Microsoft set Windows 8.1 upon the world today, and with it a host of improvements large and small. You check out our full review here , but in the meantime, here’s a look at our favorite new features. Read more…
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The Five Best New Features in Windows 8.1
Nerval’s Lobster writes “This year’s revelations about NSA surveillance have upended the idea that our data—any of it—is truly secure from prying eyes. That uncertainty has sparked the rise of several businesses with a simple proposition: you can send whatever you want via their online service (text, images, video), and that data will vaporize within seconds of the recipient opening it up. One of the most popular of those services is Snapchat, which allows users to take “Snaps” (i.e., videos or photos) that self-destruct a few seconds after the recipient opens them; that data also disappears from the company’s servers. But is ‘disappearing’ data truly secure from prying eyes? Earlier this week, Snapchat admitted to a loophole in its schema that leaves Snaps open to viewing by law enforcement — provided the latter shows up at the company’s front door with a warrant. Until a recipient opens a Snap, it’s stored in the company’s datacenter. In theory, law enforcement could request that Snapchat send it an unopened Snap. ‘If we receive a search warrant from law enforcement for the contents of Snaps and those Snaps are still on our servers, ‘ read an Oct. 14 posting on Snapchat’s corporate blog, ‘a federal law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) obliges us to produce the Snaps to the requesting law enforcement agency.’ Law-enforcement entities have hit Snapchat with ‘about a dozen’ search warrants for unopened Snaps since May 2013. ‘Law enforcement requests sometimes require us to preserve Snaps for a time, like when law enforcement is determining whether to issue a search warrant for Snaps, ‘ the blog continued. That surveillance could also go beyond unopened Snaps: Snapchat ‘Stories, ‘ or a cluster of Snaps, live on the company’s servers for up to 24 hours and can be viewed multiple times, which broadens the window for law enforcement to poke its way in.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Snapchat Search Warrants Emphasize Data Vulnerability
alphadogg writes “As it embarks on what’s likely to be a long journey to its next big increase in speed, Ethernet is in some ways a victim of its own success. Years ago, birthing a new generation of Ethernet was relatively straightforward: Enterprises wanted faster LANs, vendors figured out ways to achieve that throughput and hashed out a standard, and IT shops bought the speed boost with their next computers and switches. Now it’s more complicated, with carriers, Web 2.0 giants, cloud providers, and enterprises all looking for different speeds and interfaces, some more urgently than others. … That’s what the IEEE 802.3 400Gbps Study Group faces as it tries to write the next chapter in Ethernet’s history. … ‘You have a lot of different people coming in to the study group, ‘ said John D’Ambrosia, the group’s chair, in an interview at the Ethernet Alliance’s Technology Exploration Forum in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday. That can make it harder to reach consensus, with 75 percent approval required to ratify a standard, he said.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Ethernet’s 400-Gigabit Challenge Is a Good Problem To Have
FreedomPop, promiser of free data , is finally launching the first actually free service plan into beta today. It comes with free texts, free minutes, and free data. All you have to do is front $100 for a phone. Read more…
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Heck Yes! The First Free Wireless Plan Is Finally Here
Frosty Piss writes “Delta Air Lines plans to buy 11, 000 Microsoft Surface 2 tablets for its pilots to replace the heavy bundles of books and maps they haul around now. Delta says the Surface tablets will save it $13 million per year in fuel and other costs. Right now, each pilot carries a 38-pound flight bag with manuals and maps. Other airlines, including American and United, have been buying Apple’s iPad for that purpose. One reason Delta picked a Microsoft device was that it’s easier to give pilots separate sections for company and personal use, said Steve Dickson, Delta’s senior vice president for flight operations. Another reason for picking the Surface tablet is that Delta’s training software also runs on the same Windows operating system as the tablets, reducing the need to redo that software for another device, Dickson said.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Delta Replacing Flight Manuals with Surface Tablets
New submitter TinTops writes “Speaking in a keynote at Intel’s Developer Forum, Microsoft’s vice president of marketing, Tami Reller, said the firm has ‘now seen about three quarters of Windows enterprises moving to modern desktops’ from Windows XP, with the last leg of Windows XP migrations being spurred by the imminent availability of Windows 8.1. However, Reller did not offer a breakdown of the enterprise uptake of Windows 8 compared to Windows 7, both of which are counted by Microsoft as modern desktops.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Majority of Enterprise Customers Finally ‘Migrating Away From Windows XP’
