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Intel Promises ‘Optane’ SSDs Based On Technology Faster Than Flash In 2016

holy_calamity writes: Intel today announced that it will introduce SSDs based on a new non-volatile memory that is significantly faster than flash in 2016. A prototype was shown operating at around seven times as fast as a high-end SSD available today. Intel’s new 3D Xpoint memory technology was developed in collaboration with Micron and is said to be capable of operating as much as 1000 times faster than flash. Scant details have been released, but the technology has similarities with the RRAM and memristor technologies being persued by other companies. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Intel Promises ‘Optane’ SSDs Based On Technology Faster Than Flash In 2016

Parallels 11 brings Microsoft’s Cortana to Macs before Siri

The latest version of Parallels, the popular Windows virtualization tool for Mac OS X, almost feels like it’s trolling Apple. One of Parallels 11’s key features, alongside full Windows 10 support, is its ability to put Microsoft’s Cortana right on your OS X desktop. That’s right — you could have a Windows-powered virtual assistant on your Mac long before Siri reaches the desktop. Parallels has already made it possible to run Windows apps directly on your Mac desktop for years with its “Coherence mode, ” but this latest update marks the first time it’s brought over a Windows feature on its own. Slideshow-313636 In a brief demonstration, Parallel’s Cortana feature (which requires a Windows 10 virtual installation, naturally) worked just like it did on Windows 10 proper, with decent voice recognition and no noticeable delays. It can even take advantage of your Mac’s location data, making it practically indistinguishable from a native OS X app. Parallels 11 also packs in the usual performance improvements: It can launch and shut down Windows around 50 percent faster than the last version, and a new “travel mode” can save up to 25 percent of your battery life. But really, the main reason you’d want to upgrade is to put Cortana on your OS X desktop and freak out all your friends. Parallels 11 is available today for $80, though users of the past two versions can upgrade for $50. And if you need more out of your Windows virtual machine, there’s also Parallels 11 for Mac Pro Edition, which will take advantage of that machine’s beefy hardware. It’ll cost you $100 a year, or $50 a year if you’re upgrading from Parallels 9 or 10. Filed under: Software Comments Tags: Cortana, Macs, OSX, Parallels, Parallels11, Windows10

Privacy-focused Blackphone 2 is ready for pre-order

Blackphone 2, the second iteration of Silent Circle’s privacy-focused handset, is now available for pre-order — assuming you don’t mind reserving a device without knowing its price. The original Blackphone was sold at the flagship-level cost of $629, but remember, this one’s more sophisticated than its predecessor, with its front and rear covered in glass. It has a 5.5-inch 1080p display, and inside, it boasts an octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. What makes it different from other phones with similar specs, though, is that it runs an Android-based platform called PrivatOS which includes a suite of secure apps, including ones for encrypted messaging and voice calls. We saw Blackphone 2 at the Mobile World Congress earlier this year, and we have a preview you can read to know a bit more before you pre-order a unit. The device is expected to arrive sometime in September — if you’d rather get the the Blackphone+ tablet, though, you’ll have to wait a bit more, since Silent Circle hasn’t revealed when that one will be available. Filed under: Cellphones , Mobile Comments Via: TechCrunch Source: Silent Circle Tags: blackphone2, mobilepostcross, silentcircle

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Privacy-focused Blackphone 2 is ready for pre-order

Windows Memory Manager To Introduce Compression

jones_supa writes: Even though the RTM version of Windows 10 is already out of the door, Microsoft will keep releasing beta builds of the operating system to Windows Insiders. The first one will be build 10525, which introduces some color personalization options, but also interesting improvements to memory management. A new concept is called a compression store, which is an in-memory collection of compressed pages. When memory pressure gets high enough, stale pages will be compressed instead of swapping them out. The compression store will live in the System process’s working set. As usual, Microsoft will be receiving comments on the new features via the Feedback app. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The software Stephen Hawking uses to talk to the world is now free

For almost 20 years, Intel has been building technology to help Stephen Hawking communicate with the world — and now the company is making the same software the world renowned physicist uses to write books, give speeches and talk available to everybody . For free. It’s called the Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit (ACAT), and it’s the very same software Intel baked Swiftkey into for Hawkings early last year. Releasing it as open source software was always the plan, giving engineers, developers and researchers a groundwork they can use to create technology that improves the lives of patients with motor neuron disease and other conditions that make using typical computer interfaces impossible. Right now ACAT uses webcam-based face recognition for user control, but Intel says developers can augment it with custom inputs. As is, it still works pretty well: I installed it on a Windows tablet for a quick test run and was able to type simple words by flexing my face muscles in the same manner as Professor Hawking — patiently waiting for the ACAT system to highlight the menu, letter or predictive text word I wanted before moving my cheek. The system can also open documents, browse the web and gives users surprisingly precise cursor control. The base software is available for free on Github , and Intel is hosting a separate site with documentation, videos on features and compatible sensors and a detailed manual to help users get started. If you’re having trouble, you can even contact the project’s lead directly (his email is published on the ACAT website) for help. All in all, the project’s public release is a great step forward to achieving Professor Hawking’s dream of making connected wheelchair and assistive computer technology to every person that needs it. Check out the project’s official Git.Hub page or Intel’s project page at the source link below. [Top image credit: Jason Bye / Alamy] Filed under: Misc , Intel Comments Source: Wired , ACAT , Github Tags: acat, AssistiveTechnology, hawking, intel, stephenhawking

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The software Stephen Hawking uses to talk to the world is now free

