Latest News - Page 2796

The Google Glass wearable could be losing support from early adopters and supporters, as Google pushed back a consumer launch. Wearables have a great opportunity for business and military use, but widespread consumer adoption could prove difficult, especially if developers are jumping ship. Nine out of 16 Glass app makers recently said they have dropped Glass-related projects, with three others shifting from consumer to business focus.

"We are completely energized and as energized as ever about the opportunity that wearables and Glass in particular represent," said Chris O'Neill, Google Glass Head of Business Operations. "We are committed as ever to a consumer launch. That is going to take time and we are not going to launch this product until it's absolutely ready."

Whether it's Glass or some type of wrist-worn wearable, the entire wearables market receives a lot of media attention - and analysts expect the industry to develop its success in the coming years. However, software and hardware developers must be ready to invest time and money into wearables, knowing that an immediate return on investment (ROI) is unlikely.

Sony PlayStation 4 gamers have experience trouble with the PlayStation Network, and company officials recently apologized for the sporadic problems. More than 13.5 million PS4 units have been sold since the console's launch, and the PSN's struggling network isn't too surprising - and Sony is scrambling to try to prevent additional network problems in the future.

"Listen: We're really, really apologetic," said Michael Ephraim, SCE Australia managing director. "Dealing with network and digital - I'm not trying to spread or deflect anything, but dealing on such a robust network is a tricky experience. The good thing is we've launched 2.01, which has fixed the Rest Mode, and has fixed the YouTube app. It was very unfortunate. We hate that. The network was down during the 2.0 release. It's very unfortunate. Those things are gonna happen over time. We're not bulletproof on those things."

Sony and BioWare have worked to fix a serious bug that hit Dragon Age: Inquisition gamers, with the PSN blamed for the problem.

It is a great time to be a PC gamer, as there isn't constant grumbling about FPS limitations, and computer hardware continues to move forward at a rapid pace. San Francisco East Bay boutique gaming company Digital Storm has a lot to be happy about, at a time when gamers have more money to spend, hardware is reaching new limits, and PC gaming is enjoying a resurgence when compared to game consoles.

It wasn't long ago when many tried to argue that PC gaming is dead, but that hasn't proven to be true at all.

"It's definitely growing," said Harjit Chana, Digital Storm Chief Brand Officer, in a recent conversation with TweakTown. "That's evidenced by an increase in year-over-year demand of high-performance gaming PCs. Gamers demand the best experience possible game on PCs. PC gaming delivers a superior visual experience (4K graphics, NVIDIA G-SYNC technology, etc.) and the customization a gamer craves. It is a level of gaming that cannot be achieved on any other platform."

Lenovo and ASUS continue to find success in the tablet market, as both companies are finding ways to carve out market share against Apple and Samsung, according to the Strategy Analytics research firm. ASUS now controls 6.8 percent of the tablet market, while Lenovo has 4.4 percent - small percentages compared to Apple and Samsung - but haven given a breath of life in the stagnant tablet market.

Meanwhile, Google Android has 72 percent tablet operating system market share, while Apple currently has 22.3 percent - and Windows continues to drag along, capturing six percent of the market. However, Lenovo's Yoga 3 Pro ultrabook and Yoga Tablet 2 run Windows, and are proving to be ideal in the workplace.

"White Box manufacturers continue to contribute a large percentage of the Android market share by offering a wide range of tablets in a wide range of screen sizes, connectivity and price points, simultaneously improving quality and specifications," according to Peter King, Tablet Service Director of the Strategy Analytics research group.

The FBI is aware of state-sponsored cyberattacks, with a large volume of attacks blamed on the Chinese and Russian governments, but finding ways to arrest and prosecute hackers overseas is difficult. Companies are struggling to keep their networks secure, as more employees and customers are at risk of data breaches with these groups evolving into better organized, well-funded cybercriminals.

"Since cybercrime is not found in only one country and is globally dispersed, law enforcement agencies must work together on identifying and arresting the actors perpetrating the crimes," a Special Agent from the FBI recently said during a webinar. "The biggest challenge is when these actors live in countries where the cybercrime laws are not distinct, or in some cases non-existent. There have been cases where these actors have traveled through cooperative regions of the world and arrests have been made."

Realistically, many of the state-sponsored cybercriminals will remain out of the reach of the FBI - and other Western European governments - but China, Russia, and select other countries are the largest perpetrators of attacks.

