Latest News - Page 2861

While speaking at the media forum in St Petersburg yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the Internet was one big "CIA project" and "is still developing as such".

After his remarks, Russia's biggest search engine, Yandex, saw its share price drop drastically. The Kremlin has been trying to grab more control over the Internet, as opposition activists have used to promote their ideas and organize various protests. Putin touched on Google, saying that information "all goes through servers that are in the States, everything is monitored there".

There have been conspiracy theories for as long as I remember that the Internet was a big CIA project, and that Mark Zuckerberg was a CIA agent. This is why Facebook has become so big so quickly, because the US spy agencies instead of having to require a subpoena or similar to get information on someone - people just hand it up on a silver platter through the social network now.

In its new blog post, Netflex blamed Comcast of extorting content companies and its own customers by charging twice for accessing the same content on the internet. It also stated that the internet service provider is not truly offering transit service.

Earlier, Netflix raised concerns about Comcast's merger with Time Warner as it might charge a 'toll' for accessing video content, but at the end of the day Netflix had to made an agreement with Comcast for better quality of streaming of content for its customers.

Netflix pointed out that unlike Level3 and Cogent, Comcast is not carrying traffic to every network on the internet. According to Netflix, rather than moving the traffic, its merely acting as a 'gatekeeper' for its subscribers. Netflix VP of content Ken Florance added,"In this way, Comcast is double dipping by getting both its subscribers and Internet content providers to pay for access to each other."

Rumors are flying that Google will soon shut down, or at least dismantle its Google+ service. The rumors suggest that Google would remove Google+ as a product, but continue it flowing in the background as a service instead.

TechCrunch has said: "What we're hearing from multiple sources is that Google+ will no longer be considered a product, but a platform - essentially ending its competition with other social networks like Facebook and Twitter". According to one of TechCrunch's anonymous sources, Google+ would no longer compete directly against Facebook and Twitter, and would end the forced integrations of Google+ into Google services like Gmail and YouTube.

Another source, as well as the Financial Times' anonymous source has said: "One person familiar with Google said the company planned to refocus its social media efforts soon. Its Hangouts messaging and video-chat app will be given greater prominence, alongside photos, while the Google+ branding may take a back seat, this person said".

The Boston Children's Hospital was recently targeted in a wave of cyberattacks trying to bring down its website, though cybercriminals were unsuccessful, and no patient data was taken in the attempted breach.

"Over the weekend and through today, Boston Children's Hospital's website has been the target of multiple attacks designed to bring down the site by overwhelming capacity," said Rob Graham, hospital spokesperson, in a statement.

Hospital officials have reported police authorities and an investigation is currently underway - no hacker or hacker groups have stepped forward to take credit for the attempted breach.

Amazon has made no secret over the years that it wants to earn all your business. You can get just about anything you can think of from Amazon and you can now buy your groceries there. Amazon has announced Prime Pantry, a grocery delivery service available anywhere in the lower 48 states.

With Prime Pantry, you can go and find all the snacks, dinner stuff, drinks, toiletries, personal hygiene, and other items you need. Add them to your cart and Amazon keeps a running total of how full your Prime Pantry Box is.

Once the box is full, Amazon will ship it to you for $5.99. The box will hold up to four cubic feet of items or 45 pounds. You will still have to go to the store for some of your items since Prime Pantry only has non-perishable items. This service could save you most of your trips each month. It seems that the prices are higher than local stores (at least my local stores) but the convenience f not having to go to the store may be worth it for some folks. You do have to be an Amazon Prime member.

ASRock has quickly grown to be one of the foremost motherboard manufacturers in the custom PC world and with Intel's pending release of its new 5th Generation Haswell Processors for 2014, the company has prepared an entire line of Z97-based motherboards for 2014. While we are sure that ASRock will be showing them all of at Computex 2014, TweakTown has been given a special look into the line in the form of 19 photos.

No information was given on each specific motherboard except that they are Z97 based, and will accept Intel's 5th Generation Haswell Processors. Some of the boards will feature the new M.2 SSD connector and will allow the use of M.2 SSD drives with the boards. "M.2, formerly called "Next Generation Form Factor" (NGFF), is the latest I/O solution of replacing Mini-SATA (abbreviated as mSATA) and breaking through the speed limit of the current SATA3 6Gb/s. Leading by Intel Inc., M.2 technology is based on the PCI Express interface and also compatible with the SATA interface," ASRock said in a release.

Skylanders has been around for several years and was the first game to allow the player to take real-world action figures into the video game to play. The player could buy a number of Skylanders action figures, set them on a portal device, and play them in the video game. Activision has turned Skylanders into one of its most profitable franchises.

A new Skylanders game will land this fall called Skylanders Trap Team. It will have the normal ability to let gamers place an action figure on the portal and play the character in the game. It will also have another interesting feature that is a first for the franchise.

