BBC's 'Blackadder' return 'on the cards'

Ben Gourlay | Celebrities & Entertainment | Aug 24, 2015 10:26 PM CDT

Fans of the classic BBC period comedy 'Blackadder' which starred a pre-'Mr. Bean' Rowan Atkinson might be a little bit excited, but even more cautious after news that the show might be coming back after nearly two decades off TV screens.

Quoted in The Telegraph, actor Sir Tony Robinson who portrayed Baldrick stated that he thinks "a new series of Blackadder is on the cards. I have spoken to virtually all the cast about this now", but that it all hinged on whether the station can still afford Hugh Laurie. "He's a huge star now - or so he'd like to think." During the latter seasons of 'House', the British actor commanded a fee of $400,000 USD per episode - clearly out of the spectrum of the public broadcaster.

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ASUS ZenFone 2 said to be the fastest-charging smartphone in the world

The new ZenFone 2 smartphone from ASUS is making waves, with Tom's Guide recently publishing an article that has three smartphones competing against one another to see which one recharges the fastest.

Many of the biggest and best smartphones out were tested, including iPhone 6, Nexus 6, LG G4, OnePlus 2, ASUS ZenFone 2, Samsung Galaxy S6 and Motorola Droid Turbo. The ASUS ZenFone 2 was the winner, hitting 53% from 0% in just 30 minutes, and was the fastest to reach 80% and full charge. When battery capacity is factored, the ZenFone 2 still beat the Galaxy S6, but not by much.

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Acer shows off Aspire Z3-710 All-in-One with Windows 10

Michael Hatamoto | Computer Systems | Aug 24, 2015 5:09 PM CDT

Acer today announced the Aspire Z3-710 Series all-in-one desktop PC, running the Microsoft Windows 10 operating system.

The AIO features a 23.8-inch display full HD (1920x1080) LED display, and is powered by an Intel Core Ci5-4590T CPU, up to 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, and DVD super multi optical drive. The Aspire Z3-710 also has three USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, HDMI, with 802.11ac wireless capability.

The Acer Aspire Z3-710 starts at $749.99 with an Intel Core i3 4170T CPU, 6GB RAM, and 1TB HDD.

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Microsoft rolls out beta for Cortana on Google Android devices

Making good on its promise earlier this year to roll out Cortana to Google Android and Apple iOS, Microsoft has started a beta run of Cortana for Android devices.

Not surprisingly, the Android version of Cortana doesn't offer full features available to Windows users, with some apps left out - and you can't say "Hey Cortana" to get instant access. Microsoft also limited this beta phase to consumers in the United States only, and hasn't detailed international rollout just yet.

It looks like Microsoft has plenty of beta users, as the signup page offers the following message: "Thanks for your interest in becoming a beta tester for Cortana. At this time, the beta program has enough testers and isn't accepting more users."

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Avid Life Media offers more than $375,000 bounty to identify hackers

Michael Hatamoto | Hacking, Security & Privacy | Aug 24, 2015 2:25 PM CDT

Avid Life Media is still trying to deal with a major PR disaster after The Impact Team breached Ashley Madison, and the company has offered up a $500,000 CAD ($377,000) bounty.

"You know The Impact Team has crossed the line," said Bryce Evans, acting staff superintendent of the Toronto Police, during a Monday morning press conference. "This hack is one of the largest data breaches in the world. The social impact behind this leak, we're talking about families, we're talking about children, we're talking about wives, we're talking about their male partners. It's going to have impacts on their lives... this is affecting all of us."

Evans also asked for the hacking community to "do the right thing" and help Avid Life Media and the police identify the hackers. Even if members of The Impact Team are identified, however, trying to bring them to justice could be extremely difficult - depending where they are located in the world.

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Windows 10 updates will do whatever the hell they like

Anthony Garreffa | Software & Apps | Aug 24, 2015 6:13 AM CDT

In case you didn't know, Microsoft has the rights to install system software updates to your installation of Windows 10, whether you want to, or not. Some experts don't agree with this stance from Microsoft, but it is leaving some users completely baffled about what is being installed onto their systems.

