Month: May 2018

Matrix Games announced today that Command LIVE: Commonwealth Collision, the latest expansion of the Command series will be released on May 10th.

Will you lead the most impressive Carrier Task force ever gathered after World War II or will you take the opportunity to destroy it?

Main Features

• Playable as the India-UK or Pakistan-China alliances.
• Battle with or against a fleet of multiple aircraft carriers that includes the brand-new HMS Queen Elizabeth and INS Vikrant, along with the Type 45 destroyer.
• Attack or defend a target set that includes seaport facilities, a deployed brigade, and even an admiral in his personal aircraft.
• Coordinate the efforts of units that vary wildly in capability. Each side has a mixture of western and eastern platforms that range from fresh and untested to old and obsolete in terms of individual quality. Knowing the strengths and limits of each one is key to victory.
• Control such potential game changers as the CM-400AKG anti-ship missile, F-35 stealth fighter, Astute-class submarine, and Soar Dragon high-altitude drone.
• Command a force with fewer resources than a Nimitz CSG or Backfire regiment, making intelligent planning and asset management necessary.

Get more information about the game from its official Product Page. The game will also be available on Steam.

Check out these latest hardware announcements for today from around the web. Also included are some hardware news bits, and on some days, a few rumors tossed in for good measure. Click on the links below to read the official press release, visit the products web page, or to an independent news source.

• CORSAIR Launches New SPEC-OMEGA RGB Case
• ID-Cooling Announces the Addressable LED CHROMAFLOW 240 AIO Cooler
• ENERMAX Launches T.B.SILENCE ADV, the Superior Ultra Silent Fan
• CORSAIR Carbide SPEC-05 Mid Tower PC Gaming Case Silently Released
• EK Releases Limited Edition Supremacy Edge Water Blocks
• MSI Intros Optix AG32CQ Curved Gaming Monitor
• NETGEAR Debuts Industry-First Orbi Tri-Band Mesh WiFi Cable Modem Router System
• Akasa Intros Compact AMD Socket CPU Cooler
• ASRock Issues Statement on Phantom Gaming Series Graphics Card Regional Availability
• Linksys Ships New High-Performance WRT32XB Gaming Router

Steam News announces a free weekend and sale are underway for Call of Duty: WWII. From now until Sunday, May 6th at 1PM PDT, Call of Duty: WWII Multiplayer is free to access on PC!

Details:

• All progression carries over from free trial to full title once purchased
• All inventory items and unlockables will carry over from free trial to full title once purchased

There’s also a Steam Discount on WWII from today until May 7th:

• Call of Duty: WWII – 35% Discount
• Call of Duty: WWII Digital Deluxe Edition – 25% Discount
• Call of Duty: WWII Season Pass – 20% Discount

Get in and try it out on your own, or party up with your friends!

Slitherine announces Aggressors: Ancient Rome – the new turn-based 4X strategy game that brings you back to the ancient world. A mix of deep gameplay and rich historical flavour, Aggressors lets you relive history as the ruler of one of the mighty civilizations of the Mediterranean world. Choose Rome to conquer the Mare Nostrum, or Carthage and build an immortal trading empire. Choose one of twenty available factions and conquer the world, changing the course of history, from Egypt to Athens and Sparta.

• Be like Gaius Marius, with his exceptional abilities in reforming Rome and its army. You can manage all aspects of your empire: war, trade, internal politics, diplomacy and cultural development. Rule your empire by managing its internal politics and developing its economy. Establish trade routes to reap wealth, ensure the loyalty of your citizens, manage demographics, technological research, internal reforms, and laws; the tools at your disposal are endless and seamlessly integrate with each other. But beware: citizens react to the current situation and they can move to other places when they are not happy.
• Be like Caesar, with his unparalleled strategic genius.Experience the incredibly deep combat system, with each unit having its own abilities and traits, with terrain affecting the outcome in a meaningful way. Army morale and the supply system are crucial and need to be considered before any battle. You will need all your guile and strategic mastery to triumph on the battlefield. Vae victis!
• Be like Hannibal, play your own way and surprise the enemy. Play on your strengths, beware of your weaknesses. The ancient world is brutal, for no mercy shall be given to the defeated. Twenty factions, from migrating barbarian tribes to advanced empires, which interact with each other through an extremely detailed diplomatic system. Make use of more than ten available diplomatic agreements, including the possibility of forming Federations and Confederations as well as affecting nations and provinces in your sphere of influence.
• Believe us, you never played a 4X like Aggressors. Manage all aspects of your mighty empire with complete freedom: you can decide to start with an advanced nation surrounded by newer civilizations, or you can choose to start as a young tribe, ready to take on an older and decadent empire… or you can decide to completely randomize the map and play in a uniquely generated world. The choice is yours!Dive into Aggressor at your own pace: thanks to the tutorial and tool tips you can gradually explore all the options available to you.

Aggressors: Ancient Rome will be available on Steam and PC in Q3. The Beta is open now! Slitherine is looking for experienced players who want to test their abilities in Aggressors. Join up here! You can watch the Aggressor: Ancient Rome – Join the Beta Trailer and find out more about Aggressors: Ancient Rome at the games official webpage.

Matrix Games announce that Order of Battle: Sandstorm is going to be released on May 16th!

