Latest News - Page 2991

For more than a decade now email has been a way of life, and as with all electronic services that become staples, hackers have found ways to get your information. Fortunately Google has found a way to all but end account hacks to its Gmail service.

Nine times out of ten, a program breaks into your email accounts with the intention of blasting out spam to both your contacts and a list of thousands of others. This is why we see so much spam in our inbox's. Gmail was not left out and the number of hacked accounts soon began to rise. As a result, Google developed a complicated handshake to ensure you are actually you, when logging into your account.

The system performs a complex risk analysis each time your account is logged into. In fact more than 120 variables have to be authenticated before the system will validate you as the correct user. In the event some of these variables do not match, Google will ask you some simple questions. This is why you sometimes get asked for your mobile phone number when logging in.

Last summer at Google's annual tech conference, Google I/O, the company opened up the "explorer" edition of its Project Glass headset for pre-order to IO developer and early adopter attendees. At the time you had to fork over $1500 for the early access to the headset.

Google is re-opening the pre-order program for its headsets, with one caveat. You must be a "Creative Individual" and enter the #ifihadglass competition, being held by Google now. If your entry is chosen, Google will allow you to pre-order a pair of Google Glasses.

The competition is open to US residents only who are of the age of 18 or older. Applicants must impress Google in 50 words or less which explain what you would do if you had Glass. Entries must start the essay with the hashtag #ifihadglass, can include up to five photos, and a 15 second video. The pre-order will still cost you $1500 if you are chosen. You can find the competition at the source link below.

It looks like GPU shipments for Q4 2012 didn't do so well according to Jon Peddie Research's latest numbers - where they dropped 8.2% sequentially and 11.5% year-over-year. The drop in GPU shipments is being blamed on the popularity of tablets, as well as the continuing and damaging recession.

This has caused JPR to revise their compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for PC graphics from 2012 to 2016 to 3.2%, with the total shipments of GPUs in 2016 hovering at around 549 million units. Intel's shipments dropped just 2.9%, but AMD dropped by a much larger 13.6% and NVIDIA were worse, dropping by 16.7%. Market share wise, we saw Intel hold onto 63.4%, which was a gain of 3.4%, but this was at the expense of AMD and NVIDIA which dropped 1.2% and 1.73% respectively - down to 19.7% and 16.9%.

There are some breakdowns from JPR's latest report below:

You might not have even heard about Sony's Xperia Z, or you haven't had the time to grab one, or it's not available in your country yet - whatever the situation, the latest and greatest handset from Sony has already been rooted.

The XDA Developers forum is at it again, with the device being rooted already - how was it done? Modifying the code of a Nexus 4 root, while leveraging Teamviewer to remotely test it on a real-world device. Others have come in saying that the trick used isn't just a one-time occurrence, but should be repeatable. The hack, like most, is risky and currently lacks a recovery tool.

You can read more on it, and even try it right here.

It looks like South Korean electronic giants LG and Samsung are solving their disputes out of court, after a patent battle between the companies started last year with Samsung filing a lawsuit claiming that LG had stolen technology secrets from within their OLED production.

LG fired back, threatening their own injunctions, but it looks like everything has calmed down and a few expensive drinks have been shared between the companies. Samsung Display have come out saying that they've dropped their injunction request, and LG have responded with the same respect - after dropping the request for an injunction seeking to ban the sale of Samsung's Galaxy Note 10.1 in South Korea, LG have said they're now seeking resolution "through an amicable negotiation".

I'm glad we have companies solving things nicely, and not pushing it all through a court - all in the public eye.

The flip-flopping developers of Crysis are at it again, with Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli under an NDA from both Microsoft and Sony, where he can't reveal the details of next-gen consoles from the respective companies.

Yerli has still come out and spilled at least a couple of beans on the next-gen gaming powerhouses, saying that the hardware gap between PCs and next-gen consoles makes it "impossible" for the next-gen consoles to match, or beat current-gen PCs. Yerli says:

LSI have come out today announcing their latest AXM5500 family of products, which feature the first high-end ARM-based multicore for mobile networking equipment. This new family of products from LSI will help mobile companies and service providers get out of the mess they're in right now with the ever-increasing mobile market.

The growing trends in the mobile market right now are expanding quickly with the 4G LTE adoption, and as this grows, LSI's help is going to get noticed more and more. Better network intelligence will bump heads with big data, and this needs to have a product to help it - enter the AXM5500 family.

It might not seem like we need it, but streaming video, music, games, social networks and the countless other things we do over mobile networks is always increasing - but network bandwidth and server hardware needs to continuously be upgraded in order to not be congested.

Reports surfaced today stating that a small number of Apple's systems were hacked through the same zero-day Java exploit that Facebook's systems fell victim to in January. The source of the exploit is said to be the same as the one that managed to infect some of Facebook's systems. In the case of Apple, there is no evidence that any data was transmitted from Apple's systems.

