70832463
submission
MojoKid writes:
Intel is targeting big core performance and intelligence in a microserver form factor with its new Xeon D family of processors, the company's first ever Xeon-based System-on-Chip (SoC) design. The Xeon D line Intel is announcing today is built on their 14nm process technology and combines the performance and features of its traditional Xeon chips with the size and power savings of an SoC. According to Intel, Xeon D delivers up to 3.4x faster performance node and up to 1.7x better performance per watt compared to the company's Atom C2750. The Xeon D is the third generation of the family and it's actually based on Intel's Broadwell architecture. Intel unveiled two new Xeon D processors today, the D-1540 (8 cores, 16 threads, 2GHz, 45W TDP) and D-1520 (4 cores, 8 threads, 2.2GHz, 45W TDP). These chips have memory controllers capable of addressing up to 128GB. They also feature an integrated platform controller hub (PCH), integrated I/Os, and two integrated 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports. Again, all of this is based on Intel's Broadwell core CPU architecture, so performance per watt should be strong.
70793951
submission
MojoKid writes:
Laptops with fully articulating hinges are starting to show up from more vendors than just Lenovo, though the company certainly got some mileage out of their Yoga brand of machines. Now it appears HP is getting in on the action as well, with the new HP Spectre X360 that's powered Intel's new Core i5-5200U Broadwell-based processor with integrated Intel HD 5500 series graphics, along with 8GB of DDR3-1600 memory, a 256GB Solid State Drive (a Samsung M.2 PCIe SSD), 802.11ac WiFi, and a 13.3" Full HD (1920x1080) multi-touch screen. The Spectre X360 has a geared and spring-assisted hinges. The hinges swing open easily, and then offer more resistance as the screen is moved into an upright position, or swung around into tent, stand, or tablet modes. What's also interesting about this new breed of convertibles, beyond just its ability to contort into tablet mode and various other angles, is that performance for these ultralight platforms is scaling up nicely, with faster, low-power processors and M.2 PCIe Solid State Drives offering up a very responsive experience and under 10 second boot times. It has gotten to the point that 3 pound and under notebooks feel every bit as nimble as desktop machines, at least for mainstream productivity and media consumption usage models.
70700489
submission
Deathspawner writes:
After a month of anticipation, NVIDIA announced its SHIELD at GDC. Yes – “SHIELD”. Unlike the portable and tablet to come before it, the latest SHIELD is a dedicated set-top box that acts as a media player and game console. It’s an inch thick, five inches high, features Tegra X1 under-the-hood, includes a controller, and costs $199. This is the most intriguing SHIELD yet.
70699383
submission
theodp writes:
Code is the New Literacy, declared tech-backed Code.org in a star-studded video two years ago as it teamed with politicians, educators, billionaires, tech giants, and the NSF to make CS education "an issue like climate change". And as the billionaire-bankrolled nonprofit celebrates its second birthday, it would appear that the mission's been accomplished. Last December saw K-12 educators in the U.S. and Russia clamor to make sure their kids get with the program(ming). Heck, Arkansas went so far as to declare a high school CS education state of emergency, New York City has tapped Code.org, the NSF, Google, and Microsoft to tag-team-teach schoolkids CS before, during, and after school, and AmeriCorps VISTA Members will soon be fighting the war on poverty using Google's CS First Curriculum. Hey, Harold Hill and Lyle Lanley could only dream of such success!
70690683
submission
MojoKid writes:
AMD is jumping into the virtual reality arena and announced today that its new LiquidVR SDK will help developers customize VR content for AMD hardware. The upcoming LiquidVR SDK makes a number of technologies available which help address obstacles in content, comfort and compatibility that together take the industry a major step closer to true, life-like presence across all VR games, applications, and experiences," AMD representatives said in a statement. Oculus is one of the VR companies that will be working with AMD's LiquidVR SDK and it seems to like what it's seen so far. "Achieving presence in a virtual world continues to be one of the most important elements to delivering amazing VR," said Brendan Iribe, CEO of Oculus. "We're excited to have AMD working with us on their part of the latency equation, introducing support for new features like asynchronous timewarp and late latching, and compatibility improvements that ensure that Oculus' users have a great experience on AMD hardware.
