Latest News - Page 3097

SOPA may have been stalled, but the fight is not over, yet. Wikipedia have announced that they are joining in on the Black Out protest which is scheduled for January 18, just mere hours away.

Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, made the announcement through Twitter today, saying that Wikipedia will be unavailable for 24 hours beginning midnight EST of January 18 (4pm AEDT). Instead of Wiki entries, users will get to the site, and get redirected to a page with a banner saying "The Internet Must Remain Free".

Wikipedia is just one of a number of sites that will suspend operations on January 18, these sites include Minecraft, Reddit, Major League Gaming and the entire Cheezburger network. These black outs and protests are to raise awareness for SOPA and PIPE bills. Hopefully this begins to catapult SOPA and PIPA into the mainstream, and the House drops it. Let's hope they don't rename it, add some spice and throw it in with another bill without anyone knowing. It's not like they would be capable of doing that, again.

It seems as though Remedy are working on a new AAA title, with a job advertisement on their official website listing:

It would seem as though, from that advertisement, that this new project isn't just Alan Wake DLC, but an entirely new project. One of the best bits of that is they're after an "AI Programmer", which could be interesting to see how it fleshes out over time. The ad goes onto say that Remedy is looking for "[e]xperience on AI algorithms related to, for example, path finding, obstacle avoidance, decision making, group cooperation or planning". It seems as though this new AAA console game might be shared with another co-operative AI player.

Qualcomm have an interesting new competition, named the Tricorder X PRIZE. It is jointly organised with the X PRIZE Foundation, who is famous for its Ansari X PRIZE award of $10 million for its first private suborbital space flight. Qualcomm is offering up $10 million to those who could take the concept of a highly-portable health-monitoring device, the Star Trek Tricorder, and make it real.

Peter Diamandis, chair and chief executive of the X PRIZE Foundation says:

Razer may have been showing off its expensive Blade laptop at CES, but for those of you who don't want to buy an entire laptop for their cool Switchblade UI configurable touchscreen with programmable keys, you're in luck, it's made it' way to a standalone keyboard.

There are 10 programmable buttons at the top of the Switchblade panel that are backed by an LCD, which allow the look of each key to be different. These keys can be programmed to launch applications, toggle functions like the Windows key, and execute macros. Below them is a nicely-sized touchscreen that doubles as a touchpad, a numpad, a directional pad optimized for gaming, and even a secondary display.

Razer has said they plan to release an SDK that should unleash the community to build their own applications for the Switchblade UI. Even at this point in time, there's a YouTube app and a web browser. Switchblade also supports on-the-fly macro recording, which lets users quickly automate combos without having to exit a game. All preferences and macros are stored in the cloud, another nice benefit.

My birthday is in March and I'm pretty sure this is why NVIDIA are launching then, but the latest news is that NVIDIA does not want to paper launch the Kepler, so the launch of their first high-end Kepler part will only start once they have enough units for the first wave of customers.

NVIDIA originally had a Q1 2012 launch date in mind, with Quadro Kepler arriving in Q2 and Tesla Kepler arriving in Q3. But the new plans seem to indicate that NVIDIA will be launching the GeForce Kepler when they are able to ensure hard availability and have all of its partners covered.

AMD launched their GCN-based Radeon HD 7970 on December 22, 2011, but did not have any on retail shelves until closer to January 9th, 2012. NVIDIA does not want to repeat this and want to have stock availability in some what good numbers when they launch.

CES 2012 - One of my final meetings at CES was with the folks at BitTorrent in their suite at the Hilton hotel. We were given an introduction to some of the new features inside the latest version of the BitTorrentPlus client.

Brad from BitTorrent started by giving us a demo of "Disconnected" on the BitTorrentPlus client and its ability to transcode files that have been received through the BitTorrent network. He downloaded a torrent file (a .3gp file) from a mobile phone and while it's playable on a PC, it's not playable on other devices such as media players.

It's really a simple and quick process to convert the file, copy to a USB drive and then plug into a BT certified device (in this case a Blu-ray player) and playback the file which was converted from a .3gp file to a .mkv file which is supported by a vast amount of media players. No longer are you required to use third party tools which can be complex to convert files. It's all done within the BitTorrentPlus client.

Intel shook the hands of its two new partners at CES last week, with Lenovo and Motorola Mobility both at the hand-shaking end of that deal, where Intel also let ARM know its intentions of competing in the low-power consumption smartphone and tablet markets.

Lenovo went on to show off its K800 smartphone, sporting an Intel 32nm Medfield Atom Z2460 single-core processor with hyper-threading clocked at 1.6GHz. Motorola's product is currently in the final processes of preparation and is due to be delivered for carrier validation this summer.

