Google offers Project Fi users a one-time $100 Nexus 6 replacement in cases of accidental damage
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It looks like being an all-in Project Fi customer has some benefits. It turns out Project Fi customers with damaged phones are offered a one-time replacement of their Nexus 6 for just $100, so long as they bought the phone from Google during the Project Fi setup process. All it takes is a quick call, chat or email with Project Fi support, and you'll have a new phone shortly.
- - - -This follows in the footsteps of rather vague and unadvertised policies from the Play Store and Google Store that (seemingly on-and-off) offer free or discounted replacements for Nexus devices, but this one is hardly vague — Project Fi offers any customer who bought a Nexus 6 through Fi a one-time $100 replacement within a year of purchase, with no questions asked.
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We’ve scoured the catalogs to bring you the very best of this year's offerings.
-The post $100M Worth of Crazy-Swanky Cars Are About to Go on Sale appeared first on WIRED.
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-Because everyone hates straight lines.
LG has launched a curved soundbar in its Music Flow series of connected audio equipment, dubbed the Music Flow HS8 Wireless Curved Sound Bar. Available in Europe starting next week, the HS8 houses a 4.1 channel speaker system with an output of 360W and is compatible with Google Cast.
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It's a digital world, but that song you’re streaming still sounds best if it was originally encoded in magnetic particles.
-The post Sorry, But Digital Songs Sound Better When Recorded on Tape appeared first on WIRED.
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-Twitter has just launched a new tool called "Full-Archive Search API," which gives brands access to every public tweet ever made from the microblogging site's inception nine years ago. If you recall, the company also opened up its archives to resea...
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-Hillary Clinton has decided to surrender the private email server she used during her time as Secretary of State to the Department of Justice. A few hours after the Intelligence Community Inspector General told Congress that some of her corresponde...
OneNote is currently being updated for Android, offering up a new feature for fans to take full advantage of. If you've been crying out for more convenient access to your notes, this update is for you as Microsoft has implemented a new floating icon called floatie.
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-Two months after Microsoft launched Skype's Business edition, which integrates into MS Office Calendar and allows for group messaging/video chats/calls for up to 250 people, the video conferencing company announced on Tuesday that a mobile version...
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-Law enforcement agencies are making social media part of more and more investigations these days, based on Twitter's latest transparency report. Between January 1st and June 30th this year, the company saw a 52 percent increase in account informati...
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-Merchant Customer Exchange is an alliance of several of the US' biggest retailers and restaurants, including Wal-Mart and Target, aimed at bringing mobile payments under their own control — and not by tying themselves to a particular tech com...Coming from En Masse Entertainment, Pocket Platoons is a turn-based strategy game with a World War II theme, which will be there second mobile game release onto Android. The game is set to focus on base building as well as troop positioning, with the final goal being to control the continent of Europe.
+To be released by Fliptus Pty Ltd, Beat Bop is a tapping game where players are using their frantic tapping to crate music for fans. Players assume the same Le of a struggling guitar player, with aspirations of stardom. As players progress their character, they'll be recruiting band-mates to play with, and invest in merchandise that can be sold when not playing the game.
-Players will choose either the Allied or Axis faction, build up a base, raise army, and lead it to war. Sounds a lot like the board game RISK in a lot of ways. The game is set to contain "over 300 campaign stages, hundreds of progression quests, dozens of tactical units, and a wide variety of combat modes to master", according to the developers.
+Beat Bop is also set to include random tasks, that players can choose to try and win an "extra boost" (according to the presser), or will result in an accident that can cause a setback. Even the sound and tempo of the songs will dynamically respond to the performance of the player. Faster tapping, for example, will respond in amping up the music, while recruiting the aforementioned band mates will influence the style, based on what instruments they play.
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Beat Bop Features:
+- Start with nothing. Recruit band members and load them up with new clothes and gear
- Dynamic and original soundtrack that matches the way you tap and the band members you play with
- Easy to play - simply tap to jam with your band and rake in money
- Sell merchandise in the background to get rich even while you're idle
- Polished, vibrant and light-hearted graphics
- Original soundtrack provided by Piotr Nowotnik
Beat Bop is set go have a soft release in Australia and New Zealand on August 20th, and going global at a later date. The game is slated to be free with "opt-in ads". You can check out the game in action ahead of time with the trailer below.
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A new FPS-strategy hybrid game will be arriving for mobile devices soon. Currently in the beta testing phase of development, Dead Union is a blend of FPS gameplay with base building strategy mechanics, and zombies of course. However this game may not be exactly what you are thinking it is.
+ +Essentially players will be building up their base with different defenses and other handy structures and items to help you survive. You will also have the ability to control zombies as your main type of military unit. This means you will be deploying different types of zombies to attack your opponent. Of course they will be able to do the same. When you are confronted with incoming zombies, you'll switch to a first-person perspective and handle them with your current weapon of choice.
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Dead Union has a few different types of game modes available. While there is a single-player mode you can play through, following the storyline within the game, there also happens to be multiplayer PvP as well as X-Mode. The PvP mode is pretty self-explanatory. X-Mode is basically a survival game mode where you will be trying to survive as long as you can against waves of zombies.
+There are a few details we do not know just yet, with controller support being the main one. However, judging from how the onscreen controls are set up, anyone with a Shield tablet and Shield controller should be able to easily button map this game. The same goes for anyone using an app to button map controllers with their non-Shield device. Right now there is no specific release date announced, only that it is coming soon. As for price, it looks like Dead Union will be available for free with optional IAPs. More screenshots available below.
+Official Website: Dead Union
Players will need to direct their troops to attack the enemy base, or defend their own base. You will also be promoting officers to tailor their skills to the needs at hand. Multiple players can team up to form coalitions in order to defeat opposing players and bigger enemy coalitions as well.
-Pocket Platoons is set to be released for free on Android both on Google Play, as well as the Amazon Appstore, on August 27th. In the meantime you can check out the game in action through the trailer below.
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A new app called Edge Up Sports uses IBM's Watson cognitive computing skills to help you win your fantasy league.
-The post IBM’s Watson AI Wants to Coach Your Fantasy Football Team appeared first on WIRED.
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-Here's the evolution of mobile news reading in a nutshell: First there were browsers; then RSS readers; and eventually we saw a slew of news reading apps like Flipboard, Feedly and Nuzzle that aimed to make it easier to discover and read news. Now...
Welcome back to another week of the Android Police Podcast. To catch us live on Hangouts On Air every Thursday at 5:30PM PST (subject to change as per the calendar widget below), just head over to androidpolice.com/podcast. For the unedited video show, click here. As always, we'll take your questions at 530-HELLO-AP and also at our email address: podcast at androidpolice dot com.
On this week's episode: On this week's show, we go back to Honeycomb, taking a look at Google's odd tablet-focused operating system that introduced us to the Holo design language.
Read More[The Android Police Podcast] Episode 173: Xooming Through Honeycomb was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
+Purm the Game from Diske Inc is an interesting little game. It is an endless worm flying game where you control Purm, the mighty worm who has managed to put a jetpack onto his back so he can fly around. You will need to avoid plenty of obstacles as well as not crashing in general, while trying to earn as many points as possible.
- -While this may be an infinitely flying game, there is a way to beat it. The problem is, the solution/directions to beating this game is encrypted within a riddle. Once you've managed to solve the riddle on how to beat the game, you will then actually have to beat the game using those directions. Why finish the game?
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Well for one thing you can tell people you managed to finish an endless runner/flyer game and then you can sit back and watch them try to figure out what you're talking about. Probably with a sort of WTF type of look on their faces. The other reason is that if you're the first person to complete the game, the developers will apparently personally give you $1000, and that would be in real money, not play money. Needless to say, with $1000 on the line, finding the solution to beating this game won't be easy.
-The soundtrack was done by OMFG for those of you curious. If you are up for the challenge, whether that be just trying to get the high score or trying to be the first to complete the game and score $1000 in cold hard cash, you can download Purm The Game off of Google Play for free. There are optional IAPs as well and using any of them also removes the ads (and gets you Ninja and Lazy worm) within the game as a side benefit.
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It's time to go back to school, and we'll make sure you're well-equipped.
+ +For many students, it's time to hit the books again. Whether you're loading up for your first day at high school, finding your stride in college, or you're making the long haul in university graduate programs, we've got the best tech for back to school season right here.
+ +
A few of us here at the XDA offices recently switched from Straight Talk to Google Fi. Aside from the well-packaged welcome kit, with case, external battery, and headphones, we’ve
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+If you've been eying the Apple Watch, but needed a larger band to wear it comfortably, you're in luck. Cupertino added new accessories today to accommodate with a new L/XL Sports Band and Link Bracelet Kit that adds an extra 40mm to the 42mm metal...
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DISCLAIMER: This is an editorial based on early impressions. I will update my thoughts once I get a hands-on look next week. It is not just the S-pen, or the
Sony is ahead of most other OEMs when it comes to its support of open source. It contributes significantly to AOSP and even releases binaries for many of its devices so developers can build AOSP ROMs for them. Today, Sony is announcing support for the first three 64-bit devices in the Open Device project.
The new devices are the Xperia Z3+, Xperia Z4 Tablet, and Xperia Z4 Tablet WiFi. Technically, we're talking about a phone and two versions of the same tablet, but it's nice they're supporting the mobile data version specifically.
Read MoreSony Adds The First 64-Bit Devices To Its Open Device Project was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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+Immobilizers are supposed to kill a vehicle's engine to prevent it from being stolen. However, a trio of researchers recently released a study that reveals the Megamos immobilizer system used by more than two dozen car manufacturers -- including Vo...
There's this thing that really smart people do to themselves, where they convince themselves that they're not as good as their peers and that their success really comes down to luck and faking it.
This feeling is called Imposter's Syndrome. It's particularly rampant in the geek/hacker world, where intelligence of all kind is revered, genius coding is idolized, and famous genius coders have reputations for being insult-spewing dudes who don't suffer fools kindly (think: young Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg in the movie "The Social Network", or Linus Torvalds' famous rants).
Many tech professionals are working themselves into the ground, feeling that in order to keep up the facade of being smart and skilled, they need to worker longer and harder.
So, here's an interesting insight: Even some of the most successful people suffer from Impostor's Syndrome. Since we first reported on the rampage of Imposter Syndrome in the tech industry, we've noticed more brave souls going public about their own battle.
On Thursday during a Reddit AMA, another brave soul confessed: author and YouTube star John Green.
Green is the author of best-selling novels "Looking for Alaska," "Paper Towns" and "The Fault in Our Stars." ("The Fault" was beautifully written and filled with memorable lines like this one: "'As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.")
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reen is also known for his mega popular vlogbrothers YouTube channel with his brother Hank, and his educational video channels Crash Course,and Mental Floss. All told, the Greens have a following of 10 million people across all their channels.
This guy has Imposter's Syndrome? Yup.
When a recent grad student asked him if he ever had writer's block and worried that he'd never write again, Green replied:
I mean I haven't published a novel for three and a half years, so....yeah.
I feel this way all the time. People often use the phrase "literally the worst" colloquially, but I have on countless occasions felt that I am literally the worst writer on Earth, and that I am a complete fraud. I feel like a fraud all the time, and I still don't feel like I know how to write a novel, and at this point I doubt I ever will.
The only way through it for me is to take pleasure in the process of writing, or to find value in it. Even when I suck. Even when there's no way anything I'm writing will ever see the light of day. The act of trying to write for an audience must feel valuable in and of itself, or else I am doomed.
As another Imposter's Syndrome sufferer once advised: The trick to making these terrifying feelings of insecurity go away, even temporarily, is to talk about it and discover you are not alone.
Which means if we're all really "faking" our way to success, maybe even greatness, how fake can we really be?
SEE ALSO: 15 things you didn't know about billionaire Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: People doing backflips on a two-inch wide strap is a real sport called slacklining
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+As you step into the shimmering globe of 13,000 LEDs, a sensor detects your presence. It reacts to the rise and fall of your lungs and illuminates the sphere of suspended lights called PRANA. The signal from the chip works its way to a computer...
The Galaxy Note 5 clearly was the big winner from Thursday's Samsung Unpacked event — if you don't live in Europe, anyway — and that means the discussions are really starting to heat up in our Note 5 forums.
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An alleged Bloods gang leader suspected of engaging in a bloody standoff on Friday in New York City appears to have posted an ominous update on his Facebook page as the confrontation began.
A law enforcement source told Business Insider the New York City Police Department believes this Facebook page belongs to Garland Tyree, who has been identified as the suspect.
According to The New York Times, the standoff began at about 6 a.m. on Friday. At 6:19 a.m., a chilling note was posted on the Facebook page.
"Today I die," the note said.
On Friday afternoon, an NYPD spokesperson told Business Insider the standoff suspect was "dead."
According to the local Staten Island Advance newspaper, sources have described Tyree "as the leader of the Bloods on the East Coast."
Police have said he barricaded himself in his home and set it on fire when marshals attempted to arrest him on a probation violation warrant Friday morning. The Advance also reported Tyree has a lengthy criminal record and allegedly shot a firefighter who responded to the blaze in his home.
The Facebook page police believe belonged to the suspect is listed as belonging to a man named "Garland Tyree." It features multiple photos of a man in what appears to be a prison uniform. Photos on the page show the man wearing the red colors associated with the Bloods and some feature red bandana imagery that is one of the gang's main symbols.
One of these pictures is a birthday invite for Tyree that describes him as "a real G," which is slang for gang member. Another picture on the page shows piles of money. Other photos posted on the Facebook show news articles about gang crimes on Staten Island and one shows a draft of a novel raging about "a rat."
View some photos from the Facebook page below.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: This is the 'Fallout 4' video fans have been waiting months to see
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On Thursday, the White House announced President Obama's summer reading lists.
On Friday, the White House has followed up by releasing President Obama's two "summer vacation" playlists on Spotify (sorry, Apple Music).
The president's "Day" playlist has 20 high-energy tracks from artists like Coldplay, Brandi Carlisle, and Florence + the Machine.
The more laid-back "Night" playlist includes songs from The Lumineers, Al Green, and Van Morrison.
The playlists, uploaded on the official White House Spotify account, even have their own Twitter hashtag: #POTUSPlaylist.
“President Obama hand-picked his favorite songs for a summer playlist,” according to the White House's Spotify account.
Obama announced the playlists himself on Twitter:
Due to popular request, here are my vacation playlists: http://t.co/uer5sIl4Vk http://t.co/zHEekHvQBr What's your favorite summer song?
You can check out both playlists below.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: We unearthed Donald Trump's Vine account from 2013 and it's incredible
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+If you've ever accidently deleted a file in a cloud service (or worse had someone delete a shared file) you know that any restore feature is a god send. Apple recently launched its own file restore feature for iCloud.com users that resurrects files...
The cost and complexity of delivering groceries is what ultimately led to the downfall of Webvan and other startups that have tried to disrupt the $600 billion-a-year grocery industry.
But a new wave of promising delivery startups are relying on a tried-and-true model to disrupt groceries: membership.
Membership grocery services help secure consumers as repeat customers and allow companies to lower individual shipping fees on every order. Shipping fees are typically a big barrier to grocery delivery because orders must be delivered fast to guarantee freshness.
The grocery delivery model is attractive because it guarantees that customers are getting fresh food straight from their local supermarket, without having to waste time in the store. The typical American family of four visits the grocery store twice a week, according to the USDA.
In a new report from BI Intelligence, we define what an e-commerce membership program is and how retailers are taking the Costco model and updating it for online grocery shopping. We also assess the advantages and disadvantages of e-commerce membership programs for the retailer, as well as what consumers might look for in these programs and what incentives are needed to get people to sign up.
Access the Full Report By Signing Up For A Risk-Free Trial Membership Today >>
Here is a small sample of the e-commerce membership programs that we examine in the report:
In full, the report:
To access the full report from BI Intelligence, sign up for a 14-day trial here. Members also gain access to new in-depth reports and hundreds of charts on the digital industry.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: This is what happens to your brain and body when you check your phone before bed
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The imperatives of the military have always been one of the main drivers of technological development.
ARPANET, one of the internet's most important precursors, was a Pentagon project while most of the technology in an iPhone originated with the US Department of Defense.
Just as smart gadgets have invaded our homes and revolutionized our lives over the last 15 years, next-level weaponry has transformed the military.
Today, militaries and irregular forces around the world are still pushing technological boundaries.
Everything from concealed roadside bombs — cheap, primitive, and deadly — to multibillion-dollar aerial lasers have transformed conventional methods of combat and altered the world's technological and political landscape.
Here are 19 of the most important weapons of the last 15 years.
America's largest conventional bomb is precision-guided, weighs 30,000 pounds, and can blast through underground bunkers.
