gaming – Page 7 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

He must be serious about Mars: Elon Musk invests $2 billion in carbon fibers

(credit: SpaceX) SpaceX appears to be betting big on carbon fiber composites, which could increase the capacity of its future rockets to get people and supplies into space—and eventually to the surface of Mars. According to a report in Nikkei Asian Review , SpaceX has signed an agreement with Toray Carbon Fibers estimated to be worth $2 billion to $3 billion. The total price and delivery dates have yet to be finalized. It is not immediately clear exactly when, and in which launch vehicles, these lightweight composites will be employed by SpaceX. But the company is not alone in its interest—NASA and other aerospace companies have been experimenting with the materials because they have the potential to increase the amount of payload that can be carried by a rocket. They could also lower overall manufacturing cost. The scale of the deal seems telling, however. If the value of the deal as reported is correct, in the billions of dollars, it seems probable that the carbon fiber composites would be used in SpaceX’s proposed Mars Colonial Transporter rocket. This is the very large (but still under development) rocket the company plans to use to transport humans to Mars. SpaceX is already far along in the production of its Falcon Heavy rocket, which is based on the Falcon 9 core stage. The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, which SpaceX has successfully been landing this year, has tank walls and domes built from an aluminum lithium alloy. (Ars has reached out to SpaceX for comment on this story and will update accordingly). Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Orbital angular momentum states may vastly increase fiber’s bandwidth

(credit: NASA ) We live and die by data these days. Data rates and latencies are everything, with data centers and chips designed to maximize communication speeds. The hero in the world of data is the optical fiber. Thanks to light’s very high base frequency, it is possible to modulate it very quickly without using a huge amount of bandwidth. Optical fiber’s ability to modulate light quickly allows network designers to choose a wavelength band, divide it up into slots, and use each slot to communicate its own data. So a typical fiber will carry several channels, each operating at multi-gigabit-per-second speeds. This approach, already many, many years old, has served us very well. But all good things come to an end. Researchers are always looking for ways to carry more information, and one idea—that one, at the back of the class, ignored by all the other ideas—is to use special states of light to encode information. These orbital angular momentum (OAM) states have the potential to vastly increase bandwidth, but they are difficult to handle. Some recent research, however, suggests that we might well be using OAM states before too long. Read 19 remaining paragraphs | Comments

View article:
Orbital angular momentum states may vastly increase fiber’s bandwidth

