MSI does Black Friday early for GPUs: NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti Super is $120 off with a free game
MSI is getting in on the action with discounted NVIDIA RTX 4000 GPUs - as Lovelace prepares to be succeeded by new Blackwell graphics cards - and there's a tasty offer on an RTX 4070 Ti Super.
MSI's RTX 4070 Ti Super Expert model is now on sale direct from the company at $729.99, which represents a chunky discount. This GPU normally retails at $849.99 from the MSI store, so you're getting $120 off.
As you might expect, there's limited stock, but there is still inventory available at the time of writing.
Elon Musk's claim he's a global top 20 player at Diablo IV is true, but there's a catch
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has sat down for an interview on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast, where he discussed, among other topics, how he was a top Diablo IV player.
At the beginning of the podcast, Joe Rogan and Elon Musk discuss the benefits of playing video games, which Musk attributes to the difficulty of the game he playing. Musk says that when he's playing a difficult video game, it takes 100% of his focus, and by performing an activity that forces him to consume 100% of his focus, he is able to alleviate other stresses in his life. Rogan compares the experience to bowhunting and the many moving parts of the bow and how it requires all of his focus to perform the action correctly, and through this intense focus comes a sense of mental clarity.
During this conversation, Musk mentions that he is one of the world's best Diablo IV players and points to the leaderboard rankings, which states his name in position 20 for the fastest precise time of The Pit. For those that don't know, The Pit is end-game level content in Diablo IV that puts players up against some of the toughest hoardes of monsters in the game. The goal is to beat The Pit and reap the rewards in the form of gear upgrades. Completing a Pit run in the fastest time possible is an indication of Diablo IV competency, and Elon Musk's time of 2 minutes and 45 seconds is currently the 20th-best time in the world, according to Helltides.com.
Nintendo Wii gets turned it into a Mini Gaming PC that can play Switch games
The Nintendo Switch is undeniably a juggernaut, one of the most successful consoles ever. However, before the Switch's meteoric rise, Nintendo's most successful home console was 2006's Wii - which introduced the world to motion controls as the primary way to interact with a game.
On YouTube, Gaming enthusiast Tech By Matt has posted a deep dive into his latest creation, turning an original Nintendo Wii console into a gaming PC. One that is powerful enough to (ironically) emulate and play Nintendo Switch games like Super Mario Odyssey at a playable frame rate.
For those with a Nintendo Wii, you might recall that it was a pretty small console - too small to fit an ITX motherboard. So Matt decided instead to use the components from a mini PC - the Minisforum UM773 Lite with a Ryzen 7 7735HS APU. The best part is that the original power button turns on the PC, and the GameCube ports still work when you plug in the original GameCube controllers.
Scientists discover gene that if tweaked can extend life by up to 30%
A new study has outlined how a specific protein within a genetic sequence can, if altered, extend the life of a species by up to 30%.
The new study published in the scientific journal Nature Communications has identified a protein within the cytoskeleton of a cell sourced from a fruit fly. The cytoskeleton is the structure that helps maintain the shape of the cell and is comprised of a network of interlinking protein filaments. The researchers were able to identify a protein called F-actin as the catalyst for extending life and looked at the relationship between F-actin and how it accumulates in the brain as the aging process continues.
The researchers found that as F-actin builds up in the brain, it slows down the cellular-level self-cleaning process, which ultimately leads to a build-up of cellular waste within the brain. The researchers tweaked the genetic sequence of the F-actin within a group of fruit flies and found that because the F-actin wasn't accumulating in the brains of the flies, hindering the cellular clean-up process, the flies' lifespan increased by up to 30%. Additionally, the researchers state the reduction in F-actin in the brain led to the flies displaying increased overall health benefits and signs of other organs improving.
Continue reading: Scientists discover gene that if tweaked can extend life by up to 30% (full post)
NVIDIA surpasses Apple as the single most valuable company in the world
NVIDIA has surpassed Apple for the second time to become the world's single most valuable publicly traded company after the GPU maker's share price rose nearly 3%.
NVIDIA's market cap reached $3.43 trillion, putting it just a smidge above Apple's $3.4 trillion. As for NVIDIA, the company has seen extreme growth that can be attributed to it supplying the demand for hardware to conduct artificial intelligence-based tasks. Additionally, NVIDIA was extremely well-positioned to capitalize on the early opportunity of AI, which has proven very beneficial for it as the company has been able to maintain its extraordinary growth and it's dominating lead in the GPU market.
For context, NVIDIA's share price has skyrocketed an astounding 2,700% over a 5-year period, with the company's share price having almost tripled in just 2024. As for Apple, the company's share price has increased 17% this year, with some industry analysts predicting Apple's share price could increase when Apple Intelligence is fully deployed. Additionally, Apple was the first company to reach a $1 trillion and $2 trillion market cap, and NVIDIA briefly surpassed Apple's market cap back in June.