Boeing's Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bomb is designed to pierce 60 feet of reinforced concrete and then detonate 200 feet underground.
After the MOP's first successful test in 2007, the US Air Force ordered an arsenal of these mega-bombs, which are now considered a "plan B" for striking at Iran's hardened nuclear facilities should the need ever arise.
In January of 2007, China initiated a worrying new era in warfare. Using a C-19 ballistic missile, the People's Liberation Army destroyed an out-of-commission weather satellite flying over 500 miles above the surface of Earth.
In a single widely condemned move, China had militarized outer space. The long-term consequences are startling: If satellites are considered legitimate military targets, attacks could create debris fields that would knock out entire orbits or create chain reactions that might destroy vital communications and global-positioning satellites. Similarly, countries could deploy weapons to outer space capable of destroying terrestrial targets once the global taboo against space warfare disappears.
If that alarming worst-case scenario ever comes to pass, future generations could identify the successful 2007 test as the moment that space became a military frontier. The test also displayed China's eagerness to develop weapons that its rivals would probably never use — showing how a state can use asymmetrical means to close the gap with it more powerful opponents.
The Navy's X-47B is a strike-fighter-sized unmanned aircraft with the potential to completely change aerial warfare.
Northrop Grumman's drone is capable of aerial refueling, 360-degree rolls, and offensive weapon deployment. It's carried out the first autonomous aerial refueling in aviation history, and has also taken off and landed from an aircraft carrier.
It cruises at half the speed of sound, and has a wingspan of 62 feet — as well as a range of at least 2,400 miles, which is more than twice that of the Reaper drone.
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Comcast is preparing to launch a major new video platform with content from big-name partners in the coming weeks, Business Insider has learned.
The platform is currently called "Watchable," but there's a small chance that could change before launch.
The Information's Amir Efrati previously reported that Comcast was thinking of launching a digital video service, but here are more of the details.
Comcast is partnering with major digital publishers like Comcast-backed Vox and Buzzfeed, lifestyle, and comedy sites like AwesomenessTV, Refinery29, and The Onion, news sites like Mic and Vice, as well as legacy brands like NBC Sports to come up with a widespread digital-video platform that will rival YouTube and Facebook's online video efforts.
It will also rival the rumored video platform Verizon is preparing to unveil.
The full list of partnering media companies is still being determined, sources say, but participants are committing to Comcast for up to a few years. As part of the partnership, the publishers have agreed to upload all unlicensed, original video content to Watchable for users to stream on demand. The content from the publishers will be bundled and curated for Comcast's millions of Xfinity X1 box owners, and eventually Watchable will also be available on iOS and Android devices.
Comcast already has a smart-TV solution called Xfinity. The X1 set-top boxes allow users to stream unlimited amounts of movies and shows on demand from their televisions or mobile devices.
Over the next few years, sources say, Comcast plans to switch out all of its subscribers' boxes for X1 boxes, which could extend a platform like Watchable from just a few million households today to tens of millions of Comcast subscriber homes by 2017.
Comcast is hoping to establish itself as the digital-video advertising leader, sources familiar with Watchable say.
"Comcast is currently the largest seller of video ads in the United States," one says. "As platforms shift to digital, Comcast doesn't want to lose market share, but they're losing it to YouTube and Facebook."
Publishers seem interested in Comcast's platform for two reasons.
Watchable could help digital publishers make a critical leap from being online-only brands to household names among traditional television viewers. If digital-media companies can successfully cross that chasm, their brands will become much more valuable, and they'll be able to attract the massive advertising dollars cable networks have long enjoyed.
"Everybody is looking to see how digital companies are going to be able to produce video content that can move the needle in a meaningful way," one publisher told Business Insider.
If Watchable takes off, it could also become a significantly cheaper content model for Comcast as well. Currently, Comcast has to dole out cash on a per-subscriber basis to networks like ESPN and CNN. But Comcast won't pay any licensing revenue to Watchable partners, only advertising revenue.
Deals are nonexclusive, so publishers will still be able to post content natively to Facebook.
Comcast Watchable is just the latest solution to emerge in the ongoing video-platform wars. In the end there could be one big winner, or multiple. One source likened the current video environment to driving through a tunnel and being unsure what you're going to find on the other side.
"I think on any of these [Comcast or Facebook] platforms there will be a hybrid of traditional TV content and then the digital players. It will be really interesting to see how things shake out over the next 18 months."
Comcast declined to comment for this story.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: We Tried The Streaming Service That The Networks Are Trying To Shut Down — It's Amazing
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-There's no question that Blizzard is a cornerstone of the eSports world. StarCraft is so big in South Korea that it's virtually an institution, and Heroes of the Storm was the first game to get a live ESPN2 broadcast. It only makes sense that the...
Hey, game pirates: screw you. Seriously, you're part of the reason it's so hard to find a decent game that isn't packed with $100 in-app purchases. Of course, good old-fashioned greed on the part of game developers is a big part of that, but a demonstrable loss of revenue from relatively easy piracy (a problem on other platforms like Windows) is giving developers little incentive to release conventional premium games for a simple price.
Read MoreNoodlecake Trolls Game Pirates By Uploading An Impossible Version Of Shooting Stars To Popular Torrent Sites was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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Sony's awkwardly named "Live on YouTube" app has one purpose, to let you broadcast your video live to YouTube. The latest update adds a few features that make life easier for users. For starters, you can now pause as you're recording. Alternatively, if you're fine with people seeing what's going on but don't want them to hear everything, you can now mute the stream as well.
Pictures courtesy of XperiaBlog
Version 1.00.54 doesn't just deal with presentation.
Read MoreSony Updates 'Live On YouTube' Xperia-Exclusive Live Broadcasting App With Pause, Mute, Tags, And More was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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Last week, Google released factory images for every actively-supported Nexus except the Nexus 7 2013 LTE and Nexus Player. These images were for a new build, LMY48I, intended to patch the recently outed vulnerability that was found in Stagefright.
Today, it appears the OTAs are beginning to hit the masses, but be warned, all these do is patch Stagefright. They contain no other fixes of any kind, so if there's some problem with your device you're hoping to have solved with this update, it's not going to happen.
Read More[Update: Nexus 7 2013 Wi-Fi] OTA Updates Incoming For Nexus Devices To Fix Vulnerability In Stagefright was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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-Historically, the Moto G has been the best selling Motorola smartphone of all time. It's the greatest. It floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee. Or something like that, at least according to Motorola.
+This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a list of the best technology to buy. Read the full article here. -In reality, the latest incarnation — the Moto G 2015 — a darn good, cheap Android phone. It's built well, performs well, and this year has a decent camera. There's no wonder the initial run of the 16GB memory model (the one you should probably buy) sold out.
+After 36 hours of research, testing eight different devices in a number of real-world settings and then playing the audio we c...The US ad regulator has told digital TV provider DirecTV to stop trashing cable in its ads.
Actor Rob Lowe and a number of his alter-egos have appeared in a series of humorous ads over the past few months, claiming DirecTV is superior to cable in terms of service wait times, signal reliability, picture and sound quality, and that it has better sports programming.
Back in April, Comcast complained about the ads to the National Advertising Division, a regulatory unit that investigates controversial ads. The NAD recommended the spots be discontinued because DirecTV did not submit substantiation for its "superior" claims in the investigation, and that disclosures in the ads themselves about the company's customer-satisfaction ranking, sports-programming charges, and picture quality were "inadequate."
At the time, DirecTV said it was planning to replace the ads anyway with spots showing Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition cover model Hannah Davis and a singing, talking horse.
Nevertheless, a five-member panel of the National Advertising Review Board (NARB) — the appellate unit of the US advertising industry's self-regulatory system — reviewed the NAD's decision. The verdict was published on Friday.
The panel noted that the Rob Lowe commercials "are very funny," but added that "depending on the context, even humorous advertisements can convey messages that require substantiation by the advertiser."
In summary, the NARB decided:
The panel agreed with the NAD that the ad conveyed a message that DirecTV is "superior to cable."
The panel agreed with the NAD that DirecTV's claim about "up to 1080" should be modified to include a disclosure that this is limited only to programming where the resolution is available
The panel did not agree with the NAD's findings that DirecTV's "Scrawny Arms Rob Lowe" commercial reasonably implied all sports programming was available in the service's $19.99/month introductory bundle. The NARB recommended DirecTV make a clearer disclosure.
The panel agreed DirecTV had appropriate substantiation for its "#1 in customer satisfaction over all cable TV providers claim" but recommended it more prominently disclose the source of the information.
DirecTV did not agree with all aspects of the decision, but said in a statement: "DirecTV is a strong believer in the self-regulatory process and will take the NARB’s recommendations into consideration when making these claims in the future."
However, DirecTV added that it "continues to believe that consumers do not perceive comparative superiority claims in the Rob Lowe advertisements. Whether from news accounts or social media, it is clear that consumers appreciate and understand the central role that humor and exaggeration play in the Rob Lowe advertisements."
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: How to speak without bias, according to the 'Bias-Free Language Guide'
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For more than a few of us, the Moto G 2015 will be our first Android smartphone. It might even be the first smartphone experience for some of us. That's cool, and welcome to the fold.
+ +A first experience with an Android phone isn't likely to be confusing, but there are a few tricks to make the initial experience a little smoother.
+ +If you're an old pro, you still might know someone who could use a few tips. Treat them right, and tell them to come visit us!
This election season looks like it may bring the American people what they're clamoring for most — a new Vine star.
So far both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have made their way to the 6-second video platform after some internet-savvy folks created entertaining clips out of footage from Snapchat videos and public appearances.
This Vine of Trump (uploaded by CNN!) is seeing a ton of traction this week with over 2 million loops.
Gawker reports on the context: “Jeb Bush or Hillary, or one of these politicians, all controlled by lobbyists and special interests — and donors, people like me from previous months — total control. Bing bing, bong bong bong, bing bing. You know what that is, right?”
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has become her own meme.
In one of the many half-hearted political attempts to engage with ~millennials~,Hillary Clinton shared a Snapchat back in July where she held the phone way too close to her face to let her audience know she was “just chillin’...in Cedar Rapids.”
Someone was able to snag that video and upload it to Vine, allowing others the opportunity to use it (or rip its audio) in countless ways.
Uploaded on July 18, the above Vine has over 17 million loops. Now other Vines are popping up everywhere, Motherboard reports, like this one, which mashes Blink182's song, "I Miss You," with the Cedar Rapids Vine.
"Where are you?" Blink182 sings.
"I'm just chillin, in Cedar Rapids!" Clinton replies.
Then there are these kids, who didn't use any editing effects for their video. They just really like saying "Chillary Clinton."
As it is with the race to the oval office, it is too early to tell which presidential hopeful will end up being the next big Vine celebrity. We'll keep you posted.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Meet 'The Fat Jewish,' Instagram's cult phenomenon with 5.5 million followers
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Online streaming music is all well and good, but if you're hankering for the good old days of sliding FM dials, Rdio wants to oblige your craving. The long-standing streaming service is adding a new section to its app called "On the Air on Rdio," which gives users access to digital streams of 500 United States radio stations. The collection of stations covers basically every major market in the county, usually with a mix of top 40, classic rock, country, sports, and news content.
Rdio Music Adds 500 Local Terrestrial Radio Streams From Partner Cumulus Media was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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Hewlett-Packard is preparing to diverge into two companies this November, but it can also claim a new achievement for diversity in the national tech workspace.
HP now has the "most diverse" boards in the US, according to the nonprofit Rainbow PUSH.
The HP boards, announced earlier this week, will feature a blend of original members and new hires. Four women and two people of color will be placed on each board, reported Forbes.
Rainbow PUSH is an organization focused on social change and has been urging technology companies across the country to hire underrepresented minorities.
The nonprofit has especially ramped up its efforts in the past year, meeting with tech behemoths across the country, including Apple and Google, to discuss their diversity numbers. A survey conducted by the group last fall found only three blacks and one Hispanic among the 189 board members from 20 technology companies examined.
There were also "153 men and just 36 women. Eleven (over half) have all-white Boards," Reverend Jesse Jackson, who is spearheading Rainbow PUSH, said in a press release. He later added, "Certainly there is a long way to go."
Last March, the nonprofit met with HP at its shareholder meeting to talk about its numbers.
"We challenged them — and the tech industry — to confront the virtual exclusion of women and people of color in the tech industry," Rev. Jackson said. "HP committed to make demonstrable strides in expanding diversity and inclusion."
At HP Enterprise, Leslie A. Brun from Sarr Group, and Pamela Carter, former president Cummins Distribution, are both people of color who will be joining. The board has 13 members in total, according to an HP press release. Heading the team will be Pat Russo, who became a part of the HP board in 2011.
The board at HP Inc. will include Stacy Brown-Philpot, chief operating officer at TaskRabbit, and Stacey Mobley, former senior vice president at DuPont. Twelve people will help oversee HP Inc., which focuses on the printer and PC businesses.
HP CEO Meg Whitman will sit on both boards and serve as chairwoman for HP Inc.
“The post-separation Boards for both Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc. comprise leaders with some of the most diverse backgrounds and professional experiences I’ve seen in my career,” Whitman said in HP's press release.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Sony has been working on this PlayStation game for 8 years — and the trailer is absolutely beautiful
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+Yes, we know: A bunch of phones just came out. Don't worry, we'll be reviewing those shortly. In the meantime, we have a handful of items we'd like to induct into our buyer's guide. Included among them: not one, but two laptops, including the impre...“League of Millions” documents the worldwide cultural phenomenon around the video game "League of Legends." For many weeks we have followed a top pro team, Team Liquid, in their quest for the 2015 Championship.
In Part 1 and Part 2 of the series, we meet the five elite players on Team Liquid. We witness their intense 15-hour days, along with the fans and fame that are part of the pro gamer's life.
In this final installment, we see if Team Liquid can come together and secure their place in the North American finals to be held at Madison Square Garden.
Director and Producer: Sam Rega
Editor: Josh Wolff
Production and Research: David Fang and Lauren Browning
Executive Producer: Diane Galligan
Follow TI: On YouTube
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Remember the LG G Pad, the company's return to the tablet market from 2013? It was an impressive effort, a high-end, mid-sized tablet (which eventually got a Google Play Edition brother) that was unfortunately followed up by a collection of low-end G Pads designed to try and take a bit out of Samsung's cheap Galaxy Tab market share. It looks like LG is ready to try again, at least according to this page on the company's Korean website.
LG G Pad II 8.0 Makes Its Debut On Korean Website, Complete With Stylus And Full-Sized USB Port was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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-Always looking for a reason to dust off your office's sad, unused fax machine? Here's one: The band YACHT used faxes to initially distribute its new album's artwork. No, really. It's part of a weird, multimedia promotion that defies all expectation...It's been a long time since a movie has generated as much fervent anticipation as "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." Due in theaters this Christmas, the movie is expected by some to gross more than $2 billion at the worldwide box office.
Expectations are incredibly high for the JJ Abrams-directed sci-fi epic, but there's no guarantee that "The Force Awakens" will please everybody.
Produced by Graham Flanagan. Camera by Corey Protin.
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Our recently published list of groundbreaking scientists highlighted the smartest and most innovative modern scientists and researchers in the field.
Among them is Abe Davis, an MIT graduate student who has worked with researchers from MIT, Microsoft, and Adobe to publish their findings on "the visual microphone" – an algorithm that can almost literally create sound from soundless objects.
In a TED talk this spring, Davis broke down the research using videos and graphics to a stunned audience. Here's what he explained:
Davis is also the creator of Caperture for iOS. It allows users to capture, view, and send objects in 3D.
NOW READ: 50 groundbreaking scientists who are changing the way we see the world
Follow us! 7 scientists who are helping us understand how the world works
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NOW WATCH: What Adderall is actually doing to your body
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+The Moto G gets a little better every year. Now in its third generation, Motorola's mid-range handset is still our favorite affordable smartphone, with the most recent version notching a score of 87 out of 100 in our review (that's up from 86 las...We may soon find out what the M in Android M stands for, as a new video which showcases all of the previous releases, and then teases about the new one has surfaced. Each year, there are tons and tons of guesses about what Google decided to call the upcoming Android release, and this year is no different.
The first Android 5.1-based kernel Motorola released was for the LTE version of the 1st generation Moto G. This week it has released the source files for the less speedy 3G-only model, codenamed Falcon.
Developers, you know what to do. The zip comes in at 132 MB. You can download it from GitHub at the source link below. After that, feel free to make all the recovieres, ROMs, and other things we Android nerds get excited about.
Read MoreMotorola Uploads 1st Gen Moto G 3G Android 5.1.1 Open Source Kernel Files was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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Forget exorbitant roaming charges, overpriced international data packages, or spotty internet coverage.
