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Submission + - Intel Unveils 5th Gen Core Series Broadwell-U CPUs And Cherry Trail Atom (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Intel has officially taken the wraps off it's 5th generation Core Series notebook processor, code named Broadwell-U. This new SoC is a "tick" in Intel's tick-tock plan, which means it's mostly a die shrink of the existing Haswell architecture, at least, on the CPU side. On the GPU side, there's a bevy of improvements and advances, and the video decoder block has been beefed up with dual bit stream decoders in its high-end (GT3) hardware. Other feature improvements and capabilities are expected, though Intel has been quiet on exactly what they have tweaked and changed to date. Intel is claiming that the architecture will boost battery life by 1.5 hours, speed video conversions, and offer a whopping 22% improvement to 3D performance — a gain on par with what we saw when moving from Ivy Bridge to Haswell. Intel also took the wraps off their next gen Atom CPU, code named Cherry Trail. This is essentially a 14nm Bay Trail die shrink that's been on the roadmap for a while. As with Haswell-Broadwell, the Bay Trail-Cherry Trail shift is aimed at improving CPU power consumption and overall SoC power characteristics, though again, we'll see an updated GPU baked in as well.

Submission + - NVIDIA Announces Tegra X1 Chip And Drive CX And PX Automotive Platforms (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: For the last few years, NVIDIA has taken advantage of the lead-up to the Consumer Electronics Show to announce new Tegra-powered mobile architectures and this year we're being treated to more of the same. Today, NVIDIA unveiled its upcoming Tegra X1 system on a chip (SoC) and a few automotive computer systems leveraging the chip. Tegra X1 is a significant departure from the previous-gen Tegra K1 in that it features a 256 core Maxwell-derived GPU and eight CPU cores; four ARM A57 cores and four A53s in a big.LITTLE configuration. NVIDIA claims the Tegra X1 offers up to 2x the performance of the Tegra K1 in a similar power envelope, thanks to improved efficiency in the CPU and GPU cores and because the chips will be built using TSMC's 20nm manufacturing process. In addition to the Tegra X1 itself, NVIDIA also announced some new automotive computing platforms, the NVIDIA Drive CX Digital Cockpit Computer and Drive PX Auto-Pilot Platform, along with the Drive Studio software suite for developing in-car infotainment systems and autonomous driving systems.

Submission + - Hackers Leak Xbox One SDK Claiming Advancement In Openness And Homebrew (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Microsoft, it seems, just can't catch a break. Days after a major hack took its servers offline on Christmas day, and after being lambasted in multiple stories for shipping games like Halo: The Master Chief Collection in nigh-unplayable condition, the company's Xbox One SDK has been leaked to the public by a group calling itself H4LT. H4LT, which apparently objects to being called a hacker group, offered this explanation when asked why it was distributing the SDK. The group claims that "the SDK will basically allow the community to reverse and open doors towards homebrew applications being present on the Xbox One." To be clear, what H4LT has done is a far cry from groups like Lizard Squad. The SDK for any given product is typically available behind some degree of registration, but they don't necessarily cost anything. The SDK is one small component of creating the ecosystem that would be necessary to get homebrew up and running on the platform. Whether or not users will ever pull it off is another question.

Submission + - Security Research At The Hague, Netherlands: Mobile Network And Internet Threats (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: The Hague Security Delta (HSD) is the official title of a collaborative effort between Netherlands businesses, their federal government and multiple research institutions, to identify emerging security threats, share best practices, and foster collaboration between industry, governments, and universities. One of the most pressing issues they're tackling is that of mobile network and internet security. One point that the Netherlands' officials made repeatedly is that the country is essentially the "digital gateway" to Europe. This might seem like hubris but once you look at the arrangement of undersea cables between the US and Europe, it makes a lot more sense. The Netherlands is far from the only transatlantic connection hub between the US and Europe, but it certainly accounts for a significant chunk of total cable capacity. One of the brainchildren of the HSD is the creation of what it calls the "Trusted Networks Initiative" that would allow direct denial of service attacks originating from specific countries to be cut off. By creating a network "bridge" that can be raised and lowered, the idea is that content and visitors can be cleanly isolated from the bad actors launching an attack. There's an intrinsic assumption here — specifically, the idea that attackers are gathered into a group of systems that can cleanly be split from the so-called "trusted" networks that would continue to operate. It is however, an interesting concept to thwart broad-scale DDoS attacks.

