Perseid Meteor Shower set to dazzle stargazers on August 11

August holds a special event for stargazers across the nation in the form of the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. This astronomical event occurs on an annual basis and produces more fireballs and "shooting stars" than any other meteor shower. During its peak, stargazers could see more than 100 meteors per hour with some streaking across the sky as bright fireballs.

"We have found that one meteor shower produces more fireballs than any other," Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office said in a statement. "It's the Perseid meteor shower, which peaks on August 12 and 13."

Cook and a team of scientists from NASA have placed meteor observing cameras across the southern United States in an effort to count the amount of fireballs produced during the Perseid event and between 2008 and 2013, the project logged 568 fireballs. This is significantly more than next largest meteor shower event, The Geminids.

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Researchers create world's smallest recreation of Mona Lisa

The world's smallest re-creation of the Mona Lisa has been painted on a surface that is just 30 microns in width, which is roughly one-third as wide as a human hair. This tiny feat was accomplished by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and used a process known as ThermoChemical NanoLithography, which is similar to the process used to etch the circuitry on the silicon used in microprocessors.

The process uses a precise application of heat in a painstaking process that "paints" the image pixel by pixel. Varying the amount of heat allows for changes in in the darkness of the gray used to illustrate the image. For example, the more heat used in a single pixel, the darker that pixel will be. Likewise, less heat produces a lighter pixel.

"By tuning the temperature, our team manipulated chemical reactions to yield variations in the molecular concentrations on the nanoscale. We've created a way to make independent patterns of multiple chemicals on a chip that can be drawn in whatever shape you want," Jennifer Curtis, an associate professor in the School of Physics and the study's lead author, said in a statement.

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Marvell chip powers first self-branded China Mobile smartphone

Charles Gantt | CPU, APU & Chipsets | Aug 6, 2013 3:04 PM CDT

Today, Marvell announced that China Mobile's first self-branded smartphone will feature a Marvell ARMADA Mobile PXA988 processor. Dubbed the M601, the Android-based smartphone will feature unified 3G performance thanks to the ARMADA PXA988 which has been designed to deliver high-performance computing with industry-leading graphic capabilities, while at the same time producing best-in-class robust connectivity.

The ARMADA PXA988 is a unified 3G and LTE single-chip solution that integrates a high-performance low-power ARM Cortex A9 application processor alongside cutting-edge cellular modems that support advanced multimedia and graphics capabilities. The PXA988 also features TD-HSPA+ R8 as well as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, FM radio, and GPS.

"I am very pleased to see the launch of China Mobile's first self-branded smartphone, which is a major milestone for China Mobile and over a billion consumers in China. In the past several years, we have seen the fast development of China's 3G TD-SCDMA technology and the rapid growth of the smartphone market, thanks to the close collaboration among China Mobile and global companies, such as Samsung, ZTE, Yulong Coolpad, Lenovo and others," said Weili Dai, President and Co-founder of Marvell. "I am very proud of our collaboration with China Mobile and Marvell's investment in developing advanced TD-SCDMA technology. I am very thankful for the innovation, dedication and contributions made by the China Mobile and Marvell global engineering teams."

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CyanogenMod 10.1 sees 11 new devices added, teases next-gen ROM too

Today, CyanogenMod announced that it has added 11 new devices to its 10.1 white list, with most of the devices being of Motorola origin and a few Samsung handsets tossed in. Additionally, three new tablets have been added to the list as well.

For our readers who have never heard of CyanogenMod, it is a custom ROM for Android devices and is widely believed to be one of the best alternate Android ROMs on the market. Cyanogen 10.1 is based on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and is closer to stock Android than any other custom ROM. The development team behind CyanogenMod says that work on CM 10.2 is already underway and that it will be based on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. They alluded to what could be the next generation of Custom ROMs with a top secret project named Nemesis that will feature a new camera app called Focal.

The list below contains the names of all the new devices that been added to the 10.1 white list.

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LinkedIn comes to full-touch Nokia Asha devices

Charles Gantt | Software & Apps | Aug 6, 2013 12:02 PM CDT

This morning, Nokia Asha owners have one more reason to use the phone today. Nokia has announced that the popular professional networking site LinkedIn has just released an app for the full-touch versions of its Asha smartphones, making it even easier to stay in touch with colleagues and coworkers.

"LinkedIn for Nokia Asha essentially brings the most popular features of LinkedIn to an app built specifically for Asha touch devices," said LinkedIn's Giovanni Iachello, responsible for international product management. It's made up of four main features:

We really wanted to design something for ambitious people on the go. What we always try to do with mobile applications is design something that's consistent with the user experience on the website itself, but something that's really useful for people in transit as well. If you're going into a meeting with somebody and want to look them up, it's easy to search and find out all about them from your Asha touch device. It's a way to reach our members in emerging markets, by offering a feature-rich app on devices that are readily available and affordable in many markets. It allows us to work where our members work.

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Meet SOL, an Unbuntu-powered, solar-charged laptop, 10hr battery life

Charles Gantt | Laptops | Aug 6, 2013 11:03 AM CDT

Imagine the convenience of having a laptop that boasted 10 hours of battery life, yet only requires two hours in the sun to fully recharge. Sounds pretty nice, doesn't it? Well that fantasy is now a reality thanks to a Canadian company called WeWi Telecommunications and their revolutionary Ubuntu-based laptop dubbed the SOL. The laptop was designed with developing countries in mind where one may need computational power, but reliable grid-based electricity is something of a scarcity.

