24th July 2013 Archive

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• US remains global sluggard in broadband speed rankings

  'We're number 9! We're number 9!'

  Akamai's latest State or the Internet report shows that the US is making little headway in becoming a top-ranked broadband nation, and is being outpaced by Asia and Europe based on traffic analysis from the first quarter of the year.

  Broadband 24 Jul 00:32

• Apple drops hints about future low-cost iPhones

  Maybe just older iPhone models, maybe something new entirely. We report, you decide

  Apple surprised Wall Street on Tuesday when it announced that it had sold more iPhones than most forecasters had envisioned. What it didn't say in its earnings release, however, was how many of those 31.2 million iPhones it sold in its third fiscal quarter were iPhone 5s, and how many were lower-priced, older models.

  Phones 24 Jul 00:34

• Senator: Surveillance state based on secret law 'has no place in America'

  But if it's not stopped now, it may soon be too late

  The US government has created "an always expanding, omnipresent surveillance state," according to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), and if something isn't done, it may soon become impossible to dismantle.

  Policy 24 Jul 00:49

• Nvidia chases defense, intelligence ISVs with GPUs

  Chewing through signals and video in real-time

  The defense industry already accounts for somewhere between 10 and 15 per cent of Nvidia's Tesla GPU coprocessor sales and is a big chunk of the sales of Quadro high-end graphics cards, as well. And Sumit Gupta, general manager of the Tesla Accelerated Computing business unit at the company, says that there is a lot more business to be had in the geospatial intelligence market – GeoInt in defensespeak –­ and the company will be working with partners to chase those dollars.

  Data Centre 24 Jul 01:36

• Google Reader replacement 'Old Reader' crashes

  Possible data loss as SSDs fail during terabyte transfer, service goes down

  The Darwinian derby to determine which RSS-reading service would replace Google Reader as the world's dominant feed-wrangler may just have produced its first extinction event, after theoldreader.com choked on its recently-enlarged database and crashed.

  Networks 24 Jul 01:56

• Google buys speech rec patents from SR Tech

  From unknown to Choc Factory provider

  A company established last year to negotiate royalties from patents filed by previously low-profile individuals from Cincinnati has vaulted into public eye courtesy of Google, which has bought rights to two of its patents.

  Law 24 Jul 02:20

• New Kiwi spook law allows domestic prying

  Kim Dotcom fair game under revised statute

  New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), which illegally spied on resident Kim Dotcom, is on the cusp of gaining sweeping new powers that include wiretapping NZ citizens.

  Policy 24 Jul 02:56

• Boffins flip optics to make booster-free superfast fibre

  Oz PhD student demos 1.8 Tbps, 800 Km link

  A group of researchers led by a Monash Univeristy PhD student has demonstrated an all-optical technique for dealing with nonlinearity – something that considerably boosts the throughput of an optical system.

  Data Networking 24 Jul 04:19

• MYSTERY of 19th-century DEAD WALRUS found in London graveyard

  'Tusky the Ripper' - or a mad scientist at work?

  The finest specialists in British archaeology have confessed themselves baffled by the mysterious case of the dead 19th-century Pacific walrus found buried in a London graveyard.

  Science 24 Jul 04:58

• IBM pours WebSphere tech into Cloud Foundry cauldron

  Big Blue bets big on platform cloud from Sons of VMware

  After months of big bets on open source and cloud computing technologies, IBM just can't stay away from the gambling table, and on Wednesday came back to slam down a ton of chips on Cloud Foundry, a platform cloud technology developed by VMware spinoff Pivotal.

  Cloud 24 Jul 05:02

• Village-swallowing MUDCANO was no accident, say boffins

  Forget 'Sharknado': the Mudcano is real, destroyed 10,000 buildings and is still erupting

  In early 2006, miners drilling a new natural gas well in the Indonesian district of Porong struck a problem. Not far from their workings and not long after they did some drilling, hot mud started bubbling to the surface.

  Science 24 Jul 05:32

• China tops global telco service study

  Press 12 for UK, 18 for USA and 19 for Oz

  Asian telcos came out top in a new global study of the prepaid mobile market by KPMG designed to find the best customer experience in-store and over-the-phone, with the UK, US and Australia all placing disappointingly outside the top ten.

  Business 24 Jul 05:55

• SKA precursor starts streaming firehosing astrodata to the world

  Cramming the universe into a fibre at 1.5 terabytes an hour

  Hard on the heels of yesterday's discussion of high-performance computing with the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research and the National Computational Infrastructure comes the announcement that real data has started to stream out of Western Australia's Murchison Widefield Array.

  Data Networking 24 Jul 06:29

• EMC's ViPR sinks fangs into LUN aggregation

  Srivastava sets out what EMC's latest tech can and can't do

  Can ViPR - EMC's virtual data management package - really aggregate logical storage units across different devices?