Submission + - 6 Terabyte Hard Drive Round-Up: WD Red, WD Green And Seagate Enterprise 6TB (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: The hard drive market has become a lot less sexy in the past few years thanks to SSDs. What we used to consider "fast" for a hard drive is relatively slow compared to even the cheapest of today's solid state drives. But there are two areas where hard drives still rule the roost, and that's overall capacity and cost per gigabyte. Since most of us still need a hard drive for bulk storage, the question naturally becomes, "how big of a drive do you need?" For a while, 4TB drives were the top end of what was available in the market but recently Seagate, HGST, and Western Digital announced breakthroughs in areal density and other technologies, that enabled the advent of the 6 Terabyte hard drive. This round-up looks at three offerings in the market currently, with a WD Red 6TB drive, WD Green and a Seagate 6TB Enterprise class model. Though the WD drives only sport a 5400RPM spindle speed, due to their increased areal density of 1TB platters, they're still able to put up respectable performance. Though the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 6TB (also known as the Constellation ES series) drive offers the best performance at 7200 RPM, it comes at nearly a $200 price premium. Still, at anywhere from .04 to .07 per GiB, you can't beat the bulk storage value of these new high capacity 6TB HDDs.

Submission + - Know Your Type: Five Mechanical Keyboards Compared (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: As a power user, you notice certain things that the average person might not. One of those is the difference between typing on a sweet mechanical keyboard with luxurious key action, versus pounding away on a run-of-the-mill squishy plank that relies on membrane switches to register your keystrokes. The difference may seem subtle to the uninitiated, though even casual typists can recognize that there's something inherently superior about a mechanical keyboard. Of course, it's the mechanical key switches that are responsible for elevating the typing experience. These are better than the rubber domes found in membrane keyboards in a number of ways, including feel, responsiveness, and durability. Mechanical keyboards are growing in popularity, as word is spreading about how good they are. In turn, keyboard manufacturers have responded by feeding more mechanical models into what was once a niche market. If you go out in search of a mechanical keyboard, you'll now find a mountain of options. This roundup further reinforced something we've known for a long time, which is that mechanical keyboards are the superior choice for both gaming and daily typing chores. That doesn't mean they're all created equal — there are different key switches to choose from, and features vary from one plank to the next. The choice of key switch type is highly subjective but we can say that Cherry MX key switches are indeed of higher quality than knock-offs like the Kailh switch. That's not to say Kailh switches are bad, just that you can discern a difference when going from one to the other.

Comment Re:What's the problem? Use case, better multitask (Score 1) 75

by MojoKid (#48670649) Attached to: Samsung Galaxy Note Edge Review
Here's the use case problem I think it can solve better, or at least somewhat. When you're actually in an app, you can pull up shortcuts to other apps as well as use edge panel apps simultaneously, without having to go back to the home screen. Other phones offer split screen or windowed views but this is a different and in some cases better (in some not) way of multitasking.

Comment Re:3 gig of ram? CORRECT, 32GB of Flash Storage (Score 3, Informative) 75

by MojoKid (#48670641) Attached to: Samsung Galaxy Note Edge Review
The summary is completely correct. It has 3GB of RAM (as in system/processor memory), which is actually as big as it gets these days for premium smartphones. 32GB of Flash storage is what you're thinking of, which is not RAM, obviously. And yes, the device has a 32GB Flash setup. So, you're wrong and that's what else is new I guess.

Submission + - Samsung Galaxy Note Edge Curved Edge Display Proves Itself A Useful Innovation (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Differentiation is difficult in the smartphone market these days. Larger screens, faster processors, additional sensors and higher resolution cameras, all are nice upgrades but are only iterative, especially when you consider the deluge of products that come to market. True innovation is coming along with less frequency and Samsung, more so perhaps than some other players, is guilty of punching out so many different phone models that it's hard not to gloss over new releases. However, the new Samsung Galaxy Note Edge may offer something truly useful and innovative with its supplementary 160 pixel curved edge display. The Note Edge is based on the same internal platform as the Galaxy Note 4, and features a 2.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 SoC with Adreno 420 graphics and 3GB of RAM. What makes the Galaxy Note Edge so different from virtually all other smartphones on the market is its curved edge display and what Samsung calls its "revolving UI" that offers app shortcuts, status updates, data feeds and features all on its own, but integrated with the rest of the UI on the primary display. You can cycle through various "edge panels" as Samsung calls them, like shortcuts to your favorite apps, a Twitter ticker, news feeds, and a tools panel for quick access to the alarm clock, stop-watch, a flashlight app, audio recorder and even a digital ruler. The Galaxy Note Edge may not be for everyone, but Samsung actually took curved display technology and built something useful out of it.

Submission + - Samsung Announces Production Of 20nm Mobile LPDDR4, Faster Than Desktop DDR4 (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Samsung announced today that it has begun volume production of its 8Gb LPDDR4 memory chips, with expected commercial shipments in 2015. The announcement is noteworthy for a number of reasons. First, one of the most important characteristics of a modern mobile device is its battery life, and moving to a new memory standard should significantly reduce the memory subsystem's power consumption. Second, however, there's the clock speed. Samsung is claiming that its LPDDR4 will hit 3.2GHz, and while bus widths on mobile parts are significantly smaller than the 64-bit channels that desktops use, the higher clock speed per chip will help close that gap. In fact, multiple vendors have predicted that LPDDR4 clock speeds will actually outpace standard DDR4, with a higher amount of total bandwidth potentially delivered to tablets and smartphones than conventional PCs will see. In addition, the power savings are expected to be substantial.

