Latest News - Page 3068

The rumored ASUS Nexus 7 has shown up online in the form of two pictures uploaded to Picasa. The two photos, which measure 1280 x 960, were uploaded on June 7 and June 13. The photos could have been scaled down, so don't take that as indicative of the camera's performance. The two pictures are linked to Google+ user Somit Bh.

Furthermore, the geo-location data place the pictures as having been taken in Google Building 44. Of course, this information is fairly easy to fake, but a look as Google+ user Somit Bh's profile offers reason to believe otherwise. His circles contain many people who are affiliated with Google which means this could be legit.

Just two years ago, the Nexus S was revealed in the exact same way. The "Nexus Tablet" has been rumored for a while now, including the portion that ASUS is going to be the one making it. The rumor also said that the tablet would cost between $149-199 and would go on sale this July. It's likely that an announcement is just around the corner.

Google continues to be an open company when it comes to censorship and the like and has released its biannual Global Transparency Report which details take-down requests by people. In the past six months, Google said it saw an "alarming" number of Government requests, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 for the period.

"Unfortunately, what we've seen over the past couple years has been troubling, and today is no different," Dorothy Chou, Google's senior policy analyst, said in a blog post. "When we started releasing this data, in 2010, we noticed that government agencies from different countries would sometimes ask us to remove political content that our users had posted on our services. We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it's not."

Google said that they received 461 court orders for the removal of 6,989 items, of which they agreed to 68% of those orders. They also received 546 informal requests and agreed to remove content from 46% of those. The study leaves out Iran and China who block Google content without notification to the search giant.

Bret Taylor was Facebook's chief technology officer, but won't be for much longer. The CTO was in charge of both platform and mobile development at Facebook. Once he's gone, two of his underlings will take over his two posts, with Mike Vernal taking on platform development and Cory Ondreijka going after mobile.

Taylor is an ex-Google employee, too, leaving the company in 2007 where he founded FriendFeed. Facebook acquired FriendFeed in 2009, and two years later he was donned as CTO of Facebook. Taylor spoke to AllThingsD saying that the time he spent with Facebook "has been among the most fulfilling times of my career".

With the troubled IPO and problems the social networking are having at the moment, one would think this is quite a bad time for Taylor to leave, but his departure is no surprise to Facebook management. Taylor has always said that he "had always been upfront with Mark [Zuckerberg] that I eventually wanted to do another start-up, and we felt now is the best time after the IPO and the launch of some recent things for me to do that".

Creator of the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds, has slammed NVIDIA for their lack of drivers/support in a public presentation. During the talk, Torvalds called NVIDIA "the single worst company we have ever dealt with" and ended it in a positive note with "NVIDIA: F*** YOU!!", I'm sure you know what are behind those *'s.

Torvalds made the colorful comments during a speech at the Aalto Center for Entrepreneurship in Otaniemi, Finland. Nearling the end of his hour-long speech, he was asked by one of the attendees about NVIDIA's hardware support and lack of open-source drive enablement/documentation, where he mentioned those colorful words. Torvalds did start off by stating that NVIDIA is an exception to Linux support, rather than the rule in terms of their lack of friendliness towards open-source drivers, and the Linux community.

Then things get better, Torvalds said he was happy to publicly point them out and their problems, where his statements toward NVIDIA continued. He said that NVIDIA is "one of the worst trouble spots we've had with hardware manufacturers", continuing with "NVIDIA has been the single worst company we have ever dealt with". He ended his NVIDIA tirade with "NVIDIA: F*** YOU!" and flipped them off toward the camera.

Thanks to a 56-page leaked document, more details of Microsoft's next-gen Xbox 720 have emerged. The presentation looks to be from quite sometime ago, August 2010, and is loaded with future improvements such as SmartGlass, a Metro dashboard and Xbox TV apps.

Microsoft list their clear vision for the Xbox 720, including Blu-ray, native 3D output, and glasses, concurrent apps, additional sensor and peripheral support. They've also teased us with a '6X performance increase', as well as mention of true 1080p output with full 3D support, as well as an "always on" state for the Xbox 720.

The document tells us that the Xbox 720 is designed to be scalable in the number of CPU cores and their frequencies, it seems that the Redmond-based company have been finding it hard to decide between six or eight ARM-based cores, or going down the x86 route, each clocked at around 2GHz each, with 4GB of DDR4 memory as well as some backward-compatible PPC cores clocked at 3.2GHz. Backwards compatibility will be a great selling point for the Xbox 720.

Toshiba has launched a 13" version of its Excite tablets and a few reviews have popped up online showing off a few issues. Thankfully, Toshiba didn't disgrace this tablet with a paltry 1366x768 screen and instead opted for a 1600x900 panel. It appears to be a TN panel as there is no mention of IPS, something usually added for marketing.

Some of the reviews we mentioned above have called out the screen as being rather dim, but that's the least of the panels problems. The Gorilla glass that covers the screen can stick to the LCD panel and create visible "puddles." Have no fear, though, as that can be alleviated by twisting the tablet like an ice cube tray.

