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Technology

Forza Horizon 5 Dev Says The Game Looks Great On Every Platform, Discusses Impact Of COVID

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Forza Horizon 5 will look and perform best on the latest Xbox console or a high-end PC, but no matter what platform you’re playing on, you should have a good experience. That’s according to Playground Games creative director Mike Brown, who recently spoke about the differences between the various editions of Forza Horizon 5. Brown also touched on how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the development of the racing game.

“There are so many slight differences between the platforms, I think I would struggle to give you a fully accurate answer. The main improvements are through the power we have available thanks to the Xbox Series X and S … is just the phenomenal detail we’re able to pack into every scene,” he said during a recent event attended by GameSpot. “The quality of the assets is improved. The quality of the lighting is improved. The quality of the shadows is improved.”

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Now Playing: Forza Horizon 5 Gameplay | Xbox Gamescom Showcase 2021

In the Forzavista mode specifically, which allows players to examine their cars up close, Forza Horizon 5 supports ray-tracing for a further visual jump. “Everything is rendered with unparalleled realism,” Brown said.

The main difference between the Series X and Series S editions of Forza Horizon 5 will be its capability to output in 4K on the higher-end model and 1080p for the Series S.

“Other than that, it should be more or less the same. The visual fidelity should be the same. You’ll still get ray-tracing in Forzavista. Everything else should look as detailed and as glossy as it does on the Series X,” Brown said.

Moving further down the spectrum of Xbox consoles, Brown said he didn’t have information readily available regarding the specific graphics and performance statistics for older Xbox hardware. But overall, Brown said he feels confident that players will enjoy the game and its visuals no matter what platform they’re on.

“I will just say, whichever platform you’re playing on–whether it’s a base Xbox One, the Xbox One X, or a high-spec PC–you will have a really great experience in the game. It looks great on every platform,” he said.

Also during the interview, Brown discussed the impact of COVID-19 on Forza Horizon 5’s development. Thanks in part to the game’s three-year development cycle (as opposed to the normal two-year schedule), the team was able to send researchers to Mexico to capture and compile a database of assets to use as models for the game prior to the pandemic. But when the pandemic hit, the UK-based Playground Games shifted to work-from-home and Brown said the team was able to quickly and successfully pivot to this new environment.

“Obviously COVID-19 affected everybody. It affected everyone and everyone’s lives, and I don’t want to sit here and pretend that video games was the hardest thing to do during a pandemic,” Brown said. “We’re a team of problem solvers and we reacted really quickly. The team did a good job of getting everyone set up to work from home pretty much as soon as the pandemic hit. And anytime we ran into any production problems, we just instantly worked to try and solve them. The team did a really great job. It wasn’t something we planned for at the start. Equally, I don’t think it was something that massively derailed us or anything. COVID affected everyone’s lives in a ton of ways. I don’t think us transitioning to work from home was the worst of them.”

Forza Horizon 5 launches on November 9 for Xbox and PC, and it’s included with Xbox Game Pass. About a month after that, Microsoft will launch another big exclusive, Halo Infinite, on December 8, according to a recent leak.

For more on Forza Horizon 5, check out this piece, How Forza Horizon 5’s Extra Year Of Development Helped Make It A Better, More Accessible Game. Microsoft also recently announced a special-edition Forza Horizon 5 Xbox controller.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

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Technology

‘A Day Off Twitch’ Blackout Has Streamers Boycotting Platform

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Screenshot: Twitch / Pixabay / Kotaku

Next week, streamers plan to step away from Twitch for a day in an effort to combat how the platform continually lets it marginalized creators down.

Earlier this month, streamers rallied around the #TwitchDoBetter hashtag on social media, where reports of awful user experiences on the platform proliferated. Many of the posts revolved around how Twitch has offered tepid protections against sustained harassment. In particular, hate raids—in which bad-faith viewers use the platform’s “raid” feature to flood a channel en masse with slurs and vile language—are not only possible, but becoming a daily nightmare for folks using the livestreaming service. And since it’s nearly effortless to create an account on Twitch, trolls are able to sign up for a bunch of accounts. It’s absurdly easy to circumvent any bans, at least until measures like account verification via phone numbers are implemented.

As The Washington Post reported, Twitch streamers say the issue has only exacerbated in the past few months, possibly the result of the platform expanding its tag list to include 350 tags classified by “gender, sexual orientation, race, nationality, ability, mental health, and more.” On one hand, this allows creators to more easily find a community. On the other, it’s made it far easier for racist trolls to find—and harass—creators.

