XAMI

Instant messaging is an increasingly competitive market and despite your best efforts to keep it simple and use a single app or platform, it's hard to avoid keeping two or three apps around to keep in touch with different groups of people. In any given day I get hundreds of notifications from HipChat,WhatsApp, Telegram, Skype, and my business’ Facebook Page. While most of these clients are mobile-first nowadays, thankfully for my sake all offer some form of desktop counterpart — either a full blown native client or a web based one — so I can reply faster and more comfortably using an actual keyboard. However that doesn’t make switching between different app windows and browser tabs throughout the day any less annoying. If this sounds familiar, there are a handful of all in one messaging clients that can save you the trouble by keeping all your chats under one roof, and best of all they are cross-platform. The concept isn’t new — remember Trillian, anyone? — but updated for today’s mobile messaging world. Franz I’ll tell you right away all three options we’re covering today work similarly as they are essentially wrappers for the web versions of all the supported messaging apps. But Franz is still my favorite of the bunch. It feels polished, fast and is presented in a clean, no-frills interface. It covers a wide range of services, among them Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Slack, Telegram, WeChat, Skype, HipChat, Google Hangouts, GroupMe, Steam Chat, and more. As of writing there are 34 different services in total and development is active so new ones are added regularly. The latest update introduced support for email (Gmail, Inbox by Gmail, and Outlook), Twitter’s TweetDeck client and custom HipChat servers for companies that prefer self-hosted solutions. Moreover, Franz allows you to add each service many times, which is useful if you manage multiple business and private accounts at the same time. It’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Rambox Rambox is an open source alternative to Franz that works pretty much the same but covers a lot more services — 74 and counting at the time of publishing this piece — and adds a few bells and whistles of its own. Each service you add is listed in its own tab in the Rambox interface, with notifications handled individually for each service and the option to mute all by enabling Do Not Disturb mode. Like Franz, you can add each service many times, but a key feature that differentiates Rambox is the ability to add a custom service in case you are using an obscure or niche app that isn’t already listed. As long as the service is accessible via URL, which I tested by adding a tab for Chatra. Other unique features include the ability to lock the app if you’ll be away for a period of time and setup a password for when you come back or when launching the app. If you use Rambox in different computers, you can synchronize your configuration between them, configure it to use a Proxy if your network blocks some services, and add custom behaviors via custom code injection. Overall it’s a broader and more flexible alternative, though after using it for a few days it didn’t feel as polished as Franz, and I noticed a little lag while switching between clients. Rambox is also available for Windows, Mac, and Linux and since it’s open source you’re always free to check its inner workings. All-In-One Messenger If you’d rather have a solution that lives inside the browser then All-in-One Messenger will be more up your alley. It has a more limited list of supported services but not by much, and all the big ones are there. Like its desktop-based counterparts above, you can use as many accounts of the same messenger platform as you want. You can get desktop notifications with one-click reply and mute specific services if you are being distracted by one of them. If you are a fan of hotkeys All-in-One supports a few, allowing you to quickly toggle between tabs or jump directly into one of them and reordering within the chat interface. All-in-One is simple, stable, well designed and uses roughly the same amount of resources they would in a browser tab in Chrome. It’s available as a Chrome Web App, and while I prefer a standalone client, it still serves the purpose for keeping all your messaging clients accessible in a single place. It’s also the only of the three that will work on Chrome OS, so there’s that, too. Article By: TechSpot

At GTC Europe, Nvidia has unveiled a small amount of information about their upcoming Xavier SoC, which is designed to succeed Parker in the company's collection of products focused on autonomous driving and artificial intelligence. Nvidia is continuing to name their SoCs after comic book characters – Xavier is in reference to Professor Charles Xavier from X-Men – so there's certainly no shortage of names to choose from. Xavier is expected to improve on nearly every aspect of Parker, packing in a huge seven billion transistors on a die manufactured using TSMC's 16nm FinFET+ process. There's not a whole lot of information about the CPU and GPU configurations inside Xavier, but here's what Nvidia has announced so far. The CPU will be made up of eight custom ARM cores designed by Nvidia, possibly using a new design that succeeds Denver used in their Parker SoC. The GPU will use Nvidia's next-generation Volta architecture and pack 512 CUDA cores, up from 256 in Parker. Nvidia wants Xavier to absolutely crush Parker in terms of performance. The company is aiming for 20 Deep Learning Tera-Ops (DL TOPS) at a power consumption of just 20W, which is crazy when you consider the entire Drive PX2 board with multiple Parker SoCs and several discrete GPUs hits 24 DL TOPS at 250 W of power. It will still be some time before we see Xavier in the flesh, as Nvidia is beginning to sample the SoC in the last quarter of 2017 ahead of expected volume production in 2018.

