Latest News - Page 2772

Time has partnered with Coinbase to begin accepting bitcoin payments for digital and print subscriptions of Fortune, Health, Travel + Leisure and This Old House. This is a major victory for Coinbase and the bitcoin community, as Time's online and print media reaches 130 million consumers every month - and surely some of them own bitcoins.

"We are always looking for ways to make it easier for consumers to engage with our brands and this pilot program will give bitcoin users a seamless and simple way to purchase subscriptions," said Lynne Biggar, executive vice president of consumer marketing and revenue at Time, in a press statement. "We hope to expand our partnership with Coinbase in the coming months to create more opportunities to provide greater value to our customers."

Bitcoins continue to be extremely volatile, with value fluctuating as many investors question its long-term financial stability. However, that doesn't mean retailers and other businesses have shied away, as they want to accept whatever payment methods its shoppers use.

Apple's draconian move to disable TRIM software support in the latest versions of OS X has left only one third-party SSD manufacturer that supports TRIM. Angelbird natively supports TRIM in OS X, a feat others haven't been able to accomplish without TRIM Enabler software. Apple removing TRIM Enabler compatibility has forced users to expose their system to malware by disabling key security features, or to simply not use TRIM with their third-party SSDs. Other third-party SSD manufacturers rely upon garbage collection in lieu of TRIM, but as any enthusiast with rudimentary knowledge can explain, garbage collection doesn't keep performance as snappy as a TRIM-enabled system.

Angelbird's wrk SSD now comes in capacities up to 1TB. The wrk utilizes an SMI 2246EN controller, and the case is made of a matte-black anodized aluminum. Sequential read/write speeds weigh in at 564/456 MB/s, respectively. The SSD also tops out at 72,000 random read IOPS. The 1TB wrk retails for $599.99, which is comparable to other Apple-specific SSDs, especially considering it is the only line of SSDs that natively supports an integral feature required for sustained performance.

Our resident SSD guru Chris Ramseyer recently took a look at the wrk in his Angelbird SSD wrk 512GB SSD Review.

The hacker group reportedly behind a major cyberattack against Sony Pictures Entertainment is getting what they want - as Sony tells theaters they don't need to show "The Interview" due to terror threats. The movie is scheduled for release on Christmas, Dec. 25, and it would appear some theaters have already said they won't show the controversial film.

Movie theaters that decide to still show the film plan to use additional security - even if there has been no credible evidence a plot is in place - with AMC, Cinemark, Regal and Carmike all suffering a drop in stock values because of the threat.

"Somebody is playing mind games with [Sony]," said Richard Clarke, cybersecurity expert and former White House counter-terrorism lead, in a statement published by Good Morning America. "I think North Korea has little or no capability to do any physical attacks, commando activity, or terrorism in the U.S. By saying it's coming, however, they hope to keep people from the theaters and, thereby, hurt Sony's revenue."

The Delhi High Court has given Xiaomi a bit of a reprieve, allowing the Chinese mobile manufacturer the chance to sell its Qualcomm-based devices until Jan. 8. Xiaomi will have to turn over $1.60 for all devices sold, but will be able to allow consumers to purchase products until the deadline in three weeks. Qualcomm received patent licenses from Ericsson to use its patented technologies, an argument Xiaomi plans for 2015.

Earlier, a single judge passed an order that stopped Xiaomi from importing and selling its smartphones to India - its biggest target market outside of China - and a legal fight seemed imminent.

Ericsson wants Xiaomi to hold a license to have their smartphones imported to India, and the issues will be put on the table during the next legal hearing on Feb. 5. However, Xiaomi says it has a licensing agreement with Qualcomm to utilize its chipsets for the Xiaomi Mi3, Xiaomi Redmi1S and Redmi Note 4G for sale in India.

The Australian government have proposed curriculum changes to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority - making computer coding and computational thinking a mandatory part of the countries Year 10 curriculum.

This news is well received by the Australian Computer Society as this positive information comes to light after the ACS and StartupAus joined forces with either other industry bodies fighting against a the proposed recommendation to only allow a dedicated technology subject in Year 9 Australian Schools - now it looks like the children may be learning more and over a longer period of time.

