Latest News - Page 2825

Sprint will reportedly cut prices with an announcement set for next week, as the No. 3 wireless carrier tries to catch up to Verizon Wireless and AT&T. Sprint Chairman Masayoshi Son recently tasked new CEO Marcelo Claure with pointing the company in the correct direction following a failed bid for T-Mobile.

Claure replaced Dan Hesse last week, and is interested in dropping prices, boosting the company's wireless network, and trying to cut operational costs.

"In the short term, our success will come from our focus on becoming extremely cost efficient and competing aggressively in the marketplace," Claure recently said. "The management team has been working closely with the board to outline the future strategy of the company."

During an interview with Joystiq at Gamescom, Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg said that the three-year cycle that the Call of Duty franchise finds itself in, is something its audience is used to. But even though we see a game released every year, we have three studios working on the franchise at all times.

Hirshberg explained: "That extra year of development time, particularly with the new consoles and the more powerful hardware, has really paid off thus far to iterate, innovate and try new things. To find out which things didn't work and have the freedom to fail in the creative process, so what goes on the disc is the best ideas".

It's interesting to see that the company knows it has the ability to fail, with Hirshberg continuing: "The thing that the three-year development cycle allows is these games have gotten so ambitious, we're packing so many different modes of play onto the disc. The things that started off as flyers, like zombies or co-op became their own whole games". Hirshberg says that even though the franchise is annualized, the structure it has for Call of Duty sees that the quality of the series is sustainable. He finished off by saying "Activision has a narrative that doesn't match the reality, which is quite potent".

Flash Memory Summit 2014 - Newisys displayed two data center storage systems at the show this year, both with a focus on density. The new NDS-2600 and NDS-4600 allow data centers to add large volumes of storage with as little rack space as possible.

Here is a face you've seen on the pages of TweakTown a few times. It's Michael Schuette, formally of OCZ fame. Michael has taken his wealth of knowledge to Sanmina, owners of the Newisys brand.

Michael is no stranger to the cutting edge. Here we see one side of the new Newisys NDS-2600, a 2U server that features 30 2.5" drive bays on each side of the system. As you can see in this image, the system is still on rails so it slides in and out of the server rack for service easily.

Michael J Fox's charity, the Michael J Fox foundation, has partnered with Intel to examine how wearable technology can be of benefit to people with Parkinson's disease.

Michael J Fox founded the charity after he was diagnosed with the disease. Its cause is not known and there is no cure, however, the symptoms, such as shaking and trouble with co-ordination, can be treated to a degree. The wearable tech will be used to unearth more data, for example, by recording the movements of patients and volunteers. An accompanying smartphone will upload this data to an Intel system, which will then dedicate data scientists to the project.

Ex Intel boss Andy Grove has acted as adviser to the foundation since he was also diagnosed with the disease. Chief executive of the foundation, Todd Sherer, said, according to the BBC: "This opportunity really will allow us the chance to uncover novel breakthroughs in Parkinson's disease by truly understanding how people are living with the disease today, how are they responding to treatments, what are their unmet needs."

Although it didn't set the box office alight in the manner that Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures had hoped, the green light has officially been given for a sequel by Warner, along with a very specific release date of June 8, 2018.

Director Gareth Edwards hasn't been confirmed to return to direct the sequel, however the 2018 release date has presumably been set as to allow him to helm the as-yet untitled 'Star Wars' spin-off for Disney, which releases in 2016.

With a budget of $160 million, the $500 million worldwide return was generally seen as a disappointment, especially off the back of a strong critical response (including our review here), along with a solid cast led by 'Breaking Bad' star Bryan Cranston.

Corsair has just taken the wraps off of its new DDR4 RAM, where it has announced two DDR4 kits in its Dominator Platinum range. Both of the new DDR4-powered products are 16GB kits, with a 2800MHz kit, and a 2666MHz kit.

