inch display (instead of 1.3").

Yesterday's virtual Unpacked event produced us a pair of both Galaxy Note20 smartphones as well as Galaxy Tab S7 tablets. Neither of these come with a 3.5 mm headphone jack, which brings us to the this announcement.

Samsung updated also their Galaxy Buds lineup. The new Galaxy Buds Live is a rather large upgrade to the predecessor with a new design and important new features.

The bean-shaped design is said to come from looking for comfort and fit. That remains to be seen but they are definitely unique.