TechEye |  |
- D-Link net cam covers all the angles
- Samsung making its own CPU core
- AMD rushes out a new Radeon R9 290 fix
- Shuttleworth says sorry to "open source Tea Party"
- Robots take the Nintendo
- Google has to hand over Street View data
- British spooks spoofed Slashdot and LinkedIn
| D-Link net cam covers all the angles Posted: 11 Nov 2013 03:21 AM PST Want to keep an eye on your yard while you’re down at the Dog and Duck? D-Links wireless pan tilt network camera could be just the job for you.
From the settings menu can switch on motion detection and if the said rodent makes an appearance it will send you an email alert. You can also create scheduled notifications. |
| Samsung making its own CPU core Posted: 11 Nov 2013 01:44 AM PST It seems that Samsung is getting the DIY bug and wants to make a CPU core and displays with 560ppi soon. During a conference call, the company said that it would move CPU core production in house. Samsung will first develop 64-bit cores based on ARM designs and then move to its own designs. If that is the case then it means that it is using ARM as a training tool and will eventually push itself into the mobile chip industry, which Intel needs like a hole in the head. ARM will also not be that happy as Samsung would be one of its biggest customers. Next year, Samsung will out RGB AMOLED displays with a pixel density of 560ppi. Combined with the targeted WQHD resolution (2,560 x 1,440 pixels), the aforementioned pixel density points at a display with a 5.25" diagonal coming our way. Samsung said that it will create mobile devices with 4K displays in 2015. Given few people can actually see any difference at that resolution it is hard to see why they are bothering. |
| AMD rushes out a new Radeon R9 290 fix Posted: 11 Nov 2013 12:52 AM PST AMD has quickly rushed out another Catalyst driver update which fixes an embarrassing bug in its Radeon R9 290 series. Last week tech magazines noticed that the Radeon R9 290 series was making low level operational changes that will have a direct impact on the power, noise, and performance of the cards. It would appear that fans were running too slow, which could have resulted in lower performing cards. The new catalyst update fixes a problem with the variability in the fan speeds on the cards. Specifically AMD has changed the algorithms for how their drivers handle the fan speeds and overridden the BIOS defaults. Currently fan speeds are based on percentages, but now it seems that AMD has switched to controlling fan speeds on an absolute basis, using the measured RPM of the fan. For the release of the new driver, AMD said that it had identified that there's variability in fan speeds across AMD R9 290 series boards. This variability in fan speed translates into variability of the cooling capacity of the fan-sink. Using PowerTune technology this could be corrected this variability in a driver update and will normalise the fan RPMs to the correct values. |
| Shuttleworth says sorry to "open source Tea Party" Posted: 11 Nov 2013 12:35 AM PST Ubuntu's CEO Mark Shuttleworth has penned a couple of apologies to his critics in the open sauce community. The most amusing was for calling those who oppose Mir, the Xwindows replacement oddly omitted from Ubuntu 13.10, "the Open Source Tea Party". Shuttleworth says it was "unfair" to use the term and now thinks it was "unnecessary and quite possibly equally offensive to members of the real Tea Party". But writing in his bog, he has also had to say sorry for his legal team who sent out legal threats in a trademark dispute. He said that Canonical had to enforce its trademarks or lose them, however a new guy at the company decided to sent out a trademark warning to an "Ubuntu sucks" site. This lead to Wired accusing Canonical of a campaign to suppress critics. "The point is, people are judging Canonical over this, which is fine and correct in my view, because I am judging Canonical over this too," Shuttleworth wrote. He said that Canonical has a trademark policy that lets community members use the marks and allows for satire and sucks sites even in jurisdictions where the local law do not. Shuttleworth said that he was reassured that the team in question is taking steps in training and process to minimise the risk of a recurrence. "For those carrying pitchforks and torches on this issue, ask yourself if that would be appropriate to a bug in a line of code in one of many thousands of changes being made monthly by a large team," he wrote. |
