December is usually a pretty light month for new book releases, and while 2020 has been anything but traditional, that’s still the case here. However, you’ll find there are plenty of enticing new volumes heading to shelves, including an entire book of stories written during lockdown. Stay home, stay safe, stay reading!
Source: io9 – December’s New Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books Just Might Help You End 2020 on a Good Note
If people can get Doom running on old Nintendo hardware, surely Doom can come to the Nintendo Switch, right? Well, Bethesda is telling gamers to “Prepare for Joy-Con Carnage” as Doom: Eternal will be coming to the Nintendo Switch on December 8th.
Doom: Eternal is the action-packed fifth entry into the Doom series that we looked at when it
Source: Hot Hardware – Bethesda Bringing Doom Eternal To Nintendo Switch On December 8th For Hellishly Good Fun
Enlarge / All Facebook, no matter which way you look. (credit: Michael Short | Bloomberg | Getty Images)
After well over a year spent investigating Facebook, state and federal regulators are more than ready to start launching a slate of cases against Facebook, new reports say—that is, as soon as the agencies can agree on how they actually want to do it.
New suits against Facebook should come before the end of January, The Wall Street Journal writes. Both the Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of attorneys general for 47 states and territories are expected to take some kind of action.
The state and the federal probes are basically looking into two overall buckets of potentially anticompetitive behavior. The first has to do with Facebook’s effects on other businesses that could or do compete with it. That’s the investigation that delves into mergers and acquisitions, both large and small, as well as Facebook’s behavior toward companies that refuse a buyout.
Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Cases against Facebook are reportedly coming… when FTC decides how
The PS5 and Xbox Series X/S are in high demand but short supply. That’s not completely surprising given the challenges of launching next-gen consoles in the middle of a pandemic. But trying to get a hold of one continues to be a bigger headache than it otherwise might be due to scalpers, scammers, and the confusing…
Source: Kotaku – Trying To Buy A Next-Gen Console Is Still A Nightmare
It’s one of the best times of the year if you’ve been thinking about upgrading your PC. Odds are good that you can score great deals on components from Black Friday through Cyber Monday (even if you’ll never get that flagship Nvidia or AMD graphics card in your holiday stocking). Whether this is your first time…
Source: LifeHacker – How to Upgrade Your PC With Your New Black Friday Buys
Long-time research analyst Wes Miller, who previously worked at Microsoft, believes that Windows-powered PCs are now stuck in the same rut that American cars grappled with in 1973 to 1983. He writes: I’ve said before that Windows has never escaped x86. I’m still not sure if it ever can. So the challenges then come down to three things:
1. Can Intel succeed where they’ve failed for the last 5+ years, at building hybrid processors? The next year to two years should answer this question.
2. Can Microsoft succeed at finally getting application developers to write platform-optimized, energy-respectful, halo applications for the PC? I’ve been writing about the Windows Store for a long, long time. A long time. And I’m still not sure how Microsoft can light a fire under Windows application developers when they’ve lost that mindshare.
3. Can Microsoft begin pushing the Surface platform forward again? This one’s completely up to Microsoft. I’ve seen the rumors of the next Surface Pro… and it’s more of the same — evolutionary, not revolutionary.
I guess we will see in the next 3-5 years whether Intel can cross this chasm; if they can’t, then the future likely belongs to ARM, and that future will likely mean less and less to Microsoft, outside of running classic Win32 applications on x64/x86 Windows.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – ‘Welcome To the PC Malaise Era’
It’s Monday and time for Ask Kotaku, the weekly feature in which Kotaku-ites deliberate on a single burning question. Then, we ask your take.
Source: Kotaku – What Do You Do With Your Retired Consoles And PCs?
I’ve been successful at avoiding all things Black Friday/Cyber Monday this year, save for a small splurge on a cold-brew coffee maker. If you’re looking to upgrade your life in a bigger way—in the form of a new phone—you should know that you can get Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S20 Androids (the S20 and S20+) at their…
Source: LifeHacker – How to Score Great Deals on Samsung Androids and Refurb iPhones Today
Alphabet-owned DeepMind may be best known for building the AI that beat a world-class Go player, but the company announced another, perhaps more vital breakthrough this morning. As part of its work for the 14th Critical Assessment of Protein Structur…
Source: Engadget – DeepMind’s latest AI breakthrough can accurately predict the way proteins fold
If you’re big into Fortnite and also just so happen to fancy the Nintendo Switch, there’s a new console bundle available today that might interest you. Nintendo has launched a Fortnite-themed Switch console that is currently available from the usual suspects like Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and GameStop.
Unlike the Switch + Mario Kart 8
Source: Hot Hardware – Fortnite-Themed Nintendo Switch Bundle Makes Cyber Monday Debut With Digital Freebies
A Growl notification. (credit: Aurich Lawson)
Growl, once a key part of the Mac desktop experience, is being retired after 17 years. Christopher Forsythe, who acted as the lead developer for the project for years, announced the retirement in a blog post on Friday.
Launched in 2004, Growl provided notifications for applications on Macs (it was also offered for Windows) before Apple introduced its own Notification Center. Notification Center was added to macOS (then styled Mac OS X) in the Mountain Lion update in 2012, but it first debuted on iOS a year earlier.
