TechEye |  |
- Rock the Linux kernel module
- 64-bit Android phone demand better than expected
- Chipmaker Xilinx reports flat sales
- Putin's mates take control of Russian Facebook
- Apple shakes up shares
| Posted: 24 Apr 2014 03:15 AM PDT A popular beat combo from the town which bought us Nirvana has released a debut album as a Linux kernel module alongside the usual formats. Netcat, which shares its name with a networking tool of the same name, told the world+dog on its Facebook page that the world was ready for Linux kernel module music. "Are you ever listening to an album, and thinking 'man, this sounds good, but I wish it crossed from user-space to kernel-space more often!' We got you covered. Our album is now fully playable as a loadable Linux kernel module." The album has the catchy title Cycles Per Instruction and the kernel module can be found on GitHub. Reddit users are enthusiastic and some of them are planning to port it to a specialized raspberry pi image and build a strange dedicated Walkman to play it. Oddly the band are also releasing it on cassette and we are surprised there are any of those still around. Needless to say having music as code is always going to find an open sauce pedants who are going to complain. One moaned about the unnecessary intermediate compression of the audio, others who played it just think it sounds like shit. We would have thought that it would have been better to have used Flanders and Swan as a test for it – a song like "I'm a Gnu... how do you do". What is strange is that while many bands pitch at the teenage girl market, Netcat appears to have thought that Linux programmers were a better bet. Their website said that the group wanted to explore the intersection between "technology, complexity, and free improvisation." This means bringing together conventional instruments and combining it with computer generated sounds and computer instruments, like the Chango, a novel synthesizer that is played with light. It case you were wondering, the mixture of these ingredients is "textural, long-form structured improvisations" which requires you to "laying down on the floor with expensive headphones on and enjoying the solipsism". We are guessing that solipsism is not just a euphemism for being under the influence of hash... er the hash key. |
| 64-bit Android phone demand better than expected Posted: 24 Apr 2014 03:03 AM PDT Fabless chip designer ARM has told Cnet that the shift to 64-bit mobile gear is taking place faster than expected. Tom Lantzsch, ARM's executive vice president of corporate strategy said that phone and tablet makers are rushing to embrace 64-bit designs, surprising even those executives behind the chip platform. He said that there had been a big uptick in demand for mobile 64-bit products and particularly the Cortex A53, a high-performance 64-bit mobile processor. This caught the ARM off guard because it thought that 64-bit ARM would only be needed for corporate servers in the initial phase of the technology's rollout. He said that he was surprised at the pace that 64-bit is now becoming mobile centric. Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Marvell are examples of public 64-bit doing well. Lantzsch said that there will be a 64-bit phone and tablet in the shops by Christmas. All this is a little strange because there is not a 64-bit version of Android yet. However he said that all software, nevertheless, will run faster. He said that the architecture allows for more efficiency in the code. So, that means better battery life, quicker responsiveness, better features. However, he said that when the 64-bit software finally does arrive, products could change in a big way. Intel has released Android KitKat 4.4 with a 64-bit kernel optimised for Intel Architecture saying that this will provide 64-bit kernel support for development of next-generation devices. Intel's Doug Fisher, general manager, Software and Services Group said that Chipzilla is moving everything to 64-bit. Qualcomm introduced the Snapdragon 410 in December. This is a 64-bit processor for mainstream phones in emerging markets. |
| Chipmaker Xilinx reports flat sales Posted: 24 Apr 2014 03:01 AM PDT Chipmaker Xilinx has predicted current-quarter revenue below what the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street have predicted. The reason is because sales to its aerospace, defence and wired telecom customers were flat and Xilinx said it expected first-quarter revenue to stay flat or rise up to 4 percent sequentially. This means that the company will make $617.8 million-$642.5 million for the quarter ending June. Analysts on average were expecting revenue of $638.4 million. The company, which gets nearly half its revenue from telecom customers, expects fourth-quarter gross margins of about 68 percent. Xilinx's chips are used by the US Air Force and the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), as well as by Wall Street investors. Xilinx's net income rose to $156 million in the fourth quarter, compared with $130.6 million a year earlier. The company has Ericsson and ZTE among its major customers, said revenue rose 16 percent $617.8 million. Xilinx expects revenue from its wired communications business, part of its largest end market to be flat in the current quarter due to declining orders from a couple of large customers. Sales at Xilinx's industrial, aerospace and defence business decreased three percent from the previous quarter. |
| Putin's mates take control of Russian Facebook Posted: 24 Apr 2014 03:00 AM PDT The Tsar of Russia, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin I, has apparently taken control of the Russian Facebook to make sure that he can effectively monitor Ukrainian protests. Pavel Durov who ran VKontakte had previously announced he was leaving the company but said he had withdrawn his resignation but found that allies of Putin sitting in his desk. Durov was reported in the Guardian as saying he had previously refused requests from the Russian government to censor posts on his site. "Today VKontakte goes under the complete control of Igor Sechin and Alisher Usmanov. Probably, in the Russian context, something like this was inevitable, but I'm happy we lasted seven and a half years. We did a lot. And part of what's been done can't be turned back." Sechin is the chief executive of state-owned oil company Rosneft and was President Putin's former deputy chief of staff. Usmanov, who is the richest man in Russia. The Russian news agency Interfax reported that Vkontakte said they had acted on Mr Durov's resignation letter of 21 March as he had not withdrawn it officially within an allowed one-month grace period. Durov has since said he has fled the country saying that it is incompatible with internet business at the moment. Durov had been asked by the Russian authorities to hand over the details of Ukrainians who had used the site to create groups related to anti-government protests. He was also asked to close down a group that supported Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. He said no had flogged his shares in the company so that he could continue "to make the right decisions". |
| Posted: 24 Apr 2014 02:52 AM PDT While Apple has not made much new lately it appears it has been doing a financial ballet to keep shareholders interested. The outfit has approved another $30 billion in share buybacks till the end of 2015 and authorized a rarely seen seven-for-one stock split. Apple has been called on to start sharing more of its cash hoard and broaden the stock's appeal to individual investors. The company also approved a roughly eight percent increase in its quarterly dividend to $3.29 per share. Activist investor Carl Icahn, who had famously called on the iPhone maker to boost its buyback program, tweeted his approval of the move on Wednesday. Shares of the company which have been stuck between $500 to $550 range since the start of the year, jumped 7 percent to $561.51. Apple reported sales of 43.7 million iPhones in the quarter ended March, far outpacing the roughly 38 million that Wall Street had predicted. That drove a 4.6 percent rise in revenue to $45.6 billion and beat Wall Street's projections for about $43.5 billion. However, what Apple has not done is produce any new product and its long term future is a little shaky. The smartphone market is maturing and rivals like Samsung are taking chunks out of its mobile-device market share. So far all the hype about the next phone has centred on the fact it will have a bigger screen, something that its rivals have had for ages. Speculation persists that the company will take the lead in wearable devices with a smartwatch or other gadget, given that Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has spoken about "new product categories" for 2014. So far this has been vapourware. More cynical analysts say that the reason for Apple's current boom quarter is that the outfit got a spike in revenue in China and Japan thanks to inclusion of NTT Docomo and China Mobile as carrier partners. China, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan, climbed 13 percent to $9.29 billion in the quarter. Japanese sales rose 26 percent to $3.96 billion. However the China sales did not do nearly as well as Apple hoped and in the long term may not pan out to be Jobs' Mob's great white hope. |
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