Plus, Twitch takes a solid percentage of subscription revenue, with half going to streamers and half going to the platform (which was purchased for nearly $1 billion by Amazon in 2014). Streamers told Kotaku the split should tip more toward content creators, somewhere closer to a 70/30 breakdown. If streamers have to continuously put up with bullshit, you’d figure they’d at least get a fair chunk of the pie, yeah?

Read More: Streamers Are Rallying Behind ‘Twitch Do Better’

“It’s so heartbreaking to see all the stories of marginalized people on the platform being attacked for something outside of their control like their skin color, gender identity, sexual preference, or otherwise,” the streamer Rek It, Raven!, who originated the hashtag, told Kotaku via email at the time of the #TwitchDoBetter campaign. “We shouldn’t have to feel fear to press ‘go live.’”

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The #ADayOffTwitch campaign—organized by Raven alongside streamers LuciaEverblack and ShineyPen—is scheduled for September 1. Essentially, it’ll be a 24-hour-long total blackout: no streaming, no watching streams, no logging on to chat. Viewers are encouraged to participate, as well.

Following the #TwitchDoBetter campaign, Twitch quickly rolled out improved chat filters, per The Verge. And last week, the company announced it would implement detection for channel-level ban evasion, but did not offer a timeline for that feature’s rollout. The hope is that a day with reduced engagement on a wide scale will force the company to take note—and, ideally, to take further action.

 



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Business

Crypto platform Poly Network rewards hacker with $500,000 ‘bug bounty’

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HONG KONG, Aug 13 (Reuters) – Poly Network, the cryptocurrency platform which lost $610 million in a hack earlier this week, confirmed on Friday it had offered the hacker or hackers a $500,000 “bug bounty”.

In a statement it thanked the hacker – who it dubbed a “white hat”, sector jargon for an ethical hacker who generally aims to expose cyber vulnerabilities – who had returned the bulk of the funds for “helping us improve Poly Network’s security”.

The network also said it hoped “Mr. White Hat” would contribute to the blockchain sector’s continued development upon accepting the $500,000 reward, which it had offered as part of negotiations around the return of the digital coins.

The statement did not specify the form in which it would pay the $500,000. It said the hacker had responded to the offer but did not say if it was accepted.

On Thursday digital messages shared on Twitter by Tom Robinson, chief scientist and co-founder of crypto tracking firm Elliptic, showed a person claiming to have perpetrated the hack had said Poly Network offered him the bounty to return the stolen assets.

A lesser-known name in the world of crypto, Poly Network is a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that facilitates peer-to-peer transactions with a focus on allowing users to transfer or swap tokens across different blockchains.

A man takes part in a hacking contest during the Def Con hacker convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. on July 29, 2017. REUTERS/Steve Marcus/File Photo

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The as-yet unidentified hacker or hackers appear to have exploited a vulnerability in the digital contracts Poly Network uses to move assets between different blockchains, according to blockchain forensics company Chainalysis.

According to Friday’s statement, the hacker has returned $340 million worth of assets and transferred the bulk of the rest to a digital wallet jointly controlled by them and Poly Network.

The remainder, held in tether, was frozen by the cryptocurrency firm behind the stablecoin.

“After communicating with Mr. White Hat, we have also come to a more complete understanding regarding how the situation unfolded as well as Mr. White Hat’s original intention,” the statement said, without giving further details.

Poly Network announced the hack on Tuesday, but the following day said the hackers had begun returning the digital coins they had taken.

The hackers said in digital messages shared by Elliptic that they had perpetrated the attack for fun and that it was always the plan to return the tokens.

Some blockchain analysts have speculated however they might have found it too difficult to launder stolen cryptocurrency on such a scale.

Reporting by Alun John in Hong Kong and Tom Westbrook in Singapore
Editing by David Holmes

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Entertainment

Lady Gaga turns heads in form-fitting black dress and matching platform heels in New York City

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Lady Gaga created quite the scene when she was recently spotted out and about in New York City.

On Monday, the “A Star Is Born” actress, 35, who is the daughter of area restauranteur and owner of Joanne Trattoria Joe Germanotta, rocked a hugging thin-strap black dress that fell to her ankles as she exited a studio in the Big Apple.

More impressively, were the very tall platform heels that Gaga – real name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta – appeared to have no trouble waltzing in as she eased her way on down the road.

The 12-time Grammy-winner paired the fit with a black lockbox-style purse and tinted black shades.

