remaining – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Fully driverless cars could be months away

Enlarge / Waymo is using a fleet of Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans to develop its self-driving technology. (credit: Waymo) Real driverless cars could come to the Phoenix area this year, according to a Monday report from The Information’s Amir Efrati. Two anonymous sources have told Efrati that Google’s self-driving car unit, Waymo, is preparing to launch “a commercial ride-sharing service powered by self-driving vehicles with no human ‘safety’ drivers as soon as this fall.” Obviously, there’s no guarantee that Waymo will hit this ambitious target. But it’s a sign that Waymo believes its technology is very close to being ready for commercial use. And it suggests that Waymo is likely to introduce a fully driverless car network in 2018 if it doesn’t do so in the remaining months of 2017. Waymo plans to launch first in the Phoenix suburbs Efrati reports that Waymo CEO John Krafcik faces pressure from his boss, Google co-founder and Alphabet CEO Larry Page, to transform Waymo’s impressive self-driving technology into a shipping product. Page had been pushing for a launch by the end of 2016. But a major deal with Ford to produce the necessary vehicles fell through, forcing Waymo to scramble and sign a smaller deal with Fiat Chrysler to supply minivans. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Fully driverless cars could be months away

Intel 18-core Core i9-7980XE launches September 25 for $2,000

Enlarge Intel’s monstrous 18-core, 36-thread Core i9-7980XE CPU launches September 25 for a whopping $2,000, Intel announced today. It will be joined by the $1,700 16C/32T i9-7960X and the $1,400 14C/28T i9-7940X, while the 12C/12T i9-7920X launches a month earlier on August 28 for $1,200. UK prices are TBC, but the top-end chip will likely start at around £1,900, and then work its way down from there. Alongside release dates, Intel also revealed TDPs and boost clock speeds—information that was curiously missing from the original X299 announcement back in May. The Core i9-7980XE features a 2.6GHz base clock, a Turbo Boost 2.0 clock of 4.2GHz, and a Turbo Boost 3.0 clock (up to two cores) of 4.4GHz. That’s accompanied by 24.75MB of L3 cache, 44 PCIe lanes, and a 165W TDP (the 10-core i9-7900K has a 140W TDP). Boost and turbo clocks for the remaining i9 chips are largely the same, with a mere 100MHz variance, although the i9-7940X sports a higher 3.1GHz base clock. PC Gamer dug up a more detailed look at stock clock speeds, which shows the variance depending on how many cores are under load. In the case of the i9-7980XE, clock speeds vary from 4.2GHz to 3.9GHz up to 12 cores, dropping to 3.4GHz when all 18 cores are active. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Intel 18-core Core i9-7980XE launches September 25 for $2,000

Email scheme stole $100 million from two US tech companies

It’s tempting to assume that technology workers are intelligent enough to avoid email fraud , but that’s not always the case. Both the FBI and the state of New York have charged a Lithuanian man, Evaldas Rimasauskas, with perpetrating a phishing campaign that siphoned $100 million away from two US tech companies companies. They’re both choosing to remain unnamed, although one is a “multinational online social media company” — you can probably whip up a short list of candidates based on that description. The scheme wasn’t particularly complicated, either, and mostly relied on less-than-attentive employees. Between 2013 and 2015 (possibly earlier), Rimasauskas allegedly ran a fake company in Latvia that had the same name as an “Asian-based computer hardware manufacturer.” He used this bogus firm to fool victims into responding to phishing emails, getting them to wire millions of dollars to his bank accounts in Latvia and Cyprus. The fraudster quickly spread the money to accounts elsewhere in the world (including Lithuania, Hong Kong, Hungary and Slovakia), and even sent forged documents to the banks to convince them that the large sums of money were legitimate. If the charges (which include wire fraud, identity theft and money laundering) hold up, Rimasaukas faces stiff punishment. He’s looking at a minimum of 2 years in prison if he’s found guilty of identity theft, and each of the remaining charges could get him up to 20 years behind bars. However, it’s also safe to say that his targets are learning a hard lesson, too. Even the most tech-savvy companies can fall prey to online fraud, and they may need to step up their security measures (including staff education) to prevent similar incidents. Source: Department of Justice

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Email scheme stole $100 million from two US tech companies

21st Century Fox is buying UK’s Sky in $14.6 billion deal

Following talks last week , 21st Century Fox has agreed to buy Sky, the UK’s largest pay-TV network, for £11.7 billion ($14.6 billion). The UK-based pay-TV broadcaster and broadband provider counts nearly 22 million subscribers in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Germany and Austria. That’ll give Rupert Murdoch’s Fox a delivery platform for content from its 20th Century Fox movie studio and Fox TV network, along with cable TV channels like FX, Fox Sports and National Geographic. The deal “creates a global leader in content creation and distribution, enhances our sports and entertainment scale, and gives us unique and leading direct-to-consumer capabilities and technologies, ” 21st Century Fox said in a statement . As part of the deal, Sky headquarters will stay in London and continue a £1 billion ($1.25 billion) expansion of its headquarters. Rumored talks last week valued Sky as high as £18.5 billion ($23.2 billion). The Rupert Murdoch-owned media empire already owns 39 percent of Sky and tried to buy the remaining shares back in 2010. However, the company abandoned the attempt after several of the company’s tabloids became embroiled in a the so-called phone hacking scandal. With Brexit significantly weakening the pound, Sky has become significantly cheaper for US-based Fox, making it ripe for an acquisition. Source: 21st Century Fox