Latest News - Page 2813

Sitting here, I was watching an episode of Under the Dome when I had a random thought about my Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro, and when the Yoga 3 Pro was coming. I decided to Google it, and noticed that Lenovo had a listing on its website, going as far as listing the Yoga 3 Pro, but it hitting a 404 error.

This set me off on some digging, with some sources stating that the upcoming Yoga 3 Pro will feature Intel's new Core M processor, and most of the same specifications of the already impressive Y2P. We should see 8GB of RAM, varying SSD sizes, and the beautiful 13.3-inch 3200x1800 IPS display.

We know that HTC is preparing to unveil new smartphones, and maybe an action camera, on October 8 - just days away. But now there is a leak that is showing off HTC's purported new smartphone, the Desire Eye, which features a massive 13-megapixel front-facing camera.

Desire Eye is mostly a mid-range handset, with a 5.2-inch 1080p display, quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of on-board flash storage. What makes it unique, is that Desire Eye will reportedly feature a 13-megapixel cameras on both the front, and rear of the device. HTC should unveil the Desire Eye in a couple of days time at its "Double Exposure" event.

Rebellion has just updated Sniper Elite 3, with the game now joining the ranks of AMD's Mantle compatible games. The Head of Programming at Rebellion, Kevin Floyer-Lea explained that switching to a different API, is important not only for the gaming industry, but gamers, too.

Sniper Elite 3 runs on the Asura engine, with Rebellion having to find a way to bake Mantle support in with the assets the developer had made for the DirectX version of the game. With Asura being a cross-platform title, it was easier than some engines, but a big task nonetheless. The Mantle-powered version of Sniper Elite 3 lowers the CPU overhead, thanks to more efficient calls within the Mantle API. You can see in the image below, that the Mantle version of the game uses less CPU power, but also provides increased FPS.

We can see that using the Intel Core i7 3770K processor at stock speeds (3.5GHz), the DirectX 11 version of the game uses 23% of the 8 available threads, and provides 88FPS. The Mantle version of the game on the other hand, uses 21% CPU - 2% less than DX11 - and provides 100FPS, just over 10% added performance. Not bad, considering its free performance for Radeon users.

For those out there with much more money to splash on a new smartphone, Vertu has just unveiled its new Aster smartphone, a mid-tier, titanium-built, Android-powered smartphone with a whopping $6,900 price tag.

What do you get for close to $7,000? A 4.7-inch 1080p display, 5.1-inch 117-carat sapphire screen, 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 chip, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and 2.1-megapixel front facer, with the rear-facing snapper certified by Hasselblad, the company who had its technology in the cameras in the 1969 Moon landing.

64GB of internal flash storage, a 2,275mAh battery, front stereo speakers, NFC, Qi wireless charging, and LTE also make the cut. Vertu's CEO said: "Vertu is not here to follow general mass market mobile trends; our technology is leading edge but it doesn't have to be bleeding edge. The same goes for the physical design of Vertu products. The nature of our customers and of our products mean that we have to develop what is right for them, not follow generic broader industry design themes that may be more fleeting than those of the luxury market". The CEO added: "Many of our customers desire and appreciate compact size Vertu products that comfortably fit the inside the pocket of a well-tailored suit or in an expensive clutch bag".

With Mars being orbited by India's satellite Mangalyaan, it has spurred scientists back here on Earth for their next mission, with NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) signing a new agreement to work together on the future exploration of Mars.

The two space agencies also agreed to collaborate on observations and scientific analysis from their respective satellites that are orbiting Mars. With India now the first Asian nation to research to reach Mars, and the only country in the world that succeeded on its first attempt. NASA has its own Maven satellite that entered Mars' orbit two days before Mangalyaan arrived, with Maven the first spacecraft to explore the upper atmosphere of Mars, and Mangalyaan studying the surface of the planet, in search for evidence of methane, and more.

NASA spent north of $740 million on its latest journey to Mars, with India spending just a tenth of that, at a cost of $74 million. Analysts have said that this puts India directly into the big league when it comes to space, nudging out China and Japan in space exploration in one small step for the country. So far, Chinese and Japanese missions to orbit Mars have failed. In six more years, the two space agencies hope to launch NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar, or NISAR. NISAR will observe the Earth, measuring changes in our land surface. NASA said in a statement: "Nisar will improve our understanding of key impacts of climate change and advance our knowledge of natural hazards".

