Samsung’s 2022 lineup of TVs and monitors with the addition of Stadia, GeForce Now, and Xbox Cloud Gaming support. At the time, Samsung said its new Gaming Hub would get support for Amazon Luna in the future, and the wait was shorter than expected. As promised, Luna is now available on compatible Samsung smart TVs. The Samsung Gaming Hub is built into the company’s current TV lineup, so you don’t have to get a streaming dongle or a separate TV box to stream games. It’s rare to find a media streaming device that supports more than one of these services, but with the latest edition, 2022 Samsung TVs support all of them.
Just a few short years ago, you needed expensive gaming hardware to play AAA titles, but is changing that. By offloading all the rendering to a server, these services can turn almost any screen into a portal for your gaming obsession, and Logitech wants in on the action. No, it’s not launching yet another gaming service. Logitech has partnered with Chinese megafirm Tencent to develop a “handheld cloud gaming” device. You have several options for accessing cloud gaming services like GeForce Now, Luna, and Stadia. You can use a TV or media streamer that supports your chosen service, and then you’ve always got the phone in your pocket for a portable gaming experience.
Today, streaming music is everywhere, but in the before times, it was all about locally stored MP3s — all legally ripped from CDs, of course. Winamp was one of the most popular ways to listen to those files, but it fell into disrepair as listening shifted to online services. A began a few years back, and you can now get a look at the final version. The first release candidate is available for download, and it still whips the llama — yes, Winamp 5.9 plays that iconic intro when you first launch it. The younger folks out there might be a little confused by all this fuss over a desktop music app, but Winamp was almost a required download in the early 2000s.
Analysis of a set of July photos from NASA’s JunoCam has revealed a cluster of swirling storms near Jupiter’s north pole. The agency released the entire dataset, which is cool enough all on its own. But now, a NASA citizen science project called “Jovian Vortex Hunter” is seeking volunteers to “spot and help categorize vortices and other atmospheric phenomena visible in JunoCam photos of Jupiter.” That’s right: NASA wants YOU to help spot these swirling vortices on Jupiter. Volunteers don’t need any training or any special hardware or software. Anyone, anywhere, can participate with a cellphone or laptop. What you’re looking for is storms like these:
(Photo: Activision Blizzard)Microsoft has adopted an interesting tack as it waits for a number of regulatory agencies to clear its acquisition of Activision Blizzard. In a recent filing with New Zealand’s Commerce Commission, the tech giant said the game developer has “no must-have” titles. “There is nothing unique about the video games developed and published by Activision Blizzard that is a ‘must have’ for rival PC and console video game distributors that give rise to a foreclosure concern,” Microsoft writes. The was first yesterday by Rock Paper Shotgun (who understandably referred to the statement as a “weird flex, but okay”).
(Photo: Zach Vessels/Unsplash)The dawn of digital media brought with it a new type of crime: piracy. Since the 80s, distributors from record labels to film companies have struggled to keep people from illegally copying media. One of the ways they’ve attempted to make digital pirates think twice is by running anti-piracy campaigns, but these haven’t been particularly effective. New research from France’s ESSCA School of Management reveals why anti-piracy campaigns have failed to stop or slow digital theft. In a published late last month, economics and management professors Gilles Grolleau and Luc Meunier inspect the commonalities uniting popular (and sometimes infamous) anti-piracy campaigns, then explain why those common threads aren’t as useful as one might think.
Intel is hard at work on the next generation of Wi-Fi standards, according to a from Korea IT News. Wi-Fi 7 will replace the current Wi-Fi 6/6E as the latest standard when it debuts in 2024. It theoretically allows for data transfer rates that are more than twice as fast as those with Wi-Fi 6E. Intel says it plans on submitting its plans to the Wi-Fi Alliance in order to gain certification. Once that occurs, it will offer it in mobile products first, with desktops to follow. If all goes according to plan, it should be hitting major markets by 2025.
For years, we’ve been talking about all the amazing things the could do, and now it’s actually doing them. From its vantage out beyond the moon, Webb is turning its infrared eye toward far-away objects we’ve never been able to see before. It’s also providing images of well-known objects like the Cartwheel Galaxy (above) with an unprecedented level of detail. The Cartwheel Galaxy is about 500 million light years away in the Sculptor constellation. This is the subject of intense study because it’s a rarity — a survivor of a massive collision oriented to give us a perfect view.
Diablo Immortal has been available for several months, and it’s turning out to be quite the cash cow for Activision Blizzard. The free-to-play title has raked in more than $100 million, and it’s probably going to keep printing money. In the early days, gamers calculated it would cost around a hundred thousand dollars to completely level up a character, and now we have a real-life example. One streamer spent that, and he’s “won” the game. His prize: being too overpowered to play with anyone else. Streamer Jtisallbusiness has posted dozens of videos since the game launched earlier this summer.
