AMD releases Radeon R7 SSDs

small_radeon-ssd-5AMD announced a new technology partnership with OCZ to build AMD Radeon branded Solid State Drives (SSDs).

Starting today, users can buy the AMD Radeon  R7 Series SSDs in 120GB, 240GB or 480GB capacities online retailers.

The AMD Radeon R7 Series SSDs are designed for gamers looking to upgrade their system’s overall responsiveness with something a little cheaper.

Roman Kyrychynskyi, director of memory, AMD said that with the new AMD Radeon  R7 Series SSDs powered by outstanding OCZ designs, was a good mix of performance, reliability and affordability.

They are being pitched as high performance SSDs which uses the A19 MLC NAND flash process and the Barefoot 3 M00 controller. The disks have a write endurance of 30GB/day, as well as read/write speeds of up to 550MB/s and 530MB/s, respectively.

This exclusive combination of hardware also features an anodized black housing, characteristic of the AMD Radeon brand.

AMD Radeon  R7 Series SSDs will be available at a starting price of $99.99 USD for the 120GB drive.

Apple’s smart watch launch slips

stop-watchThe Duke Nukem  of mobile products , Apple’s Smartwatch is set to be delayed yet again, according to the latest report from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

Kuo has been telling anyone who will listen that Apple is having production issues surrounding its new smartwatch.

“We reiterate our view that iWatch, as compared to existing products, and as Apple’s (US) first attempt at a wearable device, represents a much higher level of difficulty for the company as regards component and system design, manufacturing and integration between hardware and software,” says Kuo.

The problem is that Apple wants the iWatch’s to be small and have a flexible AMOLED display which is new territory for a smartwatch.  Apple is also having difficulty water proofing the gizmo which is an area which Jobs’ Mob has not had to worry about much before.

He said that if the reports are correct that Apple will use sapphire glass for the iWatch display that could also put a spanner in the works. Sapphire glass is much tougher and flexible than the kind of toughened glass used in smartphones, but also a lot more difficult to produce.

All of this is why Kuo said that “While we are positive on iWatch and believe that the advantages of the design and business model behind it are difficult to copy, we think, given the aforementioned challenges, that the launch could be postponed to 2015.”

He said that Apple might show off the watch at an October event, but will delay the immediate release.

Jobs’ Mob is already in trouble with the project. It is so late getting the product to market the ground has well and truly been picked over by rivals.  The only real takers for smartwatches are the sporting types, which is not exactly Apple’s target market.

 

Ballmer quits Microsoft board

ballmerThe shy and retired CEO of Microsoft Steve “there is a kind of hush” Ballmer has announced that he is leaving the company completely.

Ballmer was Microsoft’s 30th employee, its first business manager and was the top Vole for over a decade. Now, after 34 years with the company, Ballmer is leaving behind his last foot hold in the company — a seat on the board.

In a letter to Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s new CEO, Ballmer explained that he’s leaving the company’s board of directors effective immediately because he has become a little too busy playing with his NBA team.

Ballmer wrote that he saw a combination of Clippers, civic contribution, teaching and study taking up a lot of time.

He will still me keeping his fortune tied up in Voleware and most of the letter is spent encouraging Nadella and giving advice.

“Microsoft will need to be bold and make big bets to succeed in this new environment,” he told Nadella. “Our board must also support and encourage that fearlessness for shareholders to get the best performance from Microsoft. You must drive that.”

He also worried about Microsoft’s stock performance: outside of index funds, probably because he still owns more Microsoft shares than anyone.

“I bleed Microsoft, have for 34 years and I always will,” he concluded. “I promise to support and encourage boldness by management in my role as a shareholder in any way I can.”

Nadella wrote back that Microsoft will thrive in “the mobile-first, cloud-first world”.

Sadly the place will be a lot quieter now that Steve has gone.

Microsoft takes on Chrome

Chrome-4-Wallpaper-Background-HdSoftware giant Microsoft appears to be attempting to give the Chromebook a run for its money.

Vole has arranged a few deals with some of its hardware partners to create $199 to $249 Windows laptops which are based around cloud storage systems.

HP will be Microsoft’s number one chum and will lead the way to lower-priced Microsoft Windows computers this year.

First off the block will be a $199 laptop dubbed the HP Stream 14. Details for the device leaked to Mobile Geeks. The data sheet that the magazine got its paws on shows a  14-inch laptop which could provide an interesting alternative to a Chromebook.

