Latest News - Page 2883

During his speech at the SXSW technology conference in Austin, Texas, Google chairman Eric Schmidt had some damning words to say about the Chinese, and the NSA. SChmidt said that government attacks from China, and the US, forced Google to boost its security protocols.

Schmidt said that governments around the world have come to the realization that trying to block Internet access to its citizens are futile, and that they have moved onto other methods of control. He said: "You don't turn off the Internet: you infiltrate it. The new model for a dictator is to infiltrate and try to manipulate it. You're seeing this in China, and in many other countries."

The Google chairman was pressed about the role of technology in uprisings, such as the one in the Ukraine right now, where he said that the spread of mobile devices has allowed people to organize much more easily, but although "revolutions are going to be easier to start," they'll also be "harder to finish."

During his testimony to the European Parliament released on Friday morning, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said that he reported policy or legal issues related to the NSA's far-reaching spying programs to more than 10 officials. But, as a contractor, he had no legal leg to stand on in order to pursue further whistleblowing.

Snowden was asked specifically if he had felt like he had exhausted all of his options before deciding to leak the classified information to the public, where he responded with: "Yes. I had reported these clearly problematic programs to more than ten distinct officials, none of whom took any action to address them. As an employee of a private company rather than a direct employee of the US government, I was not protected by US whistleblower laws, and I would not have been protected from retaliation and legal sanction for revealing classified information about lawbreaking in accordance with the recommended process".

US President Barack Obama said back in an August news conference that Snowden had "other avenues" to pursue, referring to Snowden "whose conscience was stirred and thought that they needed to question government actions". Obama referred to Presidential Policy Directive 19, a system setup for questioning classified government actions under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Microsoft Studios has owned the rights to Gears of War franchise for a little over a month now, but as of March 10, 2014 at 12:00pm Pacific Standard Time (PST), Epic Games will be shutting down and archiving the Gears of War forum.

Epic Games will also be handing over the Facebook and Twitter accounts to Gears of War over to Black Tusk Studios. Epic Games said on its Facebook page for Gears of War that "Black Tusk Studios asks for your patience and support as they set up new forums for the Gears of War community, and encourage you to communicate with them over Facebook (this page) and Twitter (https://Twitter.com/GearsofWar) during this forum transition over the coming weeks".

The situation between Russia and the Ukraine is heating up, but could the US government know what Vladimir Putin's next move is, all by studying his body language over the years?

The Pentagon has spent considerable sums of money studying the body language of foreign leaders, to hopefully predict future behavior. An article was recently published by USA Today reporter Ray Locker, who worked with documents uncovered by RT that provided a look into a subject that isn't talked about often. The military has been using the expertise of body movement analysts to interpret the nonverbal projections of important heads of state, including one in the spotlight right now, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Locker reported: "US policymakers are seeking any advantage they can find". He added that the United States Office of Net Assessment, which is a division of the Department of Defense, has employed Naval War College research fellow Brenda Connors. Connors has been involved since 1996, and is one of just a few movement pattern analyst practitioners in the world to be sanctioned by the Motus Humanus organization.

Today KINGMAX, a manufacturer of flash-based storage, announced that it has released a new PRO Extreme line of SDXC / SDHC SD memory cards. The new Pro Extreme line adheres to UHS-I Speed Class 3 specifications ensuring that users get the fastest experience possible when used in compatible devices. KINGMAX says that the UHS-I rating allows the card to transfer images from the users camera's image buffer to the SD card much faster than non UHS cards.

"In order to record with high quality at any time and during important moments, a good memory card has become an important accessory for photographers! Everyone now can use the PRO Extreme SDXC/SDHC to access ultra-high quality Full HD (1080p), Ultra HD (2160p), 3D or 4K2K videos on D-SLR, D-SLM, digital camcorders and other high performance models. The PRO Extreme SDXC/SDHC memory card is compatible with SDHC and SDXC devices, and currently comes in 32 GB and 64 GB capacities for consumers to choose from. More excitingly, the 128 GB and 256 GB are also about to be released, so to use one memory card to record all scenarios of a micro-film is no longer a dream," the company said in a release.