Players will be able to defeat digital enemies and bring them into the real-world using special traps. Once the enemy is defeated in the game, inserting a trap allows the gamer to catch the bad guy and turn it into a playable character. Somehow, the bad guy can be heard inside the trap. Since the traps are physical items, the player can take them to a friend's house to play on another system just as they do with the action figures. The game launches October 5 and will cost about $75 for a starter kit.

There are some incredibly exciting devices coming out this year, with the Virtuix Omni VR treadmill being one of them. Virtuix, the company behind the VR treadmill, has just received $3 million in a round of investment.

Virtuix has said that it will use the investment to increase the amount of staff it has, improve the mass production as well as the distribution of the Omni treadmill. The Virtuix Omni begins shipping in a few months to its Kickstarter backers, after which it will go on sale to the general public - and hopefully arrive at my house for a good old thrashing.

Watch Dogs isn't even out yet - and doesn't arrive until May 27 - but Watch Dogs' Creative Director, Jonathan Morin, is already teasing us about the sequel. Not directly, but he talked to Eurogamer saying "Right now there is no such thing as a Watch Dogs 2".

Morin continued: "It's certainly not going to be the same amount of time if we ever embark on such a journey. A big part of it was defining whatever Watch Dogs is. Once you have that starting point, then what becomes interesting is what players want more of - what comes next?". He also mentioned the delay that Watch Dogs required, suggesting the commitment to Watch Dogs' long-term potential. He said that Ubisoft wanted to get the game right, as the future of Watch Dogs is important to them.

He added: "Especially with the delay we have just been really concentrating on getting it [the original Watch Dogs] launched. After that we'll see where it goes - I think Ubisoft is showing more and more that they're willing to take the time for it to be right". When it came to talk of a sequel, Morin suggested that the decision for Watch Dogs 2 isn't going to necessarily be greenlit on sales numbers alone, but more the critical reception of the game would be important to the company, too.

We were there when it was announced, but we didn't know when the GeForce GTX TITAN Z would be released - now we know: April 29. NVIDIA will be selling the GTX TITAN Z for a massive $2999 - without tax.

Considering some countries charge anywhere between 10-30% tax, you could be looking at as much as just under $4000 for this beastly dual-GPU video card. But, remember that the TITAN Z sports two GK110 GPUs, so we should expect some truly delicious performance from this card. Each GPU features 2880 CUDA cores, 240 TMUs, 48 ROPs, and 6GB of GDDR5 RAM at the ready.

One of the best things NVIDIA did with its TITAN Z is air-cool it, versus AMD's watercooling setup on its Radeon R9 295X2. You can just buy the TITAN Z, strap it into a PCIe slot and away you go. There is no fiddling around to mount some massive radiator. I can't wait to get my hands-on two of these for some triple 4K action.

GIGABYTE is really expanding its BRIX lineup of small form factor PCs, with the latest one powered by an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 GPU. Not only that, but it had an Haswell-based Core i5 processor, too.

Inside of the new BRIX was an Intel Core i5-4200H processor at 2.8GHz (up to 3.4GHz thanks to Turbo), with a 47W TDP. As for the desktop-class GPU, the GeForce GTX 760 has a total TDP of 170W, so we should expect some serious heat to be pushed out of this particular BRIX. Inside, we have dual SO-DIMM slots, support for both mSATA and 2.5-inch drives, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Gigabit Ethernet.

On top of that, we have four USB 3.0 ports, dual HDMI outputs, and a miniDisplayPort output. We should expect the GeForce-powered BRIX PCs to roll out sometime next month, with the company teasing a Core i7-based BRIX being available soon. We should see much more on the BRIX PCs as we get closer to Computex which kicks off in early June.

According to a Russian leaker, the next version of Windows will be a free, cloud-based OS known as Windows Cloud. Windows Cloud would require an Internet connection for full functionality of the OS, but to receive functions past the basic ones provided for free, a subscription would be required.

The person behind the leak, Wzor, has been right on previous rumors, such as an early version of the Windows 8.1 update. According to PC World, part of Windows Cloud would be stored locally on your computer, possibly sitting in your PC's BIOS, with the rest of it downloaded from the Internet. When not connected to the Internet, it would offer the user just basic functionality.

This would work similar to how Windows 7 Starter gave users basic functionality, with the option to upgrade to other versions of Windows.

The Pentagon has been building itself some robots, with a new Terminator-like rescue robot that would be deployed into disaster situations, where it would search for survivors.

The 6-foot 2-inch robot named Atlas is one of the entrants in a contest that is designed to build a robotic hero, thanks to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The competition sees entrants' robots capable of finding their way through rough terrain and entering buildings. The competition was created after the magnitude-9 earthquake in Japan which crippled the Fukushima nuclear plant and sent a tsunami into the country.

DARPA is The Pentagon's go-to research department, which has just shown off its Atlas robot - featuring LED lighting, but was switched off and simply in a "static" display for the competition. Head of DARPA's Tactical Technology Office, Brad Tousley, told US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that Hollywood has portrayed an unrealistic expectation in peoples' minds about what robots are capable of - at least at this point in time.