The HP Stream 14 is a bit like a Chromebooks.  It has a 1366 x 768 display and energy-efficient AMD chips. It has an untaxing 2 GB of memory and either 32 or 64 GB of flash storage as well as an SDXC card slot. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, three USB ports, HDMI out and a webcam.

The laptop runs Windows 8.1 and is connected to Microsoft’s cloud storage services. Like a Chromebook, the HP Steam 14 will come with 100 GB of OneDrive storage for two years, which is the identical

It appears that Microsoft is not going to give the bottom of the market to Google without a fight and we are expecting to see other products from Volish partners in the $199 to $249 price range in the coming months.

Hackers accessed nuclear power watchdog

 

Picture thanks to Wiki Commons

Picture thanks to Wiki Commons

Hackers managed to gain access to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission three times, according to a Nextgov report.

The hackers on two occasions were foreigners and the last was an unknown person or group.  The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission governs America’s nuclear power providers. Ironically making sure that they are secure.

Apparently an investigation into the source of the third hack was scuppered because logs of the incident had been destroyed.

Intruders used basic hacking techniques to get at the NRC’s computers. One attack linked to a foreign country or individual involved phishing emails that coerced NRC employees into submitting their login credentials. The second one linked to a foreign government or individual used spearphishing, or emails targeted at specific NRC employees, to convince them to click a link that led to a malware site hosted on Microsoft’s cloud storage site SkyDrive, now called OneDrive.

The third attack involved breaking into the personal account of a NRC employee. After sending a malicious PDF attachment to 16 other NRC employees, one person was infected with malware.

NRC spokesman David McIntyre insisted that the NRC computer security team “detects and thwarts” most hacking attempts.

Sony bemused at PS4 success

PS4Even the marketing people at Sony can’t work out why its PS4 is selling so well.

Sony is cleaning Microsoft’s clock in the console wars despite the fact that the two products are pretty much the same spec with the same price.

It has sold more than 10 million PS4 consoles have been sold in the nine months since launch. It’s a bigger number than anyone anticipated, and even  the president of Sony’s Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, doesn’t know why.

He was a bit nervous because he did not completely understand what’s happening. Sony has had marketing people look into this early success, and have found that a lot of PS4 owners did not own a PS3, or any last-gen console at all.

He said that normally when you see a great sales number, instinct tells us we should be concerned about future sales. If Sony sold this number of units at this stage in the game there would be no more consumers it can sell to in the future.

It seems that is not the case and a lot of the PS4s are being flogged to those who have never owned one of Sony’s consoles in the past.

It does not answer the question why, but according to our nephew it is because the Xbox does not have as many good games as the PS4 yet.

Chinese hackers steal 4.5 million hospital data

snap dragonA top US hospital operator has admitted that Chinese hackers broke into its computer systems and stole data on 4.5 million patients.

Community Health Systems sheepishly said that the attack occurred in April and June of this year, but it was not until July that it was finally spotted.

It told the US Securities and Exchange Commission that the attack was carried out by a group based in China that used “highly sophisticated malware” to attack its systems.

The attacker was able to bypass the company’s security measures and successfully copy and transfer certain data outside the company.

The group is apparently known to US federal law enforcement authorities, which are now investigating.

Stolen were patient names, addresses, birthdates, telephone numbers and Social Security numbers of the 4.5 million people who were referred to or received services from doctors affiliated with the company in the last five years.

However the stolen data did not include patient credit card, medical or clinical information, but still ranks as the second largest disclosed attack to hit the US medical industry in the last few years.

What is still not clear is why the Chinese government would want the medical details of 4.5 million, it is not really as if it could benefit from any ID fraud. However it might be a Chinese criminal gang.

Boffins may make a quantum breakthrough

fatter catA team of boffins at the University of Chicago has announced it has developed a way to observe, control, and manipulate the behaviour of a single electron with the help of lasers.

In terms of quantum physics, this is a way of telling if Schrodinger’s cat is really dead or alive, or just has escaped the box and is asleep on a soft bed somewhere.

An electron is an elementary subatomic particle that is a fundamental constituent of matter, having a negative charge. It is found in all atoms and acts as the primary carrier of electricity in solids.

To manipulate a single electron at the quantum level the researchers used a laser light in ultra-fast pulses which in turn managed the quantum state of an electron inside a nanosecond defect, which is naturally found in diamonds.

The method used was also able to observe and track the properties of the single electron, as well as how the electron changes over a set period of time.

