Wednesday, June 4, 2014

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Apple nicked our name

Posted: 04 Jun 2014 02:35 AM PDT

The only thing that Apple has announced which was new recently has been blasted by an Aussie start-up for nicking its ideas.

When Tim Cook announced the Apple HealthKit application to the great throngs yesterday, it appears that the collective yawn which followed did not drown out the yelp of anger Down-Under

A company called HealthKit took to its Twitter account recently to say that it was "feeling annoyed" over the same-name issue, asking "@tim_cook r u aware of this?"

HealthKit owns both the domain name and the Twitter handle, having existed before Apple introduced its health and fitness-centric utility.

The Aussies apparently were not even approached by the company.

The company's co-founder Alison Hardacre spoke to the folks at Wired about the matter, saying:  "It is very flattering that they (sic) like our name, but I'm a little let down because how hard would it have been to spend five seconds to put HealthKit.com into their browser and find us?"

HealthKit bought its domain name in early 2012.

Actually Apple originally wanted to call its product "HealthBook" and for some reason changed its name at the last minute. "HealthKit" was one of three trademarks that surfaced in trademark applications believed to originate from Apple last month.

So, the only new thing to have come from Apple in the last year or so turns out to have been unoriginal – at least as far as its name is concerned. 

Cavium takes on Chipzilla with 48 cores

Posted: 04 Jun 2014 02:33 AM PDT

It is starting to look like things are hotting up in the data centre with a war brewing between ARM vendor Cavium and Intel.

Cavium has come up with a 48-core chip which it hopes to blow Intel's efforts out of the water. Dubbed ThunderX, it will be built on the 28 nm process, with between 24 and 48 custom 64 bit ARMv8 cores at 2.5 GHz, and will run at between 20 and 95 W. Intel's Xeon processors run 100 W just for the processor.

ThunderX will be sampling in Q4 2014 and there is little out there on performance. Cavium claims its SoCs should match the power dissipation of Intel-based systems but then it would say that.

Other things leaked about ThunderX range include statemetns like "hundreds of gigabits/second" and " I/O, cache coherency across dual sockets, four DDR 3/4 72 bit memory controllers that will cope with up to 1 TB in a dual socket configuration, integrated hardware accelerators for applications like storage, networking, virtualisation and security".

There will be five flavours of ThunderX. There will be the ThunderX_CP for content serving applications; the ThunderX_ST for Hadoop; the Thunder_SC for Web front-end, security and cloud; and the Thunder_NT for embedded applications and NFV workloads. The ThunderX CN87xx 8-16 core range, with two DDR3/4 controllers, multiple 10GbE, SATAv3 and PCIe Gen3 interfaces will look after the lower end. 

YouTube online again in Turkey

Posted: 04 Jun 2014 02:31 AM PDT

YouTube is online in Turkey again and may be allowed to show whistleblowing videos which embarrass the government.

Turkey's top court declared a government ban on YouTube unconstitutional, and cited the Turkish constitution's freedom of expression clause, which guarantees that "everyone has the right to express and disseminate his/her thoughts and opinions by speech, in writing or in pictures or through other media".

The administration of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan went after the site on March 27, after it was used to host a leaked audio recording of Turkish officials discussing security matters in Syria.

Erdogan's ban on Twitter fell flat just two weeks after he imposed it on March 20, and while YouTube is once again accessible, Turkey's Telecommunications Directorate (TIB) has refused to lift web restrictions.

When a lower court told the government to sling its hook, the government just ignored it. It is not clear if the government will ignore the Constitutional Court's appellate decision.

TIB has so far insisted that it had no plans to unblock the site for as long as it contains "criminal content" which is anything that says that Erdogan and his party are involved in anything shady.

It seems that the TIB has blinked, probably because the election is over and if Turks saw anything about government corruption it was clear they did not give a monkey's about it. After all Erdogan was re-elected. 

EU wants more robots

Posted: 04 Jun 2014 02:27 AM PDT

The European Commission has decided to make sure that the only way that European countries will do what they are told is if they are all run by robots.

The Commission has set up a scheme with 180 companies and research organisations called SPARC which it said will strengthen Europe’s position in the global robotics market.

SPARC will create over 240,000 jobs in Europe, and increase Europe’s share of the global market to 42 per cent.  To do this the Commission will invest €700 million and euRobotics €2.1 billion.

European Commission Vice President  Neelie Kroes said:  "Europe needs to be a producer and not merely a consumer of robots. Robots do much more than replace humans – they often do things humans can’t or won’t do and that improves everything from our quality of life to our safety. Integrating robots into European industry helps us create and keep jobs in Europe.”

President of euRobotics Bernd Liepert says: "SPARC will ensure the competitiveness of European robotics industries. Robot-based automation solutions are essential to overcome today’s most pressing societal challenges - from demographic change to mobility to sustainable production".

Robotics enables companies to continue manufacturing in Europe, where they might otherwise move operations to lower-cost countries.

Tech workers boycott IBM, Infosys and Manpower

Posted: 04 Jun 2014 02:26 AM PDT

Three US tech worker groups have called for a boycott of IBM, Infosys and Manpower, saying the outfits discourage US workers from applying for US IT jobs and doctor employment ads so that only foreigners can apply.

Bright Future Jobs, the Programmers Guild and WashTech have said it was time that companies look first for US workers to fill US IT jobs,

Donna Conroy, director of Bright Future Jobs, said the boycott aims to attract attention to the problem and put pressure on the IT staffing firms to change their practices.

Conroy claimed that a Manpower subsidiary has advertised for Indian IT workers to come to the US for openings anticipated more than a year in advance.

The advertisements in India are being placed even though "most Americans believe the nature of the tech industry is so fast-paced that staffing projections cannot be predicted a year a head.

Les French, president of WashTech said the boycott should also raise concerns about staffing firms violating equal employment laws.

Infosys has denied it avoids recruiting US IT workers. It said that it is recruiting for over 440 active openings across 20 states in the US.

The company's external job posts give "everyone an equal opportunity to apply," she added. The company supports several minority advocacy groups, she said. 
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