BlackBerry CEO John Chen believes the Asian market is important in his effort to give the struggling smartphone maker new life, but doesn't want to rush any faster than needed. Of note, the Chinese market is appealing to companies, and one that is "too big a market to ignore," but BlackBerry wants to take its time trying to head into China.

"It takes too long to ramp up to a size that is even reasonable (in China)," Chen recently said. "Even if I have that time and money I'll probably have better returns going into a different set of markets that we are already in, like India, South Asia, and Southeast Asia."

The Chinese market is appealing for smartphone manufacturers, with Samsung and Apple both growing their market share in the country. BlackBerry should focus more on redeveloping itself in North America, as trying to compete with Samsung and Apple - among Chinese companies Lenovo and Xiaomi - could prove even more disastrous.

Silicon Valley startup Knightscope has developed the five-foot-tall, 300-pound K5 robot designed to serve as security robots for businesses wanting a new twist on traditional security patrols. The robots are currently being tested by Knightscope and will launch at a Silicon Valley company that can detect movement and behavior - and report back to a security center.

The K5 uses cameras, sensors and navigation equipment, giving the autonomous robot the ability to patrol while also avoiding obstacles. In addition to four high-definition cameras, the K5 has a license-plate recognition scanner, weather sensor, GPS, internal laser ranging instruments, four microphones, and Wi-Fi to communicate with operators.

"This takes away the monotonous and sometimes dangerous work, and leaves the strategic work to law enforcement or private security, depending on the application," said Stacy Stephens, Knightscope co-founder and VP of sales and marketing.

Power consumption is the highest ongoing expense in the datacenter, and for giants like Facebook it can easily add up to billions of dollars per year. One of the most obvious sources of power consumption spawns from cooling costs. Power consumption generates heat, and Facebook has grabbed the low-hanging fruit by moving to open-air datacenter designs that radically reduce cooling requirements. Now Facebook has turned their attention to UPS systems for the next layer of power savings. Reducing overall power consumption is key because it also incurs the expense of power backup. During a power loss event the systems automatically fall back to massive UPS systems that provide enough power, typically 90 seconds worth, to cover the gap until backup generators come online. Facebook has already altered UPS design by migrating from large central UPS systems to seven-foot tall server cabinets interspersed throughout the datacenter.

Today these massive power backup systems rely upon lead-acid batteries, but now Facebook is experimenting with the same type of lithium-ion batteries found in today's latest electric vehicles. The long term cost of maintenance is lower for lithium-ion batteries, and they also deliver more power in a smaller footprint. Facebook is experimenting with designs that embed lithium-on batteries at the rack level. Two batteries will slide into each rack and provide UPS protection. This design also reduces the chance of UPS failure. If a standard centralized UPS fails the entire datacenter can go down. With rack-level battery backups, only small groups of servers would be effected by individual failures.

Recent advances in lithium-ion battery technology have been fueled by electric car development. Vehicles like the Volt, Tesla, and Leaf, have ushered in advanced battery technology and also lowered the overall cost. Now that cost of Li-on batteries has fallen they have become a sensible alternative for UPS applications in massive datacenters. Facebook is integrating their new designs into their Open Compute initiative, which might serve to expand the widespread use of Lithium-ion in the datacenter. There is no word on how increased demand would affect the overall pricing.

Apple hasn't heard reports of any users that have been compromised by the "Masque Attack," but cybersecurity experts are still asking Apple engineers to develop new protections to ensure enterprise users are more secure.

"We designed OS X and iOS with built-in security safeguards to help protect customers and warn them before installing potentially malicious software," an Apple spokesman recently said. "We're not aware of any customers that have actually been affected by this attack."

Cybercriminals want to hijack OS X and iOS users - and have largely struggled to find security loopholes - but are increasing their efforts into malware development.

The Sony PlayStation 4 outsold the Microsoft Xbox One in October, with sales growing 59 percent year-over-year, racking up $273.6 million, according to the NPD Group. Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have all declined to release sales figures of their respective consoles in October, indicating it was a rather lackluster 31 days of sales.

"Overall sales across hardware, new physical software, and accessories were essentially flat in 2014 compared to October 2013," according to the NPD Group's Liam Callahan.

However, the Xbox One price cut has helped the console's sales triple, as it approaches 10 million units sold since launch, and looks poised to better compete against the PS4.

