Since the original 2001 arcade release, Bandai Namco’s series of Taiko drum rhythm games have spawned dozens of entries on various PlayStation, Nintendo, and mobile platforms. Although, cutesy characters WadaDon and twin brother WadaKatsu have never had a debut on Xbox or PC—until now. The only official information on Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master comes from Microsoft’s latest Game Pass release list, the Bandai Namco Asia website, and a tweet from Bandai Namco Europe....

As reported by CNBC, Gates was speaking at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Summit Wednesday about Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Much of what he said related to the Tesla boss’ claims that he would reduce moderation on the platform and embrace the principles of free speech. But Gates questioned Musk’s plan and his ultimate goal for Twitter. “How does he feel about something [on Twitter] that says ‘vaccines kill people’ or that ‘Bill Gates is tracking people?...

On Thursday, several anonymous Activision Blizzard employees told The Washington Post that Diablo IV’s June release date seems unlikely unless they cut parts of the game or there is a massive crunch period. The sources say that the title has already faced several unannounced delays. This claim bears some weight considering that leaks in November indicated the game would arrive in April 2023. A two-month delay on a game already in its beta phase seems reasonable — the extra time should give developers a chance to put the finishing touches and final polish on the title....

As you can see this budget buys you a lot of nice hardware, though the key components are the Intel Core i7-4790K, Gigabyte GTX 980 Gaming G1 and Samsung SSD 850 Pro 512GB. Granted gamers would be better off saving $100 by opting for the Intel Core i5-4690K, but we can’t assume everyone who is interested in the luxury build is a gamer. Furthermore this is a ’luxury build’ and we certainly consider the Core i7-4790K a luxury item....

The AM3+ platform is supported by the 9-series chipsets, which currently include the 990FX, 990X and 970 northbridge with the SB950 southbridge. This chipset series features the same 65nm silicon used by AMD’s previous-generation 8-series chipsets. In fact, the SB950 and SB850 are the same chip and therefore offer the exact same features. The reason for the name change is simply to help the user identify that one is designed for the AM3+ platform while the other supports AM3 processors....

The Radeon HD 5670 performed poorly as did the old Radeon HD 4890 and 4850 graphics cards. The GeForce GTS 450 matched the average frame rate of the Radeon HD 5770, though with 49fps each this is hardly desirable performance. The GeForce GTX 260 was right about on the limits of what we’d like to play Call of Duty: Black Ops at. Meanwhile, the Radeon HD 5830 and GeForce GTX 275 delivered roughly the same performance with over 60fps on average each....

Fraps was used to measure frame rates during a minute of gameplay from the second single-player mission of the first act. The performance was measured from the beginning of the mission, having played through the first few acts the frame rates here seemed to be about as low as they go. We tested the game at three resolutions: 1680x1050, 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 using the maximum in-game quality settings. Gamers will want MW3’s image quality settings on “native” rather than “extra,” which seems counter-intuitive....

This year, the smartphone market experienced one of its worst first quarters of the past several years. Global shipments fell more than 11 percent compared to 2021, and the European market saw its most significant decline in a decade. Some of that decline was expected due to seasonality, so phone makers like Samsung started reducing their production accordingly. That said, market analysts at Counterpoint estimate that mobile chipset revenues grew around 23 percent in the first three months of 2022 thanks to a shift in consumer demand toward more expensive 5G handsets....

This week, a report from McAfee’s security researchers highlighted five Google Chrome extensions that tracked users and manipulated the websites they visited. Collectively, almost a million and a half users installed the extensions. Two of the extensions masqueraded as functions letting users hold Netflix watch parties, while another impersonated a screenshot capture extension. Most pertinent to the scammers’ goals were extensions for price tracking and automatically detecting flash sales. Ultimately, the malware sought to steal affiliate sales commissions from websites where their victims shopped, such as bestbuy....

Oil giants like Shell have now refused to purchase Russian fuel, and fast food chains like McDonald’s have elected to close all the restaurants they’ve opened in Russia. Even tech giants are joining in – with a few notable exceptions, such as Cloudflare. Despite public pressure, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince refuses to disable access to its services in Russia following a round of discussions with “government and civil society experts....

