1. Titanic Takeover Tuesday: LulzSec's busy day of hacking escapades
First up—and still only intermittently available at the time of writing—was gaming magazine The Escapist, with no apparent reason for the attack. LulzSec boasted that taking down the site required just 0.4 percent of its DDoS capacity.
Next in line were the login servers for the game EVE Online. The effect of this attack was to bring down the EVE Online website at the same time, though LulzSec insists that this was not the actual target. In response to the DDoS, CCP Games, makers of EVE, have taken all their systems offline, for fear that they might be hacked. The company has also issued a statement to assure customers that their personal information remains secure.
The third target—and the only one for which the group has offered a rationale beyond "lulz"—is an IT security company named Finfisher. Their site was taken down, briefly, because "apparently they sell monitoring software to the government or some shit like that."
Gamers were once more in the crosshairs with the fourth target; more login servers, this time for Minecraft. Just as with EVE Online, going after the login servers also took out the game's website.
The pattern was repeated for the fifth target; login servers for the game League of Legends were knocked offline, a move which also brought down the game's website.
The result of all this? Lot of enraged gamers complaining about the downtime, and hence, many lulz for Lulz Security. Going after gaming targets hasn't made the group universally popular; posters on 4chan's /b/ forum, who might normally be sympathetic to lulz-motivated shenanigans, attempted to hunt LulzSec down. LulzSecdismissed the "/b/tards" as "damn furries," saying that they were the cream of the /b/ crop from 2005, distancing themselves from the /b/tards of today.
2. AMD's second Fusion CPU gives glimpse at future of CPU/GPU
At long last, AMD has launched the second of its so-called Fusion "APUs," where APU stands for "accelerated processing unit" and refers to a single chip that hosts both a Central Processing Unit (CPU) and a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). Anandtech is first out of the gate with benchmarks for AMD's Llano testbed notebook, and the results show that the new chip is a win for AMD in a two departments.
For the first time in its life, Windows will receive a true touch interface. Since Windows XP, Microsoft has tried to graft touch capabilities onto its operating system, but has consistently failed to bridge the gap between precise mouse and keyboard interfaces, and sloppy, imprecise, finger-based interfaces. Windows 8 changes that. Microsoft describes the new interface as "touch first"; it'll work with a mouse and a keyboard, but it was designed for fingers.
The best way to get an understanding of the new interface is to watch Microsoft's video about it. There are also extensive photographs at Engadget and This Is My Next.
The interface has more than a passing resemblance to the Metro look and feel of Windows Phone 7. The Start screen, in particular, with its grid arrangement of live tiles, is very much a scaled up version of the phone interface. Task switching is performed by swiping in from the side; tasks can also be snapped to the side of the screen for a multitasking view.
The demo also confirmed what has been until now something of an open secret: the next Windows will include an application store of some kind. Microsoft didn't talk about this at all, but the live tile confirmed its existence.
It will still be some months before anyone outside Microsoft (and select partners) has any hands-on time with the new interface. Nonetheless, it looks like it will be a serious and credible competitor in the tablet market, and Microsot's tight control of manufacturers should ensure that hardware is done right too. For new applications built to use the new interface, the whole experience should be slick and integrated.
However, this is not just a user interface for tablets: this is going to be the user interface for Windows. Windows 8 will still run Windows application—all of them, with pretty much the same system requirements as Windows 7. One of the application tiles is a full-blown Windows 7 desktop, and this is where legacy applications will run. The new-style interface and new-style applications will be clean and modern, but none of this extended to the traditional applications, which are stuck in their own little ghetto.
While this is understandable for truly legacy applications, it doesn't appear to offer much of a transition path for software that's still under active development. There are plenty of applications that are too complex and fiddly to ever be at home with a touch-first interface—consider a software development environment, or a fully-featured office suite. Leaving these stuck in a Windows 7 ghetto doesn't seem like a good long-term option.
