Latest News - Page 2986

Apple's A series processors are nothing to joke about. They routinely smash the competition in graphics benchmarks and often win the power consumption war with rival chips. Unfortunately they are more expensive than off the shelf ARM SoC's.

Cost savings is a huge part of bringing a cheaper iPhone to market, and is why Apple could be considering an alternative for its cheap iPhone that is set to launch later this year. Rumors are circling through the tech media world that Apple may be eyeballing Qualcomm's Snapdragon as the replacement chip for the cheaper iPhone.

Much like Apple's A6, Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon features on-board LTE, custom cores and low power consumption. As it is designed to power a wide range of Android smartphones, there is an abundance of the chips available, which brings the price down considerably if you were looking to purchase a few million of them, as Apple no doubt would. In reality we are still unsure if the so-called "cheap iPhone" is even a real thing so as always, treat these rumors as such.

Crystal Dynamics' reboot of Tomb Raider has just been released, and being an AMD Gaming Evolved title, Radeon owners haven't been having an issue running it at all. GeForce users on the other hand? Well, you should read on.

GeForce users have been having huge problems with the game, so much so that NVIDIA's Andrew Burnes, the editor of the official GeForce.com website, wrote a three-paragraph statement regarding the performance issues of Tomb Raider on NVIDIA hardware:

According to F-Secure, a security firm, Android accounted for 79% of all mobile malware in 2012. This is an increase of 66.7% and 11.25% for 2011 and 2010, respectively. Apple's iOS doesn't even attempt to come close to these numbers, and only accounted for 0.7% of mobile malware in 2012.

Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Symbian all entered the pie with much less than Android, with 0.3%, 0.3% and 19%, for Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Symbian, respectively. The security firm also discovered that Android saw a surge in malware at the end of the year, but most of the malware is found in emerging markets. This means that most, not all, people in Europe and the US won't be affected, but everyone should always play it safe when opening up messages, links and emails.

Motorola has confirmed that the Droid RAZR and Droid RAZR MAXX will be getting updated to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. This update will allow these two devices to have access to Google Now, a feature that is being hailed as revolutionary. It makes sense that Motorola would want to update their devices to the latest Android as they are owned by Google.

Like most over-the-air updates, this update will be rolled out in stages. If you don't have the update quite yet, don't worry as it will eventually roll out to your device. You can find out more information about the updates from Motorola's blog post.

At the Pwn2Own hacking competition currently running in Vancouver, Canada, two security researchers from MWR Labs have managed to exploit Google Chrome. As a result of this impressive feat, they have been awarded a $100,000 prize. The exploit relied on a bug in Chrome as well as a bug in the kernel of Windows 7.

By visiting a malicious webpage, users could be susceptible to the exploit, even if they are running fully patched software. The exploit allowed the researchers to run code in the sandboxed renderer process. They then utilized a kernel exploit in Windows 7, which granted them elevated privileges.

As part of the ongoing launch troubles that SimCity has undergone, EA has announced that they will be shutting down some of the non-critical features of the game to help with server load and connectivity. Most of these features, ironically, are the ones that would require an always-on internet connection.

EA is also adding servers to help with the load. They have said that customers can request a refund, though this didn't work out too well for at least one person who tried. We'll keep looking for SimCity news, hopefully of the variety that EA has fixed all of the problems. If you haven't picked up the game yet, you would be advised to hold off until the all-clear is given by EA.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is currently up on stage talking about how they want to turn the News Feed into the best newspaper in the world. He has pulled up a picture of what the News Feed looked like in 2007. Zuckerberg notes that the News Feed has shifted towards visual content:

Zuckerberg has just debuted the new look:

They are looking to feature the same design across the desktop and mobile environment. The new design will make use of more of the available screen real estate. The current design uses only about 40 percent of available space. The new design features larger pictures that will be the focus of the updated design.

Back in 2010, the Internet Movie Database or IMDb.com was banned from access from within China's borders because of a documentary on Tibet that was prominently displayed on its homepage. The ban was not a popular one among Chinese citizens, but remained in effect until today.

The Chinese government has unexpectedly lifted the ban on the encyclopedic movie website, making it fully available in both Chinese and English. The South China Morning Post is reporting that the removal of the ban is being met with great fanfare with many people thanking China's new leaders.

No official explanation on why the ban was lifted has been released by the Chinese government yet, but in my opinion, that does not really matter. The important story here is that China has removed one of its long standing website bans, and hopefully we will see similar action taken to other internet bans being currently enforced.

