Below are the 16 most recent journal entries recorded in OSNews' LiveJournal:

Friday, January 3rd, 2014
7:44 pm	Intel's CES plan: Android and Windows in the same computer http://www.osnews.com/story/27497/Intel_s_CES_plan_Android_and_Windows_in_the_same_computer The PC industry isn't doing so well. Sales have dramatically slumped, despite the industry's efforts to tempt consumers with Windows 8 tablets and transforming touchscreen laptops. But next week, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas may be the launching pad for a new push - a new brand of computer that runs both Windows and Android. Sources close to the matter tell The Verge that Intel is behind the idea, and that the chipmaker is working with PC manufacturers on a number of new devices that could be announced at the show. Internally known as "Dual OS," Intel's idea is that Android would run inside of Windows using virtualization techniques, so you could have Android and Windows apps side by side without rebooting your machine. I'm going to make a very daring prediction, that is sure to send ripples across the entire industry: this is not going to turn the tide for the PC.
10:40 am	Jolla outsells iPhone, Galaxy S4, high-end Lumias on DNA, Finland http://www.osnews.com/story/27496/Jolla_outsells_iPhone_Galaxy_S4_high-end_Lumias_on_DNA_Finland More good news for Jolla and Sailfish. On the Finnish carrier DNA, the only carrier currently selling the device, Jolla outsold the iPhone 5S, 5C, Galaxy S4, and every Lumia except the 520. Jolla ended up as number five, preceded by the Lumia 520 in fourth place, the Galaxy SIII 4G in third, and two cheap Galaxy phones as two and one. Sales cover the holiday period. Of course, with Finland having a small population and Jolla having the home team advantage, this isn't exactly representative for, well, anything, but it's still impressive and good news for the young platform. The fact that Jolla outsold the flagships of iOS, Android, and Windows Phone holds promise for the future. On top of that, out of that top five, the Jolla is the most expensive phone (save for perhaps the Galaxy SIII). I'm curious to see if they'll be able to maintain this momentum. It's not going to be easy.
Thursday, January 2nd, 2014
7:31 pm	The lost secrets of webOS http://www.osnews.com/story/27495/The_lost_secrets_of_webOS The Verge has an interesting story up detailing the various hardware and software prototypes that could have had a future hadn't HP botched pretty much every aspect of its Palm acquisition. Both in features as well as design, the next version of webOS, codenamed 'Eel', looked quite promising, and the hardware designs certainly stand out too. Sadly, as I stated in my detailed history of Palm, webOS was, at its core, simply not a Palm product. As I wrote: A cool UI doesn't hide the fact that it's slow and unresponsive. A cool UI doesn't hide the fact that the underlying system is unoptimised. A cool UI doesn't hide the fact that it sucks battery like a there's no tomorrow. A cool UI doesn't hide the fact that the hardware was of appallingly low quality. A cool UI doesn't hide the fact that the operating system has absolutely nothing to do with what Palm is supposed to stand for. WebOS probably looked like the bee's knees to someone used to the version of Android and iOS at the time, but having had a long history using PalmOS products, webOS was a total and utter letdown. WebOS was a badly sewn together set of compromises, unfinished parts and shortcuts - and it showed. From The Verge's article, I get the impression that Eel slapped on a new coat of paint and new user-facing features - but that the lower levels and core of the operating system were still very much the same unoptimised mess. I'm definitely curious what LG's webOS TV is going to be like - it looks nice - but if it's anything like Palm's and HP's webOS products, it won't light any of my fires.
12:01 am	Advanced imaging reveals computer 1500 years ahead of its time http://www.osnews.com/story/27494/Advanced_imaging_reveals_computer_1500_years_ahead_of_its_time The findings, published in Nature, are probably best described as "mind blowing." Devices with this level of complexity were not seen again for almost 1,500 years, and the Antikythera mechanism's compactness actually bests the later designs. Probably built around 150 B.C., the Antikythera mechanism can perform a number of functions just by turning a crank on the side.
Wednesday, January 1st, 2014
7:11 pm	On hacking microSD cards http://www.osnews.com/story/27493/On_hacking_microSD_cards Remember when I wrote about how your mobile phone runs two operating systems, one of which is a black box we know and understand little about, ripe for vulnerabilities? As many rightfully pointed out in the comments - it's not just mobile phones that have tiny processors for specific tasks embedded in them. As it turns out, memory cards have microprocessors though - and yes, they can be cracked for remote code execution too. Today at the Chaos Computer Congress (30C3), xobs and I disclosed a finding that some SD cards contain vulnerabilities that allow arbitrary code execution - on the memory card itself. On the dark side, code execution on the memory card enables a class of MITM (man-in-the-middle) attacks, where the card seems to be behaving one way, but in fact it does something else. On the light side, it also enables the possibility for hardware enthusiasts to gain access to a very cheap and ubiquitous source of microcontrollers. There's so much computing power hidden in the dark.
