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Mark Rober will bring his scientific talents to Netflix with two upcoming projects. Rober is a former NASA engineer who parlayed his skills into an entertaining and educational YouTube career. In past years, we’ve seen him develop not just one, but two stinky glitter bombs to fend off porch package thieves, as well as leading work on a Guinness World Record-holding robot called the Dominator. 

According to an announcement from Netflix, Rober “will bring some of his most beloved, ambitious, and informative experiments” to the streaming platform later this year. Then in 2026, he’ll also host a competition series aimed at kids and family viewers. Rober’s CrunchLabs business and Kimmelot, late night host Jimmy Kimmel’s production company, will be producing.

Netflix has been adding several YouTube creators to its content lineup, with a particular angle toward family-friendly science programs. Earlier this year, it brought some content from Rachel Accurso’s Ms. Rachel channel, with educational topics for very young children, to the platform.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/youtuber-mark-rober-is-bringing-his-experiments-to-netflix-201853920.html?src=rss 

NVIDIA’s GeForce NOW game streaming service is leveling-up in September with the addition of RTX 5080 GPUs, which will allow for 5K streaming at up to 120fps (or 1080p/320fps for the truly frame-hungry). While you’ll need to be on the $20-a-month GeForce Now Ultimate tier to use RTX 5080 streaming servers, NVIDIA at least isn’t raising that tier’s price. Subscribers at that level will still receive 100 hours of monthly playtime (with 15 hours of rollover), up to eight-hour long sessions and access to all of GPU’s respective DLSS features, including Frame Generation.

NVIDIA claims the RTX 5080 GeForce Now servers will perform up to 2.8 times faster than the current RTX 4080 systems — but of course, that’s due to the new GPU’s 4X Frame Gen capabilities, which interpolates frames using AI modeling. The 4080 only supports up to 2X Frame Generation. At launch, GeForce Now’s RTX 5080 servers will support popular games like Doom: The Dark Ages, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Cyberpunk 2077 and Flight Simulator. We’re still waiting for a full list of supported titles from NVIDIA, as well updates on when we can expect more games that will support the RTX 5080.

While the raw power of the RTX 5080 will be the main draw for the GeForce NOW Ultimate tier, NVIDIA is also improving something that’s always bothered me with game streaming: image quality. No matter the resolution and framerate I’ve seen while streaming games across multiple services, I’ve always noticed that the color fidelity and overall sharpness doesn’t look as good as rendering a game locally on a PC. NVIDIA’s new Cinematic Quality Streaming (CQS) aims to change that, with support for YUV 4:4:4 chroma subsampling (for more accurate colors), smoother video streaming performance with the AV1 codec, and AI video filtering to reduce artifacts. CQS will also be able to automatically detect and optimize its settings for the DPI of your screen — that’s helpful for high DPI laptop screens.

With CQS turned on, GeForce Now streams will max out at a hefty 100Mbps. That’ll make it ideal for people with 1Gbps or faster connections, but it could be out of reach if you’ve got slower internet or restrictive bandwidth caps. I’ve only seen a screenshot of CQS in action, but it’s definitely something I’ll be testing further once the new GeForce NOW servers launch in September.

NVIDIA also plans to expand the number of titles on GeForce NOW with a new feature called Install-to-Play games, which will automatically get installed to cloud storage servers. Performance and Ultimate-tier subscribers will get 100GB of storage for free, and they can upgrade to 200GB for $2.99 monthly, 500GB for $4.99 per month and 1TB for $7.99. Typically, GeForce NOW games are preinstalled on servers and wait for players to queue them up. (It’s also worth noting that the service taps into games you’ve already bought on existing storefronts like Steam, your subscription doesn’t get you a collection of games to play like Xbox cloud streaming.)

NVIDIA says that GeForce Now will have up 2,300 pre-installed games this year, and together with Install-to-Play options there will be over 4,500 games on the service. That goes a long way towards making GeForce Now more appealing to mainstream players — if you could play most new titles over the cloud for a monthly fee, why have a gaming PC at all?

To that end, NVIDIA is also making GeForce NOW work even better across a wide variety of devices. It’ll support up to 90fps on the Steam Deck through its native app, and it will also stream in 5K on newer LG OLED monitors. LG TVs will also get a native GeForce NOW app that supports up to 4K 120Hz streams, a first for any TV maker. NVIDIA also says that many Logitech racing wheels will be supported, as well. (Though I wonder how many people are traveling with wheels when they want to game on the go.)

While its unclear if game streaming will ever replace local gaming, GeForce NOW is certainly getting close with the addition of RTX 5080 GPUs and a wealth of new features. And given the rise of streaming TV service costs these days, its pricing seems relatively fair. You can test out a free ad-supported version of GeForce NOW, or pay $10 a month (or $100 a year) for ad-free 1,440p support. For most people, especially if they’re just streaming to laptops and handhelds, that’ll be more than enough. But the Ultimate tier isn’t unreasonable at $20 a month, $100 for six months or $200 annually. That’s a small price to pay to game in 4K (and 5K!) without a huge rig.

