It looks like a conference panel may be the source of a new leak of Nvidia news. The annual Hot Chips conference takes place in August and it featured a talk titled "NVIDIA's Next Generation Mainstream GPU." That has since been scrubbed and Nvidia is planning something super secretive at Gamescom 2019, but don't get your hopes up yet.
The Verge reports that some breadcrumbs are pointing toward a reveal a lot sooner than most expect, but there's not a whole lot of weight beyond the scrubbed Hot Chips talk. The Gamescom tip is likely involving a new series of monitors instead of GTX 1180 news, but we'll have to wait and see. Things have been quiet for Nvidia for a while, but not for the sale of high-end GPUs. AMD is also gearing up for its next wave by showing off the 7nm Vega GPU which was shown at Computex.
In the meantime, resident tech specialist Chris Jarrard has put together a guide for how to build the best gaming PC. Cyberpunk 2077 is probably going to be one of the benchmark titles as people prepare to play it at its best, though the requirements for it aren't available just yet. Stay tuned to Shacknews for more updates and look out for more evolutions of Chris's guide content!
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Only a few hours after Google announced the release of new Android updates, Essential is already pushing them to Essential Phones.
Updates include the July 2018 security patch and a stability update for Android Auto.
Essential also pushed those updates to users of the Android P beta, as well as beta updates.
Smartphone manufacturer Essential may be in some hot water, but that hasn’t stopped the company issuing incredibly timely updates to the Essential Phone, its only current device. Today, only hours after Google announced them, Essential is rolling out Android updates to all Essential Phone users.
The updates include the July 2018 security patch for Android as well as some stability tweaks for Android Auto. Essential announced the rollout on Twitter:
It’s the second day of July and we’ve got your monthly security patches ready to go! Oh yeah, we also included some stability improvements for Android Auto. Check your Essential Phone now to download the update. pic.twitter.com/6QS3Ay3O2r
Essential also announced that it is pushing those same updates (as well as the general code updates) to users on the Android P beta, after a fan asked about it:
The Essential Phone will be the first device to get an updated Android P beta after Pixel users, likely leaving all other devices in the beta program (like the OnePlus 6 and Sony Xperia XZ2) in the dust. This will surely make Essential Phone users ecstatic.
Samsung’s rumored Galaxy Tab S4 tablet showed up in a leaked press render.
Based on the render, the tablet will not have home and capacitive buttons.
Samsung will reportedly launch the tablet between now and September.
Even though the Android tablet space is on life support, Samsung does not seem to care and will reportedly launch the Galaxy Tab S4 sometime soon. A leaked press render finally gave us a first look at what the upcoming tablet might look like.
Based on the render that Android Headlines acquired, the Galaxy Tab S4 gets rid of the home button and might feature a larger 10.5-inch display. Along with the display increase might be a shift away from the Galaxy Tab S3’s 4:3 aspect ratio, though the lack of a home button leaves us without a fingerprint sensor.
The Galaxy Tab S4 might feature an iris scanner to make up for the lack of a fingerprint sensor. Alternatively, the tablet might feature an under-the-display fingerprint sensor. That is more of a moonshot, however.
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Best Android tablets (June 2018)
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Elsewhere, the back features Samsung branding next to the “Tuned by AKG” branding. The Galaxy Tab S3 featured similar branding and delivered great sound, thanks in part to there being four stereo speakers. We expect the Galaxy Tab S4 to also feature quad speakers, with two positioned on both edges of the tablet in landscape.
Based on previous rumors, the Galaxy Tab S4 features a 13MP primary camera, 8MP selfie camera, Snapdragon 835 chipset, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, a 7,300mAh battery, and Android 8.1 Oreo. Not much else is known about the tablet, though its recent visit to the FCC indicates that a launch might be around the corner.
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No one is pleased with Sony right now and its divisive approach when it comes to cross-play, but so far the company hasn't budged on easing up on the regulations it has in place when it comes to letting folks play together. That's why it's not surprising that, according to Bethesda Game Studios' Todd Howard, there will be no cross-play in the upcoming online title Fallout 76.
During an interview with German publication GameStar, Howard was asked about the eventual possibility of cross-play multiplayer in Bethesda's online-only RPG. He stated that the team would "love" to do that, but that "right now" it's not possible. After a brief pause, he adds that "Sony isn't being as helpful as we want them to be." That's the quote, verbatim, straight from Howard himself.