FireChat is the perfect travel app, allowing users to send and receive text messages entirely without data or internet thanks to something called mesh networking.
Basically, mesh networking allows you to communicate wirelessly by bouncing your message from one phone equipped with FireChat (within 210 feet of you) to another via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth antennas.
If there aren't any connections nearby, messages are stored until they can be sent. And don't worry: Messages will be encrypted, so only the intended recipient will be able to read them. The message then keeps bouncing from phone to phone until it reaches said recipient — and to cross oceans, for example, it'll hop from phone to phone until it reaches one with internet, then making its way to its final destination like any other message.
Sure, this can take a few minutes — 10 to 20 across a dense metro area, according to Skift — but you'll be able to send texts from abroad without incurring roaming charges or even from remote or blackout areas that have little to no coverage, including planes and subways.
Of course, this means that the more people download the app the better: According to Skift, only about 5 million mobile users worldwide have downloaded the app, but the app's creators estimate that as long as 5% of a city's population has it, messages can be delivered in around 10 minutes.
Originally designed for people to get in touch with each other at crowded events, FireChat became hugely popular in Iraq last year after the country faced restrictions on internet use, and it was an integral part of the 2014 Hong Kong protests and 2015 Ecuadorian protests.
While you may continue to use Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp when connected to the internet, what makes FireChat so great is that it doesn't rely on any carrier and will work anywhere.
Available on: Android and iOS.
Cost: Free
SEE ALSO: This is the one app you should use to make phone calls when you're traveling abroad
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NOW WATCH: The 10 best cities in the world, according to travelers
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+Samsung's latest attempt to appeal Apple's 2012 patent infringement victory has fallen flat. A U.S Federal Court of Appeals rejected the Korean electronics giant's bid for reconsideration yesterday, reports the San Jose Mercury News. The original 2...
Samsung is officially launching its new smartwatch, the Galaxy Gear S2, in September. But this hasn't stopped it taking the chance to show it off early.
The South Korean electronics manufacturer teased the new device at its Galaxy Note 5 launch event on Thursday, and followed it up with a space-age photoshoot showing off the unreleased smartwatch alongside its other gadgets.
We first saw the photos over on the Verge.
NOW WATCH: How to clear out a ton of space on your iPhone superfast
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-Right now, the easiest way to read breaking news on your smartphone is to download a dedicated news reader app, something like Paper or Flipboard -- but rumor has it that Facebook is working on something different. According to Business Insider, Fa...
AT&T, a company with a reputation for evil such that placing their logo inside a Death Star has always seemed genuinely appropriate, has announced some changes to pricing on their mobile data plans today. While some of those changes are genuinely good if you're a subscriber with a large data bucket or have some pretty particular usage habits, many new customers can expect to pay $5-10 more a month under the new structure, which AT&T of course claims is a totally innocuous attempt to "simplify" things for customers.
Read MoreAT&T Restructures Data Plans To Squeeze A Little More Money Out Of Some Subscribers, Lowers Pricing For Large Data Buckets was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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-Out of all the watch faces that you can currently find in the Google Play Store for your Android Wear device, weather apps are some of the most helpful at a glance. There are plenty of them out there right now, and one to take a look at is Weather Time for Wear.
- -It's free with in-app purchase options that unlock the good stuff, but mostly gets the job done well. Lets take a look.
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Weather Time for Android Wear definitely has the design aspect of things down. The default screen is a blue sky with fluffy white clouds — even when that is not at all what it looks like outside — and all your information overlaid onto it. At the top of the screen you'll see the time, underneath that there is the date, and at the bottom of the screen you'll see the temperature along with an icon for weather conditions.
- -The free version of Weather Time for Wear gives you access to some options, but to get the full experience you'll need to drop $2.00. All of your options are available on your phone and they are all divided up into one of several categories; Weather Settings, Look and Feel, Notification Settings, Touch Event Settings, and General Settings.
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Expansys is currently offering a pretty good deal on the 16GB WiFi variant of the Nexus 9, discounting it to $290.
Sprint is now pushing out an update for the HTC One M8, which contains a patch for the Stagefright exploit. Several Samsung phones on Sprint have already received the update, and it is great to see updates being pushed from other manufacturers as well. The update bumps the phone up to software version 4.25.651.18.
+ +If you have not already received the update notification, you can manually check for the update by heading into your phones Settings then checking for the update. Receiving the update on another device? Be sure to let us know in the comments below!
+ +Source: Sprint
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-Makerbase, a new site from Lifehacker founder Gina Trapani and former blogger Anil Dash that's being billed as the IMDb of web design, has just launched. Just as IMDb maintains archives of the people that help produce television shows and movies, M...
In a speech at the Lowy Institute Media awards in Sydney, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson blasted Google for greed, censorship, corruption, and piracy, mUmBRELLA reports.
Thomson accused “distributionists” like Google and Facebook of setting up a broken system.
“None of them actually create content, and they certainly have little intention of paying for it,” he said. “But they do redistribute the content created by others – they would argue that such redistribution is a natural extension of their role as social networks. I would argue that much of the redistribution is an unnatural act.”
Thomson believes these companies are helping themselves to the content that others create, “co-opting and corralling audiences and consciously devaluing brands.” He contended that the words “Intellectual Property” don’t appear in Google’s alphabet, a reference to Google’s new operating structure of the same name.
He went on to riff more on Alphabet: “A is for Avarice, B is for Bowdlerize, through to K for Kleptocracy, P for Piracy and Z for Zealotry.”
Thomson cautioned that without a fair payment model in place, “well-resourced reporting will be ever more challenged.”
He also threw a barb at LinkedIn, calling it a “pretender” that is chock full of spam.
Business Insider has reached out to Google for comment and will update this post when we hear back.
You can read Thomson's full speech here.
SEE ALSO: Waze cofounder tells us how his company's $1 billion sale to Google really went down
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NOW WATCH: Here are all of Google's awesome science projects — that we know about
+The OnePlus One was one of the most talked about smartphones of 2014 and the small Chinese company is back in 2015 with their newly released OnePlus 2. The smartphone is only available to order by invite only, but we have a first look at the new Android device.
Produced by Darren Weaver
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+It's likely not the first time you'll hear scientists compare an exoplanet to Jupiter. According to a team of astronomers, though, this one called the 51 Eridani b isn't only similar in size -- it's "very much what models suggest Jupiter was like i...Google is said to be working on two new smartphones to be released this year — a giant phone that's essentially going to be a new version of the Nexus 6, and a smaller flagship that will likely be an updated Nexus 5. Now, a new leak has given us a clear look at what that updated Nexus 5 might look like.
Steve Hemmerstoffer, who runs the Twitter account OnLeaks and the tech news blog Nowhereelse.fr, has shared a set of renderings that reportedly show the new Nexus 5 with tech site uSwitch. The renderings are said to be based on schematics that have been sent to accessory makers to ensure that their cases fit the phone when it launches.
While the images aren't an definitive look at Google's new Nexus phone, it at least gives us an idea of what we might be able to expect. The new phone is said to be produced by LG, lining up with rumors we've heard in the past, and it'll reportedly have a 5.2-inch screen.
Although Hemmerstoffer has a pretty solid track record when it comes to leaking unreleased products, it's important to keep in mind that these images haven't been confirmed by LG or Google. Even if they are legitimate, there's a chance things could change by the time Google actually announces its new phone.
The Nexus 5 was regarded as being Google's best Nexus phone yet when it launched two years ago. It was a big step up from the popular Nexus 4 — it had a slimmer design, a larger screen that was sharper than that of the Nexus 4, and it supported LTE. Now it sounds like Google is working on an updated version of that to appeal to those who may find the Nexus 6 too big.
The company usually releases its new version of Android and new Nexus devices in October, so there's a chance we'll hear about it then.
Google denied to comment on the leak.
SEE ALSO: How Samsung's new Galaxy phones compare to the iPhone and their biggest Android rivals
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: 2 texting tricks you didn't know you could do on your iPhone
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Update: PCWorld reports that, according to a Google spokesperson, the Project Ara sales pilot project for Puerto Rico is no longer going to happen. The spokesperson offered no other details.
+ +Original story: Project Ara, which is Google's effort to create a smartphone using quickly changed modular parts, is looking like it has hit a snag. The project's official Twitter feed has posted a series of messages indicating a delay in the launch of its sales pilot project in Puerto Rico, which was supposed to happen by the end of 2015.
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+Fitbit's updated its Windows app for Windows 10. The app features all-new Live Tiles, pushes notifications to the Action Center, and supports Cortana voice commands. Saying things like "Fitbit, I ate chicken for dinner" or "Fitbit, I went for a thr...
While many executives are criticized for their excessive pay, some CEOs have been able to skirt around the issue by choosing to forgo a lofty salary and opting instead for a paycheck of $1 a year, or less.
Of course, this isn't to say these executives are living off the dollar menu.
The CEOs on this list are still worth millions, if not billions, but while some merely pay lip service to the $1 salary club by taking home hefty compensation in the form of company stock awards and bonuses, others forgo adding to their wealth in this way entirely.
"I've made enough money," said Mark Zuckerberg during a Q&A on Facebook in June. "At this point, I'm just focused on making sure I do the most possible good with what I have." Zuckerberg chooses to take home a $1 salary and declines stock awards and bonuses.
Here are some CEOs and other executives that belong to the $1 (or less) salary club:
SEE ALSO: 17 billionaires who were once dirt poor
According to Google's annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Brin and Page, the company's cofounders asked that their base salaries each be reduced to $1 per year in 2004.
Since then, Google's compensation committee has offered them market-competitive salaries annually, which they continue to decline.
While they also forgo cash bonuses based on their individual and company performance and do not hold any stock options, Google stock units, or other contingent stock rights, Page is currently worth an estimated $34.9 billion and Brin is worth an estimated $34.3 billion.
In a filing with the SEC in June, it was revealed that Twitter's interim CEO receives no compensation for his role. This is of little financial consequence to Dorsey, whose current estimated net worth comes in around $2.3 billion.
"At your request, you have agreed to forego any compensation for your role as Interim Chief Executive Officer until the Compensation Committee agree upon a compensation package for you at the same time that it conducts its annual assessment and setting of executive compensation later in the year. Until a compensation package is finalized, you will be entitled to no cash or equity compensation for your services as Interim Chief Executive Officer," the document reads.
As in previous years, Oracle reported to the SEC that Ellison, now executive chairman and CTO, took home a salary of $1 in 2014.
Meanwhile, new co-CEOs Safra Catz and Mark Hurd, who took over in September, 2014, each took home a $950,000 salary last year in addition to other compensation.
So how does Ellison continue to add to his estimated $49.2 billion net worth? Compensation Ellison received last year included $65 million in stock option awards, $740,000 in non-equity compensation, and $1.5 million for other compensation, most of which went towards security-related costs for Ellison's home.
NOW WATCH: This drummer created a whole song using only the sound of coins
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Growing up in Lebanon, I got used to giving and receiving directions to my home as, "take the second right turn after the chicken restaurant, continue straight past the two gas stations, it's the first building on the left after the falafel stand, with a flower shop below it and facing a pharmacy." I even remember how long I had to stay on hold on the phone with some government dude just to get the ZIP code for my area.
Read MorePlus Codes Are An Easier And More Accurate Way Of Locating People And Businesses In Places With No Specific Street Address was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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The FBI is now in possession of the private email server Hillary Clinton used for work-related correspondences while she served as secretary of state during the first term of the Obama administration.
And what they find could give Clinton's political rivals the ammunition they need to forcefully attack her presidential campaign.
"If investigators find that her server was ever compromised, the GOP is going to have a field day," cybersecurity expert Alex McGeorge, a senior security researcher at Immunity Inc., told Business Insider.
Though Clinton's use of a private email address was not illegal and was permitted by State Department rules, the federal government has standards for how servers are built, how they are secured, and how their data is stored.
If Clinton failed to take one or all of the required steps to secure her private server — and if it is confirmed that classified information made its way into an insecure inbox — proving that this sensitive intelligence might be in the hands of foreign adversaries would be the GOP's "fastest path to victory" in the 2016 presidential election, McGeorge said.
Furthermore, demonstrating that the "clintonemail.com" server was hackable would be relatively easy, he said.
"Subpoena the exact configuration of the Clinton email server, and create a duplicate system as best as you are able," McGeorge said. "Put a legitimate bug bounty on it for real money (over $100k), to the first person who's able to get emails off of it. This gives the GOP proof that the system was hackable as configured."
Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner in the 2016 election, has repeatedly said as recently as late July that she was "confident" she did not send or receive classified information by email.
But Charles McCullough, the inspector general for the US intelligence community, recently said the server potentially included hundreds of classified emails, some of which include information derived from US intelligence agencies.
And this week, McCullough told Congress that he discovered two emails that were classified as "Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information," which is one of the government's highest levels of classification. Those two emails were drawn out of a batch of 40 emails randomly selected from about 30,000 "work-related" emails Clinton turned over to the State Department.
The Associated Press reports that the two emails "include a discussion of a news article detailing a US drone operation and a separate conversation that could point back to highly classified material in an improper manner or merely reflect information collected independently."
What's still unclear is how much classified information was consciously shared in the tens of thousands of emails — or what particular safeguards were taken to protect it.
"If Clinton knowingly used her private server to handle classified information, she could have a problem," Time senior correspondent Massimo Calabresi said recently. "But if she didn’t know the material was classified when she sent or received it, she's safe."
"Hillary Clinton's big problem now is legal," Charles Lipson, a professor of international politics at the University of Chicago, argued in RealClearPolitics. "And it could well be insurmountable politically."
Lipson, the director of the Program on International Politics, Economics and Security at the University of Chicago, then listed several "legal questions with huge political ramifications."
"Did the Clinton server meet the federal government's standards for how servers are built, how they are secured, and how data is retained? Was all sensitive material encrypted or did it circulate without those protections?" he wrote.
"Did anybody hack into the server? Did Secretary Clinton, who says she erased all 'personal' emails from the server, actually erase some government documents? If so, was that inadvertent or a possible cover-up? Who handled IT security for this server? Could he read the materials if he wished?"
Clinton's unusual email system was originally set up by a staffer during Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, replacing a server used by her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
The new server was run by Bryan Pagliano, who had worked as the IT director on Hillary Clinton's campaign before joining the State Department in May 2009. In 2013 — the same year she left the State Department — Clinton hired the Denver-based company Platte River to oversee the system.
It's possible that Clinton's private server was more secure than the private email accounts of the nation's other top officials, "purely because it's a smaller target," cybersecurity expert Joe Loomis, the founder and CEO of CyberSponse, told Business Insider.
"Only she and a few other people are using it," he said.
"Even if Secretary Clinton or her aides didn't run afoul of any criminal provisions, the fact that classified information was identified within the emails is exactly why use of private emails ... is not supposed to be allowed," Bradley Moss, a Washington attorney who specializes in national-security matters, told McClatchy recently.
"Both she and her team made a serious management mistake that no one should ever repeat."
And Clinton's choice to eschew the State Department's email system looks particularly egregious, given her standing within the department.
If she felt the State Department's server wasn't secure enough, she "would have been in a good position to demand change," said McGeorge, the senior security researcher at Immunity Inc. "But if it was a problem, and you decided to use your own server, then what did you do for your department?"
And then there are the deleted emails.
Last October, the House of Representatives committee dedicated to investigating the 2012 terrorist attack on the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, asked Clinton for any emails she had relating to the attack.
Clinton obliged a separate request from the State Department, handing over roughly 55,000 pages of emails — about 60,000 emails in total. She deleted about 30,000 others that were "personal" in nature.
The fact that the State Department has no record of Clinton's email exchanges now that she has wiped her server clean also means Clinton may have skirted the rules governing federal-records management, which require that anything relating to agency activity be captured on the department's server.
Interestingly, McGeorge said, "the FBI can now only investigate anything Clinton didn't take the time to erase" because she used the "clintonemail.com" address.
SEE ALSO: We know what those 2 top-secret Clinton emails were about
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: More trouble for Subway's Jared Fogle...
+Samsung's decision to deny European buyers its best smartphone is weird and unnecessary.
+ +As tick follows tock, each year Samsung has followed up its Galaxy S handset with a new Galaxy Note. It was one of the more reliable, almost inevitable events of the tech calendar. Every 12 months the Note family has introduced a new member at the IFA trade show in Berlin, Germany. And each time it's been the gold standard for what's possible in a big-screened, high-end Android handset.
+ +Note owners are fiercely loyal. It's been said among fans of the series that the only thing that can replace a Note is another Note.
+ +Except not anymore. This year, Europe isn't getting a new Galaxy Note — at least not anytime soon. Americans can buy it, as can Asian consumers. But live in Europe? For the moment, you're SOL. There'll be no Galaxy Note 5 for European buyers in 2015 — instead we'll get the Galaxy S6 edge+.
