RSS Blogster - Top Articles

Intel internal WiMAX / WiFi card pops up in FCC database

2008-05-16T22:32:00-07:00

Filed under: Wireless

Wondering what kind of radios are inside all those WiMAX-enabled laptops, ultraportables and MIDs (and, uh, sheets) we've been seeing lately? We've got a hunch they've all got something a lot like Intel's 5350 WiMAX / WiFi card tucked away in there, and now that it's hit the FCC, we're being treated to some class-A photography of the lil' bugger. Yep, still useless without a network -- but if that $12B Clearwire deal pans out, you might get to get familiar with the user manual located just beyond the read link.

[Thanks, Stephen]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

3M mini-projectors set to land in / with Samsung phones later this year

2008-05-14T11:58:00-07:00

Filed under: Cellphones, Displays

3M has been touting its mini-projectors for some time now (along with many others), but it looks like they're now finally a bit closer to landing in an actual product, with Samsung reportedly set to begin offering them later this year. What's not clear, unfortunately, is whether the projectors will actually be built into the cellphones (and if so, which ones), or simply offered as an attachment of some sort, but either way you can apparently expect to pay between $200 and $400 for the chance to spread a bit of visual pollution.

[Via Unwired View] Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

AT&T 3G Hitting 20Mbps in 2009 [3G]

2008-05-14T10:30:00-07:00

Just in time for the new iPhone's imminent release, AT&T said today that it will upgrade its 3G network to run at speeds over 20 megabits per second in 2009. That's more than five times the current limit of 3.6Mbps, which is already fast, at least compared to EDGE. The company is currently testing its HSPA 3G network for the upgrade, and says it now runs at 7.2Mbps in the lab. The speed boost will be achieved through a software upgrade and won't require major hardware changes across the network, so we may actually see this happen on time. The question is, when everyone and their mom has the 3G iPhone, will the speed peaks still be that good? [AppleInsider]

Should We Be Concerned That The Military Will Use Counterfeit Routers Bought Off eBay?

2008-05-14T09:38:00-07:00

There was a story last week that got a lot of press about how the FBI discovered that the military was using a ton of counterfeit technology equipment, including thousands of fake Cisco routers. Dan Wallach has an excellent writeup looking at the security implications of what happened. From the description, it certainly doesn't sound like any of the equipment was found to include any kind of questionable technology for spying, but the point is that it would have been easy enough if someone had wanted to do so. Basically, the background is that while the government only buys equipment from approved vendors, those vendors can subcontract out the actual tech purchases to anyone. That leads to situations where (no joke) one subcontractor purchased a bunch of fake routers off of eBay and then resold them to the government via an authorized vendor. Or, try to follow the details of the case of the US Navy contracting with Lockheed Martin for equipment. Lockheed outsourced the deal to an unauthorized Cisco reseller as a subcontractor. That subcontractor turned to its own subcontractor who (yup, you guessed it) hired another subcontractor who shipped the equipment straight to the Navy. If you lost count, that's five layers deep, with most of those layers having no real oversight on what they did. You would think the government (and especially the military) would be a bit more careful in where it sourced its products from, but it certainly doesn't seem as though that's the case at all. Given all that, it's almost difficult to believe that compromised equipment hasn't been sold to the government at some point.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Big important study: Violent games so aren’t bad for kids

2008-05-13T11:18:58-07:00

We’ve been saying for awhile that violent video games aren’t bad for kids, and now we’ve got research from Harvard to prove it.

They spent nearly one and a half million dollars in four years following the habits of 1,200 kids. As it turns out, violent games are a good way for kids to relieve stress and it doesn’t roll over to real life in most cases.

So it’s OK to let your 8 year-old run over hookers in GTA IV. It really is.

Now Texas Is Wondering Why Amazon Doesn't Pay State Taxes

2008-05-12T16:22:00-07:00

Following New York's decision to change its laws to force Amazon.com to collect sales tax for New York-related transactions, other states are apparently going back and reevaluating Amazon and taxes. Texas, for example, has been alerted to the fact that Amazon probably should be paying sales tax in the state. This is different than the situation in New York. The rule has always been that, if the company has a "physical presence" in the state, it is required to collect and pay sales tax. The question in New York was what counted as a physical presence. Amazon doesn't have offices or a distribution center in New York, but New York was trying to claim that all its Amazon affiliates in New York represent a physical presence. In Texas, however, Amazon actually does have a physical presence in the form of a distribution center. It's just that the state of Texas didn't recognize that until someone from a Dallas newspaper pointed it out. So even if Amazon is successful in fighting the law in New York, it looks like the renewed interest in forcing online retailers to collect and pay sales tax is catching up to Amazon in other ways.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Official: HBO arrives on iTunes, standard pricing be damned