"Apple has identified malware which infected a limited number of Mac systems through a vulnerability in the Java plug-in for browsers," the company said in a statement. "The malware was employed in an attack against Apple and other companies, and was spread through a website for software developers. We identified a small number of systems within Apple that were infected and isolated them from our network."

Apple has released an update to Mac OS X that will help protect customers from the malware. The update can be installed from the Software Update panel in the Mac App Store or downloaded directly from Apple's website.

It looks like House of Cards has been a success with Netflix, at least according to data from Cowen and Company. According to their survey of 1,200 people, 28 percent were paying Netflix customers with an additional 18 percent having access to a Netflix account. Their data shows that 10 percent of those users have watched at least one episode of House of Cards during its first week.

On average, six episodes were watched by a user. Most people--80 percent--responded that the series was "good" or "exceptional." Netflix releasing all 13 episodes at once was also received positively, with 90 percent watching more than one episode per sitting.

The data suggests that Arrested Development could be even better for the company, with the largest group of users being aware Netflix is bringing the show back. 19 percent of the 1,200 surveyed were aware of House of Cards. 34 percent were aware of Netflix's original content plans.

It looks like the iPad mini's constrained supply has finally caught up to the high demand. The device is now showing as "In Stock" in most countries around the world, showing that Apple's supply has either increased to meet the high demand, or the high demand has dropped off slightly.

In all reality, it's probably the latter option. People are probably seeing the rumors of a new iPhone 5S and are starting to think that an updated iPad mini could also be just around the corner. There have also been rumors of an iPad mini with Retina display coming soon and this could be contributing to a decrease in demand.

European customers are still seeing 1-3 days as the quoted shipping time, but those should soon change to "In Stock." If you want to pick up a new iPad mini, now is definitely a good time as you shouldn't have to wait for them to ship out.

The latest installment in the Gears of War series has leaked out into the wild this morning. Copies of Gears of War: Judgment were spotted on torrent sites early this morning, leading Microsoft to threaten some harsh ramifications to anyone who downloads and installs a pirated copy.

A spokesperson for Microsoft said:

ORIGIN has announced that they are the first to bring a liquid cooled NVIDIA GTX Titan system to market. The graphics card, just announced earlier by NVIDIA, is the single fastest consumer GPU on the market with over 2,600 CUDA cores, 6GB of RAM, support for 4-way SLI. It's a beast of a card with over 7 billion transistors.

ORIGIN worked closely with EK Water Blocks in order to be able to offer a liquid cooled system right at launch. It's important to keep such a large card cool and there is not many better ways than water to do it. The system, named the CRYOGENIC liquid cooling solution, keeps the GPU cool, even when overclocked.

"When NVIDIA first showed us TITAN, we were simply blown away by its single GPU performance on even the most demanding games and applications." said Kevin Wasielewski ORIGIN PC CEO and cofounder. "Just wait until you see it running on an ORIGIN PC. With support of our CRYOGENIC Liquid Cooling Solution, Professional Overclocking and up to 4-WAY SLI, TITAN brings us the first true gaming supercomputer."

Alongside today's GTX Titan launch, NVIDIA announced a new integrated Tegra processor that features LTE. The Tegra 4i is the first chip from NVIDIA to feature LTE and should allow the GPU giant to enter the smartphone market. Previously, Tegra chips had been relegated to tablets due to the lack of an LTE radio.

NVIDIA claims that the new Tegra 4i is the fastest and most efficient mobile chip. Jointly developed by ARM and NVIDIA, it makes use of the R4 Cortex-A9 CPU for its four cores and features a fifth battery saver core. The GPU features 60 custom NVIDIA GPU cores, so graphics performance should be stellar for a mobile device.

"NVIDIA is delivering for the first time a single, integrated processor that powers all the major functions of a smartphone," said Phil Carmack, senior vice president of the Mobile business at NVIDIA. "Tegra 4i phones will provide amazing computing power, world-class phone capabilities, and exceptionally long battery life."

During this morning's press conference, HTC didn't really touch on the hardware specifications of its new flagship the HTC One, and that lead some of us to believe that it may not pack the punch we were hoping for. The HTC One's webpage just went live and "wow" did they deliver on performance.

The HTC One features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core processor running at 1.7GHz, 2GB of RAM, 32GB or 64GB of internal storage and built-in NFC capabilities. The display is a 4.7-inch Full HD 1080p, 468 PPI density LCD that is the company's brightest, sharpest and most vibrant display to date.

Other notable features include GPS, Digital Compass, Gyro, Accelerometer, Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi, DLNA and an IR blaster that lets your phone function as a remote control for all your home theater devices. It also features a completely redesigned camera that is built on HTC's exclusive Ultrapixel technology. The camera is set at f/2.0 with a 28mm lens, is capable of full HD 1080p video capture as well. A front facing 2MP camera with an 88 degree field of view is also placed on the phone.

