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Apple halts iOS 12 beta, users experiencing problems

Written by Matti Robinson @ 14 Aug 2018 6:41

Apple halts iOS 12 beta, users experiencing problems Apple released the seventh beta version of their newest mobile operating system, the iOS 12. Not long after the update shipped yesterday the Cupertino giant had to, however, take it back.

Users were reporting major problems with the update and Apple decided to pull the update. Many of the beta users were complaining about performance issues that struck right after updating their device.

Reports said apps are slow to start and the lock screen animations are sluggish, laggy or can even halt altogether. Some have also complained about problems in the Notification Center.

Even though the problems occurred in a pre-production beta version, Apple has decided that they are too severe to wait for another update. That is understandable as testing the platform would be hard if it keeps freezing and lagging.

Apple did not pull the update from all channels, though. Over-the-air (OTA) updates were stopped but developers can still access iOS 12 beta 7 manually.




AfterDawn: News

Nvidia unveils Turing architecture, teases next week's gaming GPUs

Written by Matti Robinson @ 14 Aug 2018 5:55

Nvidia unveils Turing architecture, teases next week's gaming GPUs The leading GPU manufacturer Nvidia has finally gave us some Turing news, and to start with it has revealed its most powerful professional GPU.

Turing is of course the company's new architecture that it will apply not only in the new Quadro RTX 8000 already revealed but also the upcoming, more gamer-friendly, GPUs that are expected from Gamescom next week.

Aforementioned Quadro RTX 8000 is a powerhouse of a GPU that professionals of all ilk working with extreme cases of graphics intensive workloads would appreciate. The unit includes 567 Tensor cores that have been upgraded to Turing specs.

That includes a dedicated RT Core unit which is responsible for raytracing calculations. Obviously that'll give the other processing cores more time to focus on other tasks whether they'd be AI calculations or more general purpose tasks.

Speaking of general purpose tasks, there are 4608 CUDA cores on board the new RTX 8000, and a completely insane 48 gigabytes of GDDR6 memory.

As you might expect, specs like that don't come cheap. In fact the price for RTX 8000 is an insane $10,000. Worry not, though, there will be more affordable Turing cards in the near future.

The company has teased upcoming gamer GPUs on a YouTube video. Nvidia is expected to release new GPUs at Gamescom on August 20.

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AfterDawn: News

Nintendo targets ROM sites in legal crackdown

Written by James Delahunty @ 13 Aug 2018 8:28

Nintendo targets ROM sites in legal crackdown Nintendo is targeting websites that distribute ROM copies of its classic video games from legacy platforms with lawsuits.

The Japanese gamemaker filed legal action recently in Arizona, targeting LoveRetro and LoveRoms, which offered ROMs of classic games from Sega, Sony, and Atari. It is seeking $150,000 for each Nintendo game offered, and up to $2 million for each trademark infringement.

Responding to the legal action elsewhere, EmuParadise voluntarily removed ROMs from its website. It said that it will continue to operate but will take the website in a different direction.

"We run EmuParadise for the love of retro games and for you to be able to revisit those good times. Unfortunately, it's not possible right now to do so in a way that makes everyone happy and keeps us out of trouble," wrote MasJ, founder of EmuParadise.

Nintendo will be launching a subscription service for its Switch console later this year, and will be offering access to some retro titles.




AfterDawn: News

Musk facing lawsuit over Tesla comments

Written by James Delahunty @ 13 Aug 2018 7:52

Musk facing lawsuit over Tesla comments Tesla and founder Elon Musk are the targets of lawsuits from short sellers over comments made by Musk on Twitter.

Tweets made by Elon Musk on August 7 stunned the market as he openly stated his desire to take Tesla private at $420 per share. The proposed $72 billion transaction, for which Musk claimed he had 'secured' funding, pushed Tesla shares up initially by around 13 percent. While much of the gain was lost afterwards, short sellers were hit and are now targeting the firm and its CEO in two lawsuits.

In one lawsuit, Kalman Isaacs claimed that Musk's tweets were false and misleading, and amounted to a nuclear attack designed to completely decimate short sellers. Among with another lawsuit from William Chamberlain, Isaacs alleges that Musk's conduct artificially inflated Tesla's stock price and violated federal securities laws.

Both lawsuits were filed in San Francisco, three days after Musk's original tweets. Isaacs alleges that Musk's conduct cost short sellers hundreds of millions of dollars from having to cover their short positions.

