TechEye

North Korean propagandists enlist Adobe
NAND flash market hits record high
FAA expects 10,000 drones by 2020
Foxconn tapped for Google's Project Glass
AMD looks to cloud gaming
US Congress bans buying Chinese IT
Hackers really are dweebs
Bees use electric fields to communicate
Egyptian navy comes to the rescue of the internet
Apple's slide continues

Posted: 28 Mar 2013 05:17 AM PDT

Taking a page out of the Iranian Photoshop propaganda playbook, North Korea has been caught altering images of a military exercise featuring a bunch of landing craft and elite DPRK soldiers storming a snowy beach.

The image has been pulled by Agence France Presse (AFP), citing excessive digital alteration. It seems to show a fleet of eight hovercrafts delivering troops ashore, but on closer inspection it appears that some of the craft were digitally added, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. It also shows that North Korea is not only short of fuel, cabbage and rice – it desperately needs fresh Photoshop tutorials as well.

AFP photo editor Eric Baradat said a simple examination of photos submitted by KCNA, the North's state news agency, is usually enough to dismiss their pictures as fakes. However, he added that the North "tends to be better with Photoshop recently".

Although the North Korean navy operates a couple hundred landing craft, it is widely seen as a bad joke – a service equipped with obsolete hardware that would probably make good museum pieces elsewhere in the world. It would be wiped out in any serious conflict, but it can still pose a serious threat, as demonstrated in the 2010 sinking of a South Korean corvette.

North Korean rhetoric is out of control, but while it can be amusing, let's not forget the bigger picture. For all its lunacy, the belligerent North Korean regime should be taken seriously. It has a huge standing army, it operates concentration camps and routinely threatens neighbours in range of its missiles.

Perhaps most worryingly, it is steered by a frustrated new leader with access to nuclear weapons who wants to be seen as a worthy successor to Kim Jong Il.

NAND flash market hits record high

Posted: 28 Mar 2013 04:39 AM PDT

The PC market remains weak and the overheated smartphone and tablet market seems to be slowing down as well, but NAND makers are reporting their best quarter in history.

According to IHS iSuppli, NAND industry revenue in the last quarter of 2012 hit a new record, $5.6 billion. The market was up 17 percent from the third quarter, despite the slowdown.

Samsung and Toshiba lead the pack with a 37 and 31 percent market share respectively. Micron is in a distant second, with 14 percent of the market, followed by SK Hynix and Intel, at 11 and seven percent respectively. All the other players accounted for just three percent.

IHS believes the strong results were important because they helped offset negative trends in previous quarters, resulting in a period of record revenues last year.

"Major contributors to NAND strength in the fourth quarter included smartphones and tablets, even though density growth is projected to slow in 2013 for each smartphone, and has been negative for tablets since 2010. For these markets, rising volumes trumped the trend of slower growth in memory usage in the fourth quarter," said IHS analyst Ryan Chien.

Aside from smartphones and tablets, solid state drives and retail flash products helped the industry rake in record revenue last quarter.

FAA expects 10,000 drones by 2020

Posted: 28 Mar 2013 03:47 AM PDT

The US Federal Aviation Administration predicts that up to 10,000 commercial drones might end up in American skies after new guidelines are improved.

Congress has already asked the FAA to write regulations for civil drone operators and submit them by 2015. The regulations should allow the civilian unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) market to develop rather quickly, both in new markets and established markets dominated by manned aircraft.

Teal Group analyst Paul Finnegan believes law enforcement will be the first to tap the potential of cheap UASs, followed by civilian applications. It is estimated that the UAS market will be worth around $94 over the next ten years, reports CNS News.

The FAA has already issued 1.428 UAS licences, but most of them went to police, universities and federal agencies. Only 327 of these licences are still active.

Civilian unmanned aircraft clearly have a lot going for them and we can think of a wide range of applications. They are a lot cheaper and more efficient than manned aircraft, which makes them quite appealing for cash strapped government agencies and even some commercial enterprises.

However, New York City's Mayor Bloomberg gave a foreboding radio interview that warned though he may not like them, it's inevitable there will be domestic drones in the sky, quite possibly for surveillance purposes.

As such, the adoption of unmanned aircraft by civilian operators will raise some eyebrows, especially in conspiratorial circles. Some people like to think they are so important that the federal government has nothing to do with its drones than to spy on them. We are, however, talking about conspiracy kooks who have nothing better to do with their lives than come up with half baked theories.

