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AfterDawn: News

NBC Sports app comes to PS4

Written by James Delahunty @ 15 Jun 2018 6:54

NBC Sports app comes to PS4 The NBC Sports app, which streams thousands of hours of premium NBC Sports content annually, is available to download for PS4 consoles now.

The app annually streams thousands of hours of premium content that is presented across NBC, NBCSN, Golf Channel, and Olympic Channel. At the moment it is also streaming the football matches from the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Russia.

Already in 2018, the NBC Sports app has streamed the NHL Winter Classic, NHL All-Star Game, Super Bowl LII, PyeongChang Winter Olympics, Premier League, Stanley Cup Playoffs and Stanley Cup Final, PLAYERS Championship, French Open, and Triple Crown, among others.

Besides the PS4, you can get the NBC Sports app for Xbox One, Windows 10, Fire TV, Fire Stick, Fire Smart TV, Fire tablets, Android tablets, Android phones, iPhone, iPad Apple TV. It is also compatible with Chromecast, Roku and some Samsung Smart TVs.




AfterDawn: News

AT&T's $85 billion Time Warner deal closes

Written by James Delahunty @ 15 Jun 2018 6:32

AT&T's $85 billion Time Warner deal closes AT&T has closed its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner following a favorable court ruling.

The Trump Administration was opposed to the No. 2 Carrier in the United States acquiring Time Warner. In November 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit aimed at halting the proposed acquisition arguing that it would be harmful for consumers.

In the lawsuit, the DOJ argued that AT&T owning both DirecTV and Time Warner would provide it an unfair advantage over rival pay TV providers. U.S. District Judge Richard disagreed with the DOJ and ruled that the proposed takeover does not violate antitrust laws in the United States.

Despite the deal being closed, the DOJ still has sixty days to appeal if it should choose to do so.

Judge Leon's decision was predicted to prompt a wave of takeovers between tech and media companies in the United States. Within days, Comcast had offered to purchase 21st Century Fox' media assets in a $65 billion all-cash deal. Comcast sent a letter directly to the Fox board, attempting to sway it away from a deal with the Walt Disney Company.

Source: Reuters News Agency




AfterDawn: News

Comcast makes $65 billion offer for Fox' media assets

Written by James Delahunty @ 14 Jun 2018 8:30

Comcast makes $65 billion offer for Fox' media assets Comcast is trying to sway Twenty-First Century Fox away from an agreed deal with Disney last year by making a 'superior offer'.

Fox agreed to sell almost all of its media assets to the Walt Disney Co in December for $52 billion in stock. Now, Comcast has sent a letter to the 21st Century Fox' Board of Directors offering $65 billion in cash for the same assets. Fox's movie and television studios, its share of Hulu, FX and more are included.

Comcast Chief Executive Brian Roberts said that he is confident the deal will be approved by regulators. While not mentioning this week's court decision that paved the way for AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner, that is generally considered to be the source of Roberts' confidence, and a defining moment for media.

If the Fox Board decide that they would prefer to go with Comcast's offer then Disney will have up to five working days to respond, potentially kicking off a bidding war.

You can read the letter sent to the Twenty-First Century Fox Board at www.cmcsa.com




AfterDawn: News

Cortana used to bypass Windows 10 security

Written by James Delahunty @ 14 Jun 2018 8:14

Cortana used to bypass Windows 10 security Microsoft has pushed out a fix for a flaw with the Cortana assistant that could be exploited to unlock a Windows 10 computer.

McAfee reported the flaw to Microsoft back in April, and Microsoft has included an update to address the issue in this month's Patch Tuesday load of fixes and tweaks. Windows 10 devices on default settings will apply the update over the next day or so.

The flaw took advantage of the fact that Cortana listens for commands even when a Windows 10 PC is locked, coupled with the regular indexing of files on attached storage to make searching faster.

"This will come as a surprise and lies at the core of all the issues we found, but simply typing while Cortana starts to listen to a query on a locked device will bring up a Windows contextual menu," Cedric Cochin and Steve Povolny wrote on a McAfee blog post detailing a potential attack.

With a contextual menu displayed and search results coming from indexed files and applications (and in cases the contents of the file are indexed), a malicious actor could see sensitive contents of text files and other documents that has been indexed.

The McAfee team went further though and even detail a path to a password reset and login in a blog post here.




AfterDawn: News

Microsoft to challenge Amazon in checkout-free retail stores

Written by James Delahunty @ 14 Jun 2018 5:19

Microsoft to challenge Amazon in checkout-free retail stores According to a report, Microsoft is working on technology to compete with Amazon Go in delivering checkout-free shopping markets.