A federal court in California has concluded a case against 12 DRAM manufacturers as they accused of price fixing between 1998 and 2002. The court calculated that the manufacturers will have to do a settlement that totals up to $310 million.

The case was filed by a group of US attorney generals against DRAM manufacturers including Samsung, NEC, Infineon, Hynix, Micron and Toshiba in 2007. The DRAM makers have any wrongdoing of any price fixing during those years, but have agreed to make a settlement. The attorney generals have agreed to $310 million settlement package where the money will be distributed to the public.

Earlier, Samsung had to cough out $300 million in 2005 as a settlement with US department of Justice.

With March Madness in full swing, Motorola has just created a way for you to show off your favorite NCAA team with its Moto Maker software. Now you can customize your Motorola Moto X smartphone in your alma mater's colors and include the mascot on the rear of the phone. Beginning today Motorola has opened up its College Collection design gallery and will allow customers to select pre-configured school color combos from over 40 NCAA colleges.

"Moto Maker lets you express yourself and your style through your phone. Now, you can express your school spirit too! Just in time for the tournament, we're introducing the College Collection, a range of college-inspired Moto X customization options that allow you to showcase your favorite school colors," said Motorola. "We took a look at college colors across the board and added nine new back colors and three new accents to our Moto Maker palette so you can create the ultimate fan phone."

Customized Motorola Moto X phones retail for just $399.99 off-contract or just $49.99 with a new two-year contract, but college students or anyone with a .edu email address will be given a $60 discount on new Moto X phones in collegiate colors, bringing the price down to just $339.

Update #3: Another strange update for the still missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, where five passengers checked into the flight but never boarded the plane. Their luggage was removed after officials realized they were not boarding the plane.

No wreckage of the missing Boeing 777-200 have been found according to the Director-General of Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation said in press briefing in Kuala Lumpur. Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said that authorities still had no idea where the plane was, with a search involving 34 planes, 40 ships and more than 100 people have still not found plane. He announced: "We have not found anything that appears to be an object from the aircraft, let alone the aircraft."

Update #2: It is being reported that two passengers on the missing Malaysian Airlines flight boarded with stolen passports. Terrorism has not been ruled out, but is now being questioned because of the stolen passports. This means that the passports were not checked, or were incredibly elaborate fakes to be let through the Kuala Lumpur airport.

We now know why Ubisoft delayed Watch Dogs, but today is a new day, and today brings news of the resolution and frame rate that Watch Dogs will run along at on next-gen consoles on PC.

On the PS4, Watch Dogs will run at 1080p/30FPS, but will drop to 960p/30FPS on the Xbox One. On PC, you can drive Watch Dogs right up to 4K (and beyond) at variable frame rates of course. The PC version of Watch Dogs has seen Ubisoft team up with NVIDIA, so we should see some special details added to an already pretty game.

You can bet your bottom dollar we'll be running Watch Dogs through our multi-monitor, multi-GPU hoops here at TweakTown. We'll have it tested at 4K, and triple 1440p, too.

Club 3D has just announced the launch of two new flagship video cards to its PokerSeries GPUs. The cards are based on AMD's "Hawaii" architecture reference design Radeon R9 290 and R9 290X GPUs. The all new royalAce Radeon R9 290 features 2560 stream processors and 4GB of GDDR5 RAM making it one of the fastest GPUs on the market today.

The royalAce Radeon R9 290X is the king of the castle with 2816 stream processors, 4GB of GDDR5 RAM, and a tripple fan cooler that ensures gamers achieve the highest-level of performance possible. The royalAce R9 290 features a core clock speed of 1040MHz while the royalAce R9 290X is 10MHz faster at 1050MHz. Both cards are said to be much faster than the reference design and can easily compete with the best custom Hawaii designs on the market today.

As with anything on the internet, Porn always finds a way to infiltrate it, and Twitter is apparently fed up with pornographic material making its way onto its Vine video app. Today Twitter changed Vine's Terms of Service to explicitly ban the uploading of pornographic material or any nudity what-so-ever if it is not classified as artistic or as part of a documentary.

