fnself-program5 – Page 6 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

9.7-inch iPad Pro and iPhone SE both have 2GB of RAM

Enlarge / The 9.7-inch iPad Pro isn’t quite the equal of the 12.9-inch version. (credit: Andrew Cunningham) Apple has started distributing both the iPhone SE and the 9.7-inch iPad Pro to journalists, and one of the first things to come to light has been the amount of RAM in each device. Memory in iDevices has a big impact on performance and general usability, but Apple almost never actually talks about it so we need to have hardware in hand before we can get the full story. The good news is that the iPhone SE has the same 2GB of RAM as the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus despite its smaller size and lower price. The not as good news is that the 9.7-inch iPad Pro has the same 2GB of RAM as the iPad Air 2, not the 4GB of RAM on offer in the 12.7-inch version. RAM doesn’t have quite the same effect in an iOS device as it does in laptops and desktops—iOS was originally designed for low RAM devices and even though current iPhones and iPads have much more RAM than the 128MB in the first iPhone, the OS is still aggressive about ejecting apps from memory. Giving an iPhone or iPad more RAM doesn’t necessarily speed up general performance, but it does mean that apps and browser tabs need to be ejected from memory less often. Today this is particularly beneficial in Safari, which needs to reload tabs when they’re ejected from RAM—at best this process adds a couple extra seconds to what ought to be a simple tab switch, and at worst you don’t have connectivity and so can’t see the tab you’re trying to open. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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9.7-inch iPad Pro and iPhone SE both have 2GB of RAM

Intel’s high-end quad-core NUC ships in May for $650

Enlarge / The “Skull Canyon” Core i7 NUC. (credit: Intel) Intel talked a little about its new high-end Core i7 NUC mini PC at CES earlier this year , but today at GDC the company revealed what the final model will look like along with its specs, release date, and cost. The new NUC6i7KYK, codenamed “Skull Canyon,” includes a 2.6GHz (3.5GHz Turbo) 45W quad-core Core i7-6770HQ —not the fastest Skylake laptop chip that Intel can sell you, but definitely one of the fastest. The other main draws are the Iris Pro 580 GPU, which includes 78 of Intel’s graphics execution units and a 128MB eDRAM cache (compared to 48EUs and 64MB of eDRAM in the standard Core i5 NUC we just reviewed ), and the Thunderbolt 3 port which also supports full USB 3.1 gen 2 transfer speeds of 10Mbps. It takes DDR4 memory, M.2 SATA and PCI Express SSDs, and comes with a built-in Intel 8260 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth adapter, just like the Core i5 NUC. It’s got a good port selection, including a full-size HDMI 2.0 port, a mini DisplayPort 1.2 output, four USB 3.0 ports, a headphone jack, an SD card slot, a gigabit LAN port, and an IR sensor for use with remote controls. The HDMI 2.0 port ought to make some HTPC fans happy, since the standard NUCs are still stuck on version 1.4 and can’t view HDCP 2.2-protected content. And this is all in addition to the aforementioned Thunderbolt 3 port; this will be the first NUC since the original to support Thunderbolt, which opens up possibilities for external graphics cards down the line. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Intel’s high-end quad-core NUC ships in May for $650

TP-Link blocks open source router firmware to comply with new FCC rule

A TP-Link router. (credit: TP-Link. ) Networking hardware vendor TP-Link says it will prevent the loading of open source firmware on routers it sells in the United States in order to comply with new Federal Communications Commission requirements. The FCC wants to limit interference with other devices by preventing user modifications that cause radios to operate outside their licensed RF (radio frequency) parameters. The FCC says it doesn’t intend to ban the use of third-party firmware such as DD-WRT and OpenWRT; in theory, router makers can still allow loading of open source firmware as long as they also deploy controls that prevent devices from operating outside their allowed frequencies, types of modulation, power levels, and so on. But open source users feared that hardware makers would lock third-party firmware out entirely, since that would be the easiest way to comply with the FCC requirements. The decision by TP-Link—described by the company in this FAQ —shows that those fears were justified. (Thanks to Electronic Frontier Foundation Staff Attorney Nate Cardozo for bringing it to our attention.) Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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TP-Link blocks open source router firmware to comply with new FCC rule