The faster of the two is the Dominator Platinum Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4 DRAM 2800MHz C16 Memory Kit (CMD16GX4M4A2800C16), while the second kit is the Dominator Platinum Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4 DRAM 2666MHz C15 Memory Kit (CMD16GX4M4A2666C15). Both of the new DDR4 kits include XMP 2.0, which allows for super easy automatic overclocking. Both of the kids also support Corsair Link, so that you can use the software for temperature monitoring, and even the ability to enhance the white LED lighting on the RAM itself.

Corsair offers a limited lifetime warranty on its Dominator Platinum RAM, so you won't have to worry about spending a considerable sum on RAM, and not have the kick ass support behind it. Corsair is selling the 2800MHz kit for $539.99, while the 2666MHz kit is slightly cheaper at $479.99.

Google Android and Apple iOS are clearly dominating the smartphone market, with very little room for the Microsoft Windows Phone. Microsoft has added 11 additional OEM partners, and has attracted new developers, but Microsoft is still losing ground. There are more than 300,000 Windows Phone apps, but that greatly trails the 1 million+ Android and iOS apps already available.

Windows Phone devices dropped from 3.4 percent down to 2.5 percent year-over-year during Q2, according to the IDC research firm. Microsoft has tried to heavily promote its Windows Phone OS to users and developers, but it has been nearly impossible to steal attention from Google and Apple. Android has around 84 percent of the market, available on a host of different OEMs, such as Samsung, LG, and others.

"It's been an incredible upward slog for other OS players," said Melissa Chau, IDC senior research manager, in a statement. "Windows Phone has been around since 2010 but has yet to break the 5 percent share mark ... the biggest stumbling block is around getting enough partnerships in play - not just phone manufacturers but also developers, many of which are smaller outfits looking to minimize development efforts by sticking to the two big ecosystems."

Flash Memory Summit 2014 - We sat down with Josh and Matt from iXsystems while at the show. Matt and Josh unloaded a lot of information about FreeNAS and where the project is headed. It sounds like the big push for the second half of this year revolves around making the product more user friendly. A new wizard system should tame the complicated but powerful storage specific operating system.

The FreeNAS developers also also pitched us TrueNAS, not that it was difficult to make us listen. iXsystems will soon offer TrueNAS in an all flash array, something we're excited about. The current builds of TrueNAS use hybrid storage pools with flash acceleration.

If you missed our review of the iXsystem's FreeNAS Mini be sure to take a look. The system cost less than $1000 and outperforms many systems costing several times more.

Amobile Spy recently launched the iKeyMonitor Android Spy App, a custom app designed to help parents track what their children do using their smartphones.

The app has the ability to log passwords and keystrokes, monitor WhatsApp message recording, Web history tracking, capture screenshots, log email reporting and 2-side SMS/call logging. The keylogger monitors everything from Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Skype, Yahoo Messenger and other popular social media or communication apps.

"iKeyMonitor Android Keylogger offers simple, secure, and secret ways to record the activities on Android devices with incredible monitoring features," said Kyle Davis, Amobile Development Department Manager, in a press statement. "We're also giving users smart features to review the logged data remotely."

A new Chinese malware infected more than 75,000 jailbroken Apple iPhones, with the malware hijacking 22 million advertisements. AdThief, also known as Spad, is the iOS malware and was able to covertly operate around four months - and only works on jailbroken devices. Although originally found by researcher Claud Xiao in March, Fortinet senior mobile researcher Axelle Apvrille took a closer look at AdThief.

Operating on 15 different mobile adkits, the malware changed a developer or affiliate ID so the attacker would collect the revenue. Eight of the adkits are Chinese, and jailbreaking devices is a rather common technique among Chinese consumers. Security experts continually warn users that jailbroken smartphones and tablets pose significant threats to users.

The Chinese hacker, known as Rover12421 did contribute to the code, but denied saying he or she is behind the entire project.

Way back in 2000 a man named Neil Stammer was accused of sex crimes involving a child as well as kidnapping and other charges in New Mexico. The man was released on bond and then he skipped town and remained at large for 14 years. He was recently captured after facial recognition tech was used on his photograph.