Chrome add-on helps you watch Netflix with friends

If you’ve ever wanted to watch Netflix with someone not in the same room as you, here’s your chance. Thanks to a new Chrome extension called Showgoers , people can now share a viewing experience from afar by linking their Netflix accounts. It works fairly simple: once the users’ info is entered, you click the Showgoers button and it sends an invite to whoever you want to watch a movie or TV show with in real-time. The person on the other end then receives a URL, clicks and, in a matter of seconds, the synced programming will begin automatically — you can play, pause or start something else anytime. Keep in mind that Showgoers is a public beta, so you may encounter some hiccups along the way. Still, the developer says “it generally works great.” According to Showgoers, you must follow these steps for the extension to work smoothly: Be signed into their Netflix account before opening the invite URL. Have installed the Showgoers Chrome extension. Open the invite URL in Chrome. [image credits: AFP/Getty Images] Filed under: Home Entertainment , Internet , HD Comments Via: BGR Source: Showgoers Tags: hdpostcross, movies, Netflix, streaming, streamingvideo, TVshows, videostreaming

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Chrome add-on helps you watch Netflix with friends

NASA’s LADEE confirms the moon’s atmosphere has neon

NASA’s LADEE ran out of fuel and crashed into the lunar surface in 2014, but not before it collected the data needed to answer some decades-old questions about the moon. One of those is confirming that our natural satellite’s atmosphere contains neon — the same gas used to light up signs in Vegas. Astronomers have been speculating about its presence since the Apollo missions, and now LADEE’s Neutral Mass Spectrometer (NMS) instrument has proven that it exists. It’s even relatively abundant, though the moon’s atmosphere is too thin (it’s actually called “exosphere” due to that reason) to turn it into a glowing orb in the sky. NMS has thus proven that the lunar exosphere is composed mostly of helium, argon and neon. Their main source is solar winds, and they fluctuate over time, as well as exhibit peak times throughout the day. LADEE’s data shows, however, that some of the gases in the exosphere come from the moon itself: The decay of radioactive potassium-40 found in lunar rocks gives rise to argon, while thorium and uranium produce helium. As NASA’s Goddard’s Mehdi Benna said: The data collected by the NMS addresses the long-standing questions related to the sources and sinks of exospheric helium and argon that have remained unanswered for four decades. These discoveries highlight the limitations of current exospheric models, and the need for more sophisticated ones in the future. [Image credit: NASA Ames/Dana Berry] Filed under: Science Comments Source: NASA Tags: ladee, moon, nasa

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NASA’s LADEE confirms the moon’s atmosphere has neon

Hack Amazon’s Dash buttons to do things other than buying stuff

Amazon’s Dash buttons are tiny adhesive physical triggers that can order for you, through the magic of WiFi, anything you need to stock up on. But that’s not the limits of their power, if you’re willing to tinker with them. Ted Benson, (who works at a company that likes to regularly perform such shenanigans with the aid of its web tools), reckons it”ll you take under 10 minutes to repurpose Amazon’s physical iteration of Buy It Now. (I think he’s underestimating the degree of incompetence this editor possesses, but anyhow.) Benson managed to hack a diaper-ordering Dash button to act as an Internet Of Things -style tracker for how often his (adorable) baby poops. Or how many times he wakes up in a night. The trick lies in the fact that Amazon’s buttons aren’t constantly connected to WiFi. For the sake of battery life, the buttons only come to life when pushed, meaning the workaround picks up when your button is trying to access the internet, and registers that as a trigger for anything but buying stuff from Amazon. With a little bit of python code, a simple program can track when the button tries to connect to the WiFi, and once it gets a hit, record a datapoint. (In this case, inside a Google Doc spreadsheet.) Of course, you need to ensure you’ve setup the button not to order something every time you press it –easily done when you first start using the button. If you’re looking to make the idea of smart diapers seem suddenly very stupid, you can find all the code and instruction needed in the Medium post right here Filed under: Wearables , Internet , Amazon Comments Source: Medium Tags: amazon, amazondash, dashbutton, diapers, internetofthings, poop, video

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Hack Amazon’s Dash buttons to do things other than buying stuff

The Promise of 5G

An anonymous reader writes: From instant monitoring of leaking pipelines, to real-time worldwide collaboration, the increase in machine-to-machine communications that 5G allows will change the way we live. This TechCrunch article takes a look at the promise that 5G holds and its possibilities. From the article: “By 2030, 5G will transform and create many uses that we cannot even think of yet. We will live in a world that will have 10-100 times more Internet-connected devices than there are humans. Hundreds of billions of machines will be sensing, processing and transmitting data without direct human control and intervention.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Health Watchdog To Bring Legal Action Against Soylent Over Lead, Cadmium Levels

An anonymous reader writes: We’ve previously discussed Soylent, the self-proclaimed “meal replacement.” The product has not been without controversy, and now it’s likely to see some more: As You Sow, a non-profit foundation dedicated to corporate responsibility, plans to bring legal action against Soylent for failing to provide sufficient warning about the amount of lead and cadmium in it. They allege that a serving of Soylent contains 12 to 25 times the concentration of lead at which point consumers in the state of California must be warned. The concentration of cadmium, they say, is four times the current maximum. Soylent has acknowledged the results of heavy metal tests but says the levels present in Soylent are not toxic. As You Sow maintains that Soylent’s marketing focus on replacing food suggests chronic exposure, which is more of an issue than an occasional indulgence. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Health Watchdog To Bring Legal Action Against Soylent Over Lead, Cadmium Levels

Ken May

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