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OxygenOS version 1.0.2 has just been released to the public. OnePlus has provided the means to flash the update, which is set to address the "Stagefright" vulnerability that could lead to your phone becoming compromised.
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Siri may have some issues when it comes to understanding what you’re saying, but when your life is on the line, it turns out she can be pretty handy. At least that seems to be the takeaway from a recent heroic effort by Siri that probably saved the life of a 18-year-old man in Mufreesboro, Tennessee, WZTV Fox 17 reports.
The man was working under his truck when it fell on him, trapping him underneath.
He called for help, but was alone, and no one could hear him. That’s when Siri helped out.
The man heard Siri talking in his pocket and was able to “push up on his hip” and call 911. Vanderbilt University Medical Center's trauma team and paramedics did take over after that, but we know who the real hero is here: Siri. Perhaps we should add “life-saving” to our list of cool things you didn’t know Siri could do.
Of course, it's worth pointing out that maybe Siri just likes calling 911. If you tell Siri to "charge my phone 100%," it automatically dials emergency services.
SEE ALSO: If you ask Siri to charge your phone, she’ll call the police
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: 11 things you can ask Siri to get the most bizarre and hilarious answers
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+Are you happy that Google's new Play Services software for Android developers is out? If not, one of the new features may tell you to turn that frown upside down. Google's latest APIs for Android apps include "Mobile Vision" face detection and "Nea...
It has been almost a month since Google Play services 7.8 began rolling out to users, and as of yesterday, it is in wide release to everybody. A previous blog post by Google discussed the big new feature for developers would be the Nearby Messages API, but it turns out there are a couple of other additions worth checking out. In a new post on the Android Developers blog, Google announced a new Mobile Vision API with the ability to detect the presence, orientation, and some details of faces when they are in frame on an active camera.
Read MoreGoogle Play Services v7.8 Completes Rollout, Adds New Mobile Vision API With Face Detection And Barcode Reader, Improves Cloud Messaging With Priority And Localization was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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+Today on In Case You Missed It: The Haptoclone allows users to touch and interact with distant objects, in a way you have to see to understand. But basically, long-distance makeouts over Skype are coming. Cambridge University researchers designed a...
AT&T has announced a number of changes to the US carrier's Mobile Share Value plans. The aim is to simplify available tiers, offering more data for your buck. As usual with the majority of said offerings, the more you pay up each month, the greater the benefit is with AT&T's revamped bundles.
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With the official stable release of Android Studio v1.3 a couple of weeks ago, it's time to begin testing the next string of new features. The first preview release of version 1.4 is now in the Canary channel, and it's sporting some big new features. The Android Tools team has been working on the new theme editor first demonstrated in the I/O session titled What's New in Android Development Tools.
Read MoreAndroid Studio v1.4 Preview 1 Enters Canary Channel With Brand New Theme Editor, Vector Asset Wizard, Performance Monitors, And More was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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+Apple's largely white guy workforce isn't going to change overnight, but the company made strides this year, according to its latest diversity report. After promising changes in June, Tim Cook said "we're working hard to expand our recruiting effor...
It seems that NAND flash memory just isn't fast enough to show off the full performance of the latest datacenter networking equipment from Mellanox. They teamed up with HGST at Flash Memory Summit to demonstrate a Storage Area Network (SAN) setup that used Phase Change Memory to attain speeds that are well out of reach of any flash-based storage system.
+ +Last year at FMS, HGST showed a PCIe card with 2GB of Micron's Phase Change Memory (PCM). That drive used a custom protocol to achieve lower latency than possible with NVMe: it could complete a 512-byte read in about 1-1.5µs, and delivered about 3M IOPS for queued reads. HGST hasn't said how the PCM device in this year's demo differs, if at all. Instead, they're exploring what kind of performance is possible when accessing the storage remotely. Their demo has latency of less than 2µs for 512-byte reads and throughput of 3.5GB/s using Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) over Mellanox InfiniBand equipment. By comparison, NAND flash reads take tens of microseconds without counting any protocol overhead.
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This presentation from February 2014 provides a great summary of where HGST is going with this work. It's been hard to tell which non-volatile memory technology is going to replace NAND flash. Just a few weeks ago Intel and Micron announced their 3D XPoint memory, immediately taking the place as one of the most viable alternatives to NAND flash without even officially saying what kind of memory cell it uses. Rather than place a bet on which new memory technology would pan out, HGST is trying to ensure that they're ready to exploit the winner's advantages over NAND flash.
+ +None of the major contenders are suitable for directly replacing DRAM, either due to to limited endurance (even if it is much higher than flash), poor write performance, or vastly insufficient capacity. At the same time, ST-MRAM, CBRAM, PCM, and others are all much faster than NAND flash and none of the current interfaces other than a DRAM interface can keep pace. HGST chose to develop a custom protocol over standard PCIe as more practical than trying to make a PCM SSD that works as a DIMM connected to existing memory controllers.
+ +Last year's demo showed that they were ready to deliver better-than-flash performance as soon as the new memory technology becomes economical. This year's demo shows that they can retain most of that performance while putting their custom technology behind an industry-standard RDMA interface to create an immediately deployable solution, and in principle it can all work just as well for 3D XPoint memory as for Phase Change Memory.
+
+
+With T-Mobile now behind it as the nation's third largest carrier, AT&T has updated its wireless data plans (below) to give you a bit more data for a bit less money. Unsurprisingly, the benefits get juicier if you spend more -- there's 5GB more...
The saga of WhatsApp's Google Drive backup option is only rivaled by the app's epic voice calls invite feature that we all had to endure for months. It's there, then not there, then it's back, only to disappear again, then wait it's hiding and only shows when it's time for a backup... but Rita, it's not working for me, and now it's gone for everyone, oh-oh look I got it with root and a few commands, and now it's on for everyone finally. We swear.
Read More[Definitely, Maybe] WhatsApp's Google Drive Backup Should Be Back Now And Working For (Almost) Everyone was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
+
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-Netflix has acquired yet another movie: Mascots. Behind the full-length project, scheduled to be released in 2016, is Christopher Guest, best known for his acting and directing in comedies like A Mighty Wind, Best In Show and For Your Consideratio...
It's still OK to think different, no matter how much pressure there is to be the same.
+The post We Should All Be Thankful for Samsung’s Weirdo Phone appeared first on WIRED.
Camden Thrasher took over 1,000 photos for an incredible video of this year's 24 Hours of Le Mans.
+The post 24 Hours of Le Mans in Two Minutes of Epic Stop-Motion appeared first on WIRED.
Audi wants to build an all-electric SUV that will go 300 miles on a charge, and it's partnering with Samsung and LG to get it done.
+The post Audi’s Plan to Make an Electric SUV With a 300-Mile* Range appeared first on WIRED.
+ 
The startup is installing its charging system in two dozen garages in Manhattan.
+The post Tesla’s Making It Suck Less to Drive an EV in New York appeared first on WIRED.
-If you've been wanting to play around with LastPass on your mobile device without paying the $12 annual fee for premium support, today is your day: the password manager just added mobile to its free tier. What's the catch? You only get it on mobile...
+
+There are a lot of devices out there that you can use to keep track of your pets, but the Buddy collar is akin to several types rolled into one. The LED collar makes sure Fido's visible in the dark, but it's also a temperature sensor, an activity t...
Use your phone for more than just listening to tunes. With the right tools, you can be an artist too.
+The post 8 Apps for Making Legit Music on Your Phone appeared first on WIRED.
+
+A University of Cambridge team of researchers has created a "mother robot" capable of giving birth to -- or more correctly, building its own -- baby cube-bots. The team conducted five rounds of experiments, wherein it assembled 10 pint-sized machin...
+
+We previewed the OnePlus 2 for you in the past, but if you'd rather see some internal component porn, iFixit has got your back. iFixit has taken the device apart like it did the first OnePlus phone (and many, many other gadgets before it) to examin...
+
+Evernote's been beta testing a redesigned web interface since last October. But, after nearly a year of experimenting with the fresh look, the company is finally ready to make it available to all its users starting this week. The main purpose of th...
+
+The Bundesliga, Germany's top-tier football league, is coming to YouTube. After recently securing US broadcast rights for this competition, Fox Sports has now announced it will stream a live match via Google's video service on August 14th. As the n...
+
+Getting an FAA exemption to operate commercial drones in American airspace is almost more trouble than it's worth, what with the litany of requirements and restrictions. That's why Google, according to a Guardian report, has been sidestepping those...
Nestled in Lenovo's latest earnings report were disappointing figures for both their own brand of smartphones and Motorola, which was acquired late last year. The Chinese company's response is to do some fairly large-scale restructuring, handing over basically all aspects of Lenovo smartphones to Motorola with the possible exception of marketing. Motorola will continue to develop, make, and market their own line that most Westerners are familiar with.
In light of the earnings figures, it might be surprising that Motorola is the part of the larger company that is rewarded with more responsibility.
Read MoreMotorola Will Take Over Lenovo's Slumping Smartphone Division In Spite Of Motorola's 31% Sales Drop was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
+
As the week starts to wind down NVIDIA is back with another driver release, 335.60.
+ +This latest release is notable for a few different reasons. Officially NVIDIA is releasing this as their preferred Game Ready driver for the Ashes of the Singularity tech demo, which is due later this month. Ashes is a large-scale RTS being developed by Oxide Games and Stardock, the former of which is likely better known for their Star Swarm tech demo. Built on the same Nitrous engine, Ashes will be the first DirectX 12 enabled consumer software to be released, though in very early form as a tech demo ahead of its 2016 launch.
+ +
Meanwhile this driver is also the first release from NVIDIA’s R355 branch. At this point we don’t know a great deal about this new driver branch – NVIDIA’s release notes are thin on both new features and bug fixes – though I suspect this is one of those cases where we’ll find out more later.
+ +That said, the one major addition we do know about for this driver is that it enables support for NVIDIA’s GameWorks VR technology in a consumer driver. Along with this driver release GameWorks VR is being promoted from alpha to beta status, and with the release of a new beta SDK is being opened up to more developers and wider testing. NVIDIA has been heavily investing in VR, seeing it as a potential new market to not only further grow sales, but as a market that will require more powerful and expensive GPUs than standard consumer system builds.
+ +As usual, you can grab the drivers for all current desktop and mobile NVIDIA GPUs over at NVIDIA’s driver download page.
+
So far HP's Android tablets have been somewhat unremarkable, with the arguable exception of the Pro Slate series. Despite a lukewarm response from consumers and retailers, it looks like the company is ready to release at least one more model. A new tablet called the HP 10 G2 has been hanging out with both the FCC and the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, and spotted by Liliputing. Based on the "10 G2" name and photos, it looks like a relatively low-cost follow-up to the original HP 10.
HP Isn't Done With Android Just Yet - 'HP 10 G2' Tablet Certified By The FCC And The Bluetooth SIG was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
+
Fans of Warhammer 40,000 have put up with a lot over the years. The IP has been the basis for a great many mobile games, only some of which have been good. The newly announced Warhammer 40,000: Freeblade looks like it has some potential, just judging from the flashy gameplay trailer. Many questions remain unanswered, though.
In this game, you'll take control of an Imperial Knight—basically a giant mech with lots of guns and stabbing weapons.
Read MoreVisually Impressive Shooter 'Warhammer 40,000: Freeblade' Coming This Fall To Android was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
+
If you've been watching today's coverage of the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge+ with bated breath, you won't have to wait too long to pick one up from an American carrier. All five major US networks have confirmed that they'll be carrying Samsung's new flagships, with varying degrees of availability and pre-order status. The official release date from Samsung is August 21st, and AT&T is already selling phones.
AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, And US Cellular Announce Plans For The Galaxy S6 Edge+ And Galaxy Note 5, Best Buy Offers $200 Trade-In was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
+
Using the stock market isn't free. Well, obviously. You're buying and selling stocks, after all. But on top of that, brokerage firms tend to charge fees to manage financial transactions. The Robinhood app lets you get around that fee, and now it has made its way over from iOS to Android.
Robinhood lets you access market data and quotes in real-time. You can buy and sell stocks without the app charging you for each transaction, though SEC and FINRA regulatory fees may apply.
Read MoreRobinhood Free Stock Market Trading App Comes To Android was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
+Finally, robots are useful.
+The post Meet MIT’s Beer Delivery Bots appeared first on WIRED.
Samsung has had a lot of strange ideas in the past, but you can afford to experiment when you're raking in cash as the top Android OEM. The newly announced keyboard cover for the Note 5 and S6 Edge+ is especially weird, though. It's a case with a snap-on physical keyboard that interacts with the screen. It's also indisputably ugly.
The rear section of the keyboard cover looks like any other cover, but there are two notches where the front keyboard section attaches when you need it.
Read MoreSamsung's Insane Keyboard Cover Is Real, Will Be Available For The Note 5 And S6 Edge+ was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
+
Today a number of great games have all become available for NVIDIA SHIELD all around the same time. To make sure that you have something to play these titles on, we're giving away three bundles of hardware. Sure, you could already play most of these games on your phone or tablet, but wouldn't you rather fire them up on and NVIDIA SHIELD console? In that past, we've called it the best Android TV device on the market.
Read More[North American Giveaway] Win One Of Three NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV Bundles was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
+
There's a distinct lack of new Android Wear devices on the market right now, but perhaps you can tide yourself over with some new apps and watch faces for your faithful wrist companion. We've got a ton of new stuff as always, but even more watch faces thanks to Google's recent push with various brands and designers. Strap on your watch and get ready.
34 Best Android Wear Apps And Watch Faces From 6/16/15—8/13/15 was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
+
Here's something you already knew about the Galaxy Note 5 and S6 Edge+ before today's announcement—both devices are expensive. Samsung charged a ton for its massive phones before, and nothing about introducing more premium materials into this year's iterations says cheap. So you're looking at parting with uncomfortably close to a grand by the time taxes are factored into the equation.
AT&T, for example, wants around $740 for the Galaxy Note 5 and $815 for the S6 Edge+.
Read MoreSamsung Galaxy Note 5 And S6 Edge+ Now Available From AT&T For $740 And $815—Get $300 In Bill Credit Under Certain Conditions was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
+
Last week, Google released factory images for every actively-supported Nexus except the Nexus 7 2013 LTE and Nexus Player. These images were for a new build, LMY48I, intended to patch the recently outed vulnerability that was found in Stagefright.
Today, it appears the OTAs are beginning to hit the masses, but be warned, all these do is patch Stagefright. They contain no other fixes of any kind, so if there's some problem with your device you're hoping to have solved with this update, it's not going to happen.
Read More[Update: Nexus 9 LTE] OTA Updates Incoming For Nexus Devices To Fix Vulnerability In Stagefright was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
+
The rapidly growing Middle Eastern airline is launching new service to Central America, grabbing the longest flight by a few miles.
+The post Emirates Offers the World’s Longest Commercial Flight: 17.5 Hours appeared first on WIRED.
They say it's for work, but it'll do well for anyone.
+The post Dell’s New Chromebook Might Be The Best One Yet appeared first on WIRED.
Bring on the button mashing.
+The post Samsung Breaks Out a Keyboard Case for its New Phones appeared first on WIRED.
The Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge+ each have a single feature Samsung hopes will set them apart.
+The post Samsung Has Two Big New Phones, and Even Bigger Ideas appeared first on WIRED.
Today, Samsung is announcing the next generation of their Galaxy-brand phablets, the Galaxy Note 5 and the Galaxy S6 edge+. Samsung’s phablets have been one of their greatest smartphone success stories, finding traction in a market when many thought there wouldn’t be a place for such a large phone. And while you will never see some competitors directly admit to it, products like the Note series have legitimized the phablet form factor and required that the competition catch up as well, making the phablet form factor as much of a home court for Samsung as there can be.
+ +Starting with the 2014 models, Samsung introduced two different phablets, the Note 4 and the simply titled Note Edge. This year Samsung is retaining the dual phablet approach, however in the case of the Edge product Samsung has shifted gears on what they want to do. For 2015 Samsung seems to be going after a new audience in the form of the Galaxy S6 edge+, which is a more distinct derivative of the Note 5 platform with some greater feature changes than just a curved screen. To understand what I mean, read on for the full article.
When Samsung took the stage at the 2015 Flash Memory Summit, they admittedly didn't deliver any bombshell announcements on the scale of the Intel/Micron 3D XPoint surprise, but they still had a lot to talk about.
+ +We knew that Samsung's third generation of V-NAND/3D NAND was on the way with mass production scheduled for the second half of this year. Samsung has now disclosed that mass production is starting this month, and that it's a 48-layer design with a 256Gb TLC being the first die announced. Samsung's current second-generation 3D NAND is a 32-layer design available as 128Gb TLC or 128Gb MLC.