Today we were invited out to the Acer headquarters here in Taipei, Taiwan where we were given an introduction to the company's take on cloud storage which they named AcerCloud.

Acer's cloud system is different ones such as Apple's iCloud, Google's Drive or Dropbox. Instead of sending your data up into the cloud, AcerCloud is more personal in nature. In technical terms, that means that your data is not stored on servers on the web. The data is instead accessed from your PC or laptop which has AcerCloud software installed and is of course connected to the internet.

AcerCloud launched towards the end of last year, but it was our first chance to go hands-on with it today, and it's quite good. Within AcerCloud are separate applications including clear.fi Media, clear.fi Photo, clear.fi Music, clear.fi Video. Each app handles different files and allows you to view saved files on any device with AcerCloud - that is a PC running Windows 7 or Windows 8, and iOS device running OS version 5.0.1 or above and any Android device running OS version 2.3 and above.

Patents are often a double edged sword that can lend an interesting look into the way a company thinks. It's something we see and speculate on all the time, and this morning is nothing different. Facebook has filed a patent that could drastically change the social network's business model.

US Patent 20130030987 A1 was filed in 2011 and was granted in January of this year. It's titled "Paid Profile Personalization" and describes a method that would allow Facebook to remove ads, and implement "premium" features to the profiles of users who subscribe to a monthly service.

Does this mean that Facebook could be investigating a paid subscription service that would let you spice up your profile and remove those annoying tiny ads? Truthfully, I have no idea. The fact is that most patents remain unused and in recent times, they are used more as a blocking agent than a true "innovative idea."

We've already been greeted with the PlayStation 4 specs, and now it's edging closer to Microsoft's time of unveiling their next-gen Xbox. Gaming Capacity have spoken with a source, who has had hands-on time with the next-gen Xbox prototype, unveiling some new details. The source wanted to stay anonymous, stating the following in regards to testing:

The source was able to unveil some details, which might surprise some:

Gamers across the world, myself included, are itching for the next-generation consoles to be released - but how many do Sony expect to ship this year? DigiTimes' latest piece comes from quoted sources at both the Foxconn and Pegatron manufacturing plants where the PS4 is being made, who have said that Sony's internal plans are to ship at least 16 million PS4s by the end of 2013.

DigiTimes' sources said that Sony have only just begun requesting quotes on the requisite components, and that mass component shipments in August would allow Sony to get the PlayStation 4 onto shelves by Christmas this year. If DigiTimes' sources are right, Sony are in the very beginning stages of industrial design, which could be problematic if something were to happen in the coming months.

16 million is a lot, but we have had nearly 10 years between consoles, and gamers are spending more than ever with DLC these days - so is it too much to ask for Sony to sell 16 million? What are your thoughts on the matter?

Appthority has released a new study that looks at risky behavior exhibited by the top 50 iOS and top 50 Android apps. The data suggests that despite the appearance of more security in iOS, more iOS apps tend to engage in risky behaviors, such as sending and receiving unencrypted data, than Android apps do.

As you can see in the chart above, every single one of the iOS apps tested sent or received data without using encryption. This exposes user data to being sniffed while traveling over the internet. Only 46 of the 50 Android apps tested exhibited this behavior.

Furthermore, a higher percentage of tested iOS apps used ad networks or analytics. Far more iOS apps tracked the user's location. Finally, over half of the iOS apps tested had access to the user's contacts, while only 20 percent of the Android apps tested were allowed to access a user's contacts.

For those looking to play on some of EA's SimCity servers, you might have found yourself out of luck earlier today. EA was forced to shut down Oceanic 1, NA East 1, and NA East 2 to apply patches that will hopefully fix connection and load issues that users have experienced since SimCity's launch yesterday.

The process started at 11:40a.m. PST for NA East 1 and NA East 2. At 12:14p.m., EA said they had powered on four new servers to meet demand. Ten minutes later, they brought Oceanic 1 back online for players to use. At 1:55p.m., EA turned NA East 2 back on for gamers. At the time of writing, NA East 1 is still offline for maintenance.

EA added at 2:18p.m. PST that they were applying the patches to EU West 1 and EU West 2. This likely means these servers are offline, though I can not confirm this as I don't have SimCity. You can keep an eye on EA's progress on their status post.