SQL Server for Linux coming in mid-2017

Apparently. (credit: Microsoft) It’s not April 1. Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of the Cloud and Enterprise Group, announced today that next year Microsoft will be releasing a version of SQL Server that runs on Linux . A private preview is available today that includes the core relational database features of SQL Server 2016. The announcement implies two things. Either there is a large number of Linux-using corporations out there that are desperate for SQL Server’s feature set (as opposed to open source databases such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, or MaxDB, or the proprietary ones such as IBM’s DB2 and, of course, Oracle’s Oracle), or there is a large number of SQL Server-using organizations out there that are keen to ditch the cost of their Windows licenses but happy to continue to pay for their SQL Server licenses. Neither seems obvious to us. The Windows version will go into general availability later this year, with a wave of launch-related events starting on Thursday. SQL Server 2016 boasts new in-memory database capabilities that can make some workloads 30-100 times faster and support for encryption for data at rest, in memory, and on the wire. It also offers analytics support using R. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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SQL Server for Linux coming in mid-2017

New DisplayPort 1.4 standard can drive 8K monitors over a USB Type-C cable

(credit: VESA) Today, most new computers with DisplayPort or USB Type-C connectors support the DisplayPort 1.2 standard, which provides enough bandwidth to drive a 4K display at 60Hz over a single cable. In late 2014, VESA published the DisplayPort 1.3 standard, which increased the available bandwidth enough to drive 60Hz 5K displays or 30Hz 8K displays over a single cable. And today, VESA has finalized and released the DisplayPort 1.4 spec , which can drive 60Hz 8K displays and supports HDR color modes at 5K and 8K. The physical interface used to carry DisplayPort data—High Bit Rate 3 (HBR3), which provides 8.1Gbps of bandwidth per lane—is still the same as it was in DisplayPort 1.3. The new standard drives higher-resolution displays with better color support using Display Stream Compression (DSC), a “visually lossless” form of compression that VESA says “enables up to [a] 3:1 compression ratio.” This data compression, among other things, allows DisplayPort 1.4 to drive 60Hz 8K displays and 120Hz 4K displays with HDR “deep color” over both DisplayPort and USB Type-C cables. USB Type-C cables can provide a USB 3.0 data connection, too. The standard includes a few other features, most of which are targeted at home theater buffs: Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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New DisplayPort 1.4 standard can drive 8K monitors over a USB Type-C cable

Largely undetected Mac malware suggests disgraced HackingTeam has returned

Enlarge (credit: Patrick Wardle ) Researchers have uncovered what appears to be newly developed Mac malware from HackingTeam, a discovery that’s prompting speculation that the disgraced malware-as-a-service provider has reemerged since last July’s hack that spilled gigabytes worth of the group’s private e-mail and source code . The sample was uploaded on February 4 to the Google-owned VirusTotal scanning service , which at the time showed it wasn’t detected by any of the major antivirus programs. (Ahead of this report on Monday, it was detected by 10 of 56 AV services.) A technical analysis published Monday morning by SentinelOne security researcher Pedro Vilaça showed that the installer was last updated in October or November, and an embedded encryption key is dated October 16, three months after the HackingTeam compromise. The sample installs a copy of HackingTeam’s signature Remote Code Systems compromise platform, leading Vilaça to conclude that the outfit’s comeback mostly relies on old, largely unexceptional source code, despite the group vowing in July that it would return with new code. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Largely undetected Mac malware suggests disgraced HackingTeam has returned