As we've recently reported on President Obama writing his own little bit of code, it helps signify the global 'new-age' of technology that we're currently experiencing. This is where basic and intermediate computer skills are becoming a necessity in this day and age with many professional and unskilled 'real-world' jobs and workplaces requiring you to have some form of computer knowledge - this bill helps solidify the improvement in education working toward preparing the children for the workforce.

Capcom has announced that there will be a re-release of the reboot of Devil May Cry, with DmC hitting the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One with 1080p and 60FPS goodness.

DmC: Definitive Edition will feature better visuals and graphical detail than the original release, with all of the DLC that has been released since the original game hit the previous generation consoles. The game will run at 1080p at 60FPS, even with the increased graphical bells and whistles. The re-release includes:

60 fps and 1080p resolution - It looks and feels super smooth to play.

Analogix Semiconductor has announced that it has shipped over one billion DisplayPort devices, a number that includes various tablets, smartphones, and notebooks that allow them to connect with the latest in TV, projector and monitor technologies.

If you don't know about Analogix, they're a semiconductor firm most famous for SlimPort, an impressive technology found in various few smartphones and tablets on the market. Analogix's Chairman and CEO, Kewei Yang, said that the industry's growing acceptance of DisplayPort technology has helped the company grow considerably. He continued "The adoption of DisplayPort for both internal and external screen connectivity has been exceeding our expectations. Demand for SlimPort-enabled smartphones, tablets and notebooks is also fueling the company's sustained sales."

The company isn't stopping there either, with new SlimPort Transmittors coming soon, with the release of DP Alternate Mode over USB Type-C specification being published by VESA. Andre Bouwer, the Vice President of Marketing for Analogix said "Customers are using SlimPort transmitters to support the DP Alternate Mode over Type-C. In fact, DP1.3 over a USB Type-C connector is the only generally available consumer standard capable of transferring 8K content." So there you have it, the company is already teasing 8K content being made possible over DP1.3 over USB Type-C, impressive.

Rockstar is finally teasing Grand Theft Auto V's online heists mode, something it will update for gamers in early 2015. The online heists mode adds four-player missions to the multiplayer side of GTA V, where gamers can plan, prep and pull off a big heist.

The developer has delayed the online heists mode multiple times now, promising that it would be released with the re-release of GTA V on the PS4 and Xbox One last month, but missed that too. Producer and Lead Mission Designer on GTA V, Imran Sarwar, explained that Rockstar delays its content when it's "not at the level we expect of ourselves."

The new mode will launch with "five unique strands" that will feature over 20 missions, and around 20 hours of gameplay. Sarwar added that the heists mode has taken so long to get out because they were much harder to build than the team originally thought. The idea behind the new mode was to create "multi-tiered missions in which players would work cooperatively with their individual strengths - ensuring that each player was important" reports Polygon.

343 Industries has released another patch for Halo: The Master Chief Collection, which promises to fix various issues found within the first-person shooter extravaganza.

The update will improve the "reliability" of matchmaking, while ensuring the split-screen, local multiplayer friends are always-on the same team when playing Halo 2. Microsoft has chimed in, saying that TMCC's new update should also improve the stability across the game's menus, campaign playlists, matchmaking and custom games.

If Halo is going to be around for another 30 years, they might want to get their games a little more stable, instead of taking weeks upon weeks of updates to even get them up to release worthy.

According to the latest rumors, the upcoming NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan II has been benchmarked against the Radeon R9 380X and R9 390X. These are just rumors right now, as all three of these cards have not been announced yet. Even the name Titan II could change to Titan II, or Titan Extreme. AMD on the other hand could change their cards to 399X, or 400X or anything out of the norm from what to expect.

The details on the cards from the poster on Chiphell state that the Fiji XT and Bermuda XT (380X and 390X respectively), will be manufactured on Globalfoundries' 20nm process. The Titan II on the other hand will arrive as the GM200, which will supposedly come in two flavors: a cut down version with 21 MM units and a total of 2688 CUDA cores. A "full fat" version will arrive at a later date with an increased amount of SMMs and CUDA cores.

When it comes to performance, the GM200-powered GPU from NVIDIA will be 34% faster than the GeForce GTX 980. On the AMD side of things, the R9 390X will be a huge 65% faster than the R9 290X, which will feature liquid cooling that was rumored all those months ago. Performance wise, the next-gen GPUs are packing a massive punch.