7:05 pm	The Mac Pro review http://www.osnews.com/story/27492/The_Mac_Pro_review All in all the new Mac Pro is a good update to its aging predecessor. Apple did a great job with the new chassis and build a desktop that's extremely dense with compute. When I had to dust off the old Mac Pros to prepare them for this comparison I quickly remembered many of the reasons that frustrated me about the platform. The old Mac Pro was big, bulky, a pain to work on and was substantially behind the consumer Macs in single threaded performance. The new Mac Pro fixes literally all of that. If you have a workload that justifies it and prefer OS X, the Mac Pro is thankfully no longer just your only solution, it's a great solution. The only Mac Pro review that matters. Still want one. Won't buy one - but want one.
Monday, December 30th, 2013
6:48 pm	Jacob Applebaum: To protect and infect http://www.osnews.com/story/27491/Jacob_Applebaum_To_protect_and_infect Jacob Applebaum's detailed technical 30c3 talk about the NSA's tools. Just watch this. Naming and shaming of just about every major technology company. This will blow your mind.
5:56 pm	Xiaomi's Hugo Barra details China's insane technology market http://www.osnews.com/story/27490/Xiaomi_s_Hugo_Barra_details_China_s_insane_technology_market If you ever wondered why many people say the US and Europe are irrelevant targets for new and existing technology companies compared to China, just watch this Le Web interview with Hugo Barra - who recently left Google's Android team to join Chinese device maker Xiaomi. In it, he compares China's most popular internet services with their western counterparts - and 'our' services pale in comparison to China's. The most impressive number? China now has 500 million smartphone users. Six months ago, it was 'only' 250 million. That's the scale and growth we're talking about here. I often hear people say "yeah, but China is mostly poor people with a few rich ones on top" - well, these figures prove otherwise. And the growth is far, far from over. That's why I always chuckle whenever a major western company only highlights US figures. It just means they missed that huge, fat, Chinese boat.
5:16 pm	Haiku improves its processor support http://www.osnews.com/story/27489/Haiku_improves_its_processor_support In a blog post from Haiku developer Pawel Dziepak he describes the work he has been doing on improving processor support. Most notably removing the 8 processor limit. From the blog post: The main scheduler logic has been completed and now I am concentrating mainly on bug fixes, adjusting tunables and some minor improvements. I also removed gSchedulerLock, a spinlock I mentioned in my last post, and replaced it with more fine grained locking. An new interfaces for cpufreq and cpuidle modules has been created together with a cpufreq module for Intel Sandy Bridge or newer cores and cpuidle module for all processors that support C-states and invariant TSC. Furthermore, IRQs (including MSI) can be now directed to an arbitrary logical processor. Implementation of inter-processor interrupts has been improved so that it avoids acquiring any lock if it is not necessary and supports multicast interrupts. And, last but not least, 8 processor limit has been removed.
3:49 pm	Documents reveal top NSA hacking unit http://www.osnews.com/story/27488/Documents_reveal_top_NSA_hacking_unit The German newspaper Der Spiegel has unveiled a whole bunch of stuff about the NSA and its tools that defy belief. Their tools and actions go way beyond what we already knew; we're not just talking passive information gathering through cables and such, but way, way more. For instance, the NSA can divert shipments of purchased computers and equipment to their own secret workshops, where malware and spying hardware is added to these products before they are then shipped onward to the buyers. They also intercept Windows crash reports as they are sent from users' computers to Microsoft's servers. Worse yet, they can reportedly add special hardware to drones that can wirelessly infect computers from up to 8 kilometres away. We've only seen the tip of the iceberg here. The fact that no heads are rolling in Washington over this illustrates just how corrupt and undemocratic the US government has become.
