Author: kenmay

The US will protect Japan against cyberattacks

The US knows that it’s not enough to protect its own networks against cyberattacks — its allies have to be safe, too. Appropriately, it’s agreeing to shield Japan from digital assaults against its military and critical systems. The move gives the island nation a big security boost (its online defense unit has a mere 90 people) and hopefully reduces the chances that less-than-sympathetic neighbors China and North Korea will compromise a strategically vital country. While it’s doubtful that the pact will deter many hacking attempts, it could make any local cyberwarfare campaigns that much tougher. [Image credit: AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko] Filed under: Internet Comments Source: Reuters

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The US will protect Japan against cyberattacks

NVIDIA’s GTX 980 Ti has enough power for solid 4K gaming

Who needs a $650 video card? Pretty much anyone who wants to play games in 4K at decent frame rates. That’s the basic pitch for NVIDIA’s new $650 GTX 980 Ti, its latest high-end video card which, naturally, packs in even more power than last year’s GTX 980 . The new card sports 2, 816 parallel processing CUDA cores and 176 texture units, around 38 percent more than the GTX 980, as well as 2 additional gigabytes of RAM giving it 6GB. It’s also based on NVIDIA’s new GM200 GPU, which is at the heart of the company’s absurdly expensive $1, 000 Titan X card . Basically, that means in the instances where its former heavyweight card slows down in 4K — for example, by running Grand Theft Auto V — the 980 Ti should shine. NVIDIA says the new card gets around 60 FPS in GTA V, while many benchmarks of that game with the 980 see between 35 and 45 FPS. The 980 Ti is also good news for anyone waiting for a good deal on the 980, since NVIDIA is also dropping the retail price of that card from $550 to $500. NVIDIA claims its memory bandwidth is also 50 percent faster than its predecessor, which makes a big difference when throwing huge textures around. Of course, the Titan X is an even faster option than the 980 Ti, but its high price makes it far out of reach for most, even hardcore gamers. Together with the $200 GTX 960 and the $330 GTX 970, NVIDIA now has powerful new cards for gamers of a wide variety of budgets. It’s just a shame that we didn’t see a slight price drop for the 970, which so far appears to be the best overall value for high-quality 1080p gaming. Filed under: Gaming , NVIDIA Comments

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NVIDIA’s GTX 980 Ti has enough power for solid 4K gaming

Tron 3 Is Cancelled

Dave Knott writes: Tron 3 won’t be coming to a theater near you. Disney had been developing a sequel to Tron:Legacy since the movie, made for $170 million, grossed $400 million worldwide. But now they have chosen not to move forward with a third installment in the sci-fi series, sources say. “Disney has had strong success with its live-action properties recently, including Maleficent and this year’s Cinderella, which earned $527.4 million worldwide. But it recently had a stumble with the $180 million live-action film Tomorrowland, which underperformed at the box office this past weekend with a $33 million U.S. debut.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Tron 3 Is Cancelled

LHC Season 2 Is About To Start Testing the Frontiers of Physics

An anonymous reader writes: The final preparations for the second run of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are in place. This week, it is expected to start taking new data with collisions at the record-breaking energy of 13 teraelectronvolts (TeV). There are a lot of expectations about this new LHC season. In one of CERN’s articles physicists tell of their hopes for new discoveries during the LHC’s second run. “They speak of dark matter, supersymmetry, the Higgs boson, antimatter, current theory in particle physics and its limits as well as new theoretical models that could extend it.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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LHC Season 2 Is About To Start Testing the Frontiers of Physics

Google Calendar Ends SMS Notifications

LuserOnFire writes: Google has sent out an email this morning that says in part: “Starting on June 27th, 2015, SMS notifications from Google Calendar will no longer be sent. SMS notifications launched before smartphones were available. Now, in a world with smartphones and notifications, you can get richer, more reliable experience on your mobile device, even offline.” You can find the announcement on Google’s support pages as well. “Richer” may be accurate, but I’m not sure that “more reliable” describes web-based notifications; that may be why the announcement linked does not apply for Google’s “Work, Education and Government customers.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Calendar Ends SMS Notifications

