Sunday, December 27, 2015
The late Steve Jobs introduces the first iPhone in 2007
Friday, August 21, 2015
Fwd: low power
Working with Frank Chang at Caltech UCLA, the JPL boffin Adrian Tang is keen on ways to let devices with relatively low communications needs do without recharging.
As NASA explains here, their idea is to let a chip either reflect a signal back to a base station or access point (representing a binary 1), or absorb it (representing a binary 0). That way, the Wi-Fi device (be it a smart-watch or a a bio-sensor, for example), only needs enough energy for its own operations, instead of having to carry power for a full transceiver.
Not only that, but the device is fast. The NASA release says that at a short 2.5 metre distance, it can communicate at up to 330 Mbps, "using about a thousand times less power than a regular Wi-Fi link".'
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/28/back_at_you_wifi_reflector_cuts_power_demands_for_wearables/
Fwd: Google translate
The service previously offered translations between English and French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. The app works both ways: Non-English speakers can also translate English signs into their native languages. For Hindi and Thai translations, however, Google Translate can only convert English to the two languages—not the other way around—due to the complexity of their characters.
The app also works in the absence of a data connection for a phone, which makes it optimal for travelers.
The instant translation feature is largely derived from the Word Lens app, which Google acquired last year when it purchased the company behind it, Quest Visual.'
http://www.fastcompany.com/3049192/fast-feed/google-translate-can-now-decipher-signs-in-27-languages
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Fwd: android graphics api
Vulkan actually comes by way of the Khronos Group, a non-profit consortium of companies creating open standard APIs for computer graphics rendering such as OpenGL and WebGL. Once Google integrates the new Vulkan APIs, developers can choose to use them or stick with the tried and true OpenGL ES.'
http://www.zdnet.com/article/android-to-get-a-graphics-boost-with-vulkan-a-low-overhead-rending-api/
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Fwd: Xpoint
For reference, a typical PC with a Haswell or Broadwell CPU and dual-channel DDR3 offers around 17GB+ of memory bandwidth, while lower-end machines survive on 9GBps or less. Higher-end systems reach into the 55GBps range, while graphics card memory far outstrips those.'
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2953816/storage/what-3d-xpoint-says-about-the-pc-of-the-future.html
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Fwd: USB-C
However, "soon" isn't "now". It's going to be a confusing and expensive journey before the promises are fulfilled.
The last piece in the jigsaw fell into place yesterday at Computex, and cemented the USB-C socket as the winner. Intel announced that the third generation of Thunderbolt will support USB-C plugs.
So only one kind of plug is needed to support power, video and audio, and high-throughput data peripherals such as disk drives.
But that doesn't mean one cable will support everything: there will be several different kinds of USB-C supporting different capabilities, ensuring confusion continues for some time to come.
The reason is obvious to the tech-savvy, but less so for the typical user who has wandered into PC World on a Saturday morning. The plugs may be the same, but the capabilities are defined by the gadgets at each end of it.
Since the expense is defined by the capabilities of the host controller, it all depends on how much the market-conscious manufacturer wanted to spend.
Most people who'll see a USB-C socket won't be getting Thunderbolt 3 performance, as the Thunderbolt hardware is a luxury-priced item that will continue to be in high-performance hardware, rather than the value mass-market.
So the industry is moving to "one plug", but retains lots of different standards. At least in the bad old days, you knew you couldn't plug your projector monitor into the modem port and expect it to work. It wouldn't fit.'
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/03/one_usb_plug_to_rule_them_all_no_wait/
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Monday, April 13, 2015
Fwd: malware
Simda is a "pay-per-install" software nasty: fraudsters pay miscreants some sum of money for every 1,000 or so machines they compromise. The hackers effectively earn cash by selling access to the infected computers, renting out the botnet real-estate to other crooks.
The Simda malware, once installed and has set itself up to run after every system startup, kills off antivirus software, logs keystrokes made by the user so it can steal passwords and other sensitive information, downloads and executes banking Trojans and other malicious programs, upload copies of the user's files, and so on.
It opens a backdoor to a command-and-control server, so it can receive orders from the brains behind the malware, and send back any stolen data.
The botnet was seeded by compromising legitimate websites, and hijacking them to redirect visitors to sites hosting exploit kits – which are webpages booby-trapped with code that exploits software vulnerabilities to install the malware.
The most heavily infected countries were the US, UK, Russia, Canada and Turkey, although Simda spreads its tentacles worldwide. The vast majority of victims were located in the US, where there were more than 90,000 new infections since the start of 2015 alone.
In a series of raids last Thursday, 10 command-and-control servers were physically seized in the Netherlands, with additional servers taken down in the US, Russia, Luxembourg and Poland. The operation involved officers from the Dutch National High Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU), the FBI in the US, and the Russian Ministry of the Interior's Cybercrime Department "K" supported by the INTERPOL National Central Bureau in Moscow.
Security firms Trend Micro and Kaspersky Lab provided the cops the technical knowhow to locate the systems. The crackdown effectively decapitated the botnet by taking away the servers that sent infected PCs their instructions and received swiped passwords and other data.
Windows PCs keelhauled into the botnet remain compromised, hence the need for a cleanup operation. In order to help victims disinfect their PCs, Kaspersky Lab has created a website that will check your public IP address against a database of machines known to be infiltrated by Simda. This database was lifted from the command and control servers during the takedown raids.'
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/13/simda_botnet_takedown/
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Fwd: enlighten
'Enlighten 3 offers a unique method of implementing advanceddynamic lighting inside of digital content, which not only improves the image visually as compared to the older Enlighten technology, but also offers significant performance gains. "Lighting is the most critical element in producing computer graphics that reflect the realism of the natural world," said Masaki Kawase, lead software engineer, YEBIS, Silicon Studio. "Post processing is an integral part of this. With the inclusion of YEBIS 3 Post Processing Effects Middleware is Forge, artists will more easily be able to realize their creative vision."
By using Enlighten, game developers can create realistic light effects. Although this isn't entirely new, many games today still feature ambient lighting, seemingly coming from no source; or if a source is shown, the light often does not actually emit from it.'
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/geomerics-enlighten-3-dynamic-lighting,28673.html
Friday, February 6, 2015
Fwd: Neutrality
That essentially killed the compromise proposed by Mr. Wheeler, leaving him no choice but to follow the path outlined by the president.'
http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-white-house-thwarted-fcc-chief-on-internet-rules-1423097522
I pay my Internet Service Provider for high speed access, but that ISP has been charging Netflix to provide that same access.
The only issue is whether Netflix can pay for preferential treatment? I would think that technology would make this unnecessary, because I am now getting at least 60 megabits per second downloads, but I am not sure of the issues involved. Perhaps