Submission + - Intel Releases 'Easy Migration' App To Transfer Files and Photos To Chromebooks (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Since their launch in 2011, Google Chromebooks have gained a reputation for being pretty barebones, packing in little more than the required amount of performance to get someone through their everyday tasks. But, that impression of "barebones" changed a bit this past summer, when Acer released the first Core i3-equipped Chromebook: the C720. The fact that a Chromebook now featured a true Intel notebook processor was impressive, but perhaps more so was the simple fact that Intel was beginning to show a bit of a commitment to the platform and that apparently is being further strengthened today. With its just-released "Easy Migration" app, Intel is making it easy for anyone who owns an Intel-powered Chromebook to transfer files from their Android, iOS, and Windows machines, over to the notebook. Well, sort of. Because Chromebooks are equipped with very little storage, anything Intel's app carries over actually goes to the cloud — with Google's Drive service being the target.

Submission + - 65,000 Complaints Later, Microsoft Files Suit Against Tech Support Scammers (hothardware.com) 2

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Tech support scammers have been around for a long time and are familiar to most Slashdot readers. But last month, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it had issued lawsuits against several culprits responsible for tech support scams. Now Microsoft has announced that it too is going after tech support scammers. According to the company, more than 65,000 complaints have been made about tech support scams since May of this year alone. Bogus technicians, pretending to represent Microsoft, call the house offering fake tech support and trick people into paying hundreds of dollars to solve a non-existent issue. If successful in their ruse, the scammer then gains access to a person's computer, which lets them steal personal and financial information and even install malware.

Submission + - After 40 Years As A Shoulder-Level Double Amputee, Man Gains Two Bionic Arms (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Les Baugh, a Colorado man who lost both arms in an electrical accident 40 years ago, is looking forward to being able to insert change into a soda machine and retrieving the beverage himself. But thanks to the wonders of science and technology — and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) — he'll regain some of those functions while making history as the first bilateral shoulder-level amputee to wear and simultaneously control two Modular Prosthetic Limbs (MPLs). "It's a relatively new surgical procedure that reassigns nerves that once controlled the arm and the hand," explained Johns Hopkins Trauma Surgeon Albert Chi, M.D. "By reassigning existing nerves, we can make it possible for people who have had upper-arm amputations to control their prosthetic devices by merely thinking about the action they want to perform."

Submission + - Google Now Brings Voice Control To Nest Smart Thermostat (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Earlier this year, Google made a big splash with its $3.2 billion acquisition of Nest Labs. In the months following the announcement, Google tossed around less interesting ideas of displaying ads on your thermostat or fridge and began the process of harvesting data from Nest Thermostat users. However, the Google-Nest Labs hook-up is beginning to make more sense as the couple closes in on one year post-acquisition. Google just announced that voice control is coming to the Nest Thermostat via Google Now for both Android and iOS users. All you have to do is say "OK Google" to being the process. Once prompted, you can say, "turn the thermostat to 67 degrees" and your command will be sent directly to the internet-connected Nest Thermostat. At this time, you don't appear to be able to issue voice commands for anything other than changing the temperature, so saying something like "set system to away" or "turn system off" doesn't appear to be in the cards, yet.

Submission + - Touring A Carnival Cruise Simulator: 210 Degrees Of GeForce-Powered Projection (hothardware.com) 2

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Recently, Carnival cruise lines gave tours of their CSMART facility in Almere, the Netherlands. This facility is one of a handful in the world that can provide both extensive training and certification on cruise ships as well as a comprehensive simulation of what it's like to command one. Simulating the operation of a Carnival cruise ship is anything but simple. Let's start with a ship that's at least passingly familiar to most people — the RMS Titanic. At roughly 46,000 tons and 882 feet long, she was, briefly, the largest vessel afloat. Compared to a modern cruise ship, however, Titanic was a pipsqueak. As the size and complexity of the ships has grown, the need for complete simulators has grown as well. The C-SMART facility currently sports two full bridge simulators, several partial bridges, and multiple engineering rooms. When the Costa Concordia wrecked off the coast of Italy several years ago, the C-SMART facility was used to simulate the wreck based on the black boxes from the ship itself. When C-SMART moves to its new facilities, it'll pick up an enormous improvement in processing power. The next-gen visual system is going to be powered by104 GeForce Grid systems running banks of GTX 980 GPUs. C-SMART executives claim it will actually substantially reduce their total power consumption thanks to the improved Maxwell GPU. Which solution is currently in place was unclear, but the total number of installed systems is dropping from just over 500 to 100 rackmounted units.

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