+ +With mass production imminent, Samsung has ensured that neither SK Hynix nor the Toshiba/SanDisk joint venture will be able to leapfrog them with their respective 48-layer 3D NAND designs, both scheduled for mass production starting in 2016.
+ +Samsung says the new 256Gb TLC will have about 30% lower power consumption than an equivalent capacity of their current 128Gb TLC, and a switch to a dual-plane organization ensures that one 256Gb die will perform at least as well as a pair of the current 128Gb dies. Density is improved by about 40% while production costs only increased slightly, so price per GB will be going down. At FMS, Samsung is pushing the idea that their 3D NAND TLC is ready to replace MLC for most uses, and they're optimistic about scaling up their 3D NAND layer count past 100.
+ +| New Samsung 48-Layer TLC SSDs | +|||
| Drive | +PM953 | +PM1633 | +PM1725 | +
| Form Factor | +NVMe over M.2 22110 and 2.5" | +2.5" SAS 12Gb/s | +NVMe PCIe HHHL card | +
| Capacities | +480GB, 960GB, 1.92TB (2.5" only) | +480GB, 960GB, 1.92TB, 3.84TB | +3.2TB, 6.4TB | +
| Sequential Read | +? | +1,100 MB/s | +5,500 MB/s | +
| Sequential Write | +? | +1,000 MB/s | +1,800 MB/s | +
| 4kB Random Read IOPS | +? | +160k | +1,000k | +
| 4kB Random Write IOPS | +? | +18k | +120k | +
| Endurance Rating | +? | +? | +5 DWPD (6.4 TB model) | +
Samsung also shared information about three upcoming drives, all using TLC though not necessarily the new 48-layer parts. The PM1633 Enterprise SAS drive was previewed at CES in January and is intended for read-heavy workloads. A follow-on PM1633a model was mentioned to use the new 48-layer TLC to reach 15.36TB capacity, but we don't have any other information about that update. The PM953 is a enterprise NVMe drive in M.2 or 2.5" form factors, and is the counterpart to the MLC-based SM951. Of particular interest, the M.2 version is using the M.2 22110 form factor (22mm x 110mm, the maximum length for M.2), with Samsung using the extra space to implement power loss protection.
+ +Meanwhile the PM1725 is a fast multi-TB PCIe expansion card that Samsung intends to use to challenge the assumptions about what uses TLC is suited for. Relatively speaking it appears to be intended for workloads that aren't very write-heavy, but it still manages 120k IOPS for writes. That just looks small compared to 1M IOPS for reads and a sequential read speed of 5.5GB/s.
+ +All three drives are intended for OEMs, but the PM953 will probably find its way into the retail channel just like the SM951.
+ +Finally, along with Samsung's new 3D NAND appearing in the afformentioned new drives, it will also be appearing in at least one of their existing drives. The 850 EVO, Samsung's current consumer TLC drive, will apparently be getting an update to use the new 48-layer TLC, though it's not clear if this will be new capacities and/or a wholesale NAND update.
+
Compression and Encryption have much more in common than you could have guessed.
Snapdragon 820 is still a mystery as far as official information from Qualcomm goes. However, today Qualcomm has given a bit of insight into their upcoming SoC. While there's still no information about the CPU portion featuring Qualcomm's custom 64-bit cores known as 'Kryo', there are some details about the Adreno 510 and 530 GPUs, as well as Qualcomm's Spectra image signal processor.
+ +
Because Adreno 530 is their new flagship GPU, Qualcomm's press release focuses more on the 530 than the 510. The performance figures released by Qualcomm describe Adreno 530 as being 40% faster than Adreno 430 on average, while also consuming 40% less power. This result is described as an average of "the top graphics benchmarks", and while it's still generally a good idea to take vendor provided numbers with a grain of salt, if the power and performance gains over Adreno 430 are anywhere in the ballpark of Qualcomm's 40% figure then Adreno 530 should end up being quite impressive.
+ +
On the API side, Adreno 500 series GPUs will support OpenGL ES 3.1 + AEP (Android Extension Pack), Renderscript, Vulkan, and OpenCL 2.0. With OpenCL 2.0 comes support for Shared Virtual Memory (SVP), which allows an OpenCL host program and a device's kernel to share a virtual address space so access to data structures like lists and trees can be easily shared between the host and GPU. Adreno 530 has varying improvements to GPGPU performance when compared to Adreno 430, but Qualcomm's slides show video processing as demonstrating the greatest improvement with a 2.5x increase in compute performance. This is also the area where efficiency gains for generational improvements typically happen, so we expect fixed-function codec support although this information is not yet provided.
+ +As for the ISP, it's still the case that mobile image signal processors are black boxes. Qualcomm is stating that their Spectra ISP in Snapdragon 820 will be able to support 3 simultaneous cameras at up to 25MP and at 30fps with no shutter lag. The Spectra ISP will also use MIPI's higher bandwidth C-PHY serial interface, which supports the enhanced camera support. As well as this, new developer and user-facing features include support and APIs for depth maps and using dual cameras to perform refocusing or other visual effects - because Qualcomm is just the SoC manufacturer, it is up to the smartphone OEMs to implement dual-camera/depth-maps as a feature as well.
+ +According to Qualcomm, Snapdragon 820 will start showing up in devices during the first half of 2016. Hopefully between now and then there's more information from Qualcomm about the other aspects of their new SoC, including their Kryo custom CPU core. In Q1 we will be at Mobile World Congress, so we may see more information at that time.
+ + +
At Flash Memory Summit this week, Toshiba is showing off a NAND flash device packaged using through-silicon vias rather than traditional wire-bonded connections.
+ +The NAND flash currently on the market is typically produced in the form of a die with a capacity like 128Gb (16GB). The popular SSD form factors don't have enough surface area to fit dozens of those chips, and SSD controllers don't have the pin count to connect to that many independently, so several chips are stacked in a single postage-stamp sized package. The traditional way of connecting the individual dies in a stack is to use the same technique as for a single-die package: bonding a thin gold wire between the edge of the die and the package substrate or external pins. The downsides are that it requires a lot of wires and the edges of the dies in the stack need to be exposed somehow, either by staggering them or by putting a spacer between each layer.
+ +
An alternative packaging method is to design the dies to participate in the stacking, by including electrical conductors that penetrate the entire thickness of the silicon die so that they can make contact with the dies above and below it in the stack, essentially tunneling right through each die. These through-silicon vias (TSVs) can then form a shared bus to carry signals from any of the dies in the stack out to the last die, which is the only one with the external connections.
+ +
Chip stacking using TSVs requires the dies to be aligned and stacked without spacers, which makes the whole stack a bit more compact. Since TSVs can be placed anywhere on the chip rather than just at the edge, it's easy to implement a wide data bus and communication within the stack can be very fast or low-power due to the short distances involved. These advantages have been very attractive for packaging DRAM, most notably in the form of the HBM stacks used by AMD's R9 Fury and R9 Nano video cards.
+ +Toshiba's demonstration is a 16-high stack of 128Gb dies in a BGA-152 package measuring 14mm by 18mm and 1.9mm thick, and an 8-high stack that's 1.35mm thick. Those numbers are all typical even for wire-bonded stacks. The speed (1Gb/s) and operating voltages (1.2V for I/O and 1.8V core) are what we would expect from a next-generation NAND interface, but the claimed 50% power reduction is a very nice improvement for a change that leaves the flash memory cells themselves unmodified.
+ +Toshiba hasn't said whether the dies being stacked are their current 15nm planar NAND or their forthcoming 3D NAND, nor have they said when modules using TSVs will be hitting the market. The most compelling applications would be to use TSVs to stack flash atop a controller chip in an eMMC product or atop an SoC, but the power savings would be appreciated almost everywhere. If the use of TSVs allows economically stacking more than 16 dies, it could enable a dramatic increase in the density of SSDs.
+Small businesses and power users often need the flexibility offered by a file server when compared to a dedicated NAS. This is where storage servers based on Microsoft's Windows Server offerings and systems based on various Linux and BSD distributions come into play. These servers can be bought as an appliance or assembled in a do-it-yourself (DIY) fashion. Today, we will be looking at a system based on the former approach - the Advatronix Nimbus 400.
As our final update to what has been a very successful first round for our Build-A-Rig project, last week we held the drawing to determine the winners. Each of our winners is taking home a $1500 gaming system, designed by Zotac and Corsair respectively. So without further ado:
+ +
Congratulations to our two winners, and the first winners for the Build-A-Rig project. And be sure to check back later this month when we kick off Build-A-Rig round 2, where we will be putting together and giving away a pair of small form factor systems.
+
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-There is no single definition of an "indie" video game. "Indie" doesn't mean free, cheap, mobile, 8-bit, 3D, platformer, shooter or any other thing. Thanks to the recent, rapid evolution of game-making technologies, more people than ever are able t...
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-The phrase I saw and heard over and over again while talking to other journalists and security researchers about the Def Con hacker convention was "hostile environment." Not physically hostile; the attendees and staff were extremely nice. The hosti...
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-Sure, we've seen machines that can mix drinks with the help of an app and robot bartenders that can create cocktails out of Keurig-esque pods, but they all require you to actually push the control buttons and carry your own beverages. The horror! F...
Android phones have come a long way in the accessibility department, and the Moto G 2015 is no exception. Using the features and tools Google has provided for Android Lollipop, the Moto G 2015 has plenty of options for those with trouble seeing or hearing, and even those of us with motion control issues.
- -Being there is fine, but knowing how to use them is the important part. that's where we can help. Have a gander at the Moto G 2015 accessibility options.
- -
Some homes are smart, and the Logitech Harmony serves as their brain. It provides a single location to control all the things, assuming of course that the products are supported. The latest update adds quite a few more to the list ranging from door locks to thermostats and a few things in between. Logitech Updates Harmony App With Support For The August Smart Lock, Ecobee Thermostat, LIFX Light Bulbs, And Insteon
The new additions include the August Smart Lock (pictured above) that provides remote control over your doors.
Read MoreLogitech Updates Harmony App With Support For The August Smart Lock, Ecobee Thermostat, LIFX Light Bulbs, And Insteon was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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At Flash Memory Summit today SanDisk announced the second generation of their CloudSpeed Ultra enterprise drive. This is the sibling to the gen. 2 CloudSpeed Eco that was announced in June.
@@ -942,1805 +1908,12 @@ Sure, we've seen machines that can mix drinks with the help of an app and rSanDisk is already supplying the CloudSpeed Ultra gen. 2 to several major customers for large-scale deployments and it will be more broadly available later in 2015, where it will be competing against drives like Samsung's SM863 and Intel's DC S3610. Pricing will be under $1/GB, but we don't know by how much. It probably won't be undercut by Intel's DC S3610, but to be competitive it will need to be down near Samsung's $0.66/GB for the SM863.
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The latest updates to Microsoft's OneNote app have taken advantage of an ability granted to it by the openness of Android OS: the ability to place an overlay on top of other running apps. Similar to Facebook Messenger's chat heads UI, OneNote now has an opt-in feature called "floatie" that remains accessible while you use non-OneNote apps. The idea is that inspiration for notes may come at any time and you may not want to leave the app you're in to do it.
Read MoreMicrosoft OneNote Adds 'Floatie' Feature, An Unobtrusive Shortcut For Jotting Down Notes While Using Any App was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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-If you're already annoyed with the autoplay video ads in your Facebook timeline, you might want to brace yourself. The social network is opening up that advertising tech to outside apps, or more specifically, to publishers who leverage Menlo Park's...
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-It doesn't take long for social media to become antisocial. A tactless tweet, an inappropriate picture or even a mundane status update can create the perfect storm for online shaming. In an attempt to convert those rabid online tendencies into oppo...
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-Last year, we had a lot of fun at Engadget Live Los Angeles and now we're gearing up to do it all over again. Next Friday, August 21st, we'll take over Exchange LA from 7PM to 10PM and give readers like you a chance to experience the future of tech...
Keeping to their normal rapid release schedule, Mozilla published v40 of the stable release of Firefox to the Play Store today. The biggest user-facing change in the update is one that was also present in the beta version of v40, allowing you to long press the forward or back buttons to see a list of your recently visited pages. Here's a quick look at how that works:
This is the sort of thing that only catches your attention when there aren't any other major changes, but this is one of those times.
Read MoreFirefox Stable Release Is Updated To v40 With Tweaked Forward/Back Navigation, Better Malware Protection, And Other Minor Improvements was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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Our Russell Holly will be joining the TWiT team on tonight's All About Android show, and you can tune in and watch it live. Starting at 5 p.m. PDT, or 8 p.m for those on the East Coast, you can check out all of the conversation as it happens.
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-The Steam Machine invasion is happening this fall. But while these computers are said to be more powerful than traditional consoles, such as the Xbox One or PlayStation 4, none of them are exactly portable. Smach Zero's device, however, is. Formerl...
The idea of paying using your phone may be exciting, but that's all it will ever be until more stores start playing along. Today Rite Aid announced that you will soon be able to add its nearly 4600 stores to the list. Starting August 15th, it will accept Google Wallet NFC payments in stores. It will also take tap and pay credit cards.
That's right, it'll be like you're shopping at Walgreens.
Read MoreRite Aid Will Officially Accept Google Wallet, And Eventually Android Pay, Starting August 15th was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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That's one way to do it.
-The post VR Gets the Simple, Hands-Free Head Wear It Deserves appeared first on WIRED.
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-Verizon has announced that it has successfully completed field tests of its new super-fast fiber optic technology, dubbed the next-generation passive optical network (NG-PON2). It could offer users connectivity speeds anywhere from 10Gbps to 80Gbps...
Most developers run regular beta tests via the Play Store, but not eBay. Oh no. The most recent eBay v4.0 beta is closed, and even the APK needs an authorized login to work. Luckily, there's a form you can fill out to get access.
It's a simple Google Docs survey and should only take a moment to complete. Just put in your email, beta preference (iOS/Android), and your country. You should get an email with the download link as soon as there's a new build to test.
Read MoreGet Access To The eBay App v4.0 Closed Beta By Filling Out This Form was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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Microsoft has announced the preview for its upcoming Skype for Business offering on Android. Skype for Business will come as an update to the existing Lync 2013 app when it arrives later this year.
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Developers in Qatar, Kazakhstan and Nigeria are now able to list paid apps in Google Play, and display the apps using local currency pricing. The changes, which are reflected on the Google Play Developer Console, indicate that developers in these regions are now able to set pricing for their apps, as well as in-app purchases using local currency.
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-You're probably tired of hearing just how "unconventional" Google is after yesterday's surprise restructuring announcement. Sure, making Google a subsidiary of a company called Alphabet is certainly strange, especially after it's become a household...
The free version of Skype is great for personal use, but you can also get work done with it as well. I took part in numerous job interviews over video chat during my last year of college. When I landed an internship, we used it to communicate around the office.
But for big work done by big companies, there's Skype for Business. It comes with extra perks such as the ability to chat with up to 250 people and integrate everything with Office.
Read MoreAndroid's Version Of Skype For Business Is On The Way, And You Can Sign Up Now To Test The Preview was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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You don't hear a lot about Google Creative Lab, but it's had a hand in some of Google's most memorable ads and products. Google's Creative Lab is an outfit that basically comes up with (presumably) innovative ideas the promote the Google brand. Along the way, they've also made a few apps. Today there are three new apps from the Creative Lab, all of which are appropriately offbeat.
First up, there's Landmarker, which I dare say is the most conventional and useful of the three.
Read MoreGoogle Creative Lab Releases Three New Experimental Apps—Landmarker, Tunnel Vision, And Lip Swap was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
-Braden O'Guinn gives us the scoop on reactive programming and where to learn more about it.
-The post What is reactive programming? appeared first on Mutual Mobile.
Lenovo already has cell phone legend Motorola under its umbrella, but the company has also started a new Chinese brand called ZUK. This firm is intended to compete with the budget offerings of Xaiomi, Huawei, and others. Its first phone looks like a good start too. The Z1 has a massive battery and a USB 3.0 Type-C port.
The Z1 is basically specced like a 2014 flagship with a few important extras.
Read MoreLenovo-Backed ZUK Announces The China-Only Z1 With USB 3.0 Type-C And 4100mAh Battery was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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Using LastPass on anything more mobile than a PC used to be a perk reserved exclusively for paying customers. We couldn't call it all that much of a luxury, considering that at $12 a year, LastPass Premium costs about as much as a short trip on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. But now you won't even have to pay that much to start managing your passwords on your Android phone or tablet.
Users who sign up for LastPass can use the service on an unlimited number of smartphones or tablets—but not both.
