Latest News - Page 2730

The UK may have anywhere from 4 million up to 5.9 million CCTV cameras in use, but many of the cameras are useless and there must be concern so the region doesn't 'sleepwalk' towards becoming a surveillance state, according to UK Surveillance Camera Commissioner Tony Porter.

"You can still maintain the balance of excellent surveillance but not have a propagation of surveillance that is actually useless," Porter recently said on BBC Radio 5. "Surveillance can be an extremely good thing and run well, it's a useful tool for society. But to quote a former information commissioner, 'we should not sleepwalk into a surveillance society.'"

Broken, damaged and older analog cameras aren't effective to enhance public safety and deter crime, Porter also added. In the future, Porter wants better interaction with the public, especially regarding regulation so cameras are not simply being added just for the sake of purchasing and installing new cameras - especially if there is no benefit to the public.

Microsoft has been slowly unveiling some exciting stuff lately, where we have Windows 10 and HoloLens to look forward to, the company is now hiring new staff, including a Senior Software Engineer position for something even more 'magical'.

A job listing has popped up on the Microsoft Careers spage for a Senior Software Engineer who will help the development team built "magical, delightful and disruptive consumer experiences for the next generation of technology (from the creators of the Kinect: Alex Kipman & Kudo Tsunoda)" and the company is "looking to make significant contributions to the early stages of a project with huge growth potential".

This could mean we'll see it reach the Xbox One, or something new is coming. I would peg it on HoloLens, but we could see it reach the Xbox One or even Windows 10. The Xbox One for me, is kinda dead ass you can't add some magical peripheral to it like VR as the system isn't fast enough to deliver the experience Microsoft will need to beat Oculus VR and the Rift. But something for HoloLens and Windows 10? Now you're talking.

Don't ever click porn links on Facebook - it's a very good rule to follow in general, however if you're looking to get a porn fix through this popular social media, you need to be extremely alert and aware. Reportedly infecting over 110,000 Facebook users within two days, not everyone is as smart as you might have hoped.

Disguised as a Flash update, this disguised-malware post will tell you to quickly download and run an update in order to see a withheld porn video - doing so will download a Trojan directly onto your system, allowing a hacker to take control of your keyboard and mouse. This virus will then start linking multiple similar links on your wall and tagging up to 20 friends with each post.

Facebook have released an official statement on the matter, saying "we use a number of automated systems to identify potentially harmful links and stop them from spreading. In this case, we're aware of these malware varieties, which are typically hosted as browser extensions and distributed using links on social media sites." In order to cull the wave of infections, Facebook is "blocking links to these scams, offering cleanup options, and pursuing additional measures to ensure that people continue to have a safe experience on Facebook."

With fans eagerly awaiting the return of the long running fantasy drama series 'Game of Thrones' on April 12th, HBO have now released the first trailer from the upcoming fifth season of the George R.R. Martin adaptation.

The two-minute trailer sheds some light on the upcoming plot twists and reveals some of the new characters, including cast memebrss Alexander Siddig, Toby Sebastian, Nell Tiger Free, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Jessica Henwick, Rosabell Laurenti Sellers, DeObia Oparei, Jonathan Pryce, Hannah Waddingham, Enzo Cilenti, Michael Condron, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje who join the cast for the first time.

This weekend, 'Game of Thrones' hits select IMAX theatres in the US, with two episodes from the fourth season; 'The Watchers on the Wall' and 'The Children' remastered utilising IMAX digital technology.

We've been covering various large and small PC builds over the last few weeks, trawling the internet looking at rigid-tubing, SLI setups, crazy colors and massive overclocks, so here's something a little different - the Sour Apple.

Modder Gardnerphotos has taken a boring old PowerMac G4, slapped a #PCMasterRace array of components within and made it his own.

Modified to fit an ASRock Z87m OC Formula motherboard, an Intel i7 4770k and an AMD Radeon 7990 - the yellow and black themed interior is all cooled by 3x240mm radiators connected to hard acrylic tubing containing Mayhems Pastel Sunset Yellow coolant.

With 1.3 million employees under their wing during peak production time, Foxconn Technology Group, the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer and maker of Apple devices, recently let slip that plans are being put into place to reduce their global human workforce, favoring a robot alternative.

Currently sitting as one of the largest private employers in the world, Foxconn reported slows in revenue growth over the last few years, coupled with rising Chinese wages. Group spokesman Louis Woo has stated that this is a concern for his company. Without mentioning a specific time frame or target for this operation, he noted that labor costs have over doubled since 2010. Speaking to media, Woo stated that "we've basically stabilized (our workforce) in the last three years. We would like to stabilize our employee headcount no matter how fast we are growing in the future."

When Woo was asked if Foxconn was looking to reduce its overall employee number, he answered that there were internal targets for long term cuts, however he was unable to disclose any figures, adding "it depends how successful we are in terms of introducing the process automation and also the robotics."

There are plenty of opportunities for consumers and companies embracing the Internet of Things (IoT), but trying to secure connected things will be extremely difficult. Vendors must embrace continuous testing programs to verify their services are secure - and consumers will need to utilize available security protocols, while pushing for new securities in the future.

