Drobo’s new 5N is a speedy $600 NAS for when you need files, stat

Tragically, we only learned about Drobo's new 5N after we'd hired a warehouse the size of an aircraft hanger to store our latest, 12 million page novel. If you want to avoid our mistake, then the company's latest NAS might end your own storage woes. The new hardware is part of the same family as the 5D and Drobo Mini , except this one ditches the Thunderbolt connection in favor of a single gigabit-ethernet port. Inside, there's space for five 3.5-inch drives, giving you a maximum capacity of 20TB. An mSATA slot for an SSD drive will let you make use of Drobo's "data-aware tiering" feature, which gives applications like Adobe Lightroom and iTunes faster access to your NAS-stored files. The base model will set you back $600 and will be available in "mid December," which we impatiently hope is a euphemism for "tomorrow." Continue reading Drobo's new 5N is a speedy $600 NAS for when you need files, stat Filed under: Storage Comments Source: Drobo

Frame Latency Spikes Plague Radeon Graphics Cards

crookedvulture writes "AMD is bundling a stack of the latest games with graphics cards like its Radeon HD 7950. One might expect the Radeon to perform well in those games, and it does. Sort of. The Radeon posts high FPS numbers, the metric commonly used to measure graphics performance. However, it doesn't feel quite as smooth as the competing Nvidia solution, which actually scores lower on the FPS scale. This comparison of the Radeon HD 7950 and GeForce 660 Ti takes a closer look at individual frame latencies to explain why. Turns out the Radeon suffers from frequent, measurable latency spikes that noticeably disrupt the smoothness of animation without lowering the FPS average substantially. This trait spans multiple games, cards, and operating systems, and it's 'raised some alarms' internally at AMD. Looks like Radeons may have problems with smooth frame delivery in new games despite boasting competitive FPS averages." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Leaked chart appears to spill beans on Intel’s Haswell desktop CPU range

The folks over at VR-Zone have snagged a chart which purports to represent Intel's plans for the Haswell architecture in 2013. If genuine, then we can expect at least 14 new desktop CPUs to arrive next year, including a range-topping 3.5GHz Core i7 with 400MHz of headroom in boost mode and a TDP of just 84W -- i.e. midway between Sandy and Ivy Bridge in terms of power consumption, but not bad when you consider this'll be a higher performance architecture with no transistor shrinkage . Integrated graphics have also apparently been tweaked, with a reference to HD 4600. Since we can't expect Intel to confirm the leak, we'll just have to file this one in the "plausible" cabinet. (What, you didn't know we had filing cabinets?) Comments Via: Ubergizmo Source: VR-Zone (Translated)

New Mac trojan tricks users into paying pricey cell phone fees

Doctor Web Researchers have discovered new Mac-based malware that's designed to trick users into paying pricey subscription fees. Dubbed Trojan.SMSSend.3666, the trojan masquerades as "VKMusic 4 for Mac," a name that closely resembles an app used to listen to music on a popular Russian social networking site, according to a report published on Wednesday by Russia-based antivirus provider Doctor Web. An installer prompts users for a cell phone number, purportedly as part of the registration process. Users who respond to a subsequent text message then receive a bill charged to their mobile account. "Trojans of this family used to plague Windows users, but Trojan.SMSSend.3666 targets owners of Apple computers," Wednesday's advisory stated. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

FBI snares $850 million Butterfly botnet ring with help of Facebook

On Tuesday, the FBI announced that it had arrested ten people connected to a botnet that had spread through Facebook. Spread by a virus targeting Facebook users, the botnet caused over $850 million in losses to financial institutions, infected over 11 million computers, and stole credit card and bank account data. The botnet itself was shut down in October, according to an FBI statement. This is the second major outbreak of botnets based on the Butterfly (aka Mariposa) bot tool. The first incarnation, discovered in December 2008 and shut down a year later, infected over 12 million PCs worldwide and was spread primarily through file-sharing and instant messaging attacks. It also harvested financial information from over 800,000 victims. In the latest incarnation of Butterfly, the botnet spread itself using variants of Yahos, a virus that spreads itself by sending links via social networks and instant messaging. Victims clicked on the link, launching Yahos' attack. The malware, which in some variants disguised itself as an NVIDIA video driver , then downloaded and installed the botnet controls and browser exploits that captured users' credit card and bank account information. The spread of viruses like Yahos prompted Facebook to   partner with McAfee in 2010 to provide tools to users to clean infected systems. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

GE uses dual piezo jets to keep a Core i7 laptop cool, play a...