Ubisoft only delayed the patch yesterday, but the company has announced that the forthcoming patch for the still broken Assassin's Creed: Unity weighs in at a huge 6.7GB.

The massive patch is currently being pushed out to Xbox One and PS4 users, while the PC version of the patch is coming soon. Ubisoft has explained the patch on the website for Assassin's Creed as "Part of the team's effort to enhance frame rate for players involves replacing and updating portions of the Paris city map where we are seeing issues. This explains the large size of this title update (6.7 GB). However, since a large portion of the patch replaces existing files the net increase to the game's overall size will be less than 6.7 GB."

So the developer is trying to say that they've replaced large chunks of the map where there are various performance issues, which to me, would mean the game is broken? It's not a patch that fixes various problems, but replacing physical parts of the map to help performance? What the hell happened, Ubisoft? The patch notes are quite large, but you can check them out here.

TAG Heuer plans to jump into the smartwatch market to compete with Apple and other competitors, as the wearable market accelerates. The company started on its wearables industry about four months ago, creating several partnerships, while also exploring potential acquisitions. TAG Heuer plans to wait until it has a working product to present to the public, which could take until late 2015 at the soonest, the company says.

"Smartwatches represent a challenge to the Swiss watch industry that is comparable to the appearance of quartz technology," said Guy Semon, Tag Heuer general manager. "We cannot ignore this tsunami that is coming closer."

The smartwatch market should increase in popularity next year, as more tech companies and watchmakers dive into wearables.

ASUSTOR has announced the launch of their new 50T and 51T NAS products. There are four new high-performance models that leverage the Intel Celeron 2.41Ghz dual-core processor and a more powerful Celeron 2.0Ghz quad-core processor. The processors also feature turbo functionality to provide higher burst speeds during peak processing activities. Each model comes with either 1GB or 2GB of SO-DIMM DDR3L memory, which can be upgraded to 8GB for more discerning users.

The new products come with the ADM 2.3 operating system, which was recently optimized to deliver a more refined interface. The models support HDMI and S/PDIF, allowing the NAS units to operate as the hub of the home entertainment system. Other features include smart system sleep and instant wake mode, which helps keep power costs down. Both models come with a 3 year warranty and are available now from dealers. We will be posting a review of the units soon in our NAS section.

Key Features for the AS5002T and AS5004T

The ongoing drama for Sony Pictures Entertainment took a dark turn on Tuesday, with the hacker group responsible issuing a terrorist threat when 'The Interview' hits theaters. It would seem the threat is working, as some movie theater operators are considering pulling the movie.

"We will clearly show it to you at the very time and places 'The Interview' [will] be shown, including the premiere, how bitter fate those who seek fun in terror should be doomed to," the hackers said in a statement. "Soon all the world will see what an awful movie Sony Pictures Entertainment has made. The world will be full of fear. Remember the 11th of September 2001."

The group also recommended people stay away from theaters after the movie is released.

Corsair is one of the companies that helped forge the third-party SSD ecosystem as SSDs entered the mainstream. The new Neutron XT is a continuation of that theme, but leverages the new Phison quad-core S10 controller. Phison and Silicon Motion have been grabbing SSD controller market share as we await new competitive products from SandForce and Marvell. The SSD also features Toshiba A19nm 2bit MLC NAND.

Chris posted the Corsair Neutron XT SSD Preview as an early look at the new drive, but withheld final scoring until concrete MSRP information was available. Corsair has released the MSRP guidelines just in time for the holiday season. The 240GB SSD is $149.99, the 480GB is $269.99, and the 960GB weighs in at $539.00.

Chris will be circling back with the full review soon, so stay tuned, but the initial performance testing looks very good. Development continues on DEVSLOP and Slumber functionality, which will boost battery life in laptops. The Neutron XT is geared for those in performance segment, and at roughly $0.56 per GB it will compete directly with the Samsung 850 Pro. With top speeds of 100,000 / 90,000 IOPS read/write the Neutron XT certainly has the grunt power to deliver great performance. The Neutron XT will be available in January.