2008-05-12T23:08:00-07:00

It's official. HBO content just entered the digital halls of iTunes with variable pricing. Episodes of Rome and The Sopranos pop for $2.99 while The Wire and Sex and the City (yes the complete series) go for the iTunes "standard" pricing of $1.99. We just fired-up iTunes and confirmed it just like the rumor predicted. With Apple backing down from its strict, flat-rate pricing policy, don't be surprised to see additional content from previously iTunes-shy providers arriving in succession.

[Thanks, Turki]Permalink | Email this | Comments

Xbox 360 to get a smaller case revision in 2009?

2008-05-13T05:23:00-07:00

Filed under: Gaming

We think we've already got a handle on the various chipset revisions planned for Microsoft's too-beautiful-for-this-world Xbox 360*, but it looks like that planned 45nm "Valhalla" combined CPU / GPU motherboard design we've been hearing about might also come in a redesigned, smaller case. That's certainly news to us, but TG Daily has the refresh happening on the same fall-2009 timeline we've been hearing about, so at least all these sketchy rumors line up. We'll see when we see -- it sounds like the 65nm Jasper units are coming off the line for that August release in the meantime to keep us all warm at night.

*Guess which Engadget ed had his 360 go RRoD over the weekend? You only get one try.

[Via Xbox 360 Fanboy]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

CitizenHawk Raises $3 Million To Target Cybersquatters

2008-05-12T09:01:46-07:00

CitizenHawk, a digital brand management company, has raised $3 million in funding from Maveron LLC.

CitizenHawk helps companies protect their online brands by targeting cybersquatters. According to CitizenHawk, up to 20% of hand-typed URLs are misspelled, which has created a market for “typo” domains. Many of these “typosquatting” sites employ the use of profane ads and spyware to maximize their profits, which can tarnish a brand’s image. CitizenHawk locates these sites, notifies them of their trademark infringements, and initiates legal action if the offenders refuse to cooperate.

CitizenHawk intends to use the money to increase their staff and encourage growth in the market. The company was founded in 2006 and is based in Aliso Viejo, California.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

80 Gbps Deep Packet Inspection Hardware Announced

2008-05-12T10:53:00-07:00

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that Procera Networks is launching a new weapon on the deep packet inspection (DPI) front. At $800,000 these 80 Gbps tanks aren't going to be sitting in everyone's closet, but it could mean that more traffic shaping is on the way. "The PL10000 can handle up to 5 million subscribers and can track 48 million real-time data flows. That's certainly a potent piece of hardware, but larger ISPs will need more. That's why Procera designed the new machines with full support for synchronizing traffic flows where return traffic might be routed to a different PacketLogic machine. The machine receiving the return traffic can make the machine monitoring the outbound traffic aware that it sees the other half of a TCP/IP conversation, for example, giving the devices more accuracy than those which might only have access to one side."

HP Turns to Lasers to Cut Copper From Chips

2008-05-12T08:47:06-07:00

HP is trying to eliminate copper on semiconductors to make them run faster, and today the company is gathering about 150 researchers at its Palo Alto campus to push lasers as a means to do this. If it and chip manufacturers such as Intel, IBM and Luxtera succeed, the chip firms will follow in the telcos footsteps, turning to light to transmit information quickly.

Only, in this instance, the light would provide short-haul transport on a chipset measured in nanometers or millimeters rather than over distances of miles. Lasers could replace the copper connecting multiple processing engines inside a chip, but could also act as interconnects between multiple chips on a board. Light pulses provided by a laser could reduce the bill of materials (if adapted for silicon), power consumption and solve some of the problems associated with following Moore’s Law because it reduces some of the materials needed on a chip. Improved chips mean more computing power and a faster, more dynamic web.

Such efforts are in the early stages with real products likely 10 years out. However, it isn’t so far-fetched. Already Infinera, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company whose products are sold to telecommunications companies, makes an optical chip, but it builds its chips on a far more expensive substrate than a silicon wafer.