Read MoreLastPass Free Is Now Available On Mobile Devices For New Users, But You Have To Pay To Switch From Phones To Tablets Or PCs was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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Most remote access apps just beam your computer's screen to the phone, but Parallels does a bit more. It has a handy app launcher and full-screen rendering of desktop apps. It's not free, but maybe the latest update will entice you to pony up some cash.
Here's the changelog for Parallels v3.0.
Parallels Access Updated To v3.0 With File Sharing, Universal File Manager, And More was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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Snapchat's developers have pushed out another update to the Android app, version 9.14. Like before, users get to satisfy their thirst with a trickle of new features.
One tucked away change is the ability to see who has viewed your Story by tapping on the eyeball in the corner. We also see an addition aimed specifically had users with limited or slower data connections. There's now the option to dive into Settings and enable Travel Mode, which reduces mobile data usage.
Read MoreSnapchat 9.14 Offers A Travel Mode That Uses Less Data, New Emoji Button, And More was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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ZUK are a relatively new sub-brand of Lenovo, who had previously enjoyed press through multiple rumors about their impending release of a CyanogenOS smartphone called the Z1. This has turned out to be off the mark; the company announced the very same handset today, although it’s running a custom implementation of Android 5.1 called ‘ZUI’. We’ll be bringing you a more in-depth preview of the device once we get our hands on it, but at this point we already have a full list of specifications and a number of interesting details about this very reasonably priced first effort.
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With its $280 price tag, ZUK is going head-to-head with a number of other thrifty Chi. . . READ ON »
If you're a Samsung phone owner hoping to play with the manufacturer's custom-made game recording app, you might just be able to today. Game Recorder+ has been updated to work with a few new devices, plus updated compatibility for new Android 5.1 builds and better performance.
The new phones are the Galaxy S6 Active, the older Galaxy S5 Active, the Galaxy Note Edge, and the Galaxy Note 3 Neo. The app now works with Android 5.1 on the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S5, and Galaxy Note 4 (which may or may not be updated depending on your location and/or carrier).
Read MoreSasmung's Game Recorder+ Updated To Work With More Phones And Android Versions was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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Google surprised us with the long, long, long-awaited Hangouts 4.0 release earlier today, but that wasn't the only update worth paying attention to – Android Wear v1.3 turned up in the later hours, as well. At first glance, the only new option appears to be a selector in settings for choosing between watches for hacking or programming purposes, but a teardown reveals some great new features we can expect to see in the next major firmware release to Android Wear.
Read MoreAndroid Wear v1.3 Includes 'Device To Debug' Picker, Reveals Upcoming "Together" And Interactive Watch Faces, New Apps, And More [APK Teardown + Download] was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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Starting from version 16.5.4, Pushbullet now supports end-to-end encryption for its notification mirroring, universal copy-paste as well as its SMS features. To enable this, users need to manually add a password through the settings screen of pushbullet apps on desktop and mobile, labelled “End-to-end Encryption”.. . . READ ON »
To be honest, I'm still not sold on Vessel's business model, which posts original web video content a few days early to paying subscribers before it goes out to more general portals (usually YouTube). But the Android app seems more than serviceable even in its beta form, and the developers are adding features quickly. Case in point: the latest update adds Chromecast compatibility, which no video app should be without.
Vessel Beta App Gains Chromecast Support In The Latest Version was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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Drone videos are in high demand, but inexperienced pilots are putting people in danger.
-The post Why Risk Lives With a Drone When You Can Rent an Ace Pilot? appeared first on WIRED.
You can't deny that Pushbullet is insanely useful, and it gets more so with each update. However, Pushbullet does see a lot of your data in plain text, and there's been growing demand for better security. As of today, Pushbullet supports end-to-end encryption for SMS, notification mirroring, and universal copy-paste.
In a recent conversation on Reddit, Pushbullet's lead developer dug into the issue with users. Pushbullet has always used https to secure connections, but the Pushbullet servers still see all your data in plain text.
Read MorePushbullet Now Supports End-To-End Encryption For Notification Mirroring, SMS, And Copy-Paste Sync was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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After acquiring SSD controller designer SandForce, LSI took the quick route towards creating high-performance PCIe SSDs by putting multiple SandForce controllers and an LSI RAID controller on a single expansion card, branding the resulting product as the Nytro. This Nytro product line was transferred to Seagate along with the SandForce division in May 2014, and it's now getting both a refresh and a major expansion.
- -The new Nytro XP6500 succeeds the Nytro XP6302 and offers improved write latency and improved write endurance. Write throughput suffers slightly, but the XP6302's original performance specifications were inflated by testing at 28% over-provisioning rather than the default of 17% that is implied by the listed capacities. Meanwhile the XP6500 4TB model is listed as optimized for 8kB rather than 4kB random accesses, so its IOPS numbers aren't directly comparable to the others.
- -| Seagate Nytro XP6000 Series | -|||||
| Drive | -XP6500 4TB | -XP6500 1.5TB | -XP6302 | -||
| Usable capacity | -3.4TB | -1.3TB | -1.3TB, 1.75TB, 3.5TB | -||
| Interface | -PCIe 3.0 x8 | -||||
| Sequential read | -4 GB/s | -||||
| Sequential write | -2.2 GB/s | -1.5 GB/s | -2.3 GB/s | -||
| Random read IOPS | -275K (8KB) | -300K (4KB) | -296K (4KB) | -||
| Random write IOPS | -85K (8KB) | -100K (4KB) | -148K (4KB) | -||
| Write latency | -14µs | -33µs | -|||
| Write endurance | -20 PB | -8 PB | -6.6-11.7 PB | -||
| Required airflow | -550 LFM | -300 LFM | -|||
Peak power consumption isn't listed but is likely significantly increased over the XP6302's 39W, based on the increase in required airflow from 300LFM to 550LFM for the same operating temperature range. The Nytro XP6500 supports a supercapacitor bank to protect data in its large (2-4GB) DRAM cache. The XP6500 is available either as a full-height expansion card with built-in supercapacitors, or as a half-height card with an optional tethered supercapacitor module. Seagate has announced immediate availability of the Nytro XP6500.
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Expanding the Nytro brand into new territory are the XF1440 and XM1440 NVMe drives, in 2.5" U.2 (SFF-8639) and M.2 22110 form factors respectively. They're split in to two tiers: “Endurance Optimized” (3 drive writes per day) and “Capacity Optimized” (0.3 DWPD).
- -| Seagate Nytro XF1440 | -||||
| Drive | -Endurance Optimized | -Capacity Optimized | -||
| Usable capacity | -400 GB, 800 GB, 1600 GB | -480 GB, 960 GB, 1800 GB | -||
| Interface | -PCIe 3.0 x4 SFF-8639 | -|||
| Sequential read | -2700 MB/s | -|||
| Sequential write | -600-1200 MB/s | -|||
| Random read IOPS | -200K | -|||
| Random write IOPS | -34K | -3K–7K | -||
| Write endurance | -3 DWPD | -0.3 DWPD | -||
| Warranty | -5 years | -|||
| Peak power | -12.5 W | -|||
| Average read/write power | -9 W | -|||
Performance specifications for the Nytro XM1440 weren't available, and we aren't assuming that they will be the same as for the Nytro XF1440. The XF is listed as using eMLC (Enterprise MLC) but the XM is using MLC+, a term often used to refer to higher-binned consumer-grade MLC. Maximum power consumption is significantly lower for the XM, and the XM will be released later (early 2016, when the XF1440 will ship at the end of October), which suggests that there may also be controller differences.
- -| Seagate Nytro XM1440 | -||||
| Drive | -Endurance Optimized | -Capacity Optimized | -||
| Usable capacity | -400 GB, 800 GB | -480 GB, 960 GB | -||
| Interface | -M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 | -|||
| Write endurance | -3 DWPD | -0.3 DWPD | -||
| Warranty | -5 years | -|||
| Peak power | -8.25 W | -|||
| Average read/write power | -7 W | -|||
Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices have become quite popular over the last five years or so, but Direct Attached Storage (DAS) units were the go-to devices for consumers looking to store large amounts of data before that. The interfaces for these DAS units have evolved from USB 2.0 and Firewire to eSATA and nowadays, USB 3.x and Thunderbolt. What sort of performance numbers and features can we expect in a modern multi-bay DAS unit? What are the use-cases enabled by them in the modern computing ecosystem? Our review of the StarTech.com S358BU33ERM 8-bay USB 3.0 / eSATA hard drive enclosure provides some answers.
Back in March at GTC 2015, NVIDIA announced the first member and flagship of their Maxwell 2 generation of Quadro cards, the Quadro M6000. Packing a fully-enabled GM200 GPU and 12GB of RAM, M6000 signaled an interesting shift from NVIDIA on the high-end of Quadro, with the company shipping what amounted to a “pure” graphics card as opposed to a jack-of-all-trades type card as they typically do at the high-end.
- -Meanwhile, although the M6000 was the first Maxwell 2 based Quadro card to launch, it was not the first Maxwell 2 GPU to launch. NVIDIA has launched GM204 and GM206 late last year and early this year respectively, and of course Maxwell 1 ended up in the Quadro K2200 and a couple of other cards. As a result we have been expecting NVIDIA to refresh the rest of the Quadro lineup with Maxwell 2 after the release of the M6000, and this week at SIGGRAPH NVIDIA is doing just that with the release of the Quadro M5000 and Quadro M4000.
- -| NVIDIA Quadro Specification Comparison | -||||||
| - | Quadro M5000 | -Quadro M4000 | -Quadro K5200 | -Quadro K4200 | -||
| CUDA Cores | -2048 | -1664 | -2304 | -1344 | -||
| Boost Clock | -~1050MHz | -~780MHz | -650MHz | -780MHz | -||
| Memory Clock | -6.6GHz GDDR5 | -6GHz GDDR5 | -6GHz GDDR5 | -5.4GHz GDDR5 | -||
| Memory Bus Width | -256-bit | -256-bit | -256-bit | -256-bit | -||
| VRAM | -8GB | -8GB | -8GB | -4GB | -||
| FP64 | -1/32 | -1/32 | -1/24 | -1/24 | -||
| TDP | -150W | -120W | -150W | -105W | -||
| GPU | -GM204? | -GM204 | -GK110 | -GK104 | -||
| Architecture | -Maxwell 2 | -Maxwell 2 | -Kepler | -Kepler | -||
| Size | -Double-Slot | -Single-Slot | -Double-Slot | -Single-Slot | -||
| 4Kp60 Displays Supported | -4 | -4 | -2 | -2 | -||
We’ll start things off with the Quadro M5000. While NVIDIA has not announced the GPU for these new products, we believe the M5000 to be based on GM204, given the CUDA core and memory bus configuration. By those standards M5000 would be a fully enabled GM204 card, featuring all 2048 CUDA cores and the full 256-bit memory bus, essentially making this the Quadro version of the GeForce GTX 980.
- -Curiously, the M5000 features DRAM soft ECC support, allowing for error correction on the DRAM. Previous 5000-series Quadro cards have also included this feature, but at a GPU level NVIDIA typically reserves this feature for their highest-tier GPUs. With that said, as it’s software based and we’ve seen NVIDIA enable it in a Kepler-based GK104 product before (Tesla K10), for the moment we believe that they have gone ahead and enabled it for this GM204 product, rather than outfitting the card with GM200.
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Paired up with the GM204 is 8GB of GDDR5 clocked at a slightly more conservative 6.6GHz. Based on these specifications it’s not clear whether NVIDIA is using 16 4Gbit chips or 8 8Gbit chips, as the latter are now available though still fairly rare (M6000 by comparison used 24 4Gbit chips). In any case this is the same amount of RAM as the previous Quadro K5200 shipped with, indicating that NVIDIA is targeting the same market segment as before.
- -As for GPU clockspeeds, as is usually the case NVIDIA has not published specific clockspeeds, but in their press materials they have the card’s FP32 performance listed at 4.3 TFLOPs. This would put the maximum GPU clockspeeds at around 1.05GHz, though as this is a GPU boost product we don’t know the base clockspeeds at this time.
- -NVIDIA has also published the power information for this card, and like its Kepler-based predecessor it’s a 150W card. A 150W TDP allows M5000 to more easily work in lower power workstations where only a single 6-pin PCIe power connection is available, and is actually a bit lower power than comparable desktop GeForce products. Though as a result we expect that shipping clockspeeds are below 1GHz.
- -Meanwhile NVIDIA has typically gone with dual-slot blowers on their 150W Quadro cards, and M5000 will be no exception. The card is shipping with what appears to be a new blower and shroud design – and one I suspect is all plastic like the Quadro K5200’s – mimicking the original metal shroud of the M6000. At any rate this is a full size card, meaning it measures 10.5” long like NVIDIA’s other high-end cards.
- -Finally, much like the M6000, the overall importance of a Maxwell release is two-fold for NVIDIA. First and foremost of course are the performance improvements from Maxwell, which achieves much better performance per CUDA core and much better energy efficiency than the preceding Kepler parts, so M5000 should achieve even better real-world performance than its already substantial on-paper specifications indicate. However the other significant benefit here is that the switch to Maxwell means that the Quadro cards gain Maxwell’s newer display controller and NVENC blocks, allowing the M5000 to drive four 4K displays – twice as many as K5200 – and real-time HEVC encoding.
- -Also launching today and below the M5000 is the M4000. This appears to be another GM204 design, forgoing some of GM204’s CUDA cores in exchange for lower costs, performance, and power consumption. Like the M5000 we don’t have the clockspeed information for the card, but we do know it features 1664 active CUDA cores, making it analogous to the GeForce GTX 970. Also like the M5000 this features 8GB of VRAM – twice as much as the K4200 – this time clocked at 6GHz, however without the soft ECC support of the higher-end Quadro cards.
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Compared to the M5000 the TDP on the M4000 is down by 30W to 120W. The previous Quadro K4200 was a 105W card, so power consumption is up slightly, but in turn the M4000 features the Maxwell family improvements and more CUDA cores than the K4200. The card is rated for 2.6 TFLOPs of FP32 performance, which puts the maximum clockspeed at around 780MHz, so we expect that performance will be greatly improved over the K4200.
- -Meanwhile like past Quadro 4000-series cards, the M4000 is a single slot design. To the best of our knowledge this is a new PCB design for NVIDIA, and taking advantage of the lower power requirements brings the length of the card down to 9.5”. In order to get everything down a single slot NVIDIA has done away with the DVI port – a first for the 4000 series – making M4000 a 4x DisplayPort design. As we mentioned with M5000, the Maxwel display controller improves 4K support to allow 4 such displays off of a single card, and this is a scenario NVIDIA is clearly looking to enable with the M4000.
- -Finally, as is usually the case for NVIDIA, the company is not publishing any official prices for these cards, leaving pricing up to their partners and vendors. That said, at this point we expect pricing to be similar to the Quadro K5200 and K4200, which would put street prices on the cards at around $2000 and $1000 for the M5000 and M4000 respectively.
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Along with the release of their latest Quadro cards, NVIDIA is also announcing a new software suite at SIGGRAPH: DesignWorks. The latest Works project, DesignWorks, is partially a collection of new software and partially a branding exercise for the company. Following in the footsteps of GameWorks for game development, NVIDIA is collecting most of their tools and libraries for professional graphics development under the DesignWorks brand, and going forward will be releasing new tools under this brand as well.
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Along with collecting previous disparate tools like Iray and OptiX, the announcement of DesignWorks also marks the introduction of some new tools for NVIDIA. Of particular note here is NVIDIA vMaterials, a library of digitized, real world materials for use in applications that can interface with NVIDIA’s Material Design Language, MDL. Also premiering with DesignWorks is a version of NVIDIA’s VR technology optimized specifically for professional use, aptly named DesignWorks VR.
- -Meanwhile NVIDIA’s technology focus for the DesignWorks launch is on Physically Based Rendering (PBR), a realistic rendering technique the company has been promoting for much of the last year now. PBR is very GPU intensive – always a plus for someone in the business of selling GPUs – but in turn is designed to offer more photo-realistic results (but not necessarily more accurate results) by focusing on simulating the properties of the materials of the surrounding world itself. This focus on PBR goes hand-in-hand with the NVIDIA vMaterials announcement in particular, as a big part of enabling PBR is creating the material representations themselves.
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Finally, as part of their PBR push over the past year, NVIDIA has been showing off various images under the Real or Rendered tagline. For SIGGRAPH the company has put together an admittedly impressive render of a DeWalt drill, which is close to the real thing, though not identical to it.
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Sometimes, the most creative ideas fall the hardest.
-The post HTC’s Epic Tailspin Isn’t Even Its Fault appeared first on WIRED.
The hard part is asking people to strip down and give their shower a test run.
-The post Stepping Into This Shower Feels Like Hugging a Warm Cloud appeared first on WIRED.