Portable external storage drives have been the saving grace of many consumers who have needed to transfer large amounts of data at one time or another. For the most part, these portable drives have been limited to the 2.5" HDD form factor, and were still a little bulky to toss into a pocket or purse. Today VisionTek has solved that problem forever.

VisionTek says that the mSATA Mini Enclosure has a footprint smaller than a business card and thanks to mSATA SSD technology, the device can store more than a similarly priced thumb-drive, and remain faster. Unfortunately the mSATA enclosure is just that, an enclosure. You will have to purchase and install your own mSATA SSD. Total cost for the enclosure and a decent mSATA drive will be over $100, but if you need to save space while retaining storage, this may be for you.

For the last month or so, Twitter has been testing out a new profile page with select users, and today the company has released its new profile design to all of its users. The complete overhaul has taken Twitter from what many considered to be an outdated design, to a more modern look and feel that is on par with Facebook and Google Plus.

The biggest thing you will notice is that the new Twitter profile now spans the full width of the page, and looks a lot like Facebook's Timeline. Users can now upload a large header image similar in size to what Google+ allows. Users also now benefit from a mosaic-view of their twitter post, but a chronological view is also available. Additionally, users can pin a single Tweet to the top of their feed, which allows them to keep important tweets at the top.

The way Twitter displays Tweets in the mosaic view is based on how much engagement each tweets gets. Tweets that get Favorited or re-tweeted more will move up the list, while less popular tweets get pushed down. Users can also filter tweets from others profiles and select just tweets with images or videos. As you can see above, I have the new profile and honestly it feels like this is how Twitter should have always been.

Rumours of NVIDIA's sequel to its Shield handheld gaming console seem to be confirmed as a new test model of NVIDIA Shield was spotted in AnTuTu's website which contained specifications.

NVIDIA's first gen shield was released in July 2014 and was a console game controller with 5" touchscreen where you can play Android games and stream PC games. Recently it also received a huge update which provided an out-of-home game steaming, enhanced functions in Gamepad mapper tool, support for Bluetooth keyboard and mouse in console mode, followed by Android KitKat 4.4.2.

However according to the recent news, it seems that NVIDIA wishes to up the hardware specifications.

Yesterday, we visited the Taiwan-based offices of VIA, where they showed us a massive Video Wall Solution that used 8 x 1080p TVs, pushing enough pixels to easily display 4K content in a very, very unique manner.

VIA is pushing the technology in Taiwan, but will be offering it up to consumers in more countries as time goes on. VIA's Video Wall Solution even has an app that communicates with the screens, where you can send messages or even play games on them. The massive video wall is powered by VIA S3 Graphics, which is shown toward the end of the video.

VIA even goes as far as offering it as a complete solution, where a customer can order a massive display of TVs, with VIA coming in and installing everything for the customer, including custom content to display on the massive Video Wall.

Codemasters announced Grid Autosport and is all for release on 27th June for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, along with a teaser video of its upcoming game. The games designer wanted to produce a more authentic motorsport racing game, and emphasized that they have made implementations based on the feedback received by fans for Grid 2.

The cars will be ranging from Indycars to supercars, and will be bringing back drift. The game brings back a lot of content from the original Grid as the in-game campaign will lets you acquire sponsors and teammates.

The game will also be bringing back cockpit view. There are two options within cockpit view- view with driver's hands and another will be closer to the track.

Today Silicon Power unveiled an updated version of its popular Thunder T11 external Thunderbolt solid state drive. The new Thunder T11 features an enlarged capacity and is now capable of storing up to 240GB of data and deliver it back as blazing Thunderbolt speeds. Silicon Power says that the Thunderbolt T11 is capable of read speeds up to 380MB/s and write speeds of 340MB/s.

Media streaming has been slowly replacing cable subscriptions for people for the last few years, and in the past 12 months, it has exploded with help from set-top boxes and HDMI dongles such as Google's Chromecast. As such, media streaming apps and services have been popping up left and right, and now it appears that AT&T wants its cut of the action as well.

Today AT&T announced that it has partnered up with the Chernin Group to develop the next major media streaming service that would be a direct competitor to the current number one, Netflix. AT&T says that together, the partnership has committed $500 million in funding the new service, and are currently working out how the service would work. Luckily for AT&T, the Chernin Group already owns such a service, called Crunchroll.

"A critical part of The Chernin Group's strategy has been our significant focus on the online video industry, and joining forces with AT&T only further underscores our strategic commitment in this area as operators, investors and programmers," said Peter Chernin, Chairman and CEO, The Chernin Group. "Consumers are increasingly viewing video content on their phones, tablets, computers, game consoles and connected TVs on mobile and broadband networks. AT&T's massive reach on those platforms across mobile and broadband and their commitment to the online video space make them the perfect fit for this venture with us."