AMD Sets Countdown for December Public Hands-On of Zen Processor

The desktop CPU market is about to be embroiled in a contest between master crafters, Intel and AMD. After almost a decade of ruling the market with dependable reputation, Intel is about to face a challenge from AMD in the form of their latest “Summit Ridge” series that will utilize high performance Zen architecture.

Aimed to tease the public with the potential of its performance, AMD has initiated a countdown that would ultimately reveal some live demos with the Zen architecture by engaging in intensive gaming sessions. This big reveal is supposed to be a web show called “New Horizon”; it will be hosted by George Keeley, a big name in video game journalism and the eminent pro gamer Peter Dager, better known as PPD, of Evil Geniuses fame.

Estimated to be aired on 13th December at 1pm PST or 4pm ET, this reveal is going to be a treat as AMD have themselves confirmed that there will be multiple guests on the show taking their turn to test the Zen extensively and give their take on the newbie. AMD is luring the nerds stating, “If you’re serious about gaming, this is an event you do not want to miss.”

Intel is slated to showcase their latest Kaby Lake desktop processors sometime in January; AMD therefore is preparing their ground to pit their super economical Zen processors against the comparatively higher range of Intel whose last Core i7 6950x processor costs a whopping $1723. “Summit Ridge” is expected to have a highest price of $500 for an ultra fast octa-core processor.

Aside from being economical, it manipulates the use of Simultaneous Multi Threading in the high end octa-cores which is a leap of modification from its previous Bulldozer series which had single threading and low processing capacities. Also there is expected to be a high cache hierarchy. Both these couplings are aimed to correct the drawbacks of older AMD models.

The New Horizon will inaugurate with a modest level quad core to test the gaming potential, which is expected to keep the curiosity burning till the next big reveal on “Summit Ridge” later on in the beginning quarter of 2017, with other technologies hidden up their sleeve.

A lot of curiosity and interest is abuzz about this AMD Zen as this project has been entirely under wraps; the idea had been planted in a small Developer Forum convention event in August. It has been worked on meticulously by AMD to improve the design of Excavator architecture and improve its processing speed by adding more clocks; each clock is supposed to be fed with 40% more instruction than Excavator.

Assuring promises of giveaways, AMD is encouraging viewers to book a spot for the prime show and catch all the action live. An adrenaline fuelled performance on the 13th will probably be a premonition of how the processor industry of the future will turn out, commanding the best from both Intel and AMD.

Mozilla and Tor Release Urgent Update for Firefox 0-Day Under Active Attack

Mozilla and Tor have introduced browser updates to sum up a Firefox consistence being hampered to identify men who sue the services related to privacy. It is a flaw in terms of security for the immediate release, which is being exploited on Windows. The official of Tor has assured their users that there isn’t any risk currently figured out in their knowledge. They are unable to discover any exploits for Operating System X or Linux as they have implanted several security measures. But still they have insisted the users to go for the update of their Tor Browser as soon as possible.

The Tor browser is said to forged on the Firebox browser which is an open source introduced by the Mozilla foundation. No sooner did the Officials of Mozilla named Daniel Veditz came to know of this problem, he posted on his blog assuring that the issues has been fixed in some currently issued versions of Mozilla Firefox for all the popular users. He further disclosed that the attack code has been discovered who did the exploitation and measures are being taken against it.

The mishap revealed codes when the targets fed malicious JavaScript related to vector graphics. The culprit sent the IP and MAC address of the target to the server, which controlled attacks. The code resembled the technique which investigated network used by law-enforcing agencies, specially that which identified Tor-protected users who seemed to propagate child pornography.

Further similar step was taken in this regard and it was discovered this vulnerability reducing measure was created by FBI or some law-implementing agency. This shows that how restricted government hacking can become a serious threat to the larger web as anyone can use it to attack Firefox users. A different Mozilla security has proved that it can also affect Mozilla’s Thunderbolt e-mail applications and also the extended support version of Firefox used by Tor browsers. It was suggested that this flaw existed in the browser since five years.

The ridiculous load given by the exploit of code-execution is very much similar to that of FBI which it used in 2013 to discover the ones who used trade child pornography via Tor-anonymized website. The source code to the Tor group was absolutely complete, the exploit could be made easily available to lots of people which they manage to use by making slight changes to it.

Other than an update for Firefox an update to NoScript, which is an extension of Firefox in relation to the Top Browser was also released. NoScript is useful, as it does not allow the users to opt for the sites that can and cannot use JavaScript in the browser. Later for privacy reasons the Tor browser installed NoScript in such a manner that permitted all sites to affiliate JavaScript in the browser. Though this point in terms of privacy is still not clear.

It is advisable that the Firefox and Tor users should fix their problems at once. The users are considered to be protected from the attack by keeping the Firefox security to highest level, that may restrict few sights but it is proven safe.

Facebook Messenger Launches Instant Games

Instant Games Launched by Facebook

Recently Instant Games a series of titles which can be played in the Messenger iOS and Android app, or through the website of the company, had been launched by Facebook. As per TechCrunch, the game is quick to load as they tend to be delivered through HTML5 instead of full downloads. Real time multiplayer presently is not available though players can participate through high score rankings.The preliminary slate of game comprises of titles such as Galago, Pac-Man, Space Invaders together with Words With Friends Frenzy with free of ads as well as in-game purchases at present.

Screenshots of their high scores can be sketched by the players and share games to their Facebook News Feed that would enable t other players to join in promptly. In the case of developers, Instant Games access is in closed beta wherein they need to apply for the same.

As for the public, though the games seem to be accessible in 30 regions, including Canada, Russia, the U.S., Germany, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Mainland China has been excluded where Facebook has been banned. Facebook has been anticipating that some friendly competition would get the user to spend some more time in Messenger and compete asynchronously through high scores rather than directly simultaneously. Hence it is appropriate to try your luck at times.

Available on iOS/Android

Instant Games, in the long run could earn Facebook ad dollars from the developers who tend to promote their games or a cut in payments but there are no in-games purchases permitted yet. Instant Games has been launched in 30 countries with 17 games from classic developers such as Bandai Namco, Konami and Taito together with latest studios comprising of Zynga and King.

It is made available on latest iOS and Android devices and can be located by hitting the game controller icon in Facebook Messenger thread towards the photos and stickers buttons. Moreover, one could also play through platforms from Facebook on desktop due to an overlaid phone screen.

Social gaming had been dominated by Facebook around 2008 when its desktop app platform had been well-known for playing around for utilities. It had earned a peak of quarter-billion dollars for each quarter on its 30% tax on in-games purchases. Their addictive as well as viral nature enabled Facebook to develop its user count as well as commitments.

Attempts to Build HTML5 Game Platform – Project Spartan

Presently 15% of time on Facebook.con tend to be spent on playing games but the payment profitsseems to have reduced to $196 million in the most recent quarter. Since users seemed to shift to mobile, Facebook noticed that it had been shut out of gaming and only iOS and Android could run native app stores.

 It was they who had benefitted from taxes on in-game payments. In 2011, Facebook had been frantically making attempts in building an HTML5 game platform known as Project Spartan but had failed since the mobile web standard had not been adequately strong to build games which could rival with flashy download with native apps. Over a period of time the developers have identified how to have improved graphics together with responsive gameplay out of HTML5.

Why Light Bulbs May Be the Next Hacker Target

Smart Light Bulbs – Wireless Fault - Hackers Take Control

Supporters debate that the Internet of Things provides several benefits like energy efficiency, technology convenience that can anticipate what one needs and also reduce congestion on the roads. However, placing a cluster of wirelessly connected devices in one spot could be tempting to hackers and would enable them to spread malicious code via air, just like a flu virus on a plane. Researchers had reported in a recent paper release that they had discovered an error in a wireless technology which is generally included in smart home devices like lights, locks, switches, thermostats and several of the components of the smart home of the future.

According to researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science near Tel Aviv and Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, they focused on the Philips Hue smart light bulb and discovered that the wireless fault can permit hackers in taking control of the light bulbs. It may not sound like a great deal. But considering thousands or even hundreds of thousands of internet-connected devices in close proximity and the malware that is created by hackers could spread among the devices on compromising with just one of them.

