Tech News Today 463

Tech News Today Episode 463

Tech News Today 463: Allow The Idiot Element In

NVIDIA Kepler graphics cards rock pretty hard, hacktivists more of a threat than cybercriminals? Why you should care about the new Photoshop, and more.

Submit and vote on story coverage at technewstoday.reddit.com

Hosts

• Tom Merritt (@acedtect)
  • TomMerritt.com
• Sarah Lane (@SarahLane)
  • SarahLane.com
• Iyaz Akhtar (@Iyaz)
• Jason Howell (@RayGun01)
• Nate Lanxon
  • wired.co.uk
• Loyd Case
  • uncertainty.com

Top Stories

• Nvidia retakes crown of world’s fastest graphics chip with Kepler launch
• Nvidia GeForce GT 640M, 650M, and GTX 660M debut, bring 28nm Kepler to mobile GPUs
• NVIDIA Announces New GeForce 600M Series Graphics
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 official: 28nm Kepler GPU doesn't disappoint
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 review round-up: see ya later, AMD
• Keplar Unveiled: Nvidia's GTX 680 Benchmarked In-Depth!
  • NVIDIA's 1st 28nm GPUs. GeForce GTX 680 desktop GPU, 600M series for laptops. Promising twice the efficiency
  • 195W is actually less power than the previous generation.
  • Clock speed not static: Managed by hardware. Adjusted every 13Mhz. Could have different clockspeed for different frames in a game
  • 1,006MHz base clock and a 1,058MHz boost clock and will dynamically alternate between those values depending on load and power consumption.
  • Can downclock to 324 MHz to save power and overclock to 1.1 to 1.2 GHz ---- memory bandwidith of over 192GBps
  • Can supoprt three monitor gaming wiht a 4th 'companion' screen. --- The Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 should be available immediately, priced at $499 in the US, £429 in the UK (including VAT) or €419 in Europe before taxes.
  • 600M Mobile GPUs - Keper 28nm
  • Battlefield 3 on an Ultrabook anyone? (We'll see)
  • 660M - 2GB GDDR5 memory
  • 650M - 850 MHz
  • 640M - 384 cores, 625MHz 64GB/sec memory bandwidth
  • Also 28nm GF117 Fermi chips - 630M and 620M
  • Also 48nm Fermi 675M and 670M seem like dead ringers for 580M and 570M

• Data theft: Hacktivists 'steal more than criminals'
• Report: Hacktivists Out-Stole Cybercriminals in 2011
  • More than 100 million of the 174 million stolen records Verizon tracked in 2011 were stolen by hacktivist groups, according to the authors of Verizon’s 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report
  • “Doubly concerning for many organizations and executives was that target selection by these groups didn’t follow the logical lines of who has money and/or valuable information. Enemies are even scarier when you can’t predict their behavior.”
  • Hacktivist groups focused on large, high-profile entities that had lots of data, whereas criminal groups have changed their focus in the last two years from large companies to smaller businesses that are less well-defended.
  • The report combines data from 855 incidents that involved more than 174 million compromised records, an explosion of data loss compared to last year’s 4 million records stolen. The increase is due largely to the massive breaches perpetrated by activists.
  • 96 percent — were not difficult to accomplish, suggesting they would have been avoidable if companies had implemented basic security measures.
  • Smaller companies are breached through vulnerabilities and brute force attacks, larger companies were breached through social engineering and phishing
  • Verizon took data from forensic investigations conducted by Verizon’s RISK Team, the United States Secret Service, the Dutch National High Tech Crime Unit, Australian Federal Police, Irish Reporting and Information Security Service, and the Police Central e-Crime Unit of the London Metropolitan Police.