The Amazon Go store allows customers to enter when they scan their smartphone. A combination of cameras and sensors identify what items they remove from the shelves. When the customers finish their shopping and leave the premises, Amazon bills their on-file credit cards immediately for the purchases.

Microsoft is also working on similar technology to challenge Amazon in the new arena, according to a report by the Reuters News Agency. It cites six people familiar with Microsoft's developments in reporting that the Redmond giant has shown sample technology to retailers around the world, including Walmart.

The technology tracks what shoppers add to their carts on the fly, eliminating the need for a checkout line. According to the sources, a group of between ten and fifteen people have presented some of their efforts to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in person.

Using technology to eliminate or reduce the need for checkout lines in stores is seen as a major shift in retail shopping, and Amazon is currently at the head of the queue. It is inevitable that more competitors will come in to offer different solutions to retailers.




AfterDawn: News

Microsoft to release next-gen Xbox in 2020?

Written by James Delahunty @ 13 Jun 2018 7:32

Microsoft to release next-gen Xbox in 2020? According to a report, Microsoft is aiming to release its next generation Xbox hardware in 2020.

At Microsoft's E3 press conference this past weekend, the Redmond-based firm confirmed that it is already developing new "Xbox" hardware. Whether this meant another console in the Xbox One family, or something next generation, was not revealed of course. Given that Microsoft just released the Xbox One X last year, rumors swirled that the new Xbox hardware is actually next generation Xbox hardware.

According to sources cited by Thurrott, that's exactly what the new hardware is. It reports that Microsoft is developing its next generation Xbox hardware, codenamed Scarlett, and that it will be released in 2020. Moreover, the sources describe Scarltt as a "family of devices."

As you would expect, no technical details or any other clues were shared. Microsoft launched its previous Xbox generations in the month of November, suggesting that November 2020 is the likely target date. This would mark eight years between the launch of the Xbox One (November 2013) and the next generation hardware. Xbox One also launched eight years after the November 2005 debut of the Xbox 360.

Source: Thurrott

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AfterDawn: News

Tesla cutting 9 percent of workforce

Written by James Delahunty @ 13 Jun 2018 5:07

Tesla cutting 9 percent of workforce Tesla is cutting approximately 9 percent of its workforce as the firm pursues profitability, Model 3 production boost.

The cuts were announced by Tesla CEO Elon Musk in an e-mail sent out to employees this week. Musk said that the cuts were part of a simplification of Tesla's management structure.

"As part of this effort, and the need to reduce costs and become profitable, we have made the difficult decision to let go of approximately 9 percent of our colleagues across the company," the email reads.

"These cuts were almost entirely made from our salaried population and no production associates were included, so this will not affect our ability to reach Model 3 production targets in the coming months."

The hotly-anticipated Model 3 been marred with production problems so far and Tesla is aiming to hit a goal of 5,000 models produced weekly by the end of this month. For the time being, Tesla is burning through cash as it works on its assembly line, new projects like the Model Y and the construction of its ambition Gigafactory.

Regardless, Musk disagrees with analysts' predictions that Tesla will seek to raise capital later this year as he eyes profitability and positive cash flow in Q3 and Q4.

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AfterDawn: News

La Liga accused of spying through Android phones

Written by James Delahunty @ 13 Jun 2018 4:53

La Liga accused of spying through Android phones The top tier professional football league in Spain has been accused of spying on fans by accessing GPS data and the microphone on Android devices.

Furious Spanish football fans are venting their frustration at the league after it emerged that its official Android app accesses GPS data and listens through the microphone before sending data back. The controversial feature was apparently enabled on June 8. According to the Spanish league, the feature exists to fight illegal broadcasting.

Rather than sending microphone data back to the league, the app sends back a code that can be matched to audio data of a broadcasted football match. Combined with the GPS feature, this would allow the identification of venues that were broadcasting matches without a license.

According to La Liga, unauthorized broadcasting at venues costs the league around €150 million per year.

Additionally, the La Liga website states that the app had asked for consent for the data access when the La Liga app was installed or updated.

Still, Spanish football fans have hammered the La Liga app with negative reviews and accused it of spying on fans.

Read: La Liga statement




AfterDawn: News

U.S. unveils fastest supercomputer

Written by James Delahunty @ 12 Jun 2018 7:10

U.S. unveils fastest supercomputer The United States is back on top of the supercomputer list with its new Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

Summit has displaced Sunway TaihuLight from the top of the pile. The Chinese supercomputer can achieve a max performance of 93 petaflops, whereas the newly unveiled Summit can reach a theoretical max performance of 200 petaflops. That's around two hundred quadrillion floating point operations per second.

