TechEye |  |
- NASA scientist develops DIY marijuana growth system
- Intel serves up server plans
- Kiwi spooks suffer from Dotcom fiasco
- Hackers get free access to Ubisoft
- Bitcoin hits $233, tries not to look like a bubble
- China overtakes US in semicon manufacturing
- TSMC sales up 18.9 percent on year
- US techies out of work
- Foxconn allegedly fires employees with suicidal tendencies
- Microsoft copies Apple in China
| NASA scientist develops DIY marijuana growth system Posted: 10 Apr 2013 06:42 AM PDT What do manned missions to Mars and marijuana have in common? Well it seems that NASA’s only way to get to Mars is by getting high and now a former NASA scientist is looking to apply his life-support expertise to marijuana growing. Dale Chamberlain spent years working on advanced life support systems and hydroponics, hoping that NASA would go to Mars sooner or later. Sadly though, financial concerns have forced NASA to all but shelve its plans for a manned mission to Mars. Chamberlain then decided to develop a self-contained hydroponic system for DIY marijuana growers in Colorado. Since it is now legal to possess and grow cannabis for personal use in the South Park state, Chamberlain though it would be a good idea to apply his expertise to this growing field, pardon the pun. Colorado state law mandates that marijuana growers need to have an enclosed, lockable space and Chamberlain’s Colorado Grow Box offers just that. It is a lockable, self-contained system that requires very little maintenance. “The bottom line is people don’t have time, they don’t have time because of a job and other things to deal with,” Chamberlain told The Rocky Mountain Collegian. “With my background with plant chambered automation systems, it is a natural conclusion to build a chamber that would be like a refrigerator, where all you need to do is go and open the door and get your bud.” In addition to the hydroponic grow box, Chamberlain has launched a marijuana growing school with his cousin. Dubbed the High Altitude School of Hydroponics (HASH), the school offers three levels of classes designed for the casual grower. He is also considering producing videos to reach “students” who can’t attend classes, and considering his target audience, there’s probably quite a few of them. |
| Posted: 10 Apr 2013 04:21 AM PDT The maker of fashion bags, Intel, is planning to push out a lot more hardware to the lucrative server market. While Chipzilla's traditional PC market has been suffering, the market for servers is getting stronger. Intel thinks that the way forward is to have greater influence in the way servers are designed. According to the Wall Street Journal, Intel is planning to introduce faster server microprocessors and provide new details of what it calls a "rack-scale architecture". This is a roadmap for designing and plugging together servers to manage internet-style workloads. The idea is that companies are looking for new ways to run their server operations. For a while now they have been stacking boxes with separate power supplies, disk drives and using clusters of cables to connect them. But the sheer volume of web-based computing jobs, and the data they generate, is making this all impossible. Some are rethinking server designs to reduce unnecessary components and save money and power consumption and that is where Chipzilla thinks it can make a buck or two. So far it has been seen working with Google and Facebook, pushing an initiative called Open Compute. Open Compute aims to create low-cost modular servers to reduce server cost and complexity. But there are some problems with the project. Intel thinks that it is being dominated too much by Facebook. Lisa Graff, Intel's vice president and general manager of its data centre marketing group said that Facebook is doing what is best for them and that approach does not work for everyone. Open Compute envisions the use not only of x86-style chips from Intel and AMD but also chips based on ARM which is something that Chipzilla does not really want to touch. Anything that lets ARM into one of Intel's traditional markets is going to be a problem. Already Intel's long term chum HP has been muttering about putting ARM chips with its low-power servers as part of an effort called Project Moonshot. So far Intel has managed to keep the lid on that and the only Moonshot servers released so far come with Atom chips. Intel has also been doing some work on its own in something it calls Project Scorpio. This involves working with some other big web and telecom companies in China. The idea of this project is to come up with a rack design that lets servers share power supplies, fans and network components. It is also creating a reference design to encourage computer makers to create more efficient systems using an array of Intel technology. Intel is using Xeon and new low-end Atom chips for applications at the cutting edge of the cunning plan. Intel has a new Atom model for servers, code-named Avoton, which is expected to arrive in the second half of the year it is also planning to introduce a new model of its Xeon E3 family based on Haswell. New versions of its higher-end Xeon E5 will hit the shops in the third quarter and Xeon E7 in the fourth quarter. |
