This week, Sony unleashed a battery of expensive audio gear that claims to support “high-resolution audio” which, like “ultra high-definition” in the video world, sounds pretty snazzy. But what does high-resolution audio mean? And will HRA really make the music sound better? Read more…
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What Is High-Resolution Audio?
UK mobile providers, including O2 and its reseller GiffGaff, are blocking commercial VPN providers that help to secure sensitive communications from criminals, hackers and government spies.
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UK censorwall bans VPNs
UnknowingFool writes “For consumers who had hoped that Microsoft would greatly upgrade their recent entries into the tablet market, leaks and rumors have said that both machines will receive modest hardware changes. Surface Pro 2 will sport new Haswell processors which will increase battery life to 7 hours. RAM is expected to increase from 4GB to 8GB. Surface (formerly RT) will get Tegra 4 processors. The only other confirmed change will be new kickstands that have 2 positions instead of one.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Surface Pro 2 and Surface 2: Now With New Kickstand!
New submitter Zyrill writes “The German company Stuttgarter Struktur AG has released a free and open source implementation of the H.265 codec, also termed ‘High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC)’ which is now available on Github. At the same video quality, H.265 promises roughly half the bitrate as compared to H.264. Also, resolutions up to 8K UHD (7680 × 4320 px) are supported. The software is licensed under LGPL. Quoting from the homepage where the software is also available for download: ‘[This software] is written from scratch in plain C for simplicity and efficiency. Its simple API makes it easy to integrate it into other software. Currently, libde265 only decodes intra frames, inter-frame decoding is under construction. Encoding is planned to be added afterwards.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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LGPL H.265 Codec Implementation Available; Encoding To Come Later
Tor Project Researchers have found a new theory to explain the sudden spike in computers using the Tor anonymity network: a massive botnet that was recently updated to use Tor to communicate with its mothership. Mevade.A, a network of infected computers dating back to at least 2009, has mainly used standard Web-based protocols to send and receive data to command and control (C&C) servers, according to researchers at security firm Fox-IT. Around the same time that Tor Project leaders began observing an unexplained doubling in Tor clients , Mevade overhauled its communication mechanism to use anonymized Tor addresses ending in .onion. In the week that has passed since Tor reported the uptick, the number of users has continued to mushroom. “The botnet appears to be massive in size as well as very widespread, ” a Fox-IT researcher wrote in a blog post published Thursday . “Even prior to the switch to Tor, it consisted of tens of thousands of confirmed infections within a limited amount of networks. When these numbers are extrapolated on a per country and global scale, these are definitely in the same ballpark as the Tor users increase.” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Sudden spike of Tor users likely caused by one “massive” botnet
The new Yoga 2 Pro is a high-res follow-up to one of the better convertible laptop designs on the market. Lenovo The original IdeaPad Yoga was one of our favorite early convertible laptops, not least because the “convertible” part didn’t ruin the “laptop” part. Its many contortions were also genuinely useful, even if the weight and exposed keyboard made it a bit too awkward to use as a dedicated tablet. We got a belated 11-inch version of the original Yoga a bit earlier this year, but today at IFA, Lenovo has formally announced a pair of true sequels that look to improve the design without radically altering its formula. From the folding hinge to the bright “clementine orange” color, the Yoga 2 Pro is very much a successor to the first Yoga. It loses some weight and some thickness, dropping to 0.61 inches thick and 3.06 pounds from the 0.68 inches and 3.4 pounds of the original. It also includes Intel’s new Haswell processors (and its new integrated GPUs—there’s no dedicated graphics option available), but the biggest upgrade is the 13.3-inch 3200×1800 touchscreen. At 276 PPI, this is a substantial upgrade over the 1600×900 display of the original, though the (included) Windows 8.1 Pro can have some issues with high-PPI displays . Like the older Yoga, the new one is indistinguishable from a regular laptop most of the time. Lenovo The other specs are a mixed bag—you’ve got 8GB of DDR3L, standard 128, 256, and 512GB SSDs, a backlit keyboard, and Bluetooth 4.0 (all good), but there’s only one USB 3.0 port (the other is USB 2.0) and a frustratingly low-end 2.4GHz-only 802.11n Wi-Fi adapter. We understand laptops that don’t ship with 802.11ac yet, since that’s still a new standard and many people won’t have upgraded to a compatible router just yet. But to ship a high-end laptop without dual-band 802.11n seems like a seriously missed opportunity. The laptop also promises around six hours of battery life, which would have been on the low end of average for an Ivy Bridge Ultrabook but is a bit disappointing for a Haswell model. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Lenovo’s new Yoga 2 Pro has the same flexible hinge, 3200×1800 display