70631803
submission
MojoKid writes:
Today, at Mobile World Congress, Samsung took the veil off of its much-anticipated Galaxy S6, and also the Galaxy S6 edge. As has been heavily rumored, the S6 foregoes the plastic shell of its predecessor and integrates metal and glass instead, resulting in a far more premium feel, a thickness of 6.8mm, and a weight of 138g on the normal S6 and 132g on the edge. Samsung made it a point to mention that the metal it uses in the S6 is 50% stronger than other smartphones- a Apple bendgate jab, perhaps? Both the S6 and S6 edge share the same hardware, which includes a 5.1-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED display. That gives us a resolution of 2560x1440, and a high pixel density of 577 ppi. The new phones also include an octa-core processor (2.1GHz quad + 1.5GHz quad), 3GB of DDR4 memory, and LTE cat 6 (300/50Mbps) support. Also of note is the phone's rear 16 megapixel f/1.9 camera, which Samsung says will launch in less than a second (0.6 seconds, to be exact). The front camera is no slouch either, also boasting an aperture of f/1.9, and coming in at 5 megapixels. The company says that the phone can add 4 hours of battery-life after a mere 10 minutes of charging, and when compared to the iPhone, it charges up to full in half the time. The S6 also has built-in wireless charging as well.
70588129
submission
MojoKid writes:
It's long been a pet peeve of many end users that Microsoft has made it such a challenge to procure a legitimate ISO image of its various operating systems. It seems like the company should have no problem offering them in an easy-to-find spot on its website, because after all, it's not like they can be taken utilized without a legal key. Sometimes, people simply lose the disc or ISO they had, and so it shouldn't be such a challenge to get a replacement. Fortunately, with a new feature on the MS site, you are now able to get that replacement Windows 7 ISO. However, it's behind a bit of protection. You'll need to provide your legal product code, and then the language, in order to go through to the download page. If you've somehow lost your key but are still using the OS that it's tied to, you can retrieve it through a few different third party tools. However, it does seem like not all valid keys work properly just yet, since some users are reporting valid keys throwing errors or not enabling a download for some reason.
70562117
submission
Deathspawner writes:
It should come as a surprise to no one that the amount of data scraped from our digital lives each and every day is immense. But could there still be room to be wowed — or even a little concerned? At reddit, user FallenMyst claimed that everything we've ever spoken to our phones, either via Siri, Cortana, or what-have-you, has been recorded — and in some cases, we can go back and listen to it. Techgage went on to investigate, and found proof of that claim. Further, it was also discovered that Google could be tracking a lot more data than you were even aware of, such as where you were a couple of years ago. Fortunately, this tracking can be turned off, but there's something to be said about the fact that it's on by default, and is so incredibly subtle.
70536877
submission
MojoKid writes:
Intel recently released its latest generation of NUC small form factor systems, based on the company's new low-power Broadwell-U series processors. The primary advantages of Intel's 5th Generation Core Series Broadwell-U-based processors are better performance-per-watt, stronger integrated graphics, and a smaller footprint, all things that are perfectly suited to the company's NUC (Next Unit of Computing) products. The Intel NUC5i5RYK packs a Core i5-5250U processor with on-die Intel HD 6000 series graphics. The system also sports built-in 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0 and USB 2.0, M.2 SSD support, and a host of other features, all in a 115mm x 111mm x 32.7mm enclosure. Performance-wise the new 5th Gen Core Series-powered NUC benchmarks like a midrange notebook and is actually up for a bit of light-duty gaming, though it's probably more at home as a Home Theater PC, media streamer or kiosk desktop machine.
70508633
submission
MojoKid writes:
AMD just unveiled new details about their upcoming Carrizo APU architecture and the company is claiming the processor, which is still built on Global Foundries' 28nm 28SHP node like its predecessor, will nonetheless deliver big advances in both performance and efficiency. When it was first announced, AMD detailed support for next generation Radeon Graphics (DX12, Mantle, and Dual Graphics support), H.265 decoding, full HSA 1.0 support, and ARM Trustzone compatibility. But perhaps one of the biggest advantages of Carrizo is the fact that the APU and Southbridge are now incorporated into the same die; not just two separates dies built into and MCM package. This not only improves performance, but also allows the Southbridge to take advantage of the 28SHP process rather than older, more power-hungry 45nm or 65nm process nodes. In addition, the Excavator cores used in Carrizo have switched from a High Performance Library (HPL) to a High Density Library (HDL) design. This allows for a reduction in the die area taken up by the processing cores (23 percent, according to AMD). This allows Carrizo to pack in 29 percent more transistors (3.1 billion versus 2.3 billion in Kaveri) in a die size that is only marginally larger (250mm2 for Carrizo versus 245mm2 for Kaveri). When all is said and done, AMD is claiming a 5 percent IPC boost for Carrizo and a 40 percent overall reduction in power usage.