Apple’s po[CENSORED]r MacBook Pro range is due for an update soon. With the iPhone 7 and Apple Watch Series 2 launches out of the way, the company is reportedly gearing up to ship the new laptops "some time in the second half of October,” and is currently hard at work on macOS 10.12.1 to finalize support for the rumored Touch ID sensor and OLED bar. According to reports, Apple plans to introduce completely revamped 13 and 15-inch Retina MacBook Pros with a thinner and lighter form factor. The new models might ship with Intel’s seventh generation Kaby Lake processors, if the companies' release schedules line up, and are expected to feature multiple USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 3 support. Apple is said to be introducing its fingerprint scanning Touch ID feature to its new family of MacBook Pros, integrating it into the power button. Just like on the iPhone, the fingerprint reader would remove the need to type in a password and allow users to authenticate Apple Pay purchases, a feature that just expanded to the web with macOS Sierra and iOS 10. The new laptops are also expected to see the physical function keys along the top of the keyboard replaced with a new OLED display touch bar, which will present different function keys to users depending on the applications they're using. In addition to redesigned MacBook Pro models, Apple may also introduce updated MacBook Air models and new iMacs with AMD graphics chips before the end of the year.

Google has announced a version of its YouTube app for Android tailored specifically for people in areas where connectivity is limited. Dubbed YouTube Go, the new app has been designed from the ground up to give users more options over quality and file size, offline viewing and local sharing with nearby users without using any data thanks to Wi-Fi Direct. The app was field tested with hundreds of users in 15 cities across India and will be launched there first, with plans to make it more widely available early next year. "YouTube Go is a brand new app to help the next generation of users share and enjoy videos," YouTube Vice President of Product Management Johanna Wright said in a statement. "YouTube Go was designed and built from the ground up with insights from India, in order to bring the power of video to mobile users in a way that is more conscious of their data and connectivity, while still being locally relevant and social." The app is a natural extension of YouTube’s previous offline modes. The home screen will feature the typical po[CENSORED]r and trending videos from nearby, but with a new preview function where users will able to peek at a few frames before deciding to watch it or save it on the app. Google is targeting the so-called “next billion” Internet users that are coming online, many of them in India, Indonesia, Brazil, and China. And of course it’ll want to monetize views as well. Keeping with the low bandwidth approach, YouTube Go will only use six-second ads, which don’t cost much data, and will be compressed to make downloads as small as possible. Indian users can sign up now to test YouTube Go.

After being tested in closed beta by over 300 select organizations last year, Facebookannounced last December that the enterprise version of its social network, Facebook at Work, would be rolling out over the following months. And while it may be a bit later than planned, the Slack competitor will finally launch publicly next month, according to The Information. Aimed at businesses and their employees, Facebook at Work looks very similar to its non-enterprise version. It features a scrolling newsfeed, posts that can be 'liked', timelines, groups, events, the ability to follow and interact with co-worders, and a built-in chat service. Facebook said that the service would remain free - as it has been during the testing phase - with a charge of “a few dollars per month per user” for premium features such as analytics and customer support. However, the firm has now decided to charge a set monthly fee for all active users. The company didn’t specify how much it would ask, though it’s believed to be between $1 - $5. For reference, Slack charges $6.67 per active user. Facebook at Work director Julien Codorniou said it changed the payment model as Facebook believes it can keep individual employees engaged with the product. Anyone worried about their personal and business Facebook profiles overlapping needn’t worry. The two accounts are kept separate; anything shared on a work account will only be seen by people in the company, and anything displayed on a personal account will only be visible to friends (based on privacy settings). If it proves po[CENSORED]r, many office workers may find themselves spending even more of their waking hours on the social network.

Russia’s capital city of Moscow is getting rid of Microsoft’s products, replacing them with domestic software. The move comes after President Vladimir Putin called for Russian authorities and companies to be less reliant on foreign technology. The first casualties will be Microsoft’s Exchange Server and Outlook on 6000 Moscow computers. An email system installed by state-run carrier Rostelecom PJSC will replace the Redmond firm’s programs. Bloomberg reports that authorities are looking to expand the homegrown system, developed by Russia’s New Cloud Technologies, to as many as 600,000 computers in the future. Artem Yermolaev, head of information technology for Moscow, said that Microsoft Windows and Office could be the next products that get replaced. The migration to the new email servers is expected to take two years. The city has budgeted around $700,000 for the project, with the new licenses reportedly around 30 percent cheaper than Microsoft’s. Communications minister Nikolay Nikiforov said: “We want the money of taxpayers and state-run firms to be primarily spent on local software”. The decision to abandon Microsoft comes at a time of high tensions between Russia and United States. The EU and US sanctions that followed the annexation of Crimea saw many American companies shutter or cut back their business dealings in the country. Putin’s internet czar, German Klimenko, wants heavy taxes on U.S. technology companies, including 18 percent on app store purchases, to help Russian competitors in the country’s $3 billion software market. Russia has been looking to tighten its grip over the nation's tech industry recently. Back in June, it was reported that the country was looking to make backdoors mandatory in all encrypted messaging apps, part of an “anti-terror” bill that Edward Snowden called a “Big Brother law.”

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Toshiba a couple of weeks ago rolled out a new family of OCZ-branded solid state drives – the XV500 series – targeting mainstream desktop and notebook owners interested in replacing their tired (and slow) spinning hard drive. Now, Toshiba is addressing the entry-level market with its new OCZ TL100 family. Offered in capacities of 120GB and 240GB, both drives dish up sequential read and write speeds of up to 550MB/sec and 530MB/sec, respectively. Random read speeds on the two drives are identical at up to 85,000 IOPS, as are random write speeds at up to 80,000 IOPS. In addition to its higher capacity, the 240GB should be a bit more durable as it’s rated for 60 TBW (total bytes written) with an average of 54GB per day. The smaller 120GB SSD can only do half that at 30TB or 27GB/day. Both 7mm drives utilize Toshiba’s TLC (triple level cell) NAND flash and come backed by a three-year advanced warranty program. They also both consume a maximum of 1.6 watts and come with OCZ’s SSD management software. It’s unclear, however, which controller is running the show. As for pricing, the 120GB TL100 will set you back just $44.99 while the larger drive commands $67.99. Toshiba hasn’t yet said when the drives will go on sale although I suspect they’ll drop in time for the holidays.