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AfterDawn: News

WATCH: Red Dead Redemption 2 gameplay in stunning environment

Written by James Delahunty @ 10 Aug 2018 6:15

WATCH: Red Dead Redemption 2 gameplay in stunning environment Rockstar Games is teasing us again ahead of the release of the eagerly-anticipated Red Dead Redemption 2, dropping an official gameplay trailer that shows off the gorgeous world within.

We had already been treated to some shorts of the gorgeous landscapes and environments that will be present in Red Dead Redemption 2, and now Rockstar has given us a taste of the gameplay we can expect. It shows us life in the gritty but stunning American Old West in 1899, during the decline of the age of gunslingers and outlaws.

From outlaw Arthur Morgan's point of view, the player will roam this open world environment with seemingly endless possibilities for interaction and activity. Retained, though improved, from the 2010 original is the Honor system which will allow you to determine Auther's moral compass as you interact with NPCs and come across unseemly situations. You will have a choice of how to react to events you witness and this will determine much about your character.

Combat has been greatly improved since the original game to be more immersive and realistic. Firearm usage is made to feel more accurate right down to the recoil and kickback. The deadeye targeting system which allows the protagonist to aim at multiple individuals in a slow-motion sequence has been improved.

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AfterDawn: News

Samsung reveals Galaxy Watch with LTE, long-lasting battery life

Written by James Delahunty @ 10 Aug 2018 5:53

Samsung reveals Galaxy Watch with LTE, long-lasting battery life Samsung has revealed the new Galaxy Watch with LTE connectivity, long-lasting battery life and a bunch of Health and Productivity focused elements.

The new Galaxy Watch is LTE connected, supported across 30+ carriers and 15+ countries, meaning it can be untethered from a smartphone and deliver messaging, mapping, music and calls. Two separate sizes are available; 42mm and 46mm. The former is available in Midnight Black or Rose Gold, while the latter is available only in Silver.

Another key difference between the options is the battery. The smaller 42mm option packs a 270mAh battery delivering approximately 45 hours on a full charge with typical use or up to 120 hours with low usage. Meanwhile, the 46mm option has a larger 472mAh battery for up to 80 hours per charge with typical usage, or as much as 168 hours with low usage.

Samsung's Galaxy Watch sports a 1.3-inch, Circular Super AMOLED (360 x 360), Full Color Always On Display, protected by Corning Gorilla Glass. There will be over 60,000 faces available for the Galaxy Watch. A daily briefing feature will sync your Calendar and show your appointments on the home screen.

There is a strong focus on Health tracking with the Galaxy Watch too. A new stress management tracker, which automatically detects high levels of stress and offers breathing exercises to help keep users centered and focused. Additionally, a new advanced sleep tracker monitors all levels of sleep, including REM cycles, to help users adjust sleeping habits.

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AfterDawn: News

Samsung reveals Galaxy Note 9 with connected S Pen

Written by James Delahunty @ 10 Aug 2018 5:20

Samsung reveals Galaxy Note 9 with connected S Pen Samsung's Galaxy Note 9 beefs up the specs, improves camera performance and adds a smarter, connected S Pen.

The new Galaxy Note 9 delivers what Samsung says is "all-day performance" starting with the 4,000mAh battery (fast wireless charging supported), the largest ever on a flagship Galaxy phone. Under the hood is a 10nm processor (Snapdragon 845 or a Samsung Exynos, depending on location) and a Water Carbon Cooling system and on-device AI-based performance adjusting algorithm to deliver powerful yet stable performance.

It comes with two internal storage options; 128GB or 512GB. Taking into account the microSD slot, the Note 9 can offer up to a terabyte of storage if you include a 512GB card. The Note 9 sports a 6.4-inch end-to-end screen (2960x1440). When it comes to memory, the 128GB option comes with 6GB of RAM, while the 512GB kicks it up to 8GB.

Incorporated from the Galaxy S9 family are new stereo speakers a variable aperture f/1.5-2.4 12-megapixel primary camera, with an additional 12Mpxl camera on the back. New software AI features improve the quality of your photos too. The software can identify elements of a photo, such as scene and subject, to automatically classify it into one of 20 categories and instantly optimize it based on the category. It can also prompt the user to retake a photo if it detects blurry elements, or if a subject blinked, for example.

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AfterDawn: News

LibreOffice v6.1 released - download from here!