Just weeks out from Google's unveiling of the 5.9-inch Nexus 6 smartphone, the NVIDIA Tegra K1-powered Nexus 9 tablet and Android L, the company has reportedly met with the executives of Cyanogen Inc. to talk about an acquisition, which Cyanogen denied.

Cyanogen is now talking of a Series C round of funding, with some large tech companies and investors in deep talks with the company, which seeks a valuation of close to $1 billion. How can a company who makes a modified version of Android be worth that much money? Simple: Cyanogen is reportedly in talks with taking its CyanogenMod OS to India through a manufacturer called Micromax. Micromax, along with Samsung, own the majority of the smartphone market in India, which could be just what Cyanogen needs to get its OS into the hands of tens of millions of consumers.

With Google being denied the chance to acquire Cyanogen, it could mean a different direction for Android, considering many experts prefer CyanogenMod even over stock Android, which is what Google places on its Nexus devices. With the Android Silver program in trouble, and a failed acquisition of a company that heavily modifies, and sometimes for the better your mobile OS, where will Google go now if it had its hopes on this acquisition going through?

Monolith's new Shadow of Mordor is pushing PCs a little harder in the graphics department, but the effects are good enough to require a 3.7GB download of the games Ultra HD texture pack. This texture packs increases the in-game graphics with higher resolution textures, recommended only for GPUs with 6GB of VRAM, like NVIDIA's GeForce GTX Titan.

But as it stands, there is an issue with the texture pack, as users are reporting that even with the Ultra preset for textures enabled, the game still runs on High quality. There aren't many GPUs on the market with 6GB of VRAM (or more) on them, apart from a select group of Radeon HD 7970s and R9 290Xs, and a couple of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 780 and 780 Ti, apart from the company's higher-end GTX Titan series.

The game has a built-in benchmark which is easy for comparing your system against friends, and to see the averages, etc increase with an upgrade to your system. We will have benchmarks using Shadow or Mordor shortly, so check back over the weekend.

It has been ten years since Lost premiered, and with the controversial finale four years ago, the Executive Producer behind the show has said that the return of Lost is simply, in the words of Agent Smith, "inevitable".

Carton Cuse talked with Digital Spy, where he said: "Disney owns the franchise, it made them a lot of money, it's hard to imagine it will just sit there idly forever. Damon (Lindelof) and I told our story in that world and I assume someone will come along, hopefully having been inspired by our story, or our version of the story, and want to tell their own story".

"It's like the Narnia chronicles. There are seven books, they were all written by CS Lewis, but they all visit Narnia at different times and different configurations and different ways", he continued. Cuse added: "Someone is going to come up with a way to tell another Lost story. I think it's inevitable. I don't know what it is or how it would work, but I can't imagine something else won't be done with the franchise".

Now that the new iPhones are here, the talk about the next iPhone has begun. Samsung is reportedly being tapped by Apple to make its A9 processor, the successor to the A8 found in the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

Samsung is expected to use its 14nm process, which the company should surely handle since it made 30% of all A8 processors, sharing manufacturing work with TSMC. Samsung is offering up Apple's next processor built on 14nm FinFet technology, which should provide 15% smaller space compared to the current 20nm, as well as providing 20% more power, and 35% more power efficiency.

We should hear more about the A9 processor soon, but who would be surprised with a new iPhone announcement in the next six months?

Most are expecting self-driving cars to be something real before the end of the decade, but 2020 is too far away for Tesla. During a recent interview with CNNMoney, Tesla Motors' boss and real-life Tony Stark, Elon Musk, has teased that an autonomous car from the company is only months away from retail.

Musk said: "Autonomous cars will definitely be a reality. A Tesla car next year will probably be 90 percent capable of autopilot. Like, so 90 percent of your miles can be on auto. For sure highway travel. How's that going to happen? With a combination of various sensors. You combine cameras with image recognition with radar and long-range ultrasonics, that'll do it. Other car companies will follow. But you guys are going to be the leader? Of course. I mean, Tesla's a Silicon Valley company. If we're not the leader, shame on us".