Airplane flights have given the US Department of Justice (DoJ) the perfect opportunity to snoop on American citizens with a custom surveillance program operated by the US Marshals Service. The covert program originally started in 2007 and uses "dirtboxes," portable cell towers, that can secretly collect identity and phone locations on subscribers.

The flights leave from five different airports across the United States, and can snoop on thousands of citizens during any given flight. Specific details regarding the program remain unclear, but the US Marshals conduct these missions "on a regular basis" - and not surprisingly, the DoJ is refusing to comment. The phones are in continuous communication with local cell towers, providing a great opportunity to snoop while being discreet.

Following former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's mass surveillance disclosures, American citizens have become more concerned of government spying.

The Texas Armoring Corporation (TAC) believes in its product so much that company CEO R. Trent Kimball sat in the driver's seat of a Mercedes-Benz while sales manager Lawrence Kosub shot the windshield with an AK-47. The 240fps slow-motion video shows Kimball getting into the vehicle as Kosub shoots one dozen rounds directly into the windshield.

"When it comes to assuring our clients' safety, we take product testing very seriously," Kimball says in the YouTube video.

The company says it produces the world's lightest weight armored vehicle passenger vehicles, and sets the standard for luxury, and our vehicles provide the absolute finest finishing available on the market."

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare has barely been out a week and it's already breaking records on Twitch, with it becoming the most-streamed console game of the year on the Amazon-owned streaming site.

Starting on November 4, there have been over 75,000 unique broadcasters sharing their gameplay footage from the new Call of Duty, with total content views over 26 million. Ernest Le, Director, Publisher & Developer Partnerships with Twitch, said: "Since the Call of Duty community on Twitch is extremely passionate, we are not surprised that Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare set a milestone for most streamed console game of the year based on launch week comparisons. Our community spent over an hour a day watching and engaging with people playing the game, illustrating the incredibly strong appeal of live interactive video".

When it comes to Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare's gameplay, we have 6 million unique viewers last week alone, with over 327 million minutes in total watched. Co-Founder and Studio Head of Sledgehammer Games, Michael Condrey, chimed in: "The response from the global community to Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare has been incredible, with millions of fans playing the new era of Call of Duty and even more watching the action unfold live on Twitch in its first week in the wild. The team at the studio is thrilled to see that players think the game we've poured our heart and soul into making these last three years is not only be fun to play, but very exciting to watch".

Yishan Wong was the CEO of Reddit, until just recently when he resigned over a disagreement with the board of Reddit over a new office.

Lead investor in Reddit's most recently funding round, Sam Altman, said: "The reason was a disagreement with the board about a new office (location and amount of money to spend on a lease). To be clear, though, we didn't ask or suggest that he resign-he decided to when we didn't approve the new office plan". Altman added that the explanation "sounds non-credible (and it's certainly one of the craziest professional things I've ever been a part of), but it's actually what happened".

Altman said that Wong wanted to move the location of the office from San Francisco to Daly City, where he said: "Yishan wanted to move the office from SF to Daly City. The board pushed back but said we'd agree to it with certain data (we wanted Yishan to figure out how many employees would stay with the company through the move, get a comparison to other market rents, etc.-all questions I think a board should ask when thinking through a major commitment). This is certainly not what I was expecting to be dealing with so quickly after investing in reddit, but we'll make the best of it".

GIGABYTE has teamed up with EK Water Blocks, where they have collaborated on making some water blocks exclusively for GIGABYTE's X99 range of motherboards. The new EK-FB KIT GA X99 water blocks can be slapped onto both the X99 chipset, and the motherboard's power-regulation circuitry.

GIGABYTE explains it a bit better: "The EK-FB KIT GA X99 is a complete water cooling solution, made with a base of nickel-plated electrolytic copper while the top is made of quality POM Acetal or acrylic glass material (depending on the variant). Tailor designed for GIGABYTE X99 series motherboards, the coolers consist of two separate water blocks; one water block directly cools the Intel X99 chip while the other takes care of the power regulation area. Not only do the water blocks look amazing and are quieter than an air cooling system, they are actually as efficient as the GIGABYTE factory cooling solution. The screw-in standoffs are already pre-installed and allow for easy and trouble-free installation by utilizing original motherboard back plates".

After teasing it for so long, Sony has finally unveiled PlayStation Vue, its cloud-based TV service. PlayStation Vue is locked to the PS3 and PS4, but it has no contracts, and no pesky hidden fees - all without Sony giving out any pricing on it.

