Monthly Archives: January 2017

Berkeley Vanadium Dioxide Discovery

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For us science nerds, this is a discovery that will likely get you thinking of all sorts of applications that this could be useful in. They are telling us that vanadium dioxide conducts electricity but does not conduct heat. The thoughts of how this could be utilized in engines alone is fairly incredible. Thanks to Ski from the forums for the heads up.

There’s a known rule-breaker among materials, and a new discovery by an international team of scientists adds more evidence to back up the metal’s nonconformist reputation. According to a new study led by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and at the University of California, Berkeley, electrons in vanadium dioxide can conduct electricity without conducting heat.



“The electrons were moving in unison with each other, much like a fluid, instead of as individual particles like in normal metals,” said Wu. “For electrons, heat is a random motion. Normal metals transport heat efficiently because there are so many different possible microscopic configurations that the individual electrons can jump between. In contrast, the coordinated, marching-band-like motion of electrons in vanadium dioxide is detrimental to heat transfer as there are fewer configurations available for the electrons to hop randomly between.”

Discussion

Source: [H]ardOCP – Berkeley Vanadium Dioxide Discovery

A Lack of Alternatives To Qualcomm Is Hurting the Ecosystem

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Authority: Smartphone enthusiasts are probably eagerly awaiting the arrival of Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 835 SoC, which was unveiled back at the beginning of January. However, recent revelations suggest that consumers could be in for an unexpected wait, and we’re unlikely to see an alternative manufacturer step in to fill the void given the current market conditions. The report claiming that LG G6 won’t ship with the latest Snapdragon 835 flagship SoC is looking like bad luck for LG and a blow to consumers looking to spend their cash on the latest mobile technology. If true, this is also likely to have an impact on sales, as consumers hold out for better technology released in just a few months time. It’s not only LG facing this prospect though, HTC, Sony, and all the other manufacturers that typically make announcements early in the year look to be facing a situation where they will be using the same processor as last year for early 2017 models. This scenario is unprecedented in modern Android history. The past few years have seen manufacturers kick start the year with flagship releases packing new processing technology. Unfortunately for these OEMs, there aren’t any competing processors to use as a direct alternative to the delayed Snapdragon 835. The choice is then either to launch with an older technology or delay their product until the 835 is ready. While many will focus on performance stagnation, using the same chip also means that handsets are bound by the same feature sets, and so camera, video, virtual reality, and other capabilities won’t be moving on either. Samsung’s Exynos and HiSilicon’s Kirin series are the closest SoCs to the 821 and 835 in terms of performance and features, but these are primarily reserved for their maker’s own flagships and aren’t rolled off the production line in anything close to enough numbers to meet global demand. This situation is a bit of a catch-22, with manufacturers unlikely to buy up expensive foundry lines without a strong indication that OEMs will use their products, while a lack of availability means major releases can’t pick up these chips.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – A Lack of Alternatives To Qualcomm Is Hurting the Ecosystem

Raspberry Pi at Scouts Wintercamp

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As well as working with classroom teachers and supporting learning in schools, Raspberry Pi brings computing and digital making to educators and learners in all sorts of other settings. I recently attended Wintercamp, a camp for Scouts at Gilwell Park. With some help from Brian and Richard from Vodafone, I ran a Raspberry Pi activity space introducing Scouts to digital making with Raspberry Pi, using the Sense HAT, the Camera Module, and GPIO, based on some of our own learning resources.

Ben Nuttall on Twitter

Today I’m running @Raspberry_Pi activities for @UKScouting at @gpwintercamp with @VodafoneUK!

Note the plastic sheeting on the floor! Kids were dropping into our sessions all day with muddy boots, having taken part in all sorts of fun activities, indoors and out.

Ben Nuttall on Twitter

@gpwintercamp

In the UK, the Scouts have Digital Citizen and Digital Maker badges, and we’re currently working with the Scout Association to help deliver content for the Digital Maker badge, as supported by the Vodafone Foundation.

