Latest News - Page 2878

Despite fallout from former IT specialist Edward Snowden, it appears more U.S. voters are interested in security over privacy-related issues. Seventy-five percent of users are worried about personal information theft over 54 percent of those users worried about browsing history being tracked.

"By wide margins this survey clearly shows that ID theft has touched the majority of consumers in some way, and that hacking is more worrisome to consumers than tracking, and that voters want the government to more aggressively go after cyber criminals," said Ed Black, CCIA President and CEO, in a statement. "Safeguarding users online must become a higher priority for companies and also for the regulators and policymakers charged with protecting consumers."

Even though security is more thought about by U.S. citizens, privacy concerns have caused a major backlash against the National Security Agency (NSA), other US federal branches, and a handful of major corporations.

EA is already battling class action lawsuits over Battlefield 4, but now the first-person shooter has been banned in China, with the Chinese government citing "national security" concerns.

EA has declined to comment on the ban when The Wall Street Journal tried to make contact. The problem with Battlefield 4 is that the single player campaign involves China in the year 2020, with the Chinese admiral planning to overthrow the government. Then we have Battlefield 4: China Rising, which is a DLC for the first-person shooter, featuring maps, vehicles and a new gametype, all set on the Chinese mainland.

A new DDoS Botnet has the ability to infect both Microsoft Windows along with Linux-based systems, according to the Poland Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT). Unlike many cyber-based attacks, this botnet is only interested in launching DDoS attacks to knock certain servers and websites offline.

The Linux-based botnet reportedly handles dropping servers, while the Windows-based botnet easily hijacked consumer PCs. "Most servers that are injected with these various scripts are then used for a variety of tasks, including DDoS, vulnerability scanning, and exploiting," according to security expert Andre Dimino, in a blog post. "The mining of virtual currency is now often seen running in the background during the attacker's 'downtime.'"

Seeing DDoS attacks to turn zombie PCs into an effective botnet isn't Earth-shattering news, but this cross-platform attack is relatively unique. As bitcoin mining and launching attacks to impact certain companies is easily done when using unsuspecting machines.

There were rumors of this all the way back in September, but it looks like a 12.2-inch tablet from Samsung is becoming a reality. A photo of the 12.2-inch slate was posted on a Korean forum, with some specs.

Now we have a report coming out of South Korea, stating that the new "Galaxy Note Pro" or "Galaxy Note 12" slate would launch early next year. ZDNet Korea is now reporting from an unnamed industry source that the slate will feature a massive 12.2-inch 2560x1600-pixel display, 2.4GHz processor, 3GB of RAM, a gigantic 9500mAh battery and Android 4.4 KitKat.

We should see this tablet at CES 2014 in just a couple of weeks time, where we will hopefully have some hands-on time with it.

Valve is currently offering Left 4 Dead 2 for free, which promptly took down the Steam Store servers, but the Steam Holiday Sales continue no matter what, right? Of course!

Today sees a bunch of new games on sale, including Skyrim with 75% off, down from $34.99 to just $8.74, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director's Cut also seeing 75% off, down from $19.99 to just $4.99. If those games don't tickle your fancy, you could grab Payday 2 for $13.49, down from $29.99 or 55% off.

After the truly ridiculous train wreck of an ad for the Galaxy Gear, which you can watch below, it looks like Samsung could change its tune and release a fitness tracking band known as the Galaxy Band.

The South Korean-based giant released its Galaxy Gear smartwatch earlier this year to lackluster reviews from critics and consumers, announcing a successor to it very shortly after it hit wrists across the world. It was a preemptive move from the company, something that has hurt its image to consumers in the smartwatch space.

Korean language site Digital News Daily has said that Samsung is going to strike the fitness tracking band market next with the Galaxy Band. Samsung's Galaxy Band would be similar to that of the Jawbone UP and Nike's FuelBand, but would be compatible with its S Health application that is available on the Galaxy S4.

Wireless charging is something I've fallen in love with this year, but Apple is behind the game when it comes to pushing wireless charging technology into its devices, such as the iPhone. This is all set to change with a new patent from the Cupertino-based giant.

Apple's research labs have presented a surprise to the world, with an early patent filing that sees the company thinking about wireless charging being the next big thing. Apple was awarded a patent last week for a "desk-free computer". The description sees a device that is small, such as a Mac mini, that features a projector lens on one of its sides.

The device would also carry an accelerometer and a proximity sensor that would detect how far the device is away from the wall, where the image would be projected. The patent states: "The integrated projector may also provide flexibility in the location, relative to the computer system and/or the user, and/or in the size of the projected image. Display screens for both laptops and desktops are fixed in size, and have limited flexibility in location relative to the computer, either by wired connection and/or other physical constraint."