Intel’s Skull Canyon NUC is the future of tiny desktops

What if you could have a desktop that easily slips into a messenger bag or purse? That’s what Intel has been aiming for with its Next Unit of Computing (NUC) devices. Yes, it’s a terrible name, but Intel’s goal is admirable: to deliver powerful machines that are significantly smaller than the desktops of yore. Our first look at a NUC back in 2013 showed plenty of promise. And with the new Skull Canyon edition (starting at $609), Intel has come closer than ever to delivering a truly portable desktop replacement that can even play some games. Just be prepared to pay through the nose to actually use it. Officially called the NUC NUC6i7KYK (yes, Intel is really bad at naming things), this new device isn’t a complete computer. Instead, like all of Intel’s previous tiny desktops, it’s a kit that requires some handiwork. It packs in a 2.6GHz quad-core i7-6770HQ processor with integrated WiFi, Ethernet, Intel HD Audio and Iris Pro 580 graphics. But you’ll have to open it up and add your own SSD in one of the two M.2 slots, along with your own RAM (it supports up to 32GB of laptop-sized DDR4 memory). And of course, you’ll have to supply your own OS as well. In short, don’t expect to buy this box and have it magically start working. While previous NUCs looked like boring gray mini PCs, Intel actually infused a bit of style into the Skull Canyon model. It’s a slim and small device, at only 1.1 inches tall, 8.3 inches long and 4.57 inches wide. It feels like a small hardcover book, weighing in at around 1.5 pounds. Its plastic case is all black, with a reflective webbing pattern and large skull imprinted on the top — a not-so-subtle hint that Intel built this thing for PC gamers. Thankfully, the company also includes a plain black replacement cover in the box. Simply put, the Skull Canyon NUC feels like an exotic piece of hardware rather than a humdrum PC. Alongside the power button up front, there’s an SD card slot, headphone jack and two USB 3.0 sockets (one of which is colored yellow, as it’s a “charging port” meant to provide extra voltage for mobile devices). Around back there are ports for power, HDMI, Thunderbolt 3/ USB-C , Mini DisplayPort and gigabit Ethernet, along with two more USB 3.0 connections. In addition, there’s another 3.5mm jack for audio output, which also supports minijack to optical cables (useful for connecting the NUC to an A/V receiver). This plethora of ports is another way that the Skull Canyon NUC distinguishes itself from modern laptops. Getting started involves removing the four Philips screws on the bottom of the NUC and plugging in the RAM and M.2 SSD of your choice. Intel packed our demo model with a 512GB SSD and 16GB of memory, but I nonetheless unplugged and reinstalled those pieces of hardware to get a feel for what it’s like to work with such a tiny case. If you’ve ever installed RAM, a video card or any PCI card in a desktop, you won’t have any trouble here. But even if this is your first time dealing with naked hardware, it shouldn’t be too difficult (just remember to align the pins). With my system complete, I then installed Windows 10 from a USB stick, a process that took around 15 minutes. Once I got into Windows, I quickly realized that none of the drivers for the NUC were automatically recognized, not even its WiFi radio. I used my Windows desktop to snag those drivers, along with Intel’s Display drivers for the NUC. Once those were installed, I had the NUC run through Windows Update several times to fully upgrade the OS and grab all the other relevant drivers. It took about an hour to get the NUC fully up and running. All the while, I had flashbacks to the hours I spent mindlessly installing Windows during my IT days. With everything set up, I used the NUC for my daily workflow, which involves having dozens of browser tabs open across multiple browsers, chatting on Slack, writing on Evernote, listening to music on Spotify and occasionally editing some photos. For the most part, I was surprised by how normal everything felt. Even though it’s running a laptop-grade i7 processor, which produces less heat than its beefy desktop counterparts, the NUC managed to keep up with me every step of the way. Having 16GB of RAM also helps, especially when it comes to multitasking and handling large files. You can definitely hear the system’s fan working when things heat up, but that’s to be expected with such a small device. In practice the NUC felt almost indistinguishable from my custom-built desktop, which is particularly surprising given how small it is. This is also the first NUC with decent gaming performance: It had no problem staying at 60 frames per second in 1080p with less demanding games like Transistor and Civilization 5 . Quadrilateral Cowboy , with its blocky ’80s aesthetic, ran between 35 fps and 60 fps in 1080p. Even Overwatch was playable, reaching between 60 and 70 fps at 720p with low settings. More surprisingly, it ran at around 50 fps in 1080p with low settings. That’s a testament both to Blizzard’s scaling skills and the amount of power Intel has managed to cram into its Iris Pro 580 graphics. For some gamers, the Skull Canyon NUC’s performance will be fine for LAN parties and competitions. And if you need even more power, you can connect a full-sized graphics card over Thunderbolt 3 using an enclosure similar to Alienware’s $200 Graphics Amplifier . I didn’t have one of those to test out, unfortunately, but it’s nice to know the capability is there. PCMark 7 PCMark 8 (Creative Accelerated) 3DMark 11 3DMark (Sky Diver) ATTO (top reads/writes) Intel Skull Canyon NUC (2.6GHz Core i7-6770HQ, Intel Iris Pro 580 ) 6, 130 5, 634 E5, 105/ P3, 085/ X844 7, 797 2.5 GB/s / 1.5 GB/s Microsoft Surface Book (2.4GHz Core i5-6300U, Intel HD 520) 5, 412 3, 610 E2, 758 / P1, 578 / X429 3, 623 1.6 GB/s / 571 MB/s HP Spectre 13.3 (2.5GHz Intel Core i7-6500U, Intel HD 520) 5, 046 3, 747 E2, 790 / P1, 630 / X375 3, 810 1.61 GB/s / 307 MB/s Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Tablet (1.2 GHz Core M7-6Y75, Intel HD 515) 4, 951 3, 433 E1, 866 / P1, 112 2, 462 545 MB/s / 298 MB/s Dell XPS 13 (2.3GHz Core i5-6200U, Intel Graphics 520) 4, 954 3, 499 E2, 610 / P1, 531 3, 335 1.6GB/s / 307 MB/s Razer Blade Stealth (2.5GHz Intel Core i7-6500U, Intel HD 520) 5, 131 3, 445 E2, 788 / P1, 599 / X426 3, 442 1.5 GB/s / 307 MB/s Toshiba Radius 12 (2.5GHz Intel Core i7-6500U, Intel HD 520) 5, 458 3, 684 E2, 865 / P1, 622 3, 605 552 MB/s / 489 MB/s Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (2.4GHz Core i5-6300U, Intel HD 520) 5, 403 3, 602 E2, 697/ P1, 556/ X422 3, 614 1.6 GB/s / 529 MB/s My experience with the NUC was reflected in its benchmarks. It’s significantly faster than any laptop we’ve reviewed over the past year, especially when it comes to gaming performance. In fact, it even outdoes Microsoft’s Surface Book and its dedicated NVIDIA GPU. We don’t review many high-end gaming laptops these days, so we don’t have any beefier mobile hardware to which we can compare the NUC, unfortunately. And while I’ve been testing a slew of desktop GPUs over the past few months, comparing the NUC to one of those feels unfair. So Intel has built a mini computer that’s both portable and capable, but who actually needs it? That’s a good question. It’s much easier to carry around than previous NUCs and other tiny desktop designs, like Gigabyte’s BRIX . Intel is pitching it as something ideal for bringing to LAN parties and other gaming events. You’ll still need to bring along a monitor, keyboard and mouse to actually use it, of course. If you’re simply looking for something smaller than a typical desktop tower to use at home, there are plenty of small options out there that would likely cost less than the Skull Canyon NUC. And even if you’re not worried about the cost, you can still cram more-powerful hardware in other mini-PC cases. The big takeaway is that this isn’t a device meant for everyone. Most people would be fine with a laptop instead (which is hard for me to admit as a desktop fan). While it makes for a powerful home theater PC that can actually play some games, you’d be better off with something like Alienware’s Steam Machine . And if you’re just concerned about the media side of HTPCs, earlier NUC models are cheaper alternatives (and only slightly larger). The biggest issue with the Skull Canyon NUC? It’s too expensive for most uses. While it’s retailing for $609 now (down from around $650 originally), it would likely set you back somewhere around $1, 000 once you include the cost of a decent SSD, RAM and a Windows 10 license. It’s faster than Apple’s highest-end Mac Mini, which goes for $999 with a 2.8GHz dual-core i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, but I’d argue that’s also not the wisest purchase for most. If you want the best tiny desktop replacement, no matter the cost, then the new NUC is for you. In the end, the Skull Canyon NUC is a statement of intent for PC hardware tinkerers. Behold! A small profile desktop coupled with a surprising amount of power. It might seem impractical today, but in a few years this is what desktops will look like.