The activities we ran were just a gentle introduction to creative tech and experimenting with sensors, but they went down really well, and many of the participants felt happy to move beyond the worksheets and try out their own ideas. We set challenges, and got them to think about how they could incorporate technology like this into their Scouting activities.

Having been through the Scouting movement myself, it’s amazing to be involved in working to show young people how technology can be applied to projects related to their other hobbies and interests. I loved introducing the Scouts to the idea that programming and making can be tools to help solve problems that are relevant to them and to others in their communities, as well as enabling them to do some good in the world, and to be creative.

Scouts coding

Ben Nuttall on Twitter

Can you breathe on the Sense HAT to make the humidity read 90?” “That’s cool. It makes you light-headed…

While conducting a survey of Raspberry Jam organisers recently, I discovered that a high proportion of those who run Jams are also involved in other youth organisations. Many were Scout leaders. Other active Pi community folk happen to be involved in Scouting too, like Brian and Richard, who helped out at the weekend, and who are Scout and Cub leaders. I’m interested to speak to anyone in the Pi community who has an affiliation with the Scouts to share ideas on how they think digital making can be incorporated in Scouting activities. Please do get in touch!

Ben Nuttall on Twitter

Not a great picture but the Scouts made a Fleur de Lys on the Sense HAT at @gpwintercamp



The timing is perfect for young people in this age group to get involved with digital making, as we’ve just launched our first Pioneers challenge. There’s plenty of scope there for outdoor tech projects.

Thanks to UK Scouting and the Wintercamp team for a great weekend. Smiles all round!

The post Raspberry Pi at Scouts Wintercamp appeared first on Raspberry Pi.



Source: Raspberry Pi – Raspberry Pi at Scouts Wintercamp

Save 30% On Dell XPS Intel Core i5 Quad-Core Desktop, Now Only $554.99, Plus 4K TVs Deals

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Save 30% On Dell XPS Intel Core i5 Quad-Core Desktop, Now Only $554.99, Plus 4K TVs Deals
It’s just about time to close out another week, but before we go, we’ve got a fresh batch of HOT deals in store for you all. On tap today, we have deals on a Dell XPS 8910 Intel Core i5-6400 based desktop system, up to 96% off an array on on-line courses, and multiple 4K TV deals. Full details for all of today’s deals are available below.

Source: Hot Hardware – Save 30% On Dell XPS Intel Core i5 Quad-Core Desktop, Now Only 4.99, Plus 4K TVs Deals

Microsoft Fiscal Q2 Beat The Street As Windows 10 Licensing Shows Steady Gains

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Microsoft Fiscal Q2 Beat The Street As Windows 10 Licensing Shows Steady Gains
Microsoft ended 2016 on a high note by capping off the final three months of the year (which is Microsoft’s second fiscal quarter of 2017) with revenue of $26.1 billion, net income of $6.5 billion, and earnings per share of $0.83. Those figures come in slightly higher than what Microsoft recorded in the same time period a year earlier and

Source: Hot Hardware – Microsoft Fiscal Q2 Beat The Street As Windows 10 Licensing Shows Steady Gains

“You took so much time to joke me”—two hours trolling a Windows support scammer

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Tech support scammers in India got trapped on the phone with me for nearly two hours, and all they got was a revocation of their remote access software ID. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Technical support scams are the bottom of the barrel for cyber-crime. Using well-worn social engineering techniques that generally only work on the least sophisticated computer users, these bootleg call-center operations generally use a collection of commercially available tools to either convince their victims to pay exorbitant fees for “security software” or to extort them to gain control of their computer. And yet, these schemes continue to rake in cash for scammers.

We’ve dealt with them before at Ars, but this week I got an opportunity to personally engage with a scam operation—so naturally, I attempted to inflict as much damage on it as possible.

On Monday afternoon, I got a phone call that someone now probably wishes they never made. Caller ID said the call was coming from “MDU Resources,” but the caller said he was calling from “the technical support center.” He informed me there were “junk files” on my computer slowing it down, and he was going to connect me with a technician to help fix the problem.

