Rolls-Royce is considering using 3D printing technology to create lighter components for its jet engines, the company's head of technology strategy has said. Henner Wapenhans said the additive manufacturing technology could also enable the the British manufacturer to create aircraft engine parts more quickly, the reported. "3D printing opens up new possibilities, new design space," Wapenhans said. "Through the 3D printing process, you're not constrained [by] having to get a tool in to create a shape. You can create any shape you like." The Rolls-Royce executive said the technology could be used to reduce the weight of parts such as brackets.
last week announced that it is considering four contributions for development of an open, operating system-agnostic data center switch it announced six months ago. to spec out an open source switch to complement its vendor-agnostic data center software, server, and storage designs. to those from traditional manufacturers, such as Cisco, Arista Networks, Brocade, Dell, Extreme Networks, Hewlett-Packard, and Juniper. Such an alternative would foster faster hardware innovation, facilitate software-defined networks (SDN), and offer more choice to consumers. .
Google plans to build solar power plants in California and Arizona that are expected to be operational by early 2014 and will generate enough clean electricity to power more than 17,000 U.S. homes.
Jeremy Hammond, the man responsible for the 2011 attack on Strategic Forecasting Inc., better known as Stratfor, pled guilty to his role in the attack and was sentenced on Friday to serve ten years in federal prison. However, Hammond's supporters maintain that his sentencing, indeed the case itself, was unbalanced and rife with problems from the beginning. In 2011, the AntiSec movement was resurrected in name. Those supporting AntiSec used its name to target governments, law enforcement, and the private businesses that associated with them. One such business was Strategic Forecasting Inc., better known as Stratfor, a firm in Austin, Texas that provides "geopolitical intelligence" to individuals and organizations across the globe. Earlier this past May, Jeremy Hammond for the Stratfor incident as part of a plea agreement reached with the U.S. attorney's office. In December of 2011, Hammond—encouraged by fellow-AntiSec supporter Hector Xavier Monsegur (a.k.a. Sabu), who was for the FBI at the time—breached Stratfor's servers, by exploiting a vulnerability in the Plesk management system used to support the company's website. Once access was granted, Hammond downloaded various archives containing poorly protected email addresses and passwords, and a backup copy of Stratfor's corporate email. Prior to Hammond's involvement, another person compromised Stratfor's credit card processing, and stole some 60,000 records. The by AntiSec on December 24, 2011.
Several advocacy groups are calling for an investigation into Internet companies Yahoo and Google whose networks were secretly accessed by the National Security Agency (NSA). In a without the knowledge of Google and Yahoo. "The Commission should pursue this investigation because it routinely holds itself out as the defender of consumer privacy in the United States," the authors said. "It is inconceivable that when faced with the most significant breach of consumer data in U.S. history, the Commission could ignore the consequences for consumer privacy." The letter, signed by officials from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, Center for Digital Democracy, and other organizations, follows recent reports that the NSA gained access to millions of consumer records by secretly tapping directly into data streams from major Internet companies.
Devices running Google's Android operating system accounted for 81 percent of all smartphones sold worldwide in the third quarter of 2013, IDG reports.
Phil Schiller tried to convince a jury that Samsung's infringement of Apple patents cost the company phone and tablet sales.
People using the transportation apps Lyft and Sidecar in California will no longer be able to skimp on their fares, now that both apps have ditched their donation model. Sidecar Friday it was doing away with donations and instead introducing minimum fares. The changes apply only in California and take effect Friday on iOS and Android devices. Sidecar rival Lyft said. Sidecar made the change to better support its drivers, CEO Sunil Paul said in a blog post. The company has seen a 50 percent increase in driver applications since September, he said, but it has also learned from drivers that they would drive more frequently and provide longer rides if they could depend on a fair payment, Paul said.
Google has acknowledged that the best time to be on your computer might not be while you’re driving. The company updated its terms of service this week and the new guidelines add a note of caution about road safety. “Some of our services are available on mobile devices,” the say. “Do not use such services in a way that distracts you and prevents you from obeying traffic or safety laws.” Questions about the legality of driving with Google Glass were raised last month when for driving while wearing the head-mounted computer system.
Dell has started selling a thin and light touchscreen laptop called the XPS 13 Developer Edition, which will have Ubuntu Linux OS and Intel’s fourth-generation Core processors, code-named Haswell. The laptop, code-named Sputnik, has a 13.3-inch touchscreen and will run on Ubuntu 12.04 OS. It is priced starting at $1,250 and is available in the U.S. With the Linux OS, the laptop is different from other Haswell-based laptops that largely come with the Windows OS. Dell introduced its first Sputnik laptop a year ago as part of an experiment to bring Linux to ultrabook-style laptops. While the price may be high for a Linux laptop, it has a full high-definition touchscreen and components typically found in high-priced laptops. The cheapest configuration has a Core i5 dual-core processor and 128GB of solid-state drive storage, while a $1,549.99 configuration has 8GB of memory and a 256GB SSD. Other features include the latest 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.
Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said that he was encouraged to hustle his transformation plan into motion, but ended up being pushed out the door. that the board “didn’t push Steve to step down,” he said. “but we were pushing him damn hard to go faster.” within the next twelve months, as the board set out to find a replacement. website.
Now that the extent of the U.S. National Security Agency’s surveillance programs has been exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, it’s beholden on the public to fight back or else find themselves “complicit” in the activities, according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguistics professor and philosopher Noam Chomsky. The freedoms U.S. citizens have “weren’t granted by gifts from above,” Chomsky said during a panel discussion Friday at MIT. “They were won by popular struggle.” While U.S. officials have long cited national security as a rationale for domestic surveillance programs, that same argument has been used by the “most monstrous systems” in history, such as the Stasi secret police in the former East Germany, Chomsky said. “The difference with the totalitarian states is the citizens couldn’t do a lot about it,” in contrast to the U.S., he added. “If we do not expose the plea of security and separate the parts that are valid from the parts that are not valid, then we are complicit.”
A fresh round of quarterly results and market research this week show some shadows over the networking and component markets while smartphones, as usual, were the stars of the tech arena. The biggest disappointment of the week came from Cisco Systems, which Wednesday reported a year-over-year decline in profit and sales and offered a . For the three-month period ending in October, Cisco reported net income of $2 billion, down 4.6 percent from a year earlier, while sales edged up by 1.8 percent to $12.1 billion. Company executives said they expect revenue this quarter to decline between 8 percent and 10 percent from a year earlier. Several problems hit Cisco during the quarter, executives said. In emerging markets, sales declined. Concerns about surveillance in the wake of revelations about the U.S. National Security Agency may have had some impact on sales, particularly in China, company officials said. Economic uncertainty as Europe still struggles with recession also played a part in the weak results, officials said. Part of the disappointing quarter, however, was due to Cisco’s transition to a new line of carrier network equipment, which has put a damper on orders, company executives acknowledged.
The technology team working on the troubled HealthCare.gov has made significant progress in recent days, with error rates on the U.S. government’s health insurance shopping site down to less than 1 percent from 6 percent just after its launch, officials said Friday. The tech team has fixed more than 200 bugs at the website in the past month, but it still has 50 high-priority bugs to work on in the next week, said Jeffrey Zients, a former acting director at the White House Office of Management and Budget overseeing fixes to the site. The tech team completed more than 60 priority improvements and bug fixes during the past week, including new visual guides to help users compare insurance plans, he said. “The changes and improvements we’ve made over the past few weeks are having a positive impact on system performance and user experience,” Zients said during a press briefing. “For most users, speed and response times were generally good, and error rates were low.”
A member of the hacker group Anonymous was sentenced Friday to 10 years in prison for hacking into the computers of a geopolitical analysis firm. Jeremy Hammond, 28, in May pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to engage in computer hacking under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He was sentenced by Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska during a hearing at the federal district court for the Southern District of New York in New York. Hammond, of Chicago, was arrested in March 2012 and charged with hacking into the computer system of analyst company Strategic Forecasting, also called Stratfor, and obtaining subscriber and credit-card information and emails, among other data. Ultimately, credit-card details, emails and cryptographic representation of passwords were leaked. The credit cards were used to make US$700,000 in purchases. The sentencing was attended by supporters who view Hammond as a whistleblower revealing government secrets for the public good, much in the vein of WikiLeaks and former U.S. government contractor Edward Snowden. Hammond’s lawyers argued that his acts were a form of civil disobedience against a government subcontractor, an argument Preska rejected.
For anyone who has participated on a well-attended conference call, it’s a familiar problem: the tap-Tap-TAP of some anonymous participant, typing notes. Fortunately, a future version of Skype may silence the offending fingers. that Microsoft held a press conference in Stockholm, Sweden, this week, where Microsoft executives suggested that they might adapt a similar typing-quashing technology from the company’s Lync software. The technology apparently “listens” for the sound of typing, then filters it out automatically, at least within Lync. As The Next Web notes, Google has implemented a similar, but heavy-handed solution: its Hangouts automatically detect the typing sound, mute the offender, then quietly send a private note to him or her asking them to mute their microphone. Microsoft declined to comment. "Microsoft has been hard at work to make the experiences for Lync and Skype customers seamless, an example being Lync-Skype voice connectivity that we announced earlier in the year," a spokeswoman said via email. "As part of this work, our teams have been learning from each other and collaborating to provide the best communications experiences for users. However, we have nothing further to share on key tab suppression for Skype at this time."
all suggest they like it so much that they're willing to behave in very dangerous ways to use it. The 451 survey tells us that CIOs worry about security. The Forrester one suggests that despite these worries, more and more of these companies are taking part in risky cloud behavior. And the SIM one reveals that executives controlling the IT purse strings just don't care. The problem with the cloud, or at least the problem with the public version of the cloud, is that it's not secure. Hackers, be they criminals or government agents in the NSA, would have to physically steal a hard drive to get locally stored data. They have no such problems accessing cloud services. , "Put simply, the increased agility of cloud computing trumps its many drawbacks, including security."
being bug fixes and plugged security holes.Gone are some improperly initialized memory and overflows in select Javascript functions, other sundry memory issues, and the same spoofing of an address bar that affected Firefox. Also fixed were too-light signatures and problems with CC'ing a message reply if the CC was the same as the sending address.