70491859
submission
MojoKid writes:
Conventional wisdom in years past was that hackers didn't bother to exploit Apple's OS X operating system because its relatively insignificant market share didn't warrant wasting resources to attack it. The reasoning was, why bother with OS X when Windows was pushing over 90 percent of the worldwide OS market? However, in recent years, Apple has seen an uptick and pretty much dominates when it comes to notebooks priced over $1,000. The higher sales profile for Macs running OS X also means more attention from hackers and malware. A new report shows that both of Apple's major operating systems sat atop the leaderboard when it came to the number of security vulnerabilities during 2014. OS X took top honors with 147 vulnerabilities, 64 of which were labeled as "high risk". iOS took the number two position with 127 vulnerabilities, 32 of which were high risk. Rounding out the top three was the Linux kernel, with 119 total vulnerabilities including 24 high risk, while most Windows versions only had 34 — 38 vulnerabilities in total on average. When it comes to applications, Microsoft's Internet Explorer led the list with 242 total vulnerabilities, nearly twice that of the next closest entry, Google Chrome, with 124 total vulnerabilities.
70458107
submission
MojoKid writes:
Asus announced their super-slim Zenbook UX305 during the IFA trade show in Berlin in September. The machine will be available in two models, one with a 1920x1080 IPS display and one with a QHD+ display that boasts a native resolution of 3200x1800. They're both built around Intel's more power-efficient Core M processor, which was designed for ultra-thin and "fanless" form factors. Intel's Core M does seem to offer significant advances both in terms of power consumption and performance, which enables many of the design features found on the 12.3mm thin UX305. The Core M 5Y10 in the Asus Zenbook UX305 is complemented by 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and this is one of the few ultrabooks to feature a matte display. All told, the machine put up some decent numbers in the benchmarks and battery life was excellent but what's perhaps most interesting is that this is an "ultrabook" class machine that weighs in at much more palatable $700 price tag.
70451133
submission
MojoKid writes:
What a week it has been for Lenovo. Often considered one of the best of the notebook vendors, it was discovered earlier this week that the company in recent months had been bundling some seriously shady software on many of the PCs it sold to consumers. Not only did this software inject advertising into user Web browsing, it also opened up a can of worms with regards to security. While it seemed at first that Superfish was just another bundled bloatware, Lenovo quickly changed its tune after the web exploded with ire and even US Homeland Security urged removal. That lead up to yesterday, where the company apologized and offered an uninstall guide. Hopefully as the final chapter in this debacle, Lenovo has today released a tool that automatically removes Superfish, rather than forcing the user to jump through hoops to get it off their system.
70384277
submission
MojoKid writes:
The bulk of today’s high-capacity external storage devices still rely on mechanical hard disk drives with spinning media and other delicate parts. Solid state drives are much faster and less susceptible to damage from vibration, of course. That being the case, Samsung saw an opportunity to capitalize on a market segment that hasn't seen enough development it seems--external SSDs. There are already external storage devices that use full-sized SSDs, but Samsung's new Portable SSD T1 is more akin to a thumb drive, only a little wider and typically much faster. Utilizing Samsung's 3D Vertical NAND (V-NAND) technology and a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface, the Portable SSD T1 redlines at up to 450MB/s when reading or writing data sequentially, claims Samsung. For random read and write activities, Samsung rates the drive at up to 8,000 IOPS and 21,000 IOPS, respectively. Pricing is more in-line with high-performance standalone SSDs, with this 1TB model reviewed here arriving at about $579. In testing, the drive did live up to its performance and bandwidth claims as well.
70342227
submission
bigwophh writes:
Asus announced the super-slim Zenbook UX305 during the IFA trade show in Berlin in September. The machine will be available in two models, one with a 1920x1080 IPS display and one with a QHD+ display that boasts a native resolution of 3200x1800. They’re both built around the power efficient Intel Core M processor, which was designed for ultra-thin, fanless form factors. Intel’s Core M offers some significant advances both in terms of power consumption and performance, which enables many of the design features found on the 12.3mm thin UX305. The Core M 5Y10 in the Asus Zenbook UX305 is complemented by 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, and this is one of the few ultrabooks to feature a matte display. All told, the machine put up some decent numbers in the benchmarks and battery life was excellent.