The SOL will feature a dual-core Intel Atom D2500 clocked at 1.86GHz with built-in Intel GMA 3600 graphics. 2GB stock or 4GB of RAM is optionally available alongside a 320 GB Seagate HDD. A 1366 x 786 pixel, 13.3-inch WXGA display is featured with a 3-megapixel webcam. Audio is headed up by a Realtek ALC661 HD chip with two built-in speakers and a built-in microphone.

Connectivity is headed up by three USB 3.0 ports and an HDMI port. 10/100 LAN and 802.11 b,g,n Wi-Fi is present alongside 3G/4G World Multimode LTE and Bluetooth 4.0. A headphone jack and an SD card reader round out the features. The SOL features fold-out solar panels on the back of the screen which allow the device to charge up in just two hours after spending a full 10 hours powered on. Expected to retail for around $300, more info is expected in a few days pending a company announcement.

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TT eSports unleashes POSEIDON, an illuminated mechanical keyboard

Charles Gantt | Peripherals | Aug 6, 2013 10:36 AM CDT

This morning, TT eSports officially announced the launch of the POSEIDON, an illuminated gaming keyboard. TT eSports says that they built the POSEIDON with the goal of providing a quality Cherry MX switch-based keyboard, while retaining an extremely affordable price, allowing more gamers around the world the chance to experience the difference a mechanical keyboard can make. Our own Anthony Garreffa got a chance to check out the POSEIDON back in June at Computex 2013.

The keyboard is constructed out of a hefty ABS plastic body that gives the keyboard a very solid feel and virtually removes all flex when pushing down on the keyboard. TT eSports says the POSEIDON was designed meticulously with no shortcuts being taken in the construction or overall function, giving this mechanical keyboard a premium feel while retaining a budget friendly price.

The POSEIDON is a pretty bare-bones gaming keyboard that provides everything you need without excessive clutter from macro keys or extra functionality. It is truly a plug-and-play experience with no extra software needed, allowing it to become the "ultimate plug-and-play" keyboard for gaming at home or on the go. The POSEIDON will retail at an MSRP of $79.99 and will begin shipping out worldwide later this month. Below I have listed some of the features that make the POSEIDON a leader in its class.

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'BREACH' can hack HTTPS in 30 seconds, nothing is secure

Anthony Garreffa | Current Affairs | Aug 6, 2013 8:19 AM CDT

One would think this is fear mongering, but it's real, and it's here. Security experts are now warning website operators to test their HTTPS traffic, as it might be vulnerable to a new crypto attack that can be used to take users' information.

The attack is called Browser Reconnaissance and Exfiltration via Adaptive Compression of Hypertext, or BREACH, and was detailed in a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) "BREACH vulnerability in compressed HTTPS" advisory issued on Friday. The DHS warned that "a sophisticated attacker may be able to derive plaintext secrets from the ciphertext in an HTTPS stream."

The vulnerability was exposed last Thursday at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas by Salesforce.com Lead Product Security Engineer, Neal Harris, along with Salesforce.com Lead Security Engineer, Yoel Gluck. Their HTTPS crypto attack can watch "the size of the cipher text received by the browser while triggering a number of strategically crafted requests to a target site" according to exploit details provided to the DHS by Prado.

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Neill Blomkamp says he was lucky he never directed the Halo movie

Anthony Garreffa | TV, Movies & Home Theatre | Aug 6, 2013 6:30 AM CDT

A few years ago, we nearly saw a Halo feature film from director Neill Blomkamp. At the time, he wasn't a big director, and the Halo film collapsed under the weight of its two financiers, 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures, pulling out of the project at the last minute.

This was reportedly due to concerns over the ever-increasing budget, and Microsoft's cut. Lord of the Rings director, Peter Jackson, had hired Neill Blomkamp to direct the Halo movie, which would've been Blomkamp's first full-length film. When the Halo film collapsed, Jackson and his partner, Fran Walsh, decided to go with producing Blomkamp's District 9, a sci-fi flick based on one of his short films.

District 9 was released in 2009 to a huge praise from critics and viewers, going as far as receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. When talking with Hero Complex, Blomkamp said: "The luck is the fact that Peter and Fran let me make [District 9] out of the ruins that were Halo. What happened out of that was learning to trust my ideas. If Halo had come out and succeeded or failed, I wouldn't have learned that."

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RumorTT: AMD working on 12-core, 6GHz, AM4-based processor

Anthony Garreffa | CPU, APU & Chipsets | Aug 6, 2013 3:45 AM CDT

Ok, before you read this post, please make sure you've gone to your cupboard and picked up your salt, because you're going to need it. Over at the Chiphell forums, it looks like some users have found some details on a CPU from AMD.

Considering AMD aren't releasing their 28nm Steamroller-based "Kaveri" APUs until next year, I'd like to know where this new processor is coming from. The new processor in question is codenamed "Baeca", or the Phenom IV X12 170 processor, on a 25nm process. This processor is pretty incredible, with 12 cores and a base clock speed of 6GHz.

All of this is wrapped into a beautiful 75W package, and includes 24MB of L3 cache. The new processor would come with a bunch of new instruction sets, including 3DNow(+), AMD-V and AMD-IV. The new processor would also arrive on the AM4 socket, which is a 1356-pin variant. The leaker of the information has said that this processor would launch in the second half of 2014, after AMD launch their new Steamroller-based Kaveri APUs.

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