The Category5.TV Newsroom

Here are the stories we're following for the week of Wednesday July 15, 2020

Microsoft’s Flight Simulator 2020 will launch on August 18

After a series of closed alpha tests, Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studios and Asobo Studio announced Monday that the next-gen Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 will launch on August 18.

Pre-orders are now live, and the game will come in three editions: standard for $60, deluxe for $90 and premium deluxe for $120, with the more expensive versions featuring more planes and handcrafted international airports.

The last part may come as a bit of a surprise, given that Microsoft and Asobo are using assets from Bing Maps and some AI magic on Azure to essentially recreate the Earth and all of its airports. Still, the team must have spent some extra time on making some of these larger airports especially realistic and today, if you were to buy even one of these larger airports as an add-on for Flight Simulator X or X-Plane, you’d easily be spending $30 or more.

The default edition features 20 planes and 30 hand-modeled airports, while the deluxe edition bumps that up to 25 planes and 35 airports and the high-end version comes with 30 planes and 40 airports.

All the airports are still available in the lesser versions, just without the extra detail.

Based on what Asobo has shown in its regular updates so far, even the 20 planes in the standard edition have been modeled in far more detail than in previous versions, and maybe even beyond what some add-ons provide today.

Because a lot of what Microsoft and Asobo are doing here involves using cloud technology to, for example, stream some of the more detailed scenery to your computer on demand, chances are we’ll see regular content updates for these various editions as well, though the details here aren’t yet clear.

As Flight Simulator 2020 is about to enter its closed beta phase, we can expect to see more details in the coming weeks leading up to the release.

Source: techcrunch.com

Sent to us by: Robbie Ferguson

Samsung Expects 6G to Launch as Early as 2028

While we’re still waiting for the mainstream transition to 5G, Samsung is already beginning to discuss 6G, which the company expects to be commercialized as early as 2028.

In a white paper published Tuesday, Samsung has said it expects the International Telecommunication Union to begin working on 6G in 2021.

The amount of time and work dedicated to developing each generation of networking has shortened as time passes. Samsung said in the white paper that the company expects the earliest commercialized date for 6G to be 2028. It also states it belief that mass commercialization could occur by 2030.

Samsung believes 6G will equally serve humans and machines as the main users. 6G will be reign in an era of advanced services for “truly immersive extended reality, high-fidelity mobile hologram and digital replica.”

6G’s performance requirements must reach a peak data rate of 1,000 Gbps and air latency of fewer than 100 microseconds. For comparison’s sake, that’s 50 times the peak data rate of 5G and one-tenth the latency.

The company has identified the three major pillars and requirements that will make up 6G. In order to fully realize 6G, performance, architectural, and trustworthiness requirements must be met. 5G was mainly focused around increased performance.

Samsung’s white paper notes that the 6G architectural and performance requirements will overcome hurdles made by the limited computational capacities of mobile devices. Trustworthiness will address privacy and security concerns.

Source: www.iphoneincanada.ca

Sent to us by: Robbie Ferguson

The average cost of charging an electronic vehicle in Canada is just $277 per year

Curious if an electric car will save you money on fuel costs? A report in Canada shows that the average cost to charge an electronic vehicle in Canada is just $277 CAD per year - roughly $203 USD.

Uswitch, who generated the report, looked at the average price per kWh in 50 different countries, the average mileage per driver, and the average miles electronic vehicles get on a full charge to determine this statistic.

Using this method, Canada is one of the least expensive countries to own an electronic vehicle in, since the electricity is relatively cheap in some parts of the country. The most expensive countries are Denmark, Germany and Belgium, but even in the worst case, we're talking amounts of around $800 per year for the average driver.

The data shows how much money drivers can save by moving away from gas-powered cars.

If it costs around $60 to fill up, and you need to do that roughly once a month, that means you are paying more for gas in four months than the average electric vehicle owner pays in a year.

Source: mobilesyrup.com

Sent to us by: Robbie Ferguson

Facebook and Sony are preparing to increase output of upcoming gaming devices.

Facebook and Sony are preparing to increase output of upcoming gaming devices.

Facebook's Oculus, the global leading provider of virtual reality headsets by market share, is eyeing growth of at least 50% from a year ago for its latest version of head-mounted VR devices, pushing production to 2 million units.

Meanwhile Sony, the world's No. 2 video game console maker after Nintendo by shipments, has also raised production orders for its upcoming PlayStation 5 to around 9 million units, from the roughly 6 million units it had planned earlier this year.

The PlayStation 5 is the first completely new generation of the console in seven years, after Sony launched the PlayStation 4 in 2013 and an upgrade in 2016.

Facebook's move further underlines the social networking giant's ambition to further expand its footprint in the emerging VR market, where it is the market leader with around a 35% market share. Its first all-in-one VR gaming system -- Oculus Quest -- became a hit after it launched last May.

