Latest News - Page 2967

Corsair has posted up a new blog post that discusses power supply compatibility with Intel's upcoming Haswell microarchitecture. The general gist of the blog post is that most of Corsair's power supplies are compatible, but it also delves into why certain power supplies might not be compatible.

For those readers who are interested, the list above is all of Corsair's compatible power supplies. As you can see, a large portion of Corsair's power supplies are compatible. But why is this important? Haswell's C7 sleep state drops power consumption by so much--down to as little as 0.05a--that some power supplies aren't compatible. Corsair explains:

Yesterday, astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) discovered an ammonia leak in a coolant loop that cools the power system attached to one of the large solar arrays on the ISS. NASA officials say that the crew of six is in no danger and that this leak will most likely result in the array being shut down until the leak is fixed.

This same system has had leaks before, in 2007 a leak in the same spot was discovered, but was much smaller then and was such that it did not warrant an immediate repair. It was so small that the system was recharged with just eight pounds of ammonia in 2011 during a visit from the Space Shuttle Endeavor. Last November, an attempt to repair the leak was made during spacewalks made by NASA astronaut Sunita Williams and Japanese space flyer Akihiko Hoshide. The fix was only temporary though and now it has reared its ugly head again.

"It is a serious situation, but between crew and experts on the ground, it appears to have been stabilized. Tomorrow we find out for certain," space station commander Chris Hadfield of Canada wrote Thursday via Twitter, where he posts updates as @Cmdr_Hadfield.

Samsung has submitted a new camera to the Bluetooth SIG group for Bluetooth 4.0 certification. Allegedly called the Galaxy S4 Zoom, it appears to be a new "smart-camera", like the previously released Galaxy Camera.

While it is listed on the Bluetooth SIG website as a "Samsung Mobile Phone", the 3G capable smart-camera focuses more on getting a good shot than making a phone call. Featuring 10x optical zoom and an imaging sensor of unknown size, it also includes a 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED touchscreen display.

Samsung has also packed in 8GB of internal storage and support for a micro-SD card. Despite all of the information that has been released, any images of the device have yet to surface, and there is also no information on what processor is used for image handling. If you believe the rumor mill, we should see an official launch in June.

The tiny magnets inside of the iPad are capable of turning off implanted defibrillators if the iPad is left on the chest, something that was discovered by a fourteen-year-old.

This isn't a problem for most, and even those with pacemakers, but if you were using your iPad in bed and had a pacemaker, and fell asleep - well, ther could be a serious issue. Gianna Chen discovered the problem as part of a science fair project that didn't win first place, instead, she'll be presenting her findings to 8,000 doctors at a meeting of the Heart Rhythm Society in Denver. Bloomberg reported the news, adding:

Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst with KGI Securities has come out and said that Google will unveil a next-generation Nexus 7 tablet at Google I/O next week. The analyst also reveals some potential, and quite surprising specs on the device.

The Nexus 7 will still reportedly be made by ASUS, and will feature:

The best bit that we have here is the price - just $199. If Google can achieve this price, it'll completely kill the iPad mini in virtually all aspects.

Today, YouTube has laid the groundwork for a possible future paywall. The new subscription channels will allow select partners to charge a monthly subscription fee of at least $0.99. These subscription channels will be able to offer a free 14-day trial and discounts for paying for yearly access.

YouTube is looking to more directly compete with the competition. By offering channels the chance to charge a monthly fee, it opens the door to even higher quality original content. It's not clear on whether or not YouTube will be taking a cut of the monthly fees, though we assume they will be.

NVIDIA has announced its first-quarter earnings. The earnings ended up beating out expectations, but still aren't as good as last quarters. NVIDIA pulled in a total of $77.9 million in profit, which is down 55 percent from last quarter. It is, however, up 29 percent year-over-year.

Revenue came in at a total of $954.7 million. This follows the same trend as the profit: down from last quarter, up year-over-year. Tegra sales were down as NVIDIA works to transition to the newer Tegra 4. NVIDIA hopes Tegra 4 will power growth for the company this year.

Investors are happy with how NVIDIA is performing, along with their $1 billion buyback and dividend program. In after-hours trading, NVIDIA's stock has risen one percent to $14.05.