Summit was developed in partnership with IBM and NVidia. It can consume a whopping 13 megawatts of power and packs more than 10 petabytes of memory. Doing the actual number crunching is the job of 9,216 IBM POWER9 CPUs and 27,648 NVIDIA Volta GPUs. Its file system can store up to 250 petabytes of data, or around 74 years of HD video. It runs Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 7.4.

It occupies 5,600ft of floor space, which could fill two tennis courts. In that space is also packed over 185 miles of fiber optic cables. To cool this colossal machine down, more than 4,000 gallons of water is pumped through the cooling system per minute, removing around 13 megawatts of heat.

Summit will be used for research in many areas including astrophysics, cancer treatments and even quantum mechanics. U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry introduced Summit at ORNL on June 8, which you can watch online.

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AfterDawn: News

Resident Evil 2 remake coming 2019

Written by James Delahunty @ 12 Jun 2018 4:14

Resident Evil 2 remake coming 2019 Capcom revealed a trailer for a remake of the classic Resident Evil 2 at Sony's E3 Press Conference.

Give a warm welcome back to Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield while reliving one of the best Sci Fi / Horror games to grace the original PlayStation two decades ago. RE2 follows police rookie Leon Kennedy and college student Claire Redfield through Racoon City, which has been completely devastated by a Zombie outbreak.

The classic survival horror saga has been remade with modern visuals, immersive audio and a new over-the-shoulder camera view.

Just like with the original dual-disc RE2, Leon and Claire have their own separate playable campaigns in the remake. The fate of these two fan favorite characters is in players hands as they work together to survive and get to the bottom of what is behind the terrifying attack on the city.

Resident Evil 2 hits the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro on January 25, 2019.

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AfterDawn: News

WATCH: Halo Infinite teaser trailer from E3

Written by James Delahunty @ 11 Jun 2018 6:53

WATCH: Halo Infinite teaser trailer from E3 At the Xbox press conference at E3 this weekend, Phil Spencer revealed the first announcement / teaser trailer for the forthcoming Halo Infinite.

Halo Infinite - following on from 2015's Halo 5 - is under development at 343 Industries and created with the new Slipspace Engine. The announcement trailer serves more as a demonstration of what the Slipspace Engine can do, as it is light on details on what to really expect from Halo Infinite. The glimpse into the future of the Halo franchise only briefly shows Master Chief, in between a lot of rendered wildlife and terrain.

Spencer described Halo Infinite as Master Chief's greatest adventure yet, but he didn't go into much detail at all and moved on to other exclusives, including more footage of the delayed Crackdown 3.

Microsoft has been focusing on new titles to try to gain ground on Sony, whose PlayStation 4 has sold many millions more units than Microsoft's Xbox One. The Redmond giant recently acquired a bunch of Indie studios to beef up its exclusive content in the future.

Check out the Halo Infinite teaser:

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AfterDawn: News

The Division 2 gets a release date, gameplay footage

Written by James Delahunty @ 11 Jun 2018 4:16

The Division 2 gets a release date, gameplay footage Tom Clancy's The Division 2 was revealed at the Xbox Press Conference at E3 over the weekend.

The new title, developed by Massive Entertainment, Red Storm and Ubisoft Reflections brings us to a Washington D.C. that has become a wasteland in a United States facing total collapse. On the brink of civil war, agents of the Division are fighting enemies from within.

It is set six months after the events of the first game, leaving behind the winter conditions that players had to contend with. Gameplay footage was shown at the Xbox event, including a fire fight right across the street from the U.S. Capitol building.

The Divison 2 is set for release on March 15, 2019.

Check out the new trailer and gameplay footage below.

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AfterDawn: News

E3 2018: Microsoft announces Gears 5, Gears Pop! and Gears Tactics

Written by James Delahunty @ 11 Jun 2018 3:58

E3 2018: Microsoft announces Gears 5, Gears Pop! and Gears Tactics 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.

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AfterDawn: News

AfterDawn's 19th birthday

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 10 Jun 2018 4:35

AfterDawn's 19th birthday 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.

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AfterDawn: News

Microsoft confirms Crackdown 3 delayed until next year

Written by James Delahunty @ 08 Jun 2018 4:04

Microsoft confirms Crackdown 3 delayed until next year 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."

As a reminder, here is the trailer released at E3 last year.

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