Foxconn tapped for Google's Project Glass

Posted: 28 Mar 2013 03:25 AM PDT

Google has decided that Foxconn will get the contract for its internet eyeware, Project Glass.

According to the Irish Times, the specs, designed by Google and featuring software and cameras, will be made by the Taiwanese company at its factory in California. It means that Google will not have to worry about too many of staff creating PR disasters by throwing themselves off buildings.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin claims that Project Glass is the future of mobile computing and will kill off the "emasculating" smartphone.

So far fashion designers, skydivers, acrobats and pilots have been used by Google to demonstrate the eyeglass computers on the search engine's website. So far, however, Project Glass makes people look like Joe90 or Clark Kent.

Google plans to invite a limited number of users to test the interactive glasses in the next few days.

AMD looks to cloud gaming

Posted: 28 Mar 2013 02:47 AM PDT

AMD thinks that gamers will move to the cloud and it can save its bacon by getting in first.

The outfit thinks that special new cloud-focused enterprise graphics cards, called Radeon Sky Graphics will take off.

AMD has partnered with CiiNow, G-Cluster, Otoy and other cloud-based gaming services to deliver their vision for the future of cloud gaming.

The processors have specifically been created to work with remote gaming servers and have the ability to stream content to a variety of devices from PCs, smartphones and tablets.

It means that gamers who don't have extremely high-end PCs can potentially play titles that they normally wouldn't be able to enjoy by offloading the intense processing work to a remote server.

The danger here is that cloud-based gaming effectively renders the need for a high-end PC graphics card obsolete. This is a good money spinner for AMD as gamers with deep pockets like to buy them. But with more gamers moving to mobile toys, there needs to be a way to get higher quality graphics on them.

AMD seems to hope that the money will be made back from an increase in cloud-based server farms which will buy its expensive cloud graphics service chips.

But this means that AMD needs to move fast to get its foot in the door, it will not be out evolved when the cloud takes over.

Ocanada has seen a tech demo of what AMD has in mind built with Crytek's CryEngine 3 called Ruby which looked jolly nice.

The system will prove popular with games publishers because it will also mean that DRM will be easier to implement.

The downside is that it needs a really good connection to work.

US Congress bans buying Chinese IT

Posted: 28 Mar 2013 02:33 AM PDT

The US Congress has installed a new cyber-espionage review process for government technology purchases which effectively pushes Chinese companies out into the cold.

The funding law signed this week by President Barack Obama is part of growing US paranoia over Chinese cyber attacks.

It stops NASA, and the Justice and Commerce Departments from buying information technology systems unless the FBI give the thumbs up. Currently FBI policy is that if the gear comes from a Chinese company there must be something wrong with it. This is different from having a "made in China" label on the back because that applies to most US electronics. The belief is that the Chinese will alter designs to allow back doors, they will sneak into factories operating in their back yard and stick sniffer chips into devices made by US companies.

A provision in the 240-page spending law requires the agencies to make a formal assessment of "cyber espionage or sabotage" risk when considering buying information technology systems.

It must include "any risk associated with such system being produced, manufactured or assembled by one or more entities that are owned, directed or subsidised" by China.

Currently the US imports a total of about $129 billion worth of "advanced technology products" from China, although a lot of this is from US companies who outsourced over there.

Writing in the Volokh Conspiracy, Stewart Baker wrote that the measure "could turn out to be a harsh blow" for Chinese computer maker Lenovo and also "bring some surprises for American companies selling commercial IT gear to the government".

It is also possible that some US allies could raise objections because of the potential for the provision to prevent purchases of Lenovo computers manufactured in Germany or Huawei handsets designed in Britain.

Hackers really are dweebs

Posted: 28 Mar 2013 02:31 AM PDT

The stereotype of a hacker being antisocial man-children who live in their parents' basements is apparently true, according to a new study from the University of Montreal.

Professor Benoit Dupont, who will present his findings next week at a criminology conference, studied police evidence on 10 hackers between 17 and 27 years old, arrested in Quebec in 2008.

One of them was Mafiaboy, whose attacks crippled the websites of Yahoo, eBay, CNN, Dell and Amazon.

According to Sunnewsnetwork, Dupont found that the hackers rarely profit from their cybercrimes and seem to do it for lols.

"Many of them are weren't able to convert their technical competence into financial profit," said Dupont. He has done a similar study in Canada, the United States and England, and found a similar profile.

