Author: kenmay

Telstra To Roll Out 1000Mbps 4G

An anonymous reader writes: After beginning support for LTE Category 9 last year on their 4Gx network (with it’s theoretical max download speed of 450Mbps), Telstra has now announced that they will upgrade their network to support LTE category 16. In theory, this means that if a customer has the correct equipment in the correct location, they will be able to have a maximum theoretical download speed of 1000Mbps, and a maximum theoretical upload speed of 150Mbps. Of course, it’s unlikely that customers will be able to sustain these speeds, but Telstra lists on their website that 4GX devices currently have a typical download speed of 2 to 75Mbps on 4GX. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

View article:
Telstra To Roll Out 1000Mbps 4G

Valve releases tool to test whether your PC is VR ready

(credit: Valve ) With HTC beginning to take pre-orders for the SteamVR-powered Vive headset in just one week, you may well be wondering if your PC tower is up for running high-end VR without any distracting lag. Worry not: Valve has just released a SteamVR Performance Test Tool to determine whether you are technologically ready to shell out $799 for an HTC Vive . Unlike Oculus’ own Rift Compatibility Tool , which just seems to check your PC parts against a list without actually running a diagnostic, Valve’s tool takes a few minutes to run through a small, non-interactive animation of a GLaDOS robot repair facility. The goal is to “determine whether your system is capable of running VR content at 90fps and whether VR content can tune the visual fidelity up to the recommended level,” according to a Valve blog post . Afterwards, the tool gives an average fidelity rating (on a numerical and Low/Medium/High/Very High scale). It also tells you what percentage of tested frames dipped below the recommended 90 fps for a smooth VR experience and whether any of those frames were bound by the CPU, rather than the GPU. The tool does warn that “the varying CPU cost of positional tracking and processing-intensive applications” could mean actual software runs worse than the test would suggest and warns that it doesn’t test for available USB slots either. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

See the article here:
Valve releases tool to test whether your PC is VR ready

The Most Important New Smartphone Feature Is a Little Magic Slot

When LG announced its new flagship smartphone, the G5 , at Mobile World Congress yesterday, it did something radically different. At the base of the phone, LG built a small slot it might just change everything. Read more…

Read More:
The Most Important New Smartphone Feature Is a Little Magic Slot

The Inside of This $700 Battery Is Mostly a Sponge

“You get what you pay for” is one of those tried-and-true idioms that’s especially relevant in high-end electronics. Want a nice camera or a computer that’ll actually play Max Payne 3 ? Expect to shell out top dollar. Read more…

More:
The Inside of This $700 Battery Is Mostly a Sponge

This Is What Millions of Hungry Jellyfish Sound Like

Every day, troves of hungry marine organisms—shrimp, jellyfish, squid and bony fish—migrate from the ocean’s murky depths to the surface. For the first time, marine biologists have captured the sound of their collective lunch outing. May it be the sonic backdrop to all of your future, jellyfish-induced nightmares. Read more…

Follow this link:
This Is What Millions of Hungry Jellyfish Sound Like

Linux Virtual Ethernet Bug Delivers Corrupt TCP/IP Data

jones_supa writes: Vijay Pandurangan from Twitter warns about a Linux kernel bug that causes containers using Virtual Ethernet devices for network routing to not check TCP checksums. Examples of software stacks that use Virtual Ethernet devices are Docker on IPv6, Kubernetes, Google Container Engine and Mesos. The kernel flaw results in applications incorrectly receiving corrupt data in a number of situations, such as with bad networking hardware. The bug dates back at least 3 years or more – it is present in kernels as far back as the Twitter engineering team has tested. Their patch has been reviewed and accepted into the kernel, and is currently being backported to -stable releases back to 3.14 in various distributions. If you use containers in your setup, Pandurangan recommends that you deploy a kernel with this patch. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

View article:
Linux Virtual Ethernet Bug Delivers Corrupt TCP/IP Data

Verizon Is Already Testing Its 5G Hardware

The fifth generation of mobile networks—or 5G for most of us—is still a little way off providing your phone with data. But at Mobile World Congress, Verizon has announced that it as least already testing the technology. Read more…

Link:
Verizon Is Already Testing Its 5G Hardware

Amazon’s Free Shipping Minimum Is Now $49

Even if you don’t have Prime, you can still get free shipping from Amazon if you reach a spending threshold. Up until recently, that threshold was $35, but Amazon just raised its free shipping minimum to $49. Read more…

See original article:
Amazon’s Free Shipping Minimum Is Now $49

Pound sinks as Britain weighs EU exit

Britain is to hold a referendum this summer on whether to leave the EU . Proponents of “Brexit” want to see less immigration and more self-determination ; advocates of staying in the union anticipate horrors both economic and human if the country becomes, once again, an “island” . Polls are running neck and neck . Britain is important enough that its departure could deal a mortal blow to the European Union ; the Scots and Irish, in particular, are uneasily tied to England’s destiny. Meanwhile, the pound is headed south , presumably in search for warmer climes.

Read More:
Pound sinks as Britain weighs EU exit