The difficult times faced by BlackBerry this year have reached an almost inevitable conclusion: the Canadian company has announced that it would stop internal development of its smartphones, and instead focus on software and services while relying on partners to design and build any future hardware. "The company plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsource that function to partners. This allows us to reduce capital requirements and enhance return on invested capital.”," CEO John Chen said in a statement. The decision marks the end of an era for the company. In 2009, BlackBerry and Nokia were responsible for 70 percent of smartphone operating systems. Today, the company holds around one percent of the market share. Chen has twice said that BlackBerry would exit the hardware business become a software company only if he could not make it profitable. The company’s second-quarter results showed a net loss of $372 million, or 71 cents per share, on revenue of $334 million. BalckBerry’s move away from the BB 10 operating system to Android hasn’t been the success it hoped. The company’s first Android device, the Priv, ended up having its price cutin April due to low sales of around 600,000 units since launch. The company is working on other Android devices, including the DTEK60, a successor to the DTEK50 (a clone of theAlcatel Idol 4 with BlackBerry branding). Back in February, WhatsApp announced that it was dropping support for older operating systems, including BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry 10. A few months later, Facebook andPayPal revealed they would also be withdrawing support for the platform. Even the President had enough of the company's devices. In June, Barack Obama finallychanged his BlackBerry for an unnamed smartphone. BlackBerry will live on through its software offerings, and BlackBerry devices will continue to arrive through third-party manufacturers, but 2016 is fast becoming a year to forget for what was once one of the most po[CENSORED]r phone manufacturers in the world.

Veteran fans of thriller author Michael Crichton may recall that his career kicked into high gear with the 1969 release of a novel entitled “The Andromeda Strain.” The book described the impact of a deadly microbe strain delivered to earth from space via a military satellite. Next week in San Francisco, Google is heavily rumored to announce the release of a new strain of operating system codenamed “Andromeda.” The new OS is expected to combine elements of Chrome with Android. Unlike current efforts to bring support for Android apps into Chrome, however, the new Andromeda OS is expected to bring some of the desktop-like capabilities of Chrome into Android to form a super OS that could work across smartphones, tablets, and notebook-style form factors. Though details remain sketchy, the new OS is expected to offer true multi-modal windowing, as well as a file system and other typical accoutrements for a desktop-style operating system. In essence, this means that Google’s next OS—expected to be released late this year or sometime next year—will be able to compete directly with Windows and macOS. On many levels, the development of a single Google OS is an obvious one. In fact, I (and many others) thought it was something they needed to do a long time ago. Despite that, its impact is bound to be profound, and cause a fair amount of stress and, yes, strain, for users, device makers and developers alike. For consumers and other end users, Andromeda will first appear as yet another OS option, because Google isn’t likely to immediately drop standalone versions of Android or Chrome OS after the announcement or release of Andromeda. Over time, as the transition to Andromeda is complete, those potential concerns will fade away, and consumers, in theory at least, should get a consistent experience across devices of all shapes and sizes. This would be a clear benefit for users, because they should have access to a single set of applications, consistent access to all their data, and all the other obvious benefits of combining two choices into one. At the same time, however, the transition could end up taking several years, which is bound to cause confusion and concern for end users. Trying to choose which devices and operating systems to use, particularly as device lifetimes lengthen, could prove to be frustrating. Plus, if Google does move away from Chrome, as some have suggested, existing Chromebooks become relatively useless. For device makers, Andromeda could represent an exciting new opportunity to sell new form factors, such as clamshell, convertible, or detachable notebooks running the new OS. They may also be able to create true “pocket computers” that come in a smartphone form factor, but offer support for desktop monitors and other peripherals, similar to Microsoft’s Continuum feature for Windows 10 Mobile. The launch of a new OS from a major industry player is always fraught with potential concerns, but the merger of two existing options (including the most widely used OS in the world) into a single new one heightens those concerns exponentially. Initially, however, Andromeda is going to be more of a challenge for device makers because of their need to deal with product categories like Chromebooks, that could potentially go away. Plus, like Microsoft, Google seems to be moving aggressively towards doing its own branded hardware products, and that takes away potential market opportunities for some of its partners. At the same time, the launch of a new OS with new capabilities and new hardware requirements seems like the perfect time for Google to make a serious play into their own branded devices. For developers, Andromeda will undoubtedly prove to be a strain for a longer period of time because of their likely need to rewrite or at least rework their applications to take full advantage of the new features and capabilities that will inevitably come with a new OS. Plus, any confusion that consumers face about which version of the different Google OS’s to use will negatively impact future app sales and, potentially, development. The launch of a new OS from a major industry player is always fraught with potential concerns, but the merger of two existing options (including the most widely used OS in the world) into a single new one heightens those concerns exponentially. As with Mr. Crichton’s book, the initial drama and tension are bound to be high, but eventually, I think we’ll see a positive ending.