| Posted: 11 Nov 2013 12:33 AM PST Researchers at the University of the West of England and Bristol University have designed robots which literally take the piss. The big idea was to build a system that will enable robots to function without batteries or being plugged into an electrical outlet. According to Computerworld the robots pump urine into the robot's "engine room," converting the waste into electricity and enabling the robot to function completely on its own. Each robot can hold 24.5 ml of urine, could be used to power future generations of robots, or what they're calling EcoBots. We call them "American Beer" because they are tins of Nintendo. The robots will recharge themselves by visiting the local loos or popping into the local pub bogs. Peter Walters, a researcher with the University of the West of England. "In rural environments, liquid waste effluent could be collected from farms". The researchers have been building the robots for the last decade and used microorganisms to digest the waste material and generate electricity from it, the university said. Along with using human and animal urine, the robotic system also can create power by using rotten fruit and vegetables, dead flies, wastewater and sludge. This is nothing new really. TechEye's editorial staff have been powered on Talisker for the last 15 years and are constantly taking the Nintendo.. |
| Google has to hand over Street View data Posted: 11 Nov 2013 12:31 AM PST The accountants at Google must be sweating in their boots after Brazilian judges ordered them to hand over private data collected through its Street View program. So that Google gets the message how serious the judges are, it has been told that they will face a daily fine of $50,000, up to a maximum of $500,000 if they do not do what they are told. Google pays more than $500,000 a day on stocking the vending machines at the Goolgeplex so it is not as if the outfit can't afford to drag its feet on the order. According to France 24, it looks like Google has a right to be stroppy about the court order too. A few years ago, Google got into hot water over software in its Street View cars which were sniffing wi-fi data. That ended up in court and Google ended up paying a lot of money to make various court cases go away. It appeared to learn its lesson and swore never to do that again. Now there is a complaint from the Brazilian Institute of Computer Policy and Rights (IBDI), Google is using car-borne software to access private wi-fi networks and intercept personal data and electronic communications. IBDI pointed to similar occurrences in other parts of the world and demanded that Google reveal if it had engaged in such practices. You would think this is old news, and wonder why it took so long for the IBDI to get the case to court. However, it turns out that this case is based on the recent outrage of NSA spying in Brazil. Targets included President Dilma Rousseff's communications, those of state-run energy giant Petrobras and emails and telephone calls of millions of Brazilians. Google has denied any link to the US electronic snooping, mainly conducted by the powerful National Security Agency (NSA) but Snowden revealed that Google's fibre optic cable was being hacked. The IBDI seems to think that Google's street view is part of a plot by the NSA to snoop on Brazilians now. Google told the court the debate on data collection took place in several countries ages ago and the case was now closed. |
| British spooks spoofed Slashdot and LinkedIn Posted: 11 Nov 2013 12:28 AM PST British spooks used spoof sites of Slashdot and LinkedIn to distribute spying malware, a German newspaper has claimed. Der Spiegel claims that the British signals intelligence spy agency has used a "quantum insert" technique as a way to target employees of two companies that are GRX (Global Roaming Exchange) providers. The article was penned by Laura Poitras, a hackette who has access to the documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. GRX is a major hub for mobile Internet traffic when they globally roam. There are about 24 GRX providers globally and it seems that this attack specifically targeted administrators and engineers of Comfone and Mach. GCHQ used spoofed versions of LinkedIn and Slashdot pages to serve malware to targets using the same methods to target "nine salaried employees" of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the global oil cartel. It had been believed that GCHQ had hit Belgacom International Carrier Services (BICS), a subsidiary of the Belgian telecom giant Belgacom earlier this year. BICS is another one of the few GRX providers worldwide. What the Snowden documents have been revealing is how the British have been acting as the NSA's eyes and ears on Europe. It would appear that the NSA has been acting a little more aggressively than its US counterparts to silence press reports of the Snowden material. Black suited men from GCHQ smashed hard drives of Guardian reporters in a somewhat desperate bid to censor the press. President Barrak Obama admitted that there is no way he would get away with that sort of attack on the press in the US. |
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