Creating Hogwarts Legacy 2 is the biggest priority at Warner Bros. right now
Hogwarts Legacy recently surpassed 30 million in sales, making it the best-selling game of 2023 and one of the best-selling games ever. Warner Bros. Discovery, the new publicly traded company formed in 2022, is looking to capitalize on the Harry Potter franchise with new TV shows and other new things. However, Hogwarts Legacy 2 is one of the company's biggest priorities.
"A successor to 'Hogwarts Legacy' is one of the biggest priorities in a couple of years down the road," Warner Bros. Discovery's CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said. "So there is certainly a significant growth contribution from that [games] business in our strategic outlook here."
For a brand as big as Warner Bros., you'd expect a video game to sit lower on the list of things to focus on after movies and television, but that's not the case here. Even after the failure of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League earlier this year, the company's games division is a "strategic asset" - and Hogwarts Legacy 2 will play a role in shaping the future of the Harry Potter brand.
New mod fixes one of the most disliked features in Starfield and other Bethesda RPGs
Bethesda Game Studios is one of the most celebrated RPG game development studios ever, thanks to iconic releases like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 3. Although its games can be rough around the edges, they offer players a level of freedom and customization that is rarely seen.
The studio's most recent game, the sci-fi epic Starfield, is arguably its most ambitious - with a thousand planets to explore, factions to discover, companions to enlist, and spaceships and outposts to build. However, it's also Bethesda's most polarizing release to date, thanks partly to how the studio's aging Creation Engine makes space exploration feel disjointed and cumbersome.
The big problem for many was that Starfield felt like a never-ending sequence of loading screens. In Skyrim and Fallout, entering a city or building brings up a loading screen, too, but in Starfield, there were exponentially more due to the sheer size and scope of the game. Modder PanConKeso is looking to fix that with the new Seamless City Interiors mod, which turns interior locations into exterior locations, removing the need for a loading screen.
Researchers discover some air fryers listen to their owners and send data back to China
Researchers at "Which?," a UK organization that's a subsidiary of the Consumers' Association, discovered that some air fryers may be sharing their owners personal information and sending it back to China for marketing purposes.
The researchers at the organization looked at three air fryer brands and found that all of them requested permission to record audio through the user's phone, but didn't specify the reason why the microphone permission was necessary. More specifically, the air fryers were from brands such as Aigostar and Xiaomi, both of which were found to be sending their buyers personal data back to servers located in China.
Air fryers weren't the only device the team looked at as it also conducted an analysis on smartwatches, smart speakers and smart TVs. Starting with smart speakers, the researchers found that Amazon's Echo device was more consumer-friendly as it has the option to skip various requests to share data. However, Amazon and Google accounts are required to use the Echo Pop or Nest Mini, which contain trackers that users cannot opt out of.
Steam has officially added a record button for gameplay and clips
Steam Game Recording is out of Beta and available for all Steam users as part of the latest client update. It is similar in functionality to something like NVIDIA's ShadowPlay for GeForce GPU owners, AMD's Adrenaline Software, or the Xbox Game Bar.
Steam Game Recording allows you to record and share gameplay clips using NVIDIA or AMD GPU hardware encoding with Background Recording and On-Demand Recording modes. However, there's a lot more to it than that. Valve has developed some innovative features for its take on recording gameplay as it's built into Steam.
The first is the ability to bring the Steam Overlay and the new Steam Timeline to 'jump back in time' and review your recent Background Recording as if it were a sports broadcast replay. The second feature is the ability to quickly clip footage that you want to keep with a simple, lightweight interface.
Continue reading: Steam has officially added a record button for gameplay and clips (full post)
China unveils new rocket concept that's a blatant copy of SpaceX's Starship
China space officials recently unveiled a new rocket design that is strangely close to SpaceX's design for the recently successful Starship rocket.
The similarities between the two rockets were pointed out in a recent article by Ars Technica, which states the design for its Long March 9 rocket, an ultra-heavy launch vehicle that is designed to transport the first Chinese astronauts to the surface of the Moon sometime in the 2030s. However, the new design appears to be heavily inspired or directly ripped off from SpaceX's Starship launch vehicle, as the new Long March 9 rocket has the same two-stage, fully reusable configuration as SpaceX's rocket, the same aerodynamic flaps to assist in landing, and more.
Notably, and as Ars Technica points out, this isn't the first time Chinese officials have copied designs from SpaceX, as it was only last week a Chinese space launch company called Cosmoleap published a promotional video that copied SpaceX's Mechazilla tower and its two chopstick arms. Additionally, a separate Chinese space startup called Space Pioneer announced its plans to develop a new rocket with a design suspiciously similar to SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket.