Techreport

Krebs on Security reports that Ashley Madison, an online "dating" site for those wishing to cheat on their spouses, has been hacked and its customer data compromised. The data breach could expose some 37 million unfaithful or would-be unfaithful spouses along with their credit-card info and any, uh, special desires these customers shared via the service.The group claiming responsibility for the hack calls itself The Impact Team. It's demanding that the ...Read more...

Morning, folks. Hope you had a good weekend. I actually took the whole span to rest and not work, which doesn't always happen around here. I got to hang out with some old friends and rest, which was wonderful. Now I'm back to the, uh, grind of overclocking video cards for review. Yeah, it's tough.Some of you have expressed worry, in the wake of Jordan saying goodbye on the last podcast, about the status of the site. All I can tell you is that the recent departures of three key people were individual decisions made by them, not prompted by us. I ...Read more...

If Google's Nexus 9 tablet is too thick and heavy for your meager arms to hold, Samsung has a cure in the form of its Galaxy Tab S2 tablets. Despite measuring in at a mere 5.6mm (or 0.22") thick, Samsung's follow-ups to the Galaxy Tab S line pack in the features while weighing as little as 265g (or 9.3 oz) for the eight-inch model, or 389g (or 13.7 oz) for the 9.7" version. ...Read more...

Blizzard has opened preorders for StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void, the second expansion to 2010's StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. The add-on includes the single-player campaign follow-up to 2013's Heart of the Swarm, and pre-orders get immediate access to a set of prologue missions called Whispers of Oblivion which fill the gap between the two expansions. The new expansion tells the story of the Protoss' pursuit of (spoilers for a two-year-old expansion to a five-year-old game ahead) the malevolent Xel'Naga, Amon. Terran-turned-Zerg-turned-sorta-Terran-turned-uber-Zerg Sarah Kerrigan and fan favorite Jim Raynor are back, as well.On the multi-player front, Legacy of the Void introduces a handful of new units, re-balances old ones, and adds Archon Mode , in which teammates share control over the same base and units. Pre-orders also get access to the Legacy of the Void multi-player beta. Blizzard ...Read more...

During its Q2 earnings call, TSMC president and co-CEO Mark Liu announced that the chipmaker has begun volume shipment of chips based on its 16-nm FinFET manufacturing process. According to a transcript of the call posted by TheStreet, Liu said that the ramping of the 16-nm process will be even more aggressive than that of its 20-nm process. As a result, TSMC expects to gain foundry market share over the remainder of 2015 and well into 2016.Liu also talked about the foundry's 10-nm and 7-nm processes, saying that the recent product-like validation vehicle milestone was encouraging and that its plans are on-track. He re-iterated ...Read more...

Eight is Enough

Disappointed by Amazon's Prime Day extravaganza earlier this week? We've surveyed the rest of this week's deals and discounts from other retailers, and we think these are the best of the bunch.That's it for this week. If we missed any good deals, be sure to share with us in the comments. ...Read more...

We say farewell to long-time host and producer Jordan Drake. Someone cries. Then we bravely move on to talk about the Radeon R9 Fury, Fractal Design's Define S case, and a bunch of questions from the chat.Thanks to EVGA for ...Read more...

Despite some confusion over statements made by Microsoft executive VP Terry Myerson at Windows 10's introduction, the new operating system does indeed have a support life cycle. The company's freshly updated life cycle schedule shows that WIndows 10 will enjoy the same ten-year support period as Redmond's previous operating systems, with a minimum of five years of mainstream support and five more years of extended support.The dates don't exactly correspond with the July 29 release date, extending to October 13, 2020 for mainstream support and October 14, 2025 for extended support. Those dates are calculated using the date of general availability, ...Read more...

Van Helsing developer Neocore is making an RPG based on Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 universe. Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor-Martyr puts the player in the shoes of an agent of the Holy Orders of the Emperor's Inquisition, an organization that operates as the secret police of the Imperium. Neocore has released a trailer, but it doesn't give away much:...Read more...