The Ebola outbreak has largely lost popularity in the press, but the war wages on in Africa, and over 6,800 people have died in the recent scourge. Unfortunately, the death toll continues to climb. One of the keys to combating Ebola is quick detection. Isolating patients away from the general population reduces risk of that infected person spreading the disease. The World Health Organization has set a goal of have 70% of Ebola victims quarantined, and 70% of the dead safely buried, in order to begin to turn the tide back. To achieve this goal a fast and reliable test is needed to streamline the process. Even the sad task of ensuring proper burial protocols is simply impossible if there isn't a confirmed Ebola diagnosis.

Enter technology. An IC developed by STMicroelectronics and Clonit, in collaboration with Italy's National Institute for Infectious Diseases, has led to development of a portable analyzer that can identify an Ebola infection in under 75 minutes. The portable analyzer is based on the Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) molecular biology technique and utilizes a stamp-sized silicon microchip. The device only requires a few microliters of human blood, and can even detect Ebola in samples that have been diluted up to a million times. The key is to get this device through regulatory agencies and in the field as soon as possible.

The kit has four components. An extractor to gather samples, a stamp-sized silicon microchip, specific reagents, and a portable optical reader. The detection kit is small enough to be easily deployed in the field. This is a great example of companies racing the clock and rushing out a new technology to address a disaster. Several vaccines are also in the works, so hopefully continued development will help rid the planet of Ebola once and for all.

Stanford University will study artificial intelligence over the next 100 years, as part of a long-lasting study to see how AI impacts the US economy, war, crime, and society as a whole. There is growing concern that AI developments, while extremely impressive, could displace human workers and create something that may have disastrous long-term effects.

"Loss of control of A.I. systems has become a big concern," said Dr. Horvitz, Microsoft Research managing director, in a statement to the New York Times. "Rather than simply dismiss these dystopian claims, he said, scientists instead must monitor and continually evalutate the technologies. Even if the anxieties are unwarranted, they need to be addressed."

Dr. Horvitz will lead a committee of leading computer, math and engineering professors and representatives from around the country - and carefully chosen scientists will create a report on the current state of AI that will be published in late 2015.

After The Australian released reports on some possibly dodgy conduct by tech-giant Telstra back in October 2014, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) were urged to investigate - eventually ruling that Telstra's ads were misrepresenting the price of their iPhone 6 phone and plan bundle.

Telstra has rolled over to this claim, paying the fine in full. The ads in question were run in local newspapers, claiming that the phone and accompanying phone plan would cost consumers only $70 AU per month, with the fine print stating that there was a sneaky $11 AU per month handset payment applicable - raising the total cost to $81 AU.

ACCC Chairman Rod Sims commented that "consumers should be able to understand the true cost of an advertised product so they can make informed purchasing decisions," further warning that all "businesses must be careful about using attention-grabbing headline prices to ensure that their advertisements do not mislead consumers about the actual price they will have to pay. This is especially the case for bundled goods and services like phones and plans."

Cybercriminals are compromising US consumers and business workers on a large scale, able to steal personal information and payment details in bulk. Home Depot was compromised and 56 million payment card numbers and 53 million email addresses were taken in a single breach alone, along with Target, Neiman Marcus, and a number of retailers also falling victim.

However, trying to make use of stolen information forces cybercriminals to act quickly - if 10,000 cards are compromised, only around 100 could cash out, with an estimated 10 cars actually working, according to Alex Holden, from Hold Security.

"Cybercriminals don't have enough resources to monetize stolen data in big volumes," said Andrew Komarov, IntelCrawler CEO, in a statement to PCWorld. "It really has a small margin, and it is pretty complicated to resell it in big amounts."

Acording to Hong Kong's Privacy comissioner and iTNews, Android applications running on version 4.3 or older have the ability to access your personal photos, files and sensitive data without any notification.

Yesterday there was a report published by the Hong Kong Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (PCPD), explaining the findings of this information and their tests on the authenticity of the Android app model.

The report states that their "tests have revealed that it is possible to develop an app that can read the memory of Android devices, including photos, files, and any data other apps choose to store in the devices, without the need to inform app users on the permission page," further mentioning that they had informed Google of this issue back in August 2014, formally requesting that the large-name company to correct this hole.