McLaren's goal is to show off some of the bespoke options it can offer to wealthy buyers.
-The post McLaren’s New Coupe Is Too Fancy for the Word ‘Purple’ appeared first on WIRED.
It takes a little bit of work to lock your data down. But if you'd like to keep Facebook private and for-your-eyes-only, you still can.
-The post Here’s How to Use Facebook’s Mystifying Privacy Settings appeared first on WIRED.
On the eve of Flash Memory Summit (August 11-13), Toshiba has announced a full range of NVMe-based PCIe SSDs using Toshiba controllers and Toshiba MLC flash.
- -| Toshiba NVMe Drive Families | -|||
| Drive Series | -PX04P | -XG3 | -BG1 | -
| Form Factors and Interface | -PCIe 3.0 x4 HHHL / - 2.5” U.2 |
- PCIe 3.1 x4 M.2 2280 / 2.5” SATA Express | -M.2 2230 / - 16mm*20mm soldered module "M.2 1620" |
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| Capacities | -800 GB, 1600 GB, 3200 GB | -Up to 1024GB | -Up to 256 GB | -
| QSBC Error Correction | -Yes | -Yes | -No | -
| TCG Pyrite Security | -No | -Yes | -Yes | -
| Sequential Read | -3100 MB/s | -? | -? | -
| Sequential Write | -2350 MB/s | -? | -? | -
| 4kB Random Read IOPS | -660k | -? | -? | -
| 4kB Random Write IOPS | -185k | -? | -? | -
For the enterprise market, the PX04P series complements the SAS-based PX04S drives announced last week. The PX04P is available as a 2.5” drive with a U.2 (SFF-8639) connector, or as a PCIe expansion card. In either case, the drive supports four lanes of PCIe 3.0 and can make good use of that bandwidth to offer up to 3.1 GB/s sequential read speeds. With an endurance rating of 10 drive writes per day it is intended for relatively write-heavy workloads.
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For the high-performance client market, the XG3 is available in the M.2 2280 form factor using four lanes of PCIe 3.1, or as a 2.5” drive using the two-lane SATA Express connector. If these drives make it in to the retail channel, it means that consumers whose motherboards have a SATA Express connector but no M.2 slot will finally have an easy way to get in on the PCIe storage revolution.
- -For tablets and ultra-thin laptops, the BG1 is optimized for low power in very small packages. It comes as either an M.2 2230 card or a soldered-down module measuring 16mm by 20mm. The BG1's maximum capacity is only 256 GB, and given the power and size constraints it is probably not using a 4-lane PCIe connection.
- -The two client drive families implement support for the Trusted Computing Group Pyrite standard, a subset of TCG Opal that includes features necessary for things like secure boot but does not include encryption.
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Today at the SIGGRAPH 2015 Conference and Exhibition, Lenovo unveiled some new mobile workstations. The new ThinkPad P series are aimed at high-end professionals who need a lot of compute on the go. There are two models, with the P50 being a 15.6-inch version, which is a follow-on to the W541. The larger P70 features a 17.3-inch display. Both can pack some serious specifications under the hood, starting with the processor.
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Both models will feature a new processor from Intel, which is going to be the first official mobile version of their Xeon line. Intel has not released much information yet, but the Intel Xeon E3-1500M v5 is going to be powering these workstations from Lenovo. While we don’t have exact frequencies yet, the v5 version is going to be based on the just released Skylake architecture, which brings a lot of new technology to the plate. Lenovo will offer the new P series with up to 64 GB of DDR4 memory, arranged in 4 SODIMM slots. One of the reasons to use Xeon is that it supports ECC memory, and these workstations leverage that for the workloads they will be expected to run Also part of the new Xeon will be Thunderbolt 3, and both models have this connectivity. We're not sure yet if Thunderbolt is built into the Xeons, or if something like the Aipine Ridge as an IO controller for this.
- -On the GPU side, Lenovo has included a Quadro card, however the exact model is not known yet.
- -There is also up to 1 TB of PCIe SSD storage available, and up to a 2 TB hard drive. In addition to the Thunderbolt, there will also be HDMI 1.4, mini DisplayPort 1.2, ExpressCard, SDXC, and of course what workstation would not have Gigabit Ethernet, so the P Series has this as well.
- -Wireless is a new card from Intel as well, with the Intel 8260 card which is an 802.11ac model, and Lenovo will be offering it with Bluetooth 4.1 and vPro as well. For those that need connectivity on the go, Lenovo is offering a Sierra EM7445 LTE-A option as well.
- -| Lenovo P Series Mobile Workstations | -||||||
| - | P50 | -P70 | -||||
| CPU | -Intel Xeon E3 1500M v5 - Quad-core Skylake - ~47W TDP |
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| GPU | -NVIDIA Quadro - Model number unknown |
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| Memory | -Up to 64 GB DDR4-2133 ECC | -|||||
| Storage | -Up to 1TB PCIe SSD - Up to 2TB HDD |
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| Display | -15.6" 1920x1080 IPS w/optional touch - Optional 3840x2160 IPS - X-Rite Pantone Color Correction |
- 17.3" 1920x1080 IPS w/optional touch - Optional 3840x2160 IPS - X-Rite Pantone Color Correction |
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| Ports | -USB 3.0 x 4 - Mini DP 1.2 - HDMI 1.4 - Thunderbolt 3 - Docking Connector - Smart Card Reader - ExpressCard - SDXC - Headset |
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| Networking | -Intel 8260 Wireless-AC 802.11ac WiFi - Bluetooth 4.11 - Optional vPro - Gigabit Ethernet - Sierra EM7445 4G LTE-A |
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| Dimensions | -H: 0.96-1.02" (24.5-25.9 mm) - W: 14.86" (377.4 mm) - D: 9.93" (252.3 mm) |
- H: 1.17-1.2" (29.9-31.5 mm) - W: 16.4" (416 mm) - D: 10.8" (275.5 mm) |
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| Weight | -Starting at 5.6 lbs (2.5kg) | -Starting at 7.6 lbs (3.4 kg) | -||||
| Battery Life | -4 Cell 66 Whr - Optional 6 Cell 90 Whr |
- 8 Cell 96 WHr | -||||
| Price | -$1599+ | -$1999+ | -||||
Other than the larger display, the P70 can also be had with a DVD-RW drive, but hopefully but the time it launches they will at least offer Blu-ray as an option.
- -Speaking of the displays, Lenovo has packed some pretty impressive sounding displays into both models. The P series will offer a 1920x1080p as the base, with optional touch, and there is also a UHD 3840x2160 IPS offering as well. All of the panels are IPS models, and Lenovo has turned to X-Rite to offer Pantone color calibration out of the box, and over the lifetime of the device.
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The P series can be had with a good choice of operating systems too, from Windows 10 Pro, Windows 8.1 Pro, or downgrade rights to Windows 7 Professional. If you need Linux for your workstation, they will also be offering Ubuntu and RHEL.
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These MIL-SPEC tested and ISV Certified professional workstations will be available in Q4 2015 with the P50 starting at $1599, and the P70 starting at $1999.
- -Source: Lenovo
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Way back in April Samsung officially announced the Galaxy Tab A, a new tablet line with a 4:3 screen and metal body that screams "iPad alternative" in every language. So far we haven't heard of any carriers taking a bite, but Samsung's tablets are so ubiquitous that it was more or less inevitable. T-Mobile hasn't officially announced a Galaxy Tab A for the "Uncarrier," but the company's support site now has a listing for a branded version.
Read MoreA T-Mobile Version Of Samsung's 8-Inch Galaxy Tab A Has Popped Up On The Carrier's Website was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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Google announced the Stagefright vulnerability fix would start rolling out as an OTA today, but it has also added new factory images to the Nexus developer pages. That means bootloader unlocked Nexus phones and tablets can flash the new build immediately, even if your device is running some wacky ROM.
Read More[Update: Nexus 6 LYZ28J For T-Mobile] Google Posts Stagefright-Fixing LMY48I Factory Images For Seven Nexus Devices was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
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Today, Qualcomm launched a set of new SoCs, namely the Snapdragon 616, 412, and 212. These are updates to the Snapdragon 615, 410, and 210 respectively.
- -If you were to guess that these are relatively minor updates, you’d be right. First off, the Snapdragon 616 leaves the 615 mostly unchanged, with the top clockspeed of the little cluster jumping from 1 GHz to 1.2 GHz. However it should be noted that there are iterations of the 615 with a 1.11 GHz little cluster clock as well.
- -| Qualcomm's SoC Refresh Lineup | -|||||
| - | Snapdragon 616 | -Snapdragon 412 | -Snapdragon 212 | -||
| Manufacturing Process | -28nm LP | -28nm LP | -28nm LP | -||
| CPU | -4 x ARM Cortex A53 @ 1.7GHz - 4x ARM Cortex A53 @ 1.2GHz |
- 4 x ARM Cortex A53 @ 1.4GHz | -4 x ARM Cortex A7 @ 1.3GHz | -||
| ISA | -32/64-bit ARMv8-A | -32/64-bit ARMv8-A | -32-bit ARMv7 | -||
| GPU | -Adreno 405 | -Adreno 306 | -Adreno 304 | -||
| H.265 Decode | -Yes (1080p) | -Yes (720p) | -Yes (1080p) | -||
| Memory Interface | -32-bit LPDDR3-800 | -32-bit LPDDR2/3-600 | -32-bit LPDDR2/3-533 | -||
| Integrated Modem | -9x25 core, LTE Category 4, DC-HSPA+, DS-DA | -9x25 core, LTE Category 4, DC-HSPA+, DS-DA | -9x25 core, LTE Category 4, DC-HSPA+, DS-DA | -||
| Integrated WiFi | -Qualcomm VIVE 802.11ac 1-stream | -802.11n 1-stream | -802.11n 1-stream | -||
| eMMC Interface | -4.51 | -4.51 | -4.5 | -||
Meanwhile the Snapdragon 410 to 412 upgrade is a bit bigger, with the single cluster of A53s going from 1.2 GHz to 1.4 GHz and the memory interface going from a max of 533 MHz to 600 MHz. The Snapdragon 210 to 212 upgrade on the other hand is similar to the 615 to 616 upgrade, with the single cluster of A7s going from 1.1 to 1.3 GHz and are otherwise unchanged.
- -Overall it’s a bit unfortunate that none of these SoCs have made the move from a traditional polySiON gate oxide to a high-k metal gate process yet. However I suspect that in these lower tiers even the cost of HKMG would dramatically affect competitiveness and price.
- -Finally, at this point it's unclear when these new variants will begin shipping, but it’s likely that this part is sampling now. Which means that devices with these new SoCs should be available before the end of the year.
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Today, Google announced that they will undergo reorganization to better represent the growth that the company has seen in the past few years. As a result, Google the company will be now branded as Alphabet.
- -The big news here is that Google the internet services company will become one subsidiary of the larger Alphabet company - and said subsidiary still operating under the name Google - with the goal of better seperating Google's core business from what are now Alphabet's more experimental, far flung ventures. Consequently this change will see current parts of Google like X labs, Calico, Life Sciences, and other ventures shifted over to Alphabet. Meanwhile web services and software like Android, Maps, and Gmail will remain under the Google brand.
- -Organizationally, Larry Page will remain CEO of this reorganized company, and Sergey Brin will be President. Sundar Pichai will also be CEO of the new Google. Google stock is also immediately being converted over to Alphabet stock, and going forward Alphabet will be the reporting company, however Google-the-subsidiary results will be broken down and reported as part of Alphabet's results.
- -Ultimately it remains to be seen what effects this will have on the Google that we’ve known for the past few years. However given that the management structure has remained relatively constant in this move I suspect that business will continue on as usual.
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Kicking off this week in Los Angeles is SIGGRAPH 2015, the computer graphics industry’s annual professional conference. As the biggest graphics event of the year this show has become the Khronos Group’s favorite venue for delivering news about the state and development of OpenGL, and this year’s show is no exception. This week will see Khronos delivering news on both OpenGL and OpenGL ES, along with the formation of the OpenGL SC 2.0 working group.
- -Starting things off, we have the announcement of OpenGL ES 3.2. The latest version of OpenGL’s embedded variant is receiving a new revision this week, bringing the API up to version 3.2.
- -
With OpenGL ES 3.2, Khronos will officially be rolling the feature set of the Android Extension Pack into the core API. Until now these features have been available as optional extensions – which Google conveniently rolled into the AEP for Android developers – as not all original GPUs capable of supporting OpenGL ES 3.1 could also support the AEP, preventing those features from being rolled into OpenGL ES core.
- -Via these features, OpenGL ES 3.2 will bring support for tessellation, geometry shaders, compute shaders, and ASTC texture compression in to the core OpenGL ES standard. These are major features already found in desktop GPUs for some number of years now, and these days are found in all of the major mobile GPUs as well. Of particular interest here, this means that ASTC is finally part of the OpenGL ES core standard, and while it will take some time to filter out to new OSes and devices, this finally solves the problem with the lack of a standard texture compression format in the mobile space.
- -Meanwhile, as Khronos likes to note in their announcement, the inclusion of these features brings mobile GPUs much closer to parity with their desktop counterparts. At this point there are very few major OpenGL 4.x class (DirectX 11) features not accounted for in mobile GPUs in some form, so the gap between mobile and desktop has been further closed. And of course this means developers can push the envelope even harder on certain classes of graphical effects – especially geometry and compute-based physics simulations – though on a smaller scale more fitting of mobile hardware.
- -As far as OS support goes, Khronos and Google are also announcing today that OpenGL ES 3.2 will be adopted by a future version of Android – presumably 2016’s Android release – at which point OpenGL ES 3.2 will have effectively supplanted the AEP. Meanwhile we haven’t heard anything from the Apple camp about OpenGL ES in some time. iOS never received OpenGL ES 3.1 support, and with Apple gung-ho on Metal there’s no immediate reason to believe this will change with OpenGL ES 3.2.
- -Along with the release of OpenGL ES 3.2, Khronos is also announcing that they are forming a working group for OpenGL SC 2.0, which will be based on OpenGL ES 3.
- -
OpenGL SC is a little-known subset of OpenGL ES that is focused on what Khronos and its members call “safety critical” systems, such as automotive and avionics systems. OpenGL SC in turn is essentially a trimmed down version of OpenGL ES that removes some of OpenGL’s flexibility in order to allow easier driver validation and ultimately more reliable operation than what is accepted for OpenGL ES.
- -OpenGL SC was originally created in 2005 and based off of Open GL ES 1.0, the last fixed function version of OpenGL ES. With even time-tested hardware now well outstripping the capabilities of OpenGL SC 1.0, Khronos is forming a new working group to develop OpenGL SC 2.0. 2.0 in turn will be taking OpenGL GL ES 3.x and stripping it down in a similar manner as the original specification in order to produce a pared down version of the API that is more up to date. Khronos is looking to release OpenGL ES 2.0 in 2016.
- -Finally, on the desktop OpenGL front, Khronos will not be announcing a new version of OpenGL this year, making this the first SIGGRAPH in several years where Khronos doesn’t update their venerable graphics API. Citing that OpenGL has largely caught up with desktop hardware as of OpenGL 4.5 – and with attention no doubt split by Vulkan – the consortium is instead going to release several new extensions to unlock new features. These extensions represent features that are expected to be useful for developers and worth having under Khronos control, but are not universally supported by all desktop hardware, making their inclusion into an OpenGL core standard a thorny issue.
- -
Of particular interest on these extensions, one of the extensions will add support for multi-threaded shader compilation in OpenGL, with the goal of cutting down on loading times on shader-heavy workloads. Improved 64-bit integer support will also be coming to OpenGL as part of this extension set; 64-bit integers are still fairly rare in graphics workloads, but with many GPUs now supporting them, there are times where the extra precision is useful. And last but not least of course, as has been the case for the last few iterations of OpenGL, there will also be extensions to enable full OpenGL ES 3.2 interoperability, primarily to support developers in creating OpenGL ES applications.
- -Though it is interesting to note that some of the latest GPU features as exposed by Direct3D feature level 12_1 aren’t included in the extension sets, such as conservative rasterization. Right now a lot of resources are going into developing Vulkan, and while Khronos is committed to continuing to develop OpenGL separate from Vulkan, it may be that more extensive feature additions for OpenGL will have to wait until after Vulkan is done, and/or after all three major desktop vendors support these latest features.
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Today Google shipped a major update to their Hangouts application for Android. Ever since Hangouts for iOS was updated to 4.0 a little over a month ago Android users have been waiting for the update to make its way to Android. This update has been in the pipeline for quite some time, and it comes with a comprehensive redesign that brings the Hangouts app in line with Google's Material Design visual guidelines.