Most board partner variants of Nvidia's GeForce 10 series products don't vary significantly, often packing small factory overclocks and very similar cooler designs. EVGA's new graphics cards are a little different: they offer closed-loop liquid cooling, replacing a tri- or dual-fan air-cooled design. The EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 Hybrid cards use a similar closed-loop liquid cooler design, which dissipates most of the GPU's heat in an external 120mm radiator. The cards also use a 100mm fan on the board itself to cool the power delivery system, exhausting air out the rear of the card's metal shroud. The GTX 1080 Hybrid has been available for a little while now, and its clock speeds match those seen in EVGA's Classified and FTW models: a base clock of 1,721 MHz with a boost of 1,860 MHz. The GTX 1070 Hybrid is completely new, and its clock speeds – a base of 1,607 MHz and boost of 1,797 MHz – match the corresponding GTX 1070 FTW. Both cards use ten-phase power systems with dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors, so there should be a bit of overclocking headroom available to push these cards above their factory overclocks. We're also seeing a dual-slot design, despite the inclusion of the liquid cooler that sends most of the heat to the radiator. As you might expect, the inclusion of the closed-loop liquid cooler increases the price of EVGA's graphics cards significantly over their standard MSRP. The GTX 1070 Hybrid is available now for $499, while the GTX 1080 Hybrid will set you back $729, a premium of around $130.

Phone apps that provide drivers information on traffic conditions and available parking spaces are nothing new, but they’re not always accurate and can be cumbersome to use while in a vehicle. Now, the rise of smart cars could do away with these apps. Digital mapping company Here - acquired by BMW, Daimler, and Audi for $2.7 billion in 2015 – wants to improve this system by gathering real-time information from the on-board sensors and cameras found in connected vehicles. The data will then be shared among the cars to alert drivers of potential hazards, speed limit changes, and empty on-street parking spots. Some of the recorded data includes location, roadworks, accidents, hazard light usage, closed lanes, and weather/road conditions. In addition to the cameras and sensors, the vehicles can use other systems to identify a problem. Weather conditions, for example, can be determined from the use of windshield wipers, fog lights, or loss of tire traction. Here will also add information from other devices and infrastructure to paint a more accurate picture of traffic conditions. Using the service won’t require any action on the part of the driver - other than to enable it - and the system should be a lot safer than using a potentially distracting app. For those worried about any privacy implications, Here promises that the data will be anonymized, with no way of identifying individual motorists. The service will be rolling out sometime during the first half of next year. It will arrive on BMW, Daimler, and Audi vehicles first, of course, but it’s expected to reach other car manufacturers at a later date.

Yesterday, Lenovo announced a new round of layoffs that significantly affect the company's Motorola division. While the layoffs only affect "less than two percent" of Lenovo's 55,000 employees globally, more than half of the remaining Motorola employees could find themselves out of work. Lenovo's statement says that the "ongoing strategic integration between Lenovo and its Motorola smartphone business" is the reason for the headcount reduction. Specifically, the company is looking to streamline its product portfolio such that it can "best compete in the global smartphone market". Laying off up to two percent of Lenovo's 55,000 employees indicates that as many as 1,100 employees will be made redundant in the cuts. Droid-Life suggests that only 1,200 Motorola employees remain at Lenovo, so we could see more than 90 percent of the current Motorola team laid off. Lenovo will, however, keep the Motorola Mobility headquarters in Chicago, as opposed to integrating it with Lenovo's North Carolina offices. These layoffs come after Lenovo cut 3,200 employees from its global workforce in August last year, affecting ten percent of the company's non-manufacturing staff. Some Motorola staff were affected in last year's significant round of cuts, and even more will be affected this year. While Motorola has continued to produce compelling smartphones under Lenovo, the company has faced increased competition in the smartphone market, particularly at the low end where Motorola's most po[CENSORED]r smartphones sit. Clearly the division is struggling, as reflected by the layoffs, but let's hope the company can continue creating great smartphones in the future.

In 2014, we profiled a Kickstarter success story for an audio product known as The Vamp. Simply put, The Vamp was a self-contained, single-channel amplifier that let you transform any speaker into a wireless Bluetooth speaker system. Aside from serving as an alternative to self-contained speakers, The Vamp gave people a reason to hang on to old (vintage) speakers that might otherwise end up as electronic waste in a landfill. Having sold more than 10,000 units since launching two years ago, the team is returning to Kickstarter in hopes of funding a successor to the original device as well as a brand new product. The Vamp Stereo, as its name suggests, accommodates two speakers for stereo sound for more than 10 hours on a single charge (rechargeable via micro USB cable). It also comes with a magnetic metal disc that allows you to mount The Vamp on the side of a speaker. Its creator, Paul Cocksedge, says it has “twice the sound” of the original and uses the latest Bluetooth technology although unfortunately, the amp’s power rating isn’t mentioned (FYI, underpowering a speaker won’t damage it as myths have led many to believe). If you don’t have an old speaker or two to use with The Vamp Stereo then you may be interested in The Vamp Stereo + Speaker. The Vamp Stereo + Speaker is essentially a speaker box with a cutout for The Vamp Stereo. Offered in black, white and natural color schemes (think plywood), the box measures 340 (L) x 200 (W) x 130 (H) mm and weighs around 4.6 pounds. Interestingly enough, users can connect two additional speakers for even more audio although again, it’s unclear how much power the device is capable of. The Kickstarter campaign is seeking to raise just shy of $130,000 to bring the two products to market. Those interested in backing The Vamp Stereo and The Vamp Stereo + Speaker will need to part ways with around $52 or $92, respectively. There’s also a third option, a speaker “totem,” that’s only being offered during the Kickstarter campaign. Described as a “beautiful sculpture,” the totem aims to project sound to different corners of your room. It doesn’t come cheap, however, as the silver-tier with two speakers will set you back about $995 while the top-tier, bespoke totem with three hand-picked speakers can be yours for roughly $1,990. As of writing and with 16 days remaining, the campaign has raised more than $71,000 from close to 900 backers. If funded, backers can expect to receive their goods come March 2017 (two months earlier than initially advertised).