This isn't a shocking answer, nor should it come as a surprise that Sony isn't exactly being cooperative, especially with the issues surrounding Switch players being unable to access Fortnite with their Epic Games accounts that previously were used on PlayStation 4 and the like. While Sony has made statements that it could be making strides and working on resolving these problems in the future, it certainly hasn't made any advancements toward fixing the issue just yet. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.
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The 2018 Hearthstone Summer Championship ended in exciting fashion on Sunday with a four-game series that saw Raphael "BunnyHoppor" Peltzer crowned this year's champion. Four players in total advanced to the Hearthstone World Championship in 2019 across a full weekend of action. However, there was one match in particular that followers of competitive Hearthstone will not forget for a long time.
The Shudderwock Shaman is a different type of Exodia (one-turn kill) deck, one in which the player racks up and plays all of the necessary pieces and then plays the legendary 9-Cost 6/6 Shudderwock, which repeats all friendly Battlecries in a random order. At that point, it's death by a thousand cuts, as players watch the animations play out helplessly, fruitlessly hoping that they'll be left with any modicum of Health. However, even after the pieces are laid down, playing Shudderwock is stil not necessarily a guaranteed win.
So what happened when things went terribly wrong for both Fracundo "Nalguidan" Pruzzo and Torben "Viper" Wahl? The match devolved into the very best and worst of Hearthstone, all rolled into a single match.
Photo credits: Blizzard Entertainment
What Needed to Happen
The key to victory in a Shudderwock match involves first playing the following necessary pieces to make the killer final combo work:
Lifedrinker: Saps 3 Health from the opponent. When used multiple times, it eventually brings the opponent down to zero.
Grumble, Worldshaker: This returns friendly minions on the board to the player's hand with the cost of one mana. This allows for repeated Shudderwock plays across subsequent turns.
Murmuring Elemental: The next Shudderwock played on this turn will activate its Battlecry twice.
In order to activate this combo to its fullest potential, players must lay down each of these cards over the course of the game before playing Shudderwock. However, it's not always that simple. There's still a small chance that the final Shudderwock combo can fail.
What Actually Happened
Both players had their Grumble on the board. Viper was on Turn 8 and sensed an opportunity to get ahead of his opponent by playing the Coin and his Shudderwock a turn earlier than Nalguidan expected.
Viper's Shudderwock hit the board and the Battlecries activated in the following order:
Grumble
Lifedrinker
Saronite Chain Gang
Because the Grumble Battlecry activated first, Viper did not receive any copies of Shudderwock in his hand. Instead, he got his own Grumble back. The Saronite Chain Gang Battlecry left him with two 6/6 Shudderwocks on the board. He wasn't completely cooked, because a Glacial Shard Battlecry left the opposing Grumble frozen. If either of the Shudderwocks could survive, Viper could play his 1-Cost Grumble on the next turn and try again.
Unfortunately for him, Nalguidan had an answer. He had received a discounted Murmuring Elemental off of his Grumble, which meant that for his Turn 9 play, he laid down the Murmuring Elemental and Hagatha The Witch. With Hagatha's Battlecry activating twice, it means that her deployment dealt six damage to all minions, which cleared off both of Viper's Shudderwocks.
So Nalguidan should cruise to victory from here, right? Especially because two turns later, he played Far Sight and pulled out a discounted Shudderwock? Not quite.
Viper had a full board, so Nalguidan played a discounted Volcano (also from Far Sight) to repeatedly trigger Viper's Acolyte of Pain and send him into fatigue. With eight mana remaining, Nalguidan played his 6-Cost Shudderwock. The Battlecries activated in the following order:
Grumble
Saronite Chain Gang
Lifedrinker
Yes, because the Grumble Battlecry activated first, Nalguidan's Shudderwock was also a dud. On top of that, the Hagatha Battlecry left him with three 6/3 Shudderwocks on board. Viper was easily able to clear them all with Lightning Storm.
Wait! Then What Happened?
Both players' win conditions were completely out the window. In fact, their backup win conditions in the 7-Attack Grumble were also exhausted. The game was going to come to which player could fatigue the other. However, both players only had card-drawing minions remaining, like Acolyte of Pain and Mana Tide Totem. That meant the next several turns were "Hero Power, Pass" with not much action going on. Both players looked to be at a loss for what to do next, as each of them filled their hands to maximum capacity. The game was ultimately going to come down to calculation and mathematics. Which player could force the other player to draw more and get to the lethal fatigue stage, as a result?