Solar Impulse begins its sun-powered flight across the Pacific

Solar Impulse has already shown the potential for sun-based aviation in its attempt to fly around the world , but it just embarked on its most ambitious trip yet. Pilot Andre Borschberg has taken off from Nanjing, China on a cross-Pacific flight whose first leg ends in Kalaeloa, Hawaii — 5, 061 miles away. That’s about 120 hours in the air, and should set records for both the longest single-seat flight ever as well as the first transpacific flight by a solar-powered aircraft. And did we mention that this even more dangerous than previous parts of the journey? After a certain point, Borschberg’s only choice in an emergency will be to bail over the Pacific and hope that his rescue goes smoothly. There’s still a long way to go after this. The next phase will see Solar Impulse travel “just” 2, 917 miles to Phoenix, Arizona, and there are still four legs after that — the last two of which may take nearly as long as the China-to-Hawaii run. It’ll be worth the effort if Borschberg and fellow pilot Bertrand Piccard can raise awareness about renewable energy, but this eco-friendly globetrotting definitely isn’t for the faint-hearted. [Image credit: Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images] Filed under: Transportation Comments Via: BBC Source: Solar Impulse

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Solar Impulse begins its sun-powered flight across the Pacific

Google Chrome Tops 1 Billion Users

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Venture Beat: At the I/O 2015 developer conference today, Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice president of product, announced that Chrome has passed 1 billion active users. Less than a year ago, Google revealed Android has over 1 billion active users. These are indeed Google’s biggest ecosystems. Google also shared that Google Search, YouTube, and Google Maps all have over 1 billion users as well. Gmail will reach the milestone next; it has 900 million users. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Chrome Tops 1 Billion Users

Emulator Now Runs x86 Apps On All Raspberry Pi Models

DeviceGuru writes: Russia-based Eltechs announced its ExaGear Desktop virtual machine last August, enabling Linux/ARMv7 SBCs and mini-PCs to run x86 software. That meant that users of the quad-core, Cortex-A7-based Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, could use it as well, although the software was not yet optimized for it. Now Eltechs has extended extended ExaGear to support earlier ARMv6 versions of the Raspberry Pi. The company also optimized the emulator for the Pi 2 allowing, for example, Pi 2 users to use automatically forwarding startup scripts. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Emulator Now Runs x86 Apps On All Raspberry Pi Models

Verizon FiOS reps know what TV channels you watch

If you call Verizon FiOS and try to cancel or downgrade your TV package, you might find that the FiOS rep knows almost as much about your TV viewing habits as you do. Verizon’s Rep Guidance software tells Verizon representatives what channels you watch to help them make a more effective sales pitch. The system, which also shows them how much Internet data you use and which pieces of TV equipment you use most, was detailed by a Verizon executive in a public presentation hosted by Data Driven NYC. A Quartz reporter  wrote about the presentation yesterday . Verizon “is now closely tracking exactly what you watch, what devices you use, and how much data you consume,” Quartz wrote. “It knows whether your household spars over DVR conflicts and how many hours your kids spend binge-watching shows on HBO. What’s more, the company is listening in on phone calls to customer service in real-time, with supervisors poised to jump at the moment they sense a fight brewing or hear trigger words from an unhappy customer, such as ‘switching to Time Warner Cable.'” Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Verizon FiOS reps know what TV channels you watch

Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht sentenced to life in prison

NEW YORK—Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison Friday, following a jury’s finding in February that the 31-year-old was the mastermind behind the Silk Road, once the Internet’s largest online drug marketplace. Operating online as “Dread Pirate Roberts,” Ulbricht worked with a small staff to control everything sold on the site. He was arrested in October 2013, and the government made its case against him during a three-week trial here earlier this year. Ulbricht pleaded for leniency  during the hearing. “I wish I could go back and convince myself to take a different path,” he said. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht sentenced to life in prison