Tesla Motors has an announcement ready for October 9, inviting media and promising to unveil "the D and something else". A self-driving car is a total surprise at this point, and could be the catalyst Tesla requires to become the undisputed new big thing in vehicles not only in the US, but the world. Cheap to run, high-quality, safe, autonomous cars? Sure, they might be expensive at first, but with the new Gigafactory, we could be looking at cheaper, mid-range autonomous cars being the norm by 2020, instead of the first one rolling off the production line.

The United States military has slowed down efforts to dismantle some of its aging nuclear warheads, just in case they are needed for use against asteroids that threaten the Earth. Until an evaluation is conducted to determine "their use in planetary defense against earth-bound asteroids," according to officials.

Nuclear weapons could be used to strike asteroids to either knock them off course - or detonate asteroids to create smaller fragments - that would no longer pose a threat to the planet. Of course, such controversial research has garnered some criticism, including the idea that this is just an excuse for the U.S. military to keep a functional nuclear arsenal.

NASA previously outlined its interest in trying to capture an asteroid which could be used by researchers for further studies. The U.S. space agency will test capabilities by 2030 as part of the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), and it could also be used to help manned missions reach Mars.

It wasn't long ago that NVIDIA used its GAME24 event to officially unveil its new second-generation Maxwell-based GPUs, the GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970, but also celebrated PC gaming for 24 hours across the world.

NVIDIA had over 1.3 million gamers from over 120 countries jump into the live stream for the various streams NVIDIA had going, from a 24-hour modding competition, to the Maxwell launch itself, to a DotA 2 tournament, and more. 1.3 million gamers tuning in over 24 hours show that NVIDIA pulled something popular here, so it'll be interesting to see another event in the near future from the company.

Netflix has announced a new deal it has struck with Adam Sandler, the star of The Wedding Singer and Happy Gilmore, with his next four feature films as an exclusive. With Sandler's movies grossing over $3 billion at the global box office, this could be an interesting move.

Sandler's movies also rank as the most-viewed by Netflix members in the US, Brazil, the UK and more. Netflix's Chief Content Officer, Ted Sarandos said: "People love Adam's films on Netflix and often watch them again and again. His appeal spans across viewers of all ages -- everybody has a favorite movie, everyone has a favorite line -- not just in the US but all over the world".

Sandler had something a little different to say: "When these fine people came to me with an offer to make four movies for them, I immediately said yes for one reason and one reason only... Netflix rhymes with Wet Chicks. Let the streaming begin!!!!" The deal sees Sandler's Happy Madison Productions working with Netflix to develop the four movies that will see Adam Sandler starring and producing in, to premiere exclusively to member's in over close to 50 countries that Netflix operates in.

Star Citizen has raked in over $55 million in crowdfunding since it went live last year, which has seen the game enter the Guinness Book of World Records "not as the largest crowdfunded game of all time, but as the largest crowdfunded anything of all time", according to Roberts Space Industries' founder and Wing Commander's father, Chris Roberts.

Funding for the space simulation game began last November, with a $6 million Kickstarter project. When Star Citizen reached $50 million in funding, Roberts said: "Ship sales and new members of our community are the two main fund raising sources". Roberts talked about the success of Star Citizen, and its seemingly endless campaign which just isn't running out of steam, he reiterated to fans that "there is no venture capitalist wanting a massive return in three years".

This is great news for gamers and fans of the game, as well as backers and funders of the game, as the profits aren't all for RSI, but Roberts said that his "intention is for all the money we bring in before launch to be spent on development". RSI now has a team of over 280 people, with Roberts adding: "It is the community, from the existing backers who continue to support the game, to new members who join every day who are setting the level of ambition and budget for Star Citizen".

Qualcomm has just teased the next generation of wireless technology with its new LTE Direct technology, something the company has been working on for close to a decade. LTE Direct is built upon the foundations of the LTE protocol, which allows LTE Direct-powered devices to communicate with one another without requiring a cell tower.

LTE Direct will also work at distances greater than 500 yards, which means we have signal ranges that far exceed that of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Better yet, LTE Direct uses very little energy, meaning a device can be on the look out for another LTE Direct signal without draining the battery. Then there's the other side of the LTE Direct coin: it's not just limited to handsets, as beacons can be set up to communicate directly with anything nearby.

