Month: January 2021

Enlarge / The end of glitches is near, CDPR promises...

CD Projekt Red is still trying to contain the damage from widespread reports of major technical problems in the versions of Cyberpunk 2077 released for the PS4 and Xbox One last month. To that end, studio co-founder and CEO Marcin Iwinski today tweeted a video message seeking to explain the internal situation leading up to the problematic launch.

"Despite good reviews on PC, the console version of Cyberpunk 2077 did not meet the quality standard we wanted it to meet," Iwinski said in the message. "I, and the entire leadership team, are deeply sorry for this, and this video is me publicly owning up to that."

Sifting through the stream

The core of the problem, Iwinski said, was the "in-game streaming system" that Cyberpunk 2077 used to "feed" content and game mechanics to the engine without frequent breaks for loading. That system had to be "constantly improved" for last-gen consoles during development, Iwinski said, in order to keep up with the "epic" look of the PC version (which saw its graphics and other assets scaled down to work on more limited, older console hardware).

Enlarge / Amazon Web Services (AWS) logo displayed during the 4th edition of the Viva Technology show at Parc des Expositions Porte de Versailles on May 17, 2019, in Paris, France. (credit: Chesnot | Getty Images)

Amazon on Tuesday brought receipts in its response to seemingly defunct social networking platform Parler's lawsuit against it, detailing AWS' repeated efforts to get Parler to address explicit threats of violence posted to the service.

In the wake of the violent insurrection at the US Capitol last Wednesday, AWS kicked Parler off its Web-hosting platform at midnight Sunday evening. In response, Parler filed a lawsuit accusing Amazon of breaking a contract for political reasons and colluding with Twitter to drive a competitor offline.

But the ban has nothing to do with "stifling viewpoints" or a "conspiracy" to restrain a competitor, Amazon said in its response filing (PDF). Instead, Amazon said, "This case is about Parler's demonstrated unwillingness and inability" to remove actively dangerous content, including posts that incite and plan "the rape, torture, and assassination of named public officials and private citizens... AWS suspended Parler's account as a last resort to prevent further access to such content, including plans for violence to disrupt the impending Presidential transition."

Enlarge / Amazon Web Services (AWS) logo displayed during the 4th edition of the Viva Technology show at Parc des Expositions Porte de Versailles on May 17, 2019, in Paris, France. (credit: Chesnot | Getty Images)

Amazon on Tuesday brought receipts in its response to seemingly defunct social networking platform Parler's lawsuit against it, detailing AWS' repeated efforts to get Parler to address explicit threats of violence posted to the service.

In the wake of the violent insurrection at the US Capitol last Wednesday, AWS kicked Parler off its Web-hosting platform at midnight Sunday evening. In response, Parler filed a lawsuit accusing Amazon of breaking a contract for political reasons and colluding with Twitter to drive a competitor offline.

But the ban has nothing to do with "stifling viewpoints" or a "conspiracy" to restrain a competitor, Amazon said in its response filing (PDF). Instead, Amazon said, "This case is about Parler's demonstrated unwillingness and inability" to remove actively dangerous content, including posts that incite and plan "the rape, torture, and assassination of named public officials and private citizens... AWS suspended Parler's account as a last resort to prevent further access to such content, including plans for violence to disrupt the impending Presidential transition."

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Google researchers have detailed a sophisticated hacking operation that exploited vulnerabilities in Chrome and Windows to install malware on Android and Windows devices.

Some of the exploits were zero-days, meaning they targeted vulnerabilities that at the time were unknown to Google, Microsoft, and most outside researchers (both companies have since patched the security flaws). The hackers delivered the exploits through watering-hole attacks, which compromise sites frequented by the targets of interest and lace the sites with code that installs malware on visitors’ devices. The boobytrapped sites made use of two exploit servers, one for Windows users and the other for users of Android.

Not your average hackers

The use of zero-days and complex infrastructure isn’t in itself a sign of sophistication, but it does show above-average skill by a professional team of hackers. Combined with the robustness of the attack code—which chained together multiple exploits in an efficient manner—the campaign demonstrates it was carried out by a “highly sophisticated actor.”

Enlarge / AT&T corporate offices on November 10, 2020, in El Segundo, California. (credit: Getty Images | AaronP/Bauer-Griffin)

AT&T is killing off the online-video service formerly known as DirecTV Now and introducing a no-contract option for the newer online service that replaced it.

