When the combined armies of Zorg are firing photon weapons at you, 5 kilograms doesn't seem like much.
Even the cables and straps that are a necessary part of MSI's Backpack PC fade into the background when you're immersed in a virtual reality game.
That's what I discovered when I took MSI's new Backpack PC for a test spin on Wednesday at Computex in Taipei. The device is an entire gaming PC built into a backpack that allows for completely untethered virtual reality gaming.
Current VR games run on a computer that sits on a desk or floor and stubbornly won't move as you jump around in a virtual world. It means long cables are needed and that can be a hazard and a hassle.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft has agreed to transfer some patents to Xiaomi, ahead of plans by the Chinese smartphone maker to enter the U.S. and other advanced markets.The deal with Microsoft also involves Xiaomi bundling Microsoft Office and Skype on its Android smartphones and tablets, according to a statement issued by Microsoft on Tuesday.The smartphone company has agreed to buy about 1,500 patents from Microsoft, according to news reports. Xiaomi is also signing a cross-licensing agreement for some other patents with Microsoft."Expanding the Xiaomi-Microsoft partnership: new deal for Office & Skype pre-install, IP cross-license and patent transfer agreement,” Hugo Barra, vice president for Xiaomi's global division, wrote in a twitter message.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It’s OK, you’re old enough to admit it – you stunk at Super Mario Bros. The vaunted “feel” of Mario’s movement had you skidding into Koopas and off of cliffs, and the game eventually made you so frustrated that you eventually just played outside instead.And hey, now there’s scientific proof that the game really is just that hard, despite what your friend Jesse – who beat the whole thing with sickening ease – told you. A new paper co-written by researchers at MIT, the University of Ottawa, and Bard College at Simon’s Rock says that Super Mario Bros. belongs to the complexity class PSPACE, meaning it’s more difficult to “solve” algorithmically than the famous traveling-salesman problem or factoring large numbers, which are referred to as NP-hard.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Today, Sirin Labs announced an ultra-secure luxury smartphone called the Solarin for the international business person who wants both style and security. It will compete with the category of phones produced by Silent Circle, GranitePhone, BlackBerry and Samsung phones with KNOX mobile security software.This is a well-timed introduction, matching the shift to mobile from PCs.Even with price of the Solarin starting at £9,500 (~$13,750), there is a market for smartphones that prove to be impenetrable. That’s because the cost of providing managed services to secure executives’ devices can be quite high. Also, the price of the phone is far less than the cost of a breach should a phone fall into the wrong hands.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Employees are often considered the weakest link in organizations' efforts to create a strong security posture. Even organizations with security awareness programs in place struggle to instill strong security behaviors. Steve Conrad, managing director of MediaPro, a learning services company that specializes in information security, data privacy and compliance, says organizations can and should do better.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The latest entrant in the Internet of Things is legendary gaming company Atari, which plans to make consumer devices that communicate over the SigFox low-power network.The devices will be for homes, pets, lifestyle, and safety. Over the SigFox network, users will be able to see the location and status of their devices at all times, the companies said. They’re set to go into production this year.The Atari brand dates back to the 1970s, when the company introduced the early video game Pong and went on to make a series of popular video games and consoles. The company in its current form hasn’t been selling any form of hardware.SigFox is one of several startups building specialized networks for IoT devices. Its technology is designed to carry tiny amounts of data in two directions with low-power consumption so small, battery-operated devices can run for years without recharging.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Evidently discarding any reservations he might have had about mobile becoming the dominant computing platform, Benedict Evans, Andreesen Horwitz venture capital analyst and blogger, says mobile is no longer in the process of eating the world, but that “mobile ate the world.”Evans made the statement during his yearly mobile presentation, which he published at the end of March. Over Memorial Day weekend, I read his presentation, which has become a high-tech industry touchstone, and summarized the tall tent poles of this 76-slide tome for those short on time. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It's not your average company that can trace its origins back to a nineteenth-century Russian tsar, but then, Sberbank is no average financial institution.Established through a decree by Emperor Nikolai I in 1841, Sberbank is Russia's oldest bank and has played a long and storied role in the nation's history. Today, with more than 16,000 branches in all 83 constituent entities of the Russian Federation -- traversing 11 time zones -- it serves roughly 70 percent of the Russian population.Therein lie the roots of the bank's very modern challenge.Whereas once virtually all transactions were conducted in person during office hours and on bank premises, the arrival of the Internet turned that pattern on its head. No longer constrained by branch operating schedules or the on-site availability of bank officers, customer-service demands skyrocketed as consumer expectations extended 24/7.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you travel internationally, or know someone who does, this may be one to consider. LOOP Electronics travel adapter is an all-in-one travel plug that not only keeps you powered in over 150 countries, but also includes dual USB charging ports and a battery backup (power bank) for when you need power or charging but can't locate a plug. The adapter has a built-in fuse, is made of fire-resistant materials, and comes with an 18-month warranty. It currently averages 4 out of 5 stars from 99 customers (read reviews). With a regular list price of $40, it's currently discounted to just $22.45. See this discounted travel plug now on Amazon to learn more and explore buying options.