Warren East, CEO of ARM, shrugs off Intel's attempt to strong arm them [that pun actually wasn't meant to be a pun, but I looked back and it works surprisingly well, so it stays] and says:

You know what? Over the course of CES, I noticed I'm actually excited for something for once... what is it? Windows 8 tablets. I really think they could change things up this year, with full Windows capabilities, a next-gen, touch-based OS, proper touch-based tablets, it would really change things up against the kinda basic tasks the iPad can do compared to the powerhouse OS X. Anyway, DigiTimes is reporting that we could see Intel-based tablets starting at just $599.

This is due to Microsoft and Intel both willing to drop their related hardware and software quotes, as you can imagine, this will shave down the price considerably. This is of course, according to "sources from notebook vendors". DigiTimes never runs out of sources, up, down, and sideways from the supply chain, so I'm throwing some salt at you, now.

These same sources claim that Intel and Microsoft are struggling since if Microsoft drops its Windows 8, and Intel drops its Clover Trail-W prices, whilst this strategy could help raise Wintel-based tablet PC's market share, it could seriously damage pricing in the PC market and bring down both their margin performance.

Futuremark Game Studio have just confirmed the release date and pricing for the PC and iPad versions of their upcoming orbital tower defense game, Unstoppable Gorg. In case you've forgotten what Futuremark's Unstoppable Gorg is all about, check out the gameplay trailer below.

Futuermark also announced that there is a previously unannounced version coming out, appearing on Apple Mac-based systems. On top of the newly announced Mac version, Unstoppable Gorg will be released on PC, XBLA, and the iPad. Futuremark Game Studio also announced today that Unstoppable Gorg will be released as a Steam Play title, which will let users buy it just once and play it on both the Mac and PC.

RELEASE DATES, PLATFORMS AND PRICES

CES 2012 - This little bit of news had to wait till I arrived back at home since I don't carry a scanner with me on my work trips. In our meeting Patriot didn't mention the new additions but they were included in the product catalog we were issued. The Patriot Wildfire leap to the the top of our performance charts in our reviews and it was one of the finest drives of 2011. The Wildfire products also included all of the accessories we like to get with our SSDs and included a solid warranty.

First up is the Wildfire PRO model. The specs of this one are similar to the already reviewed Wildfire other than the user capacity. Patriot has changed the user capacity back to the previous overprovisioning rate found on early SandForce SF-1200 based products, 100GB, 200GB and 400GB. That leaves a lot of space for background tasks and that means these would work really, really well in RAID. Speaking of RAID, we're just about finished up with our RAID Report with 4 Patriot Wildfire 120GB drives that introduces a new test that will be in our 2012 reviews.

Next up is Wildfire SE. We have no idea what separates the SE from the standard Wildfire but we have some ideas. The original Wildfire used Toshiba 3Xnm Toggle Mode flash. Could this be one of the first SandForce drives with Toshiba 24nm flash? We think so but what the hell do we know.

Entourage fan? If not, the title means nothing to you. YouTube it! Big news, SOPA has been stalled everyone, stalled! It was stalled due to a lack of 'consensus'. A lack of consensus with something so big going through Congress. Who would've thought!

The backlash from the Internet community with sites like Reddit against it, and the boycotting of companies that supported it like GoDaddy, have helped to force the pathetic bill to be stalled. On Saturday, the House Oversight Chariman, Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) was promised by Majority Leader, Eric Cantor (R-Va.) that the House won't vote on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) unless there is a consensus on the bill.

Issa said in a statement:

Ah, torrents. You used to be cool before everyone dived onto you, years ago, but as they have become mainstream, the target has been made. Torrents used to not be mainstream, and thus, the websites hosting them were pretty safe. Now I hear grandmas discussing how their son/daughter/friend/grandson "downloaded X or Y movie/TV show from 'the torrents'".

The Pirate Bay is one of the largest torrent-hosting sites on the Internet, and in a month from now, thepiratebay.org will remove all torrent files from its site, in favor for magnet links. This new move is what The Pirate Bay calls a "new future" in file sharing, consisting of true peer-to-peer sharing without the use of trackers.

TPB has already switched over to the underlying technology that runs alongside magnet links, with Distributed Hash Table (DHT) and Peer Exchange (PEX). TPB have been using magnet links with torrent files for a while now, without letting any of its users know.

Last week at CES, ASUS showed off a new monitor designed for professional artists and photographers, the ASUS VA278Q. The VA278Q is a 27-inch, sporting an LED backlight, IPS-based panel, a native resolution of 2560x1440 pixels, and 178/178-degree viewing angles.

ASUS' widescreen includes a "Smart Contrast Ratio" of 80,000,000:1, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort connectivity, a stand enabling tilt, pivot, swivel, and height adjustments. This is something most monitors don't have, which is something professional users crave for.

Splendid Video Intelligence Technology also provides six pre-set modes which are Theater, Scenery, Gaming, Night View, sRGB, and Standard, these "optimize colors and image fidelity for onscreen content". No information on pricing or availability of the VA278Q.

