61749941
submission
MojoKid writes:
Ever since Edward Snowden leaked details on how the government had forced various IT companies to disclose information (or secured their willing cooperation), companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have been desperate to regain their users' trust. Six months ago, Microsoft announced that it would re-engineer its products and services to provide a much higher level of security — today, the company revealed that it has reached an important milestone in that process. As of now, Outlook.com uses TLS (Transport Layer Security) to provide end-to-end encryption for inbound and outbound email — assuming that the provider on the other end also uses TLS. The TLS standard has been in the news fairly recently after discovery of a major security flaw in one popular package (gnuTLS), but Microsoft notes that it worked with multiple international companies to secure its version of the standard. Second, OneDrive now uses Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS). Microsoft refers to this as a type of encryption, but PFS isn't a standard like AES or 3DES — instead, it's a particular method of ensuring that an attacker who intercepts a particular key cannot use that information to break the entire key sequence. Even if you manage to gain access to one file or folder, in other words, that information can't be used to compromise the entire account.
61705597
submission
MojoKid writes:
Samsung has just unveiled its latest series of solid state drives for consumer applications, the SSD 850 PRO. Like the previously-released SSD 845 EVO series, the 850 PRO leverages Samsung's tri-core MEX controller, but these new drives also feature bleeding-edge, 32 layer, 3D V-NAND flash memory that offers better power, endurance, and performance characteristics than traditional MLC NAND. Other features of the Samsung SSD 850 PRO series includes "Device sleep" (DEVSLP), which can maximize battery life in mobile devices and support for Samsung's RAPID mode technology, which leverages system RAM to boost performance. The SSD 850 series drives put up impressive benchmark numbers in a variety of benchmarks, besting many other drives in its class, but they also carry a long 10 year warranty.
61502325
submission
MojoKid writes:
Intel today made a splash at the International Supercomputing Conference in Leipzig, Germany by revealing new details about its next-generation Xeon Phi processor technology. You may better recognize Xeon Phi by its codename, Knights Landing. No matter what you call it, this represents a significant leap in High Performance Computing (HPC) that will deliver up to three times the performance of Intel's previous generations while consuming less power. A big part of the reason for this is the construction of a new high-speed interconnect technology called Intel Omni Scale Fabric, which Intel has been a bit cagey about, though reportedly it is comprised of silicon photonics interfaces as well as IP from Cray and QLogic. This will be integrated into the next generation of Xeon Phi processors as well as future general-purpose Xeon chips. At launch, more than 60 HPC-enhanced Silvermont-based cores will connect with up to 16GB of on-package, high-bandwidth memory designed in partnership with Micron, which leverages the fundamental DRAM and stacking technologies found in Micron's Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) product.
61475413
submission
MojoKid writes:
The transistor is one of the most profound innovations in all of human existence. First discovered in 1947, it has scaled like no advance in human history; we can pack billions of transistors into complicated processors smaller than your thumbnail. After decades of innovation, however, the transistor has faltered. Clock speeds stalled in 2005 and the 20nm process node is set to be more expensive than the 28nm node was for the first time ever. Now, researchers at NASA believe they may have discovered a way to kickstart transistors again — by using technology from the earliest days of computing: The vacuum tube. It turns out that when you shrink a Vacuum transistor to absolutely tiny dimensions, you can recover some of the benefits of a vacuum tube and dodge the negatives that characterized their usage. According to a report, vacuum transistors can draw electrons across the gate without needing a physical connection between them. Make the vacuum area small enough, and reduce the voltage sufficiently, and the field emission effect allows the transistor to fire electrons across the gap without containing enough energy to energize the helium inside the nominal "vacuum" transistor. According to researchers, they've managed to build a successful transistor operating at 460GHz — well into the so-called Terahertz Gap, which sits between microwaves and infrared energy.
61340673
submission
MojoKid writes:
Harley-Davidson is going green. No, not a Lime Green motorcycle or anything to do with paint jobs, but a brand new hog that runs on electricity instead of gasoline. To kick off the initiative, which HD is calling "Project LiveWire," the iconic motorcycle maker is taking 22 electric bikes on a tour across the U.S. next week to both promote the new rides and gauge the public's reaction. Once the attention rolls off of social media and into the streets where the hardcore bikers prefer to spend their time, it will be interesting to see what kind of reaction an electric hog elicits. These bikes lack an exhaust and the accompanying rumble that bikers love to hear. HD even tried (unsuccessfully) to trademark its bike's "Potato-Potato-Potato" sound. On the flip side, HD could attract a whole new audience to the world of motorcycles, one that cares more about carbon footprints than a rumbling exhaust.
