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Inno3D iChill GEFORCE GTX 670 2GB OC Video Card Review
Another non-reference GTX 670 arrives in the form of the Inno3D iChill. Let's see what it brings to the party.
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Another non-reference GTX 670 arrives in the form of the Inno3D iChill. Let's see what it brings to the party.
Have you ever had sensitive data that you didn't want to get into the wrong hands? Always marveled over those evil villain's bases which self-destruct? Well, RunCore has brought to market an SSD that self-destructs on command to permanently erase your data. You get the speed of an SSD with the cool features of an evil villain's lair.
In the video above, you can see an explanation of how the self-destruct function works along with the actual self-destruction happening. After the button is pressed, a puff of smoke comes out of the SSD due to how the self-destruction works. The NAND chips are over-volted so that they are physically destroyed.
A less subtle method is the physical destruction of your SSD by applying an over-current to the NAND flash memory and thereby physically destroying these. The RunCore InVincible product series is catering to embedded computer systems requiring high-speed serial switched fabric interconnects for rugged design implementation and more flexible power ranges. Delivering optimized storage options particularly in mission-critical fields such aerospace, defense and general industrial applications.
So next time the FBI comes knocking on your door, wouldn't you like to have one of these running in your PC? Well, actually, I have nothing to hide, but it sure is a cool gimmick. Unfortunately, you can only use it once.
Continue reading 'RunCore launches InVincible SSD that self-destructs on command' (full post)
Some would be criminals have been apprehended thanks to the fact that they forgot to log out of Facebook. It seems as though Facebook has become so intertwined with life that people just plain forget to log out sometimes. Two men now stand accused of robbing an Internet cafe after using their services to check out the latest hap's on the social network.
After they finished stalking the profiles of their friends, they decided it might be fun to rob the place. As such, they then decided to make like they were going to pay, but instead allegedly attacked the shop owner. After robbing the place, they hopped onto a motorcycle that also happened to not belong to them.
The police, when they arrived, happened to notice that one of the criminals had remained logged in on Facebook. This led to the arrest of the one person, who I'm sure proceeded to squeal on the other. This isn't the first time would-be criminals have been caught thanks to Facebook. Previously, in 2009, a house robber became so comfortable in the house that he logged onto Facebook and forgot to log off before leaving.
You know those augmented reality glasses being developed by Google that everyone is going crazy over? Well, Google was just granted three patents covering the technology behind them. Google isn't the only one working on the technology, but they are the only ones to have gained patents for it which should give them a leg up on the competition.
The patent numbers, in case you should want to look them up, are D659,739, D659,740 and D659,741. They are for a "wearable display device" and a "wearable display device frame." The device first made an appearance in an online video last month and made its rounds around the internet, including here on TweakTown.
The patents were filed October 26, 2011, which shows that the technology has been development for some time. What's more is that they are being tested by Google executives which shows the support for the project is coming from the top. With that support, it is all the more likely that these will eventually hit store shelves.
In the latest news about Facebook's imminent IPO is that they have increased the opening amount of shares by 84 million, which is about 25% more than what was originally planned to be on sale. These new shares, however, won't be coming from the company itself. Rather, the new shares will be on sale by early investors.
The strong demand by investors for stock in the social networking giant has prompted the change in plan. The additional 84 million shares brings the total number of shares up to 421 million that will be on sale when the company goes public on Thursday. It's possible that not even the increased amount of shares will be able to meet demand.
Originally it was expected that the IPO of Facebook would raise somewhere around $10.6 billion, depending on investor interest. With the increase of shares and interest, it is now expected that the IPO could raise $16 billion. Mark Zuckerberg will retain 55.8% of the company, which will give him a small majority.
Verizon has announced plans to expand its LTE 4G service to 28 new cities along with expanding service in 11 cities. This new addition will bring the total tally for 4G coverage up to 258 cities, which covers half of the United States population. This is all part of a plan to bring 4G LTE to 400 cities in 49 states by the end of 2012. The switch will be flipped on May 17.