Russian startup Nettle , which is based in the Skolkovo Tech City area , is showing off a $28, 000 holographic gaming set-up at TechCrunch Disrupt SF’s Hardware Alley. The Nettlebox rig consists of a 3D plasma display, with four fisheye lens infrared cameras at the corners to track the position of the gamer who wears a pair of 3D glasses with two infrared lights onboard. The game itself is powered by a Windows PC built into the table. The set up tricks your brain into seeing a real-time holographic image of the game as you play. The holographic scenery appears sunken into the table, rather than standing out proud above the surface. Most importantly, the 3D illusion is sustained as you change your position so you can move around to get the best vantage point. “With this technology users can see a 3D screen from all viewpoints, from all angles, and see a 3D object in front of him. The brain believes that it’s a real object because the illusion is very strong, ” says co-founder Andrei Desyatov. “We are tracking the user’s position very fast.” The Nettlebox’s proprietary cameras run at 1, 000 fps. That high frame rate is required to enable a “stable illusion” when the user changes their physical position, he adds. The camera range (i.e. the distance between the user and the table) is up to around 1.5 meters in the brightly lit (“noisy”) environment of the Disrupt conference hall but can extend up to 5 meters when using the Nettlebox in darker rooms, according to Desyatov. After a brief hands on — or eyes on — I can confirm it certainly works, and that the effect is pretty immersive, though it did feel like it could become rather disorienting. And possibly end up inducing a headache/motion-sickness style nausea. But that’s likely to depend on your sensitivity to this sort of stuff (speaking as someone who had to quit playing Minecraft because mining its 3D blocks left me feeling too queasy). At $28, 000 the Nettlebox itself is not about to become the next great leap forward in home videogaming, but Nettle is targeting this device at the presentation/exhibition market. It is also working with real-estate companies on developing showroom/presentation use cases by, for instance, allowing architects to walk around a hologram of a model building. After that, it does have videogaming in its sights. ”The next step for us is gaming. We are going to create a gaming machine for amusement parks, ” says Desyatov. “And then the last step is for videogames like strategies like Starcraft and so on.” Pushing the Nettlebox into the home gaming market is going to require some serious squeezing of its price tag but Desyatov reckons it will be possible to build something that is “affordable for most users.” Nettle is bootstrapping at present and launched the Nettlebox in Russia a few months ago. It’s got five customers so far and is looking to expand that customer base internationally, eyeing the U.S. market. “We’re thinking about looking for external funding to increase the speed of entering the gaming industry, ” he adds.
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Nettlebox Is A $28,000 Hologram Rig That Lets You View Real-Time 3D From All Angles
First time accepted submitter noahfecks writes “After the Linux 3.11 kernel was codenamed ‘Linux for Workgroups’ in memory of Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Linus Torvalds is using ‘Suicidal Squirrel’ as the Linux 3.12 kernel codename.” Seems only fitting. (The list of kernel names should reflect this soon.) Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Linux 3.12 Codenamed "Suicidal Squirrel"
Deathspawner writes “Valve has today announced its next attempt at a console-killer: ‘Family Sharing’ is a feature that will allow you to share your Steam library with family and close friends. This almost seems too good to be true, and while there are caveats, this is going to be huge, and Valve knows it. As Techgage notes, with it you can share nearly your entire Steam library with family or friends, allowing them to earn their own achievements, and have their own saved games. ‘Once a device is authorized, the lender’s library of Steam games becomes available for others on the machine to access, download, and play. Though simultaneous usage of an account’s library is not allowed, the lender may always access and play his games at any time. If he decides to start playing when a friend is borrowing one of his games, the friend will be given a few minutes to either purchase the game or quit playing.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Valve Announces Family Sharing On Steam, Can Include Friends
cold fjord writes “ZDNet reports, ‘Seagate on Monday took the wraps off a hard drive designed for tablets that brings 7x the storage capacity of a 64GB device with the same performance as a Flash drive. The drive, the Seagate Ultra Mobile HDD, uses software to boost performance. The idea is that Android tablet manufacturers will use the Seagate drive, along with the company’s mobile enablement kit and caching software, to up the storage. The 2.5-inch drive is 5 mm thin and weighs 3.3 ounces. As for capacity, the drive has 500GB—enough for 100, 000 photos and 125, 000 songs.’ More at The Wall Street Journal.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Big Jump For Tablet Storage: Seagate Intros 5mm Hard Disk For Tablets