The battery life is around 11 hours, at least according to one review. The device features a Tegra 3 SoC, a full-sized SD card reader, and Android 4.0. The tablet weighs in at a heavy 2.2lbs and isn't exactly cheap. The 32GB model runs about $650 and the 64GB model will run about $750. Both of those are more expensive than an iPad.

Dropbox today issues a couple of updates the the mobile and Web version of its software. Dropbox has found itself in competition with the newly released Google Drive and has still been adding customers. These latest changes are to help keep it competitive with the competition.

The biggest update is to the Web version. Dropbox has confirmed that they will no longer be supporting public folders. Dropbox posted on their forums about the change:

In the continuing MegaUpload saga, a US federal judge has ordered that the FBI being copying all 150TB of seized Dotcom data. It's not clear whether or not the information will be handed over now, as requested by Dotcom's lawyers, but it will have to be handed over if Dotcom and the other executives ever stand trial in the US.

Lawyers for the FBI are complaining that they will be unable to copy the 150TB of data in the 21-day time period given by the judge. To give an estimate of size, they had said it took 10 days to copy only 29TB of data. The judge didn't care and said that the Government had "ample means" to do the work. " ... [T]he expense involved in copying must be dwarfed by the other costs of an investigative and prosecutorial operation of this size."

The judge reiterated that if the defendants come to the United States like the prosecutors were trying for, then the copying of data would not have been a waste of time. Justice Winkelmann has ordered another two-day hearing to determine whether or not the data will be released to Dotcom, or his lawyers, while he remains in New Zealand. More as it continues.

The poor laptop has only been out for a few days and someone has already stripped it down to its most basic components. That's right, iFixIt has pulled the $2000+ laptop apart and found some interesting things, along with taking lots of pictures. The short summary is that they say it is the least repairable laptop they have ever taken apart.

Kyle Wiens says:

If you'll remember back to our pre-Computex coverage, we explained how there would be a panel of overclocking experts at GSKILL's booth. Those overclockers weren't just there to look good and answer questions; they were actually overclocking and attempting for some world records. During Computex 2012, they managed 5 new world records.

Super Pi 32M - 4mins 44.734sec

With the astonishing G.SKILL memory speed of DDR3 2646MHz CL5-9-7-18 1T, the two legendary overclockers, Fredyama-san and Shamino have both achieved the super fast Super Pi 32M score at 4mins 44.734sec with ASUS Maximus V Formula motherboard and Intel Core i7 3770K CPU.

Apple are set to release a Retina Display-powered 13-inch MacBook Pro in October of this year, according to an insider, reports Apple Insider. Apple are expected to ramp up the production of the 13-inch next-generation MacBook Pro powered by their high-res Retina Display in September.

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI has said that Apple has the "highest hopes" for the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with the Retina Display. The 13-inch model wasn't unveiled at the WWDC because of low yields and greater assembly difficulty, says Kuo.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display will also be sans optical drive, and will rely solely on solid-state flash memory storage. We should expect the screen to sport a resolution of 2560x1600, and be thinner than the 15-inch model, at 18mm. The 13-inch model will also not sport discrete NVIDIA Kepler graphics, and will rely on just the integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics.

In addition to showing off AMD's future roadmaps, Mark Papermaster showed off a cool triple-fan professional graphics card called the FirePro W9000. The card is detailed in the slide shown below and is meant to be a professional version of the 7970. Curiously enough, however, is the fact that the card he held up and the card in the slide appear very different.

Cyril Kowaliski of TechReport noticed the difference as well and put a call into AMD's Dave Erskine to get an answer. Erskine would only say that it was a "dual-GPU product that will be released later this year." Taking a good educated guess, I would say that the card is most likely a 7970x2 (7990?), or in other words, two 7970 chips on one PCB.

After all, AMD has to compete with NVIDIA's dual-Kepler beast, the GTX 690. AMD has been making dual-GPU consumer cards for something like 4 generations now (3870x2) and were rumored to be debuting one at Computex. That debut never occurred, but it seems unlikely that they wouldn't produce a dual-7970 card. The release time frame also indicates that it should be of the Tahiti flavor.

At the end of the Fusion Developer Summit, Mark Papermaster, AMD Executive VP and CTO, produced some roadmaps which provided us a small glimpse into the future plans of AMD. AMD is looking to bring three new APUs to market in 2013 and 3 new server chips later this year. With the come new updated core architectures.

Let's start with the APUs. AMD is planning 3 different versions for various markets. The top APU is codenamed 'Kaveri' and will feature 4 Steamroller cores. Steamroller is the successor to the Bulldozer/Piledriver cores. This APU will feature fully shared memory with the GPU and have 15-35W thermal envelopes and be used in 13.3-15.6" notebooks with thicknesses of 0.83" or less.