The newly added service areas will include:
Houma/Thibodaux and Lake Charles, Louisiana; Hyannis/Mid-Cape, Massachusetts; Benton Harbor/St. Joseph, Michigan; Biloxi/Gulfport/Pascagoula and Oxford, Mississippi; Atlantic City/Toms River, New Jersey; Dickinson and Williston, North Dakota; Ashtabula, Bucyrus and Defiance, Ohio; Eugene/Springfield, Oregon; Lancaster, New Castle, Northern Cambria County, Oil City/Franklin, Somerset and York, Pennsylvania; Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; Mitchell, South Dakota; Paris, Texas; Burlington/Northern, Vermontt; Fredericksburg, Harrisonburg, Martinsville and Staunton/Waynesboro, Virginia; and Sheridan, Wyoming.
The network will be bolstered in:
Denver, Colorado; Dover, Delaware; Fort Myers and Lakeland, Florida; Hagerstown, Maryland; Canton, Lima, Mansfield, Toledo and Youngstown/Warren, Ohio; and Erie, Pennsylvania.
Reports are coming in from around the world that The Pirate Bay is largely unreachable. No, this isn't due to some country's court order. Instead, according to a TorrentFreak insider, The Pirate Bay is suffering from a DDoS. This DDoS comes at an interesting time as they had recently openly criticized Anonymous for DDoS'ing Virgin Media.
In all likelihood, this is an attack by Anonymous after being criticized. However, it has not been confirmed to be them. At the time of writing, the site has been down for about 24 hours and seems to be unreachable from my end. TorrentFreak's inbox often suffers when The Pirate Bay goes down, but this time seems even worse.
The problem lies in the fact that people were expecting The Pirate Bay to be unreachable due to the censorship rulings, but they were also expecting to use the bypass methods. They weren't expecting those methods to fail. It will be interesting to see if Anonymous claims responsibility for this attack. More as it comes.
Another research firm has confirmed that Samsung is the top cell phone maker in the world. With 86.6 million handsets sold in the first quarter of 2012, Samsung has reclaimed the title from Apple. That 86.6 million sold is 25.9 percent higher than last year's first quarter and helped give Samsung a 20.7% share of the market.
Of the 86.6 million handsets sold last quarter, 38 million of them were smartphones. Samsung's 38 million smartphones account for more than 40% of Android phones in the world. That number is huge considering not a single other handset maker has captured more than 10% of the Android smartphone market.
Nokia was thrown out of the way as Samsung flew past. Nokia, now in second place, sold 83.2 million handsets, a decrease of 22.7% from last year's quarter. "Smartphone sales are becoming of paramount importance at a worldwide level," Gartner principal research analyst Anshul Gupta said in a statement. "For example, smartphone volumes contributed to approximately 43.9 per cent of overall sales for Samsung as opposed to 16 per cent for Nokia."
Apple came in third with only 7.9% market share. That figure was boosted by iPhone 4S sales, which contributed to increasing Apple's handset sales by 96.2%. RIM is still at the bottom of the heap with only 2.4% market share.
Continue reading 'Samsung takes back top cell phone maker title, Apple not far behind' (full post)
Is your current home wireless fast enough? No? Well, maybe you should pick up a new router based off of the technology that some researchers in Japan are working on. They have smashed the current record for transfer speed by double. Last November, chipmaker ROHM transferred data at 1.5Gb/s using a frequency of 300GHz.
The researchers have smashed that, however, by managing an incredible 3Gb/s. Unfortunately, due to the super high frequency, the farthest the data can travel before being affected by interference is about 10m, or 30ft for us Americans. The researchers managed this feat by using 542GHz radio waves which oscillate faster, hence can carry more data.
The technology required to operate in the terahertz region (300GHz-3THz) has always been too bulky and expensive to be of any value. It would have been near impossible to tuck inside a smartphone due to its size and power draw. This new work uses a 1mm^2 resonant tunnelling diode, or RTD, which significantly reduces the size and power requirements.
It's not likely to be coming next year, but this new wireless technology could eventually find its way into devices. As long as the distance doesn't need to be far, utilizing the terahertz spectrum could very well allow for large, direct file transfers at incredibly high speeds. This could also work very well for home theater systems.
Our Deal of the Day: 64GB Centon DataStick Sport USB 2.0 Flash Drive for $29.99 plus Shipping!
It's incredible how far prices have fallen on big portable storage. Woot.com has this water & shock resistant 64GB USB 2.0 memory stick with lifetime warranty for just $29.99 plus $5 shipping.
64GB CENTON RCDSW64GB-001 DATASTICK SPORT USB 2.0 FLASH DRIVE DEAL
Our Download of the Day is avast! Free Antivirus for Mac.
