Berlin-based Airfy, maker of the Airfy WiFi router that our very own John Biggs called one of the sexiest Wi-Fi routers he’d ever seen (and the man has doubtless seen a lot of WiFi routers), is launching a crowdfunding campaign for a new product today. Rather than tackling the ugliness and (often) stupidity of WiFi routers, the Airfy Beacon is an attempt at making the smart home, well… Read More
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Airfy’s Beacon Wants To Make The Smart Home Smarter
An anonymous reader writes Release Candidate One of OpenWRT 14.07 “Barrier Breaker” is released. Big for this tiny embedded Linux distribution for routers in 14.07 is native IPv6 support and the procd init system integration. The native IPv6 support is with the RA and DHCPv6+PD client and server support plus other changes. Procd is OpenWRT’s new preinit, init, hotplug, and event system. Perhaps not too exciting is support for upgrading on devices with NAND, and file system snapshot/restore so you can experiment without fear of leaving your network broken. There’s also experimental support for the musl standard C library. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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OpenWRT 14.07 RC1 Supports Native IPv6, Procd Init System
jfruh (300774) writes Korean electronics manufacturer LG has shown off experimental see-through, l roll-up displays, paper thin and flexible and capable of letting through about 30% of the light that strikes it. The company is eager to sell the concept and promises it’ll be arriving soon, though they’ve shown of similar (though less capable) technology over the past few years and have yet to bring any products to market. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Coming Soon(ish) From LG: Transparent, Rollup Display
Dputiger (561114) writes “It has been almost two years since AMD launched the FirePro W9000 and kicked off a heated battle in the workstation GPU wars with NVIDIA. AMD recently released the powerful FirePro W9100, however, a new card based on the same Hawaii-class GPU as the desktop R9 290X, but aimed at the professional workstation market. The W9100’s GPU features 2, 816 stream processors, and the card boasts 320GB/s of memory bandwidth, and six mini-DisplayPorts, all of which support DP1.2 and 4K output. The W9100 carries more RAM than any other AMD GPU as well, a whopping 16GB of GDDR5 on a single card. Even NVIDIA’s top-end Quadro K6000 tops out at 12GB, which means AMD sits in a class by itself in this area. In terms of performance, this review shows that the FirePro W9100 doesn’t always outshine its competition, but its price/performance ratio keep it firmly in the running. But if AMD continues to improve its product mix and overall software support, it should close the gap even more in the pro GPU market in the next 18-24 months.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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AMD FirePro W9100 16GB Workstation GPU Put To the Test
Billly Gates writes A leaked alpha of Windows 9 has been brewing on the internet. Today a screenshot shows what MS showed us at BUILD which includes a start menu with additional tiny tiles for things like people, calendar, pc settings, and news etc. “The new hybridized Start menu appears to be part of build 9788, which was compiled on July 4. While no one seems to have leaked the ISOs for build 9788 yet, the general consensus seems to be that the build does indeed exist somewhere at Microsoft — and that it might also feature Windows NT kernel version 6.4 (i.e. the complete version number is 6.4.9788). The screenshots show a Windows 8.1 Pro watermark, but this isn’t unusual for a very early alpha of a new build of Windows. If this really is the next version of the Windows NT kernel, then we’re most likely looking at an early build of Windows 9 (Threshold) rather than Windows 8.2.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Leaked Build of Windows 9 Shows Start Menu Return
Iddo Genuth (903542) writes “Israeli scientists from the Tel Aviv University perfected a method for using cell phone service towers’ microwave emitters to measure rain and snow and even (for the first time ) detect fog with great accuracy over vast areas in real time. The research team members have analyzed endless amounts of raw cellular data and developed more accurate ways to measure meteorological information and added more parameters that they can now measure using their growing database. When combined with existing meteorological monitoring technologies such as radars and local ground based weather stations, the results show unprecedented level of accuracy that can give better and further weather forecast as well as special warnings about upcoming floods, fog and hail which can affect both people and crop production.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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New Technology Uses Cellular Towers For Super-Accurate Weather Measurements
blackbeak (1227080) writes The Washington Post reports that the Journal of Vibration and Control’s review system was hijacked by a ring of reviewers. 60 articles have been retracted as a result. “After a 14-month investigation, JVC determined the ring involved “aliases” and fake e-mail addresses of reviewers — up to 130 of them — in an apparently successful effort to get friendly reviews of submissions and as many articles published as possible by Chen and his friends.’On at least one occasion, the author Peter Chen reviewed his own paper under one of the aliases he created, ‘ according to the SAGE announcement.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
redletterdave (2493036) notes that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) has shipped its first batch of microprocessors to Apple as the iPhone maker looks to diversify its overseas suppliers. Apple will continue to rely on Samsung for its microprocessors, but as the rivalry between Apple and Samsung heats up in the mobile and soon wearable arenas, the deal with TSMC allows Apple to be less reliant on Samsung and therefore have more leverage with respect to price negotiations for future chips, as TSMC has supplanted Samsung Electronics as Apple’s chief chipmaker for iPhones and iPads. Since 2011, Apple has been striking deals with other display and chip makers around Asia to reduce its dependence on Samsung. As a result of this slowdown in sales, Samsung on Monday announced operating income for its fiscal second quarter had sunk to a two-year low, blaming ‘weak’ sales of low- and medium-end smartphones, strong competition and subpar demand. It may not be a household name like Intel or AMD, but TSMC is the world’s biggest chip maker by revenue. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Apple Gets Its First Batch of iPhone Chips From TSMC
MojoKid (1002251) writes “Back in the day (which is a scientific measurement for anyone who used to walk to school during snowstorms, uphill, both ways), integrated audio solutions had trouble earning respect. Many enthusiasts considered a sound card an essential piece to the PC building puzzle. It’s been 25 years since the first Sound Blaster card was introduced, a pretty remarkable feat considering the diminished reliance on discrete audio in PCs, in general. These days, the Sound Blaster ZxR is Creative’s flagship audio solution for PC power users. It boasts a signal-to-noise (SNR) of 124dB that Creative claims is 89.1 times better than your motherboard’s integrated audio solution. It also features a built-in headphone amplifier, beamforming microphone, a multi-core Sound Core3D audio processor, and various proprietary audio technologies. While gaming there is no significant performance impact or benefit when going from onboard audio to the Sound Blaster ZxR. However, the Sound Blaster ZxR produced higher-quality in-game sound effects and it also produces noticeably superior audio in music and movies, provided your speakers can keep up.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Ode To Sound Blaster: Are Discrete Audio Cards Still Worth the Investment?
Lasrick sends this quote from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Most people would agree that keeping track of dangerous material is generally a good idea. So it may come as a surprise to some that the arrangements that are supposed to account for weapon-grade fissile materials—plutonium and highly enriched uranium—are sketchy at best. The most recent example involves several hundreds kilograms of plutonium that appear to have fallen through the cracks in various reporting arrangements. … [A Japanese researcher discovered] that the public record of Japan’s plutonium holdings failed to account for about 640 kilograms of the material. The error made its way to the annual plutonium management report that Japan voluntarily submits to the International Atomic Energy Agency … This episode may have been a simple clerical error, but it was yet another reminder of the troubling fact that we know very little about the amounts of fissile material that are circulating around the globe. The only reason the discrepancy was discovered in this case was the fact that Japan has been unusually transparent about its plutonium stocks. … No other country does this. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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How Japan Lost Track of 640kg of Plutonium