  Storage 24 Jul 07:03

• For pity's sake: DON'T MOVE to the COUNTRY if you want to live

  People don't kill people, guns and cars and drugs do, says top doc

  People often think that the big city is a dangerous place: they worry that they might get murdered, for instance. Being killed on purpose is more likely in town, according to new research, but it is so rare compared to dying in an accident of some type that in fact you would be much more likely to die unexpectedly in the countryside - in America, anyway.

  Science 24 Jul 07:23

• Mars, bringer of WAR: Quatermass and the Pit

  Britain’s arch boffin battles our erstwhile Martian overlords

  “When I wrote the Quatermass stories, I couldn’t help drawing on the forces and the fears that affected people in the 1950s,” wrote Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale in 1996.

  Vintage 24 Jul 07:59

• Flash slab lab blab: NVMe-friendly PCIe spotted on HGST's cards

  Intel and EMC fashionably late to solid-state cache party

  Samsung and Micron have announced NVMe-compatible PCIe flash storage cards - and now hardware from WD subsidiary HGST has been certified as conformant to the specification.

  Storage 24 Jul 08:30

• Devolo dLAN 500 AV Wireless Plus: Triple-tech connectivity for the home

  Mix’n’match powerline, Wi-Fi and Ethernet

  I currently use a cheap - 10 quid from eBay - Cisco four-port 10/100Mbps switch to feed the various devices in my living room that require a wired Ethernet connection to the network. The switch connects to the router, which happens to be one floor up and at the other end of my flat, by way of a 500Mbps powerline link.

  Hardware 24 Jul 09:03

• Congrats architects, PR bods, toolmakers - you're the new digital tycoons!

  Thousands of 'traditional' firms bunged into Blighty's tech economy by Google study

  There are at least 40 per cent more companies that make up the UK's "digital economy" than any Government estimates, and those companies tend to be considerably more successful than non-digital companies, researchers have found.

  Business 24 Jul 09:30

• Dell shareholders head in for second vote on Big Mike's plan

  'Board unconscionable for delaying first vote' - Icahn

  Dell shareholders are set to meet in Texas again today to see whether they can agree to go with Big Mike's plan to take the firm private or prefer to wait for a better offer.

  Financial News 24 Jul 09:58

• Speaking in Tech: You hit Y for YouTube at work and up pops YouPor..

  Samsung hardware, Google Android and incognito mode tips

  Government 24 Jul 10:18

• Pikmin to the rescue: Can Nintendo revamp revive Wii U fortunes?

  Plus Valve’s incredibly addictive Dota 2, and work out whodunnit in The Raven

  With the heatwave apparently set to give way to stormy weather, it might be about time to batten down the hatches and get comfy with a new game. This week we’re off for a walk in the forest with Pikmin 3, tracking down a master thief in The Raven and getting overwhelmed by choice in Valve’s Dota 2.

  Games 24 Jul 10:38

• Virgin Media hangs from traffic lights, hands out free Wi-Fi to Brummies

  Don't worry, they'll still get paid

  Virgin Media plans to get mobile operators to pay for free Birmingham-wide Wi-Fi in a deal which could see every traffic light in the city turned unto a 4G cell base station.

  Mobile 24 Jul 10:58

• Bad Vibes, man: Babble app chaps unwrapped in phish trap hack flap

  Viber website pwned, privates leaked all over the 'net by Syrian hackers

  Hacker gang the Syrian Electronic Army broke into the systems of Viber, the popular mobile chat service, and dumped its user account records online.

  Security 24 Jul 11:17

• UK pots 'n' pans outfit Lakeland scalded by hack attack

  Saucepan Man rattled. Password reset applied

  UK homeware retailer Lakeland is asking its customers to change their passwords as a precaution following a hack attack that allowed cybercrooks to reach two of its encrypted databases.

  Security 24 Jul 11:38

• ISPs: Relax. Blocking smut online WON'T really work

  Plus: Anti-porn MP slathered with porn (well, her website anyway)

  Since the start of this year it has become clear that the government was shifting away from its hands-off approach to censoring content online by leaving ISPs to work out an agreed code that would prevent regulatory intervention.

  Broadband 24 Jul 12:03

• Capita IT Services staff plan strike over pay this Friday

  One in 10 to down tools after execs bagged 20% pay hike in fiscal '13

  Unionised Capita IT Services (ITS) workers are staging a one-day strike over pay on Friday. Unite reckons the industrial action could impact customers including Deutsche Bank and Prudential.

  The Channel 24 Jul 12:32

• Jackboot dangled over NSA's throat for US spy dragnet outrage

  What part of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act do you not understand?

  The US House of Representatives will vote today on axing funding for controversial eavesdropping projects run by the NSA and other spooks.

  Government 24 Jul 12:58

• Boffins DREAMING of a WHITE CHRISTMAS ... on MARS!

  Snow, not groundwater, could have carved red world's valleys

  Brown University boffins reckon that some Martian valleys could have been carved by snowfall - rather than rivers running across the Red Planet's surface.