LADY GAGA STRIKES A POSE IN PLUNGING CAMISOLE FOR LATEST INSTAGRAM POST

It’s been previously reported that Gaga stays in shape via a variety of ways including clean eating, Pilates, yoga, Gyrotonics among others. Of working with Gaga, her trainer Harley Pasternak, told Elite Daily in 2019: “It wasn’t about losing weight, but I think a lot about being a performer is being confident about your body.”

Lady Gaga stuns in a black dress and high platform heels as she comes out from the studio in New York.
(Backgrid)

LADY GAGA HAS BEEN ‘COMMUNICATING’ WITH DOG WALKER AS SHE REMAINS IN ITALY FOLLOWING SHOOTING, HER DAD SAYS

Just last week, the “Shallow” performer and Tony Bennett, 94, announced their plans to sing together “one last time” in New York City after the legend revealed in a February interview with AARP magazine that he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease back in 2016.

Dubbed “One Last Time: an Evening With Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga,” the first show on Aug. 3 at Radio City Music Hall will also be a celebration of Bennett’s 95th birthday. The second stanza will take place on Aug. 5.

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Gaga and Bennett made their first album together, “Cheek to Cheek,” in 2014 and recently completed their second album. 

Well into his 90s, Bennett continued to perform up until the coronavirus pandemic, with his last performance coming on March 11, 2020.

Fox News’ Jessica Napoli contributed to this report.

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Technology

Lone Echo II Is The Last Oculus Rift Platform Exclusive

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The release of Lone Echo II for the Oculus Rift platform on August 24th will mark the end of an era as the last exclusive project funded by Facebook for its PC VR platform.

We’ve known it was coming for quite a long time with Facebook ending sales of Rift S, the cancelling of future PC VR-only headsets, the transfer of the Medium sculpting app development team to Adobe, the lack of updates or newly announced titles for Rift S, and the continuing focus on standalone VR with Quest 2.

Facebook officially confirmed to UploadVR this week “we don’t currently plan to make additional Rift exclusive titles.”

The company still supports PC VR via the wired Oculus Link and wireless Air Link with nearly 1/3 of SteamVR users connecting to Valve’s Steam store from Quest 2 to play games on that platform. Another 18 percent and 5 percent of SteamVR users connect with Rift S and Rift, respectively.

You can take a tour down memory lane with David Heaney’s 2019 list memorializing most of the Rift exclusive titles Facebook funded for the platform. 2019’s graphical powerhouse Asgard’s Wrath from Sanzaru Games was the studio’s last title before Facebook acquired it in 2020 while Sony bought Insomniac Games, the makers of 2019 Rift-exclusive shooter Stormland. Respawn Entertainment was acquired by Electronic Arts in 2017 and, at the end of 2020, dropped its Facebook-funded title Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond onto Steam alongside the Oculus store for Rift.

Facebook so far has acquired five VR game development studios starting with Beat Games (the developers behind Beat Saber) in 2019 and, most recently, POPULATION: ONE battle royale devs BigBox VR in June this year. The company also bought Onward developer Downpour Interactive and Ready At Dawn, the studio behind Lone Echo II as well as one of VR’s best team-based sports Echo VR.

Resident Evil 4 is coming exclusively to Quest 2 later this year and Facebook is also funding Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed VR games from Ubisoft.

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US

Team Trump quietly launches new social media platform

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Trump’s involvement with the project is unclear as is whether or not he will set up an account on GETTR and use it, though his proximity to Miller suggests that this may be the latest attempt to get him back in the churn of social media

The former president has been looking for alternative ways to engage with his base online after having been booted off Twitter and suspended from Facebook. And his prior effort to engage online—through the launch of a professional blog—ended quickly amid widespread ridicule and poor readership. This new venture may also raise questions about privacy, including whether it harvests information about its users’ Twitter followers.

GETTR is one of the highest-profile projects in a larger ecosystem of pro-MAGA tech and social media platforms that have blossomed on the right, largely fueled by a sense that Big Tech is attempting to silence conservative and pro-Trump ideology from being disseminated online. In recent months, it was widely reported that the Trump team was searching for a platform on which to re-establish his online presence, either by buying a company outright and rebranding it as his exclusive platform, or becoming a featured draw.

The app first went live on the Google and Apple app stores in mid-June and was most recently updated Wednesday. It’s been downloaded over one thousand times on each, drawing positive reviews from users.

A description for GETTR on the app stores calls it a “non-bias social network for people all over the world.” The app is rated “M” for mature, meaning it is recommended for users 17 and older.

GETTR’s user interface appears similar to that of Twitter. Initial promotional materials for GETTR on the app stores displayed posts of users celebrating the House of Representatives no longer requiring masks on the floor of the chamber.