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Source: Ars Technica – “You took so much time to joke me”—two hours trolling a Windows support scammer

QNAP at CES 2017 – Thunderbolt 3 and Xeon D NAS Units, Residential Gateways, and More

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As part of my usual CES vendor visits, I caught up with QNAP and took a look at the new products and QTS features slated to enter the market over the next couple of quarters. The products that caught my eye included a new series of Thunderbolt-enabled NAS units, a couple of products targeting the IoT / residential wireless gateway space, a NAS unit with an optical drive slot, and a 16-bay Xeon D NAS in the tower form factor. On the software side, QNAP also demonstrated a new QVR Pro Surveillance Station integrating the Surveillance Station package into the QTS OS along with a host of improvements. The DJ2 Live live-stream broadcast platform was also in action at the booth. I won’t go much into the software announcements – Interested readers can refer to the press release, and there really is not much to add beyond that on those aspects.


Thunderbolt NAS Units


We last looked at QNAP’s offerings in our coverage of their TVS-x82T launch back in May 2016. One of the questions I had asked at the launch event was about the non-availability of Thunderbolt 3 (the TVS-x82T series came with Thunderbolt 2 ports). At CES 2017, QNAP introduced the first set of NAS units with Thunderbolt 3 support – with the TVS-1282T3 being the flagship in that segment. Sporting 8x 3.5″ bays and 4x 2.5″ bays along with 2x M.2 SATA SSD slots, the unit can be configured with either a Core i5-7500 or Core i7-7700 CPU. Available I/Os include 2x Thunderbolt 2 as well as 2x Thunderbolt 3 ports, 2x 10GBASE-T and 4x GbE network links, five USB 3.0 ports (one in front, four in the back), two microphone inputs, and two speaker outputs as well as a 3.5mm audio line-out. There are four SODIMM slots, allowing end-users to configure the system with up to 64GB of RAM.



QNAP also introduced the 2.5″-only TVS-882ST models – The TVS-882ST2 has Thunderbolt 2 ports, while the TVS-882ST3 has Thunderbolt 3 ports. Unlike the flagship TVS-1282T3, these units use the high-end Skylake mobile CPUs (Core i7-6700HQ or Core i5-6442EQ). The brochure for the TVS-882ST series also brings out the two Thunderbolt usage scenarios – as a direct-attached storage unit (with the expansion units allowing as much as 400TB to be accessed directly), or a 10Gb switch (with the virtual switch feature that can act as a Thunderbolt to Ethernet converter) to create a 10Gbps interface for the system connecting to it. The second feature makes a separate Thunderbolt to 10Gbps converter unnecessary.



Detailed specifications of the units in both series, as well as some of interesting information from QNAP’s product brochures are reproduced in the gallery at the end of this piece.


NAS with Blu-ray Writer Support


The TVS-882BR is a 8-bay NAS with a SATA expansion bay that can either support two slim optical drives or one 5.25″ optical drive. It is based on a Kaby Lake platform, supports PCIe NVMe SSDs and also two M.2 SATA SSD slots. There are three PCIe 3.0 expansion slots and three display outputs.



The device is intended for use-cases where data on the NAS needs frequent backing up to optical media. The specifications of the various members in this lineup are summarized in the gallery at the end of this piece.


16-bay Xeon D NAS


The TS-1685 lineup is one of the most comprehensive set of Xeon D-based COTS NAS units in the market today. There are nine different tower models carrying either the Xeon D-1521 or the Xeon D-1531, with choice of either ECC or non-ECC DDR4 RAM. Based on demand, QNAP indicated that versions using Xeon D-1548 could also make it to the market. Some units carry a 550W internal PSU (instead of 250W), and can support a discrete GPU such as the AMD Radeon RX480. This is particularly useful for GPU compute, as well as a 3D accelerator for virtual machines.