The big difference was that Nalguidan was fortunate enough to draw Hagatha relatively early. Viper's Hagatha sat at the bottom of his deck, so unlike his opponent, Viper could not create random Shaman spells with every minion play. Random Shaman spells meant a lot in this game, with Nalguidan able to cause burst damage with Lightning Bolt, Tidal Surge able to generate Health, and Ancestral Spirit to keep minions on board.
At the end, it was a 6/6 Hemet, Jungle Hunter combined with a Hagatha-generated Spirit Echo spell, which would return everything to Nalguidan's hand, that made all the difference. Even facing down the same level of fatigue, Nalguidan had many more resources that Viper did not and Nalguidan was ultimately able to take this marathon victory.
How Could This Game Have Gone Differently?
In hindsight, Viper had more Saronite Chain Gangs available to him, which could have created more copies of Shudderwock. His odds of the Grumble Battlecry activating first would have been diminished. However, when facing down the same type of deck, one of the most important things is to be the first to get Shudderwock online. With that in mind, Viper went for the glory with the Turn 8 Shudderwock play. One could argue that Viper should have remembered that Nalguidan Grumble'd his Murmuring Elemental back into his hand and that a combo with Hagatha was possible. Nonetheless, it was an admirable gamble, albeit one that would ultimately cost him.
As for Nalguidan, he was the victim of some truly terrible luck. While the Hagatha did contribute to his eventual win, her Battlecry did his Shudderwocks no favors, as it left them within striking distance of the Lightning Storm.
From there, a marathon was unavoidable. Both players had far too many board clear solutions for any remaining mid-level minions, like Hemet and The Black Knight. But trying to burst or go face wasn't the answer either, because of Healing Rain and its degree of effectiveness.
Best Shudderwock Mirror Ever?
This match will go down as one of the worst competitive games ever played, because once both players' Shudderwocks were gone, they were both running on empty. All they could do was Hero Power and pass, out of pure lack of options, which was brutal to sit through as a spectator. And it's not the fault of either of the players. Shortly after the game was over, DisguisedToast went on his Twitch channel and observed that there was very little either player could have done differently. Sometimes that's just how the game goes.
However, the final minutes also ensure that this goes down as one of the most fascinating competitive Hearthstone games ever. With both players down to fatigue and minions that could only make their situations worse, it was an interesting game of mental chess to see who could put themselves in the best situation to win the game.
And on top of that, the long string of bad luck started to become perversely entertaining. Nalguidan's terrible Disovery options for Blazing Invocation was only matched by Viper's rotten luck in continuing to generate Primal Talismans spells, which would only leave him with useless Totems on the board. This was a showcase of bad RNG and it eventually got so bad, it went all the way back around to being entertaining.
The Hearthstone Summer Championship ended with BunnyHoppor as the big winner, but nobody in attendance on Sunday will forget the epic Shudderwock mirror for quite a while.
If you watched the HCT Summer Championship this weekend, what was your most memorable moment? Join the conversation and let us know in the comments.
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One of the biggest stories from this year's E3 2018 presentation was the unveiling of Starfield, the upcoming sci-fi title from the team at Bethesda, representing thei company's first brand-new IP reveal in 25 years. The game's provided trailer was sparse on details; even now, players know almost nothing about the title. However, fans do at least know more about its intended direction, as Bethesda director Todd Howard has provided some insight into Starfield's next-generation design principles and touched on the possibility of a current-generation release.
Speaking to Eurogamer during Gamelab last week, Howard said that the Starfield development team is still trying to determine what sort of hardware would be best to run the game. This apparently means keeping next-generation hardware in mind, but not necessarily closing the door to current-generation technology.
"We're pushing it," Howard said. "[We're] thinking very, very far in future so we're building something that will handle next-generation hardware. That's what we're building on right now, that's where our mind is, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't exist on the current systems as well."
Howard also provided more insight into the game's history, stating that Bethesda had begun discussion on Starfield as far back as 2004, with the original intention of creating the company's own post-apocalyptic universe prior to Bethesda buying the rights to Fallout from Interplay in 2007.
"We had made a list of what we might want to do in the future and an epic science-fiction game has always been on my mind," he said. "OK post-apocalyptic was our first choice, sci-fi was our second at the time - we were going to do our own post-apocalyptic universe if we didn't get Fallout."
Howard has indicated that not only is Starfield in active development, it also exists in a playable form, though it may be some time before players can actually see it running. With that said, there's really no timetable for when fans can expect to hear more about the game — we'll just to wait for more updates from Bethesda.
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