Initial trending topics on the app included the hashtags “#trump,” “#virusorigin,” “#nra” and “#unrestrictedbioweapon.” Those tags refer to the newfound and still unproven refrain from Republicans that China created the Covid-19 virus in a lab as a bioweapon.

But the similarities with Twitter don’t end there. GETTR’s app also claims to offer new users the ability to “import copies of your content from Twitter to GETTR.” And evidence on the site indicates that the new platform is also allowing users to import their Twitter followers.

For example, Republican Senate candidate Sean Parnell in Pennsylvania, had over 175,000 followers on GETTR as of Thursday afternoon, despite only joining the platform Thursday. His follower count is identical on Twitter.

The same is true for Tim Murtaugh, Trump’s former 2020 communications director, who had amassed over 220,000 followers on both GETTR and Twitter as of Thursday afternoon.

Twitter spokespeople declined to comment on whether GETTR violated any of its policies by allowing users to scrape data off its site. A representative for GETTR did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Whether GETTR will succeed is dubious at best. Their last attempt to replicate his twitter feed, a site called “From The Desk of Donald Trump”, was widely derided as nothing more than a blog, barely received any web traffic, and shut down less than a month later.

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Technology

Microsoft Stock Hits Record High As Software Giant Readies ‘Next Killer Platform’

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Fresh from announcing its Windows 11 operating system, Microsoft (MSFT) has another major product up its sleeve. The software giant soon will roll out its Windows Cloud PC desktop-as-a-service, a Wall Street analyst says. Microsoft stock hit a record high on Tuesday.




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Windows Cloud PC could be Microsoft’s “next killer platform,” Jefferies analyst Brent Thill said in a note to clients Sunday. The desktop-as-a-service offering could be announced at a Microsoft partner conference in July, he said.

Microsoft first disclosed its Cloud PC project in July 2020. The product is built on top of Windows Virtual Desktop. Cloud PC would offer both operating system and productivity applications on a subscription basis, according to media reports.

Windows Cloud PC should resonate initially with small and midsize businesses, Thill said.

Microsoft Stock Hits All-Time High

Thill reiterated his buy rating on Microsoft stock and raised his price target to 310 from 290.

On the stock market today, Microsoft stock rose 1% to 271.40. Earlier in the session, Microsoft stock notched an all-time high of 271.65.

“Microsoft is moving into fiscal 2022 looking for the next leg of growth from new product initiatives including a more integrated Teams and Windows 11, which brings a more modern user interface, enhanced security and new Windows Store policies to incentivize developers,” Thill said.

Microsoft unveiled its Windows 11 personal computer operating system on June 24. It will be available this holiday season as an upgrade for eligible Windows 10 PCs and on new PCs.

On June 21, Microsoft stock hit a buy point of 263.29 out of a cup base, according to IBD MarketSmith charts. The 5% buy zone extends to 276.45, based on IBD trading guidelines.

Microsoft stock is on the IBD Leaderboard and Long-Term Leaders stock lists.

Follow Patrick Seitz on Twitter at @IBD_PSeitz for more stories on consumer technology, software and semiconductor stocks.

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Technology

Tesla and Toyota Are Considering Jointly Developing a Small Electric SUV Platform

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Choi Won-seok reports in the Korean Ghosun Libo news publication that according to an official from the Japanese automotive industry Toyota and Tesla have been reviewing the partnership since last year and are approaching the final stage.

Here are some of the highlights of Toyota Tesla partnership. When the partnership with Toyota is established, Tesla will be able to launch a compact SUV EV at low cost using the Toyota platform.

The Ghosun IIbo is the biggest newspaper in SK. A Tesla source Sawyer Merritt, tweets that he has been told “the reporter of the story is also highly regarded. We’ll see if it’s true.”

Toyota provides the vehicle platform to Tesla, and instead, Tesla provides some of the electronic control platform and software technology installed in its vehicle to Toyota.

When the partnership with Toyota is established, Tesla will be able to launch a compact SUV electric vehicle at low cost using the Toyota platform. In addition, Tesla’s sales in Japan, which are around 1,000 units per year, are likely to increase significantly.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at the ‘Battery Day’ in September of last year, that Tesla “will release a $25,000 compact and affordable electric car in 2023. However, among experts, there were several opinions that it would be difficult for Tesla to find a way to sell electric cars at such low prices. Especially considering Tesla has already developed the Model 3 in 2017, The model electric crossover in 2020, the exoskeleton of the Cybertruck and working on the Semi truck. at this moment we have no idea about Tesla’s affordable compact vehicle, which now it looks like may be produced in partnership with Toyota, if this report is true.