The case was shelved years ago after no new evidence surfaced and the criminal couldn't be located. Things changed earlier this year when the Diplomatic Security Service began using facial recognition tech to crack down on bogus US passports. Authorities ran the facial recognition tech on Stammer's old photo and came up with a match.

The old photo matched a photo of a man named Kevin Hodges, who was actually Stammer living under a new name in Nepal. Stammer was teaching English to children there and was described as "comfortable" in Nepal.

I'm sure many people out there have imagined having a robot that could bring them stuff when they want it like food or drinks. A hotel in California called Aloft Hotel has started to roll out robotic butlers that can bring things to your room for you. These robot butlers are called Botlr and perhaps the best part for hotel visitors is that all the Botlr wants for a tip is a tweet.

Botlr will bring things to your room like toothpaste, towels, and just about anything else that a person would normally bring you. Botlr will go into use for the first time on August 20 at the Aloft Hotel in Cupertino, California.

The bot will be named A.L.O. and will even wear a butler uniform and nametag. A compartment on top of the robot is where items are stored for delivery. When the robot arrives at your door, the phone in the room will ring. Botlr is the product of a company called Savioki, which is backed by Google Ventures.

Land Rover is the latest automaker to be forced to issue major recalls on its vehicles for airbag issues. The company has recalled 46,515 Land Rover SUVs in the US and Canada due to risk that the airbag may not deploy in an accident due to a component failure. Land Rover says that no reports of accidents or injuries have been made.

There is no indication at this time if the airbag issue will force recalls in other areas where the vehicles are sold. Vehicles covered in the recall include 2010 to 2015 LR2 compact SUVs and 2012 and 2013 Evoque SUVs. The issue in these vehicles is that the occupant classification system electronic control unit could fail.

If that failed, the passenger airbag would be partially or completely disabled. When owners take their vehicles to dealerships, the software for that control module will be replaced at no cost beginning August 30.

LG has unveiled a version of the G Pad 8.0 tablet that packs LTE mobile web connectivity. With LTE connectivity, data connectivity while away from a Wi-Fi network is much faster allowing users to access video and other content on the go. The tablet has a sync feature that provides connectivity with other Android devices via QPair 2.0.

The users can connect their smartphones via Bluetooth and answer phone calls, text messages, and get notifications on the tablet. The tablet also includes other features from LG with Touch & Shoot letting users touch anywhere on the tablet to activate the camera. Gesture Shot makes it easy to take selfies by opening and closing the hand in front of the lens to get a three second count down.

LG uses an 8-inch IPS screen with 1280 x 800 resolution. The tablet has a 1.2GHz processor and 16GB of storage onboard. A microSD card slot is available for expansion and the tablet has 1GB of RAM. Power comes from a 4200 mAh battery and the rear camera is a 5MP unit with the front having 1.3MP. Pricing is unannounced and the tablet will ship in Europe this week before heading to other countries later.

In just a couple of months time, 4A Games will launch its Metro Redux, which sees remastered versions of two of the most popular first-person shooters of the last few years: Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light.

NVIDIA is backing this new remastered copy, so on top of the enhanced graphics, countless changes within the game, we can expect GPU-accelerated PhysX effects thanks to NVIDIA's technology. 4A Games have painstakingly changed so much of the two games, with improved geometry, encounters, lighting, and even how levels themselves end and transition.

The biggest change is going to come from Metro 2033, which will receive a graphics engine overhaul, with PnP tessellation, and some gameplay refinements that were found in Metro: Last Light. The PC side of things will see "higher-resolution textures, higher-quality effects, greater levels of PnP tessellation, support for 4K resolutions, and most significantly, re-tooled NVIDIA GPU-accelerated PhysX effects built using PhysX 3.x, the latest version of the critically acclaimed physics software".

Newer generations of malware are finding their way to virtual machines - and instead of fleeing like before - are still executing when on VM. At least 70 percent of companies plan to utilize server virtualization by the end of 2015, so malware reaching the virtual machines could prove problematic.