Lumeta's "peel & stick" solar panels can blanket a roof in under 35 minutes

2008-05-12T06:01:00-07:00

Filed under: Household

If destroying your roof just to get some sun-sucking solar panels installed isn't your thing, Lumeta's PowerPly could be the solution. The panels use traditional roofing adhesives, that'll be familiar to regular ol' roofers, and save the process from drilling holes and bolts associated with the regular rack systems required to mount solar panels. Right now this process is targeted at commercial projects -- you can watch a pair of guys install 2.25 kilowatts of solar modules onto a California roof after the break -- but hopefully residential applications won't be far behind.

[Via Digg]

Continue reading Lumeta's "peel & stick" solar panels can blanket a roof in under 35 minutes

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Rising Cost of Facebook Infrastructure; CTO Resigns

2008-05-11T21:18:41-07:00

Last month, I wrote about Facebook’s insatiable hunger for hardware. Over the weekend, Spencer Ante of Business Week reported that Palo Alto-based social networking company had raised about $100 million from Triplepoint Capital, a venture lending operation. “It will be used entirely for servers,” Facebook Chief Financial Officer Gideon Yu told Business Week’s Ante. That gives us a sense of how much hardware is gulping down.

In other words, Facebook could easily increase its number of servers from current estimates of about 10,000 servers to over 50,000 servers, in order to keep up with its growth. Various web analytic companies estimate that Facebook as over 100 million visitors and serves up billions of pages every month. One of my sources had told me that Facebook was looking to spend about $9 million this year on hardware, but apparently, their needs are much bigger. All that spending should prove to be good news for Rackable (RACK) which has been a big server supplier to Facebook.

Facebook has built an enviable infrastructure. I personally believe that their desire to market Facebook Connect is a way to offload some of the pressures Facebook apps are placing on their system, but at some later stage. Regardless, one exec who is not going to be around to help architect the next phase of Facebook’s back end bulk-up: CTO Adam D’Angelo, who left the company according to Kara Swisher and Eric Eldon.

Facebook spokeswoman confirmed the news and added that “D’Angelo will be transitioning out of his role as CTO and leaving Facebook to take some time off.” The company is currently looking for a VP of Engineering. Apparently, Adam’s main interest was engineering and the CTO role moved him too far away from that.

If this story interests you then you should definitely check out our upcoming conference, Structure 08.

NSA Takes On West Point In Security Exercise

2008-05-11T06:00:00-07:00

Wired is running a story about a recent security exercise in which the NSA attacked networks set up by various US military academies. The Army's network scored the highest, put together using Linux and FreeBSD by cadets at West Point. Quoting: "Even with a solid network design and passable software choices, there was an element of intuitiveness required to defend against the NSA, especially once it became clear the agency was using minor, and perhaps somewhat obvious, attacks to screen for sneakier, more serious ones. 'One of the challenges was when they see a scan, deciding if this is it, or if it's a cover,' says [instructor Eric] Dean. Spotting 'cover' attacks meant thinking like the NSA -- something Dean says the cadets did quite well. 'I was surprised at their creativity.' Legal limitations were a surprising obstacle to a realistic exercise. Ideally, the teams would be allowed to attack other schools' networks while also defending their own. But only the NSA, with its arsenal of waivers, loopholes, special authorizations (and heaven knows what else) is allowed to take down a U.S. network."

Memoright’s solid state drives annihilate every hard drive out there

2008-05-10T15:16:51-07:00

Solid state drives have always excelled in power economy and heat levels, but have faltered in the price-to-performance ratio, and even lagged behind in sheer performance by some measures. That last complaint is valid no longer. Memoright’s high-speed drives operate at far higher speeds than other SSDs on the market, and show nearly double the performance of the closest competitors in the spinning disk category where it counts — or more. With four 32GB modules in RAID 0 configuration, the Memorights showed read and write speeds of 450MB/S and 323MB/s, respectively. That’s madness, friend. Their I/O counts are off the charts as well, I’m talking like 20 times HDD performance.

It’s not a total shutout, of course; the WD VelociRaptor is comparable on several measures but gets its ass handed to it on just as many. And it’s worth noting that the Memoright modules cost fully ten times as much ($1000 per 32GB). But when Tom’s Hardware goes this gaga over something, you know it’s worth the cash if you’ve got it.

The take-away message here is that the performance gap between SSD and HDD has been decisively closed; it’s now just a matter of getting that price down. Man, I can’t stop thinking about that 0.45GB/s read speed. I’m freaking out here.