Today Sapphire Technology unveiled a new variant of its R9 270X GPU. The new R9 290X Dual-X 4GB GPU features the same specifications of its previous counterpart, except the new 4GB model features double the RAM. Sapphire says that they have updated the card with 4GB of RAM to meet Battlefield 4 recommended specs.

The R9 270X Dual-X 4GB features 4GB of GDDR5 RAM that has been clocked in at 5.6GHz across a 256-bit wide interface and is capable of cranking out a bandwidth of 179GB/s. The card is a non-reference design, and features Sapphire's Dual-X cooling solution which helps the card remain budget friendly while managing to keep things cool. The new card is expected to retail between $220 and $230.

Today Seagate Technology announced that it has agreed to buy Xyratex, a HDD testing equipment manufacturer. The deal will see Seagate acquiring all outstanding shares of Xyratex in an all-cash transaction that is valued at $13.25 per share, for a total of about $347 million.

Xyratex is one of the leading manufacturers of hard disk drive testing equipment, and this acquisition strengthens Seagate's vertically integrated supply and manufacturing chain. The buyout also strengthens Seagate's portfolio by adding Xyratex's enterprise storage systems and high-performance computing business to Seagate's already impressive holdings.

"This is a strategically important acquisition for Seagate as we continue to focus on delivering best-in-class storage solutions for our customers," said Dave Mosley, President of Operations and Technology at Seagate. "As the average capacity per drive increases to multi-terabytes, the time to test these drives increases dramatically. Therefore, access to world-class test equipment becomes an increasingly strategic capability. As a premier provider of HDD testing equipment, Xyratex is an important partner and we are excited to integrate these important capabilities which will considerably streamline our supply and manufacturing chain for our core HDD business. We are also pleased to acquire Xyratex's storage systems and high-performance computing business, which provides us additional opportunities to serve our customers with a broader array of storage solutions."

Overstock.com CEO, Patrick Byrne, has said that his company would be one of the first to accept Bitcoin, where it will accept the digital currency in the second half of next year.

Byrne spilled the news during an interview with the Financial Times, where he said there is going to be a market in Bitcoin, and he wanted his company to embrace it. Byrne believes Bitcoin will hold its value better than the fiat-based dollar, thanks to the fact that it is mathematically constrained, versus the limitless printing of the dollar through the Federal Reserve and government authorities.

The Overstock.com CEO stated that his company would bank the digital currency in the event that similar digital funds increase in popularity. If, however, the digital currency begins to deflate, the company would transfer Bitcoins to dollars on a daily basis.

Canonical had finally seen the light, and has added TRIM support for SSD's to its core. This is a basic feature that has been present on most modern operating systems for years now. TRIM's only function is to extend the life of your SSD, and allows the operating system to tell which blocks of data are no longer needed and can be erased or overwritten.

This allows the SSD to perform more efficiently which results in performance increases, longer life and much less performance degradation over time. Windows first featured TRIM support back in 2009, and OSX adopted it in 2011. Android now even supports TRIM which was added back in July of this year. This means that Ubuntu becomes the first mainstream Linux consumer operating system to fully support SSD's without killing the drives prematurely.

Pyle Audio recently introduced the Bluetooth Fitness Scale (PHLSCBT4), a custom designed scale including a smartphone app so owners can better track their health and fitness.

Scale owners are able to track data with the free Pyle Health Fitness Tracker app, and everything can be sent wirelessly via Bluetooth to a smartphone or tablet. Designed for Apple and Google Android products, and all data can be shared on Twitter or Facebook - or in an online password-protected workout log. Collected data includes: weight, body fat, hydration levels, muscle level and bone level percentages - and provides a great baseline of overall health.

The scale is available immediately with a $59.99 USD retail price. Pyle is best known as an audio company often specializing in consumer electronics, sports products, and professional audio - so this is a rather interesting product offering.

The Division is an MMO coming from Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment, which runs the jaw-dropping Snowdrop Engine, something we took a look at a few weeks ago now. Well, during a Reddit Q&A, the developer talked about the PC version of the game.

Massive said: "As you know, Massive has its roots in PC development. We are working hard and we want to make sure that we have a very high quality experience on PC. You can be sure that our PC version won't be a port, but a full-fledged, optimized version! We want to create the best game possible regardless of what platform you play on."

This is some incredibly exciting news, as the PC version should look the best out of every platform The Division is released on. I'm looking forward to getting my hands, and eyes, on the game even more now.

Cyanogen Inc. secured $7 million in Series A funding a few months ago, but Series B funding has come and gone, with $23 million being secured. The Series B funding was led by Andreessen Horowitz, the same company that is working closely with Oculus VR and its latest Series B funding round.

