TechEye |  |
- Intel scoops up ST Ericsson GPS unit
- Top Huawei exec: government snooping is standard practice
- AMD rolls out Jaguar based server parts
- Aussie secret service building blueprints hacked
- Hammond admits Stratfor hack
- Analysts mull Haswell impact
- Liberty Reserve laundered $6 billion
- Facebook faces criminal charges
- No Nexus 5 for LG, sorry guys
- Apple's Cook defends his loss of cool
| Intel scoops up ST Ericsson GPS unit Posted: 29 May 2013 06:01 AM PDT Intel has bought up what’s left of ST Ericsson’s GPU business unit. ST Ericsson came to screeching halt earlier this year, after the founders of the mobile chip joint venture decided it is time to call it quits. It is set to be closed down next quarter. Luckily for Intel, ST Ericsson has exactly what it needs for its smartphone push. It is still not clear how much it will pay for the GPS unit, but ST said that it would reduce the cost of closing the joint venture by about $90, so at least we have a ballpark estimate. According to EE Times, Intel will not only get the assets and IP associated with the unit, but it will also poach a team of 130 industry veterans based in England, India and Singapore. They are likely to join Intel’s wireless platform R&D organization once the deal is finalised, which should happen by August. Intel has been struggling to gain a foothold in the smartphone/tablet market for a couple of years, but now it finally seems on track. It is slowly starting to get high profile design wins and upcoming 22nm Atoms should make it a lot more competitive. |
| Top Huawei exec: government snooping is standard practice Posted: 29 May 2013 04:38 AM PDT A senior Huawei executive has said he believes it's standard practice for governments to use the internet to spy and steal sensitive data. Making the bold claim is the company's head of security operations and ex CIO for the British government, John Suffolk, who told the Australian Financial Review that states had always embarked on such practices. His comments followed reports that the Chinese company had gained access to secret designs of US weapons, which it was alleged were taken from Australia's new intelligence agency headquarters. In October last year the US House of Representatives' Intelligence Committee said that Huawei should be shut out of the US market because potential Chinese state influence poses a security threat. |
| AMD rolls out Jaguar based server parts Posted: 29 May 2013 04:10 AM PDT AMD has announced a new series of Opteron chips for microservers. Based on the new Jaguar core, X-series 64-bit Opterons will go toe to toe with Intel’s Atom based server parts. The Opteron X1150 and X2150 compare rather favourably to Intel’s Atom S1200 chips in most respects. Although they cost a bit more, at $64 and $99, they are significantly faster than Intel’s S1260, which costs $54. The Opterons pack four CPU cores, as well as 128 integrated CGN graphics cores. They have more cache than the Atom S1260, they support faster DDR3-1600 memory and more of it, 32GB versus 8GB on Atoms. The only downside seems to be power consumption. The X1150 is clocked at up to 2GHz and it consumes as little as 9 watts of juice, while the 1.9GHz X2150 needs 11 watts. The Atom S1260 is a 6W part, but then again performance per watt seems to be on AMD’s side. Although the X2150 has a lower clock, it also has integrated graphics, resulting in a somewhat higher TDP. AMD also has some other perks to boast about, such as SATA3 support, integrated USB 3.0, DisplayPort and HDMI outputs and a more advanced pipeline architecture. With all that in mind, AMD shouldn’t have any trouble finding eager customers - Hewlett Packard is already on board. HP will use X-series Opterons in future Moonshot servers. However, Intel’s next generation Atom chips are just around the corner and they could once again trump AMD’s offering. |
| Aussie secret service building blueprints hacked Posted: 29 May 2013 03:52 AM PDT Blueprints for Aussie Secret Service's new $631 million building have been pinched by a Chinese hacker. The move could mean that when Chinese agents infiltrate the new building they will know where the toilets and canteen are, something which is a state secret to most Aussies. According ABC's Four Corners, the blueprints included floor plans and the locations of communications cabling, servers and security systems. It is the latest in a series of scandals over the building, which has been plagued by delays and budget blowouts. Costs have so far blown out by $171 million and it will not open until the latter half of this year. Apparently the hackers hit a contractor involved with building the new headquarters. The attack was traced to a server in China. China has been busy Down Under. So far hackers have visited the prime minister's office and cabinet, defence, tourism and foreign affairs and trade. The home of Australia's overseas intelligence agency ASIS has also been hacked. The cyber attack targeting the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade reportedly involved the theft of a document that was so sensitive that if you looked at it in a funny way it required counselling. Hackers have also accessed classified emails on the Defence Department's restricted network. It seems that the hackers are closely monitoring employees too. One sent a highly classified document from his desk computer to his home email account. The home account was hacked and the document to be sent to China. All this hackage is making the Aussies think that there needs to be a mandatory disclosure law where spooks and governments put their hands up when they have been hacked. Four Corners also reported that Codan, a defence contractor based in Adelaide that designs and builds communications equipment for radio, satellite and metal detection applications, had also been targeted. Australian PM Julia Gillard has responded to the the allegations of cyber-hacking made by saying the ABC's Four Corners program were 'inaccurate'. We are not sure if it was because ABC spelt a word wrong, or stuck an apostrophe in the wrong place. |