During my recent testing of GeForce NOW Ultimate with RTX 4080 servers, I noticed that it’s relatively easy to launch games, performance is generally smooth and it works well across handhelds, TVs and multiple computers. I’d expect much of the same for the RTX 5080 servers, but I’ll report back next month when they actually launch.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/nvidias-geforce-now-game-streaming-gets-rtx-5080-gpus-better-image-quality-and-more-193040331.html?src=rss 

NordVPN announced today in a blog post that its Meshnet feature will shut down on December 1. All aspects of Meshnet will stop working on that date, though nothing else about NordVPN will be affected. If you were using Meshnet to connect computers, route web traffic through a personal device or share files, you’ll need to find another solution by December.

As I mentioned in my NordVPN review, Meshnet was one of the most envelope-pushing features on any VPN, letting users link their devices through a NordLynx tunnel without needing to go through a third-party server. Once the tunnel was set up, you could access either device through the other one to share files or access services. With enough connected devices, you could check your work email, visit a friend’s media server, play a remote game on another server and watch your home-based TV subscriptions — all from a single laptop anywhere on the planet. Unbelievably, it was even free to use.

I’m sad to see Meshnet go, but as NordVPN’s blog post makes clear, it never found its audience. As exciting as it was to people like me who spend all day squinting at the guts of VPNs, it didn’t provide enough everyday value to catch on with the majority of NordVPN’s customers. Hindsight shows us that Meshnet’s benefits, like remote desktop and file sharing, were mainly business-oriented; selling those was always going to be an uphill battle in a market where VPNs are more commonly used for personal reasons.

If you’re one of the few people who was actually using Meshnet, you have a few months to arrange alternatives. Should you want to stay within the NordVPN ecosystem, you can replace its file sharing features with NordLocker, which gives you 3 GB of storage for free. Of course, Google Drive is also an option. For remote access, NordVPN recommends ZeroTier, a platform where you can connect up to 10 devices without paying.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/vpn/nordvpn-will-discontinue-meshnet-on-december-1-175538284.html?src=rss 

Human resources technology company Workday has confirmed that a data breach has affected its third-party CRM platform. In a blog post announcing the breach, the company said that a social engineering campaign had targeted its employees, with threat actors posing as IT or HR in order to trick employees into sharing account access or personal information.

The company says that while the threat actors were able to access some information from the CRM, there is no indication of any access to customer accounts or the data within them. “We acted quickly to cut the access and have added extra safeguards to protect against similar incidents in the future,” the post reads. Workday says that the information gathered from the CRM consists of “commonly available” business contact information such as names, email addresses and phone numbers. From the sound of its blog post, the information of Workday end users was not revealed, only information from the companies it has contracts with.

What is known with some certainty at this point is that Workday’s CRM was breached. The company’s statement that “no indication” of a deeper customer data breach was found is far from a guarantee — often, the full scope of hacks like this aren’t known until later.

Earlier this year, Workday laid off around 1,750 employees, or around 8.5 percent of its workforce. The company said it was “prioritizing innovation investments like AI and platform development, and rigorously evaluating the ROI of others across the board.”

The precise third-party CRM Workday is referring to was not disclosed. Earlier this year Google fell victim to a hack via the Salesforce app, and last year Disney said it would stop using Slack, the Salesforce-owned messaging platform, after a hack exposed company data.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/workday-says-hackers-used-social-engineering-to-access-personal-data-during-a-breach-183451732.html?src=rss 

Big Tech’s foray into nuclear power continues as Google announced the site of its first nuclear reactor today, as part of its 2024 deal with startup Kairos Power. Oak Ridge, Tennessee, will be home to the Hermes 2 plant, which will supply Google with 50 megawatts of power under a long-term purchase agreement with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

The Oak Ridge plant is the first in a 500-megawatt deal that comprises multiple small modular reactors (SMRs) to provide power for Google’s data centers in Montgomery County, Tennessee, and Jackson County, Alabama. The Hermes 2 is scheduled to begin operations in 2030.

In a statement, TVA CEO Don Moul said, “Nuclear is the bedrock of the future of energy security. Google stepping in and helping shoulder the burden of the cost and risk for first-of-a-kind nuclear projects not only helps Google get to those solutions, but it keeps us from having to burden our customers with development of that technology.”

Google’s deal with Kairos Power is expected to reach its full 500 MW potential by 2035 and was the first-ever corporate deal to buy nuclear power from SMRs. The financial specifics of the deal have not been released.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-announces-first-nuclear-site-to-power-its-data-centers-162627123.html?src=rss