David Awschalom, who led the project, said that his research was a precursor for creating and developing semiconductor “quantum bits” and other microscopic technology and molecular powered computing which would increase computer speeds dramatically.

It would also mean that scientists will finally be able to find that pesky cat.

Blackberry turns back on phones

ripeunripeThe other fruity company which once had the world in the palm of its hand, Blackberry, is now turning its back on handsets and created a new business unit that will combine some of its most brilliant ideas and patents.

Dubbed BlackBerry Technology Solutions the outfit will be headed by Sandeep Chennakeshu, the former president of Ericsson Mobile Platforms and former chief technology officer of Sony-Ericsson.

John Chen, BlackBerry’s executive chairman and chief executive officer said that by combining all these assets into a single business unit will work rather well and open new revenue streams.

Chen has already stripped out much of Blackberry’s consumer-oriented businesses, sold property and laid off employees.

Analysts say that the new unit reinforces the fact that Blackberry’s days as a handset vendor are behind it as it moves “very aggressively” toward a different business.

Blackberry has not had much luck flogging its gear in the consumer market. It could not get its products out on time and faced stiff competition from other smartphone.

Chennakeshu, who has 73 patents to his name,  is well known in the wireless, electronics and semiconductor industries.

BlackBerry Technology Solutions includes QNX, the company that BlackBerry bought and used to develop the operating system that became the platform for its new smartphones, and Certicom, a former independent Toronto-area company with advanced security software.

BlackBerry Technology Solutions will also include BlackBerry’s Project Ion, which is an application platform focused on machine-to-machine Internet technology, Paratek antenna tuning technology and about 44,000 patents.

 

Munich mulls Microsoft agreement

munich-agreemnetThe poster child for open sauce goodness, the German city of Munich, might be thinking of abandoning the plan and going for Microsoft.

According to the German newspaper Süddeutsche, deputy mayor Josef Schmid says the city is considering the move because users miss the functionality that Voleware had.

For example, users are cross they do not have an integrated contact, calendar and email application. Süddeutsche claimed that Munich has set up an external email server to allow the City’s mobile devices to send and receive messages.

These are not little complaints either, in fact they are so bad that the city council will create an expert panel to assess the performance of its chosen software.

Schmid is quoted as saying that if the panel recommends a return to Microsoft, he will not say no.  Of course they could always pay someone to write a more integrated mail programme for them.

Munich decided to go with Linux back in 2004 and spend about 10 years installing it, however it is at the desktop level were Linux still has to make much impact, unless you count Android.

It is also bad news for the British government which also recently has issued an order moving towards desktop Linux.

 

Azure fails

cloud (264 x 264)Microsoft has fixed a worldwide outage on its Azure cloud computing service, which occurred across multiple regions.

Partial disruptions began as of 1.40pm on Aug. 18, the company said on the Azure website.

This is bad news for Microsoft which is touting its cloud-based platform for creating, deploying and maintaining online applications and services such as websites and web-hosted applications. As such, it has to work 24/7 or customers will be severely put out.

Azure is used by governments and corporations around the world, supports various programming languages, tools and frameworks.

Microsoft said that Azure services such as virtual machines, cloud services, mobile services, service bus, site recovery, HDInsight, websites and Storsimple were down during the outage.

However, Vole insisted that the core platform components were working properly throughout and only a small subset of customers were affected by the outage.

Still reports of outages might make many firms question if moving to the cloud is such a good idea, or if they can get the same levels of reliability on-site.

Lantern leaps over the Great Wall

great wall A bunch of activists has developed a piece of software which is giving the Chinese censors a run for their money.

The program was created late last year by Adam Fisk, a former engineer at the pioneering file sharing service Limewire, which was shut down by a federal judge in 2010. However Fisk used his background in developing peer-to-peer technology to create a decentralised system of combatting censorship that governments are cannot block effectively.

Fisk told the Daily Dot  that until now censors have had the upper hand in being able to block these tools.

But peer-to-peer to get around that because it allows individuals in uncensored regions can download and install it really easily and become these instant access points.

Lantern has around 25,000 users mostly in China, but with a few thousand in Iran. Fisk expects that number to grow significantly as the company makes its first big push to increase the number of users in the “uncensored” world.

Downloading Lantern in an uncensored region connects you with someone in a censored region, who can then access whatever content he or she wants through you. It operates on trust.

To use Lantern, you have to sign in with Google, and then information about your computer trickles through your network of real-world friends who are also using Lantern.

A censor who wanted to shut down your IP address would have to convince you that you are their friend.