I don't know how this can be found offensive, maybe it should be taken the other way: as a tribute. Steve Jobs was such a huge influence on society itself through the gadgets he saw released, that he makes it into one of the most iconic TV shows in history: The Simpsons.

In this weeks episode, titled "Politically Inept, with Homer Simpson", Homer is being interviewed on TV, where along the bottom, the news ticker reads "Steve Jobs unveils iGhost".

In this episode, Homer becomes a Glenn Beck type, after Bart uploads a video of him having an Alec Baldwin-ish aeroplane meltdown moment. During an interview on Fox News, the news ticker flows and shows up some funny, but fake headlines: "Europe puts Greece on eBay", "Congress postpones end of world to 2013", "Satan tweets support for Santorum", and the big one, "Steve Jobs unveils iGHOST".

Vodafone have started 2012 off with an app release of "My Vodafone" for iOS and Android-based devices. The app lets you monitor your monthly data usage, so you don't go over your data cap and get hit with excess usage charges.

Post-paid (12-, 24-month, or month-to-month) Vodafone customers with a My Vodafone username and password get access to the full suite of functionality in the application. Pre-paid customers can download the app, but to access your account services on pre-paid, the app will link you directly to the mobile version of My Vodafone, where you can log-in.

The app features are:

We still don't have pictures or video of Osama bin Laden, but hey, it's OK to dump pictures of another countries Nuclear facility, right? Well, its now known the length of North Korea's progress in building a [gasp] weapon of mass destruction. You know, the ones we still haven't found in the War on Terror after trillions of dollars spent and countless thousand killed and millions displaced.

North Korea has actually done quite a bit of work, but not as much as NK's official claims state. There are various photos dated between June of 2009 and November of last year, which show North Korea's enrichment facility and light water reactors. You can see in these photos that the two aforementioned bits of the puzzle have almost reached completion. Once that's done, it's time to have its internals placed inside. The speed at which North Korea's reached this point, has analysts concerned. Below is a quote from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

Last Friday, a group of purportedly Gazan hackers defaced Israel's Fire and Rescue Services website. They didn't just do any old hack, but added a "death to Israel" message on the website and a tweaked picture of Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, where they superimposed foot prints over his face.

Ayalon is the public official responsible for a strongly worded statement denouncing hacking, likening it to terrorism and threatening (bad move) that:

Diablo 3 hitting the consoles has been a rumor for quite a while now, and unfortunately, that rumor is now fact. Blizzard admitted last year that they were experimenting with a console version of Diablo 3, but according to a tweet from a Blizzard community manager, Diablo 3 on consoles is all but confirmed.

A fan on Twitter asked "can you confirm or deny Diablo 3 coming to consoles?" with community manager "Bashiok" responding with "Yup. Josh Mosqueira is lead designer for the Diablo 3 console project". No more details or specifics were unveiled.

Now that news, I don't mind. As long as the game isn't like all other multi-platform releases where the PC controls suffer because of the slow movement of console controllers, and the slow response time of TVs, etc. But when Blizzard first revealed they were looking at bringing RPGs to consoles, director Jay Wilson actually said the game felt better in some ways with a controller, as opposed to a mouse and keyboard.

CES 2012 - With the CES attendees safe at home we can now tell you the full story behind the ioSafe Check Yo Self Before You Wreck Yo Self Event. By now you've certainly seen the 8 foot tall tesla coil that put on an amazing display. The tesla testing was actually part of an interactive magic show. The ioSafe Rugged Portable Thunderbolt drive did take several direct hits from the simulated lightening but the results were as expected, the drive survived and held the data we put on.

The drive was filled with several documents and other files, one you can see here. The drive was then blasted, we were there and smelled the ions in the air. The data survived.

What you haven't heard yet is what happened next. To protect all of our electronics equipment from the charged air our backpacks and cell phones were placed in a protective cage that was grounded. Being ioSafe, the company who delivered the first waterproof data backup system none of us thought anything about the giant tub of water sitting close by. Dunking drives in water is actually on the tame side with ioSafe.

CES 2012 - RunCore made the trip to CES this year and brought with them a glimpse of next generation SSD technology.

With Samsung and Apple soaking up supply of Samsung 20nm NAND flash, Toshiba 24nm in limited supply and SandForce staying quiet for the first half of the year, companies are turning to Marvell to bring something fresh to the SSD market. RunCore is no exception and they will have a new Marvell high performance SSD on the market soon. With speed of around 550MB/s read and 450MB/s write we are starting to get excited to see more of these drives.

RunCore is in several different markets and over the coming years the company will grow by a large margin. Here we see two new SSD-on-chip designs where the controller and the flash is built into the same package that reduces power and heat. These products will be built into military systems that need high speed in places where space is limited.