Tag: golf

Sony’s profits triple as PS4 sales reach 25 million units worldwide

Sony’s profits have more than tripled year-on-year in the April to June quarter ( PDF link ), thanks to strong sales of camera sensors and the PlayStation 4, which has now sold 25.3 million units globally to date. The company’s overall net profit rose to ¥82.4 billion yen (£425 million, $664 million), significantly surpassing market expectations. Sony moved three million PS4s during the quarter, while peripheral and software shipments also increased, leading to the division’s 12.1 percent increase in sales to ¥288.6 billion (£1.4 billion, $2.3 billion), and an operating profit of ¥19.5 billion (£100 million, $160 million). The PS4 has taken a significant lead in the console market, massively outselling the rival Xbox One and Nintendo Wii U, the latter of which has sold just 10 million units . Sony’s devices division—which makes the camera sensors in high-end phones from Samsung and Apple— continues to grow . The unit saw a 35.1 percent increase in sales to ¥237.9 billion (£1.2 billion, $2 billion). Sales to external customers—i.e., those high-end phone makers—increased 41.2 percent year-on-year. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Sony’s profits triple as PS4 sales reach 25 million units worldwide

So far, WordPress denied 43% of DMCA takedown requests in 2015

This week WordPress released the latest edition of its recurring transparency report , revealing 43 percent  of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown requests it received have been rejected in the first six months of 2015. It’s the lowest six-month period shown in the report, though it only dates back to 2014. However, WordPress said this headline figure would be even higher if it “counted suspended sites as rejected notices.” That change in calculation would bump the WordPress DMCA denial rate to 67 percent between January 1 and June 30, 2015. In total, the publishing platform received 4,679 DMCA takedown requests as of June 30, identifying 12 percent of those as “abusive.” The top three organizations submitting these requests were Web Sheriff, Audiolock, and InternetSecurities. “Not surprisingly, the list is dominated by third party take down services, many of whom use automated bots to identify copyrighted content and generate takedown notices,” WordPress noted. The company wrote at length about this practice in April, both explaining and condemning the general procedure. “These kind of automated systems scour the Web, firing off takedown notifications where unauthorized uses of material are found—so humans don’t have to,” WordPress wrote . “Sounds great in theory, but it doesn’t always work out as smoothly in practice. Much akin to some nightmare scenario from the Terminator , sometimes the bots turn on their creators.” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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So far, WordPress denied 43% of DMCA takedown requests in 2015

Qualcomm quarterly profits plummet 47 percent year-over-year

Qualcomm, the world’s largest supplier of chips for mobile phones, is reeling after announcing a 47 percent drop in quarterly profit compared to the same period in 2014. On Wednesday, the San Diego-based firm said that it made $1.2 billion in net income during the third fiscal quarter of 2015, down from $2.2 billion a year ago. As a way to bounce back, the company also announced that it would be cutting 15 percent of its workforce, and would “significantly reduce [our] temporary workforce.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Qualcomm quarterly profits plummet 47 percent year-over-year

New iPod Touch’s A8 CPU running at 1.1GHz, includes 1GB of RAM

The new iPods that Apple announced this morning were outed a couple of weeks ago, but the insides of the new iPod Touch were still a surprise: Apple put an A8 in the new Touch, the same SoC that powers the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. The iPod Touch is quite a bit smaller than either iPhone, though, and preliminary benchmarks suggest that the chip’s speed has been reduced somewhat to keep the temperature down and the battery life up. Geekbench tests run by TechCrunch say the A8 in the Touch is running at about 1.1GHz, down from 1.3GHz in both iPhones. They also confirm that the A8 includes 1GB of RAM, the same amount as the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. The scores in that Geekbench run suggest that the slowed-down A8 is roughly equivalent to the 1.3GHz Apple A7 chip in the iPhone 5S , which if accurate still represents a substantial improvement over the A5 in the fifth-generation Touch (Primate Labs’ John Poole told us that he believes the listed clock speed to be accurate). What we don’t know is whether the GPU’s speed has been similarly reduced and how aggressively the A8 in the Touch will throttle its speed as it warms up. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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New iPod Touch’s A8 CPU running at 1.1GHz, includes 1GB of RAM

Here’s what Windows 10’s DVD and USB packaging will look like

Glorious purple for the Windows 10 Pro DVD. @MicrosoftInside Windows 10 will be available on both DVD and USB memory stick for the first, and possibly even the last, time. By the time the next version of Windows is released— if there is one —it’s hard to imagine that optical media will still be abundant, but this release comes on both the old shiny disc and the new USB key. Mundane blue for the Windows 10 Home DVD. @MicrosoftInside The different media have different packaging, and Twitter user @MicrosoftInside  has posted pictures of what they’ll look like. The DVD boxes will include a screenshot of the operating system on the front. The USB version will stick with a simple logo. The two versions of the operating system, Home and Pro, will sport different colors. The Pro version’s superiority is affirmed through its striking purple color, leaving Home to blue mediocrity. And the USB media get a simpler look. @MicrosoftInside   Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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Here’s what Windows 10’s DVD and USB packaging will look like