There are a total of twelve 3.5″ bays and four 2.5″ bays. On the board, there are six M.2 SATA SSD slots (supporting 2242 to 22110 form factors) with heat sinks on top as well as thermal pads at the bottom. There are four GbE ports and two 10GBASE-T  ports. The three spare PCIe expansion slots (two 3.0 x8, one 2.0 x4) can be used for 10/40 GbE adapters, discrete GPUs, PCIe NVMe SSDs or USB 3.1 Gen 2 cards.


QNAP is marketing the TS-1685 as a Super NAS, and the above specifications completely justify the tag. More details are available in the pages from the brochure included in the gallery at the end of this piece.


Intel AnyWAN Designs – QBoat Sunny IoT Server and TGX-150 Gateway NAS


QNAP had two products at CES that were a bit of a departure from the traditional NAS units. Even though they have been focusing on IoT from a NAS perspective for some time, the IoT-focused QBoat Sunny caught us by surprise. Running QTS Lite (a stripped down version of the QTS NAS OS), it is meant as a platform for IoT developers to create a local IoT / home automation controller.



Synology is currently shipping their second generation wireless router, the RT 2600ac. Even though they are not trying to bring cutting-edge products to the market, they seem to have got a toehold in the market. In the set of NAS vendors who are trying to move to the larger consumer Wi-Fi router space, QNAP is throwing its hat in the ring with the TGX-150. It looks like a traditional Wi-Fi router (1x WAN, 4x LAN) and has Intel radios for a 802.11ac MU-MIMO Wi-Fi access point. This device also runs QTS Lite.


The interesting aspect of both of these products is the usage of the Intel AnyWAN GRX750 network processor / SoC. To the best of our knowledge, this is Intel’s first design win in the consumer Wi-Fi router space (one traditionally dominated by SoCs from Qualcomm, Broadcom, and Mediatek).


The detailed specifications of the QBoat Sunny and the TGX-150 are included in the gallery below (along with the specifications of all the new product lines discussed above).



QNAP’s CES 2017 announcements make it clear that it is going to be difficult for any other vendor to match the wide range of hardware platforms they have on offer. It is surprising that no other NAS vendor has tried to attack the NAS / DAS / iSCSI SAN combo market that QNAP is targeting with their Thunderbolt NAS units. Multimedia-editing production houses can definitely use those types of units effectively. On the IoT / residential gateway side, QNAP’s use of an Intel platform is surprising, given the prevalence of ARM-based SoCs in that market. However, without concrete pricing information or performance numbers, it is difficult to draw conclusions. The Intel AnyWAN platform seems great on paper for the applications. It might well turn out to be a credible competitor to the established platforms in the market.



Source: AnandTech – QNAP at CES 2017 – Thunderbolt 3 and Xeon D NAS Units, Residential Gateways, and More

LG G6 Will Reportedly Feature Google Assistant And Water-Resistant Unibody

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LG G6 Will Reportedly Feature Google Assistant And Water-Resistant Unibody
The LG G6 isn’t expected to officially be unveiled until MWC 2017 in Barcelona next month, but LG has already starting dropping hints on what to expect. But it isn’t just LG, insiders are also leaking information on the G6 including the latest revelation that it will be the first non-Pixel smartphone to come with the Google Assistant built-in.

If

Source: Hot Hardware – LG G6 Will Reportedly Feature Google Assistant And Water-Resistant Unibody

Nintendo Peeks Mario Kart 8 Deluxe In Switch Commercial But What's Up With The Guy On The Toilet Playing?

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Nintendo Peeks Mario Kart 8 Deluxe In Switch Commercial But What's Up With The Guy On The Toilet Playing?
Nintendo is not being coy about why you might want a hybrid game console that you can take with you for gaming on the go. Or when you have to go, as in, to the bathroom. Just as tablets and smartphones replaced the practice of reading shampoo bottles and paper magazines in the holy sanctuary of bowel movements, the Nintendo Switch could be

Source: Hot Hardware – Nintendo Peeks Mario Kart 8 Deluxe In Switch Commercial But What’s Up With The Guy On The Toilet Playing?