Related to this issue is the question of how new-style applications will be written. Microsoft said that they will be HTML5 plus JavaScript, but again this precludes the possibility of migrating existing applications to the new interface. I'm told by insiders that HTML5 and JavaScript won't be the only option, and that existing applications (native, Silverlight, and WPF) will be migratable in some way, but specifics are still lacking at this time.
Windows Phone application compatibility would also be desirable—Windows Phone applications are already touch first, and already Metro-themed, and the compatibility between iPhone and iPad applications helped Apple rapidly fill its App Store with plenty of iPad applications—but a pure HTML5 with JavaScript development environment would rule this out, too. Conversely, will we see an option for HTML5 application development on the phone? On today's showing, it would make sense.
These questions should receive an answer in September. Simultaneously with the Windows 8 demo, Microsoft announced its next major developer event, BUILD, to be held in Anaheim in September. This event will take the place of the company's traditional PDC (Professional Developers' Conference) event. Reflecting the explosion in software development that tablets and smartphones have heralded, it will be aimed at a much broader developer community—encompassing open source developers and hobbyists in addition to the professionals—and reflecting the closer ties between hardware and software, it will also touch on hardware tasks, somewhat subsuming Microsoft's WinHEC conferences for hardware developers.
There's still no word on a release date, with the second half of 2012 still being the most likely estimate. As a result, Microsoft will still have plenty of work to do if it wants to become a serious player in the tablet space. The company will be late, there's no doubt about that. But as late as it will be, the promise of true Windows compatibility for those times you need it, and a fast and attractive interface for times that you don't, could yet make Microsoft a real contender in the market.
Lulz Security, the hacking group apparently motivated by nothing more than their desire to laugh at the mayhem they cause, has had a busy day in an event they called Titanic Takeover Tuesday. Taking a break from their dumps of user data and server break-ins, today saw the group perform a bunch of distributed denial of service attacks against a range of targets.
First up—and still only intermittently available at the time of writing—was gaming magazine The Escapist, with no apparent reason for the attack. LulzSec boasted that taking down the site required just 0.4 percent of its DDoS capacity.
Next in line were the login servers for the game EVE Online. The effect of this attack was to bring down the EVE Online website at the same time, though LulzSec insists that this was not the actual target. In response to the DDoS, CCP Games, makers of EVE, have taken all their systems offline, for fear that they might be hacked. The company has also issued a statement to assure customers that their personal information remains secure.
The third target—and the only one for which the group has offered a rationale beyond "lulz"—is an IT security company named Finfisher. Their site was taken down, briefly, because "apparently they sell monitoring software to the government or some shit like that."
Gamers were once more in the crosshairs with the fourth target; more login servers, this time for Minecraft. Just as with EVE Online, going after the login servers also took out the game's website.
The pattern was repeated for the fifth target; login servers for the game League of Legends were knocked offline, a move which also brought down the game's website.
The result of all this? Lot of enraged gamers complaining about the downtime, and hence, many lulz for Lulz Security. Going after gaming targets hasn't made the group universally popular; posters on 4chan's /b/ forum, who might normally be sympathetic to lulz-motivated shenanigans, attempted to hunt LulzSec down. LulzSecdismissed the "/b/tards" as "damn furries," saying that they were the cream of the /b/ crop from 2005, distancing themselves from the /b/tards of today.
2. AMD's second Fusion CPU gives glimpse at future of CPU/GPU
At long last, AMD has launched the second of its so-called Fusion "APUs," where APU stands for "accelerated processing unit" and refers to a single chip that hosts both a Central Processing Unit (CPU) and a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). Anandtech is first out of the gate with benchmarks for AMD's Llano testbed notebook, and the results show that the new chip is a win for AMD in a two departments.