Rest assured with our latest technologies, now available for Mac
avast! Free Antivirus for Mac now contains the same light, award-winning, certified, and highly acclaimed antivirus and anti-spyware engine as its avast! version 7 Windows counterpart.
Shield yourself from increasing web-spawned threats
Our new Web Shield for Mac transparently scans all visited web pages (port 80), downloaded files, and java scripts, supports IPv6 connections, and - with its intelligent stream scanning feature - doesn't slow your surfing.
Continue reading 'Download of the Day: avast! Free Antivirus for Mac' (full post)
Google have just starting pushing the latest Chrome out, Chrome 19. There's a very nifty new feature which is included, which will help people who go between PCs and Android devices, tab syncing. Tab syncing allows you to bring up tabs from other machines, through a menu at the bottom of the new tab page.
Not impressed? Well, pulling up a tab from another machine brings up the tab and its entire browsing history, this means you won't miss out on a single thing moving from PC to mobile device. Personally, I move between an Apple MacBook Pro, my Windows machine and my GALAXY S II running Android 4.0. I can already have my bookmarks, etc synced, but tab syncing is just amazing. It creates a fluid experience from device to device.
Google have said there is a little delay in trying out tab syncing, where they've said:
While Chrome will be updated to the latest Stable version over the next few days, the tab sync feature will be rolled out more gradually over the coming weeks.
Chinese search company Baidu has whispered into the ears of TechCrunch that they have some big plans for the Baidu Cloud Smart Terminal system that runs their newly-announced phone. Baidu wants to push Baidu Cloud into all major mobile operating systems, including Windows Phone, iOS and Android.
According to a Baidu spokesperson, the company wants to eventually produce a Windows Phone with Baidu Cloud, as well as an iOS-based device. A Windows Phone I could see happening, but an iOS device? It would really require Apple's complete permission, and I just can't see this happening.
Baidu Cloud is a suite of apps tied into Baidu's storage, music and search offerings. The phone announced today, is a low-cost phone, dubbed Changhong H5018 and sports a 3.5-inch 480x320 touchscreen, 3G connectivity, and a 3-megapixel camera. It will be available for $158, which earns it the right to be dubbed a low-cost smartphone. Baidu Cloud runs on top of Android 2.3, and because Google gives Android partners much more freedom in adapting their OS, it gives Baidu the chance to start off on Android.
Continue reading 'Baidu wants Baidu Cloud on Android, iOS and Windows Phone' (full post)
AllThingsD is reporting that with sources close to the situation, investors are being told that the IPO price range for Facebook is between $34 and $38 per share. This results in the highest valuation being over $100 billion, fully diluted.
Last month, the predictions per share were at around $31, in filings related to its pending acquisition of photo-sharing start-up, Instagram. Recent ranges have put the social networking site at between $28 and $34.
Other reports have put the price between $35 and $40, so $34-$38 per share doesn't seem out of the question. The higher price is an indication that some of the reports from last week saying there was weak investor interest... but they were obviously wrong. The official pricing for the IPO for Facebook will arrive on Thursday, with a public offering on Friday under the "FB" ticker symbol on the Nasdaq market.
Social networking site Facebook are currently in the midst of their IPO roadshow, and have just updated their mobile site and apps. This includes updated apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Android apps.
Facebook have taken a leaf out of Instagram's book, which, they own now. Where the images on Facebook are significantly larger, which means the news feed shows one large post instead of two or three on the iPhone/iPod Facebook apps.
Pictures are now 300-percent larger than they were before, and Facebook haven't noted any other changes. Facebook haven't mentioned whether this will arrive to other mobile, or non-mobile devices, but it will most likely happen in good time.
Samsung's GALAXY S III is nearly here, and whilst the phone sports a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED screen, and an impressive 2,100 mAh battery, the battery life itself was questioned. But, GSM Arena have stepped in and thrown the quad-core smartphone through some tests, which are very surprising.
They started with 3G talk time, where the GALAXY S III beats out the iPhone 4S by a large margin, and also beats the HTC One V and S by just minutes. The iPhone 4S sports 7 hours and 41 minutes of 3G talk time, where the GALAXY S III smashes it with 10 hours and 20 minutes, impressive, Samsung. Next up we have web browsing.