The middle APU is codenamed 'Kabini' and will be the successor to the Zacate and Ontario APUs. The Kabini APU will sport Jaguar cores which are the next iteration of the Bobcat core architecture. Thermals will be in the 9-25W range and be used in 11.6-15.6" notebooks with thicknesses in the neighborhood of 0.71-0.94". The bottom APU, 'Temash,' will be similar and manage to fit into a thermal envelope of 3.6W. Wow.

We reported yesterday that Samsung was working on a Facebook competitor. We cited a Korea Times article as the source. Samsung has come out today on their official blog and denied the claim saying that it was groundless. They are saying that it is a rumor and no such project exists. They do admit to upgrading "Family Story," however.

The full denial, as seen in the blog post, is quoted below for reference:

Western Digital, a manufacturer known for their hard drives and not networking gear, has entered a new market today with the release of a new line of home networking gear called My Net. The new family of products contains a Gigabit switch, three dual-band Wi-Fi routers, and one dual-band router with 1TB or 2TB of network attached storage.

First off, the new N900 Central is a router that features built-in network attached storage. Speeds of up to 900Mbps are possible thanks to the dual-band connectivity. It features the typical 4+1 Ethernet connections for wired networking and comes with a USB for printers or additional storage. The basic N900 is almost the same except it trades the storage for an extra USB and 3 more LAN ports.

The N750 and N600 both feature 5 GigE ports but that is where the similarities end. The N750 can manage 750Mbps and features 2 USB ports. Meanwhile, the N600 can only reach a combined speed of 600Mbps and only features one USB port. The My Net Switch doesn't have any storage, router, or wireless functions, but instead provides 8 GigE ports.

Drox Operative is a space-based RPG with warring alien races, fierce space battles, a dynamic, evolving galaxy, and co-op multiplayer. The game is now available for pre-order at a reduced price of $14.99. With your pre-order purchase, you will gain access to the latest beta build, forums for feedback, and the final game when it is released.

A bit more about the game from the company itself since they know more about it than anyone:

In a hope to "make the internet a better place," an online retailer in Australia has decided that they have had enough developing for Internet Explorer 7. Hence, they are now charging a fee to users who insist on using the old, out-of-date browser which is extremely hard to make webpages look correct in.

Ruslan Kogan is now charging a 6.8% fee on any purchase made using the old browser in order to offset the cost of maintaining the site to be compatible with Internet Explorer 7. Dubbed "Internet Explorer 7 Tax," users are made aware of the issue via a popup. However, it's not clear just how much of an issue it is.

Internet Explorer 7 makes up only 2.99% of internet traffic, so it wouldn't kill their business not to support it if it did cost this much. It would appear that this is more of a publicity stunt than an actual business need. Kogan insists that Internet Explorer 7 use is a problem in an interview:

The My Xbox LIVE for iPhone app has been updated, which lets you find, learn more about, and control your favorite content from popular entertainment services on Xbox 360. But, it gets better: you can control the content on your console with play, pause, fast forward and rewind controls directly from the confort of your iPhone, on your lounge, bed or bean bag!

The good news doesn't stop there, My Xbox LIVE for iPad has also been updated. The new app sports Retina Display support, as well as improved authentication making connecting your iPad with your Xbox LIVE account easier than it has ever previously been. And for the first time on Android, the free My Xbox LIVE app lets you read and send messages to friends, manage your friends list and invite new friends, read and edit your full LIVE profile (name, bio, motto), change your avatar features and items with the avatar closet, and view and compare your achievement progress with friends.

Some of the updates coming for the iOS version are:

Vodafone UK have thought outside the square and released the Booster Brolly. What exactly is the Booster Brolly, well it's a multi-purpose umbrella. The prototype umbrella was created in partnership with University College London (UCL) to make sure that festival goers stay connected with their friends during the events over the coming months.

Booster Brolly has been designed to work as an eco-friendly mobile phone charger that gets charged through a bunch of flexible solar panels. The electrical current generated from these solar panels also powers a micro antenna which will boost a handsets 3G signal wirelessly. Booster Brolly is going to get trialled at the Isle of Wight Festival next weekend, the umbrella also sports an LED torch for night time navigation, as well as a 'hands free' smart phone cradle.

Booster Brolly works with a bunch of mobile devices, charging a smartphone battery in less than three hours. Booster Brolly features a durable carbon fibre skeleton, housing the electrical circuitry and a double layer wind and waterproof canopy that protects users from the worst of the British weather that is thrown on top of them, as well as doubling as a sunshade when the sun is out and bright.

Reddit has found that certain websites or their operators spam links on Reddit and has banned these domains from being posted on the site. The newly created /r/BannedDomains subreddit details the sites whose links are banned from being posted. Users who try to post a message containing a link to a banned site will be denied with an informative message.

The list of banned domains contains some major sites and is as follows:

The reason behind blocking these sites? It turns out editors from the sites, some of which are highly influential, have been posting links to their site on Reddit in a rather spamming fashion. A link on Reddit can often garner the site many extra hits or views that would otherwise not have come in. These hits are monetized by advertising making the site more money.