Latest News - Page 2643

With news already coming out that the Ashley Madison hack has seen over 700 Australian Government employee email addresses named, sitting alongside members of the White House and US congress and even dirtying the name of Sao Paulo due to the sheer number of accounts within, there is now even more to add to the plate.

This latest update comes in the form of yet another information dump, being twice the size of the last one. Released onto the dark web, this information leak is largely targeted at Noel Biderman, the CEO of Ashley Madison's parent company, Avid Life. Alongside including many of his business emails, this leak is coupled with a statement which reads "Hey Noel, you can admit it's real now."

Measuring around 20GB, this leak is said to be focused mainly on internal operations and information - quite possibly to ensure people take this leak seriously and removing the possibility of Ashley Madison calling it off as a hoax.

The Aussies are in trouble, with the latest Ashley Madison hacking scandal unveiling over 700 Australian Government email address' linked to the affairs website, but it looks like they aren't the only ones. Looking further into the data, The Big Story published an article outlining that members of the White House and US Congress were also involved in the mix.

Including those holding high positions in multiple Government offices (including law enforcement), the hacked and published list includes some powerful titles which The Big Story explained as; "at least two assistant U.S. attorneys; an information technology administrator in the Executive Office of the President; a division chief, an investigator and a trial attorney in the Justice Department; a government hacker at the Homeland Security Department and another DHS employee who indicated he worked on a U.S. counter terrorism response team."

Although you may view it as morally unjust, there will be no legal action taken against these Government employees, sources say. This inaction is due to there being no elected officials involved, nor have these people committed a felony. Further to this information, the names have not been publically posted or confirmed by the US Government.

IDF 2015 - Intel has laid out predictions for a marked rise in DDR4 RAM adoption following the widespread availability of Skylake-powered servers, notebooks and desktops.

Right now mainstream support for DDR4 RAM is rare, and it's mostly found in Intel's Xeon-powered servers and in enthusiast grade PC's powered by X99 chipsets. But according to analyst firm IHS, whose findings Intel touted on stage, DDR4 will already start to overlap production of DDR3 as early as next year.

IHS further lays out a timetable for desktops and servers that shows the projected transition period from DDR3 to DDR4. Servers have been using DDR4 since late 2014 thanks to the Xeon E5 v3 processor, and the platform will continue to account for a bulk of memory usage throughout this year and well into 2016. By the end of this year alone IHS predicts that DDR4 will account for 60% of all server memory shipments, and jump to 90% in the same time next year.

Alienware has just announced its latest and greatest gaming notebook, the Alienware 18, with what I would call the single most best, cringe-worthy announcement video of all time. Check it out below.

The new Alienware 18 gaming laptop kicks off with a minimum of a Core i7-4710MQ at 2.5GHz, but you can opt for the Core i7-4910MQ or Core i7-4940MX if you want some added CPU performance. There's four DIMM slots inside, with a stock 16GB of RAM upgradeable to 32GB. The stock model includes a 500GB HDD, while the 1TB model costs an insane 1TB more. Very strangely, there's no SSD here which is super disappointing and somewhat of a showstopper for me.

GPU wise you can have up to two NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M or GTX 980Ms in SLI, which will more than handle the 18.4-inch 1920x1080 display and any game you throw at it. Connectivity wise, we have a Killer Ethernet port, Broadcom 802.11ac Wi-Fi, 4 x USB 3.0 ports, a miniDisplayPort, HDMI (in and out) and more. Dell has also packed in 20 LED lighting colors across 10 separate zones for the ultimate customization.

The cult 1980's animation 'He Man and the Masters of the Universe' looks set to be re-imagined for the big screen, as Sony Pictures orders a new script from comic book writer turned screenwriter Christopher Yost.

Previously bought to the screen in the ham-statistic 1987 turkey, which starred Dolph Lundgren and Frank Langella. While the picture bombed - failing to recoup it's production budget - Sony are no doubt hoping that the world will look on the Prince of Eternia just a little bit kinder. With development on the film still in early stages, the film isn't expected to be launched until 2018 at the earliest.

We've been hearing about AMD's next generation GPUs for a while now, but it looks like they're beginning to take more form. It's being reported that AMD's upcoming 'Greenland' GPU will be an entirely new microarchitecture, with development on Greenland starting some two years ago.

But more interestingly, rumor has it that it's not just going to be yet another Graphics Core Next architecture (GCN), but it'll feature a new ISA (instruction set architecture) that will be so different to GCN, that it will be very exciting. On the surface, it'll be like previous generation Radeon products, with so much more happening underneath.

Greenland will reportedly usher in twice the power efficiency of GCN, where we can expect these GPUs to be made on the 16nm FinFET or 14nm process, with a serious jump on the number of stream processors when compared to the Fiji architecture. Fiji is the GPU behind the Radeon R9 Fury and R9 Fury X cards, powered by High Bandwidth Memory, or HBM. More importantly, it's being reported that Greenland will pack HBM2, with enthusiast level and professional cards packing up to 32GB of HBM2. The consumer orientated Greenland-powered Radeon cards will come in two flavors: 8GB and 16GB, both of the next-gen HBM2 technology.