Roku earlier today unveiled a new fall line-up including the $30 Roku Express, the company’s most affordable streaming player to date. The updated hardware won’t arrive until October 9 which may give Google just enough time to squeeze in a brand new version of its po[CENSORED]r Chromecast dongle. As you may have heard, Google is planning to host a hardware-based media event on October 4. In addition to new Pixel smartphones, we’re now hearing that the search giant will unveil the Chromecast Ultra which serial leaker Evan Blass recently posted images of. Assuming the images are legitimate (Blass is usually spot-on), we can see that the 4K-capable Chromecast Ultra will utilize the same overall form-factor as the current model. The only major visual difference appears to be the removal of the Chromecast logo in favor of a smaller “G” insignia and the inclusion of a physical button which may be a reset button or on/off switch. The puck-shaped dongle will be priced at $69, nearly twice as much as today’s HD-only streamer. It’ll reportedly ship with firmware version 1.21 which recently became available to those participating in the Chromecast Preview Program. We’re also hearing that Google will keep its current streamer around for those that haven’t yet made the jump to 4K. Google’s October 4 event may also serve as the launching pad for Google Home, the company’s answer to Amazon’s Echo personal assistant, and a new Wi-Fi router.

Google may have more in store than some new Pixel phones at its upcoming hardware event Slater for October 4. According to a reports from Android Police and 9to5Google, the company might finally be ready to talk about its long rumored merger of Chrome OS and Android into one hybrid operating system, which is internally known as ‘Andromeda’. The operating system could be showcased at the event but an official consumer launch could still be some ways off. Android Police claims Andromeda is a completely distinct effort from Google's current campaign to bring Android apps to Chromebooks — the initiative is being pursued via merging Chrome features into Android, not the other way around. There are little details about what that will mean for the future of Android and Chrome OS and if all three operating systems will be maintained separately for different product categories. Google is said to be testing its forthcoming Andromeda Android/Chrome OS hybrid OS on an upcoming Huawei tablet. However, the goal appears to be launching the new OS alongside a ‘Pixel 3’ laptop in Q3 2017 to rival similar devices from Apple and Microsoft. The laptop, codenamed Bison, is currently planned as an ultra-thin device with a 12.3" display, powered by an Intel m3 or i5 Core processor with 32 or 128GB of storage and 8 or 16GB of RAM. Google has already found some success with Chrome OS devices and has been working towards enabling a more traditional windowed-app approach where it makes sense. Aside from bringing Android apps onto select Chromeblooks, Google also added freeform window mode to Android 7.0 Nougat, a feature we’ve yet to see on any production device that basically enables Android tablets to handle apps in individual windows. With just over a week to go until Google’s event things are starting to get interesting.

Intel last year acquired FPGA-maker Altera for $16.7 billion in cash, the chipmaker's largest purchase in history. As it turns out, Microsoft played a key role in Intel’s decision to make the purchase. A recent feature from Wired explains how, in late 2012, engineers within Microsoft attempted to sell then-CEO Steve Ballmer on an idea called Project Catapult. Doug Burger explained that in the near future, the world’s top Internet giants would be running web-based services so complex that they’d require a whole new architecture to run them. Project Catapult, which would use field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), was Microsoft’s answer to that as-yet-realized conundrum. FPGAs, which have been around for decades, are programmable chips that engineers only recently realized could be useful in accelerating online services as they can be programmed to perform a very specific job and be very efficient about it. Ballmer reportedly wasn’t buying it but little did he know, Burger and the team that runs Bing had already started work on it. They’d have to go through three prototypes to finally find a solution that also worked for Microsoft’s other massive online services – Office 365 and Azure. Programming at the hardware level is a “nightmare,” according to former Microsoft Principal Researcher Jim Larus but in the end, it proves to be worth the hassle as Catapult hardware costs less than 30 percent of everything else in a server, consumes less than 10 percent of the power and processes data twice as fast as would be possible without it. Microsoft’s FPGAs come from Altera, the company Intel purchased last year. In fact, Microsoft is the reason Intel bought Altera but not the only reason. According to Intel executive vice president Diane Bryant, a third of all servers used by major cloud providers will utilize FPGAs by 2020.