Pentium? Core i5? Core i7? Making sense of Intel’s convoluted CPU lineup

Intel’s Skylake-based Pentium G4500. (credit: Andrew Cunningham) Our creative director Aurich Lawson is building a PC to power a custom arcade cabinet, and he was having trouble picking a processor. Not because he didn’t know what he needed, but because he was having trouble matching what he needed (the cheapest quad-core CPU that meets the recommended requirements for Street Fighter V ) with what Intel was offering (five different obfuscated brands spread out over multiple sockets and architectures). And if you’re building a PC now after having been out of the game for a few years, it can be exceptionally confusing. Around the turn of the millennium you just had Celeron and Pentium. One name meant “cut-down low-end” and one meant “high-end, more features,” and you just bought the fastest one you could reasonably afford. Things got a little more confusing in the Core and Core 2 days (the Core branding continues to survive alongside the Celeron and Pentium brands), but you could at least use names like “Core Solo” and “Core 2 Quad” to guess which architecture and how many cores you were getting. Now there are three separate Core brands, Pentium and Celeron brands, and a long series of letters that you need to know to figure out what CPU you’re getting. It’s been a few years since the last time we demystified Intel’s CPU lineup, and in truth things haven’t changed too much. In broad strokes, the rules are the same. But Intel has introduced and retired a few CPU architectures and brands since then. We’ll run down the basics for both desktops and laptops to help you make some sense of things whether you’re building a computer or buying one from someone else. Read 38 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Linux Mint hit by malware infection on its website, forum after hack attack

(credit: Wired UK/Shuttershock) Linux Mint forum users, and anyone who downloaded and installed a copy of the 17.3 Cinnamon edition on Saturday have probably been compromised by hackers and need to take action immediately, the distro’s creator has warned. Clem Lefebvre, confirmed in a blog post that the “intrusion” had taken place over the weekend. He said: “Hackers made a modified Linux Mint ISO, with a backdoor in it, and managed to hack our website to point to it.” He added that the resultant malware infection had only affected ISOs downloaded from the Linux Mint site on Saturday, February 20. “As far as we know, the only compromised edition was Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon edition,” Lefebvre said. However, by Sunday it was a different story , with Linux Mint confirming that its forums database had also been targeted in the hack of its systems. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Tiny micro-supercapacitors built directly on a chip

(credit: Drexel University ) Since the tech boom began decades ago, we’ve seen a dramatic transformation of electronics. Today, some technological dreamers are talking about “smart environments” where electronics are seamlessly integrated into our environment, providing comfort and convenience. For these dreams to be achieved, we need to get electronics—not just the chips—miniaturized to the point where sensors can be pervasive. This involves developing high-performance electrochemical storage devices to enable long-lived sensors and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. But efficient miniaturized energy storage devices have proven to be challenging to create; it can be done, but it’s hard to integrate the results with other electronics. Supercapacitors According to an article in Science , an international team of scientists has now reported some progress in this area—specifically with the design of micro-supercapacitors. Supercapacitors are a class of materials that can store energy through accumulation of charge at the surface of a high-surface-area carbon sheet. They typically have a good cycle life, moderate energy density (6 Wh/kg), and high power densities (> 10 kW/kg). Supercapacitors are a great replacement for batteries in applications that require high power delivery and uptake with a very long charge-discharge cycle life; micro-supercapacitors are the same kind of material but much, much smaller. Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Tiny micro-supercapacitors built directly on a chip

Warning: Bug in Adobe Creative Cloud deletes Mac user data without warning

Enlarge (credit: Backblaze) Adobe Systems has stopped distributing a recently issued update to its Creative Cloud graphics service amid reports a Mac version can delete important user data without warning or permission. The deletions happen whenever Mac users log in to the Adobe service after the update has been installed, according to officials from Backblaze , a data backup service whose users are being disproportionately inconvenienced by the bug. Upon sign in, a script activated by Creative Cloud deletes the contents in the alphabetically first folder in a Mac’s root directory. Backblaze users are being especially hit by the bug because the backup service relies on data stored in a hidden root folder called .bzvol. Because the folder is the alphabetically top-most hidden folder at the root of so many users’ drives, they are affected more than users of many other software packages. “This caused a lot of our customers to freak out,” Backblaze Marketing Manager Yev Pusin wrote in an e-mail. “The reason we saw a huge uptick from our customers is because Backblaze’s .bzvol is higher up the alphabet. We tested it again by creating a hidden file with an ‘.a’ name, and the files inside were removed as well.” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Warning: Bug in Adobe Creative Cloud deletes Mac user data without warning