Here’s a snippet of Forsythe’s announcement:
Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Growl, once a staple of the Mac desktop experience, has been retired
When the Arizona Cardinals and San Francisco 49ers face off on December 26th as part of the NFL’s tripleheader that Saturday, one of the few ways you’ll have to stream the game to your TV is through Amazon Prime Video and Twitch. While Amazon is no s…
Source: Engadget – The Cardinals-49ers NFL game will only be available to stream
While a neat concept, getting invaded by other players in the Demon’s Souls remake can be super frustrating. Sometimes it feels impossible to land a single hit due to the typical online latency. But a notable Souls player recently managed to banish an invader from his world with the worst and most unwieldy attack in…
Source: Kotaku – Demon’s Souls Invader Destroyed By Game’s Worst Attack
When it comes to kids and teenagers, it’s all about TikTok. Competitors can try to clone it, the president can try to shut it down, but the made-in-China video sharing service just keeps on rolling, with around 850 million people estimated as active users. Even if you don’t like it, TikTok is the marketplace of ideas…
Source: LifeHacker – The Out-of-Touch Adults’ Guide To Kid Culture: Viral TikTok Overload
The weekly release candidates of Mesa 20.3 fell off the wagon last week due to the US Thanksgiving holiday but now is updated today for Mesa 20.3-RC3…
Source: Phoronix – Mesa 20.3 Is Near With Lavapipe Vulkan, Raspberry Pi V3DV, Better AMD RDNA2 Support
We know that time and money spent on video games is surging due to the pandemic. Now, industry-tracking firm The NPD Group is providing detail on where that growth is coming from. From a report: And it turns out that people across all age demographics are playing more games more often. That’s big for mobile games, but it also includes Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox. In its “2020 Evolution of Entertainment” report, NPD found that 4-out-of-5 consumers in the U.S. played a game in the last six months. More important for the industry, those consumers are spending 26% more time and 33% more money on games than the same period in the previous year. But this isn’t just coming from young people. Older demographics are turning to games more often as they find themselves with money they can no longer spend on dining out or attending live events. Spending on video games for Americans 45 years old-to-54 years old increased 76%. People age 55-to-64 increased their spending 29%.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Americans of All Ages Are Spending More on Video Games
How to Install PHP 8 on Debian.
Source: LXer – How to Install PHP 8 on Debian
ASRock and Razer have today announced a product collaboration. Two of ASRock’s premium models for AM4 are being updated with Razer styling and Razer Chroma connectivity: the X570 and B550 Taichi Razer Edition. Built upon the popular Taichi series, both of the new Razer Edition variants include a 16-phase power delivery, with official support and compatibility with Razer’s Chroma RGB ecosystem.
Whenever Razer does a collaboration with any company in the hardware industry, it gets people excited and talking. One of the most prominent brands globally with its green inspired peripheral range, as well as its various wacky ideas such as an RGB gaming toaster; I can’t ever be as excited for a toaster as much as the Chroma Edition.
The ASRock X570 Taichi Razer Edition Motherboard
Back to the actual hardware, and it has teamed up with ASRock, a company seemingly fearless when trying new and off-the-wall ideas. This has realised the two new models, the B550 and X570 Taichi Razer Edition. The Taichi series is one of ASRock’s most popular ranges, especially in the premium motherboard space, and the new Razer Editions will build upon this with both the AMD AM4 500 series chipsets being treated to some Chroma.
Both the ASRock X570 and B550 Taichi Razer Edition models will feature much of the same feature set including a large 16-phase VRM, built with premium 60 A chokes and Nichicon 12K black capacitors. In regards to the actual specifications, both of these new models correspond nearly identically with its non Chroma counterparts. The X570 Taichi Razer edition includes three PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, eight SATA ports from the chipset, a 2.5 GbE port as well as a Killer AX1650 Wi-Fi 6 module. For the B550, it is slightly lower down the pecking order due to the PCIe 4.0 support coming only from the CPU. It includes one PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, with an additional PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot with eight SATA ports, four from the chipset and four from an ASMedia SATA controller.
The biggest impact and only differences between the standard X570 and B550 Taichi’s compared to the Razer Edition models comes visually, with Razer’s flair located around the board itself. The addition of addressable RGB headers taps into one of the biggest RGB Ecosystems around, the Razer Chroma RGB. On both models, the Razer logo can be found on the rear panel cover and the chipset heatsinks, for a bit of added flair and vibrance that RGB offers. These aren’t OLED screens, just Razer branded vanity plates.
It should be noted that Razer is famous (infamous?) for doing things like green USB ports to unify the branding. That hasn’t happened here however, indicating that this is more of a collaborative branding exercise rather co-design effort.
As it stands, the ASRock X570 and B550 Taichi Razer Editions aren’t on the open market and neither company has opted to announce a release date or pricing. Given that both models include official pages (X570 and B550) on the ASRock website means that this launch for its target markets (TBA) should be imminent.
Source: AnandTech – ASRock x Razer: New Razer Taichi Edition X570 and B550 AMD Motherboards
This week we’re joined by Danielle Belton, editor in chief of The Root, and Maiysha Kai, the managing editor of The Glow Up, to talk all things books. More specifically, how to read more of them in the coming year, and how to upgrade your reading list to get you ready. Listen to hear these two voracious readers talk…
Source: LifeHacker – How to Read More Books in 2021, With The Root’s Danielle Belton and Maiysha Kai