Sony has said that it doesn't expect to lose money when it launches the PlayStation 4. Unlike the PlayStation 3, the new next-generation console features mostly standard PC hardware, making it both cheaper and more readily available. Additionally, Sony didn't have to spend money developing the hardware as someone already did that for them.

According to Sony CFO Masaru Kato, Sony expects to not incur a major loss at launch. On the conference call held earlier today when they announced a profit for the first time in five years, Kato said, "Unlike PS3, we are not planning a major loss to be incurred with the launch of PS4."

Battlefield 3 players will be saddened by the news that Battlefield 3 servers continue to be hit by a distributed-denial-of-service attack, rendering multiplayer basically unplayable. DICE has announced that, despite their security measures, the attack is continuing. They note that they are working around the clock to mitigate the impact.

We previously reported how Battlefield 3 and Battlelog servers were under attack. At the time, it wasn't clear the nature of the attack, but it is starting to appear to be just a malicious attack to prevent users from playing. As noted by the DICE team above, no user data is involved.

Login VSI B.V. has announced a major new release of their flagship performance testing application Login VSI.

Login VSI is an industry standard benchmarking tool for measuring performance and scalability of centralized desktop environments, such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and Server Based Computing (SBC). The performance-testing program simulates unique user workloads to test VMware Horizon View, Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp, Microsoft Remote Desktop Services, or any other Windows based hosted desktop solution.

The new Login VSI 4.0 dramatically improves ease of installation, test creation, and management. Login VSI 4.0 also offers unparalleled production realism in workload patters, datasets, and test execution.

The New Zealand government has passed a bill that prevents software from being patented in the country any more. The New Zealand Institute of IT Professionals praised the decision saying that it would lead to innovation on a large scale.

The new policy was part of an amendment to the existing patent bill, which redefines three basic principles:

I see this as a major step forward and I am sure that the folks over at the Electronic Frontier Foundation are ecstatic this morning. However, not all is as it seems.

This morning Google and Time released the culmination of a project in which they teamed up with NASA and the US Geological Survey to produce a historical perspective on how Earth has changed over the past 30 years.

The project takes satellite imagery produced by the LandSat program and stitches them together removing clouds and haze to produce animated GIF images of how a region has changed over the past three decades. The Time.com hosted site features a handful of pre-chosen sites such as the Amazon Rainforest, Las Vegas, Dubai, Mendenhall Glacier and the Oil Sands fields in Russia.

The project consists of literally millions of individual images taken by the LandSat satellites that have been orbiting Earth at an altitude of over 400 miles since the 1970's. The project began in 2009 when Google began working with the USGS to make the entire archive of LandSat imagery available to the public.

CyanogenMod 10.1 has reached a step closer to being a proper 'stable' release, reaching Release Candidate (RC) 1. The final release is now close, according to the team.

CyanogenMod 10.1 RC1 is now available to download for compatible devices, and if you aren't aware of what it is, it's an OS based from Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, but has a huge cache of additional features. This is the perfect way to upgrade your device if your manufacturer hasn't bothered to do so. The compatibility list, is below:

CyanogenMod 10.1 RC1 supported devices:

How much does the new flagship Galaxy S4 from Samsung cost to build? According to research firm IHS, just $237. This could be because most of the components sourced for the S4 are from Samsung themselves.

IHS analyst Vincent Leung said: "Samsung's strength is this ability to in-source to itself. They just keep adding to the list of components that they can supply to themselves". The international version of the Galaxy S4, the one that features the eight-core Exynos 5 Octa SoC, costs just $28 per chip. The US version, which features the Qualcomm-made Snapdragon processor, has an estimated cost of $20.

There are at least four versions of the Galaxy S4 being made, with two versions headed to the United States. The two US-bound versions feature a Fujitsu image processor that adds $1.50 to the cost of the phone, with the Korean version having its image processing handled by the on-board Exynos processor. The display and touchscreen are made by Samsung and cost $75, while the 32GB of on-board flash memory costs $28.

Universal Pictures have taken the unsurprising decision to delay the release of the fourth entry in the Jurassic Park franchise, which was set for June 13th 2014, to an undetermined date. The film which had yet to even cast its lead actors and only established a director, Safety Not Guaranteed's Colin Trevorrow a matter of weeks ago, would not have met its projected date without serious shortcuts, so a little breathing room is not necessarily troublesome.