| Kiwi spooks suffer from Dotcom fiasco Posted: 10 Apr 2013 02:18 AM PDT Sheepish Kiwi spooks are seriously regretting their antics over spying on such a high profile case as Megaupload boss Kim Dotcom. After the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) was hauled over the coals for illegally spying on Dotcom, the government held an official inquiry into the spooks' operations. According to AP, they found that the agency had a fairly casual attitude to the law and had never really been called out on it. New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said the report into the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) was "sobering reading" and revealed long-standing problems with the agency's practices and culture. Key, who is the minister responsible for the organisation, said that this review will knock public confidence in the GCSB. Key has offered a public apology to Dotcom, acknowledging that the German national should have been off limits to the GCSB because he has residency status in New Zealand. At the time the GCSB insisted the Dotcom case was an isolated incident, but an 85-page report, compiled by a top public servant, found there were a total of 88 cases where New Zealand citizens or residents may have been illegally spied on. Although the names were kept secret to protect the guilty, the report identified "issues within GCSB concerning organisational structure, culture, systems and capabilities" and called for more external oversight of the agency. Key has promised to bring in some major changes at the agency. Dotcom said he was surprised at the scale of the problem and said that the PM should apologise to those people too and inform the targets. |
| Hackers get free access to Ubisoft Posted: 10 Apr 2013 02:16 AM PDT Russian hackers have worked out a way that they can gain free access to Ubisoft's online game offerings. According to Game Informer, the hack highlights the problems for games companies who put their products online. Rather than spending a lot of time hacking into game DRM, the hackers can focus on breaking into the defences of the online servers. They can then illegally sell access. A Ubisoft spokesperson said that the company was aware of the problem and is working to resolve it quickly. While no personal information was compromised, uPlay's PC download service will be unavailable until the problem is fixed. In this case the hack tricked uPlay into thinking users already own a particular game, making it available to download at no cost and with no DRM. What will be embarrassing for Ubisoft is that its unannounced shooter Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is apparently lying on Ubisoft's servers, available to download to those who have the exploit. All was revealed when someone using the hack posted half an hour of Blood Dragon footage on YouTube. While this was quickly pulled down by Ubisoft, it was really being shown as evidence that the exploit works and is being used to play the unreleased game. |
| Bitcoin hits $233, tries not to look like a bubble Posted: 10 Apr 2013 02:15 AM PDT Bitcoin has surged past $200 for the first time in history, but its meteoric rise has prompted many in the financial world to sound the alarm. As of Wednesday morning, Bitcoin is trading at $233. Just last week it crossed the $100 threshold and a month ago it was valued at about $40. Naysayers are calling it a massive bubble, and given the numbers we are inclined to believe them. However, there are still those who believe Bitcoin is a wise investment. They have a valid point. Anything that doubles in value in just over a week might work as a short-term speculative investment. For many, the allure of doubling their cash in a matter of weeks, or even days, might be worth the gamble. However, it sounds very risky at this point. Bitcoin is not regulated, it relies on bitcoin exchanges, which aren’t regulated either, and although its decentralised nature sounds like a revolutionary idea for the digital age, the sheer lack of regulation and oversight will continue to hamper efforts to make it a trusted mainstream currency. |
| China overtakes US in semicon manufacturing Posted: 10 Apr 2013 02:14 AM PDT China has managed to overtake the US in semiconductor manufacturing and according to SEMI’s latest report, the trend is more than likely to accelerate, reports Quartz. Last year China gobbled up $5.07 billion worth of silicon ingots and other materials used for semicon manufacturing, up 42 per cent over 2008. In contrast, North America consumed $4.74 billion, down from $4.99 billion in 2008. Taiwan still reigns supreme, its spending is well north of $10 billion and growing. |