AT&T unveiled DirecTV Now late in 2016, the year after AT&T bought the DirecTV satellite company. Prices originally started at $35 a month for the live-TV online service, and it had signed up 1.86 million subscribers by Q3 2018. But customers quickly fled as AT&T repeatedly raised prices and cut down on the use of promotional deals, leaving the service with just 683,000 subscribers at the end of Q3 2020.

In 2019, AT&T changed the name from DirecTV Now to AT&T TV Now, creating confusion among customers and its own employees because the company simultaneously unveiled another online streaming service called AT&T TV.

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  The 2021 Acura TLX Advance is an all-new model. It's unique to North America and is not just a rebadged Honda. [credit: Acura ]

The SUV may be ascendant these days, but some carmakers still have room in their hearts, or more accurately their product portfolios, for the four-door sedan. Among them is Acura, the high-end arm of Honda in North America, which recently debuted its second-generation TLX. But don't assume this is a case of badge engineering; the second-gen TLX is unique to Acura—you won't find it wearing a Honda logo in Japan or Europe.

Acura is mostly known as a luxury brand, competing for customers with Lexus and Infiniti, but the company's roots are actually much more sporty than plush. Acura wants to reconnect with that heritage as a way of differentiating itself from those rivals, and to that end, it says the new $40,000 2021 TLX is the most performance-focused sedan it has ever made. It starts with a monocoque chassis that's 50 percent stiffer overall, with even higher rigidity at the parts where the suspension is attached. There are braces for the underbody, more rigid mounts for the front dampers, and a very stiff center tunnel. But at the same time, there's extensive use of aluminum, even in some of these high-stiffness areas, to cut weight over the old model.

Further to its sporting intentions, Acura opted for a double-wishbone arrangement for the front suspension, which it says has 85 percent more lateral stiffness than the MacPherson struts on the first-generation TLX. That means the tires' contact patches don't shrink too much under cornering.

Enlarge / A splash image for Nuvia from the company's blog. (credit: Nuvia)

Chipmaker Qualcomm announced a major acquisition today: it will buy Santa Clara-based silicon company Nuvia for $1.4 billion. Qualcomm intends to use Nuvia's technology in future chip designs for a wide range of devices, from phones to cars.

Nuvia was founded in 2019 by three former Apple semiconductor executives. The startup has been developing custom CPU core design for servers, and its company materials make frequent reference to a mission to "reimagine" silicon design. But Qualcomm sees applications for Nuvia's tech beyond servers.

Qualcomm's press release says Nuvia will deliver "step-function improvements in CPU performance and power efficiency to meet the demands of next-generation 5G computing." Qualcomm plans to use Nuvia's tech in "flagship smartphones, next-generation laptops, and digital cockpits, as well as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, extended reality and infrastructure networking solutions."

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  There's apparently an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3000-series GPU inside of this laptop, and it's apparently launching on or after January 26. [credit: Nvidia ]

If you've been wondering when gaming laptops would begin a more serious push to 1440p panels, this week's CES reveals from Nvidia are aimed directly at you. Behold: a generational jump in the company's laptop-minded GPUs, this time with Ampere architecture and RTX 3000-series branding.

Three GPU models have been announced in all, and they're named after the GeForce RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060. They are slated to roll out in "70+" laptop models starting January 26. Nvidia has listed "top OEMs" like Acer, Alienware, ASUS, Gigabyte, HP, Lenovo, MSI, and Razer with upcoming RTX 3000-series laptops, along with "local OEMs and system builders."

Naming convention double-check

Nvidia's sales pitch positions the RTX 3060 laptop variant as "faster than laptops featuring the RTX 2080 Super," though this model may land more specifically in 1080p systems. The two higher-end models are frequently referred to as part of 1440p systems, a resolution that has long been left in the gaming-laptop cold (and will arguably benefit hugely from Nvidia's proprietary DLSS upscaling solution). While Nvidia's latest promotional materials mention a bang-for-the-buck upgrade compared to the last generation of laptop GPUs, we're still waiting to see OEMs roll out specific prices and specs for their late-January models. (Also, we're wondering if those laptops will sell out too quickly for average humans to get them.)