Google shut down its Glass explorers program earlier this year, bringing development of the wearable back behind closed doors. However, it turns out that Google is already ready to show off early versions of Glass 2, reportedly sending prototype units out to selected partners. The few people to have a …
Read More »Monthly Archives: February 2015
Qualcomm fits-in ARM Cortex-A72, 4K support into mainstream SoCs
Qualcomm, the world’s largest supplier of mobile application processors, has introduced its new lineup of mobile system-on-chips for mainstream smartphones, tablets and other devices. The new Snapdragon 600-series application processors feature ARM’s latest Cortex-A72 cores, support 4K video capture and playback, advanced storage technologies, a number of other high-end features …
Read More »How fast is the speed of light really?
Update: Thanks to our readers for pointing out some of the problems with this piece. Mark Smith came up with a short and sweet analogy for what's going on in the video below: “The times given are how long *we* perceive it takes light to travel those distances. Relativity tells …
Read More »Kid-friendly Youtube is on the way
Although Youtube is certainly one of the cleaner online video sharing sites, requiring a signed-in account for anything more titillating than a Katy Perry video, Google is looking to make it easier for parents to keep some aspects of the site from their childs' eyes, by introducing a new kid-friendly …
Read More »Epic to seed promising UE4 devs with $5 million
Epic Games has always fostered new development in the gaming industry. As well as offering its latest and greatest game engine to everyone and anyone that wants to give it a try, for just $19 a month, it's been giving away huge prizes and funding to developers for years with …
Read More »Asus ROG G751J Review
The specification of the Asus Republic Of Gamers G751J follows the tried and true combination of an Intel Core i7-4710HQ with Nvidia Maxwell graphics (GTX 970M in this instance), loads of DDR3 memory and a solid state drive to handle Windows and applications. The Asus Republic Of Gamers G751J laptop is …
Read More »Tim Sweeney: VR will look as good as real life 10 years from now
Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games and one of the best experts in computer graphics and video games in the world, believes that virtual reality will have dramatic influence on gaming. Moreover, rapid development of VR will mean that 10 years from now it will be impossible to distinguish …
Read More »Apple plans to release its own cars by 2020 – report
Apple has always been a rather creative company, which developed tens of devices many of which never reached the market. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in the late 1990s, he cancelled the vast majority of projects to focus on promising ones. Nowadays Apple’s product lineup is broader than ever. …
Read More »Apple will continue to repair MacBooks with GPU fault
It seems that some MacBooks that were sold between February of 2011, until December of 2013 started to develop some pretty severe graphical issues when they were used. Back in 2014 a class action lawsuit was even brought against Apple, as it knew that the laptops were defective and failed to properly compensate customers. …
Read More »Would you pay for YouTube? Google think so
It's no secret that YouTube is the go to source for instantly watching online videos these days, with YouTube access being a consideration when people are buying anything from tablets and phones, to consoles and TVs, let alone PCs. But now that YouTube is in such a dominant position, as …
Read More »50% of Samsung’s DRAM will be made using 20nm process in 2015 – report
Samsung Electronics will lead the market of dynamic random access memory with transition to 20nm fabrication process, a media report citing sources with knowledge of the matter claims. Over half of the company’s DRAM this year will be made using 20nm manufacturing technology. Demand for higher-performance and higher-density computer memory …
Read More »Spies probably have the keys to your phone
Everything your phone transmits to and receives from your network providers phone tower is encrypted, so that only the network operator can receive your calls and data and route them as you request. This is all encrypted with a set of keys on the sim card inside your phone and another set …
Read More »Sony wants to sell overpriced memory cards for ‘premium sound’
Sony is doing a lot of restructuring at the moment in an effort to try to return to profitability. However, this might not be the answer. Sony is currently working on a new memory card that promises ‘premium sound' and as you would imagine, it's going to cost more than …
Read More »Report suggests that PS4 will outsell Xbox One 40% by 2019
A new report from Strategy Analytics claims that the PlayStation 4 will maintain its strong lead over the Xbox One, outselling Microsoft's console by 40 per cent by 2019. The results of the study were released this week, predicting sales figures for both consoles over the next four years. According …
Read More »Samsung buys LoopPay to compete with Apple Pay
Samsung has acquired LoopPay, a Kickstarted mobile wallet provider that allows payments to take place on existing magnetic strip readers. This will help Samsung compete against Apple's new Apple Pay service, which has taken off in the US and is due to expand to other territories this year. Speculation about …