• Adobe launches Photoshop CS6 as a free public beta
• Adobe Photoshop CS6 hands-on preview
• Adobe releases Photoshop CS6
  • 1st time in 7 years Adobe has released a beta version of PS ahead of the formal release...and it's free. Photoshop CS6 beta now available from Adobe Labs in English and Japanese.
  • Official commercial release expected within 1st half of 2012: free with Creative Cloud subscription for $50/month with yearly sub. Standalone prices outside of Creative Cloud not yet announced.
  • CS6 will have regular & Extended version which has more intuitive 3D controls.
  • Adobe says 60% more new features than the prev. version, 65 user-requested enhancements, software acceleration via new Mercury Graphics Engine takes advantage of the graphics processor (GPU) rather than the main computer chip (CPU) to speed up processor-intensive functions.
  • 2 new content-aware tools: Content-Aware Patch: select/duplicate an area of an image to fill in or “patch” a different area of the same image. More subtle than clone tool. Content-Aware Move: select/move an object to a new place in the image, PS fills in the background behind the relocated object.
  • vector layers now allow users to apply dashed lines and gradient strokes. Also includes searchable layers.
  • Bryan O’Neil Hughes, Photoshop’s senior product manager. “This is a very user-directed release and we’re encouraging people to download the beta, experience it, and provide feedback.”
  • Updated Creative Cloud: Adobe Touch Apps/Adobe Creative Suite® software integration in cloud"

Discussion Stories

• Pinterest Has Hired The Man Who Came Up With The 'Blueprint' For Facebook's Monetization
• Is Pinterest the next Facebook?
  • In March the site registered 17.8 million users, according to Comscore, a 52% jump in just one month -- and it isn't even open to everyone (would-be "pinners" must still request an invitation to join).
  • In February Pinterest drove more traffic to websites than Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn (LNKD), and YouTube combined.
  • The company in October raised $27 million from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz in a deal that valued Pinterest at a reported $200 million.
  • Pinterest just hired Tim Kendall, who spent many years as Facebook's director of monetization, to build out the business.

• Apple's new iPhone will use bigger 4.6-inch display: report
• Rumor: Next-gen iPhone to feature 4.6-inch Retina Display
• iOS 5.1 code hints new iPhone could have 4G LTE
• On These Rumors of a 4.6-Inch iPhone Display
  • Maeil Business Newspaper (a South Korea publication) reports the next iPhone will have a 4.6-inch retina display - the newspaper cites an unnamed industry source
  • Reuters says the launch would be in the 2nd quarter, a translation of the original report says "summer"
  • Samsung already makes a 4.6-inch OLED display, but that's for its Galaxy S II (Samsung is known display provider for Apple)" "- John Gruber is calling this rumor bullspit (except that wasn't the word) considering the display would pack in more pixels than the current display. He says this change would require every app to be redesigned and resized.
  • According to Krishna Sagar, a tipster writing to iDownload Blog, Apple is definitely working on a 4G LTE iPhone, and iOS 5.1 has the code to prove it.

• Nokia takes Apple to task over nano-SIM proposal: 'does not meet all of the pre-agreed requirements'
• Apple vs. Nokia, RIM and Motorola On Nano-SIM Standard
  • Financial Times' reported awhile back that that Apple is seeking to get its nano-SIM proposal approved over a competing proposal from Nokia, Motorola, and RIM
  • Next week, the ETSI (the European Telecommunications Standards Institute) decides on the 4FF (Fourth form factor). Measuring approximately 12 millimeters by 9 millimeters, the new SIM will be about 30 percent smaller than the micro-SIM. The thickness of the cards has been reduced by about 15 percent, according to Giesecke & Devrient. The nano-SIM is also approximately 60 percent smaller than traditional-size SIM cards.""
  • Nokia objects to Apple's design: Apple's proposed card is the same length as the width of current micro SIMs and so would risk jamming, leading to card and product damage.
  • when combined with the associated mechanics needed in the phone, we don't believe it represents a significant reduction in size.
  • Our option allows for more design options for the type of card reader.
  • Nokia's total nano-SIM package (including phone components) is smaller and doesn't require a tray. We'd previously heard from the FT report that Apple's proposal would require a drawer of some sort, and this seems to back that up.

News Fuse

• A Netflix representative told Mashable that the company plans to introduce HD video for the new iPad, but could not give specifics on timing. The Netflix iPad app still only displays standard definition, but Netflix on Apple TV was upped to 1080p. According to Mashable, the only streaming video app that displays 1080p video is the ABC app.

• Facebook just bought 750 patents from IBM, at least so says a person with knowledge of the transaction according to Bloomberg. The patents are said to cover various tech around software and networking. The acquisition would considerably beef up Facebook's stack of patents, which right now includes around 56 issued patents and 503 filed U.S. patent applications.