| TSMC sales up 18.9 percent on year Posted: 10 Apr 2013 02:13 AM PDT TSMC, the world’s biggest foundry for hire, has seen its sales surge 18.9 percent in March from a year earlier, Reuters reports. TSMC CEO Morris Chang recently announced that his outfit will post double digit growth figures, but few were expecting such a good result. Chang is upbeat when it comes to the rest of the year, too. “Last year was not a very good one,” said Chang. “This year we think will be better.” Although Chang thinks 2012 was not a great year, TSMC still managed to increase its revenue by 19 percent last year. Fourth quarter profit jumped 32 percent and the first quarter of 2013 is looking even better. TSMC has the mobile craze to thank for its stellar results. It manufactures mobile chips designed by Qualcomm, Broadcom and Nvidia. If rumour mongers are to be believed, TSMC has also landed a massive contract from a certain fruity gadget maker based in Cupertino. |
| Posted: 10 Apr 2013 02:11 AM PDT The US is facing an increase in the unemployment rate for people at the heart of many tech innovations, even while IT companies claim they are short staffed. Unemployment among electrical engineers rose sharply in the first quarter of this year and the IEEE-USA says the increase is alarming. According to Computerworld, electrical engineering jobs declined by 40,000 in the first quarter, and the unemployment rate in the category rose to 6.5 percent, based on an analysis of US Labour Data by the IEEE-USA. Meanwhile the numbers of unemployed software developers are on the rise. The unemployment rate for software engineers was 2.2 percent in the first quarter, down from 2.8 percent in 2012, IEEE-USA said. This means that there were 1.1 million software developers were employed during the first quarter. Between 2010 and 2011, the unemployment rate for electrical engineers held at 3.4 percent. In 2012 there were 335,000 electrical engineers counted in the workforce and it's now just 295,000. Keith Grzelak, the IEEE-USA's vice president of government relations, said that the first quarter unemployment spike is alarming. He warned that unemployment rates for engineers could get worse if the IT industry gets its way on H-1B visas. The big technology companies are lobbying their sock puppets in Washington to get the numbers of H-1B visas increased so that they can bring in more foreign IT workers. The US reported this week that it had received 124,000 H-1B petitions for the 85,000 visas allowed. Not surprisingly, the IEEE-USA has long opposed efforts to increase the numbers of H-1B visas. |
| Foxconn allegedly fires employees with suicidal tendencies Posted: 10 Apr 2013 02:10 AM PDT Foxconn has reportedly come up with a cunning plan to reduce the number of suicides in its dormitories in mainland China. Rather than improving working conditions, the company seems to be firing workers with suicidal tendencies. According to Chinese media, a 27-year-old worker named Zhang was fired after he was seen taking some sleeping pills. The worker took the pills on a regular basis, to combat insomnia. "They're not so effective, so I took four before going to bed," Zhang said. However, a coworker though he was trying to commit suicide, so he reported him. The company responded by firing the pill popping worker, who will at least have time to get some sleep now. As usual, Foxconn is not commenting on the sacking, but it does not appear to have been an isolated case. A few days ago Sina Weibo reported that more Foxconn staff were threatening to kill themselves, but the report was denied by company. |
| Microsoft copies Apple in China Posted: 09 Apr 2013 08:28 AM PDT Microsoft is regretting copying Apple's warranty tactics in China just as the fruity toymaker falls foul of the authorities. Now it seems that China's state-run radio has slammed Microsoft's one-year repair warranty policy for its Surface Pro tablet. Microsoft had decided to follow Apple in its somewhat dubious warranty policy for tablets. In the EU tablet makers are required to provide a two year warranty. China National Radio, the country's official mouthpiece, moaned that the Surface Pro should follow national law by offering a one-year repair policy for the entire tablet and a two-year warranty for its major parts. Doug Young, author of the book 'The Party Line: How the Media Dictates Public Opinion in Modern China,' told Bloomberg that it is potentially worrisome. He thought that China National Radio thought that its media rivals had scored a hit on Apple, and thought that it could jump on the same bandwagon with Microsoft. China National Radio insists it is nothing to do with the Apple stories. Pan Yi, a reporter for the state-run media outlet, told Bloomberg that the story surfaced after listeners started to complain about Microsoft's warranty policies. China is a huge market for Apple and Microsoft and bad press propagated by the government run media can easily create a consumer backlash. At the moment Microsoft has not followed Apple and issued an embarrassing apology. |
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