Google announces YouTube Gaming, its competitor for Twitch

The rumors were true, as it turns out. After it didn’t manage to purchase Twitch last year (which eventually got grabbed by Amazon), Google is launching a competing service. It’s called YouTube Gaming (and not YouTube Live as previously leaked), and it will become available “this summer”. YouTube Gaming will first be offered in the US and UK.

It will come with a new website and app, which will feature gaming-related videos and live streams, powered by what Google calls “the biggest community of gamers on the web”.

People are already using YouTube to post gaming videos, and this will give them a dedicated home. More than 25,000 games will each have their own page on YouTube Gaming, which will collect the best videos and live streams about that particular title. The service will also have channels from game developers and YouTube creators.

You’ll be able to easily add a game to your collection, letting you quickly get to the latest videos about it. As for channels, you’ll subscribe to get notified when they start a live stream. Recommendations will be shown to you based on the games you like, and search inside YouTube Gaming will be restricted to game-related queries.

“In the coming weeks” it will become simpler to upload your gameplay to YouTube, thanks to “an improved live experience”. And you won’t need to schedule a live event ahead of time anymore. Furthermore, you will get a single link you can share for all your streams.

Amazon releases its first report on government requests for user data

Following other US tech giants – including Google, Twitter, and Facebook, Amazon has released its first transparency report, revealing government requests for user information it received for the period January 1, 2015, through May 31, 2015.

As per the report, the e-commerce giant received 813 subpoenas and 25 search warrants during the period, and it responded fully to only 542 and 13 of them, respectively. In addition, the company also received 13 court orders, 0-249 national security requests, 132 non-US requests, and 1 removal request.

“While we recognize the legitimate needs of law enforcement agencies to investigate criminal and terrorist activity, and cooperate with them when they observe legal safeguards for conducting such investigations, we oppose legislation mandating or prohibiting security or encryption technologies that would have the effect of weakening the security of products, systems, or services our customers use,” said Stephen Schmidt, chief information security officer for Amazon Web Services.

He also claimed that the company never participated in the NSA’s PRISM program.

Windows 10 kicks off on July 29

Microsoft announced today the official availability of the upcoming Windows 10 – July 29. That’s less than two months from now, which means Microsoft has nothing left to do but polish a few edges.

Windows 10 will introduce universal apps, Cortana, Microsoft Edge browser to replace the Internet Explorer, new Office 2016 included in Windows 10 for free, Xbox Live app and integration, new multimedia apps, among others.

The major OS update will also include a better Windows Store, Windows Hello login, and continuum functionality for easy switching between tablet and PC interfaces on convertibles.

As of now, if you own a Windows Phone smartphone you can ask Cortana about the Windows 10 release date and she’ll give you an answer.

Windows 10 comes on July 29 and will be a free upgrade. In fact, if you have a Windows 8-running PC or slate, as of today you can notice a new Windows icon next to your clock. It will allow you to reserve your Windows 10 update and will download it for you the minute it becomes available. Neat!

Oppo is now an official partner of FC Barcelona for three years

Tie-ups between smartphone makers and football teams are nothing new, as you may know. But this is the first we’ve seen Oppo go this route. The Chinese company has inked a partnership agreement with FC Barcelona, one of the biggest football clubs on the planet.

The deal has been signed for three years. During this time, the Oppo brand will be visible at the Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona, and you should probably expect to see some cooperation in the field of TV ads too.

Perhaps we’ll soon spot a few Barcelona players rocking Oppo devices? The exact terms of the deal have obviously been kept under wraps, but it sounds like we’re going to see the first results of this partnership in the very near future. This will undoubtedly help Oppo further build its brand awareness across the globe.

Intel brings more graphics power to new fifth generation Core, quad-core processors

Intel has managed to maintain supremacy on the CPU front for quite some time now. The company has built such a formidable reputation for itself, that it is truly a household name. Few people, however, tend to associate the chip maker with graphics and beastly GPU performance.

With its fifth generation Broadwell architecture, Intel pushed the envelope even further in terms of power to performance ratios. Yet, if you want a truly capable onboard graphics solution, Intel chips typically get outshined by what AMD’s APUs have to offer. The California company has been trying hard to bridge this gap in performance and its latest additions to the Broadwell lineup are a testament to this effort.

A total of five new chips were showcased at Computex 2015. They all employ the 14nm Broadwell architecture, but are bundled with new Intel Iris Pro 6200 Graphics chipsets. The new GPU chips promises impressive performance gains, while still retaining the all-important power-efficiency. To quote the presentation

The new lineup consists of two desktop models, bearing the “C” moniker and working on LGA1150 socket and three mobile chips with an “R” in the name, intended for a BGA1364 socket. The 6 all have a TDP of 65W and have four physical cores, which is a first for the Broadwell line. But, this is not the only novelty in the new models. This is actually the first time Intel has included its Iris Pro graphics series in desktop silicon. This definitely shows a level of confidence in their performance. The full list of new Core i5 and Core i7 processors, announced today, can be found in the table below.

Model	Cores / Threads	Clock / Turbo	L3-cache	IGP	Memory	TDP	Socket
Core i5-5575R	4 / 4	2,8 / 3,3GHz	4MB	Iris Pro 6200	ddr3l-1600	65W	BGA1364
Core i5-5675C	4 / 4	3,1 / 3,6GHz	4MB	Iris Pro 6200	ddr3l-1600	65W	LGA1150
Core i5-5675R	4 / 4	3,1 / 3,6GHz	4MB	Iris Pro 6200	ddr3l-1600	65W	BGA1364
Core i7-5775C	4 / 8	3,3 / 3,7GHz	6MB	Iris Pro 6200	ddr3l-1600	65W	LGA1150
Core i7-5775R	4 / 8	3,3 / 3,8GHz	6MB	Iris Pro 6200	ddr3l-1600	65W	BGA1364

As far as pricing goes, nothing has been officially announced yet, but, previous rumors hint at a price of about $479.99 for the top of the line Core i7-5775C and $349.99 for the Core i5-5675C. Currently, the Core i7-4790K and Core i5-4690K cost around $339 and $242, so, there is quite a substantial premium to be paid. Still, the new models are quite a viable choice for any build that does not require a dedicated GPU.

Nintendo NX game console will not run Android after all

Yesterday, it was reported about a possibility that Nintendo will adopt Google’s Android platform for its upcoming game console codenamed NX.

However, today a company spokesperson refuted the claims and stated that there is no truth to the report. No reasons were cited for not using Android for NX game console. There goes a possibility of having yet another Android game console down the drain.

If Nintendo had adopted Android platform, they would not only have an access to an ecosystem having large audience with different devices but also a large number of developers. However, Nintendo seems to be working on something of its own.

This means that in all likeliness the Nintendo’s NX console will sport a custom operating system. There’s no assurance whether the rumored mobile games sync will be supported with NX either.