Five-year-old Danny Kitchen asked his parents for the password to their iPad so that he could download a free game, which turned into a nightmare for the Kitchen's, as Danny racked up a $2500 bill in add-on purchases to his mother's credit card.

The culprit? Zombies vs. Ninjas, which is definitely a free game, but Danny ordered extra "darts" and "bombs" to battle those nasty zombies, where weapons range right up to $99.99. Danny's mother had no idea what was happening until she noticed 19 e-mails from iTunes in the morning, receipts of her son's purchases.

Sharon didn't think anything of the emails, putting it down to multiple invoices of the one receipt. She ignored it until her credit card company called her regarding the suspicious activity. Sharon told Mashable:

We've already seen what ASRock are working on, but what about Gigabyte? They haven't been sleeping by the looks of things, with the new Z87 range of motherboards, built for overclockers, being noticed at CeBIT.

The best of the bunch, the GA-Z87X-OC, is built with a full 8 Phase Solid VRM using DRMOS, International Rectifier MOSFETs, which should give some crazy stability when pushing that overclock. The Z87X-OC includes that sexy orange and black design we've come to know and love from Gigabyte, as well as the usual buttons for enthusiasts on the board - BCLCK, Turbo, Gear, Power switches at the side of DIMM slots, Voltage measuring points, Debug LED and a Dual BIOS switch.

We should expect to see more from Gigabyte at Computex in June, where more consumer-ready boards should be unveiled. There's more in the Z87 range from Gigabyte, with the GA-Z87X-UD5H, GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-UD3H and GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-UD3H being shown off at Gigabyte's CeBIT 2013 booth.

SGI has launched the new InfiniteStorage 5600, a next-generation high performance storage platform. SGI has a huge presence in the storage market, delivering over 600 Petabytes of storage last year alone. This next gen RAID platform provides the highest throughput for its footprint, spindle count, watts consumption and investment dollars. Designed to capitalize on many forms of storage, from SSDs to HDDs, this platform is well suited for high performance computing, research and analysis, simulation and modeling.

The flexible modular architecture of this new system allows customers to tune their specific performance and capacity requirements. The IS5600 can intermix multiple drive types and enclosure densities, ranging from 4TB high capacity drives to extreme performance SSDs in a single, scalable system.

With a tremendous advantage in MB/s per spindle over competing solutions, the IS5600 provides higher performance with fewer spindles than any other solution on the market.

Yesterday we had a look at a few of ASRock's Haswell-based motherboard offerings, but the pictures weren't too shabby. We're back today with some much better pictures, where we can take a closer look at their upcoming motherboards.

The shots are in perfect detail, of each board - the B85M, H87 Pro4, Z87 Extreme6 and Z87 Pro4-M. We have shots of each, as well as the inputs on the back of each board, let's start with the B85M:

Next up we have the H87 Pro4.

The introduction of 12Gb/s SAS products has just inched closer, with LSI firing the initial salvos of this new technology by being the first to ship OEMs a 12Gb/s product. Several key players are lining up to provide customers with 12Gb/s products, but LSI has apparently taken the lead in this race with the CeBIT announcement.

LSI is currently shipping the LSISAS3108 12GB/s SAS ROC and the LSISAS3008 12Gb/s SAS I/O controller. The new Invader controllers can top 6GB/s in throughput and 915,000 IOPS.

At FMS 2012 we were able to spot some of LSIs new 12Gb/s gear with the MiniSAS HD connections to the rear of the controller. These connections provide 12Gb/s speed in a smaller form factor.

CeBIT 2013 - OCZ have taken the time out of CeBIT to unveil their new Vector PCIe device, a PCIe-based Vector SSD. The new PCIe Vector has improved IOPS performance, which provides the user with superior sustained performance, no matter if the data streamed are compressed, or uncompressed.

The new drive comes on a PCI Express 2.0 x4 interface, which provides it with plenty of bandwidth and on the PCIe Vector itself we find dual Indilinx Barefoot 3 controllers. The PCIe Vector outpaces OCZ's current SATA 3.0-based Vector SSDs and RevoDrive 3 Series, which is really saying something. We're looking at up to 1GB/sec in transfer speeds, and a crazy 140,000 IOPS. The new PCIe Vector includes a huge 5-year warranty, and comes in 240GB, 480GB and 960GB capacities.

The PCIe Vector is bootable as a direct-attach storage device, and has been designed for Windows-based client, and workstation machines. No word on price just yet.