3. Report: iPhone 5 in final testing, may lack 3G FaceTime on Verizon
The next-generation iPhone hardware is reportedly undergoing final testing before production begins, and the device appears to be on schedule for a fall launch. While iOS 5 contains support for 3G FaceTime calls and over-the-air iOS updates, users on Verizon's network may not be able to use the feature in the fall. And additional evidence in the recently released developer preview of iOS contains hints that the next-gen device might still use a 5 megapixel camera sensor.
According to a source for 9to5 Mac, the next-gen iPhone hardware is currently in the "AP" testing stage. At this stage, the hardware has been finalized and the features of the software frozen. High-ranking Apple and carrier executives are reportedly using them full-time, as this prototype is pretty much what will come off the assembly line this fall. Assuming no major problems arise, production is likely to begin in late July for a planned September launch.
While iOS 5 is capable of making FaceTime video calls over 3G networks—a major improvement over the previous WiFi-only limitation—it will apparently be up to individual carriers to support it. 9to5 Mac's source indicated that Apple and Verizon have not yet reached a deal to enable it on its EV-DO 3G network. The same is also true for iOS 5's upcoming support for OTA software updates; it will naturally work via WiFi, but the "delta" updates promised at last week's WWDC keynote should, in many cases, be small enough to download comfortably over 3G. Reportedly, Apple and Verizon are "still working out the kinks regarding support" for the feature.
Finally, iOS 5 once again includes references two unreleased devices, codenamed N93 and N94, and still reference a 5MP rear-facing camera sensor. The next-gen iPhone has been rumored to have an upgrade to an 8MP sensor from OmniVision, Sony, or possibly both. It's hard to say for sure whether it will be 5MP or 8MP in the final shipping version—it may be an error or outdated information in the preview—but at least the 5MP sensor in the iPhone 4 is one of the best we've seen.
4. Anonymous Arrests: How Do You Behead That Which Has No Head?
The next-generation iPhone hardware is reportedly undergoing final testing before production begins, and the device appears to be on schedule for a fall launch. While iOS 5 contains support for 3G FaceTime calls and over-the-air iOS updates, users on Verizon's network may not be able to use the feature in the fall. And additional evidence in the recently released developer preview of iOS contains hints that the next-gen device might still use a 5 megapixel camera sensor.
According to a source for 9to5 Mac, the next-gen iPhone hardware is currently in the "AP" testing stage. At this stage, the hardware has been finalized and the features of the software frozen. High-ranking Apple and carrier executives are reportedly using them full-time, as this prototype is pretty much what will come off the assembly line this fall. Assuming no major problems arise, production is likely to begin in late July for a planned September launch.
While iOS 5 is capable of making FaceTime video calls over 3G networks—a major improvement over the previous WiFi-only limitation—it will apparently be up to individual carriers to support it. 9to5 Mac's source indicated that Apple and Verizon have not yet reached a deal to enable it on its EV-DO 3G network. The same is also true for iOS 5's upcoming support for OTA software updates; it will naturally work via WiFi, but the "delta" updates promised at last week's WWDC keynote should, in many cases, be small enough to download comfortably over 3G. Reportedly, Apple and Verizon are "still working out the kinks regarding support" for the feature.
Finally, iOS 5 once again includes references two unreleased devices, codenamed N93 and N94, and still reference a 5MP rear-facing camera sensor. The next-gen iPhone has been rumored to have an upgrade to an 8MP sensor from OmniVision, Sony, or possibly both. It's hard to say for sure whether it will be 5MP or 8MP in the final shipping version—it may be an error or outdated information in the preview—but at least the 5MP sensor in the iPhone 4 is one of the best we've seen.
4. Anonymous Arrests: How Do You Behead That Which Has No Head?
Spanish police announced Friday they have arrested the leaders of the Anonymous hacker group in that country. They also claim to have found a server that coordinated and implemented computer attacks on government, financial and business websites worldwide, including the Sony's PlayStation Network, at the home of one of the trio. Spanish police said they sifted through more than 2 million lines of records, comprised of log chats and Web pages, to home in on the three. The hackers used the LOIC tool.