Plex is the go-to option for streaming from your own media library to pretty much any device that has a screen or can hook up to one. The service has traditionally required a dedicated, always-on PC to run its server component while a player app on a separate device handles the front end, but now Plex is making itself more accessible to mainstream users via a new online option, called Plex Cloud, delivered in partnership with Amazon Cloud Drive. Plex Cloud functions just like a regular Plex Media Server except both the server component and media content lives in the cloud. The simplified setup will eliminate some of the hassles that come with using Plex for less-technical users, like maintaining a server at home, keeping the software updated and managing hard disk drives. If your ISP’s upstream speeds are awful you’ll also from better stream quality using Amazon’s servers. It does, however, require a $59.99 per year subscription to Amazon Drive for unlimited storage, on top of a Plex Pass at an additional $4.99 per month or $39.99 per year. You’ll also need to manually upload the content that you want to keep in the cloud — which you might want to think twice about if your media library comprises pirated media. For now the new Plex Cloud service is available as an invite-only beta for Plex Pass subscribers. It will eventually include all the features offered by Plex but some not available at launch include camera upload, mobile sync, cloud sync, media optimizer, DLNA and DVR. Plex says it will be evaluating support for other cloud storage providers over time.

Roku has officially announced its revamped lineup of streaming devices following several leaks in recent weeks. As expected, there are as many as five streaming devices, with the company aiming for every bracket on the market while driving prices down for 4K support. Starting at the low end the new Roku Express box replaces the Roku 1 with a much smaller form factor and double the processing power of the original box. More importantly, it costs just $30 — that’s $20 less than the previous Roku 1 and the latest Streaming Stick. It’s also $5 cheaper than Google's po[CENSORED]r Chromecast, making the Express the least expensive mainstream streaming device around and likely to make a big splash in the budget category. The Express maxes out at 1080p and uses last-gen 802.11n Wi-Fi. Unlike Chromecast, it ships with a real remote control, although it’s a standard IR version which you have to aim at the device. It also has no other ports aside from a single HDMI connector, so if you want the composite cable inputs of the Roku 1, you'll have to shell out for the $40 Roku Express Plus. Moving up to the next tier, the Roku Premiere replaces the Roku 2, with a more powerful quad-core processor, 4K video support at up to 60 frames per second, and 802.11ac Wi-Fi for $80. Likewise there is a ‘Plus’ model for $20 extra, which adds HDR, an ethernet port, a microSD card slot for more storage and an RF remote with a headphone jack. Lastly, the range topping Roku Ultra goes for $130, replacing last year’s Roku 4 with the same 4K and HDR capabilities as the Premiere Plus but with a few more bells and whistles. Among them is an optical audio port, a more advanced remote, and it’s the only model to include a USB port, allowing local media to be streamed from an external drive. All of the company's new players are available for preorder today and will ship on October 9th.

In light of the continuing Galaxy Note 7 debacle, Samsung will probably be relieved to find that some of the spotlight is starting to point at its next smartphone, the Galaxy S8. A new leak reported by Sammobile suggests the handset will pack some seriously powerful hardware, allowing it to produce high-quality VR and 4K experiences. The report claims that the S8 may come with an Exynos 8895 SoC featuring ARM’s new high-end Mali-G71 mobile GPU. Built using the company’s new Bifrost architecture, the 16nm graphics chip is clocked at 850 MHz and offers up to 20% better energy efficiency, 40% better performance density and 20% external memory bandwidth saving compared to the Mali-T880 GPU found in the Galaxy S7. The Mali-G71 is also compatible with Vulkan, OpenGL ES 3.2, GPU Compute, and Android RenderScript APIs. Speaking about its cutting-edge chips back in May, ARM executive vice president and president of product groups, Pete Hutton, said: "This technology can make engaging with 4K video, virtual reality, and augmented reality an everyday experience on a mobile device." Other rumors reported by Tech Updates claim the S8 will ship with a 5.2-inch display with a resolution of 2160 x 4096 – an increase over the 1440 x 2560 found in the S7. It’s also said to feature a 30MP rear camera with optical image stabilization, a 9MP front-facing snapper, a 4200 mAh battery, retina and fingerprint scanners, 64GB or 128GB storage, a microSD slot, and a mini projector. While some of these rumors are quite probable, such as the scanners and microSD slot, others, like the 30MP camera, should be taken with a big pinch of salt. Like its predecessor, we'll probably see the S8 announced at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress trade show in February, with the handset launching a couple of months later. As for the price, it’s been suggested that Samsung is eying the $850 mark. Let’s hope there are no problems with that rumored massive battery.

