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Toyota is to make a $500 million investment in Uber as the pair seek to catch up to competition in the self-driving car space.

The Japanese firm said that the investment would involve the mass production of a fleet of autonomous vehicles. Uber would then deploy these self-driving vehicles as part of its ride hailing service. Toyota's Sienna Minivan model will inspire the autonomous vehicles' design.

Toyota's investment in Uber values the company at $72 billion.

"This agreement and investment marks an important milestone in our transformation to a mobility company as we help provide a path for safe and secure expansion of mobility services like ride-sharing," said Shigeki Tomoyama, executive vice president of Toyota Motor Corporation.

Source: BBC News

Some of Samsung and Panasonic's 4K TVs will soon support the HDR10+ format through a firmware update.

Additionally, 20th Century Fox has committed to incorporating HDR10+ in its upcoming new release slate. The studio is currently exploring several titles for release in the marketplace and plans to announce availability in the coming weeks.

HDR10+ advances the High Dynamic Range (HDR) and HDR10 TV formats. It adds dynamic metadata to each video frame which enables advanced chipsets to create true-to-life picture across a wider range of displays. It is essentially a competitor to Dolby Vision which also seeks to improve HDR.

The issue with Dolby Vision is TV manufacturers filmmakers have to pay significant royalties in order to use the technology. With HDR10+, there is a nominal administrative fee and no royalties. Panasonic, Samsung, 20th Century Fox, Amazon and others are involved with the development of HDR10+.

"Panasonic is happy to announce that through the deployment of a firmware update, the majority of our 2018 4K models are now HDR10+ certified meaning that our viewers will be able to enjoy content even closer to the intentions of the filmmakers," said Toshiharu Tsutsui, Director of Panasonic's TV Business Division.

A US federal judge has extended the ban on the publication of designs for 3D printed gun parts.

US District Judge Robert Lasnik extended a ban on the publication of 3D printed gun part designs by Distributed Defense that was put in place in early August. The ban was set to expire today, but Judge Lasnik cited "irreparable harm" in his decision to extend the ban.

In July, the US Justice Department ruled that blueprints for 3D printed gun parts could be published by Distributed Defense, citing no threat to national security since the types of guns featured in the design could be purchased in stores.

There are also first and second amendment concerns related to the distribution of the files.

Defense Distributed had initially said it would put the designs online for download on August 1, but released them several days earlier. They were downloaded thousands of times before they were removed due to the order of the judge, and are still available to download in other places.

If you need a dose of nostalgia from the history of gaming today you could do no better than watching the new reveal trailer for Streets of Rage 4.

Lizardcube, Guard Crush Games and Dotemu have teamed up to bring a sequel to the legendary Streets of Rage series that ate way too many hours of your childhood. Streets of Rage 4 builds upon the classic trilogy's gameplay with new mechanics, a fresh story and a gauntlet of dangerous stages with a serious crime problem.

It features hand-drawn visuals following on from Lizardcube's Wonder Boy update released in 2017.

There are precious few details available other than you can play two-player co-op as either Axel Stone or Blaze Fielding. Old head Streets of Rage players will be begging for Yuzo Koshiro undoubtedly. We have no idea what consoles it will appear on but Switch is extremely likely given the success of Wonder Boy.

Give it a look:

According to some reports, more people watched pirated streams of KSI vs. Logan Paul online that paid to watch the official stream.

The official pay-to-view stream on YouTube peaked at about 800,000 live viewers during the fight. On top of that, 15,000 people paid to go watch the fight at the Manchester Arena at the weekend. However, pirate streams of the fight reportedly clocked up over one million viewers on Twitch alone.

Twitch responded to criticisms of its handling of pirate streams by stating that it had been responsible to complaints made under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Some users reported problems with the official YouTube stream, which cost $10 to view. On Twitch, many pirate streams were hidden under fake titles such as "Free Fortnite Skins" in an attempt to avoid detection and being shut down.

Twitter's Periscope also reportedly had illegal livestreams of the match being broadcast on the platform, though reportedly not as many as Twitch.

The anticipated bout between the two YouTube personalities ended in a draw and will go to a rematch in the United States at a later date.

Microsoft has announced Xbox All Access, a two-year financing deal that gets customers an Xbox One console, access to Xbox Game Pass and an Xbox Live Gold subscription.

Rumors of such a financing deal had been doing the rounds and have now manifested in a 24 month contract offer. Starting at $21.99 per month, a customer will receive an Xbox One S console, access to Xbox Game Pass which provides over 100 game titles and an Xbox Live Gold subscription.