Compared with the cyclical and relatively mature games console market, which is dominated by Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, market watchers said VR was still a nascent market where a lot of players are trying new applications. But gaming is still the most important segment.

Counterpoint senior analyst Karn Chauhan said, "During the pandemic, the gaming industry witnessed a record number of online player additions as more consumers are considering gaming for entertainment at home."

Facebook is looking to further expand standalone VR, which gives users a more immersive experience than PC and smartphone-based VR headsets. The U.S. company said in June it will stop selling Oculus Go, its entry-level VR device which went on sale in 2018, to focus on the Oculus Quest and Rift offerings, its more powerful and higher-end products. Oculus Rift S, introduced in 2019, still needs to be connected to a computer to function.

Mark Zuckerberg said in an earnings conference earlier this year that the company's revenue categorized as "others" reached $297 million for the January-March quarter, up 80% from a year ago, which was "driven primarily by sales of Oculus products."

The VR market is growing. HTC, formerly a leading smartphone maker, shifted its focus from handsets to VR, while Sony launched its first PlayStation VR in 2015. Google, Samsung Electronics and Huawei Technologies all introduced phone-based VR headsets, using smartphones as the VR headset's screens.

Apple has been working on augmented reality technology for years and has reportedly entered a trial production for an augmented reality device recently.

The worldwide shipment of all types of VR devices last year was around 10 million units. Facebook, Sony and HTC together accounted for 69% of the market. But excluding mobile VR, which requires a smartphone, the overall VR market shipped around 4.32 million units, with Facebook shipping roughly 1.5 million devices.

Source: asia.nikkei.com

Sent to us by: Robbie Ferguson

A vulnerability in Windows DNS service can allow hackers to run malicious code as admin on all computers on your network.

Microsoft is urgently advising Windows server customers to patch a vulnerability that allows attackers to take control of entire networks with no user interaction and, from there, rapidly spread from computer to computer.

The vulnerability, dubbed SigRed by researchers at Check Point who discovered it, resides in Windows DNS, a component that automatically responds to requests to translate a domain into the IP address computers need to locate it on the Internet. By sending maliciously formed queries, attackers can execute code that gains domain administrator rights and, from there, take control of an entire network. The vulnerability is present in all Windows Server versions from 2003 to 2019.

Both Microsoft and the researchers said that it’s wormable, meaning it can spread from computer to computer in a way that’s akin to falling dominoes. With no user interaction required, computer worms have the potential to propagate rapidly just by virtue of being connected and without requiring end users to do anything at all.

When a worm’s underlying vulnerability easily allows malicious code to be executed, exploits can be especially harmful, as was the case with both the WannaCry and NotPetya attacks from 2016 that shut down networks worldwide and caused billions of dollars in damage.

Check Point researchers said that the effort required to exploit SigRed was well within the means of skilled hackers. While there’s no evidence that the vulnerability is actively under exploit at the moment, Check Point said that’s likely to change, and if it does, the destructive effects would be high.

Microsoft rated the chances of exploitation as “more likely”. Many outside researchers concurred.

Security researcher Marcus Hutchins fears attackers will exploit SigRed in an attempt to wage crippling ransomware campaigns. In that scenario, attackers would take control of a network’s DNS server and then use it to push malware to all connected client computers.

Microsoft issued a fix as part of this month's Update Tuesday. Organizations that use Windows DNS should carefully assess the risks and install Tuesday’s patch as soon as possible.

Source: arstechnica.com

Sent to us by: Robbie Ferguson

Lego and Nintendo are making a Lego NES

The collaboration between Lego and Nintendo will go beyond the Lego Super Mario series of play sets set to launch in August. Lego is also making a brick-based version of the classic Nintendo Entertainment System.

On Twitter, the official Lego account posted a darkened video of an upcoming set with the words “Are you ready to play like never before?” The five-second teaser shows what is clearly an NES system, a controller, and a CRT television, which would logically be composed of plastic Lego bricks.

Can't quite see it? Here's what the video looks like after we brighten it up in Resolve.

The 2,646-piece Lego Nintendo Entertainment System set will feature an elaborate build for the brick-based television. A crank on the side of the TV will make an onscreen Mario jump up and down, and make the onscreen playfield scroll right to left. The set also appears to work with the Lego Super Mario sets.

Clear photos of the Lego NES were also leaked, showing the 8-bit console with its controller, a Super Mario Bros cartridge, and a vintage tube television, and on Tuesday, Nintendo posted a video to their YouTube channel which shows the set being built.

It'll be pricey, listed at €300.

Lego and Nintendo have not officially announced a release date for the Lego NES set as of yet, but we expect the announcement soon.

Source: www.polygon.com

Sent to us by: Robbie Ferguson