I don't was in the meeting, but someone tell me about this HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Security researcher Brian Krebs has been responsible for exposing some of the biggest hacks in recent history, the price of which is that his blog, Krebs on Security, has faced numerous DDoS attacks from angry hackers over the years. But the latest assault was so large that the site was offline for a week, and it took a helping hand from Google to get it back up. The distributed denial-of-service attacks started two weeks after Krebs revealed that Israeli teenagers Yarden Bidani and Itay Huri were the alleged owners of vDOS, a “booter” service that people can use to carry out DDoS attacks against websites. vDOS was said to be responsible for "a majority" of the DDoS attacks that had been clogging up the internet over the past few years, earning the pair $618,000 in the process. Following the report, Krebs on Security was targeted by one of the largest DDos attacks on record. The site was hit with 620 gigabits per second of junk data – almost twice the size of anything it previously had to fend off. While the attack didn’t bring down the site, Krebs’ hosting provider, Akamai Technologies, was forced to order Krebs on Security off the network. Along with DDoS protection firm Prolexic, it had been offering Krebs pro bono protection from attacks for years, but the size of this DDoS meant it couldn’t keep on doing so without the financial impact affecting other customers. "I can't really fault Akamai for their decision," Krebs said. "I likely cost them a ton of money today." The good news is that Krebs on Security is now back online, thanks to Google’s free Project Shield program. The company provides the DDoS attack mitigation service to verified journalists and non-profit organizations. "A number of other providers offered to help, but it was clear that they did not have the muscle to be able to withstand such massive attacks," Krebs added.

Snapchat has made two big announcements that involve a name change and the launch of a new product. The company has rebranded and will be now be called Snap Inc., and it is launching a Google Glass-style wearable product that comes with a built-in video camera. The new name only applies to the company itself; Snapchat the app won’t be affected. “Changing our name also has another benefit: when you search for our products it will be easier to find relevant product information rather than boring company information or financial analysis. You can search Snapchat or Spectacles for the fun stuff and leave Snap Inc. for the Wall Street crowd :)” wrote CEO Evan Spiegel in a blog post. Rumors that the firm has been working on some form of headset have been circulating for a while. Now, Snap Inc. has confirmed that Snapchat Spectacles – due to be released this fall – are a real product. The $130 glasses have what Snap Inc. calls “one of the smallest wireless cameras in the world” integrated into them. Pressing a button near the hinge records 10 seconds of video, during which time a ring of LEDs will light up. The device connects directly to Snapchat via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, and recorded footage is transferred directly into the app. The Spectacles have an 115-degree field of view and captures footage with a fisheye-style look. They’ll be available in a limited quantity when first launched to see how well they're received. If successful, Snap Inc will doubtlessly produce more of the glasses, which come in black, teal, or coral color options. We still don’t know what resolution video they record or what onboard memory the wearables will have. Check out the video below to see Snapchat Spectacles in action.

Facial recognition technology is a pretty amazing thing. It can be used in a variety of applications, from identifying Uber drivers, to tagging friends on Facebook, to paying for goods on Amazon (eventually). Now, its use has inevitably spread to that most common of internet pastimes: porn. Belgian site Megacams.me, which calls itself a “live sex search engine,” has introduced what’s claimed to be the first ever “sex doppelgänger” feature. It involves desperate customers sending in a photo of a fantasy partner – co-worker, movie star, unsuspecting neighbor – and the software finding a camgirl from the 180,000 available who looks like the person in the picture. “This way,” says Megacams, “it feels like you are having live sex with the person in your picture.” The system requires a front on photograph of the subject - not easy when you're taking it from a bush 20 feet away. TechCrunch tested the system and the best match it found was rated at just 47 percent likeness. So you may have to squint a bit to feel like you’re interacting with the secret object of your affections/stalking target. Considering how it’s being used, Megacams isn’t willing to reveal which facial recognition software is powering the process, though TechCrunch believes it to be Microsoft’s Cognitive Services. Formerly called Project Oxford, the technology appears in the Redmond firm’s po[CENSORED]r “Guess your age” and “Guess your emotion” tools. Microsoft’s API gives developers 30,000 free searches a month, after that it’s $1.50 for every 1000 lookups. Megacams denied that the feature was creepy. "People are watching their girl next door all the time," spokesperson Eddy L told The Verge. "If they don't use this tool they click and click forever until they find the doppelgänger in porn. We just give them the tools right now to make that search easier." The site says that uploaded photos are deleted as soon as the search has been performed. Facial recognition technology may offer amazing ways to enhance out lives but, like the Russian privacy nightmare FindFace, most people would agree that this isn’t one of them.