To kick to a more powerful Xbox One X console, the monthly fee rises to at least $34.99 for the 24 month period. At the end of the 24 months, the console will belong to the customer. Prices of course vary depending on bundles.

For the time being the offer is limited to the United States and only from Microsoft's stores. It is also being presented as a time-limited offer by Microsoft. In order to avail of the offer you need to apply for, and be granted, a Dell Preferred Account.

More information: Microsoft

27 years ago, on the 25th of August in 1991 to be exact, a student from University of Helsinki posted on a newsgroup seeking for feedback for what he called a hobby project.

That is of course Linux, the hobby project started by Linus Torvals, that has since conquered the world. In the original post Linus was looking for feedback for fellow Minix users. He had been working on his replacement for Minix since April, and was ready to get it out there.

It obviously still took a while before Linux was ready for a proper spotlight, but the cat was out of the bag.

Linux grew into the largest open source project ever seen and the most adopted operating system. Even though originally it was perhaps meant for desktop computers, that is probably the only form of computing it hasn't dominated.

From the tiniest computers, the ones in your fridges and routers, to the largest supercomputers there is no competition. And of course nowadays it is in 2 billion pockets worldwide thanks to Android, Google's mobile OS built on Linux.

There is no other project as important to the open source philosophy as Linux. And the OS practices what they preach, as over 99% of the source code is now by someone else than the original creator.

As you might know, camera company RED has been working on their own smartphone for a few years now. We first heard of this device now more than a year ago when they officially announced it.

The phone that promises a modular design with unforeseen camera prowess and a holografic display was supposed to ship early 2018 but we had to wait until a couple weeks ago to learn that RED was finally getting the Hydrogen ready to ship. According to the company the first pre-orders will land in October and Hydrogen should be available to all in November, at least in the cheaper Aluminum version in both black and silver.

Mind you cheap for RED isn't cheap for many others, including Apple. The Aluminum version costs $1249, and Titanium version that is supposed to ship early next year, is a few hundred more.

Anyway, we've known all this for a while now, but we haven't previously seen are the actual press photos of the actual device. Previously we've had to rely on 3D renders, but now you can feast your eyes on these beautiful pictures.

Without further ado, I give you RED Hydrogen One in all it's peculiar glory.

The leading quadrocopter – perhaps more commonly known as drones &Ndash; manufacturer, DJI, has released two new models. The second generation of Mavic drones consists of Mavic 2 Pro and Mavic 2 Zoom.

The latter is the more affordable one that also comes with an 2X optical zoom. The camera setup offers 24 mm to 48 mm optical conversion which allows you to get closer up footage with a push of a button.

Pro version on the other hand features a Hasselblad branded camera system with an impressive one inch and 20 megapixel sensor. Adjustable aperture is said to range from f/2.8 to f/11. Mavic 2 Pro also has an improved color grading support with the new 10-bit DLOG-M profile.

Both drones capture video in 4K with h.265 compression and Mavic 2 Pro support HDR photos that combine several photos in one high dynamic one. They also have an improved, omnidirectional, obstacle sensing.

You can learn more about the duo by watching DJI's own video below. As for the price, DJI Mavic 2 Pro starts at $1449 and Mavic 2 Zoom at $1249.

Nvidia finally revealed the first gamer cards from the new generation of GPUs earlier this week. The GeForce RTX 2000 series shares one major difference to the previous generation which might need some explaining.

For years Nvidia has had GeForce GPUs, and for many of those years, lately, the GeForce's were accompanied with a (faux) acronyms like GTX. Well, this time around Nvidia has changed the acronym to RTX, and this time around it kind of means something.

So RTX is what makes the new generation, the 2000 series, special. It all comes down to the RT Core that is a new processing unit in Turing architecture that takes care of ray tracing. Obviously, thus the RT is both RT Core and RTX.

So this technique in producing light and shadow effect in games has been majorly improved. But what does it exactly mean? Many times has Nvidia explained this in Giga Rays/s and so on, but that doesn't really tell you what it looks like.

Well, thanks to DICE, the developer of the upcoming Battlefield V, we have now real-time gameplay footage to feast our eyes on. As you can see, the differences are huge between RTX on and RTX off.

Google is planning to revamp Chrome's UI a little in less than two weeks. The search giant's own browser will get an update to its 69th version on September 4 which will aim to improve the user experience.