PlayStation Vue will allow people to save their favorite TV shows to the cloud, where it stays there for 28 days. You can receive on-demand access to the last three dasy of TV programming. The company will be holding an invite-only beta sometime later this month, where 75 channels will be made available. Sony is currently offering up CBS, Discovery, Fox, NBC Universal, Scripss Networks Interactive and Viacom, with the promise if more network partners being announced soon.

Sony is poised to fully release PlayStation Vue sometime in the first quarter of 2015, where it should eventually find a home on non-Sony devices like tablets and smartphones.

This is my third Ubisoft article for the day, and I'm only just beginning it - the developer has spoken with the BBC, telling the UK news outfit that it will be changing the way it works with game reviews, and gamers themselves.

A spokesperson for Ubisoft told the BBC: "We are working to adapt our services and communications with consumers accordingly, both by changing the way we work with reviewers and by offering customers open betas or other early access to some games, all so that they have the information they need and want". The spokesperson said that the issues are coming from the launch of Assassin's Creed: Unity, where we saw late embargoes for the reviews - most likely to stop the negative press from getting out and affecting the launch, but as my 3-year-old daughter says: "too late".

The spokesperson added: "Having the online elements available and having populated world's is essential to creating a representative and complete experience for reviewers. Achieving this prior to launch is incredibly complex, which is why some games are being reviewed much closer - or as was the case with Destiny, even after - the game launches".

It seems that my week has been busy with bashing at my keyboard writing up various articles about Ubisoft and Assassin's Creed: Unity, but it's for a good reason: the world needs to know what's going on, and this sh*t needs to stop. Gamers are able to walk away with their hard-earned money, and not purchased the game, but the company's just blame piracy when this happens.

Well, Ubisoft might wake up when their stockholders start to notice sharp drops in their stock prices - with a massive 9% drop in Ubisoft stock after the launch of Assassin's Creed: Unity was met with a truck load of negative reactions and feedback across the world. We can see that the stock was alright up until the morning of Wednesday, 12th of November - and then it dropped harshly, just like the frame rate in Assassin's Creed: Unity.

Now we need to see if this will continue, or stabilize and return to norm. Gamers are pissed, and so are people like me, where I don't think Ubisoft should be able to get away with this. Promising something so grand, building Assassin's Creed: Unity from "the ground up" on next-gen consoles, and then launching the game - which was obviously not ready by any means - to gamers, at a very decent premium.

We've been all over the poor performance of Asssassin's Creed: Unity, but while most would lay the blame with its developer, the developer is blaming AMD. An Ubisoft PR manager has blamed AMD-based GPU and CPU configurations for some reason, even though I'm running Intel and NVIDIA and experiencing mass performance issues.

The Ubisoft PR rep said: "We are aware that the graphics performance of Assassin's Creed Unity on PC may be adversely affected by certain AMD CPU and GPU configurations. This should not affect the vast majority of PC players, but rest assured that AMD and Ubisoft are continuing to work together closely to resolve the issue, and will provide more information as soon as it is available".

AMD has fired back in a way, and we will have our talk with AMD up in a few days, but the company talked with WCCFTech, where they said: "The game (in its current state) is issuing approximately 50,000 draw calls on the DirectX 11 API. Problem is, DX11 is only equipped to handle ~10,000 peak draw calls. What happens after that is a severe bottleneck with most draw calls culled or incorrectly rendered, resulting in texture/NPCs popping all over the place. On the other hand, consoles have to-the-metal access and almost non-existent API Overhead but significantly underpowered hardware which is not able to cope with the stress of the multitude of polygons. Simply put, its a very very bad port for the PC Platform and an unoptimized (some would even go as far as saying, unfinished) title on the consoles".

Cybersecurity experts continue to have concerns over state-sponsored hacking activity, with China and Russia typically blamed for organized cyberattacks. There were a number of significant data breaches throughout 2014, and it would appear many of them were conducted by state-sponsored hacking programs orchestrated by organized, knowledgeable computer specialists.

Following troubling news that Chinese-sponsored hackers breached the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), there has been more attention on hackers that are well-paid and well-organized.

"Whether or not China perpetrated this particular hack or not, the fact remains that nation states are sometimes our enemy," said Robert Twitchell, Jr., President and CEO of Dispersive Technologies, in a statement. "Many of them, including China and Russia, will engage in hacking to steal corporate secrets (for economic advantage), military secrets (for national defensive AND offensive purposes), to embarrass the US and show their technical superiority, and to divert our attention from other activities."