For some time now the most po[CENSORED]r screen resolution among gamers has been 1080p, though the community is slowly but surely migrating to 1440p thanks to the increased availability of quality 1440p displays and affordable GPUs such as the Radeon RX 480 and GeForce GTX 1060 which are quite capable at this resolution. But what about 4K gaming? Ultra HD displays have been around for a few years now and today it's possible to pick up a 28" 4K monitor for under $400. The reason so few gamers are going this route is because of the GPU power required to drive such a display. Only recently with the arrival of the GTX 1080 has a single GPU been powerful enough to game at 4K and even then at times some tweaking is necessary for optimal gameplay. As impressive as the GTX 1080 is, Nvidia's latest Titan X boasts 40% more CUDA cores, making it all the more of an ally to 4K gamers. The issue here, other than the card's confusing name, is the fact that it costs twice that of the GTX 1080. The MSRP is a staggering $1,200, for which you receive a 16nm Pascal GPU consisting of 12 billion transistors in a 471mm2 die. This allows for a total of 3584 CUDA cores, all of which operate at a base clock speed of 1.4GHz, though GPU Boost 3.0 will often run much higher than that. Like the GTX 1080, the Titan X still uses GDDR5X memory but its bandwidth has been increased by 50% to 480GB/s courtesy of the 384-bit wide memory bus. The Titan X should have no trouble providing highly playable performance at 4K in all of the latest triple-A titles. This got us thinking: how many 4K displays could a pair of Titan X SLI graphics cards drive? In the past we've tested the most powerful dual GPU options available to see how they handled three extreme resolution displays. Back in 2011 for instance, we compared the GTX 590 and HD 6990 at 7680x1600 (triple 1600p). In other occasion we did all SLI and CrossFire pairings however that was when frame pacing became a big issue. Today's testing will demonstrate the capabilities of dual-flagship setups including the Titan X and R9 Fury X at resolutions as high as 11520x2160 or three 4K displays. That's a shipload of pixels, but perhaps it won't be too heavy for $2,400 worth of graphics gear to haul. Without further ado, let the benchmarks... begin! Test System Specs Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.50 GHz (Skylake) Asrock Z170 Z170 Extreme7+ 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4-3000 Samsung SSD 850 Pro 2TB Silverstone Strider Series ST1000-G Evolution AMD Crimson Edition 16.9.2 Hotfix GeForce Game Ready Driver 372.90 - WHQL Windows 10 Pro 64-bit Benchmarks: Tom Clancy's The Division, Star Wars Battlefront Using a single 1440p display, two Titan X graphics cards average 143fps with the minimum frame rate staying just above 120fps. This means the Titan X cards aren't even offering 40% scaling at 1440p, which is quite disappointing. That said, The Division has never offered great multi-GPU support. The weak SLI scaling also allowed a single Titan X to roughly match a pair of 1080s. Scaling improves slightly at 4K as adding a second Titan X improved performance by 45%. Again this is weak but we have come to expect that in The Division. Running three 1440p displays still sees the dual Titan X cards deliver an average of 60fps with a minimum of 50fps. This is pretty impressive triple-1440p performance though it has to be said that SLI scaling over a single card was the weakest we have seen yet in this title. Unfortunately, no matter how much you spend on GPUs it looks like triple-4K gaming in The Division is just fantasy for now. SLI scaling improved performance by 40% but that meant going from an average of 20fps to just 28fps, so not exactly playable performance. SLI scaling improves in Star Wars Battlefront. Here the Titan X duo provides an impressive 200fps on average or 56% faster than a single card. Clearly there was even more performance to be had as the minimum frame rate only dropped to 199fps. That being the case, I expect SLI scaling to improve at 4K. Finally, we see some truly impressive results. This time the Titan X SLI configuration provided 100% more performance than a single card. This allowed an average of 135fps at 4K which it has to be said it quite incredible. Even with triple 1440p monitors the Titan X duo is able to push 100fps making them almost 80% faster than a single Titan X. Driving three 4K displays while maintaining an average of 50fps is pretty special. The Titan X combo never dipped below 44fps and as such had no trouble delivering playable performance. SLI scaled by 92% here taking the frame rate from 26fps to 50fps. Taking 4K Performance to the Next Level The new Titan X may be ludicrously expensive but it's also ludicrously fast. Nvidia blew our socks off with the GTX 1080 only four months ago and now the company did what was seemingly impossible by making that same GPU look slow to some extent. Folks playing at 4K will love what the Titan X has to offer and 60fps 4K gaming is now a reality. Although SLI didn't always impress us with strong scaling, it did take things to the next level. In Mirror's Edge Catalyst for example, a single Titan X fell just short of 60fps and adding a second card saw the minimum frame rate stay well above 60fps, while stunning titles such as Rise of the Tomb Raider and Star Wars Battlefront pushed well past the 100fps barrier. Unfortunately, no matter how much money you have, triple-4K gaming isn't yet possible, at least not without compromise. We honestly didn't expect to find playable frame rates at 11520x2160 as this was more experiment than anything else, but it was still interesting to see how a pair of Titan X cards handle this extreme resolution. The more po[CENSORED]r triple-1440p resolution provided more desirable results and it was here that we found smooth playable performance in all titles tested. The GTX 1080 SLI cards were also impressive, delivering around 60fps in games such as Star Wars Battlefront, Far Cry Primal, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto V. Given how powerful the Pascal Titan X is, this got us wondering: if Nvidia can repeat what it did this generation the next time around by offering Titan-like performance for $400, this will be incredibly good news for gamers. For now, most can only dream of owning one Titan X, let alone two of them, but it's nice to see where we are and where mainstream gaming should be in the relatively near future. A feature we're keen to test but currently can't is Nvidia's Simultaneous Multi-Projection engine. This upcoming feature is hardware dependent and specific to the Pascal architecture for now; in a nutshell what Simultaneous Multi-Projection does is reproject geometry based on more than one viewport, fixing the fisheye effect with multi-monitor setups (or VR) by giving a more natural projection of graphics and adding efficiency gains. This will require game developers to implement support and no released titles have done so yet, at least not to our knowledge. We've heard that the Unreal Engine and Unity are set to implement this, so hopefully we can check it out in the near future. Overall, impressive stuff here. It's a shame SLI doesn't scale perfectly on all titles, but limited multi-GPU support has been something all SLI and Crossfire owners have had to deal with since the arrival of these technologies. DirectX 12 should help improve support, but we continue to wait for games built for DX12 instead of it being an afterthought. Review By: TechSpot