"As we've watched the community and your creativity grow and evolve, we've found that there's a very small percentage of videos that are not a good fit for our community. So we're making an update to our Rules and Terms of Service to prohibit explicit sexual content," the company said in a blog post. "For more than 99 percent of our users, this doesn't really change anything. For the rest: we don't have a problem with explicit sexual content on the Internet -- we just prefer not to be the source of it."

The new rules are inline with several popular apps and social media site's policies on nudity and pornography, but some industry analyst are suggesting that Twitter updated Vine's ToS to appease some of Apple's App Police from making a push to ban the app from the app store. It's still unclear weather or not this change will also effect Twitter itself as the social network has thousands of active accounts from the porn industry.

It's no secret that I am not a big fan of smartwatches, and that I often refer to them as nothing more than a passing fad. One concept artist has all but changed my mind though. The the concept smartwatch he recently designed is both beautiful and brilliant in both form and function.

Gabor Balogh posted his design up on Adobe's Behance social network for designers, and it caught the eye of the entire tech world. The design is based off of the Havanna Timepiece from Triwa, and replaces its face-plate with a concept circular display. While new concept smartwatch designs pop up every day, Balogh's ditches the common square and bulky wrist-piece for a sleek and classical, low-profile design with a modern UI that I would be proud to wear every day.

"I like products with discreet technology," Balogh explained in an interview with The Verge. "When they serve me, my real needs, and make my life easier rather than simply changing my days." He calls out the Nest thermostat and Apple's Airport Express as prime examples of technology being applied discretely without obscuring functionality. They're just ticking away in the background, making your life easier."

Companies infected with the Cryptolocker ransomware are willing to pay up, with 40 percent of companies hit sending around $500 to recover files.

Cryptolocker is plaguing companies, encrypting certain file formats that cause workplace disruption, which is likely why companies are so quick to make a payment to cybercriminals overseas.

"If the results reported on the rate of Cryptolocker victims who pay a ransom are to be strengthened by further research, these figures would be extremely troubling, netting criminals behind the ransomware hundreds of millions." said Dr. Julio Hernandez-Castro, University of Kent School of Computing professor, said in a statement. "This would encourage them to continue with this form of cybercrime, potentially prompting other criminal gangs to jump into an extremely profitable cybercrime market."

HobbyKing is the biggest name in the radio-controlled hobby world, and the company continues to blaze the trail in making the RC hobby more affordable. This week HobbyKing announced its new RotorBits lineup of chassis and parts for DIY multi-rotors. The RotorBits line revolves around a modular design that allows users to build a multi-rotor using common 10mm square shafts and molded plastic parts.

Kicking things off, HobbyKing has launched three DIY frame kits that will allow customers to easily build a TriCopter, QuadCopter, or Hexacopter in less than an afternoon. The modular system utilizes zip-ties as easily breakable fasteners. This allows the frame to survive light crashes with only cheap ziptie to replace. The company has a full lineup of spare parts, accessories, electronics, and mechanical parts for the RotorBits line and allows users to mix and match parts to build their own creations.

"RotorBits can be recycled and reused into other creations, mix and matching different bits to make a Y6 or Bi-Rotor! As your collection of Bits grows and concepts evolve with plug-n-play ease, who knows what you can come up with? Have club competitions for creative ideas or races for fastest box to air builds. RotorBits is one idea that can never be outdated, only reconfigured." HobbyKing said in a statement.

Soundtracks are a staple in any TV show or movie production, but generally speaking they tend to follow the music trends of the time-period the production is portraying. For instance, if a movie were set in the 1980's you could expect to hear some hairbands playing in the background, or if the TV show was about Las Vegas in the 50's Frank Sinatra would most likely be played at some point. What one does not expect, is an entire album to be released about a TV series where the music and show theme are hundreds of years apart.