During this test, the GALAXY S III only provides 5 hours and 17 minutes of web browsing, compared to the iPhone 4S' very impressive 6 hours and 56 minutes. I'm guessing this is down to the GALAXY S III's much larger screen. Video playback is something very important on smartphones these days, especially something with a 4.8-inch screen. How did the GALAXY S III go against the iPhone 4S?
The cloud, isn't it wonderful? NVIDIA have unveiled some of Kepler's cloud-based benefits during the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California today. NVIDIA has said that Fermi-based game servers, such as those run by Gaikai, only have one GPU per server, or 28 GPUs per rack. One GPU is dedicated to a game stream and consumes 150W of power.
NVIDIA's cloud solution, GeForce Grid, powered by Kepler GPUs allows four GPUs per server, or 84 per rack at 75W each. This results in huge power savings for server operators, and this should also be passed down to consumers, and gamers. NVIDIA has mentioned that it's possible for a streaming service to offer bundles of games for around $10 per month. To compare, OnLive offers roughly 200-plus titles, but not new releases, for $9.99 per month.
GeForce Grid isn't just more economical, it also reduces server-side latency by up to 30ms. With lag being a huge concern with existing server-based gaming services, GeForce Grid could really step up and be something quite amazing. NVIDIA puts this improvement of latency to its fast and concurrent game capture APIs, strategic geographic server placement, and better input lag on Smart TV Ethernet ports.
The Overclocker's latest issue is out, Issue 19. The latest read covers a bunch of hot topics such as a 'Z77 Battle Royal', a cover feature about the Ivy Bridge-based Core i7, and they also interview Brazil's finest overclocker, Rbuass.
Also covered is a review of GIGABYTE's GEFORCE GTX 680, Plextor's M3 256GB SSD, ASUS' Rampage IV Formula, ASUS Radeon vs. GIGABYTE HD7870, G.Skill Trident 2400MHz CL10 RAM, and finally, Intel's 520 Series SSD. There's much more to read, so don't miss out!
You can read the entire issue, all for free, here.
It has been previously reported that Rockstar would only launch one game this year, and that game launched today in the form of Max Payne 3. But, with the phenomenal reaction the third-person, slow-mo shooter has received, why would Rockstar want to wait? Strike while the iron is hot, right?
Well, according to Internet retailer Amazon, Grand Theft Auto V could be released as soon as December of this year. This is coming from Amazon listing GTA V for pre-order, giving gamers something to aim for in terms of a release date. If it is made available in December, it would be perfect for the pre-Christmas rush.
Why December, though? Well, if we look at October and November, they're both filled with some insanely large titles such as Assassin's Creed 3, Resident Evil 6, Halo 4, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Waiting a month would let players finish their game/s of choice, and snap up Grand Theft Auto V. GTA V (in my opinion) would sell as much as those games, if not more. Exciting news anyway you look at it!
Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics have announced that their reboot of Tomb Raider has been delayed until 2013. Head of Crystal Dynamics, Darrell Gallagher, said that the studio had two aims when it decided to make a new Lara Croft title, firstly to create a "modern" Tomb Raider, and secondly, to make the "best game of our careers".
It's the second goal that has caused them to delay the reboot, from its original Autumn release date, to sometime in Q1 of 2013. This delay will fly right past the lucrative Christmas shopping season. Gallagher adds:
We're doing things that are completely new to Tomb Raider in this game and the additional development time will allow us to put the finishing touches into the game and polish it to a level that you deserve. believe that this is the right choice and I guarantee it will be worth the wait. The game is looking amazing and we can't wait to show it to everyone at E3 in a few weeks.
Showing it off at E3 means that the company at least has some solid code to display, and with E3 only weeks away, we'll see it soon enough.
Diablo III launched last night, and for some, it was OK and working. For others, Error 37 plagued many. The various server load issues stopped people from creating characters, starting the game, joining others, or launching into the game at all.
My game launched with one issue where I couldn't create a character, I logged out, logged back in and I was ok. The game crashed a few times, but I put that down to my NVIDIA Surround setup, and requiring new NVIDIA drivers. The game is delicious. Sexy. Addictive. Awesome. It's PC gaming, and it's here, right now.
But there's a new error on the block, Error 3003 which says "Unable to connect to the service or the connection was interrupted". This is the problem with Internet-required games, is that if there are any server-side issues, like most people have experienced with Diablo III, then it pisses a lot of people off. Let's hope it only gets better from here, shall we?