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 09 Aug 2018 7:38

LibreOffice v6.1 released - download from here! Free open source alterinative to Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, has been updated to v6.1. The office productivity suite was originally born as a spin-off project from OpenOffice suite. Both, OpenOffice and LibreOffice resembled each other quite a lot for many years, but since then, LibreOffice has become the de facto open source office suite for many users and vendors.

The new LibreOffice v6.1 is mostly a minor improvement over v6.0 branch, but has interesting changes in it. Most importantly, the image management system of the entire suite has been revamped and is now easier and smoother to use, especially when editing files originally created in Microsoft Office.

So, if you're looking for a free Microsoft Office compatible suite, you might want to give LibreOffice a test.

You can download the latest version directly from AfterDawn's software section:

LibreOffice v6.1 for Windows (64-bit)

LibreOffice v6.1 for Windows (32-bit)

LibreOffice v6.1 for Mac OS X




AfterDawn: News

Snap gets a $250 million investment from Saudi Arabia

Written by Matti Robinson @ 08 Aug 2018 8:28

Snap gets a $250 million investment from Saudi Arabia Snap was once perhaps the hottest prospects in the messaging startup game but they've fallen quite a bit from their perceived glory. Now they've once again been trusted with hundreds of millions of foreign investments.

Thanks to Facebook, and others, who've been copying Snapchat's innovative features, and surpassing them in other ways, Snapchat has been struggling to stay relevant and afloat. A $353 million net loss previous quarter is just one of the signs of the waning platform.

Fortunately now Saudi prince Al-Waleed Talal has put forth $250 million to acquire 2.3% stake in the company.

Snap is nowadays known not only from its self-destructive messages, and AR filters called World Lenses that were released last year, but also social media sunglasses, 2016 launched Spectacles, that were revamped earlier this year.

Snapchat has currently just under 200 million users while Facebook-owned Instagram has recently surpassed a billion users according to Statista.

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AfterDawn: News

Augmented Reality headset Magic Leap now available for $2,295

Written by Matti Robinson @ 08 Aug 2018 3:06

Augmented Reality headset Magic Leap now available for $2,295 Perhaps the most hyped Virtual, and by Virtual I mean Augmented, Reality headset, Magic Leap, ever has been released to the public. However, the Microsoft HoloLens -like AR headset is by no means everybody's entertainment device, for few reasons.

Magic Leap can be now ordered in six cities in the United States: Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco and Seattle. But even if you live in one of these places, the price might put you off. See, the price for what seems to still be a fairly exclusive product, is $2,295, not including VAT.

If you still want to shell out the cash, you might want to know what you are spending your money on. The hotly anticipated AR device comes in a three pieces with the headset itself being one of them obviously. You also get one touchpad controller as well as the computing part of the operation called the Lightpack.

Included in the Lightpack is Nvidia's Parker mobile CPU, a GPU based on Pascal architecture, eight gigabytes of RAM and 128 GB flash storage. According to the company the battery can run the device for up to 3 hours at a time, which should be more than enough to tire your eyes.

Connectivity-wise Magic Leap supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2 and USB-C.

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AfterDawn: News

Alex Jones' Infowars targeted by Apple, Spotify, Facebook and YouTube

Written by James Delahunty @ 07 Aug 2018 4:30

Alex Jones' Infowars targeted by Apple, Spotify, Facebook and YouTube In a seemingly coordinated manner, multiple platforms have removed content from Alex Jones' Infowars outlet, citing violations of terms of service.

Podcasts and channels from the Infowars outlet disappeared from services run by Apple and Spotify, whilst Alex Jones' personal YouTube account was closed down for "violating community guidelines". Jones' personal Facebook page was also taken down.

According to Facebook, the page was removed for, "glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies."

Spotify explained the removal of podcasts from the Infowars outlet as punishment for, "repeated violations of Spotify's prohibited content policies."

Responding to the coordinated removal of Jones' and Infowars' content, Paul Joseph Watson claimed that the timing of the removal was intended to affect the upcoming midterm elections in the United States.



Watson is the editor-at-large at Infowars.




AfterDawn: News

SpaceX relaunches Falcon 9 Block 5 booster

Written by James Delahunty @ 07 Aug 2018 4:09

SpaceX relaunches Falcon 9 Block 5 booster SpaceX has successfully reused a previously landed Falcon 9 booster based on its final 'Block 5' design.