Bethesda's Pete Hines has talked to GameSpot about last April's controversy surrounding paid mods for The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim in the Steam Workshop. Here's a quick recap: earlier this year, Valve introduced paid mods in Steam Workshop, allowing mod creators to charge for their work. Skyrim was the pilot game for the program. Proceeds from paid mods were divided among Bethesda, Valve, and the mod's author. That went about as well as tossing water into hot oil, as the gaming community's furious reaction eventually led Valve to cancel the whole thing a few days later.In the interview, Hines says he would like to see paid mods return in some form, but he doesn't provide any details on how that could happen. He does say that "our stance on it is we're going to re-evaluate it going forward." The company does think that mod authors ...Read more...

Researchers have found yet another way to attack the aging RC4 stream cipher, an encryption scheme still used by many websites' SSL setups and the legacy Wi-Fi encryption protocol WPA-TKIP. The new attack only requires 75 hours' worth of collected data, or 52 hours if JavaScript is injected into a victim's browser.The RC4 cipher has been under scrutiny for quite some time. Several research papers detail a variety of methods that would make an attack computationally feasible. The previous minimum data collection time that ...Read more...

Boutique case maker CaseLabs has apologized to Thermaltake for accusations that Thermaltake violated patents and ripped off the designs of its products. As we reported in June, CaseLabs previously posted a comparison between Thermaltake's W Series and its own Merlin S8 cases, both of which have external add-ons that can sit above or below the main PC case.The apology letter retracts CaseLabs' claims that the PC component giant violated patents that CaseLabs could not afford to defend. Those patent claims turned out to be nonexistent. CaseLabs' president, James Keating and vice president Kevin Keating admit in the letter that the threats of patent ...Read more...

Come join us for the live recording of the latest episode of The Tech Report Podcast on Twitch. We'll be discussing AMD's Radeon Fury graphics card and taking listener questions:...Read more...

AMD's R9 Fury and R9 Fury X may not be the absolute fastest graphics cards on the planet, but they're still very fast–and very new. If you want to support the red team by dropping your cold, hard cash (or plastic) on its new hotness, though, you may have a tough time. A quick survey of Newegg, Amazon, Tiger Direct, and NCIX in the US reveals that no R9 Fury or R9 Fury X cards from any of AMD's partners are in stock.Right now, prices for R9 Fury X cards hover slightly above AMD's $649.99 suggested price, often in the $669-$679 range. Of all the retailers we checked, only Newegg has a listing at AMD's suggested price, in the form of Sapphire's R9 Fury X ...Read more...

AMD has posted its Q2 2015 financial results. The company reported revenue of $942 million and an operating loss of $137 million. Gross margins dropped 10% year-on-year, and the company lost 23 cents per share. Here are the company's GAAP results, in tabular form:AMD pointed to weaker-than-expected consumer PC demand as one of the primary reasons for the revenue drop, which impacted APU sales to OEMs, and attributed the year-on-year ...Read more...

Tonight's podcast live stream is happening at our usual time, 9:30PM ET/6:30PM PT, over on our Twitch channel.We'll be talking about the Radeon R9 Fury, taking questions from the chat, and kicking around the latest news stories, as well. You ...Read more...

Windows 10 is coming, and PC makers everywhere are capitalizing on its release as a way to stem declining PC sales. HP certainly isn't sitting out the occasion: the company has pulled back the curtain on its family of Windows 10 devices and services for businesses, due to be available shortly after Win10's July 29 launch.HP touts the security offered by new Windows 10 features like Microsoft Hello , Microsoft Passport, and Device Guard as reasons to upgrade, as well as its own security measures. One is HP Sure Start, which is described as a "self-healing BIOS." Sure Start inspects the system's firmware ...Read more...

We already know that the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight is quite a mess, bad enough that publisher WB Interactive has temporarily halted sales of the game. Now, word has it that Arkham Knight may not be fixed for a while yet. Kotaku Australia reports that a leaked internal EB Games email tells employees that the game will not get the full suite of promised patches "until Spring," or fall for those of us in the northern hemisphere.The use of seasons is vague, but it may mean that PC gamers will have to wait until September at the earliest to receive the fully patched game. A recent post by WB Interactive apologized ...Read more...