In Order of Battle: Sandstorm you’re going to lead a whole new range of units in a series of new exciting scenarios. Will you manage to earn the title of Desert Fox?

We have something else to show you until then – including something that is new to the Order of Battle expansions, so stay tuned!

Get more information about Order of Battle: Sandstorm from its product page!

By Paul Alcorn @ Tom’s Hardware

The online German computer magazine Heise.de is reporting that eight new Spectre-class vulnerabilities have been discovered. The vulnerabilities purportedly affect Intel and ARM processors, but the impact on AMD processors remain unknown. We reached out to Intel for comment, and the company provided this statement, which neither confirms nor denies the vulnerabilities:

Protecting our customers’ data and ensuring the security of our products are critical priorities for us. We routinely work closely with customers, partners, other chipmakers and researchers to understand and mitigate any issues that are identified, and part of this process involves reserving blocks of CVE numbers. We believe strongly in the value of coordinated disclosure and will share additional details on any potential issues as we finalize mitigations. As a best practice, we continue to encourage everyone to keep their systems up-to-date.

Much like the first round of Spectre vulnerabilities, these newly discovered vulnerabilities rely upon a side-channel attack on a processors’ speculative execution engine. As per normal and responsible reporting policies, the teams of researchers that discovered the attacks are not releasing details until processor vendors are given a reasonable amount of time to develop patches, which should help ward off exploits, at least for now.

Read more…

Source: Guru3D

AMD has finished up its patches for vulnerabilities that security company CTS Labs announced last month. The chip designer reports that the updates for, among others, Epyc chips are in the final phase of testing and should become available next month through a Firmware patch.

CTS Labs announced the bugs unexpectedly and without any warning a while ago, according to the security company, it would take many months to close the vulnerabilities. CTS recently once more contacted Toms Hardware to ‘express their concern about the lack of updates from AMD regarding these vulnerabilities’. The company said it believed many of the vulnerabilities ‘would take months to fix’. One of them, Chimera, would even require a hardware change.

Read on…

Source: TechPowerUp!

NVIDIA today released the GeForce 397.55 Hotfix drivers to address various issues that many users have been experiencing. Primarily, the drivers fix the pesky problem where a few GTX 1060 models would throw up a Code 43 error in Device Manager after driver installation putting users’ systems into an endless restart loop. The new drivers also contain fixes for occasional Netflix playback stuttering and the display driver being removed when a system has been idling during an extended period of time. Lastly, NVIDIA added support for Microsoft Surface Book notebooks.

You can download the new GeForce 397.55 Hotfix drivers from GeForce Experience and GeForce.com.

Check out these latest hardware announcements for today from around the web. Also included are some hardware news bits, and on some days, a few rumors tossed in for good measure. Click on the links below to read the official press release, visit the products web page, or to an independent news source.

• ADATA XPG Launches INFAREX K20 Gaming Keyboard
• Noctua Presents NF-A12x25 120mm Fan, 140mm Adaptor and Redux Line NF-P12
• DeepCool Intros New Ark 90 Electro Limited Edition Case
• Patriot Launches Ultimate TRINITY 3-in-1 Adaptive USB Flash Drive
• Sony Announces the SL-E USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C External SSD

Light Cruisers Join An Already Impressive Line-Up of Warships As Naval Forces Closed Beta Testing Approaches

Ahead of the upcoming launch of War Thunder’s Naval Forces Closed Beta, which will see the first reveal of the game’s early ship tech trees, developer Gaijin Entertainment presents a new class of warships to be added to the game – light cruisers. This class will feature the most powerful armament among all the ships in the game. Their sheer size and destructiveness will make them a centerpiece of any naval battle, entrusting their captains with great power and responsibility over the battle’s outcome.

The first two models of light cruisers presented are the British HMS Enterprise, an Emerald-class light cruiser, and the Italian Giussano-class light cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni. The HMS Enterprise is capable of speeds up to 33 knots, boasts good armour, and is armed with seven 152mm main cannons, as well as anti-aircraft cannons, machine guns, and even torpedo tubes. The Bartolomeo Colleoni is slightly faster at 37 knots and surpasses the HMS Enterprise in armament, as it offers eight 152mm main cannons plus six additional 100mm long range cannons. Its protective capabilities, however, are considerably weaker, with only 24mm of hull armour in comparison to the 76.4mm offered by the British ship. Captains of the Bartolomeo Colleoni will also have to keep an extra eye on the sky, considering the noticeably weaker anti-air defense compared to the HMS Enterprise. The latter, however, still remains susceptible to attacks from daring torpedo bombers, given that the British ship will need more time to maneuver than the faster Italian vessel.

In War Thunder Naval Battles, light cruisers are well placed at distance from smaller enemy vessels, in such conditions, they can inflict severe damage on the enemy fleet while sustaining fire even from two destroyers simultaneously. In close combat, armour-piercing shells can deal devastating damage to light cruisers, and they always need to keep an eye out for enemy torpedo boats sneaking dangerously close. Played strategically, light cruisers protected by destroyers and patrol ships will be able to assert dominance over an entire sea sector, securing strategic positions and blocking enemies from advancing through an area of interest.

More information about the new class of warships in War Thunder and the progress of the Naval Forces Closed Beta is available on the game’s official website HERE.