GamingNews

Mike Ybarra joins Blizzard after years as Xbox services boss

October 24, 2019
Blizzard Entertainment is getting a new executive from Microsoft. Mike Ybarra is taking on the role of executive vice president and general manager at the Overwatch and World of Warcraft publisher. This comes two weeks after Ybarra left his long-time position on Microsoft’s Xbox team. Ybarra made the announcement in a statement on Twitter. In that tweet, the Blizzard boss said that he is…
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ComputersNews

Microsoft used magnets to make its Surface Laptop 3 more repairable

October 24, 2019
When Microsoft introduced the Surface Laptop 3 earlier this month, Chief Product Officer Panos Panay casually lifted its top assembly (the part that contains the keyboard) on stage to show that it was designed better than its predecessors. Now, iFixit’s teardown has proven that it truly is quite easy to open the device, which could mean not just a more repairable laptop, but an overall…
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AI & RoboticsNews

AI can help doctors spot brain hemorrhages faster

October 24, 2019
The process relied on a convolutional neural network that pored over 4,396 CT scans. That’s a comparatively small number of samples, but the abnormalities were detailed “at the pixel level,” according to UCSF. In other words, they were far less likely to…
GamingNews

Fortnite’s black hole event broke Twitch and Twitter viewing records

October 24, 2019
It’s been just over a week since Fortnite came back online following a two-day, black hole-induced hiatus. But the event, which ushered in the game’s eleventh season and its all-new redesigned map, was one of the biggest singular online gaming events to date — with more than 7 million concurrent viewers across Twitch, Twitter, and YouTube. Epic Games tells The Verge that the black hole…
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GamingNews

Xbox One hardware falters, but software and services are bright spots

October 23, 2019
Xbox One hardware sales are continuing to fall, and that put a drag on Microsoft’s gaming division. Xbox revenues for Q1 of fiscal 2020 were down from $2.738 billion to $2.542 billion. The end of the generation is here, and people are less willing to go out and buy new hardware that originally debuted in 2013. So just like during Microsoft’s Q4 of fiscal 2018, hardware sales are…
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