Mahesh Makhijani from Qualcomm has said that this is somewhat of a sixth sense, which is constantly aware of the environment around you. With the world filled with information, LTE Direct can help people use their phones to better their lives. But, with retailers jumping on board, and you being blasted directly in places where you'd normally not get cell signal, it could get annoying, fast.

Within the next four months, Apple would've launched its new iPhone into 115 countries and regions, but in order to meet the insane demand of its new flagship smartphone, Foxconn is having to hire even more workers at its Chinese plants to keep up with demand.

The news is coming from DigiTimes, with Foxconn not commenting on the report, but supply chain sources have told DigiTimes that Foxconn is "aggressively recruiting workers" to work on the new iPhones. Considering Apple have sold over 10 million iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus smartphones in the first three days alone, we should expect there to be tens of millions sold before the holidays.

In just three weeks time, on October 17, Apple will open up sales of the new iPhone in China, which is the world's largest market. This will be a big test not only for Apple, but for Foxconn and China itself. Foxconn has reportedly been having issues employing more staff after all of the negative press the company receives from its various issues, which has forced the company to host hiring events to keep up with the demand of its manufacturing.

In something that feels like it's right out of Hollywood, we now have self-destructing SSDs. SecureDrives has the technology, with four different SSDs on offer that provide 256-bit AES CBC hardware encryption, two-factor authentication, GSM command over encryption key flipping and physical fracturing of the NAND flash itself.

This kind of technology might not seem like something you or I might use, but for those with super-sensitive information on their notebooks that might get left behind, or stolen, this is perfect. The SecureDrive SSDs have a self-destruct mechanism which happens if someone attempts to physically open the drive, which will initiate the physical fracturing of the NAND flash.

Better yet, you can configure the SSD to self-destruct if it's removed from your SATA II connector. Other options include self-destruction if the internal battery runs completely empty, and the convenient ability to destroy the drive if an an SMS is sent from any phone.

Apple has been having a tough time with the bending iPhone 6 Plus, but it looks like German magazine ComputerBild.de is having an even tougher time, with Apple reportedly banning the magazine from official events after its coverage of #BendGate.

ComputerBild.de is claiming that Apple has stopped sending them test devices, as well as revoking invites to any future Apple launch events after they posted a video showing how the iPhone 6 Plus could be bent with your bare hands. As you can see in the video above, the iPhone 6 Plus is easily damaged through bending just below the volume button.

The site has talked with Apple's PR department in Germany, which refused to answer any questions about the bending iPhone 6 Plus, telling the site that it "will not get any testing devices and no invites to official events any more". ComputerBild.de then wrote an open letter to Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, asking him if this was the reaction that his company wants to have to publications that are covering the issue, like we have been - I still ask: seriously, what's Apple going to do with #BendGate.

It was probably only a matter of time, but U.S. health agency the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has now confirmed the first case of diagnosed Ebola has hit the continental United States, according to news agency Reuters.

The unidentified man left Liberia on September 19 and arrived in the United States the next day, not showing symptoms of the disease until four of five days later. The Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital where the man is in isolation won't confirm details such as the man's identity, his contact with the public, or what he was doing in Liberia, which is now an Ebola hotspot. There are currently no other suspected cases of the deadly disease in Texas, or the wider United States.

More than 3,000 people in West Africa have died after being infected with Ebola, the strain of which broke out earlier this year.

Auction house eBay has decided to spin off its PayPal business amid activist pressure from board members and shareholders, with two independent companies to begin in the second half of 2015. Devin Weng, head of the eBay "Marketplaces" business, will lead the independent eBay as CEO - and Dan Schulman, a former American Express executive, will be CEO head of the new PayPal unit.

"We are happy that eBay's board and management have acted responsibly concerning the separation - perhaps a little later than they should have, but earlier than we expected," said investor Carl C. Icahn. "As I have said in the past and have continued to maintain, it is almost a 'no brainer' that these companies should be separated to increase the value of these great assets and thus to meaningfully enhance value for all shareholders."

Corporate spinoffs are becoming more commonplace among major corporations, as shareholders and potential investors want to see better control over corporate operations. Depending on the economic climate - and the parties involved - it can lead to a strong boost in stock prices to win over board members.