Friday, December 27th, 2013
10:11 pm	Sailfish updated yet again http://www.osnews.com/story/27487/Sailfish_updated_yet_again Jolla promised another big bugfix update before the year was over, and they delivered. Version 1.0.2.5 brings a whole boatload of bugfixes and stability improvements, but also brings in a few new features - such as one-way Google Calendar synchronization, camera support for Android applications, and a few more. Bigger new features are expected to arrive in January. The update rollout itself was a bit of a disaster - the servers became overloaded (at least, that's what it looked like), so many people couldn't download the update, or would have the download hang halfway through. As far as I know, the update seems to be rolling out fine now, but having this process go wrong when the userbase is as small as it is means they've got some work to do on this one. In the meantime, Christmas was packed with gifts for Sailfish users when it comes to applications. For instance, Sailfish has its own, native WhatsApp client now - and it works perfectly, and looks great. There's also a video player, and a native Facebook client - Friends - is getting daily updates. Then there's TinyWebBrowser; started out as a test project, but is already getting more useful than the stock browser, mostly because it supports landscape (a feature the stock browser will supposedly get in January). All in all, the rate of new applications, new versions to existing applications, and operating system updates is all very promising, especially if you take into the account the very small userbase (I would guess several thousands at this point). Let's hope they can keep it up. For what it's worth - thanks to the new applications, I already uninstalled the Android compatibility stuff from my Jolla.
8:03 pm	The CDC 6600 architecture http://www.osnews.com/story/27486/The_CDC_6600_architecture The CDC6600 and its family members are part of the computer industry history. A decade before the Cray 1, the members of the CDC6000 family were not only expensive and the most powerful systems at the time of introduction. They were also lean and wonderful architectures ! The elegance was also conveyed in several publications (many by CDC), where all the necessary knowledge was explained from the ground up. All you needed to know was supplied, clearly laid out, not just hints for efficient programming. Basically, you could rebuild your own computer by reading these books. 50 years later, they are invaluable reminders and tools, we can see where the computer industry comes from and realise that it is not that hard to do it ourselves, too. Via HackerNews. This is an amazing resource.
6:19 pm	Google sues Apple, Microsoft-backed patent troll Rockstar http://www.osnews.com/story/27485/Google_sues_Apple_Microsoft-backed_patent_troll_Rockstar Google has decided to fight back against the Apple and Microsoft-backed patent troll Rockstar. It has filed a lawsuit, asking the court to state that the Android platform does not infringe any of the patents the patent troll is asserting against Android, Google, and Android OEMs. Google describes Rockstar's trolling in no uncertain terms. Rockstar produces no products and practices no patents. Instead, Rockstar employs a staff of engineers in Ontario, Canada, who examine other companies' successful products to find anything that Rockstar might use to demand and extract licenses to its patents under threat of litigation. A very interesting tidbit is found further down in the legal documents - Google claims that Rockstar actually contacted companies that use Android, asking them to... Stop using Android. On information and belief, Rockstar contacted and met with these California-based companies in order to discourage them from continuing to use Google's Android platform in their devices, and to interfere with Google's business relationships. This Apple and Microsoft shell company is way, way dirtier than we already knew.
Tuesday, December 24th, 2013
4:02 pm	BlackBerry posts disastrous quarterly results http://www.osnews.com/story/27484/BlackBerry_posts_disastrous_quarterly_results BlackBerry's new interim chief John Chen has just got a rude wake-up call: the company shipped only 1.9 million smartphones to retailers in Q3 compared to 3.7 million last quarter, and lost $4.4 billion. Most of the phones shipped were lower-priced BB7 models, and it lost a massive $2.6 billion on unsold BlackBerry 10 devices and other associated BB10 charges. Retail channel sales (of phones already shipped) during the period also showed the scale of the drop in its upmarket phones: of 4.3 million devices sold to end-users, only 1.1 million were BB10 handsets. I feel terrible for the people working at RIM. This is the news they have to hear just days before Christmas.
3:56 pm	Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing http://www.osnews.com/story/27483/Royal_pardon_for_codebreaker_Alan_Turing "His later life was overshadowed by his conviction for homosexual activity, a sentence we would now consider unjust and discriminatory and which has now been repealed," said Mr Grayling. "Turing deserves to be remembered and recognised for his fantastic contribution to the war effort and his legacy to science. A pardon from the Queen is a fitting tribute to an exceptional man." Finally.
Monday, December 23rd, 2013
9:15 pm	Plasma 2 Technology Preview released http://www.osnews.com/story/27482/Plasma_2_Technology_Preview_released Plasma 2 Technology Preview demonstrates the current development status. The Plasma 2 user interfaces are built using QML and run on top of a fully hardware accelerated graphics stack using Qt5, QtQuick 2 and an OpenGL(-ES) scenegraph. Plasma 2 is a converged workspace shell that can run and switch between user interfaces for different formfactors, and makes the workspace adaptable to a given target device. Plasma 2 is not a complete rewrite; it's a port to a new graphics system (a fully hardware accelerated OpenGL(ES) scenegraph).