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A new report from 451 Research theorizes that the “race to the bottom” of public IaaS cloud prices is an unsustainable model that is not expanding market share. Instead vendors have transitioned to a “race to the top” to add higher-level application services on top of their clouds to grow their businesses.Three years ago IaaS vendors dropped prices regularly, sometimes within hours of each other, in what appeared to be a race to the lowest prices in the cloud. Today, public cloud IaaS vendors focus much more on providing higher-level application services that run on top of their infrastructure in an effort to attract and retain customers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Shadow IT, a term that loosely refers to any technology that is used in a company without the oversight of the IT department, isn't a new concept. But companies don't seem to have a better handle on it now than they did when we first started writing about it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Contrary to scattered reports, Microsoft has not backpedaled from its latest aggressive tactic to boost Windows 10 adoption.Accounts claiming that Microsoft has only now introduced a new warning dialog are incorrect: That secondary notice has been part of Microsoft's campaign since at least the first week of May -- before word spread about the company's unusual interpretation of a click on the red "X" in the upper-right corner of a notification that a pre-scheduled upgrade to Windows 10 was imminent.Since at least March 23, and probably as far back as February, Microsoft has been defining a click-the-X as approving the scheduled upgrade, rather than the expected behavior of ignoring the notice and closing the window. Microsoft's interpretation of clicking the X runs counter to its own design rules.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
After laying dormant for quite some time, Microsoft has announced that it is getting back into directly investing in startups. Microsoft Ventures has been overhauled, though it’s not clear why Microsoft has decided to get back into investing — or if the company is in it for the long haul.Nagraj Kashyap, the corporate vice president of Microsoft Ventures, laid out his vision for the investing arm in a blog post Monday, saying that the fund will be used to support early-stage companies and help Microsoft be more involved in new technology developments.Microsoft’s existing series of startup accelerators, and its BizSpark program to offer discounts on software, will be rolled into a new Microsoft Accelerator organization. For larger business partnerships and acquisitions, Microsoft will rely on a different team. This version of Ventures is supposed to fill in a gap Microsoft left open when it stopped directly investing in companies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I'm a portable man—I like laptops and tablets. It's been years since I've owned a desktop PC. Between frequent travel to tech conferences and my predilection for doing my work done from the comforts of donut and coffee shops, I just can't be tethered to a desk.That means I ask a lot of my mobile gear. I need them to perform with desktop power. Compile code, edit video, play games—they need to do it all. And do it well.Enter the newly updated Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition.The model I got for review comes with a 6th Generation Intel Core i7 processor, 16 gigs of DDR3 RAM, a half a terabyte solid state drive and Intel's Iris 540 GPU. Port wise, it has two USB 3 slots, an SD card reader and a Thunderbolt port (which I will only ever use with an HDMI adapter because, seriously, does anyone actually use Thunderbolt ports?). The machine is pretty doggone beefy by anyone's standards.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hewlett-Packard Enterprise is asking a jury to award the company US$3billion from Oracle after the database giant stopped supporting HPE's Itanium-based hardware, even though it allegedly signed a contract to do so.A jury trial in the 5-year-old legal dispute between the tech giants is scheduled to begin Tuesday, nearly four years after a California judge first ruled that Oracle must continue porting its software to HPE's Itanium platform. The new trial is scheduled in Santa Clara Superior Court in California.HP, which has since split into two companies, sued Oracle in 2011, saying the database company's decision to stop offering future versions of its popular database software for Itanium violated a deal the partners signed in 2010. Oracle argued parts of the deal were "a corporate handshake" and didn't impose long-term support obligations. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Tor Browser 6.0 is out. If you have been using Tor, you can upgrade it via its built-in updater. The Tor Project said the “updater is not relying on the signature alone, but is checking the hash of the downloaded update file as well before applying it.” Additionally, the Tor Browser Windows installer is no longer vulnerable to DLL hijacking.DuckDuckGo for default search resultsThe Tor Browser Team is still using Disconnect as its search provider, but it switched to DuckDuckGo to provide the default search results. In short, the reason is that Bing search results were simply not cutting it. The team explained:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Smartphones can indeed be hacked via public USB-charging ports found around public facilities such as airports, parks and coffee shops, says a computer security firm. Additionally, any PC used for charging can perform the exploit.Hacks of this kind, first publicly written about in 2011, and called "juice-hacking" then, are not a myth, Kaspersky Lab says. That’s despite an apparent lack of reported cases.The security company, known for its antivirus products, says it has proven that forms of the hack can variously make illicit calls, suck files off a device and in its simplest rendition, capture a phone’s unique identifiers, such as a serial number.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Marcus Galafassi was named VP of Information Technology and CIO at Otis Elevator last October, joining the company at a critical time as the venerable firm is looking to make a large investment in technology to improve customer service and pave the way for new capabilities. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently talked to Galafassi about the big picture plans.
Marcus Galafassi, VP of Information Technology and CIO, Otis Elevator To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The number of non-farm jobs added in the United States in recent months has inched up, and the unemployment rate has held steady at 5%, but that’s not to say the computer and networking industry hasn’t suffered its share of layoffs in 2016 to date.Here’s a rundown of some of the more notable layoffs, workforce reductions, resizings or whatever companies want to call them.MORE: Laid-off Abbott IT workers won’t have to train their replacements | Looking back at 2015 tech industry layoffsTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A few weeks ago, Tumblr notified users of a data breach that resulted in the theft of user email addresses and hashed passwords. The company did not say how many accounts were affected, but recently someone put the data up for sale and the number is: 65 million records.The data is being sold on a Tor dark market website called TheRealDeal by a user named peace_of_mind who also sold 167 million user records stolen from LinkedIn. Recently he also posted offers for 360 million accounts allegedly stolen from MySpace and 40 million from adult dating website Fling.com.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here