LG is bringing its dual-screen concept to the US along with a new variant of the G8: the G8X ThinQ. The G8X drops the 3D depth camera and quad-HD display resolution in favor of a 32-megapixel selfie camera, full-HD display, stereo speakers, and a larger 4,000 mAh battery. It also has an in-display fingerprint reader instead of the standalone sensor on the G8. Other features of the G8X are similar to the G8, including a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chip, standard and wide-angle rear cameras, high-end audio chip, extra-loud speakers, 3.5mm headphone jack, IP68 water resistance, NFC, wireless charging, fast charging, 6 GB RAM, 128 GB storage, and a memory card slot. The snap-on Dual Screen sports a full-HD OLED screen identical to that on the G8X, including the small notch. It also has an extra "cover" display on the outside that shows notifications, date, time, and battery life. The hinge folds a full 360deg, and locks in place at 120deg, 140deg, 180deg (flat), and 27deg (tent). The phone + Dual Screen together will sell for $700 unlocked. Both AT&T and Sprint will offer the LG G8X ThinQ. AT&T is including the Dual Screen for free for a limited time. Sprint will offer an online rebate form for a Dual Screen, which will ship from LG. Sprint will have "more details to share next week" on its launch offer. Pre-orders start Friday, will full availability on November 1st.

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Xiaomi, the China-based electronics juggernaut that has carved itself into most markets with its aggressive price/performance ratios, has just announced two new gaming monitors in its new Mi Surface Display lineup. First up is a 34", 21:9 UltraWide monitor with a resolution of 3440 x 1440. This one also carries a 144 Hz refresh rate monitor with support for AMD FreeSync (which might also mean it is G-Sync compatible). This same panel offers a 1500R curvature, which is somewhat treated as a must in larger diagonal 21:9 monitors, and Xiaomi is quoting a 5 ms GtG response time, which, paired with the 144 Hz refresh rate, should be more than enough for all but the most seriously competitive gamers. Color coverage is being quoted at 121% of the sRGB color gamut. The bezels are reportedly around the 2mm mark in the 34" model. The stand and the monitor's connection is ensured by a magnetic clasp. The 34" monitor is being joined by a 1080p, 24" monitor as well, of which there were no additional details being shared. Connectivity details also weren't shared at time of writing. Xiaomi's new Mi Surface Display 34" is priced at 2,499 Yuan (around $352).

NVIDIA today released the latest version of its GeForce Software suite. Version 440.97 WHQL comes game-ready for "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare," and "The Outer Worlds," including SLI support for the latter on "Turing" GPUs. SLI support is also added for "The Darwin Project." The drivers also introduce G-SYNC support for OpenGL and Vulkan games and applications. Among the bugs fixed are crash-to-desktop (CTD) on FIFA 19 and FIFA 20; random flickering in "Apex Legends," CTD on "Star Wars: Battlefront II," an application crash with "Growtopia," missing objects in "Tradesmen," flickering in the character-selection screen in "World of Warcraft," a ghosting effect when moving the brush tool in Cinema 4D; a game crash with "Shadow of the Tomb Raider" in DirectX 12 mode, color corruption in "Forza 4," and problems with boosting GeForce GTX 970M.

Game Ready
Provides increased performance and the optimal gaming experience for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and The Outer Worlds.

Gaming Technology
Adds support for windowed G-SYNC for OpenGL and Vulkan-based applications.

Application SLI Profiles
Added or updated the following SLI profiles:

• Darwin Project
• The Outer Worlds (NVIDIA Turing GPUs only)

New Features and Other Changes

• G-SYNC is now supported on windowed OpenGL and Vulkan applications.
• Fixed flashes or frame drops in several Notebook models when running G-SYNC in the lower of the two system refresh rates.

Fixed Issues in this Release

• [FIFA 19/FIFA 20]: The game may crash to the desktop. [2690624/2713659/200559659]
• [Apex Legends]: Random flickering occurs on the screen. [2709770]
• [Star Wars: Battlefront II]: Random crashes to the desktop occur. [200550245]
• [Growtopia][GeForce RTX]: The game crashes when launched. [2709649]
• [Tradesmen OS3DE]: Objects are missing in the game. [2691363]
• [World of Warcraft]: Flickering occurs on the character select screen. [2684628]
• [Cinema 4D]: Trailing ghosting effect appears when moving the brush tool. [2633267]
• [Shadow Of The Tomb Raider][DirectX 12]: The game crashes after hitting a TDR error.[200549489]
• [Forza Horizon 4]: Colored corruption appears in the game during gameplay. [200544234]
• [Notebook][GeForce GTX 970M]: GPU clock cannot be boosted beyond base clock speed. [2683147]