The user interface will be changing no matter what version you use, be it desktop or mobile, and will include updated graphics in terms of colors and shapes of the elements. Google is moving towards what it calls Material Design, a design language that is playful with rounded corners and easy to approach in its simplicity.

The design isn't anything new really, many of Google's websites and services already sport the look that was originally developed in 2014, but Chrome has been lacking behind a bit.

In addition to new look and some changes in the UI, Chrome 69 will also support Windows 10 notifications, Windows 10 touchpad gesture navigation as well as few other minor improvements on Windows.

The biggest changes, though, are heading iOS's way. Chrome 69 on iOS will get a complete UI revamp and things like navigation buttons are going to be moving from the top of the screen to bottom.

As everyone knows, Apple is raking up major profits. One of the more impressive money making machines is the app ecosystem that rains straight into Cupertino coffers without Tim Cook having to lift a finger.

Some aren't that impressed, though, and even want to bypass what the harshest critique could consider rent-seeking. Netflix might not be one of those but nonetheless wants to minimize the fees Apple collects from the in-app purchase of Netflix subscriptions.

Apple's margin for in-app purchases is a very steep 30 percent for the first year, which obviously cuts deep into Netflix's profits. After the first year the royalty share drops to 15 percent.

According to TechCrunch, Netflix is testing a new payment method which involves their own mobile website through which the payment is made. The company is currently trying this out in 33 markets in Europe, Latin America and Asia.

This doesn't mean that you'll be keeping any of the 30 percent Netflix saves. The prices are the same, slowly increasing, slightly region specific ones that you've paid before.

The people selected in this trial will be automatically redirected to the new payment page instead of iTunes when selecting a subscription. The test period is said to end in September, but if all goes well expect the method to be applied more comprehensively.

Microsoft is planning on unveiling a new type of service in the near future called Xbox All Access. The service, like its name suggests, not only gives you access to a extensive game catalog but the game system itself too.

According to a report by The Verge, Microsoft is going to start offering Xbox All Access with both Xbox One S and Xbox One X. The more powerful game console plus the Live Gold and Game Pass it comes with would cost $34.99 on a 24 month contract.

For now it is said that Xbox All Access, which I'm sure will soon be christened XAA or XBAA, is limited to those in the United States but one can expect expansion if people love it.

Smartphones have made the products as a subscription service a huge market, and one could imagine another technology driven product to fare similarly well. For customers the game subscription part makes even more sense, though, since the game prices are relatively high compared to the hardware.

Windows Central writes that the price of the cheaper Xbox One S with the Xbox All Access should be around $22. But that means you'll be missing out on the higher fidelity 4K experience.

Internet Relay Chat, better known by its acronym IRC, is celebrating a birthday. In fact this year the chat protocol is turning 30, University of Oulu, the birthplace of IRC, reports.

IRC was developed in University of Oulu in Finland in the late 80s. The messaging platform was created in the Computer Science department as a replacement for their BBS-based messaging platform called MultiUser Talk, or MUT.

In August of 1988, exact date unknown, Computer Science student Jarkko Oikarinen released IRC, both server and client software, that he had developed over the summer. The first server was run by a Sun-3 computer in the Department of Information Processing Science lab.

If you aren't familiar with IRC, it's a text-based real-time chat software where users can create and join channels for example based on their interests or group of friends.

Obviously the implementation of IRC was very successful since its been used for 30 years and continues to be used, although in much more limited fashion compared to, say, mid- to late 90s.

Modern chat software, including the likes of Slack and Discord, borrow a lot from the classic channel-based messaging platform.

Nvidia has finally come out and launched the new GeForce RTX series. The company unveiled the new graphics cards, three of them to be exact, at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany.

After the company released the first product using the new Turing architecture, the $10,000 behemoth RTX 8000, they've now released the real beef. Gamer-oriented RTX 2000 series includes RTX 2070, RTX 2080 and the top dog RTX 2080 Ti.

Each three cards will also come in a Founder Edition version, as expected.

What makes the new GPUs better than the previous GTX generation, you might ask. Well, pretty much everything you need to know is in the R of RTX, and that is ray tracing.

Turing-based GeForce RTX cards have now a separate ray tracing cored, called simply RT Core, that allows the GPU to excel at that specific technique. This makes the calculations on lighting and shadows much faster. That obviously means not only less computing time but potentially much more photorealistic detail.

When it comes to performance not regarding ray tracing, we'll just have to see after the first tests, but for now we can assume there's at least a slight boost.