5. IBM Cooks Up Super-Thin Graphene Chips
IBM researchers have demonstrated a graphene circuit which integrates all circuit components onto a single wafer made of silicon carbide. Graphene is a mesh of carbon atoms that's one atom thick. Integrating it monolithically -- meaning in one unit -- with other materials is a problem researchers have been grappling with since 2004, when the material's properties were first demonstrated. IBM announced the demonstration of its monolithically integrated graphene circuit in a paper published Friday in the journal Science.
5. IBM Cooks Up Super-Thin Graphene Chips
IBM researchers have demonstrated a graphene circuit which integrates all circuit components onto a single wafer made of silicon carbide. Graphene is a mesh of carbon atoms that's one atom thick. Integrating it monolithically -- meaning in one unit -- with other materials is a problem researchers have been grappling with since 2004, when the material's properties were first demonstrated. IBM announced the demonstration of its monolithically integrated graphene circuit in a paper published Friday in the journal Science.
At the D9 conference today, Steve Sinofsky, President of Windows and Windows Live at Microsoft, gave the first look at the next version of Windows, currently "codenamed" Windows 8. On display was the new touch user interface: an interface designed for tablets and touch computers.
For the first time in its life, Windows will receive a true touch interface. Since Windows XP, Microsoft has tried to graft touch capabilities onto its operating system, but has consistently failed to bridge the gap between precise mouse and keyboard interfaces, and sloppy, imprecise, finger-based interfaces. Windows 8 changes that. Microsoft describes the new interface as "touch first"; it'll work with a mouse and a keyboard, but it was designed for fingers.
The interface has more than a passing resemblance to the Metro look and feel of Windows Phone 7. The Start screen, in particular, with its grid arrangement of live tiles, is very much a scaled up version of the phone interface. Task switching is performed by swiping in from the side; tasks can also be snapped to the side of the screen for a multitasking view.
The demo also confirmed what has been until now something of an open secret: the next Windows will include an application store of some kind. Microsoft didn't talk about this at all, but the live tile confirmed its existence.
It will still be some months before anyone outside Microsoft (and select partners) has any hands-on time with the new interface. Nonetheless, it looks like it will be a serious and credible competitor in the tablet market, and Microsot's tight control of manufacturers should ensure that hardware is done right too. For new applications built to use the new interface, the whole experience should be slick and integrated.
However, this is not just a user interface for tablets: this is going to be the user interface for Windows. Windows 8 will still run Windows application—all of them, with pretty much the same system requirements as Windows 7. One of the application tiles is a full-blown Windows 7 desktop, and this is where legacy applications will run. The new-style interface and new-style applications will be clean and modern, but none of this extended to the traditional applications, which are stuck in their own little ghetto.
While this is understandable for truly legacy applications, it doesn't appear to offer much of a transition path for software that's still under active development. There are plenty of applications that are too complex and fiddly to ever be at home with a touch-first interface—consider a software development environment, or a fully-featured office suite. Leaving these stuck in a Windows 7 ghetto doesn't seem like a good long-term option.
Related to this issue is the question of how new-style applications will be written. Microsoft said that they will be HTML5 plus JavaScript, but again this precludes the possibility of migrating existing applications to the new interface. I'm told by insiders that HTML5 and JavaScript won't be the only option, and that existing applications (native, Silverlight, and WPF) will be migratable in some way, but specifics are still lacking at this time.
Windows Phone application compatibility would also be desirable—Windows Phone applications are already touch first, and already Metro-themed, and the compatibility between iPhone and iPad applications helped Apple rapidly fill its App Store with plenty of iPad applications—but a pure HTML5 with JavaScript development environment would rule this out, too. Conversely, will we see an option for HTML5 application development on the phone? On today's showing, it would make sense.