See the original article here:
Intel’s Skull Canyon NUC is the future of tiny desktops

Researchers crack open unusually advanced malware that hid for 5 years

The name “Project Sauron” came from code contained in one of the malware’s configuration files. (credit: Kaspersky Lab) Security experts have discovered a malware platform that’s so advanced in its design and execution that it could probably have been developed only with the active support of a nation state. The malware—known alternatively as “ProjectSauron” by researchers from Kaspersky Lab and “Remsec” by their counterparts from Symantec—has been active since at least 2011 and has been discovered on 30 or so targets. Its ability to operate undetected for five years is a testament to its creators, who clearly studied other state-sponsored hacking groups in an attempt to replicate their advances and avoid their mistakes. State-sponsored groups have been responsible for malware like the Stuxnet- or National Security Agency-linked Flame , Duqu , and Regin . Much of ProjectSauron resides solely in computer memory and was written in the form of Binary Large Objects, making it hard to detect using antivirus. Because of the way the software was written, clues left behind by ProjectSauron in so-called software artifacts are unique to each of its targets. That means that clues collected from one infection don’t help researchers uncover new infections. Unlike many malware operations that reuse servers, domain names, or IP addresses for command and control channels, the people behind ProjectSauron chose a different one for almost every target. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

See the original post:
Researchers crack open unusually advanced malware that hid for 5 years

Bitcoin value falls off cliff after $77M stolen in Hong Kong exchange hack

The value of bitcoins plummeted 20 percent after almost 120,000 units of the digital currency were stolen from Bitfinex, a major Bitcoin exchange. The Hong Kong-based exchange said it had discovered a security breach late Tuesday, and has suspended all transactions. “We are investigating the breach to determine what happened, but we know that some of our users have had their Bitcoins stolen. We are undertaking a review to determine which users have been affected by the breach. While we conduct this initial investigation and secure our environment, bitfinex.com will be taken down and the maintenance page will be left up,” said the company on its website . Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

View original post here:
Bitcoin value falls off cliff after $77M stolen in Hong Kong exchange hack