Today HBO unveiled a new album for its upcoming season of Game of Thrones which features 10 tracks from some of the world's most famous hip-hop artist. Titled, Catch the Throne: The Mix Tape, the album features songs from artist like Big Boi, Common, Daddy Yankee, Magazeen and more. Many of the tracks feature actual audio from the series, and are not as bad as I originally expected. My personal favorite is track number six: Arya's Prayer by Dominik Omega, but the entire album is actually quite good considering the time-period difference between the two mediums.

Common's The Ladder is pretty bad ass as well and Born To Rule by Daddy Yankee has a flow that makes me want to put it on repeat for the rest of the day. It's still unclear as to why HBO commissioned a hip-hop album to generate hype for its upcoming season of Game of Thones, but I am happy they did. I do think that a heavy rock album would have been a better fit, but you can tell that the song writers and artist put a lot of time and thought into making each song as relevant to the series as possible.

Typically, when an electronics firm recalls a product it has to do with some components of the device not working correctly. I have heard of plenty of recalls for things that didn't work as promised, batteries that overheat, and other reasons. I haven't heard of a company issuing a recall due to allergic reactions.

That is exactly what Canon has done with one of its digital cameras. The Canon PowerShot SX50 HS is the camera that is being recalled. Canon is working with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission on the recall.

The reason for the recall is that a chemical used in the rubber part of the viewfinder that touches the eye can cause skin or eye irritation. The chemical has caused allergic reactions in users before. The recall will affect about 14,000 units and Canon says users need to stop using the camera immediately and send them in for free repair.

If you live or work in a building with a lot of other people that have their own Wi-Fi networks, you know firsthand that too many networks can cause interference for everyone and slow things down. A group of researchers from Stanford University is working on a new shared wireless network system called BeHop that is designed to make for faster wireless networking by sharing inside buildings.

BeHop is a single, dense Wi-Fi infrastructure that can be centrally managed, but allows individual users to manage their own portion like a private Wi-Fi network. Users on the Behop network will each get their own SSID, passwords, and other settings.

The big thing with this shared, yet private network is that it is set up using cheap consumer grade access points. The hardware used in the tests was provided by NetGear and runs custom firmware. The test system the researchers set up let the individual users name and secure their own networks just as they would if the router was in their room.

The way it works with most wearable devices today is that you simply buy one of a few available models and go on about your day. If down the road you decide you need more features, you need to buy a new smartwatch. A group from the UK is working on a slick modular smartwatch that was inspired by Google's Project Ara.

I think this is a very cool idea. The way the product works is that the user can choose from a number of blocks that contain sensors inside. These blocks let you start with a basic configuration and then add new sensors as your needs change.

The sensors appear to be part of the links in the bracelet of the watch. They connect simply using something akin to headphone ports you would see on your PC or smartphone. This would allow you to customize the smartwatch to whatever you will be doing that day.

Ouya started out as a project on Kickstarter that blew up and made huge amounts of money. Since the project turned into an actual product, we have heard less from the company and sales haven't been much compared to other gaming platforms. Ouya announced recently that it was making itself into a service that would be embedded in other platforms.

Mad Catz and Ouya have announced this week that they have signed a content agreement. The agreement will bring Ouya to the MOJO console that Mad Catz unveiled last year. Along with the new content agreement, Mad Catz has announced that the MOJO console is getting its price cut to $199.99 in the US.

Similar price cuts are being made in other areas when the MOJO is sold. The MOJO is the first device to add Ouya Everywhere. The service will debut on the MOJO later this spring. An exact launch date hasn't been announced. When the service does launch all current Ouya content and future content will be available on the MOJO.

If you are ever in the mood for beer, whatever game happens to be on, and hot wings, Buffalo Wild Wings is a good place to find. You can even watch the UFC fights there on a fight weekend. If you have ever been in one of these places when it is busy, you know it can be hard to get your server to come to the table when you want them.

Buffalo Wild Wings has announced that it is now using tablets at all tables in 150 company owned stores around the US. The tablets will be rolling out to another 500 stores by the end of 2014 and then by next year all stores will have the tablets.

These tablets will serve many uses. Patrons to the eatery will be able to play games on the tablet including multi-player games. The tablets are called Beond and in addition to playing games, you will be able to make food and drink orders from the tablets.