Regardless of potential privacy and security concerns, expect to see a number of new connected things in the coming years - with everything from smart energy meters to security, lighting and air conditioning expected to be connected. There will be over 28 billion things installed in households and apartments by 2020, according to IDC.

"IoT is a very fast moving space, and the pressure on companies to get new things to market almost invariably comes at the expense of proper security practices," said Casey Ellix, CEO of Bugcrowd cybersecurity firm, in a statement published by Forbes. "On top of this, many of the devices are built on top of open source libraries and components, which themselves have vulnerabilities which are discovered on a regular basis."

Ukrainian forces are overwhelmed by drones and electronic jamming from pro-Russian separatists, as electronic warfare shows how devastating it can be on the battlefield. Ukrainian soldiers lack proper training and equipment to stop continued artillery strikes, and cannot communicate with one another due to radio signals being jammed.

"It is very difficult for Ukrainian forces to be able to operate on radios, telephones and other non-secure means of communications because their opponents have such an exceptional amount of jamming capability," said Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, commander of US Army Europe, in a statement to reporters. "Even if you can acquire where mortar or rockets are coming from, to be able to do something about it is very difficult if you can't communicate."

In addition to electronic warfare, pro-Russian fighters are using drones to conduct surveillance operations - collecting intelligence on Ukrainian military defenses and locations. The drones likely originated from the Russian government, and have become vital in coordinated artillery and mortar strikes against Ukrainian soldiers.

Google Android may dominate the smartphone software market with 81 percent control, but it looks like the Apple iPhone clearly has strong grip on the smartphone hardware market.

The company sold a massive 74.5 million iPhones during Q4 of 2014 - and has 42 percent of the US smartphone market share, according to comScore. Trailing behind Apple is Samsung (29.7 percent) and LG Electronics (7.6 percent), as both companies struggle to close the gap.

Despite iOS holding a significantly smaller share of the software market, it looks like current iPhone owners are willing to upgrade their devices sooner than Android smartphone owners.

Companies are under cyberattack, and a single distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack could cost companies from $52,000 up to $444,000 depending on how large the company is. Enduring downtime due to a DDoS cyberattack also hurts the company's public relations image, with disclosures made to customers and federal regulatory bodies.

Following a DDoS attack, 61 percent of victims lost access to critical business information, while 38 percent were unable to conduct day-to-day business operations. As cybercriminals are becoming more organized - and finding new strategies to launch cyberattacks - volumetric attacks tend to be increasing, outnumbering application-layer attacks.

"A successful DDoS attack can damage business-critical services, leading to serious consequences for the company," said Eugene Vigovsky, head of the Kaspersky DDoS protection at Kaspersky Lab. "For example, the recent attacks on Scandinavian banks caused a few days of disruption to online services and also interrupted the processing of bank card transactions, a frequent problem in cases like this."

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a new statement verifying the Super Bowl is a "no drone zone," and anyone caught flying a drone near the stadium faces potential criminal charges. There is a mix between security and safety concerns and copyright regarding filming sporting events, so drone operators should avoid the potential headache.

"The FAA bars unauthorized aircraft - including drones - from flying over or near NFL regular- and post-season football games," according to a statement from the FAA. "The same restriction applies to NCAA college games in stadiums seating 30,000 or more fans, Major League Baseball games and many NASCAR events."

The FAA is struggling to create private and commercial drone flight laws, as the number of unmanned aircraft continues to rise in the United States. However, the FAA is straightforward when it comes to the Super Bowl and other major sporting events: "If you want to see video of the Big Game, watch it on TV. Leave your drone at home."

The former iBUYPOWER CS:GO professional player and current banned member of the match-fixing and betting ring scandal Joshua 'steel' Nissan has issued a public statement and apology on his public Facebook page.

In this statement he highlighted his disappointment in his actions, the good times while competing in various CS:GO tournaments and some of his plans for the future. He's currently planning to stream his public matchmaking game-play through Twitch.TV, alongside commenting that "I am still a host of knowledge about Counter-Strike. I will try to make all of this information available to everyone for free. It's the least I can do."

Many enraged members of the public have decided to boycott all of Nissan's content, further naming him as "Steal".

Despite the recent match-fixing and betting ring scandals surrounding the former and friends-of iBUYPOWER (IBP) CS:GO squad teammates - the large North American computer company has announced they are looking toward another CS:GO pick-up.

IBP and their CS:GO team split on January the 5th before the accusations were confirmed. As as we're now rolling into February 2015, they've stated that another team is on their mind - commenting that their previous players actions "are not in keeping with the philosophy of the iBUYPOWER brand."

They further stated that "IBP is committed to supporting gaming at the highest levels, and expects each member of our staff and teams to perform to the best of their ability and conduct themselves with integrity at all times," adding "recently, IBP learned that certain members of the IBP CS:GO team failed to meet that expectation. The actions of these individuals come as a shock to us."

According to rumors, the newest Samsung flagship mobile product will be running an almost-completely stock Android operating system, free of the plethora of bloatware that's currently included with their smartphone models.