61314827
submission
MojoKid writes:
For years, we've heard rumors that Intel was building custom chips for Google or Facebook, but these deals have always been assumed to work with standard hardware. Intel might offer a different product SKU with non-standard core counts, or a specific TDP target, or a particular amount of cache — but at the end of the day, these were standard Xeon processors. Today, it looks like that's changing for the first time — Intel is going to start embedding custom FPGAs into its own CPU silicon. The new FPGA-equipped Xeons will occupy precisely the same socket and platform as the standard, non-FPGA Xeons. Nothing will change on the customer front (BIOS updates may be required), but the chips should be drop-in compatible. The company has not stated who provided its integrated FPGA design, but Altera is a safe bet. The two companies have worked together on multiple designs and Altera (which builds FPGAs) is using Intel for its manufacturing. This move should allow Intel to market highly specialized performance hardware to customers willing to pay for it. By using FPGAs to accelerate certain specific types of workloads, Intel Xeon customers can reap higher performance for critical functions without translating the majority of their code to OpenCL or bothering to update it for GPGPU.
61234209
submission
MojoKid writes:
Over the past few weeks, I've spent a significant amount of time with Watch Dogs. The game is infamous for not running very well on PCs. After some legwork, I've figured out a hefty chunk of the reason why. Ubisoft royally screwed up its suggested VRAM (graphics card frame buffer) settings. Watch Dogs sucks down far more frame buffer memory than many modern PC games currently. In the past, VRAM usage in games like Guild Wars, Battlefield 4, and Total War: Shogun 2, with all detail levels maxed out, was about 1.5GB. BF4 will break 2GB if you use the supersampling option to render the game internally in 4K mode. Ubisoft claims that Watch Dogs' "High" texture detail setting requires a 2GB frame buffer while its "Ultra" textures need 3GB of frame buffer memory. That might technically be true, but these figures should be treated as a minimum, not a max. Playing the game through with High Textures and "Ultra" details systems stutter repeatedly with jerky slowdowns while running a mid range GeForce GTX 770. Switching to "High" Details improved the situation, but didn't resolve it. Unfortunately, the best way to improve performance in Watch Dogs is to ignore Ubisoft's recommendations altogether and opt for lower detail levels, depending on your configuration and monitor resolution. Ubisoft has said that a patch is coming that may address some of these issues. In the mean time, this article covers suggested settings with various graphics card frame buffer sizes, for better performance.
60787727
submission
MojoKid writes:
Last year, Intel launched two new processor families based on the Haswell and Ivy Bridge-E based Core i7 architecture. Both chips were just incremental updates over their predecessors. Haswell may have delivered impressive gains in mobile, but it failed to impress on the desktop where it was only slightly faster than the chip it replaced. Enthusiasts weren't terribly excited about either core but Intel is hoping its new Devil's Canyon CPU, which launches today, will change that. The new chip is the Core i7-4790K and it packs several new features that should appeal to the enthusiast and overclocking markets. First, Intel has changed the thermal interface material from the paste it used in the last generation over to a new Next Generation Polymer Thermal Interface Material, or as Intel calls it, "NGPTIM." Moving Haswell's voltage regulator on-die proved to be a significant problem for overclockers since it caused dramatic heat buildup that was only exacerbated by higher clock speeds. Overclockers reported that removing Haswell's lid could boost clock speeds by several hundred MHz. The other tweak to the Haswell core is a great many additional capacitors, which have been integrated to smooth power delivery at higher currents. This new chip gives Haswell a nice lift. If the overclocking headroom delivers on top of that, enthusiasts might be able to hit 4.7-4.8GHz on standard cooling.
60660711
submission
MojoKid writes:
Last week, Microsoft unveiled the third iteration of its Surface Pro tablet, the aptly named Surface Pro 3. Unlike previous revisions to the product, the new Surface Pro 3 can be considered a major overhaul. Not only does the new device feature more powerful internal components and offer a handful of new features, but its form factor is a complete departure from the previous version, thanks to its screen's 3:2 aspect ratio. The particular model tested here is built around an Intel Core i5-4300U processor with integrated Intel HD 4400 series graphics, 8GB of DDR3-1600 RAM, and a 256GB SSD. For users that care about performance, the Surface Pro 3's unique cooling solution with its cylindrical-shaped fansink could be what sets this device apart, offering up to a an Intel Core i7 processor in a tablet form factor but with near silent acoustics and comfortable exterior temperatures. Performance-wise, even the Core i5-based Surface Pro 3 competes or sometimes exceeds the performance of some full-sized Ultrabooks on the market.