Cooling fans are the bane of many a laptop user's existence. The tiny things are often over-taxed right out of the box and, after a year or two worth of dust and detritus gets in them, they complain more and more loudly. As much as we hate them, engineers hate them more, as they take up precious space beneath the keyboard and draw precious juice from the battery. GE has a better solution, so-called dual piezo cooling jets. They're just 1mm thick, could consume a fraction of the power of a fan and contain no moving parts -- at least, not in the traditional sense. As a demo of their potential, GE created a prototype Core i7-powered laptop, cooled only by these jets. Click on through for our impressions. Gallery: GE Global Research dual piezo cooling jet prototype Continue reading GE uses dual piezo jets to keep a Core i7 laptop cool, play a merry tune (hands-on video) Filed under: Laptops , Science Comments

FreedomPop launches free home wireless to compete with low-end DSL

FreedomPop's new Hub Burst will begin shipping in January 2013. FreedomPop Just over three months after launching its free portable hotspot , FreedomPop now says its ready for the second phase of its expansion plan—a free home wireless connection. Like its portable device, which requires an $89 deposit to get 500MB of free mobile data over WiMAX, this new device (also with an $89 deposit) will offer 1GB of free data in nearly all of the 80 largest urban markets across the United States. “You’ll get speeds of 9 to 12Mbps when it’s fully optimized,” FreedomPop’s CEO Stephen Stokols told Ars, saying that it would be comparable to DSL. Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

How Websites Know Your Email Address the First Time You Visit

An anonymous reader writes "Darren Nix works for 42Floors, a business that uses its website to help people find office space. He recently received a marketing email for a service that offered to identify visitors to his website. After squeezing some information out of the marketer and playing around with a demo account, he now explains exactly how sketchy companies track your presence across multiple websites. The marketer offered to provide Nix with 'tracking code that would sit in your web site' which would 'grab a few key pieces of data from each visitor.' This includes IP addresses and search engine data. The marketer's company would then automatically analyze the data to try to identify the user and send back whatever personal information they've collected on that user from different websites. Thus, it's entirely possible for a site to know your name, email address, and company on your very first visit, and without any interaction on your part. Nix writes, 'A real-world analogue would be this scenario: You drive to Home Depot and walk in. Closed-circuit cameras match your face against a database of every shopper that has used a credit card at Walmart or Target and identifies you by name, address, and phone. If you happen to walk out the front door without buying anything your phone buzzes with a text message from Home Depot offering you a 10% discount good for the next hour. Farfetched? I don't think so. ... All the necessary pieces already exist, they just haven't been combined yet.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Guatemala Judge Orders McAfee Released

An anonymous reader points out an AP report which says a judge in Guatemala has ordered the release of John McAfee from a detention center. "Lawyer Telesforo Guerra said the judge notified him verbally of the ruling, but added that it may take a day for formal written notification to win McAfee's release, possibly as soon as Wednesday." McAfee, on the run from Belizean police, was arrested in Guatemala several days ago after making himself known to authorities. He did so because a pair of reporters who were interviewing him posted a photo which included metadata on the photo's location. In a live broadcast on Sunday, McAfee expressed a desire to return to the U.S. "I simply would like to live comfortably day by day, fish, swim, enjoy my declining years. My long-term plan was simply to get away from Belize, think, and decide what to do." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

California law enforcement moves to buy drones, draws controversy

UAV set up for Wylye intersection. QinetiQ group Since Congress passed legislation in February ordering the Federal Aviation Administration to fast-track the approval of unmanned aerial vehicles—more colloquially known as drones—for use by law enforcement agencies, police and sheriff departments across the country have been scrambling to purchase the smaller, unarmed cousins of the Predator and Reaper drones which carry out daily sorties over Afghanistan, Yemen, and other theaters of operation. Alameda County in California has become one of the central battlegrounds over the introduction of drones to domestic police work. Earlier this year , Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern raised the hackles of local civil libertarians (and there are quite a few of those in the county, which encompasses Berkeley and Oakland) by declaring his intention to purchase a drone to assist with “emergency response.” According to Ahern, Alameda Sheriff's personnel first tested a UAV in fall 2011 and gave a public demonstration of the machine's usefulness for emergency responses during the Urban Shield SWAT competition in late October. Were Alameda County to purchase a drone, it would set a precedent in California, which has long been an innovator in law enforcement tactics: from SWAT teams (pioneered in Delano and Los Angeles) to anti-gang tactics such as civil injunctions. The first documented incident of a drone being used to make an arrest in the United States occurred in North Dakota in June 2011, when local police received assistance from an unarmed Predator B drone that belonged to US Customs and Border Protection . The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Drug Enforcement Administration have also reportedly used drones for domestic investigations. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments