UnknowingFool writes "For consumers who had hoped that Microsoft would greatly upgrade their recent entries into the tablet market, leaks and rumors have said that both machines will receive modest hardware changes. Surface Pro 2 will sport new Haswell processors which will increase battery life to 7 hours. RAM is expected to increase from 4GB to 8GB. Surface (formerly RT) will get Tegra 4 processors. The only other confirmed change will be new kickstands that have 2 positions instead of one."

jones_supa writes with news that HDMI 2.0 is out. From Engadget "The folks at HDMI Licensing are announcing HDMI 2.0 officially. Arriving just in time for the wide rollout of a new generation of Ultra HDTVs, it adds a few key capabilities to the standard. With a bandwidth capacity of up to 18Gbps, HDMI 2.0 has the ability to carry 3,840 x 2,160 resolution video at 60fps. It also has support for up to 32 audio channels, 'dynamic auto lipsync' and additional CEC extensions. The physical cables and connectors remain unchanged." Just like HDMI 1.4, the specification is only available to HDMI Forum members.

MojoKid writes "Low-power parts for hand-held devices may be all the rage right now, but today Intel is taking the wraps off a new high-end desktop processor with the official unveiling of its Ivy Bridge-E microarchitecture. The Core i7-4960X Extreme Edition processor is the flagship product in Intel's initial line-up of Ivy Bridge-E based CPUs. The chip is manufactured using Intel's 22nm process node and features roughly 1.86 billion transistors, with a die size of approximately 257mm square. That's about 410 million fewer transistors and a 41 percent smaller die than Intel's previous gen Sandy Bridge-E CPU. The Ivy Bridge-E microarchitecture features up to 6 active execution cores that can each process two threads simultaneously, for support of a total of 12 threads, and they're designed for Intel's LGA 2011 socket. Intel's Core i7-4960X Extreme Edition processor has a base clock frequency of 3.6GHz with a maximum Turbo frequency of 4GHz. It is easily the fastest desktop processor Intel has released to date when tasked with highly-threaded workloads or when its massive amount of cache comes into play in applications like 3D rendering, ray tracing, and gaming. However, assuming similar clock speeds, Intel's newer Haswell microarchitecture employed in the recently released Core i7-4770K (and other 4th Gen Core processors) offers somewhat better single-core performance."

hypnosec writes "Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 3.11 as anticipated. Torvalds notes that the final version doesn't bring in a lot more than what is already present in the rc7, but it does include fixes — most of them in networking, file systems, and audio."

An anonymous reader sends this news from the Washington Post: "U.S. intelligence services carried out 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011, the leading edge of a clandestine campaign that embraces the Internet as a theater of spying, sabotage and war, according to top-secret documents [from Edward Snowden]. Additionally, under an extensive effort code-named GENIE, U.S. computer specialists break into foreign networks so that they can be put under surreptitious U.S. control. Budget documents say the $652 million project has placed 'covert implants,' sophisticated malware transmitted from far away, in computers, routers and firewalls on tens of thousands of machines every year, with plans to expand those numbers into the millions. ... The implants that [an NSA group called Tailored Access Operations (TAO)] creates are intended to persist through software and equipment upgrades, to copy stored data, 'harvest' communications and tunnel into other connected networks. This year TAO is working on implants that “can identify select voice conversations of interest within a target network and exfiltrate select cuts,” or excerpts, according to one budget document. In some cases, a single compromised device opens the door to hundreds or thousands of others."

rjmarvin writes "Apple's era of naming OSs after big cats is over. The Mavericks wave is rolling in, and the first four developer previews have given an inside look at the cutting-edge OS. Users and developers have almost entirely positive things to say about Mavericks, from faster speed and improved stability to new features like iBooks and iCloud keychains. While some installation concerns and errors have arisen, developer preview have improved version by version, and Mavericks is looking good."

An anonymous reader writes "It was on this day 22 years ago when Linus Torvalds humbly announced Linux and today he played on that in announcing the Linux 3.11-rc7 kernel release. The final Linux 3.11 kernel release is expected in about one week."

Calibre is a feature-laden, open source e-book manager; many readers mentioned in light of the recently posted news about Barnes & Noble's Nook that they use Calibre to deal with their reading material. Reader Trashcan Romeo writes with some news on its new 1.0 release, summing it up thus: "The new version of the premier e-book management application boasts a completely re-written database backend and PDF output engine as well a new book-cover grid view."

MojoKid writes "Historically, all-in-one desktop systems like the iMac, HP's TouchSmart and similar designs that incorporate a full system on the backside of a monitor, haven't offered performance that was competitive to their full-sized desktop counterparts. Part of the reason is that many of these systems are comprised of low power notebook platform PC components inside thin chassis designs with minimal airflow. However, as mobile platforms have become more powerful, so has the all-in-one PC. Dell's recently launched XPS 27 Touch, with Intel's Haswell mobile processor and an NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M on board, is an example of a new breed of AIO hitting the market now. The system is based on a 27-inch panel with 2TB of storage, a 32GB SSD cache drive, 8GB of RAM and performance in the benchmarks that keeps pace with average midrange full-sized desktops. You can even game on the machine with frame rates at the panel's 1080p native resolution with medium to high image quality. It's almost like the all-in-one finally grew up."

onehitwonder writes "The race to build out advanced cellphone networks in the U.S. has contributed to a spike in deaths among tower workers, making this one of the industry's deadliest years and drawing fresh scrutiny from federal regulators, according to The Wall Street Journal. At least 10 workers have died in falls from communication towers so far this year, and three more were seriously injured. The accidents, nine of which were related to cellphone network work, come during one of the biggest building booms in years, as Sprint Corp. and T-Mobile US Inc. ramp up major network upgrades in an attempt to catch up with Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc."

darthcamaro writes "Yesterday the stable Linux 3.10 kernel was updated twice — an error was made, forcing a quick re-issue. 'What happened was that a patch that was reported to be broken during the RC [release candidate] review process, went into the release, because I mistakenly didn't pull it out in time,' Greg Kroah-Hartman said. The whole incident however is now sparking debate on the Linux Kernel Mailing List about the speed of stable Linux kernel releases. Are they moving too fast?"

Nerval's Lobster writes "The Navajo Nation cut the ribbon August 13 on an $8 million data center that has been under debate and development since 2000, when then-President Bill Clinton expressed shock that a 13-year-old Navajo girl who just won a new laptop couldn't connect to the Internet. At the time that girl won the laptop in a school contest, the Navajo Nation--a 27,425 square-mile region that covers portions of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico--had barely any IT infrastructure. The incident helped drive debate among leaders of the Navajo Nation, many of whom said they believed adding telecommunications and computing facilities were secondary to other concerns for the chronically poverty stricken region. The 50,000-square-foot facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico includes 25,000-sq.-ft. of datacenter and an equal space for computer training and business incubation, according to Nova Corp., an IT services company owned by Navajo Nation and formed in 2004 to execute an IT plan to create the "Digital Navajo Nation" (PDF). The drive to get it built also helped push development of a $46 million broadband project designed to cover about half of Navajo territory with 550 miles of fiber, 32 new cell towers and upgrades to another 27. It will eventually connect more than 30,000 households and 1,000 businesses."

jrepin writes "The KDE community has released version 4.11 of Software Compilation, which is dedicated to the memory of Atul 'toolz' Chitnis, a great Free and Open Source Software champion from India. This version of Plasma Workspaces will be supported for at least two years, and delivers further improvements to basic functionality with a smoother taskbar, smarter battery widget and improved sound mixer. The introduction of KScreen brings intelligent multi-monitor handling. KWin window manager incorporates first experimental support for Wayland. This release marks massive improvements in the Kontact PIM suite, giving much better performance and many new features, like scam detection and scheduling e-mail sending. Kate text editor improves the productivity of Python and Javascript developers with new plugins, Dolphin file manager became faster, and the educational applications bring various new features. The Nepomuk semantic storage and search engine received substantial performance improvements." The performance enhancements to nepomuk (KDE's semantic desktop engine) are particularly welcome. This release of the Plasma desktop also marks the end of Plasma version one; primary development focus will now switch to updating KDE for Qt 5. There should still be more updates to KDE 4, however. Also released recently by the KDE team was the first RC of Plasma Media Center 1.1.

CowboyRobot writes "It's looking like Microsoft is planning to replace its underachieving Surface tablet with two new products, but it may need three to finally have success with the Surface. Three tablets would provide an entry point and an upgrade path. Multiple Surface RT models would help Windows RT survive OEM skepticism. Microsoft needs device fanfare to accompany Windows 8.1, and to coincide with enterprise hardware upgrades. If the company releases one of the models before the end of the year, the device would arrive in time not only for the holiday season, but also to cash in on user interest in Windows 8.1, which will be released later this fall. Surface devices released next year, meanwhile, could capitalize on enterprise hardware upgrades, which are expected to pick up as Windows XP's April 8, 2014 end-of-service date nears."

renai42 writes "If you don't follow Australian technology news, you're probably not aware that over the past few years, the State of Queensland massively bungled a payroll systems upgrade in its Department of Health. The issues resulted in thousands of hospital staff being underpaid or not paid at all, and has ballooned in cost from under $10 million in budget to a projected total cost of $1.2 billion. Queensland has now banned the project's prime contractor, IBM, comprehensively from signing any new contracts with any government department, until it addresses what the state says are IBM's project governance issues."

MojoKid writes "Google's second gen Nexus 7 tablet is a worthy successor to the original, boasting an improved design both internally and externally. It's thinner and lighter, has a faster Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro SoC, 2GB of RAM, a higher resolution 1920X1200 display and it's running the latest Android 4.3 Jelly Bean release. The display alone was a nice upgrade in a 7-inch slate that retails for well under $300. However, it turns out the new Nexus 7 is also one of the fastest tablets out there right now, with benchmark numbers that best some of the top tablets on the market, especially in graphics and gaming. From a price/performance standpoint, Google's second generation Nexus 7 seems to be the tablet to beat right now."

Okian Warrior writes "Adding to the 3-D printed gun/rifle controversy, Delta-V Engineering built a Full-auto Gauss gun (aka 'machine gun'), capable of firing 15 steel bolts from its magazine in less than two seconds. At 3% the muzzle energy of a .22, it's still in the prototype stage. Bullets are made from turned-down nails, and the gun uses no chemical propellants. The builder has posted the design notes online. Video of the gun in action is pretty interesting."

nk497 writes "Flash memory could soon be a thing of the past, according to U.S. startup Crossbar, which claims it's close to bringing resistive RAM (RRAM) to the market. Crossbar is touting impressive specs for the RRAM technology, promising 20 times the write performance at a fraction of the power consumption and size of the current best-in-class NAND flash modules — and squeezing terabytes of storage capacity onto a single chip the size of a postage stamp. The company also claims its technology can retain data for up to 20 years, compared with the standard one to three years with NAND flash."

Nerval's Lobster writes "Just in time for hurricane season, the National Weather Service has finished upgrading the supercomputers it uses to track and model super-storms. 'These improvements are just the beginning and build on our previous success. They lay the foundation for further computing enhancements and more accurate forecast models that are within reach,' National Weather Service director Louis W. Uccellini wrote in a statement. The National Weather Service's 'Tide' supercomputer — along with its 'Gyre' backup — are capable of operating at a combined 213 teraflops. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which runs the Service, has asked for funding that would increase that supercomputing power even more, to 1,950 teraflops. The National Weather Service uses that hardware for projects such as the Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting (HWRF) model, a complex bit of forecasting that allows the organization to more accurately predict storms' intensity and movement. The HWRF can leverage real-time data taken from Doppler radar installed in the NOAA's P3 hurricane hunter aircraft."

mitcheli writes "Sprint announced a Q2 loss of $1.6B as 2 million subscribers left their service. While Sprint remains one of very few carriers to continue to allow unlimited data on their networks, the failure to reconcile two competing network technologies (iDEN Nextel and CDMA Sprint) combined with the lack of upgrades to their network and degrading service prompted a mass exodus of subscribers from their network. Of course the fact that during the iPhone 5 release, Sprint openly advertised that their iPhone would not be carrier locked, only to turn around and push out an OTA two months later that locked them probably didn't help much either."