Samsung led the way with 64 million handsets shipped in the third quarter, down 7.8 percent from the same period a year earlier. Apple finished in second with 51.9 million iPhones moved, which represented an increase of 1.6 percent year over year. Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo rounded out the top five but all saw volume decline year over year. Among the top five, only Apple realized growth year on year....

By the time Ryzen 5 came around a month later, AMD took a number of important steps to improve performance and compatibility of the Ryzen platform. Gaming saw noteworthy gains but Ryzen kept trailing the Core i7-7700K in the vast majority of modern titles. At this point, countless theories have been presented to explain Ryzen’s weakness on gaming performance, and most of them have proven to be incorrect. However, early on many noticed that Ryzen’s DirectX 12 performance was not good, which added to the confusion as we expected the core-heavy AMD CPUs to have an advantage using the more modern API....

Posting classified documents about military vehicles on the War Thunder forums is becoming an almost common occurrence. Schematics for the Challenger 2 tank extracted from its Army Equipment Support Publication (AESP) were posted in 2021. There were also leaked documents for the French Leclerc Main Battle Tank and its variants, as well as classified material on Chinese tanks. The War Thunder message boards saw two incidents of restricted military intel posted last week, for the F-16 Fighting Falcon and F-15E US strike fighter, despite the developer’s repeated pleas for players not to post such content, lest the creators “end up chained at the bottom of a disguised CIA cargo ship in international waters....

Destiny 2’s “Dares of Eternity” expansion is making life a living hell for newer players. To begin with, Bungie automatically launches players into the content. Newer players are started at a power level of 1,100. Unfortunately, Dares of Eternity is rated for players 1,150 and above who own the right equipment. Because of this discrepancy, low-level players are stuck in missions they cannot beat. As if that weren’t enough, the matchmaking system only teams together like-level players, essentially trapping groups of noobs in high-level play....

It appears that an open-source developer has intentionally fried two widely used javascript libraries. The commits to faker.js and colors.js caused programs using them to get stuck in an infinite loop. Developers use the faker library to generate fake contextual data for testing or demos, while colors adds color to javascript consoles. Thousands of programs use these public packages, with faker seeing around 2.5 million weekly downloads and another 22....

According to data from AppMagic published by MobileGamer.biz, Diablo Immortal had generated $48.9 million by day 30 after it launched on June 2. That’s what went to Blizzard; it doesn’t include the 30% commission taken by Apple and Google, so the actual amount people spent on the game in this period would have been even higher. Diablo Immortal also managed to rack up 10 million downloads in its first month, though it should be noted that most of these came in its first four days after launch—downloads declined quite sharply after that initial period....

The Dyson Zone air-purifying headphones will make wearers stand out even more than if they were sporting Razer’s Zephyr facemask, given the way it wraps around much of the head. But looking like a quest giver from Shadowrun does have its advantages: Dyson says it’s ideal for city life, able to block pollutants such as gas, allergens, and particulate matter, as well as unwanted noise. The detachable vizor on the bottom half of the device is a miniaturized version of Dyson’s air filtration technology....

Electronic Arts CEO Wilson was speaking at a recent Goldman Sachs event about the Microsoft/Activision deal and what Call of Duty Xbox exclusivity could mean for EA’s multiplayer FPS series, Battlefield, which has long stood in CoD’s shadow. “In a world where there may be questions over the future of Call of Duty and what platforms that might be on or might not be on, being platform agnostic and completely cross-platform with Battlefield, I think is a tremendous opportunity,” he said (via SeekingAlpha/GameSpot)....

Musk’s takeover of Twitter looked in doubt from the moment he announced it was on hold in May as his team looked to confirm reports that the number of fake accounts on the site represented less than 5% of its userbase. Musk later warned that Twitter’s alleged refusal to hand over exact numbers relating to spam/fake accounts constituted a material breach of the deal, leaving him free to walk away without paying the $1 billion termination fee....

Reuters writes that Musk sent the ominous warning in an email titled “pause all hiring worldwide” to Tesla executives. The automaker and its subsidiaries employed around 100,000 at the end of 2021, according to an SEC filing, so a 10% reduction in its workforce would represent a substantial number of layoffs. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, the email arrived just two days after another of Musk’s internal emails demanded that all SpaceX and Tesla employees spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office, adding that anyone who doesn’t show up will have presumably resigned....