Extreme Tech- Computing

Computing

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  What’s it like to unbox a supercomputer? Surprisingly, just like unboxing a normal PC August 1, 2014 at 1:37 pm

  I don’t know about you, but unboxing new gadgets gets me pretty excited. For me, it’s knowing that soon — very soon now, after I cut through the bubble wrap or peel back the protective plastic — the device will burst into life for the very first time. If I’m honest, it actually makes me feel like Frankenstein breathing life into his monster for the first time — especially when I unbox a bunch of components and build them into a new PC. What, then, must it feel like to unbox a brand new petascale supercomputer?
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  Movidius, the chip maker behind Google’s Tango, wants to be the king of computational photography August 1, 2014 at 10:09 am

  Already the heart of Google’s Project Tango, Movidius is upping the stakes with a 20x more efficient chip — the Myriad 2.
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  Massive, undetectable security flaw found in USB: It’s time to get your PS/2 keyboard out of the cupboard July 31, 2014 at 11:38 am

  Security researchers have found a fundamental flaw that affects almost every USB device. This flaw is so serious that, now that it has been revealed, you probably shouldn’t plug a USB device into your computer ever again. There are no known effective defenses against this variety of USB attack. The USB IF itself notes that your only defense against this new attack vector is to only use USB devices that you 100% trust — but even then, as we’ll outline below, this won’t always protect you.
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  Bleep: BitTorrent’s new p2p chat client avoids the cloud so you can speak freely July 31, 2014 at 9:46 am

  The world’s most successful data transfer protocol could underlie the next generation chat client: Bleep will provide totally secure, totally peer-to-peer chatting from BitTorrent.
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  43Tbps over a single fiber: World’s fastest network would let you download a movie in 0.2 milliseconds July 31, 2014 at 8:49 am

  A research group at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), which was the first to break the one-terabit barrier in 2009, has today managed to squeeze 43 terabits per second over a single optical fiber with just one laser transmitter. In a more user-friendly unit, 43Tbps is equivalent to a transfer rate of around 5.4 terabytes per second — or 5,375 gigabytes to be exact.
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  AMD’s Kaveri onslaught: New A10 & A8 APUs, better pricing, lower power consumption July 31, 2014 at 8:00 am

  AMD is launching a group of new SKUs for its Kaveri lineup and the new chips substantially improve on the value proposition of the product line.
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  New display tech corrects for bad eyesight, makes reading glasses a thing of the past July 30, 2014 at 1:45 pm

  A new technology from UC Berkeley could make your glasses obsolete by correcting images on a screen so they appear clear to your busted eyes.
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  Microsoft announces Sharks Cove mini PC, a powerful, expensive rival to Raspberry Pi July 30, 2014 at 11:11 am

  Though it takes Microsoft a while to jump in on an emerging trend, the company does tend to throw its hat into the ring eventually. Despite releasing satisfactory hardware, the company was late to both the modern-day smartphone and tablet scene, hindering its success. This time around — likely thanks to the success of the Raspberry Pi — Microsoft is targeting the mini PC market with the announcement of Sharks Cove.
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  This robot needs just a few seconds to learn to walk again after you break its legs July 30, 2014 at 10:14 am

  Some foolhardy roboticists in France, who clearly haven’t read enough sci-fi books, have created a robot that can recover from a broken leg. More accurately, if the robot is immobilized by a broken leg, it only takes a few seconds for it to learn how to walk again, using a new gait that minimizes the impact of the broken leg. If robots are to become truly useful, they’ll have to be able to autonomously recover from damaged circuits and broken limbs.
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  EA revolutionizes gaming with Netflix-style subscription service – but only on Xbox One July 30, 2014 at 8:12 am

  EA, in one fell swoop, has changed the entire landscape of gaming and made it much more feasible to buy an Xbox One instead of a PS4. Starting today, beta testers will be able to subscribe to EA Access ($5 per month or $30 annually), giving them unlimited access to some of EA’s biggest games Considering these top-tier games usually cost $70 each, gaining access to all (or most) of EA’s games for just $30 per year is an incredibly good deal — so good that, if you’re into EA games, the Xbox One actually starts to make a lot more sense than the PS4. This is crazy, crazy stuff from EA — really, what is the company thinking?

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