Popular Websites Experience Outages/Interruption

Moreover they would not need to have direct access to the devices to pollute them. The researchers were capable of spreading infection in a network within a building by driving a car 70 metres away. The hackers had briefly denied access to complete chunks of the internet recently, by developing a flood of traffic which had overwhelmed the servers of a US company known as Dynthat assists in handling key components of the internet.

 Pinterest, Twitter, Reddit together with PayPal were down for most part of a day since their domain name provider, Dyn had been compelled to be offline. It had also resulted in popular Australian websites like ANZ, Coles, The Daily telegraph; Ebay, NAB, 9News and many others, to experience outages and interruption. Security experts are of the belief that the hackers discovered the horsepower essential for their attack by gaining control of a range of internet-linked devices.

Password Partially Blamed for Attack

However the hackers did not utilise the system provided in the report that had been released recently. A Chinese wireless camera company had stated that weak passwords on some of its products could be partially blamed for the attack. Although it had not been the first attempt hackers had utilised the Internet of Things to control an attack, the measure of effort against Dyn had been an eye opener to users who had not realized that the impact of internet-linked things joined in daily life would foresee new risks.

A widely respected cryptographer, Adi Shamir who assists pioneer modern encryption methods and is also one of the authors of the report, had commented that `even the best internet defense technologies would not stop such an attack.The new risk is said to come from a little-known radio protocol named ZigBee which had been developed in 1990s.

 ZigBee is a wireless standard which is used extensively in home consumer devices. Though it has been presumed to be secure, it has not been held up for scrutiny of the other safety methods utilised across the internet. The researchers had discovered that the ZigBee standard could be utilised in creating a computer worm to spread the malevolent software in devices which were internet-linked.

Comma.ai Goes Open Source with Self Driving Car Kit

Self driving car segment is popularly associated with Google and Apple automated car programs. But most of the people doesn’t known that BMW, Tesla and a number of other firms are working on the segment and each are going through a rapid phase of development to come up with their own version of safe and robust self-driving car within the mid next decade. Comma.ai is a lesser known player in the self-driving companies list but it has done a tremendous research and built a very reliable within a few years of its inception.

Comma.ai has announced that it will be coming up with its own software platform and it has future plans of bringing an associated hardware module which will be made available for free download on Github site. The best thing about this startup is that it will release its software platform and hardware module as an open source entity under the MIT license. This will help in development and engineering of self driving more easier and error free than before both for the enthusiasts and manufacturers alike.

Comma.ai is already works on a selected number of cars

Comma.ai’s developed self-driving platform is currently helps in powering the automation utility to just two cars namely the Acura ILX and Honda Civic. In order to bring the automated driving functionality to these cars this particular self-driving platform has to be supported with the LaneWatch package which is placed in the cars. Comma.ai brings a number of self driving capabilities to the vehicle which includes adaptive cruise control and self steering.

Adaptive cruise control backed with Comma.ai self driving platform allows the car to slow down from any given speed to a slower speed as per the traffic movement ahead while the self-steering allows users to leave the car completely on the auto-pilot kind of mode.

The advantage & disadvantage of self driving platform at a glance

As stated earlier a number of car manufactures, equipment supplier and even well established technology companies are trying their hand at developing their own home-grown self driving cars. The potential of the self driving technology is vast as it will not just bring a drastic fall in the car crashes and ultimate deaths but it will also help in reducing the traffic congestion which has become a chronic disease in mega cities. It does have it won a disadvantage which includes a major and detrimental impact on the jobs along with the economy.

Comma.ai is moving swiftly towards bring self-driving all cars alike

At the inception Cooma.ai offered to develop a self-driving car within $1000 but what it actually meant was that it will help in retrofitting the existing cars with self-driving capability through hardware and software support. On the same lines it is making its self-driving platform in open-source which will help hackers, engineers, communities and manufactures to add new capabilities and extend the application of this platform to a more diverse range of cars regardless of the region and location.