During this morning's launch event, HTC design lead Jonah Becker, walked us through the new and exciting design specifications of the new HTC One. It appears that HTC has beaten Apple to the punch when it comes to an all-aluminum uni-body smartphone.

Before we get into the body though, let's talk about some exciting new hardware featured in the HTC One. First off, the new flagship phone was given an entirely new design with front facing speakers, which HTC is calling BoomSound. The speakers are said to offer a much more rich and vibrant sound than previously seen on other HTC devices. HTC has also included an IR blaster into the phone for full home media control.

Up next is a completely re-imagined camera, that bucks the trend of packing more pixels into a smaller package. "The new HTC One makes the camera experience better", Becker said. "I saw an opportunity to shake things up with the camera experience. It starts with a new approach about camera technology, it's not about megapixel count, but pixel size." he continued.

At this morning's launch event, HTC president Jason MacKenzie, said the company has been on an "amazing ride" over the last few years. He said that smartphone users "snack" on information from their phones in 10, 20 and 30 second intervals.

MacKenzie said that HTC "saw a massive opportunity to bring some excitement back to phones" and that "this isn't a set of incremental improvements I'm talking about a bold step forward for something new and fresh".

MacKenzie then introduced the HTC One, the company's latest flagship smartphone. "The HTC One improves every part of the smartphone experience," he said. "It has a complete visual redesign so it looks cleaner and more modern. No matter your age, we all rely on our smartphones, and rely on the constant flow of content".

The highly destructive meteorite that blasted into Earth's atmosphere last week, exploding near Chelyabinsk, Russia is quite the event according to NASA. The US space agency have said that it is one of the biggest to strike in over 100 years.

The actual size of the object was 10,000 tons with the energy released from the event hovering at around 500 kilotons - nearly 30 times the size of the atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima. The meteor impact that previously wielded this type of power, was in 1908 in Tunguska, Siberia.

The Voice of Russia has reported that over 1200 people have been injured, and 3724 buildings damaged by the impact. On top of this, a combined 200,000 square meters (2.15 million square feet) of shattered glass is the result from the intense shockwave. Damage is pegged at an estimated $33 million.

Security firm Mandiant has come out with quite the startling report titled "APT1: Exposing One of China's Cyber Espionage Units", which has tracked the alleged military-backed Chinese hacking group dubbed as Advanced Persistent Threat 1 all the way back to 2006.

Mandiant have written "Our analysis has led us to conclude that APT1 is likely government-sponsored and one of the most persistent of China's cyber threat actors." The group is also believed to be the 2nd Bureau of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) General Staff Department's (GSD) 3rd Department, otherwise known as Unit 61398.

The New York Times have written about it, where they worked off an advance copy of the report, which led them to buildings in Shanghai which they believe is where the unit is based. The Times then encountered persistent attacks from Chinese hackers last year, where they worked with Mandiant to monitor and block the intrusions into their network.

Scientists from the Argonne National Laboratory are working on something truly incredible, where they are converting plastic bags into batteries - yes, you read that right. Vilas Pol, a Chemist with the laboratory was interviewed by Al Jazeera, where he cut a plastic bag and eventually turned it into a battery.

Pol did this by cutting plastic bags into bits, puts the pieces of plastic bag into a metal tube, adds a 'catalyst', and heats it to 700C. In three hours, a fine black-colored powder - carbon. This carbon sells for $150 per gram, making it worth more than gold. Within a few minutes, the carbon can be converted into a watch battery. Scientists are now working on making this technology cheaper.

The more energy pushed into the battery, the cheaper the battery can get - which is the main driving force of storing more energy into the battery itself. The US government is set to invest $120 million into the project, to create smaller batteries that would eventually be used in smartphones, right up to electric cars.

In an effort to stem the unending stream of pirated material, search giant Google could do something unprecedented (I feel like I'm writing a speech for Obama using that word) and block all funding to websites offering links to pirated material.

This could be films, music, books, games - you name it - any site that is making money from illegal material. Google's plans, while still in the discussion stage, would see them block funding to websites that don't respond to legal challenges, such as being offshore. If this does go ahead, it wouldn't be the first time a website has had its funding cut off, where we saw donations to WikiLeaks cut off from Mastercard, PayPal and Visa back in 2011.

Google would have no troubles getting the support of book publishing firms, or the music and film industries, who would like to see those extra 0's in their bank accounts instead of piracy websites. Google are aware that their move could have unintended consequences - which I'm sure we'll see Anonymous pop up and have a word or two of input - but the Mountain View-based search giant could iron out some issues in the coming months, and put their plan into action in the spring.