60377283
submission
MojoKid writes:
The PC market is changing rapidly as tablets supplant some laptops, new players such as the Chromebook disrupt the old WIntel model, and innovations in processors and graphics allow for ever-smaller PCs such as Intel's NUC (Next Unit of Computing) PC. Gigabyte recently introduced a rather unique product that combines the tiny 4.5-inch square form factor of Intel's NUC PC platform together with a mini DLP projector. The Gigabyte Brix Projector measures 4.24 x 4.5 x 1.93 inches (WxLxD) but manages to fit in an Intel Core i3-4010U (1.7GHz) processor with built-in Intel HD 4400 graphics and support for up to 16GB of 1600MHz RAM. Finally, an mSATA slot inside the chassis also supports up to a 256GB SSD. The system's DLP (LED backlight) projector itself offers a resolution of 864x480 with an aspect ratio of 16:9 and a purported image size of 7 to 85 inches. It promises 75 ANSI lumen brightness, a contrast ratio of around 900:1, and 3LED (RGB) technology. It's not an HD setup but the potential use cases are interesting. A follow-on version capable of 1080p output would be even more useful for gaming and HD video.
59894115
submission
MojoKid writes:
A big shout out goes to Amazon for forever changing the way we think about photography. You see, Amazon was recently granted a patent that, in short, describes taking photos of subjects and/or or objects against a white background. Brilliant! Wait, what's that? Photographers far and wide have long known about this technique and used it extensively in the past? Well, it appears Amazon's legal team somehow worded the patent application in such a way that the USPTO thought this was a brand new idea worthy of patent No. 8,676,045. "A subject can be photographed and/or filmed on the elevated platform to achieve a desired effect of a substantially seamless background where a rear edge of the elevated platform is imperceptible to an image capture device positioned at the image capture position," part of the patent's abstract reads.
59547719
submission
MojoKid writes:
Google's open source Android platform has the distinction of being the most popular mobile operating system in the world. That's great in terms of dominating the market and reaping the rewards that come with it, but it's also for that very reason that Android finds itself the target of virtually every new mobile malware threat that emerges. According to data published in F-Secure's latest Mobile Threat Report, over 99 percent of the new mobile threats it discovered in the first quarter of 2014 targeted Android users. To be fair, we're not taking about hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands, or thousands of malware threats — F-Secure detected 277 new threat families, of which 275 honed in on Android.
59478591
submission
MojoKid writes:
AMD has just announced their upcoming mainstream, low-power APUs (Accelerated Processing Units), codenames Beema and Mullins. These APUs are the successors to last year's Temash and Kabini APUs, which powered an array of small form factor and mobile platforms. Beema and Mullins are based on the same piece of silicon, but will target different market segments. Beema is the mainstream part that will find its way into affordable notebook, small form factor systems, and mobile devices. Mullins, however, is a much lower-power derivative, designed for tablets and convertible systems. They are full SoCs with on-die memory controllers, PCI Express, SATA, and USB connectivity, and a host of other IO blocks. AMD is announcing four Beema-based mainstream APUs today, with TDPs ranging from 10W – 15W. There are three Mullins-based products being announced, two quad-cores and a dual-core. The top of the line-up is the A10 Micro-6700T. It's a quad-core chip, with a max clock speed of 2.2GHz, 2MB of L2, and a TDP of only 4.5W. In the benchmarks, the A10-6700T quad core is actually able to surpass Intel's Bay Trail Atom platform pretty easily across a number of tests, especially gaming and graphics.
59259993
submission
MojoKid writes:
A new website sponsored by Ubisoft as part of its advertising campaign for the upcoming hacking-themed game Watch Dogs isn't just a plug for the title — it's a chilling example of exactly how easy it is for companies to mine your data. While most folks are normally averse to giving any application or service access to their Facebook account, the app can come back with some interesting results if you dare. Facebook's claims that it can identify you with 98.3% accuracy based on images.The Datashadow app also offers the ability to compare various character traits and gives a great deal of information about total number of posts, post times and inferred values about income, location, and lifestyle. Is Ubisoft actually performing some kind of data analysis? Almost certainly not. This is far from an exhaustive, comprehensive examination of someone's personality or FB posting habits. The companies that actually perform that kind of data analysis are anything but cheap. The point Ubisoft is making, however, is that your FB profile contains enormous amounts of information in a single place that can be mined in any number of ways. All of this information absolutely is combined and collated to create detailed digital profiles of all of us, and the more we engage with various online services (from Facebook to Google Plus), the larger the data pool becomes.
59217293
submission
MojoKid writes:
Microsoft could take a few lessons from BOXX in how to poke fun at the competition in a tactful yet hilarious manner. BOXX, which builds high-end workstations and rendering systems for a variety of applications like film and television, visual effects, game development, simulation, government and defense, decided to compare its own professional workstation with Apple's Mac Pro. The result? A comical commercial video spot, for one. Having just purchased a cylindrical shaped Mac Pro, Nate eagerly shows it off to his friend Drew, who is less than impressed with the hardware — or lack thereof — inside. But hey, at least it looks cool, right? Even that trait is put to the test when at the end of the video a passerby mistakes the Mac Pro for an ashtray... oops.