  Science 24 Jul 13:28

• Royston cops' ANPR 'ring of steel' BREAKS LAW, snarls watchdog

  24-hour spycam surveillance of sleepy town deemed 'excessive'

  A system of police cameras that slurped the comings and goings of Brits living and working in the small Hertfordshire town of Royston has been found to be "unlawful" for collecting "excessive" information, the UK's data watchdog ruled today.

  Government 24 Jul 13:57

• Pentagon: Mobe operators want our radio bands? Fine, but it'll cost $3.5bn

  BTW, we're leaving a few drones around the place

  The US Department of Defense has estimated at $3.5bn the costs of clearing military ops out of 25MHz of radio spectrum to make way for mobe operators – except it doesn't want to march off entirely, demanding instead that the band's new owners share nicely.

  Mobile 24 Jul 14:36

• Dead STEVE JOBS 'touts rival Lenovo gear' FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE

  Certainly what it looks like without our glasses on

  A man seemingly familiar to millions as Apple's tetchy tech tycoon Steve Jobs will star in adverts for cheap Chinese computers from Lenovo, according to reports.

  Tablets 24 Jul 15:04

• Curses! Reddit plan for fat old beardy to 'smell hot pop girl Taylor Swift's hair' FOILED

  Radio compo felt 'compromised'

  A campaign to get a fat, "creepy", and apparently over-aged bloke to win a contest to have his picture snapped backstage with country music popstrel Taylor Swift has backfired.

  Bootnotes 24 Jul 15:23

• One month on, Edward Snowden cleared to leave Moscow airport

  Might still be refused entry to Russia though...

  NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is free to leave his Tom-Hanks-in-The-Terminal* style life behind after getting a pass to exit the transit zone of Russia's Sheremetyevo Airport.

  Government 24 Jul 15:38

• You've got 600k+ customers on 4G... but look behind you, EE

  Rest of market about to open up to rivals

  EE has signed up 687,000 4G customers, and is in track to hit a million by year's end, but average revenue per user (ARPU) and total customer numbers are both a shade down as its 4G monopoly comes to an end.

  Mobile 24 Jul 15:59

• Cloud rains cash for EMC: VMWare win means Tucci's team can take it easy

  'Accelerating double-digit growth' keeps the analysts chirpy

  EMC did the business in its second calendar 2013 quarter, notching up solid gains in revenues and profits. Revenue was propped up by brisk trade in cloud virtualisation services from VMware and sales of scale-out NAS storage from its Isilon unit. The RSA and Information Intelligences groups slowed EMC down a smidge, however.

  Financial News 24 Jul 16:19

• Apple KILLER decloaked? Google lovingly unboxes Nexus 7 Android 4.3 slablette

  New LTE kit gives first cross-platform 4G support

  Google has been showing off its new Nexus 7 fondleslab running the latest version of Android, including a 4G LTE version that's the first hardware to allow 4G reception from a variety of competing carriers.

  Tablets 24 Jul 20:02

• Azure inhales open source Java implementation

  OpenJDK, and all that JaaS

  Microsoft and Azul Systems have hoisted the open source Java implementation OpenJDK onto the Redmond's Azure cloud, giving developers access to the language on Azure's Windows-based cloud services.

  Cloud 24 Jul 20:48

• Google kicks off Android 4.3 updates for Nexus devices

  Here comes Jelly Bean, again

  Google's revamped Nexus 7 fondleslab is the first device to ship with Android 4.3, but other devices will be receiving the update over the air soon and owners of Google's flagship Nexus kit can already download system images.

  Operating Systems 24 Jul 20:54

• Australia to world: Ploughman, dig our rare earths

  Maybe it's time to call them 'slightly rare earths, courtesy of supply and demand'?

  Last year, the world noticed with more than a little trepidation that China was hoarding rare earths.

  Science 24 Jul 21:16

• Amazon legal filing torpedoes Big Blue's spook cloud dreams

  Bezos & Co bring in the lawyers to get lucrative CIA cloud contract through

  Amazon and IBM's tussle for a multi-million dollar government cloud contract has moved to DEFCON 3 when Amazon challenged the CIA's decision to take another look at the two companies' bids.

  Government 24 Jul 21:58

• Juniper Networks CEO throws in towel as firm swims in cash

  Leaving on a high note

  It is always best to bow out at the top, but Juniper Networks' CEO has decided to stand down well before the company is close to peaking. At least, that's what investors will be hoping.

  Financial News 24 Jul 22:03

• Zuck on THIS: Mobile users propel Facebook to RECORD earnings

  Welcome to the party ... bitch

  Facebook posted strong results for the second quarter of its fiscal 2013 on Wednesday, showing impressive growth in its advertising and payments businesses and earnings that soundly beat analysts' expectations.

  Financial News 24 Jul 22:23

• OpenStack faces 'irrelevance and death' without AWS compatibility

  Cloudscaling's Bias has no bias about cloud API support

  Does the OpenStack cloud controller need to support the full set of APIs from Amazon Web Services and other public clouds? Randy Bias, the founder and CTO of OpenStack distie Cloudscaling thinks so. 

  Cloud 24 Jul 22:55

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