108110006
submission
Daetrin writes:
Sony is unwilling to confirm "Playstation 5" as the name, but their next console is "no mere upgrade" according to a report from Wired:
"PlayStation’s next-generation console ticks all those boxes, starting with an AMD chip at the heart of the device. (Warning: some alphabet soup follows.) The CPU is based on the third generation of AMD’s Ryzen line and contains eight cores of the company’s new 7nm Zen 2 microarchitecture. The GPU, a custom variant of Radeon’s Navi family, will support ray tracing, a technique that models the travel of light to simulate complex interactions in 3D environments. While ray tracing is a staple of Hollywood visual effects and is beginning to worm its way into $10,000 high-end processors, no game console has been able to manage it. Yet."
The console will also have a solid-state drive and is currently planned to be backward-compatible with both PS4 games and PSVR.
91958719
submission
Daetrin writes:
Robert E. Murray, CEO of one of the largest coal mining companies in the US, is suing John Oliver, HBO, and Time Warner for defamation over a comedic report on the status of the coal industry in John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight". The report began with the decline of the coal mining industry, Trump's promises to revive it, and the plight of the workers involved, but was also highly critical of the business practices and safety record of Murray Energy Corporation and Robert Murray's leadership of the company. When the company was contacted about the piece before airing they responded with a cease and desist letter and threatened to sue. John Oliver continued with the segment anyways, saying "I didn’t really plan for so much of this piece to be about you, but you kinda forced my hand on that one."
38340867
submission
Daetrin writes:
Last year T-Mobile tried to merge with AT&T but the deal was blocked by the FCC. Now T-Mobile and MetroPCS have agreed to merge in a $1.5 billion deal. There doesn't seem to be much concern that the FCC will disagree with this deal, perhaps because the two companies combined will have a user base of 42.5 million, which will still be smaller than the #3 player Sprint Nextel's 56.4 million. Because the two companies have similar spectrum holdings T-Mobile claims the merger will allow them to offer better coverage. They also say they will continue to offer a range of both on and off-contract plans.
24030318
submission
Daetrin writes:
[Note to editors: Yes, i'm submitting this a day early, just to make sure you have time to see it.] Today is Talk Like a Pirate Day, and some people like to Sing Like a Pirate as well! You may already be aware of the Talk Like a Pirate music page which has a selection of songs including the official anthem by Tom Smith. More recently the Celtic musician Marc Gunn, under the pseudonym "Captain Black Jack Murphy" has produced an album of pirate music titled "Pogue Mahone Means Kiss My Arse!" and made free copies available. He encourages everyone to support piracy by copying the album and sharing it with their friends. Of course if you like what you hear you should donate at that page or buy some of his other music. This is how many Slashdotters say music ought to be done, so how well will it work in practice? (Beware though, these are (mostly) real sea shanties and drinking songs performed acoustically. If you prefer heavily produced music from the modern labels this is not for you! Also, a couple of the songs are definitely NSFW.)
22703618
submission
Daetrin writes:
Nintendo has announced a large loss for the first quarter of the year and lowered its annual profit forecast. In the three months prior to June 30th Nintendo lost 25.5 billion yen ($328 million) and the forecast is being reduced about 80%, from 110 billion yen ($1.4 billion) to 20 billion yen ($257 million.) Nintendo is blaming poor sales of the 3DS and is responding by announcing a price cut from $250 to $170 on August 12. In order to mollify early adopters of the system Nintendo also announced that anyone who has logged into the Nintendo eShop before the price cut will receive 10 free NES games and 10 free GBA games. The GBA games won't be available until later in the year, but Nintendo claims they will be exclusive to the "3DS Ambassadors" and will not be available for purchase on the store in the future.
20050716
submission
Daetrin writes:
It was announced thursday that Stardock has sold Impulse, the digital game store, to GameStop. And no, it wasn't an early April Fools' joke. Stardock founder Brad Wardell gave an interview to Joystiq talking about the sale and the reasons behind it. GameStop also announced their acquisition of SpawnLabs, a game streaming company. It seems that GameStop is looking to challenge Steam, or at least avoid being cut out of the digital distribution business entirely.
17203858
submission
Daetrin writes:
Last weekend Google received the next statue in the sweets-themed series that commemorates the major updates of the Android OS. In the past this has meant that the release of the next SDK was right around the corner. However this time there's some doubt as to what the version number will actually be. Many sites (including Slashdot) have assumed that "Gingerbread" was synonymous with "3.0", but now there's some evidence that everyone may have jumped the gun and the next version will actually be 2.3.