| Posted: 29 May 2013 03:48 AM PDT Hacktivist Jeremy Hammond has admitted involvement in the infamous LulzSec Stratfor hack. His plea agreement could land the 28-year-old with a 10-year sentence in one of those quaint rustic US courts. Three hackers in Britain convicted of similar charges relating to the Stratfor hack received 15 month sentences. But they were dealing with a civilised country where the penalty fits the crime. In the US, Hammond expressed in a statement Tuesday, he could have faced 30 years in prison if he were found guilty at trial. His supporters and legal team are now asking his presiding judge to hand down a sentence far less harsh than the possible 10 years his plea agreement can carry. So far Hammond has been locked up for 15 months in federal detention and regularly held in isolation. He wrote to Salon Magazine that he pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act under a non-cooperating plea agreement, which he said frees him to tell the world what he did and why. Hammond said that there were numerous problems with the government's case, including the credibility of FBI informant Hector Monsegur. Prosecutors stacked the charges with inflated damages figures that meant he would be lucky to get out of jail in less than 30 years. In a statement he said that even if he was found not guilty at trial, the government claimed that there were eight other outstanding indictments against him from jurisdictions scattered throughout the country. The prosecutors threatened to ship him across the country to face new but similar charges in a different district. The government had plans to do this indefinitely. He said that he did work with Anonymous to hack Stratfor, among other websites. Hammond said that he believed people have a right to know what governments and corporations are doing behind closed doors. |
| Posted: 29 May 2013 02:02 AM PDT Analysts have been mulling over the impact that Intel's launch of Haswell will have on the industry. According to Computerworld, they seem to think that the new chip will kill off big tablets and lead to a recovery of the portable PC market. TechEye's Mike Magee has his own take on Haswell, here. The Haswell chip can make a six hour battery last nine hours, Intel claims. The fourth generation Core may be the first chip from Intel that can extend PC battery life by 50 percent. Nathan Brookwood, a chip industry analyst at insight64 said that Haswell was a redesign of its PC chip and was created from the ground up with low power use in mind. He said that one of the design techniques used for reducing energy consumption involved the addition of graphics hardware to run processes in parallel. By doing so, the chip can operate at lower clock speeds. This means that Haswell will double the graphics performance on laptops. Brookwood said that the 22-nanometer chip can turn transistors on and off as it dynamically adjusts power usage. Faster interconnects to speed data flows, reducing the amount of time the chip spends processing data. Shane Rau, an analyst at IDC, doesn't believe that Haswell alone can help the PC. But the chip combined with other things soon to arrive will provide a boost to the PC market. By next year PC makers will be producing the fourth generation of ultrabooks, and the building blocks for a strong product have been coming into place, he said. Rau thinks that touch capability will become more ubiquitous in laptops, and the devices will be increasingly lighter, thinner, and more durable and affordable than today's PCs. Rob Enderle, an analyst at Enderle Group, said Haswell coupled with Windows 8.1 could mark the beginning of the end for large, 10-in. to 12-in. tablets. Enderle said that Haswell will have a lot of folks asking why they need a tablet. |
| Liberty Reserve laundered $6 billion Posted: 29 May 2013 01:59 AM PDT The Liberty Reserve electronic currency was really a front for a $6 billion money-laundering operation online, according to US federal prosecutors in New York. Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, told the New York Times that Liberty Reserve was one of the best ways for criminals to shift their cash around. Liberty Reserve traded in virtual currency and provided the kind of anonymous and easily accessible banking infrastructure increasingly sought by criminal networks, he said. Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, and other law enforcement officials, said that the charges mark the end of the largest online money-laundering case in history. He claimed that over seven years, Liberty Reserve was responsible for laundering billions of dollars, conducting 55 million transactions that involved millions of customers around the world, including about 200,000 in the United States. Liberty Reserve created a convenient way for criminals to make financial transactions. There was a complicated system designed to allow people to move sums large and small around the world with virtual anonymity. Liberty Reserve was at the heart of the indictment of eight New Yorkers accused who nicked $45 million from bank machines in 27 countries. The outfit was incorporated in Costa Rica in 2006 by Arthur Budovsky he was arrested in Spain on last week. He was among seven people charged in the case; five of them were under arrest, while two remained at large in Costa Rica. All have been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business, and operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business. The money laundering count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and the other two charges carry a maximum of five years each. Bharara insisted that the exchange's clientele was largely made up of criminals, but he invited any legitimate users to contact his office to get their money back. |