This is not the first time that SpaceX successfully relaunched a previously flown and landed (or as SpaceX describes them: flight proven) booster, but it is the first time that it landed a Block 5 booster. SpaceX is hoping to reuse Block 5 boosters up to 100 times, and to fly no less than 10 times without the need for maintenance.

Last night, SpaceX launched a commercial satellite to geostationary orbit for Telecom Indonesia. The booster / first stage of the rocket was previously used back in May when SpaceX launched the Bangabandhu Satellite-1 into orbit.

The promise of reflying boosters is to cut launch costs significantly, though initially SpaceX may opt to keep launch costs higher to recoup the significant financial investment into the development of reusable rockets, the development of the Falcon Heavy and the ongoing development of the BFR.

NASA has also announced the first astronauts that will fly to space on a human-rated Dragon capsule from SpaceX. The Crew Dragon will have to pass a couple of test flights before the company will be able to fly humans.




AfterDawn: News

AMD's new top-of-the-line Ryzen chip goes on sale for $1799

Written by Matti Robinson @ 06 Aug 2018 12:52

AMD's new top-of-the-line Ryzen chip goes on sale for $1799 AMD has put their newest, and most powerful, addition to Ryzen Threadripper family of CPUs on pre-order. The chip in question is the 32-core and 64-thread Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX, the first of the WX series, that was unveiled in June.

Now 2990WX is available for pre-order for those looking for a truly top notch multithread processor. The second generation Threadripper chip includes new Zen+ architecture produced with 12 nm process, but its TR4 socket is supported by current X399 motherboards with a BIOS update.

According to AMD, the new Threadripper 2990WX managed to already snatch the record for Cinebench multithread benchmark, although not with default cooling solution, as you might imagine. The CPU normally clocked at 3.0GHz (and boosted at 4.2GHz) was overclocked to 5.1GHz during the test.

While powerful in all kinds of tasks, this specific family of chips is meant mainly for professional use, be it video rendering or other CPU intensive work, where core and thread counts are important. The price tag is telling as well, as not many PC enthusiasts are willing to shell out $1799 for a CPU.

Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX pre-orders are now open and it'll take another week for it to hit the stores on August 13. The cheaper $1299 24-core (and 48-thread) 2970WX will be released next month.

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AfterDawn: News

Tesla's own AI chip to replace Nvidia's

Written by Matti Robinson @ 06 Aug 2018 10:58

Tesla's own AI chip to replace Nvidia's Known for its electric cars, Tesla wouldn't be thought as the first company to develop their own microchips. But obviously Tesla's vehicles are just moving computers, and one of the most important parts of that computer happens to be the brains, the artificial intelligence brains.

It's been actually known for quite some time that Tesla is trying to come up with a more cost-efficient and tailored solution than the current Nvidia chips for its cars. Now the company has confirmed that it will be dropping Nvidia in favor of their proprietary AI chips.

Amidst reporting on quarterly results Elon Musk revealed that the homebrew chip will be introduces during next year. According to the Tesla and Space X visionary, it has been developed from the ground up for Tesla's vehicles and according to their needs.

The new chip will be able to handle all the AI calculations unlike many competing chips that require some form of software emulation. This makes Tesla's chip "an order of magnitude" faster than for example the currently used Nvidia chip.

Tesla chip is also backwards compatible so old vehicles could get an AI performance boost with a chip replacement. However, there's no word what the procedure would cost or when it would be available.

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AfterDawn: News

Virus shut down iPhone chip manufacturer TSMC

Written by Matti Robinson @ 04 Aug 2018 2:42

Virus shut down iPhone chip manufacturer TSMC Taiwanese contract chip manufacturer TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) has had to shut down some of its factories after a virus infected its production lines. The world's largest semiconductor manufacturer builds Apple's system-on-chips, including for the upcoming iPhones expected to be released next month.

According to Bloomberg, TSMC was hit by a virus that crippled some of the company's factories. TMSC representatives have denied that the systems were compromised by a hacker but there is currently no explanation how the virus entered the systems.

For TSMC the timing is horrible, since it is currently trying to crank out as many Apple chips as possible for its most important customer before the release of upcoming iPhones.

The company did not, however, disclose if the affected factories were producing chips for iPhones and what kind of financial damage was inflicted by the virus. As the investigation matures TSMC hopes to answer more questions after the weekend.

Some factories are already back to normal but others with more severe problems are expected to take at least until Sunday to reboot.

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