I think this is a smart move for both Tesla and Toyota. Some people may be skeptical of a Tesla Toyota partnership, but remember that Tesla helped built Toyota RAV4 in 2012. I am sure you guys remember when Toyota sold its Tesla stocks in 2017.

What’s in it for Toyota?

Toyota can also significantly reduce the resources and time spent on innovation of its vehicle’s integrated electronic control platform ( ECU ) and operating system ( OS ) by using Tesla technology. Toyota is evaluating that the integrated ECU and OS technology that can control and improve vehicle functions through wireless updates (Over The Air) is lagging behind Tesla. In other words, through cooperation between the two companies, Tesla can reduce the cost and period of developing small electric SUVs and Toyota’s benefit is the gain in ECU and OS development. It aims for a win-win effect by reducing the time it takes for the two companies to compensate for each other’s weaknesses, allowing them to focus more on their own strengths.

Tesla and Toyota have previously partnered. The two companies agreed to jointly develop electric vehicles in 2010, and in 2012 marketed Toyota’s RAV4 electric vehicle equipped with Tesla’s battery system. However, due to various reasons such as poor sales, the alliance between the Toyota and Tesla ended in 2017. Yet, the close relationship between Musk and Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda was maintained, leaving room for a reunion between the two companies in the future.

Tesla’s Fremont Factory is an automobile manufacturing plant in Fremont, California, operated by Tesla. But the facility opened as the General Motors Fremont Assembly in 1962, and was later operated by NUMMI, a former GM–Toyota joint venture. Tesla took ownership in 2010.

Last year, Toyota sold 9.35 million vehicles, surpassing Volkswagen and returned to the world’s top sales in five years. Toyota, along with Isuzu and its truck subsidiary Hino, plans to accelerate the electric and autonomous driving of commercial vehicles. Prior to this, Toyota also established a hydrogen fuel cell development joint venture with five Chinese automobile and technology companies, including Tsinghua University, Beijing, Cheil, Dongfeng, and Guangzhou Motors. The jointly developed hydrogen fuel cell system will be installed on Chinese trucks and buses from 2022. In addition, Toyota is striving to maximize economies of scale related to electrification and autonomous driving, including successive capital alliances with rivals Mazda and Suzuki.

Meanwhile, Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter on the 27th of March that “the likelihood that Tesla will soon become the largest company in the world is higher than 0%.” Although the context is not clear, it was also written “probably within a few months,” an expression that can be interpreted as referring to a period, and was soon deleted. Currently, Tesla’s market capitalization is about $ 590 billion, which is one-third of the world’s largest market capitalization company, Apple.

Tesla’s share price continued to rise even after surpassing Toyota, which was the first in the industry’s market capitalization at the time, in July of last year. Tesla, in particular, has a task to achieve economies of scale, with only 500,000 vehicles sold as of last year. If the alliance with Toyota is established, it can receive great power to expand mass production faster and at lower cost.

Armen Hareyan is the founder and the Editor in Chief of Torque News. He founded TorqueNews.com in 2010, which since then has been publishing expert news and analysis about the automotive industry. He can be reached at Torque News Twitter, Facebok, Linkedin and Youtube.



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Technology

Clubhouse announces accelerator program for creators on its platform

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During Clubhouse’s weekly town hall on Sunday, CEO Paul Davison announced the voice-chat app’s first creators program. Clubhouse Creator First will help aspiring hosts and creators on the platform build their audiences, connect with brands, and perhaps most importantly, monetize their shows.

The accelerator will accept 20 creators, and Clubhouse is taking applications through March 31st.

Clubhouse celebrates its first anniversary on March 17th, and has had quite the inaugural year. Its success particularly among the Silicon Valley VC crowd, has spawned several similar voice-based apps from bigger competitors, including Twitter Spaces which was announced late last year, and a similar forthcoming voice app believed to be coming from Facebook.

Davison also said during the Sunday town hall that Clubhouse is embarking on a “world tour,” hosting its first town hall in Italy on Monday. It’s also added some product features that users have been asking for, including link sharing and language filtering. The app also won’t require access to users’ phone contacts anymore, now, users can invite new people to the platform directly by using the person’s phone number. Davison said users can reach out to the company to delete previously-uploaded contacts, and that a tool to allow users to delete contacts from Clubhouse is coming soon.

Even though Clubhouse remains invite-only and is still not available on Android devices, during a recent funding round it was valued at $1 billion.

You can sign up for the Clubhouse Creator Accelerator here.



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