| Facebook faces criminal charges Posted: 29 May 2013 01:56 AM PDT Northern Italian courts are considering criminal charges against the social notworking site Facebook. A prosecutor has opened an investigation into how Facebook allowed the publication of insults and bullying posts aimed at a teenager who killed herself. Carolina Picchio, 14, from Novara in northern Italy, died in January after a gang of boys circulated a video on Facebook of her appearing worse for wear in a bathroom at a party. The group, aged between 15 and 17, were said to be friends of Carolina's former boyfriend. She dumped him and he had insulted her on Facebook. Carolina wrote to her ex before she killed herself that he had done enough to her already. She felt he had made her pay too many times. The unnamed boy claimed he had apologised to her for the insults, but she leapt to her death from her third floor bedroom window. She wrote on Facebook that she was not strong and could not take the abuse any more. The case has angered the Italian Parents Association which made a criminal complaint against Facebook. It claimed that Facebook had a role in the instigation of Carolina's suicide. Antonio Affinita, IPA director said that Italian law forbids minors under 18 signing contracts, yet Facebook entered into a contract with minors regarding their privacy, without their parents knowing.' Francesco Saluzzo, the Novara prosecutor, said he did not rule out investigating Facebook staff. He was investigating how the video had stayed online ''for days'' before it was taken down. He could theoretically investigate employees of Facebook who failed to respond to these requests to take down the video. A tide has been moving against Facebook in Italy. The outfit is already in hot water for allowing Mafia goons to have fan pages, but a 15-year-old schoolboy in Rome killed himself in 2012, having been taunted as gay on Facebook. Facebook offers a button to ''report'' offensive links, but it is a moot point if anyone notices. |
| Posted: 29 May 2013 01:55 AM PDT It seems LG won’t be getting the Nexus 5 contract after all. A few weeks ago a senior LG executive told The Korea Times that the company is cooperating with Google on next generation Nexus products, but now LG Europe VP Kim Wong says the company won’t be making the Nexus 5. In an interview with All About Phones, Kim said the Nexus 4 was a success and that it is still on friendly terms with Google. He also said LG would not churn out vanilla Android phones of its own, arguing that there’s “no added value” in such phones. It sounds a bit odd, since he described the Nexus 4 as a “great success” despite the production problems. “We do not need such a marketing success again," Kim added. So basically Kim is saying that the stock Android Nexus 4 was a success, but LG doesn’t want a successful skinless Android phone because they could hurt the sales of skinned Optimus phones. It is tantamount to admitting that LG’s Android skins are terrible and that stock Android is just better, yet for some reason logically challenged LG execs are making a conscious decision to keep selling inferior products just for the hell of it. In related news, LG has announced the global rollout of the Nexus 4 White starting May 29, almost nine months after the phone was launched. But then again, LG apparently doesn't want a successful phone on the market, which explains the delay. |
| Apple's Cook defends his loss of cool Posted: 29 May 2013 01:53 AM PDT Apple CEO Tim Cook has defended his outfit's sudden loss of cool and falling share price. Jobs' Mob has been accused of losing the plot lately with most of the Tame Apple Press blaming a lack of "game changing innovation" which, apparently, the company displayed while Steve Jobs was alive. According to Reuters, Cook defended the company's record of innovation under his stewardship, saying he expected it would release "several more game changers". This led observers to wonder if there would be more rounded rectangles or would a platonic solid be among the mix. Apparently though, Cook thinks that wearable computers will be the new thing. He enthused that it was an area ripe for exploration. Talking to the All Things Digital conference in California, Cook claimed that the time was ripe for everyone to get excited about wearable computers and there will be "tons of companies playing in this". So, no game changing innovation then and Apple will just be following a pack into wearable computers. Knickers? But with a nod to Apple's tradition of absurd secrecy, Cook stopped short of clarifying if Apple was working on wearable products amid speculation that it is developing a smartwatch, saying only that wearable computers had to be compelling. Cook dismissed Google Glass as likely to have only limited appeal. After all, everyone wears watches these days, and few people wear glasses. He said that there was nothing that's going to convince a kid who has never worn glasses or a band or a watch to wear one. So he thinks that there are lots of things still to solve in the wearable computer area. What Cook was a little more enthusiastic about was Apple telly. He said he had a "grand vision" for television that goes beyond an existing $99 Apple TV streaming device. This is hardly game changing news. Apple has wanted to do a working version of a telly for years without much success at all. Now it is having to concede ground in that area to competition from Google and Intel. Cook warned that the future of iOS would be evident when it holds its annual developer conference next month, and said the company was investing heavily in online services such as its god-awful mapping application. When asked if Apple has lost its cool, Cook said "absolutely not" and excitedly went onto list some cool statistics of device sales and usage. He, however, acknowledged that he was frustrated with the sudden downturn in the firm's stock price. When one Apple fanboy compared him to Gil Amelio, a former Apple CEO who presided over a low point in Apple's history during the mid-1990s, he said that Apple believes very much in the element of surprise. Funny really, we knew you would say that, Tim. |
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