Gizmodo has compiled some rumors, stating that the Galaxy S6 is looking to run a minimalistic version of TouchWiz, currently described as Samsung specific software that is an add-on to Android offerings.

Sammobile has also let loose that not only will TouchWiz be put on a diet, but Samsung are set to make their specialty programs like "S Voice" and "S Translator" a complete optional-install process - meaning that if you don't want your phone being clogged up like things that you're likely to never to use, you don't have to!

Minimalist PC design is becoming extremely popular in modding circles and here's an awesome example - K-limes' CoolerMaster CM690III Modded Edition.

Featuring an EK-dominated watercooling lineup, this system is powered by an Intel i7 4770k, a MSI GTX 760 Twin Frozr and tied together by MSI's Z87-GD65 GAMING motherboard.

What helps make this build look so minimal? Alongside almost no cables showing what-so-ever, the watercooling loop is kept as short as possible and all the 'backbone' components are hidden - like the power supply. This means that only the fancy components are put on display, allowing for the design to look sleek and stylish. Planet MODs has further described minimalist design as "choosing high-quality and beautiful material, then let it stand on its own".

It looks like Microsoft will be a minority investor in a new round of funding for Cyanogen, shelling up $70 million for the company that makes its money making custom versions of Google's mobile OS, Android.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that other companies and investors could jump in, throwing their hats into the ring for investment into Cyanogen, something that would take parts of Android's dominance away from Google. But with Microsoft sitting in the corner with its own mobile OS in Windows Phone, this is an interesting turn for the Redmond-based software giant.

With a market share of around 3%, Microsoft needs to claw some of that mobile OS market share away from Android and get people using its Windows Phone platform. Something we could see Microsoft do with an investment into Cyanogen is bake its Bing search engine into it, something that can't be done on an Android-based smartphone.

Google has posted both its Q4 and full year 2014 results, where we see the Mountain View-based giant raking in an impressive $66 billion for the year. This is up 19% from 2013, with its Q4 2014 seeing revenues reach $18.1 billion, up 15% year-over-year.

The company said that its Google-owned sites saw $12.43 billion in revenues for Q4 2014 which is up 18%, while its partner sites pulled $3.72 billion in revenue, up 6%. When it came to revenues secured outside of the United States, Google saw 56% of its total revenue made outside the US. The UK for example, made up 9% of its revenues. Google added an additional 2000 employees to its roster in Q4, too.

Comparing this to Apple, which made $74.6 billion for Q4 2014, more than Google's entire full year revenue, these results are great, but don't touch Apple in the slightest.

Colorful Technology has announced its latest GeForce GTX 960 video cards, with some truly great models being shown off by NVIDIA's biggest AIB partner in China.

We have four different models being unveiled, with the Colorful GTX960 CH which is a reference like card for entry users. Moving on, we have the Colorful GTX960 i-Cafe for System Integrators, the iGame GTX960Ymir-U for general users and for enthusiasts we have the iGame GTX960 Ymir-X. Starting with the GTX960 i-Cafe which features a longer PCB than the reference design, but features the same clocks as the GTX960 CH. The iCafe version provides consumers with better stability and a longer lifespan thanks to its more efficient cooler and higher quality electronic components.

Moving on to the iGame GTX960 Ymir-U which is targeting gamers and general users, which will have two clock models. The first is a power efficiency model which will have clock speeds of 1127/7010MHz while in performance mode it will crank up to 1203/7010MHz. The iGame GTX960 Ymir is the performance model of the Colorful GTX960 series, with triple fans, a steel back panel, breathing light and a longer PCB. We have two clock speeds on this card, with the default efficient mode coming in at 1127/7010MHz while the performance model cranks things up to an insane 1405MHz.

NVIDIA has been getting some flak for the VRAM issues on its GeForce GTX 970, quickly altering the official specifications of the Maxwell-powered card. Well now AMD is jumping on the chance to sell some of its Radeon R9 290X inventory, dropping the price to as low as $299 for the Hawaii-powered card.

AMD has hit back with a serious troll, statign "4GB means 4GB" somethign that blew up on our Facebook page yesterday. AMD emphasizes that its Radeon R9 290 and R9 290X video cards come with 4GB of VRAM, where all 4GB can be filled up to the very last megabyte. On top of this, they have a 512-bit memory bus which is spitting out 320GB/sec of memory bandwidth, something that the Maxwell-powered GeForce GTX 900 series can't do.

Just as with 'Terminator: Genisys', Disney have stumped up a sweet $4 million in cash to expose the follow up to 'The Avengers', the second highest grossing film of all time, to over 110 million viewers tuned in to this years Superbowl.

Whilst the 30 second spot for 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' is a little light on for footage that hasn't been shown in previously released trailers, the rapid fire spot makes for a pretty convincing argument to hand over your cash at your nearest multiplex come release. Promising to shake up the formula for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and follow up to the game-changing events of 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier 'Age of Ultron' comes with very high set of expectations indeed.

'Avengers: Age of Ultron' will be released on April 23rd 2015 in Australia and New Zealand and on the 1st of May in the USA.