Just five days ago, Trevorrow tweeted an image from the productions Hawaii location scout with the somewhat non-cryptic descriptor of 'Nublar', implying that the film would be set on the island of the first Jurassic Park film, unlike The Lost World and Jurassic Park 3. Executive Produced by Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall, from a script by Trevorrow and Derek Connolly a draft of which was apparently received by Universal this week which led to the delay. Universal have no doubt been emboldened by continuing interest in the franchise resulting from the $50 million worldwide gross of Jurassic Park 3D.

Universal have not indicated an updated release window, and whilst the brakes have been put on the films pre-production stage, the project is far from dead. I would anticipate that the film will see a release in the summer blockbuster 2015 season, which will likely go head-to-head with the seventh entry in the Star Wars saga. Still feels weird writing that.

According to Shuhei Yoshida, Sony's Worldwide Studios president, Sony never even considered putting always-on DRM in the upcoming PlayStation 4. "Did we consider it? No, we didn't consider it," Yoshida said.

His reasoning makes sense, but unfortunately doesn't preclude Sony from adding always-on DRM on a future console. "The main reason being that many countries don't have robust Internet connections. It makes sense for people to have Internet connections to play online games, but for offline games there are many countries that we saw [that] do not really have robust Internet."

While this is good news, some are still worried that the upcoming Xbox will feature always-on DRM. However, a leaked memo suggests otherwise. Microsoft would have issues if Sony's PlayStation didn't feature always-on DRM and theirs did. It seems as though these companies have learned their lessons from others that always-on DRM is not a good choice.

We reported leaked pictures of the Huawei P6-U06 yesterday and since then, more pictures have been posted to the web. The latest pictures show off a sleek device clad in brushed aluminium. The device continues to be as thin as the specs suggest, coming in at a mere 6.18mm.

The device is said to have a 1.5GHz quad-core processor paired with 2GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. We expect it to feature Emotion UI 1.6 on top of Android, though the specific Android version is unknown. A Huawei launch event has been scheduled for June 18 in London and it's quite likely the P6-U06 will be shown off in all of its glory.

Players of Battlefield 3 might have noticed some outages earlier today. EA has confirmed that the Battlefield 3 and Battlelog servers were under an attack "aimed at overwhelming our back-end infrastructure." EA has not confirmed whether or not the attack has ended or who the responsible party is.

Upon logging into Battlelog, users are presented the following message: "The current BF3 and Battlelog outages are a result of activity that appears to be aimed at overwhelming our back-end infrastructure. We will provide up to date information on our official channels, including the Battlefield Twitter account. Thanks for your patience!"

Let us know if you experienced any trouble logging into or playing Battlefield 3 or using the Battelog system.

Android is beginning to take off in a big way. It seems like every month we see a new manufacturer step into the ring with a powerful Android based offering, and this month is no different. This morning Vivo announced a new smartphone dubbed Xplay, and boy does it pack a punch.

The Vivo Xplay is a high-end Android smartphone that features a quad-core 1.7GHz Qualcomm S600 Snapdragon processor alongside 2GB of RAM and a 3400mAh battery. The display is a 5.7-inch class full 1080p display, and storage is set at either 16GB and 32GB based on phone model.

A 13MP rear camera combined with a 5MP front facing unit handles the imaging duties, while the audio system gets a boost from the addition of an extra audio chip. NFC, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 handle the connectivity with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean will be served up as the OS. At the moment, the phone is only slated for China, and should retail at 2,990, which is just below $490 for the 16GB model.

New screenshots have appeared of what appears to be a completely redesigned Google Maps. The screenshots posted by the unofficial Google Operating System blog tease what could be the next iteration of Google's Maps user interface.

The screenshots show off a new sleek and minimalist user interface that appears to put more stock into full screen viewing and less into the ugly sidebar we are all accustomed to. Other improvements include a better filtering system, updated icons, colors and even new text styles.

It has been a very long time since Maps got a UI update this massive, and with more and more users switching to mobile, we can certainly see why Google would want to focus on a cleaner, more refined design. While it is always best to put a little credit into rumors and leaks as possible, with Google I/O just around the corner, this leak could in fact come true.