Tag: games

Can Thunderbolt Survive USB SuperSpeed+?

Lucas123 writes: “The USB SuperSpeed+ spec (a.k.a. v3.1) offers up to 10Gbps throughput. Combine that with USB’s new C-Type Connector, the specification for which is expected out in July, and users will have a symmetrical cable and plug just like Thunderbolt but that will enable up to 100 watts of power depending on the cable version. So where does that leave Thunderbolt, Intel’s other hardware interconnect? According to some analysts, Thunderbolt withers or remains a niche technology supported almost exclusively by Apple. Even as Thunderbolt 2 offers twice the throughput (on paper) as USB 3.1, or up to 20Gbps, USB SuperSpeed+ is expected to scale past 40Gbps in coming years. ‘USB’s installed base is in the billions. Thunderbolt’s biggest problem is a relatively small installed base, in the tens of millions. Adding a higher data throughput, and a more expensive option, is unlikely to change that, ‘ said Brian O’Rourke, a principal analyst covering wired interfaces at IHS.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Can Thunderbolt Survive USB SuperSpeed+?

7.1 Billion People, 7.1 Billion Mobile Phone Accounts Activated

Freshly Exhumed (105597) writes “Tomi Ahonen’s newly released 2014 Almanac reveals such current mobile phone industry data gems as: ‘The mobile subscription rate is at or very very nearly at 100%. For 7.1 Billion people alive that means 7.1 Billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide.’ Compared with other tech industries, he says: ‘Take every type of PC, including desktops, laptops, netbooks and tablet PCs and add them together. What do we have? 1.5 Billion in use worldwide. Mobile is nearly 5 times larger. Televisions? Sure. We are now at 2 Billion TV sets in use globally. But mobile has 3.5 times users.’ Which mobile phone OS is the leader? ”Android has now utterly won the smartphone platform war with over 80% of new sales. Apple’s iPhone has peaked and is in gradual decline at about 15% with the remnant few percent split among Windows, Blackberry and miscellaneous others.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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7.1 Billion People, 7.1 Billion Mobile Phone Accounts Activated

Scientists Discover Nickel-Eating Plant Species

An anonymous reader writes “A new species of metal-eating plant has been discovered in the Philippines, and the plant loves to eat nickel. From the article: ‘Scientists from the University of the Philippines, Los Baños have discovered Rinorea niccolifera, a plant species that accumulates up to 18, 000 ppm of the metal in its leaves without poisoning itself, according to Edwino Fernando, lead author of the report and professor, said in a statement. Fernando and his team say that the hyper-accumulation of nickel is a very rare phenomenon, with only about 0.5 percent to 1 percent of plant species native to environments with nickel-rich soil.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Scientists Discover Nickel-Eating Plant Species

Physician Operates On Server, Costs His Hospital $4.8 Million

Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes “Jaikumar Vijayan reports at Computerworld that a physician at Columbia University Medical Center (CU) attempted to “deactivate” a personally owned computer from a hospital network segment that contained sensitive patient health information, creating an inadvertent data leak that is going to cost the hospital $4.8 million to settle with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The error left patient status, vital signs, laboratory results, medication information, and other sensitive data on about 6, 800 individuals accessible to all via the Web. The breach was discovered after the hospital received a complaint from an individual who discovered personal health information about his deceased partner on the Web. An investigation by the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) found that neither Columbia University nor New York Presbyterian Hospital, who operated the network jointly, had implemented adequate security protections, or undertook a risk analysis or audit to identify the location of sensitive patient health information on the joint network. “For more than three years, we have been cooperating with HHS by voluntarily providing information about the incident in question, ” say the hospitals. “We also have continually strengthened our safeguards to enhance our information systems and processes, and will continue to do so under the terms of the agreement with HHS.” HHS has also extracted settlements from several other healthcare entities over the past two years as it beefs up the effort to crack down on HIPAA violations. In April, it reached a $2 million settlement with with Concentra Health Services and QCA Health Plan. Both organizations reported losing laptops containing unencrypted patient data.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Physician Operates On Server, Costs His Hospital $4.8 Million

Luke Prosthetic Arm Approved By FDA

necro81 writes: “The FDA today approved the Luke prosthetic arm for sale. The Luke Arm, created by Dean Kamen’s DEKA R&D Corp., was a project initiated by DARPA to develop a prosthetic arm for wounded warriors more advanced than those previously available. The Arm can be configured for below-the-elbow, above-the-elbow, and shoulder-level amputees. The full arm has 10 powered degrees of freedom and has the look and weight of the arm it replaces. Through trials by DEKA and the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, the Arm has been used by dozens of amputees for a total of many thousands of hours. Commercialization is still pending.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Luke Prosthetic Arm Approved By FDA