NVIDIA has confirmed that a new variant for its GTX1660 GPUs, the GTX 1660 SUPER, will come out on October 29th. According to Videocardz, the GeForce GTX 1660 Super will launch at $229 (MSRP). Pricing will naturally vary on custom models, depending on things like the cooling solution and whether or not there is a factory overclock, among other features. However, the $229 MSRP is just $10 more than the regular GeForce GTX 1660. It's nice to see so little movement in the price for an upgraded card-$10 is not much of a spike. Granted, both the GeForce RTX 2080 Super and GeForce RTX 2070 Super launched at the same MSRPs as the non-Super variants ($699 and $499, respectively), but the GeForce RTX 2060 Super debuted for $50 more than the GeForce RTX 2060 ($399 versus $349). As for the specifications, here's how the GeForce GTX 1660 Super compares to its neighboring Turing cards, based on leaked data:

- GeForce GTX 1660 Ti: 1,536 CUDA cores, 1,500MHz base / 1,770MHz boost, 6GB GDDR6 (12Gbps) on 192-bit bus
- GeForce GTX 1660 Super: 1,408 CUDA cores, 1530MHz base / 1785MHz boost, 6GB GDDR6 (14Gbps) on 192-bit bus
- GeForce GTX 1660: 1,408 CUDA cores, 1,530MHz base / 1,785MHz boost, 6GB GDDR5 (8Gbps) on 192-bit bus
- GeForce GTX 1650: 896 CUDA cores, 1,485MHz base / 1,665MHz boost, 4GB GDDR5 (8Gbps) on 128-bit bus

In short, the GeForce GTX 1660 Super will get an upgrade from GDDR5 (8Gbps) memory to GDDR6 (14Gbps), while retaining the same number of CUDA cores and clockspeeds as the non-Super model. This in turn will bump up the memory bandwidth, from 192GB/s to 336GB/s. The memory bandwidth is even higher than the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, which is a nice perk. That said, the TI card is still the burlier model by way of having more CUDA cores enabled. One thing that will be interesting to see is what kind of discounts might emerge on the regular GeForce GTX 1660. Vendors will likely be looking to clear out existing inventories, and with Black Friday and Cyber Monday right around the corner, there could be some tantalizing sales.

Microsoft started deploying microcode updates to some of Intel's older Core, Pentium, and Celeron processor generations through Windows Update. The latest Cumulative Update packages chronicled under "KB4497165" apply to machines running Intel's 4th generation Core "Haswell" processors, and low-power Pentium and Celeron chips based on "Apollo Lake," "Gemini Lake," "Valley View," and "Cherry View" microarchitectures. The microcode update provides firmware-level hardening against four major variants of the MDS class of security vulnerabilities, namely CVE-2019-11091 (MDS Uncacheable Memory), CVE-2018-12126 (Microarchitectural Store Buffer Data Sampling), CVE-2018-12127 (Microarchitectural Load Port Data Sampling), and CVE-2018-12130 (Microarchitectural Fill Buffer Data Sampling).

Harry Potter's invisibility cloak appears closer to reality as Canadian camouflage manufacturer Hyperstealth Biotechnology has applied for patents on its Quantum Stealth material. The inexpensive and paper-thin technology works by bending light around a target to either alter its position or make it vanish altogether, leaving only the background visible. It is touted to be able to obscure the positions of heavy artillery, ground troops or even entire buildings from certain viewpoints.

Dives into 1ft of water.... omg!

Microsoft is ready to release its next feature update for Windows 10, the November 2019 Update. As usual, the company has updated its processor requirements for the new version, but there are some surprises in there. For one thing, it retroactively changed the requirements for version 1903 while it was at it. It's a reasonable thing to do, since Windows 10 version 1909 is really just version 1903 with an enablement package to light up some new features. If 1909 supports certain new processors, then 1903 must support them as well. On the Intel side of things, Microsoft updated them to say that they support 10th-generation Core processors, along with Xeon E-22xx. There's also support for Atom J4xxx/J5xxx and N4xxx/N5xxx, Celeron, and Pentium, although specific models of Celeron and Pentium aren't listed. On a side note, Intel 10th-gen is listed as Core i3/i5/i7/i9-10xxx, despite no 10th-gen Core i9 existing just yet. In the AMD department, there's still support for the company's seventh-generation processors, including A-series, E-series, and FX-9000, along with Athlon 2xx, Opteron, and EPYC 7xxx. What's new for AMD is support for Ryzen 3xxx CPUs, where previously only Ryzen 2xxx processors were listed. What's more interesting is the Qualcomm CPUs that are listed. Previously, version 1903 supported the Snapdragon 850, but that's removed and replaced with both the Snapdragon 855 and the Snapdragon 8cx. It's unclear if this is a misprint, but the Snapdragon 855 was never supposed to be a PC chipset; it's for smartphones. It's possible that Microsoft meant to write Snapdragon 850, which is a PC chipset that's based on the Snapdragon 845.