A government censor who downloads the software  can’t bring down the whole system because the network detects attempts to block information from passing through and seamlessly route around them.

Through a process called consistent routing, the amount of information any single Lantern user can learn about other users is limited to a small subset, making infiltration significantly more difficult.

Fisk said that the Chinese government is clearly worried about the software. Direct downloads of the program are already blocked and most Chinese users have obtained the program through virtual private networks.

The outfit disguises Lantern’s traffic to look like unassuming types of traffic that censoring governments do not block is actually a key part of its strategy. Lantern partners with other companies sympathetic to its mission to hide its traffic inside theirs.

The downside of the project is that Lantern is largely funded by the U.S. State Department. This funding arrangement has led to some fears that the NSA may have inserted backdoors into the system.

Fisk said that the people he worked with at the State Department are very different than the people across the river at the NSA in their agendas and their beliefs.

The project’s government backers have been very hands-off and, since the project is open source, anyone could go in and inspect the code themselves to see how it works and check for any backdoors that may have been put in place by government spooks.

 

i7-5960X Haswell-E snaps leaked

leaked intel chipsWe are expecting Chipzilla to release its Intel Core i7-5960X Haswell-E CPU any day now after leaked snaps of the chips started to appear on line.

We have been waiting for Intel to officially launch its new X99 chipset along with a slew of new high-end processors for a while now and the key player in the release is the Core i7-5960X processor.
Now a Japanese site with the name Hermitage Akihabara has got its paws on what appears to be a paparazzi snap of the Core i7-5960X.

Although the chips are stamped “top secret” the LGA 2011-based Haswell-E processors are supposed to be released on August 29, with three models to be unveiled: the Core i7-5960X, the Core i7-5930K and the Core i7-5820K.

The top-of-the-line Core i7-5960X will have eight physical cores and eight provided through Hyper-Threading making 16 threads which is one of the most thread thinks we have seen in a commercial CPU.

The new Core i7-5960X has 20MB of L3 cache, quad-channel DDR4 RAM support, and 40 PCIe 3.0 lands in total. The default clock speed on the Extreme CPU will be 3GHz, and it’ll be built on Intel’s 22nm process.

IBM gets thumbs up for Lenovo sale

thumbs-up-or-downUS regulators have approved the sale of IBM’s server business to the Chinese outfit, Lenovo.

There had been fears that the deal would be put on ice because the US is currently going through a McCarthy era paranoia over all things Chinese. The NSA was scared that the Chinese would start installing backdoors into their servers, probably because that is just the sort of thing that they would do.

IBM has already divested $16 billion in annual revenue over the past decade from low-margin businesses like personal computers and printers.

However, despite the fact that there was some concern about the deal by the Committee on Foreign Investment agreed that it was probably safe.

Lenovo has been through the secretive CFIUS process three times before and has won approval each time. In this case, it is believed that it argued that all the top-secret server operations would remain under the control of IBM.

CFIUS, an interagency group chaired by the Treasury Secretary, reviews deals that could bring U.S. businesses under foreign ownership and is required by law to assess any transaction involving a state-owned firm.

Lenovo said in a statement that it remains on track to close the IBM server deal by the end of the year.

In fact the deal is more likely to help Lenovo sell its gear in China and the company is less concerned about its US sales. Lenovo has many contacts to sell goods to Chinese companies and Beijing is trying to localize its IT purchases in the wake of revelations about US spying.

Facebook warns about satire

facebokSocial notworking site Facebook is so worried that people have been posting bogus stories as truth that it is experimenting with a satire tag.

The problem is that – generally speaking – people in America can’t tell the difference between a news story with the headline “New Study Finds Humans Shouldn’t Spend More Than 5 Consecutive Hours Together” and a real scientific study.

To be fair it is tricky to spot the difference. The woman who posted a story which claimed that turmeric was the perfect cure for Ebola was being serious as were the posts which claimed vaccines were full of mercury and give kids autism.

It has not helped that some US publications cannot tell the difference between satire and just “making stuff up” so these very unfunny or dim stories are easily confused with fact.

All that could be outdated, however, as Facebook is currently testing the infamous “satire” tag that will distinguish fake news from the real deal. If you click on an Onion article, for example, Facebook would then automatically tag related articles with the aforementioned “satire” text in the headline.  Sadly, this does not apply to the Daily Mail articles which are still being presented as true.

Facebook said that it is all in the testing stage and the idea came from feedback that people wanted a clearer way to distinguish satirical articles from others in these units.