Average American Cable Subscriber Gets 189 Channels and Views 17

An anonymous reader writes “Nielsen, the company that studies the viewing habits of television viewers, announced its findings in a blog post Tuesday. Since 2008, the number of cable TV channels offered as a bundle rose from 129 to 189 in 2013, but in that time-frame viewers have consistently only watched an average of 17 channels. The data seems to support the notion that consumers are better off subscribing to channels a la carte, but cable companies are of the opinion that ‘the price of cable TV wouldn’t change much if channels were served à la carte because content providers won’t sell the most popular programs to cable companies unless the provider’s other channels are also served up.’ Nielsen concluded in its post that ‘quality is imperative—for both content creators and advertisers’, signaling the possibility that more Americans will cut the cord after realizing that their cable bill has increased in the last few years but their consumption of content hasn’t.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Average American Cable Subscriber Gets 189 Channels and Views 17

The Feature Phone Is Dead: Long Live the ‘Basic Smartphone’

zarmanto writes: “The numbers have been telling us for a while now that (formerly expensive) feature phones have been slowly displaced by more feature-rich, high-end smartphones. Thus, it should come as no surprise that the other end of the market is also receiving active encroachment by low-end smartphones. Now, ARM is suggesting that it’s actually quite conceivable for OEMs to produce a ‘smartphone’ for as little as $20 — as long as you compromise a bit on those things which actually make it a smartphone in the first place. So, is this just more graying of the line between smartphones and feature phones? Or is this an indication that the feature phone (as we used to know it) is finally well-and-truly dead?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The Feature Phone Is Dead: Long Live the ‘Basic Smartphone’

Students Remember Lectures Better Taking Notes Longhand Than Using Laptops

Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes “Walk into any university lecture hall and you’re likely to see row upon row of students sitting behind glowing laptop screens. Laptops in class have been controversial, due mostly to the many opportunities for distraction that they provide (online shopping, browsing Reddit, or playing solitaire, just to name a few). But few studies have examined how effective laptops are for the students who diligently take notes. Now Robinson Meyer writes at The Atlantic that a new study finds that people remember lectures better when they’ve taken handwritten notes, rather than typed ones. The research suggests that even when laptops are used solely to take notes, they may still be impairing learning because their use results in shallower processing. ‘Our new findings suggest that even when laptops are used as intended — and not for buying things on Amazon during class — they may still be harming academic performance, ‘ says psychological scientist Pam Mueller of Princeton University, lead author of the study. Laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning. If you can type quickly enough, word-for-word transcription is possible, whereas writing by hand usually rules out capturing every word. ‘We don’t write longhand as fast as we type these days, but people who were typing just tended to transcribe large parts of lecture content verbatim, ‘ says Mueller. ‘The people who were taking notes on the laptops don’t have to be judicious in what they write down.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Students Remember Lectures Better Taking Notes Longhand Than Using Laptops

Finally, Hi-Def Streaming Video of the ISS’s View of Earth

An anonymous reader writes with a snippet from ExtremeTech: “After being continuously inhabited for more than 13 years, it is finally possible to log into Ustream and watch the Earth spinning on its axis in glorious HD. This video feed [embedded at ExtremeTech] comes from from four high-definition cameras, delivered by last month’s SpaceX CRS-3 resupply mission, that are attached to the outside of the International Space Station. You can open up the Ustream page at any time, and as long as it isn’t night time aboard the ISS, you’ll be treated to a beautiful view of the Earth from around 250 miles (400 km) up.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Finally, Hi-Def Streaming Video of the ISS’s View of Earth

Some Users Find Swype Keyboard App Makes 4000+ Location Requests Per Day

New submitter postglock (917809) writes “Swype is a popular third-party keyboard for Android phones (and also available for Windows phones and other platforms). It’s currently the second-most-popular paid keyboard in Google Play (behind SwiftKey), and the 17th highest of all paid apps. Recently, users have discovered that it’s been accessing location data extremely frequently, making almost 4000 requests per day, or 2.5 requests per minute. The developers claim that this is to facilitate implementation of ‘regional dialects, ‘ but cannot explain why such frequent polling is required, or why this still occurs if the regional function is disabled. Some custom ROMs such as Cyanogenmod can block this tracking, but most users would be unaware that such tracking is even occurring.” Readers in the linked thread don’t all seem to see the same thing; if you are a Swype user, do you see thousands of location requests, none, or something in between? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Some Users Find Swype Keyboard App Makes 4000+ Location Requests Per Day