He said that the typical hacker is male, in his 20s, and socially immature. They often have criminal records for non-digital crimes such as drug dealing and uttering threats. More than a third lived with their parents.

Dupont said that as more information was accumulated from hacker arrests, the more he found that these are characteristics that recur frequently.

Another problem for hackers who try to make cash out of their crimes is that they lack the social skills to work with people. They tend to make organisations which are dysfunctional.

Bees use electric fields to communicate

Posted: 28 Mar 2013 02:04 AM PDT

Bees use the electric fields that build up on their body to communicate without the need for mobile phones.

According to Randolf Menzel, a neurobiologist at the Free University of Berlin in Germany, as the bees fly, flutter their wings, or rub body parts together they generate a strong electric field.

These deflect the bees' antennae, which provide signals to the brain through specialised organs at their bases.

While it has been known for a while that insects gain an electrical charge when they buzz, they did not realise that charge builds up.

The bee's exoskeleton has a waxy surface that acts as an electrical insulator which means that the charge isn't easily dissipated, even when the insect lands on objects. This helps pollen stick to insects visiting a flower.

It is thought that a flower that a bee had recently landed on might have an altered electrical field, so the bee ignores it.

According to Science Now, Menzel and colleagues have studied how honey bees respond to electrical fields.

The boffins found that a small, electrically charged wand brought close to a honey bee can cause its antennae to bend. Other tests, using antennae removed from honey bees, indicated that electrically induced deflections triggered reactions in a group of sensory cells, called the Johnston's organ, located near the base of the antennae.

In less nasty experiments bees learned that a sugary reward was available when they detected a particular pattern of electrical field.

The tests suggest that the electrical fields that build up on bees due to their flight or movement are stimuli that could be used in social communication.

Egyptian navy comes to the rescue of the internet

Posted: 28 Mar 2013 02:01 AM PDT

The Egyptian navy has once more succeeded in stopping the Sea People cutting off Egypt from the outside world.

According to the Washington Post, Egypt's naval forces captured three scuba divers who were trying to cut an undersea internet cable in the Mediterranean.

While telecommunications executives blamed a weeklong internet slowdown on damage caused to another cable by a ship, it seemed that there might have been something else happening.

Colonel Ahmed Mohammed Ali told his Facebook friends that divers were arrested while "cutting the undersea cable" of the country's main communications company, Telecom Egypt.

They were arrested on a speeding fishing boat just off what is left of the wonder of the world in Alexandria.

Ali's page had a photo showing three young men, apparently Egyptian, staring up at the camera in what looks like an inflatable launch. It did not have details on who the men were or why they would have wanted to cut a nice cable.

Egypt has been suffering outages since March 22. Telecom Egypt executive manager Mohammed el-Nawawi told CBC that the damage was caused by a ship, and there would be a full recovery on Thursday. Of course it could have been another attack by the three which was designed to look like a ship. If you manage to take out enough cables in that region the whole of the Middle East will be porn free.

It's not the first time cable cuts have affected the Middle East in recent years. Errant ships' anchors are often blamed. Serious undersea cable cuts caused widespread internet outages and disruptions across the Middle East on two separate occasions in 2008.

Apple's slide continues

Posted: 28 Mar 2013 01:56 AM PDT

While Apple is doing its best to rally the troops, it appears that privately it is admitting that it has a long way to fall yet.

Apple cut its shipments of the iPad mini to between 10-12 million units for the second quarter of 2013.

The source of that rumour is Digitimes. It scores over the older, more pedestrian tech press, in that it is actually on the scene and sometimes gets it right .

In this case the figure is based on shipment information given from multiple sources who provide various components for Apple's iPad mini.

While many had known that the larger and more expensive iPad was dead in the water, this is the first time that the iPad mini has fallen short of its sales targets.

The decrease may be as high as 20 percent a month during April, the sources noted, and may continue to slightly decrease throughout the quarter to bring total shipments of the iPad mini to as low as 10 million units during the quarter.

While Apple fanboys might scream that 10 million units is better than a poke in the eye with a short stick, it is not enough to justify the still inflated shareprice, or maintain Apple's much touted reality distortion field.

Apple's cut comes as it is adjusting its reserves for the next-generation iPad mini, which is likely to be released in the third quarter.

But Apple is also finding it tough to compete with various 7-inch Android tablets, Digitimes' sources said.

Apple recently slashed shipment estimates for its iPad and iPad mini products in 2013 to 33 million and 55 million, respectively, said the sources.