PayPal’s status as the mobile payment method of choice for the masses is beset upon all sides by many would-be usurpers . What’s the company doing to stay on top? Beefing up the feature set of its apps for iOS and Android in a big way today — adding a full-on mobile wallet, automatically-applied deals and discounts and some new ways to order stuff and pay for it. The wallet feature lets people pay with a PayPal account, a credit or debit card, bank account or a line of Bill Me Later credit that can be applied for within the app. Like Google Wallet, the new PayPal app incorporates deals and discounts that are then automatically applied when you pay. Speaking of which, you can still send money the old-fashioned PayPal way, but the new app also integrates ordering, couponing and paying within PayPal’s merchant network . We got to see the new app in action, so join us after the break for more.%Gallery-slideshow79631% Filed under: Software , Mobile Comments
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PayPal app becomes a deal offering mobile wallet payment platform
Researchers have been kicking around the idea of a cranial porthole for years – a skylight for your skull that doctors could peer through to monitor brain cancer, or treat neurological disorders. But glass is too fragile, and traditional skull implants are opaque. Now, a team of bioengineers has developed an implant using a strong, transparent material that could make brain-windows a reality. Read more…
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Transparent skull implant is the next step in body mods (and medicine)
A team of 20 researchers from University of Alberta proudly announced a commendable achievement on Thursday. Using no fewer than five different experimental methods, they’ve discovered over 3, 000 different chemical compounds in human urine. And it only took them seven years . Read more…
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After Seven Years of Research, We Finally Know What’s in Your Pee
We get it: speeds and feeds aren’t everything. But this might be a rare case where a chip could actually make the whole story. Toshiba announced the Satellite Click today, and until you get to the spec sheet, it reads like a totally forgettable product. What we have here is a 13-inch detachable tablet with a 500GB hard drive inside the tablet and an extra battery inside the keyboard dock. Sounds like lots of other things you’ve read about, right? Well, lo and behold, the Click is actually one of the first products to ship with AMD’s Temash chip, whose graphics prowess we showed you back at CES . To be fair, this is a dual-core 1GHz A4-1200 processor with AMD Radeon HD 8180 graphics, not the quad-core one we demoed earlier. Even so, the general concept is the same: this is a system-on-a-chip tailored for tablets that makes use of AMD’s 28nm Graphics Core Next architecture, which you’ll also find inside some of AMD’s discrete GPUs. Depending on the exact chip, Temash promises to compete with Intel’s Atom processors as well as its Core i3 series. Unlike a Core i3 tablet, though, Temash allows for a fanless design, more akin to what you’d expect from an Atom or ARM-powered device. Also, it drives down the cost. The Click will go for about $599, making it $150 cheaper than the Core i3-powered HP Split x2 , which also has a 13-inch screen, dual batteries and a 500-gig hard drive in the dock. Granted, there are likely to be tradeoffs, and we suspect battery life could be one of them, if not speed. A Toshiba rep estimated runtime at three to four hours for the tablet only, and six to seven hours with the dock. That wouldn’t match up well against a new Haswell hybrid but then again, some of its competitors (like the Split x2) are based on Ivy Bridge, which isn’t so hot in the longevity department either. The Click will be available later this month exclusively at Best Buy and on Toshiba’s site. Hopefully, though, we’ll get some hands-on time later this week and see whether its graphical might is as great as promised.%Gallery-slideshow77126% Filed under: Tablets , AMD Comments
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Toshiba’s Satellite Click detachable PC promises better graphics than your typical budget system