The federal government just approved first private mission to the Moon

An artist’s concept of Moon Express’ MX-1 lander on the surface of the Moon. Moon Express The Outer Space Treaty requires countries to “authorize and continuously supervise” the activities of space missions under their jurisdiction, including those of commercial companies. In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration carries out those duties with regard to private spaceflight, and things have worked well enough. But now a number of companies, including SpaceX with its Red Dragon mission , are seeking to push beyond Earth orbit, which has been the traditional boundary for commercial activity. Perhaps the biggest of the many questions this raises is how permissive the federal government would be regarding this new commercial interest. The early answer seems encouraging. The first company to apply for a commercial space mission beyond Earth orbit has just received approval from the federal government. As part of the Google Lunar X Prize competition, Moon Express intends to launch a small, single-stage spacecraft to land on the Moon by the end of 2017. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read the article:
The federal government just approved first private mission to the Moon

8TB disks seem to work pretty well, HGST still impressive

(credit: Alpha six ) Cloud backup and storage provider Backblaze has published its latest batch of drive reliability data. The release covers failure information for the 70,000 disks that the company uses to store some 250PB of data. This is the first quarter that Backblaze has been using a reasonable number of new 8TB disks: 45 from HGST and 2720 from Seagate. Drives from both companies are showing comparable annualized failure rates: 3.2 percent for HGST, 3.3 percent for Seagate. While the smaller HGST drives show better reliability, with annualized failure rates below one percent for the company’s 4TB drives, the figures are typical for Seagate, which Backblaze continues to prefer over other alternatives due to Seagate’s combination of price and availability. Annualized failure rates for all of Backblaze’s drives. (credit: Backblaze) But it’s still early days for the 8TB drives. While evidence for the phenomenon is inconclusive, hard drive reliability is widely assumed to experience a “bathtub curve” when plotting its failure rate against time: failure rates are high when the drives are new (due to “infant mortality” caused by drives that contain manufacturing defects) and when the drives reach their expected lifetime (due to the accumulated effects of wear and tear), with a period of several years of low failure rates in the middle. If the bathtub theory is correct, Backblaze’s assortment of 8TB drives should suffer fewer failures in the future. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Windows 10 one year later: The Anniversary Update

Last year’s Windows 10 release was unlike any Windows release I’ve ever used before, and I’ve used most of them. Almost every Windows release to-date had a sort of unfinished vibe that reflects the product’s history. Parts of the operating system developed long ago have almost fossilized, being preserved verbatim in each subsequent release. It gives the entire operating system an overall incomplete feel. Take Control Panel as an example. The oldest parts of Control Panel use dialogs for each group of settings, as this mouse window exemplifies. Those tabs are extensible by third parties. That SetPoint Settings tab, for example, launches Logitech’s mouse app for configuring the various buttons on my Performance MX mouse. New systems to this very day continue to use this extensibility; most Windows laptops will have a tab to configure their touchpad. Read 92 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Apollo astronauts dying of heart disease at 4-5X the rate of counterparts

(credit: NASA ) Deep space travel takes a toll on the body—and it’s apparently something you can’t moon-walk off. Apollo astronauts who have ventured out of the protective magnetosphere of mother Earth appear to be dying of cardiovascular disease at a far higher rate than their counterparts—both those that have stayed grounded and those that only flew in the shielding embrace of low Earth orbit. Though the data is slim—based on only 77 astronauts total—researchers speculate that potent ionizing radiation in deep space may be to blame. That hypothesis was backed up in follow-up mouse studies which provided evidence that similar radiation exposure led to long-lasting damage to the rodents’ blood vessels. All of the data is published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports . The study, while not definitive, may add an extra note of caution to the potential hazards of future attempts to fly to Mars and elsewhere in the cosmos. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Intel’s Core M Compute Stick is an actually usable computer with caveats

Intel’s Core m3 Compute Stick. Andrew Cunningham Back in January at CES , Intel showed us a full range of mini desktop PCs that it has been releasing steadily over the course of the year. The first was a new, inexpensive version of its Compute Stick , followed by a new, mainstream Skylake NUC , and finally a quad-core NUC box that wasn’t quite like anything the company had done before. Now Intel has sent us the last device we learned about at the beginning of the year: a Core m3-powered version of the Compute Stick that sits somewhere between the Atom version and the Skylake NUC on the price and performance spectrum. It looks more or less like the Atom version we’ve already seen, but it introduces a few neat ideas (and enough performance) that it’s actually plausible as a general-use desktop computer. The bad news is the price tag, which at $380 (with Windows, $300 without, and XXX with Windows and a Core m5) is pretty far outside the sub-$150 impulse-buy zone that the other Compute Sticks exist inside. So how well does it work? What compromises do you make when you shrink a decent laptop’s worth of power into a stick? And how big is the niche for a relatively powerful, relatively expensive stick-sized desktop, anyway? Read 19 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Visit site:
Intel’s Core M Compute Stick is an actually usable computer with caveats