It looks like the High Bandwidth Memory game is about to receive a very big new player in the form of Samsung, with the South Korean electronics giant announcing at IDF 2015 that it will begin mass production of HBM early next year.

Right now HBM1 is limited to just 4GB and 512GB/sec, but HBM2 will be capable of driving far past 8GB and sitting at around 1TB/sec memory bandwidth. We should expect new video cards to feature up to 48GB of HBM2, with consumer cards most likely sitting at around 8-12GB of HBM2. With NVIDIA dominating the GPU market share with no signs of slowing down, next year is going to be one of the biggest for GPUs.

HBM2 is going to usher in more changes in the next 12-18 months than I think most people can even predict, especially when we begin seeing professional video cards (think video professionals, servers and the like) with GPUs packing 48GB of HBM2 with up to 1.5TB/sec of memory bandwidth. Even the fastest GeForce cards right now only feature 334GB/sec of memory bandwidth, while the HBM1-powered Fury X from AMD packing 512GB/sec bandwidth.

A new slim Xbox One model is rumored to be part of Microsoft's planned barrage of new hardware for October, including the Surface Pro 4, Lumia 940/940 XL and Band 2.

According to rumors the compact Xbox One, coined as the Xbox On Mini, is able to hit the smaller form factor by nixing the Blu-ray drive altogether and shaving off a considerable chunk of space--about 1/3 of the current massive VCR-sized monstrosity. This will turn the Xbox One Mini into a digital-only machine, and the excising of the drive will also lead to a nice price drop to boot.

News of a slim Xbox One circulated as far back as October of last year when AMD shrunk the console's 28nm APU to a smaller, cheaper and more efficient 20nm factor. The 20nm APU, which is 1.9 times more dense than the previous model, could lead to speeds up to 30% faster with 25% less power draw.

In the next update for GTA V, console gamers will be able to create, share and download customized mods, adding in a massive dollop of freshness to the game.

Rockstar Games didn't exactly break the news with a full-on announcement--instead it was cleverly embedded in a blog post about the Ill-Gotten Gains modding contest, where the devs pretty much sneaked in a confirmation.

"The upcoming launch of the Rockstar Editor for PS4 and Xbox One as the next update to Grand Theft Auto V and GTA Online means the next Rockstar Editor Contest will be the first one with entries across all three platforms - so the creative competition will be fiercer than ever. Stay tuned for info about that contest and forthcoming update."

Sony wants to enlist everyday PlayStation 4 gamers to help beta test new updates and features for the console, and plans to implement its own form of Microsoft's Xbox One preview program.

Interested users can sign up here and in addition to new exclusive access to new features, testers will be able to share feedback with Sony on a special section of the PlayStation community forum. Testers will be able to try out the PS4's next major PS4 v3.0 update, which brings YouTube broadcasting, a new events and communities section, and even the ability to upload video clips to Twitter.

The initiative is a great idea considering Sony's past blunder with the PS4's ill-fated v2.0 blunder which locked gamers out of the console with a rest mode glitch, and it'll be another way to squash bugs while collecting feedback in the process.

Bethesda previously admitted it had to "dial" down some of the graphics, and many gamers weren't necessarily happy with the news. The studio has offered a public statement regarding the mini controversy, with one official noting the criticism "definitely doesn't upset us."

"As with most forms of entertainment, you never get 100 percent agreement on anything," said Pete Hines, marketing chief at Bethesda, in a statement to Metro. "And so, at the end of the day, whether it's what the graphics look like or whether the gameplay is what you want or whether you like the setting, or whatever it is, everybody is entitled to their own opinion."

The need to dial back graphics was done to benefit game consoles, with Fallout 4 expected to run at 1080p/30fps on consoles - but there will be no PC restrictions. Even if some people are angry, Fallout 4 is expected to be a gaming blockbuster that has drawn incredible interest from PC and console gamers alike.

Millions of people have been exposed following the recent data dump of stolen Ashley Madison accounts, though there is something a bit frightening to consider: the possibility of people committing suicide, or being injured or killed.

The Impact Team released data of 37 million users of the popular infidelity website, and details include names, email addresses, and sexual preferences.

"We have to be very cautious and I think sensitive to this," cybersecurity specialist Brian Krebs told the Guardian. "There's a very real chance that people are going to overreact. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw people taking their lives because of this."

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's chance at creating some type of plea agreement with the US Justice Department is not likely - and a possible agreement window is rapidly closing. Snowden's attorneys and the government haven't spoken about a deal in almost one year, according to sources speaking to Bloomberg.