One of the interesting points to take away from this is that Cyanogen Inc. is planning to launch a mass consumer brand or service late next year, or early 2015. We should hear more about the hardware side of things in the coming weeks and months, with the first CyanogenMod-powered smartphone, the CyanogenMod Edition of the Oppo N1 available.

We all know that Battlefield 4 is a jumbled mess right now across pretty much every platform its on, so it comes as no surprise that Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP has filed a class action lawsuit against EA.

The law firm claims that EA issued "materially false and misleading statements" regarding the quality, and playability of Battlefield 4. The lawsuit highlights the PS4 version of the first-person shooter, claiming that "players of Electronic Arts' games were being subjected to multiple glitches and significant crashes when attempting to play Electronic Arts' titles on PS4."

The bigger problem is that this is the second lawsuit the firm has slapped EA with, with the first an investigation to find out if EA misled investors regarding Battlefield 4's projected impact on company revenue. This is still an on-going case, something we'll be keeping an eye on.

Something that has just popped up into my radar in the last few minutes, is Transcendence. Transcendence is Wally Pfister's directorial debut, which stars Johnny Depp and Morgan Freeman.

There are two trailers, the one above which is narrated by Morgan Freeman, and the one below, which is narrated by Depp. Transcendence is based around the idea of artificial intelligence (AI), where work is done to create a sentient machine that 'combines intelligence of everything ever known with the full range of human emotion.'

The full synopsis makes it seem very, very intriguing:

Thecus has unveiled new NAS devices that are the industries first to support the new RAID 50 and RAD 60 storage formats. Thecus says that the new devices offer significant advances in performance and fault tolerance for small and medium businesses and enterprise customers.

RAID 50 support has been built into the following Thecus NAS devices: N6850, N7510, N8850, N8900, N10850, N12000 N12000PRO, N16000, and N16000PRO. In addition, all devices with 8 bays or more, also support RAID 60. Each device also features optional 10GB Ethernet cards, and with a maximum capacity of 24TB in the largest device, there is more than enough room for your business to expand.

"SMB and Enterprise firms have long been looking for a NAS solution that leverages the latest innovations to combine reliability, performance and cost effectiveness in a single device. By being the first to bring RAID 50 and RAID 60 to the NAS device market, we believe we have finally met this growing demand," said Florence Shih, General Manager at Thecus. "We're already seeing great interest from our SMB and Enterprise partners."

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University confirmed it's possible to turn on a laptop's web camera without turning on a light that informs users the camera is on. Just a few years ago, it didn't seem possible to hack a webcam like this, but it's something consumers need to be somewhat vigilant about.

The team focused on Apple MacBook and iMac models available before 2008, but said the exploit can be used on a variety of different models. Although Apple initially opened up communication with Johns Hopkins University to discuss the problem, there reportedly haven't been any further updates.

Using a Remote Administration Tool (RAT), for example, works around the computer's security and remotely controls the computer webcam.

DataON Storage, the leading provider of OS-agnostic Storage enclosures, has announced that their cluster-in-a-box and JBOD enclosures have recvieved certification for Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage Spaces. The enhanced functionality of Storage Spaces, in concert with the correct hardware, provides auto-tiering and hybrid cloud support.

One of the major attractions of Storage Spaces is the easy-to-use failover capabilities. Providing a high level of redundancy and failover support for entire storage systems was an incredibly taxing and complex endeavor from an IT perspective even a few short years ago. This adds to the TCO of the solution due to prohibitive expenditures for initial setup and long-term management.

The emergence of Cluster-in-a-Box(CiB)solutions has brought this type of functionality withing striking distance of smaller organizations, and also delivers a lower TCO for larger organizations. While the long-term penetration of the Storage Spaces platform into the datacenter market will spawn a whole ecosystem of products, for now there is only one certified CiB solution available for Widows Server 2012 R2.

As with every new piece of consumer technology that comes across its doorstep, iFixit has once again posted a spectacular teardown of one of the hottest products in tech at the moment. Today the company released the worlds first teardown of a Steam Machine from Valve.

Valves Steam Machine's are nothing more than full blown desktop PCs that have been packed in a very small package, so many of you have performed essentially the same thing when building your new PC. iFixit does make the process look very cool though. iFixit says that the Steam Machines are easily repairable and as such, granted the device a repairibility score of 9 out of 10, something almost unheard of in today's tech world.

iFixit gave Valve the best award for packaging ever, as the Steam Box arrives in a wooden crate themed like you would see in a video game. They also have the Steam Controller high marks for its wealth of buttons, and unique touchpads. They did make note of the unique SATA and power cable configuration, and noted the 1TB Seagate SSD that has been installed. The unit they tested featured a ZOTAC GeForce GTX 780, and housed 8GB of Crucial Ballistix RAM. A Silverstone 450W PSU rounded things out.