In a study of 200,000 malware samples, analyzed on both VM and non-VM machines by Symantec, only 18 percent wouldn't operate on a virtual machine.

"The host server, as well as any virtual machine running on it, needs to be protected against malware," said Liam O'Murch, Symantec Security Response researcher, in a statement to SCMagazine. "To achieve this, advanced malware protection with proactive components that go beyond the classical static antivirus scanner needs to be in place. This can be agentless on the hypervisor or in the guest image themselves."

Google Android 4.4 KitKat continues to gobble up the market, now accounting for 20.9 percent of total market share, a jump from 17.9 percent from July. The 4.4 version rolled out in October 2013 and wireless carriers have been excited to include the latest and greatest version to customers.

The continued fragmentation of Android, with five different codenames running different versions, however, is seen as a security issue that must be addressed. In addition, there is complexity of Google creating an update or modification, and then phone manufacturers also needing to conduct their own tweaks.

Android Jelly Bean 4.1 still leads with 26.5 percent market share, but KitKat is quickly working to overtake that number in the future. Developers are always excited to get their hands-on newer versions of Android, and app development continues to evolve with each new version.

Gamescom has been filled with some big announcements, with the creator of Metal Gear Solid, Hideo Kojima announcing that Metal Gear Solid V will be coming to the PC. Well, he also unveiled the new Silent Hills game, too.

Silent Hills is an interactive horror game that Kojima, Sony and Konami have been working with Guillermo Del Toro, who directed movies like Hellboy and the recent Pacific Rim. Joining them is Norman Reedus, who plays Daryl on AMC's The Walking Dead. Kojima has promised that the new Silent Hills will be so scary that it will make gamers "s**t their pants". Kojima wants to create a game so scary that you'll want to turn your machine off to stop it from scaring you.

At Gamescom, Kojima said: "That's why there's a limit on how scary you can make a game, but in this case we're ignoring that. If you don't want to keep playing through the game, so be it we don't care. That's the game we're aiming for. We're aiming for a game that will make you shit your pants". We don't know what platforms Silent Hills will be hitting, but we can almost guarantee that the PlayStation 4 will be one of them.

Companies should prepare sooner rather than later when it comes to upgrading from Windows 7, even though there are years left before support ends. Mainstream support for Windows 7 ends in January 2015, while end of extended support is scheduled for January 2020.

The end of extended support of Windows XP seemingly caught many businesses off guard, as they were reluctant to bother upgrading to Windows 7 or 8/8.1. Moving forward, Gartner recommends users deploy Windows 8/8.1 on new PCs, in an effort to phrase out Windows 7 slowly overtime. If companies are planning to phase out Windows 7 - but don't show interest in Windows 8 - then be prepared to upgrade to the latest-generation version of Windows.

"Organizations that have already deployed some Windows 8 PCs, or that decide that Windows 8.1 Update 1 provides an attractive platform, should not shy away from deploying new devices with the OS," according to Stephen Kleynhans, Gartner Research VP, in a blog post. "However, we expect that by the time an organization is ready for a broad rollout, Windows 8.1 Update 2 will have entered the market. Shifting deployment to Update 2 should be relatively straightforward for most organizations, and in that case, Windows 8.1 Update 1 should be seen as a pilot for that ultimate deployment."

An unnamed 19-year-old software engineering student, identified only as "Li," was arrested just 17 hours after his "Heart App" Google Android malware infected more than 100,000 phones. The malware was able to spread so quickly by relying on the contact lists of compromised devices, with users downloading the fake app, which then sent out a text urging users to download the app as well.

Chinese wireless carriers were quick to block more than 20 million infected messages from being sent out to new users. The 19-year-old will be identified following completion of the investigation by Shenzhen police, where the student went for vacation. It seems the custom malware was designed just as proof of his ability to write code.

To uninstall the malware, Sophos recommends the following: head to Settings | Apps | Downloaded and uninstall XXshenqi app.