Nintendo asks GitHub to make Javascript-based Game Boy emulator disappear

This week, GitHub posted a takedown notice it received from Nintendo of America’s legal representation. The  Mario  makers believe that a popular Javascript-based Game Boy Advance emulator hosting its source on GitHub violated the company’s copyright for the games involved. “Nintendo requests that GitHub, Inc., disable public access to the website at http://jsemu.github.io/gba/,” the letter reads. “This website provides access to unauthorized copies of Nintendo’s copyright-protected video games and videos making use of Nintendo’s copyrighted Pokémon characters and imagery in violation of Nintendo’s exclusive rights.” The takedown notice cites both the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and GitHub’s own ” Guide to Filing a DMCA Notice .” In total, Nintendo identified more than 20 games and two franchises ( Metroid  and Pokémon ) with patents being infringed, and the individual titles run the gamut of popular ( Pokémon  Silver  and  Gold ) to obscure (remember  Golden Sun ?). The company requested GitHub immediately remove 32 unique URLs corresponding to various emulators. The notice denotes each individual patent and infringing URL, and the sites in question now deliver 404s.  Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Nintendo asks GitHub to make Javascript-based Game Boy emulator disappear

Cops nab fugitives in Cabo San Lucas by tracking Spotify IP address

A seven-month search for two Colorado children came to an end days ago after the authorities tracked the IP address of the alleged abductors’ Spotify account to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Brittany Nunn, left, and husband Peter Barr. Larimer County Sheriff’s Office Husband Peter Barr and wife Brittany Nunn of Wellington, Colorado, were brought to Denver days ago and face felony charges in connection to the children’s disappearance. Nunn had lost custody of her children to their fathers, but did not appear when the exchange was supposed to happen in December. The duo had been on the lam ever since, and are accused of unlawfully taking the woman’s two biological children, 4 and 6, to Mexico, according to The Coloradoan . The case was broken by Larimer County Sheriff’s investigator Drew Weber. According to the paper: Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Cops nab fugitives in Cabo San Lucas by tracking Spotify IP address

Google-owned Waze launches “RideWith” carpooling app on Android

RideWith, seen here looking very, very Waze-y. 5 more images in gallery Waze, the traffic-mapping app that Google acquired in 2013 for upwards of $1 billion, launched its first spin-off app on Monday. The new app, RideWith, sees Waze and Google entering the carpooling business. The app is now live in the Google Play store  for Android devices, but it currently only works in Waze’s home country of Israel (and you’ll need to turn Google Translate on if you visit the official site and don’t read Hebrew). An announcement at Waze’s official blog described the app as a “carpool pilot,” and it clarified that hopeful passengers will need to download and load the new app while drivers could opt into the program directly through the Waze app. With the RideWith app, riders can enter their commute info, then wait for an alert when a route-friendly driver has been found. Users can suss out drivers by way of profiles, prior riders’ reviews, and even through a chat option. The announcement explained that the app creates a price quote, based on distance and wear-and-tear values, when someone seeks a ride (which they can edit with their own “maximum” value). Potential drivers can then decide whether or not they want to accept that payment and take the passenger in question. The app handles payment with an apparent “nominal Waze commission” added to the price. The announcement didn’t clarify an amount, and a Google spokesperson declined to answer our question about the exact figure. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Google-owned Waze launches “RideWith” carpooling app on Android

This magic exoskeleton for industrial workers is the future—we know, we wore one

RICHMOND, Calif.—Wearing Ekso Bionics ’ forthcoming exoskeleton for construction and industrial workers is probably the closest that I will ever come to having a real physical superpower. Through the magic of gravity and amazing industrial and mechanical design, a 40-pound industrial tool that I was holding became totally weightless. After just a few minutes, I quickly figured out that if I let the tool go it would fly off into space, as if gravity had no effect on it at all. The Ekso Works suit is slated to hit the market in 2016 in the “tens of thousands of dollars” range. (One financial analyst, Jeffrey Cohen, believes it will cost about $12,000.) Read 36 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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This magic exoskeleton for industrial workers is the future—we know, we wore one

Fabled CD-playing, SNES-compatible “Play Station” prototype found in a box

At the 1989 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nintendo of America’s then-chairman Howard Lincoln took the stage to reveal some unexpected news: the company was partnering with European electronics firm Philips to make a CD-ROM-based games console. While the announcement took everyone in the audience by surprise, Sony engineer Ken Kutaragi was the most shocked of all. Just the night before, he and several Sony executives had been demonstrating a product developed in partnership with Nintendo. It was to be the world’s first hybrid console, featuring an SNES cartridge slot and a CD drive, with both formats available to game developers. That product, called “Play Station” (with a space), would never see the light of day. Industry lore suggests that only 200 of the Play Station consoles were ever produced, and hardly anyone has actually seen one of the fabled consoles in the flesh. However, pictures of the legendary original Play Station surfaced on reddit yesterday (retrieved via  Nintendo Life thanks to the current furore over on the site), showing the hybrid console in all its grey and yellowed-plastic glory. The reddit user claims that the console was discovered in a box of items given to him from a friend of his father who used to work at Nintendo. The pictures show that the Play Station featured an SNES cartridge slot on top, complete with a small LCD display and buttons that appear to be used for controlling playback of audio CDs. The rear of the Play Station shows a variety of audio and video outputs, while the familiar SNES controller bears Sony branding. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Fabled CD-playing, SNES-compatible “Play Station” prototype found in a box