External News

A Jaw-Dropping Demo, in only 256 bytes

by

“Revision” is probably the Olympics of the demoscene. The world’s best tiny graphics coders assemble, show off their works, and learn new tricks to pack as much awesome into as few bytes as possible or make unheard-of effects on limited hardware. And of course, there’s a competition. Winning this year’s 256-byte (byte!) competition, and then taking the overall crowd favorite award, was [HellMood]’s Memories.

If you watch it in the live-stream from Revision, you’ll hear the crowd going (virtually) wild, and the announcer losing his grip and gasping for words. It’s that amazing. Not only are more effects put into 28 bytes than we thought possible, but there’s a full generative MIDI score to go with it. What?!?

Read more…

Plex Bringing Back Channels And Adding Whole New Dynamic

by

Plex could be becoming more like a Roku. The growing Plex Movies and TV Shows section now includes Crackle’s library. For years Plex had a listing of what it called channels, later renamed plugins. The entries were a way to access web-based content on-demand and ranged from Networks to apps and were not officially supported. As the platform got more mainstream, channels found their way off of Plex and were sort of replaced by the podcasts and web shows. But a major effort from Plex to develop ad-supported streaming on top of the other content has opened the door to channels once more.

In the past Plex had its own channel store of sorts. At the moment there is only one channel listed and it can be accessed via the movies and TV option in Plex. The default section includes all of the video selections available via Plex with Crackle listed in separate rows.

Read more…

Intel Core i9-10900K is official, boosting up to 5.3 GHz; Core i7 and Core i5 get competitive against Ryzen

by
In context: Intel’s new Core i9-10900K CPU comes equipped with 10 cores, 20 threads and new Turbo frequencies to go head to head against the Ryzen 9 3900X and possibly become the new gaming flagship processor. Meanwhile, the new Core i7 and Core i5 range look very competitive not just in terms of specs and expected performance, but most importantly, in pricing and value against otherwise very aggressive Ryzen rivals.

This has been a long time coming and today we can finally share with you the official information on Intel’s 10th gen desktop processors in their Comet Lake lineup. No more leaks, this is the official info, and we’ll be sharing a few of our thoughts on what Intel is offering along the way.

Read more…

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti leaked specs teases an absolute monster GPU

by

NVIDIA’s next-gen GeForce RTX 3080 Ti gets teased in leaked specs, packs an insane 8192 cores with Ampere:

A new rumor is coming from a now deleted tweet from ‘chiakokhua’ who has a history of predicting big movement of tech companies, where he said AMD would use a chiplet design for its new Zen design. He also drew up a block diagram of EPYC processors receiving 64 cores over 8+1 dies.

With that said, check the specs above: we have the GA100 powering the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti with up to 8192 CUDA cores which is absolutely insane. These rumored specs see GA100 have up to 256 RT cores, up to 1024 Tensor cores, and GPU boost clocks of up to 1750MHz. All of the new Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30 series cards will have GDDR6 at 16Gbps.

Read more…

Novelty Zelda Wallet Only Holds a Maximum of $99

by

NEW YORK — Upon returning from a shopping trip to the Rockefeller Center Nintendo shop, gaming enthusiast Amy Weiss was dismayed to discover that her new novelty The Legend of Zelda wallet only holds a maximum of 99 dollars.

“I felt like somebody had pulled some kind of magic trick on me,” Weiss said, recalling the events with a flustered look on her face. “I transferred all of my cash from my old wallet into the new one, something like $160 bucks in $20’s, but when I went to pay my cab driver later that night all I found was 99 dollar bills! I don’t know how to feel about it. On one hand I’m continuously impressed by the detail and quality of Nintendo products, but on the other hand, what the fuck Nintendo? Where’s my other $61?”

Read more…

This add-in card lets you yank M.2 SSDs from your gaming PC while it’s running

by

Depending on when you built your PC, it might not have an M.2 slot, leaving you unable to add a sleek and fast NVMe SSD to your setup. You could always upgrade your motherboard, but that’s not exactly a quick and easy fix. Icy Docks solves the dilemma with its new ToughArmor MB840M2P-B, an add-in card for M.2 drives.

Icy Dock is not the first to offer such a product, but this one stands out because it supports hot-swapping drives (via Tom’s Hardware). That means you can add and remove M.2 SSDs while your PC is still powered on.

Read more…

This Abandoned Computer Store Is a Time Capsule of Early 2000s Tech

by

In the era before Amazon and boutique custom built PCs, computer enthusiasts visited humble local computer stores to buy things like RAM, graphics cards, and computer games sold in big cardboard packages. They had names like PC STORE, Computer King, and Computer Factory Outlet. The last is the name of an abandoned store rotting away in a lonely strip mall in Norman, Oklahoma. Closed for a decade, Computer Factory Outlet is locked tight and somehow still full of merchandise.

It’s like a time capsule of the early 2000s personal computer industry. Dell and Gateway boxes press against the glass, turning yellow in the sun. Beige PC towers loom in ramshackle piles. PC copies of the Tiger Woods 99 video game gather dust on the shelves.

Read more…