According to the sources close to DigiTimes, Intel will unveil its first discrete 10 nm graphics cards named "Xe" very soon, with the first wave of Xe GPUs expected to arrive some time in 2020. Said to launch mid year, around July or August, Intel will start selling initial Xe GPU models of the long awaited product to consumers, in hope of gaining a share in the massive market using GPU for acceleration of all kinds of tasks.

Perhaps one of the most interesting notes DigiTimes reported is that "... Intel's GPUs have already received support from the upstream supply chain and has already been integrated into Intel's CPUs to be used in the datacenter and AI fields.", meaning that AIB partners already have access to first 10 nm graphics chips that are ready for system integration. First generation of Xe graphics cards will cover almost whole GPU market, including PC, datacenter, and AI applications where NVIDIA currently holds the top spot.

The Epic Games Store is giving away not one, but two creepy games in time for Halloween - both Alan Wake's American Nightmare and Observer are available for free from October 17 to October 24. The psychological horror games will replace Surviving Mars and its DLC as the free weekly content offered in the Epic Games Store.

Alan Wake's American Nightmare is a spin-off of the classic thriller Alan Wake. Much of the game is structured around an episode of Night Springs, an in-universe show that's an obvious homage to The Twilight Zone. Alan Wake's friend is asleep in a motel room while the show plays on the TV, and a narrator explains the action as it plays out. In the episode, Alan is trying to chase down his evil doppelganger, Mr. Scratch, but gets stuck in a time loop and must keep repeating his actions.

Observer is a cyberpunk horror game from Layers of Fear developer Bloober Team that stars Rutger Hauer (you know, the guy from Blade Runner). It's set in a futuristic Poland, where you play as Daniel Lazarski, a detective who can hack people's brain implants in order to interrogate them. When Daniel receives an unexpected call from his estranged son, a fragmented, trippy mystery lays itself out before you.

After that another Free Game Collection will take its place, offering Layers of Fear and Q.U.B.E. 2 at no charge.

Boxer Patrick Day has died aged 27 - four days after suffering a brain injury in a fight against Charles Conwell.

LOL!

No shots Dr. Vet man! I am fierce! Ok, one shot... But I didn't like it. from r/aww

THE ROOM Official Trailer Movie in theatre 6 November 2019.

With 64 Gbps bandwidth per lane, 256 Gbps in x4, and a whopping 1 Tbps in x16 (128 GB/s per direction), PCI-Express 6.0 will debut in 2021 as 5G adoption hits critical mass in markets across the globe, to support server nodes, high-bandwidth network infrastructure, and lighting fast I/O for HPC and AI applications. Development of the new standard is already underway, with the specification having achieved a pre-release version 0.3, according to the PCI-SIG, the body that develops and maintains the PCI IP. Further development, prototyping, and testing of the standard will run through 2020 as drafts of the standard are dispatched to interested parties. With the specification published in 2021, the first devices implementing it could arrive the following year. Granted, very few devices need 1 Tbps bandwidth, but the exercise of doubling bandwidth every 3 or so years has its maximum impact on devices that only have wiring for one PCIe lane, and directly impacts bandwidth of other I/O specifications that are derived from PCIe, such as USB, Thunderbolt, CXL, etc.

A thriving online bazaar selling stolen payment card data has been hacked in a heist that leaked the records for more than 26 million cards, KrebsOnSecurity reported on Tuesday. The 26 million figure isn't significant only to the legitimate consumers and businesses who own the stolen cards or the financial institutions that issued them. Fortunately for the card owners, the database is now in the hands of affected financial institutions, who can invalidate and replace the cards. The number, therefore, is perhaps a bigger deal because it represents a significant fraction of the world's stolen-card inventory. Krebs said that Gemini Advisory, a company that monitors dozens of underground markets trafficking stolen card data, currently tracks a total of 87 million credit and debit card records. The haul of 26 million cards means that about a third of that supply has been taken out of circulation in a single swipe.

The hacked market is called BriansClub, a site available at BriansClub[.]at that, for years, has imitated Krebs' site and likeness. The data taken in the hack shows that BriansClub acquired 1.7 million cards in 2015, 2.9 million in 2016, 4.9 million in 2017, 9.2 million in 2018, and 7.6 million in the first eight months of this year. Most of the pilfered data is composed of "dumps," the term card thieves use to describe data that's stored on the magnetic stripe of payment cards. The stolen dumps can be transferred to new cards that crooks use to buy electronics, gift cards, and other large-ticket items from big-box stores. An analysis based on how many of the cards had expiration dates in the future suggests that more than 14 million of the leaked records could still be valid.

This is a must see! :-D

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