• Microsoft and TiVo have removed their weaponized patents from each other's heads. TiVo announced the settlement in a a regulatory filing and said the company did not grant Microsoft any patent rights. Microsoft's withdrawal of its patent suit seems to be tied to a dispute AT&T had with TiVo - as in Microsoft was defending AT&T. That dispute was settled in January.

• Major Nelson says Minecraft is coming to the Xbox 360. 4JStudios will handle the porting of the game which will be released on May 9th. The 360 version will be able to take screenshots and use Kinect - although Kinect support will not be there on launch day. The game will cost $20 (or 1600 MS points)

• Lookout Labs, a security firm, says that Americans lost approximately $30 billion worth of mobile phones in 2011. The study was about physically losing a phone or having it stolen. The top city for phone-losers is Philadelphia. Rounding out the top 5 are Seattle; Oakland; Long Beach, CA and Newark. Lookout Labs makes software for phones that helps people find their lost phones, btw.

• Data from IDC says RIM is now the number two smartphone shipper in its home country of Canada for the first time. The iPhone is now the king of the canucks. Maybe RIM sees the writing on the wall because AllThingsD dug up a job listing at RIM for iOS developers. Could BBM be coming to iOS?

• Why Is RIM Hiring iOS App Developers?

• After a server crash took down a Norewegian government site that helps deliver tax results to citizens, people who tried to login found themselves logged in as Kenneth, a 36 year old man from Oslo. Every single person was Kenneth, which means those people had access to his personal financial information for the past two years. The site was shut down after 15 minutes. It isn't known how many people got Kenneth's information.

• Retina Display? Microsoft's got your retina display right here! David Washington, a senior program manager on the Windows 8 User Experience team, posted that Microsoft's forthcoming operating system will scale to differently sized and more pixel-rich screens. In addition to a minumu screen resolution capability of 1024 x 768, Washington said many of the coming Windows 8 tablets will have pixel densities of “at least 135 DPI,” with some HD tablets and quad-XGA tablets going as high as 190 DPI and 253 DPI, respectively.

• It's layoff day today apparently. T-Mobile USA CEO Philipp Humm sent a memo to his employees today announcing the elimination of 1,900 jobs nationwide, primarily resulting from the closure of seven call center facilities. Across the ocean, Nokia finalized a long-anticipated plan that will see 1000 of its employees in Finland lose their jobs. And Seesmic cut half its staff. Why do you people make me read the bad news right at the end of the news fuse. It's cruel.
  • seesmic-lays-off-half-its-staff-as-it-pivots-back-to-social-cross-posting

Randomizer

• Einstein's Complete Archives to Go Online for the First Time

Calendar

• Want a Galaxy Tab 10.1 with LTE plan? You can get one today on U.S. Cellular.
• AT&T announced today that it is making the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update available for the HTC Vivid smartphone, making it the first carrier in the US to issue an ICS upgrade on a device that originally shipped with Android 2.3 Gingerbread.
• Sony Tablets are getting Android 4.0 in the end of April; Wi-Fi-only Tablet P announced for April 21st in Japan. You loved it, right, Jason?
• Samsung Galaxy Note Won't Get Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich Until Q2
• Panasonic Eluga gets official launch date in Japan and Europe and it's April 29th on NTT DoCoMo
• Republic Wireless beta will reopen to new users in June
• Tomorrow is National Day of Unplugging - the challenge is to abstain from tech from sunset on March 23rd to sunset of March 24th.

INCOMING

Voicemail

• About HP's MagCloud

Email

"bummer....but not surprised....

• ‘Bird Man’ Hoaxster Comes Clean on Dutch Television

C.J. Land"

SUMMARY - Tom sent out a request to a contact who passed it along to former ILM VFX artists. They were universally skeptical. Joanathan Ltyons wrote a blog post where he points out easy ways it could have been done, and suspicious focus shift on takeoff and blurriness on landing. Sam Edwards wrote "I see a lot of tire tracks on the ground, suggesting that there was a tow vehicle and they did a bunch of takes." - The jury is still out

Sponsors

Squarespace

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Ford

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Production Information

• Edited by: Jason
• Notes:

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