On Friday, Microsoft released its 3D Builder app, which allows Windows 8.1 users to print 3D objects, but not much else. The simple, simplistic, free app from Microsoft provides a basic way to print common 3D objects, as well as to import other files from SkyDrive or elsewhere. But the degree of customization that the app allows is small, so 3D Builder basically serves as an introduction to the world of 3D printing. In fact, that’s Microsoft’s intention, with demonstrations of the , both online as well as in the brick-and-mortar stores themselves. One of the selling points of Windows 8.1 , and MakerBot latched onto an endorsement of the technology from President Obama during his State of the Union address, recently encouraging U.S. citizens to crowd-fund an effort to 3D printers in every high school in America. (MakerBot also announced a Windows 8.1 software driver on Thursday.)
and been played 151 billion times. It’s a combination of intelligent strategy, clever design, pretty colors, and the necessity for 500 million people to be regularly distracted from their lives that has led to the booming success of the game. The explosion of Android and Windows phones and tablets as well as the introduction of steadily more affordable mobile devices have all most likely aided the growth of those numbers. But why does Candy Crush Saga achieve so much, when it seems so similar to any other time-consuming, commute-numbing, brain-dulling game? on why Candy Crush Saga has become such a phenomenon. Among other things, he cites our unanimous affinity for candy, color, and interesting shapes. Yes, even tablet-toting adults appreciate the simpler things. keep our gadgets in our hands longer and later than ever, fanning the flames of our gaming addictions.
It doesn't get more newsy here than a full-point release of a Web browser—in this case, Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7. Already available for Windows 8, the W7 release is still big news, as many users have yet to move to the Redmond giant's latest operating system. Of course there are a ton of bug fixes and upgraded compatibility, otherwise you wouldn't be reading about it here. The new version promises faster rendering. It also offers improved support for existing standards as well as relatively new ones, such as WebGL (for online gaming). It should be in your Windows automatic updates. If not, .
AT&T has a good deal on Nokia’s Lumia 2520 tablet (shown above), but only if you’re willing and able to buy a Nokia Windows Phone at the same time. The Lumia 2520, a 10.1-inch tablet running . Without the Nokia phone bundle, the price gets a lot worse. AT&T is charging $400 for the Lumia 2520 with a two-year agreement, and $500 without a contract. It might be worth just using your smartphone as a mobile hotspot instead of tacking on a tablet data plan, as you’d save $140 over two years that way. Nokia’s Power Keyboard accessory, which turns the tablet into a small laptop and provides another five hours of battery, is sold separately. AT&T doesn’t mention a price, but Nokia previously said it will cost $150.
Google Play Music, a rival option to streaming services like Spotify and Rdio, is now available for iOS, six months after launching on the web and Android-based devices.
With its new AppStream offering, Amazon is offering intensive graphics processing as a service, with the promise of freeing developers from worrying about the rendering capabilities of each user’s device. “The developer can build for the high-end computational load but still be able to distribute to lots of customers,” said Mike Frazzini, general manager of the Amazon games unit. “It frees them up to be more creative.” The new cloud service, now in beta, can render graphics or video in high definition or even in three dimensions (3D) on behalf of an application, streaming the results to the application in 720p resolution. The service can take interactive input from the local client’s mouse, keyboard or touchscreen interfaces.
Coin's 'one card to rule them all' dream certainly seems alluring, but this plastic needs to stay close to your smartphone.
Microsoft is continuing to fill in the gaps in its Windows Store catalog with the arrival of Flipboard for Windows 8.1. offers digital “magazines” culled from websites large and small. After setting up an account, users can pick from a list of categories, or create magazines based on links from Facebook and Twitter friends. Users can also follow specific publications, or combine favorite articles into homemade magazines to share with other Flipboard users. Although Flipboard for Windows 8.1 doesn't stray too far from its iOS and Android versions, it does offer a few goodies for Microsoft's platform. Adding the app to the Start screen creates a Live Tile that cycles through featured stories, and the Windows Share charm works nicely for e-mailing articles or posting to social networks. Flipboard's Windows 8.1 app also has a helpful “Discover” tab for finding more magazines.
. Sweet, eh? There's just one problem: That's not exactly accurate. . AMD provided the publications with the following statement:
The proposed European Union-wide net neutrality law would not protect citizens’ rights to privacy, the European data protection supervisor said Friday. The proposal from the European Commission in September leaves the door open for certain types of Internet traffic management to scan and discriminate between various types of content, Peter Hustinx, the European data protection supervisor (EDPS), said in a . The Commission’s proposal aims to allow providers to offer electronic-communication services across the E.U. based on a single authorization rather than the current 28 different national provisions. It is also supposed to further harmonize the conditions of radio spectrum assignment for Wi-Fi services and safeguard net neutrality.