- -Visually, Hangouts 4.0 for Android is very similar to what shipped on iOS a little while ago. This isn't surprising, as Google's applications for iOS use their Material Design principles heavily. There are a few small differences, such as the spacing of the quick access buttons underneath the message input field, and the calling controls not being hidden behind the three dot overflow menu, but the overall appearance is the same. The appearance is definitely a departure from the previous design which had a strange dual list design which was separated into two tabs.
- -On top of the redesign, Google claims that Hangouts 4.0 has noticeable improvements to performance, reliability, and battery consumption. I personally have never had many issues with Hangouts on Android, but any improvements to performance are always welcomed.
- -Hangouts 4.0 is currently rolling out in stages, and users can expect to receive the update in the near future if they haven't already.
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Along with updates on OpenGL, Khronos is also offering a status update on the development of Vulkan at this year’s SIGGRAPH show. Khronos’s next-generation low-level API was announced last year, with further development taking off this year when it was announced at the API would be absorbing Mantle 1.0 and would operate under its current fiery name. The API is still in development, but Khronos has a few new pieces of information to share on the progress of development.
- -First and foremost, there has been a bit of speculation over how Vulkan would manage being a low-level API for both mobile and desktops, and Khronos is finally answering those questions. In the OpenGL ecosystem, new features would be exposed as optional extensions, and then standardized through core releases (e.g. OpenGL ES 3.2). Due to the factors that resulted in the creation of OpenGL ES, this was never a huge problem for either branch of OpenGL since each could be scoped as appropriate and integrated separately. However with Vulkan there is now just one API, and such a coarse approach would imply limiting Vulkan to just the features mobile GPUs could support, or making even more extensive use of extensions.
- -
To that end, today Khronos is announcing that Vulkan will support defined feature sets in order to help simplify application development and to more readily support mobile and desktop hardware under the same API. Feature sets, as implied by the name, will be groupings of features that will be advertised under a single feature set name, with the idea being that developers will build their programs against a handful of feature sets instead of a massive combination of individual extensions or capability bits (though developers can still use individual features if they’d like). Feature sets are nothing new to desktop graphics, with Microsoft’s DirectX standard having supported them since DirectX 11 in 2009.
- -While Khronos is announcing that Vulkan will support feature sets, they are not announcing the individual feature sets, and for good reason. In traditional Khronos consortium fashion, Khronos is going to leave the feature set definitions up to the platform holder rather than define those sets themselves. This means that it will typically be the OS developer defining the feature sets, as will be the case on Android. However because Khronos is leaving this up to the platform holder, for holders who opt not to define feature sets for their Vulkan-enabled platforms, Khronos will step in and define those feature sets. In other words platform holders get first dibs, but either way someone will take on the task of defining the feature sets.
- -Practically speaking, this means that while Android’s feature set will be defined by Google and one can expect SteamOS’s to be defined by Valve, Windows’ feature set will be defined by Khronos. Microsoft is a member of the Khronos consortium and could define it, however Microsoft has taken a hands-off approach on Khronos’s graphics APIs in recent years – presumably in favor of focusing on DirectX – so we’re not expecting to see Microsoft make those definitions. Feature definitions have always been a weak point of the Khronos consortium structure, so giving platform holders the right of first refusal will allow holders such as Google to break the deadlock of the consortium and dictate what features will be supported on Android. Otherwise Khronos will be able to get the job done, though one would expect not without the traditional politics of the consortium.
- -| Vulkan Feature Set Definitions | -|||
| Platform | -Expected To Be Defined By | -||
| Android | -Platform Holder - Google | -||
| SteamOS | -Platform Holder - Valve? | -||
| Linux | -Khronos? | -||
| Windows | -Khronos (Platform holder Microsoft is anticipated to decline) | -||
Speaking of Android, along with announcing their support for OpenGL ES 3.2 today, Google is also announcing that they will be supporting Vulkan in a future release of Android. As with OpenGL ES 3.2, no specific timeline or version of Android is mentioned, though it’s a safe bet that it will be the 2016 release. Android has traditionally heavily relied on OpenGL ES, and with Google sewing further ties with Khronos with the Android Extension Pack, it’s not surprising that Android will include support for Vulkan in order to bring low-level graphics programming to the ecosystem’s developers.
- -
Apple, for what it’s worth, has been absent from the Khronos announcements. As the company is pushing Metal on both mobile and desktop, it looks unlikely that they will be adopting Vulkan any time soon. In which case Vulkan wouldn’t quite match OpenGL ES 3.0’s universal reach due to Apple’s reliance on proprietary APIs.
- -Meanwhile on the testing and validation front, Khronos is announcing that they are teaming up with Google and the Android Open Source Project to release the Vulkan conformance tests as as open source tests. The tests themselves are being developed by Khronos members and contractors, with the Khronos/ASOP connection coming in to provide the frameworks. The tests themselves are portable to other platforms – Khronos made this point very clear in our briefing – but partnering up with Google helps Khronos get the tests out there sooner and to fulfil their open source goals.
- -
Finally, Khronos is also offering a bit more guidance on when to expect the first revision of Vulkan. Khronos’s goal for the specification is to release it by the end of the year, which means they should be wrapping up development of the specification soon. Meanwhile driver/runtime development has been occurring concurrently with the development of the specification, which means that the first drivers will be ready at the same time. Khronos does require that there are working implementations before a specification is released to production, so with any luck Vulkan will be ready as a development target and for early end-user testing by the end of 2015.
- -
Update: And speaking of Vulkan's ETA, there are multiple Vulkan demos on the SIGGRAPH showfloor, demonstrating the API and the current status of vendor implementations. First out of the gate is Imagination, showing off a demo running on Android.
- - -Small businesses and power users often need the flexibility offered by a file server when compared to a dedicated NAS. This is where storage servers based on Microsoft's Windows Server offerings and systems based on Red Hat or Ubuntu Linux distributions come into play. These servers can be bought as an appliance or assembled in a do-it-yourself (DIY) fashion. Today, we will be looking at the latter approach using as ASRock Rack C2750D4I Intel Avoton mITX motherboard in a 8-bay U-NAS NSC-800 chassis.
As a short side piece from our in depth review on Intel's 6th Generation Core processors, codename Skylake, the well-known overclocker Splave has posted some very interesting images on the processor itself. We confirmed we are free to use the pictures below from him.
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-Image from Splave
First up is an image of the Skylake i7 silicon die on package. With our trusty interpolation measuring skills, the die area for the GT2 enabled quad core system comes out at 9.05 mm by 13.52 mm, or 122.4 square mm. Let's put this into perspective with other dies:
- -| CPU Specification Comparison | -|||||
| CPU | -Process - Node |
- Cores | -GPU | -Transistor - Count - (Schematic) |
- Die Size | -
| Intel Skylake GT2 4C | -14nm | -4 | -GT2 | -? | -122.4mm2 | -
| Intel Broadwell-H GT3e 4C | -14nm | -4 | -GT3e | -? | -? | -
| Intel Haswell-E 8C | -22nm | -8 | -N/A | -2.6B | -356mm2 | -
| Intel Haswell GT2 4C | -22nm | -4 | -GT2 | -1.4B | -177mm2 | -
| Intel Haswell ULT GT3 2C | -22nm | -2 | -GT3 | -1.3B | -181mm2 | -
| Intel Ivy Bridge-E 6C | -22nm | -6 | -N/A | -1.86B | -257mm2 | -
| Intel Ivy Bridge 4C | -22nm | -4 | -GT2 | -1.2B | -160mm2 | -
| Intel Sandy Bridge-E 6C | -32nm | -6 | -N/A | -2.27B | -435mm2 | -
| Intel Sandy Bridge 4C | -32nm | -4 | -GT2 | -995M | -216mm2 | -
| Intel Lynnfield 4C | -45nm | -4 | -N/A | -774M | -296mm2 | -
| AMD Trinity 4C | -32nm | -4 | -7660D | -1.303B | -246mm2 | -
| AMD Vishera 8C | -32nm | -8 | -N/A | -1.2B | -315mm2 | -
This makes Skylake the smallest die size for a quad core desktop processor from Intel we have seen, and that is including the integrated graphics in that calcualtion. Depending on the exact architectural details, previously in Haswell the die area was a near even split for cores and graphics after the L3 cache and IO functions (PCIe, Memory, DMI) were removed.
- -We won't know exact transistor numbers until they are disclosed at Intel's Developer Forum in mid-August, as well as a false color image die shot to show how much die area the main parts of the architecture are using. Although given the similarity to Haswell in terms of feature set (it seems to be similar with a few minor additions such as fixed function units, slightly different libraries, dual memory channels, DMI 3.0, etc.), if we take the number of transistors that GT2 Haswell had (1.4 billion) and put them in the die area we measure from the image, this comes out to a 11.4 million transistors per mm2.
- -Die size aside, Skylake also has a substantially thinner package than Devil's Canyon:
- -
-Image from Splave
-Image from PCWatch
According to PCWatch, the package thickness of the Core i7-4770K is 1.1mm, compared to 0.8mm for Skylake. This is a direct result of using fewer PCB layers, and here we count five for Skylake and eight for Haswell.
- -There could be several reasons for this. The removal of the fully integrated voltage regulator (FIVR) might reduce the number of PCB layers for power planes. The nature of the 14nm die might facilitate a thinner package as well. The cynical answer is that it is used to drive down cost. In the motherboard industry, a PCB with more layers is substantially more expensive but simplifies design when there are more features - there's also a side argument if more layers or fewer layers is better for overclocking. If we transplant this thinking to the processor, it becomes a balance of cost vs. complexity. Either way, the retail price of the processor is still relatively consistent with the previous iterations. Another thought to add to the mix would be if Intel has plans in the works to launch higher end processors based on Skylake (Kaby Lake?) in the future. The slight change in Intel's processor naming scheme (4770K to 6700K, as in 70K to 00K) also points to the potential move later in the lifetime of the product. The only hint in the naming scheme from Intel is that the 'processor numbering reflects that these processors belong to the 6th Gen Intel Core family'.
- -The thinness of the package has implications for removing the lid/heatspreader of the processor as well. Splave notes that previous heatspreader methods involving force, such as vices that were common during Haswell's tenure, may not be appropriate due to the thinness of Skylake. Splave shows an image of a failed attempt by another user on a Skylake CPU:
- -
-Image from Splave
Instead, a razor method (and something warm such as a hairdryer or the bean bags that iFixit uses to warm up glue in smartphones to take them apart) to cut through the black adhesive between the package and the IHS is suggested and it what was used for the CPU above. As there are no FIVR resistors to worry about on the top of the package, the first resistance a razor blade will encounter after the black adhesive is the silicon die itself. All that being said, over at PCWatch they successfully have used a vice method.
- -
-Image from Splave
Interestingly the heatspreader for Skylake is heavier than that from Haswell by nearly 20%, moving up from 22g to 26g. Given the copper mass that usually sits on a high end processor this should not matter much, although basic aluminium coolers might see a small benefit here by virtue of the minor extra mass. This might also just be that the mounting requirements for Haswell and Skylake are the same, and the extra mass comes from the added z-height required to maintain the mounting as before.
- -So why are we talking about removing the heatspreader? Back with Haswell (as well as Ivy Bridge to a degree), it was discovered that the thermal interface material between the silicon die and the heatspreader was both an insufficient amount and lower quality than previous generations, as well as the heatspreader being far away from the CPU due to the black adhesive, causing more air bubbles and poorer heat transfer than is optimal. For a stock processor, this difference has little effect to the use of the system, but for overclockers it meant that they were more thermally limited than silicon limited with their overclocking.
- -
-Image courtesy of Idontcare
Devil's Canyon changed that - here was a better binned Haswell processor with a higher quality package, giving a ten degrees cooler system at load. It is worth noting that previously on certain platforms Intel had been providing a mixed metal interface (generalized as a soldered interface) between the silicon and the heatspreader, which is the best but most expensive option. If the cost of the interface is reduced by 0.1 cents, then that's a significant saving on millions of processors. Devil's Canyon was a small subset of sales, so spending that extra for that specific crowd could be seen as beneficial to Intel's perspective by overclockers.
- -
-Image from PCWatch
To paraphrase Splave again, he comments that the thermal paste (TIM)o n his Skylake is certainly worse than that of Devil's Canyon. If the extra mass on the IHS is coming from a taller heatspreader (by virtue of the smaller package substrate), then more TIM is needed otherwise there will be substantial air bubbling of the TIM between the CPU and the heatspreader. By replacing his own thermal paste and resecuring the heatspreader, he saw an 18°C drop in temperatures at his highest air overclock with the old paste (5.1 GHz at 1.48 volts) - from 96ºC that overheated to 78ºC on the warmest core. An 18°C drop is immense. Under those conditions, and based on rough testing not published in our Skylake review, it could equal another 100-400 MHz depending on the quality of the processor. PCWatch confirms that switching out the paste with CoolLaboratory’s Liquid Pro (a liquid metal adhesion interface) reduced temperatures at 4.6 GHz from 88ºC to 68ºC
- -
-Image from PCWatch
This throws up some questions - is this just a result of design decisions for cost, or is there a Devil's Canyon type processor coming later in the design cycle?
- -Source: Overclock.net, PCWatch
-
In a rather understated blog post, Intel made an interesting move at the end of last week by announcing that for the first time the Xeon platform is heading for mobile workstation platforms.
- -When I first heard this, I thought ‘wait, is it not already?’, given that I have seen laptops with Xeon processors in the past. The fact of the matter is that those previous platforms relied on desktop processors (either socketed or soldered) from the high end line and were only ever found in custom designs such as those from Clevo or Eurocom which promoted a more modular concept. As a result, these systems were typically heavy, demanding, and featuring more cores/cache/TDP than was expected for a laptop. We also saw consumer processors for notebooks with vPro, but these were typically not ECC memory verified. Intel’s announcement today changes this.
- -With specific mobile processors going Xeon, Intel can forge (with OEMs) a line of workstations that are more akin to the ultrabooks and notebooks we already see in the market but with certified professional level features. Intel is stating that by default all E3-1500M v5 processors will have vPro (which was to be expected) as well as Thunderbolt 3 using Type-C and access to ECC memory. So it does not become hard to imagine a professional version of the Dell XPS 13 or a MacBook / MacBook Professional type device that looks like a Core-M or a 15W clamshell with Thunderbolt 3, and/or ECC memory, while also having hardware-assisted security and ISV workstation level certification. It is our understanding we might expect announcements on specific products from manufacturers in the coming weeks.
- -This announcement does not give details about what types of processors (if they might be dual core, quad core, or have eDRAM) will be coming to the market, only that the mobile workstation market (according to IDC’s most recent report) has showed its sixth straight quarter of year-over-year growth which is a big pointer into the decision to release Xeon on mobile. We will be getting more details as time progresses – with Intel’s Developer Forum conference a week away, we may hear something then.
- -Source: Intel
-
Aleutia's fanless industrial PCs have seen deployment in a large number of developing countries as well as other extreme environments, thanks to their rugged nature and low power requirements. We reviewed the Aleutia Relia back in 2012, but, since then, a number of new models have been launched - the Aleutia R50 based on the NUC platform, the Aleutia T1 based on the Intel Atom lineup and the M200 fanless 2U servers with Intel Xeon CPUs.
- -In an attempt to improve the thermal performance of their fanless computing systems, Aleutia has decided to go in for a novel chassis design along with their latest updates to the R50 and T1 families. The R50 is still based on the NUC platform, but the T1 moves to a nano-ITX design.
- -
The Aleutia R50 Broadwell NUC
- -Traditional passively cooled systems involve a copper heatsink on the CPU transferring the heat to a larger chassis (made of steel or aluminum) through copper heat pipes. Copper heat sinks are quite costly (relative to the cost of the system as a whole) as one goes for bigger / heavier ones. Aleutia has re-imagined the chassis by developing a copper heat sink that has the same profile as the chassis itself (made clear in the photograph below).
- -
The holes in the heat sink help it get connected to the rest of the chassis. On the whole, this lends to theoretically better thermal performance and also lends a striking look to both the R50 and T1 PCs. In addition, the presence of more copper for heat dissipation purposes has allowed Aleutia to reduce the volume of the R50 by 24% compared to the Haswell version. We are excited to check out the thermal performance of these PCs once they start shipping later this month.
- -
The Aleutia T1 Bay Trail Nettop
- -In terms of the internal platform itself, the R50 now comes with the Broadwell i3 and i5 (15 W TDP) NUC configurations, while the new T1s will be based on the Bay Trail Celeron J1800 (10 W TDP). The new R50 will come in at £599 for the i3 / 8GB / 128GB configuration - reasonable for industrial PCs, but not the average retail consumer. The T1 will come in around £100 - £200. We should have more information and hands-on time at the Intel Developer Forum later this month.
-