Microsoft recently spoke with The Register, where it confirmed that the "only time it will detail the type of updates it pushes down to users machines will be for significant updates", reports BGR. Microsoft continued: "As we have done in the past, we post KB articles relevant to most updates which we'll deliver with Windows as a service. Depending on the significance of the update and if it is bringing new functionality to Windows customers, we may choose to do additional promotion of new features as we deploy them".

The Register added: "Updates that offer minimal information about their functions don't inspire confidence. They should inspire the opposite - suspicion - not least because of Microsoft's historic sermonising about trust". And we would have to agree. Not knowing what is being installed into the operating system of your machine, if it were by someone else, would be malware, a trojan horse, or similar. Microsoft is definitely not providing confidence in users installing Windows 10, that's for sure.

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LG will show off G PAD II 10.1 tablet during IFA 2015

LG Electronics will show off the G Pad II 10.1 tablet during the IFA 2015 tech conference in Berlin, offering both an LTE and Wi-Fi version.

The LG G Pad II 10.1 features a 2.26GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 CPU, 10.1-inch display (1920x1200), 16GB eMMC, 2GB RAM, and microSD. The device runs Google Android 5.1.1 Lollipop. The device features LTE and Wi-Fi connectivity, and 5-megapixel rear camera and 2-megapixel front-facing camera.

Pricing information and an official release date will be announced during IFA 2015.

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iPhone 6 with a hydrogen battery lasts for up to a week

Let's face it, our smartphones do not last throughout the day for most users. I've tried all varieties of the iPhone, multiple Samsung, Sony, HTC and other handsets, but I just do not get through an entire day without worrying.

Well, hydrogen-powered batteries could alleviate this, with a British company teasing that hydrogen-powered smartphones could last for an entire week under heavy usage. The company has even shown off a working iPhone 6 prototype smartphone powered by a hydrogen battery. The fuel cell inside of the prototype is the same size as the iPhone 6 chassis but is so thin that it can "fit alongside the conventional battery without any alternations" reports Digital Journal.

Better yet, the hydrogen battery is recharged using the headphone jack on the iPhone 6, which was modified solely for this purpose. Intelligent Energy is the company behind the idea, where it said that production devices are still "a couple of years out". Intelligent Energy CEO, Henri Winand, said: "To our knowledge this has never been done before. We have now managed to make a fuel cell so thin we can fit it to the existing chassis without alterations and retaining the rechargeable battery. This is a major step because if you are moving to a new technology you have to give people a path they are comfortable with".

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Samsung has 'overwhelming demand' for its $1 smartphone trial

It was only two days ago that we reported that Samsung was offering iPhone users a 30-day trial of its new Galaxy smartphones for just $1, but the South Korean giant has received "overwhelming demand" and has, for the time being, stopped the test drive.

Samsung was offering iPhone users the chance to test drive one of their new Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S6 edge+ or Galaxy Note 5 smartphones for just $1. The company has now put up a note on their promotional page, thanking people for the huge demand. Samsung said: "Due to the overwhelming demand, we are temporarily out of test drive phones. Please keep checking back for available phones".

I think Samsung needs to pull out as many phones as it can to bring the offer back, as it was obviously quite the lure for iPhone users bored or looking to change over from their Apple smartphone.

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What you need to know about Optane and 3D XPoint technology

Steven Bassiri | Storage | Aug 24, 2015 2:00 AM CDT

What we already know about Optane and 3D XPoint: We know that Optane is Intel's brand name for storage using 3D XPoint, and we know that XPoint consists of layers (known as stacks). Each stack has wires that run perpendicular to each other (they are silver/gray in the image).

Between each set of perpendicular wires are a selector (yellow) and a cell (green). By providing varying amounts of voltage to the selector it can write or read to the cell. The benefit here is that the cells don't use transistors, and theoretically (depending on the size of the cell) you could squeeze much more of this into a given space than you could with the traditional transistor.

Cells can be written and read to at the same speed since you can find any point in space with only three points of reference. Now 3D X-Point fills a spot in the current memory market, right in between DRAM and NAND based SSDs. Its latency is 10x slower than DRAM but 1000x faster than NAND. It has similar density compared to NAND SSDs, which means its 10x denser than DRAM. All the speeds and density aside, 3D XPoint also offers non-volatility, which means it can store data even when it is powered off.

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