These questions should receive an answer in September. Simultaneously with the Windows 8 demo, Microsoft announced its next major developer event, BUILD, to be held in Anaheim in September. This event will take the place of the company's traditional PDC (Professional Developers' Conference) event. Reflecting the explosion in software development that tablets and smartphones have heralded, it will be aimed at a much broader developer community—encompassing open source developers and hobbyists in addition to the professionals—and reflecting the closer ties between hardware and software, it will also touch on hardware tasks, somewhat subsuming Microsoft's WinHEC conferences for hardware developers.
There's still no word on a release date, with the second half of 2012 still being the most likely estimate. As a result, Microsoft will still have plenty of work to do if it wants to become a serious player in the tablet space. The company will be late, there's no doubt about that. But as late as it will be, the promise of true Windows compatibility for those times you need it, and a fast and attractive interface for times that you don't, could yet make Microsoft a real contender in the market.
The excellent gadget repair experts at iFixit have torn apart a brand new Samsung Series 5 Chromebook to see what makes it tick, and they have published detailed hardware specifications and photographs of the system's internals.
The Samsung Series 5 Chromebook is a laptop that's powered by Google's Linux-based Chrome OS—the first Chrome OS product that will be available to regular consumers. It was unveiled last month at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco during a keynote session and is expected to retail for $429.
The folks at iFixit say that the Samsung Chromebook has much in common with Google's Cr-48 prototype, but that the new system is slimmer and better-designed. The hardware includes a 1.66GHz dual-core Atom N570 CPU, 2GB of RAM, and a 16GB SanDisk SSD. They were able to disassemble the laptop with a spudger, plastic opening tool, and a Philips #1 screwdriver.
After disassembling the laptop, they assigned it a 6 out of 10 "repairability" score. The Chromebook lost points because the RAM is soldered to the motherboard and the battery can't be replaced without opening the case. They also commented that the "mostly-plastic construction" felt "a little cheap." They noted, however, that the screen was easy to remove and most of the components—including the SSD—can be replaced easily.
"Our analysis revealed that the Series 5 is a well-polished version of the rather imperfect Cr-48 prototype Chromebook," iFixit's Kyle Wiens told us in an e-mail. "The Series 5 fixes the major shortfalls of the Cr-48 and adds the polish necessary to strike lust into the heart of a broad consumer base: sleek looks, 8+ hours of battery life, and optimized performance."
It sounds like Google's Chrome OS is launching on a pretty decent piece of hardware. We will likely receive our Samsung Chromebook—promised at Google I/O—soon, so you can look forward to our upcoming review.
The Samsung Series 5 Chromebook is a laptop that's powered by Google's Linux-based Chrome OS—the first Chrome OS product that will be available to regular consumers. It was unveiled last month at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco during a keynote session and is expected to retail for $429.
The folks at iFixit say that the Samsung Chromebook has much in common with Google's Cr-48 prototype, but that the new system is slimmer and better-designed. The hardware includes a 1.66GHz dual-core Atom N570 CPU, 2GB of RAM, and a 16GB SanDisk SSD. They were able to disassemble the laptop with a spudger, plastic opening tool, and a Philips #1 screwdriver.
After disassembling the laptop, they assigned it a 6 out of 10 "repairability" score. The Chromebook lost points because the RAM is soldered to the motherboard and the battery can't be replaced without opening the case. They also commented that the "mostly-plastic construction" felt "a little cheap." They noted, however, that the screen was easy to remove and most of the components—including the SSD—can be replaced easily.
"Our analysis revealed that the Series 5 is a well-polished version of the rather imperfect Cr-48 prototype Chromebook," iFixit's Kyle Wiens told us in an e-mail. "The Series 5 fixes the major shortfalls of the Cr-48 and adds the polish necessary to strike lust into the heart of a broad consumer base: sleek looks, 8+ hours of battery life, and optimized performance."
It sounds like Google's Chrome OS is launching on a pretty decent piece of hardware. We will likely receive our Samsung Chromebook—promised at Google I/O—soon, so you can look forward to our upcoming review.
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