The US government isn't in dire need of gaining information from Snowden, because they have a much clearer picture of the data he took. However, the American said he would like to one day return to the United States, but that hasn't seemed like a plausible scenario for quite some time now.

"Many people in government believe that the journalists who received Snowden's material are not capable of protecting it from a competent and committed state level adversary service," said Ben Wittes, a Brookings Institution national security law specialist, told Bloomberg. "Even if Snowden did not give the material to others, they argue it would have bene ripe for the picking."

It looks like the US government and police agencies are looking for some type of counter-drone system, able to protect vulnerable sites from rogue drones.

One test conducted by the New York Police Department relied on a microwave-based system designed to send the drone back to its operator. There were problems with the test, such as interference from local media broadcasts. Even though trying to shoot down drones would be fairly simplistic, it leads to public safety hazards - and there is more interesting in finding ways to send drones directly back to the operator.

"We can't shoot it out of the sky," said a source speaking to Reuters. "We have to come up with something that's kind of basic technology so that if something happens, the drone or device will just go right back to the operators. It won't crash."

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush believes the United States government needs broader surveillance capabilities, and tech companies shouldn't be fighting back about encryption.

"There's a place to find common ground between personal civil liberties and NSA doing its job," Bush recently said, as published by the AP. "I think the balance has actually gone the wrong way."

Bush also noted that recent Patriot Act changes forcing an end to bulk collection of American phone records wasn't the right idea - and was done with "no evidence" Americans' civil liberties were violated.

Released recently, the latest update for Microsoft's technical preview of its new Windows Server 2016 operating system has seen the inclusion of containers for apps, explained by iTnews as "created and managed with the open-source Docker set of tools."

This feature is said to be more efficient than virtual machines of the past, allowing the use of shared resources from a host OS, rather than relying on a numerous virtual machines to process apps separately. This means that applications running within the container will be able to function separately as if they were running on different operating systems, but be contained within one single OS.

Microsoft has promoted the flexibility of these containers, promoting use towards open source operating systems and applications. The idea of running apps separately isn't exactly a new one, but this is a large step towards easy integration into a base operating system.

Don't worry, no asteroids will be slamming into the Earth in September, NASA has confirmed following a recent viral video caused a bit of a stir.

In the video, it was falsely reported that an asteroid would impact around Puerto Rico, with the incident expected to take place from September 15 to September 28 - but there is no immediate threat to Earthlings. The video made it sound like there would be a threat to the United States, Mexico, Central America and South America.

"There is no scientific basis - not one shred of evidence - that an asteroid or any other celestial object will impact Earth on those dates," said Paul Chodas, manager of the Near-Earth Object office for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Today NVIDIA unleashed the GeForce GTX 950 card aimed at gamers who want to play PC games at 60fps 1080p without breaking their wallets.

The Maxwell-based GTX 950 has an entry-level price point of $159 and packs in 768 CUDA cores clocked in at 1021 MHz that can be boosted to 1188 MHz, and sports 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM operating on a 128-bit bus clocked at 6.6GHz. Power will be supplied via 6-pin connector, and the card will draw 90 Watts of power.

Standard NVIDIA performance tech is compatible with the GTX 950 including SLI, V-Sync adaptive sync, and PhysX. This budget model will fully support the new DirectX 12 API and will be able to play DX12 games when they become available.

SEGA has recently announced a free and limited trial of Company of Heroes 2: The British Forces to be launched on Steam in America and Europe, beginning 7PM CET on August 31 and concluding 11pm CET on September 2, 2015.

Exclusive to Steam, this trial will see up to 55,000 total players involved, allowing access to the British army and the ability to control 15 new units, six new commanders and eight new multiplayer maps. Alongside these are the four factions and base commanders as seen in all previous Company of Heroes 2 titles.

Self-claimed as "one of the most comprehensive World War II RTS games available," Company of Heroes 2: The British Forces is set for full release on September 3 for $12.99 as a stand-alone package, with 10% off given for pre-ordering customers.

As we quickly approach the start of the NFL football season, it looks like LG Electronics is preparing to help us hear the games better with new wireless audio products. LG showed off the P5 (NP5550), P7 (NP7550), and SoundPop 360 speakers, LG X-Boom Theater, and OM7550 Cube Speaker System.

The LG Music Flow P5 is a 10-watt wireless speaker with up to eight hours of battery life, while the LG Music Flow P7 is a 20-watt speaker with up to 10 hours of battery life. The LG SoundPop 360, similar in design to a drinking tumbler, is a cylindrical speaker providing 360-degree range â€" and up to 20 hours of battery life.

The LG X-Boom Theater has a pair of tower speakers with up to 1000-watt total audio output, built-in subwoofers, and is paired with a 3D Blu-ray player including LG Smart TV functionality. The LG Cube Speaker System supports a 1000-watt speaker and subwoofer, two USB ports, portable audio input, Multipoint Bluetooth, and NFC.