Read More »Nvidia to bring back overclocking of GeForce GTX 900M graphics adapters
Nvidia Corp. said on Thursday that it will bring back support of GeForce GTX 900M overclocking in its forthcoming drivers. The company did so after owners of notebooks featuring the aforementioned graphics adapters for mobile PCs got very upset about the lack of overclocking support in the latest drivers. Last …
Read More »Studio behind Xbox One Phantom Dust reboot shuts down
Microsoft had a pretty decent E3 presentation in 2014, one of the games to be teased at the show was a reboot of Phantom Dust, which was being developed by Darkside Games. Unfortunately, the independent studio has now shut down after Microsoft decided to take the game in another direction. …
Read More »Dell starts accepting bitcoin payments in UK
Dell has announced that it plans to start accepting bitcoins as a form of payment in the UK, following a successful trial of the digital currency over in the US. Dell initially began accepting crypto-currency as a form of payment in July last year but it was a US only …
Read More »Some Samsung Smart TVs aren’t encrypting user voices
Samsung's Smart TVs have come under fire recently thanks to a poorly worded privacy policy and an advert insertion bug affecting users in Australia. However, things just seem to keep getting worse as now it turns out that some Smart TV models are uploading user voices to the internet in …
Read More »Assassin’s Creed Unity patch to abandon companion app
Ubisoft has gone ahead and released the fifth Assassin's Creed Unity patch, several months after the title's initial launch. Now those who still aren't done with the game can play with all of the chests unlocked, removing the need to play the companion app. The patch has already hit the …
Read More »Lenovo faces criticism over shipping PCs with Superfish installed
Lenovo has a bit of a situation on its hands after customers and the security conscious noticed that some Lenovo PCs were shipping with an install tool known as Superfish on-board, which can result in adware as well as put communications at risk. It turns out, that some customers aren't too …
Read More »Google warns against FBI demands for expanded hacking
Currently, government agencies and local police forces in the US, are only able to obtain permission to hack into the computers and other electronic devices of suspects in their region and only then once they have a warrant. However, now the FBI and other organisations want to expand that power …
Read More »ARM Cortex-A57 and Intel Silvermont – most efficient mobile cores, says study
At present there are about half of a dozen different general-purpose processing cores for various low-power system-on-chip solutions. There are high-performance, low-power, big and small cores. But when all of these metrics are taken into account, ARM and Intel have the edge over their rivals. Massive popularization of mobile and …
Read More »New Alien movie incoming from District 9 director
If the recent success of Alien: Isolation has taught us anything, it's that despite the abortive efforts of the Aliens vs Predator movies and the Promethius film, people still love the Alien franchise; but more so for its roots than its branches. Fortunately then, it looks like we might get …
Read More »Alien star gave our solar system a fly-by 70k years ago
Although one of the common ways sci-fi writers like to make their planets more exciting is adding a second sun to the mix, it's not something we're ever likely to experience here on Earth. However our ancestors might have, as 70,000 years ago, another star did a fly-by of our …
Read More »Sega to expand mobile division with new buyouts
Sega Networks, the mobile arm of the classic gaming publisher and developer is looking to expand its influence in the West, by investing heavily in two mobile game developers and buying one out entirely. With plans to launch more than 30 free to play mobile titles in the near future, …
Read More »Plextor M6e Black Edition PCIe 256GB Review
Today we look at the Plextor M6e Black Edition. This SSD product supports PCI Express Gen 2 x 2 and potentially delivers more performance than a simple SATA 3 capable Solid State Drive. Rated sequential speeds of the Plextor M6e Black Edition are said to hit 770MB/s. It uses the …
Read More »Samsung’s eMMC 5.1 chips boost performance of mobile storage
Samsung Electronics this week introduced the world’s first NAND flash storage chips that comply with the eMMC 5.1 specification. The new solutions will significantly improve performance of embedded storage inside mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. The eMMC 5.1 storage devices from Samsung are offered in 16GB, 32GB and …
Read More »Want to buy 50,000 Bitcoins?
In a rare opportunity, thanks to the United States Marshals Service and Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road fame, you are now able to bid on 50,000 seized Bitcoins. These Bitcoins are currently worth around £7.7 million (or $11.9 million USD) and were seized from Ulbricht when the feds snatched his laptop away from him in a San …
Read More »Lenovo to spend $2 billion on R&D of servers and smartphones
Lenovo Group, the world’s largest maker of personal computers and one of the fastest growing high-tech companies, plans to spend about two billion of U.S. dollars on research and development of smartphones and servers in the next three years. The money will help the company to enter new markets with …
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