Witness the power of Facebook's ever-growing bankroll. Oculus has acquired Israeli computer vision experts Pebbles Interfaces, a company that specializes in hand-tracking technology. Here's a handy demo:...Read more...

The TR BBQ XII is coming on August 15, 2015, and you should consider coming out to join us. I just booked my travel, and the rates on everything were still pretty reasonable.For the uninitiated, the TR BBQ is an epic, day-long event that we hold on the shores of Lake Michigan each year. Here's my report from last year that will give you a ...Read more...

Kaspersky Lab has revealed a few more technical details about the malware used in the recent intrusion into its systems, which the company has christened "Duqu 2.0." The report includes a worrisome detail: a 64-bit Windows driver used by the malware platform is digitally signed by none other than Foxconn Technology Group, one of the world's largest electronics manufacturers. You might know some of their clients, like Apple, Microsoft, and Google.The valid digital signature makes the driver in question appear perfectly legitimate from the OS's perspective, and is one of the reasons why Duqu 2.0 doesn't ...Read more...

Mouse preference is a personal choice. We all have different hands and our own personalities. Some mice are utilitarian, while others feature customizable shapes and sensors. Cougar's 550M eschews all that and cranks the bling to eleven. Sure, it ticks all the right boxes: it has a braided cable, a 6400-dpi optical sensor, and on-the-fly-adjustable DPI levels. The six buttons can be customized using Cougar's UIX software, and personal settings (including macros) can be stored in any of three onboard profiles. That's all pretty standard fare for a gaming mouse, though. ...Read more...

During the investor conference call for Intel's Q2 financial report, CEO Brian Krzanich confirmed recent rumors that the chipmaker's 10-nm manufacturing process has been delayed. ZDNet has a partial transcript in which Krzanich lauds Moore's Law while stating that Intel's recent node transitions have "signaled that our cadence today is closer to two-and-a-half years than two."A two-and-a-half-year cadence would result in a gap in Intel's CPU plans. As a result, ZDNet claims Intel is working on a third 14-nm CPU family after Broadwell and Skylake, supposedly carrying the name Lake. The new ...Read more...

Intel has released its financial results for Q2 2015. The company reported operating income of $2.9 billion on revenue of $13.2 billion, down 25% and 5% respectively from a year ago. Gross margin fell two points year-over-year to 62.5%, while earnings per share remained flat at 55 cents.Here's a tabular summary ...Read more...

Microsoft has announced the availability of the latest Windows 10 preview build, version 10240, and the company's blog post about the new release offers some interesting tidbits. It's described as being "one step closer to what customers will start to receive on 7/29", and it's been made available in both the Fast and Slow update rings. Users installing the latest build will notice that the version indicator and evaluation watermark on the desktop is gone. Furthermore, The Verge reports that "sources familiar with Microsoft's plans" say the company is marking this build as release to manufacturing (RTM), meaning that PC makers can start installing it on new machines. ...Read more...

If remote execution of code via Flash or Java vulnerabilities isn't irritating enough, the Hacking Team leaks could have opened the door to more persistent pwnage, too. Trend Micro warns of a UEFI rootkit developed by the gray-hat devs that's designed to make life miserable for victims with unsecured motherboards. Once it's flashed to the system's firmware, the rootkit ensures that Hacking Team's Remote Control System malware remains installed on the target machine by checking for its presence in Windows before the OS even boots. If the user somehow manages to purge the malware, the compromised firmware reinstalls it before allowing Windows to load.Since the exploit resides in firmware, reformatting or even replacing the boot volume is not sufficient action to clean the infection. ...Read more...

Reports of the iPod's demise have been greatly exaggerated. Apple took the wraps off an updated iPod touch this morning. The new version gets the same A8 CPU as the iPhone 6, and its rear camera gets a bump to eight megapixels. The previously camera-free 16GB model gets this shooter, as well. Those who still carry huge music libraries will also pleased to find an Apple Store-exclusive 128GB storage tier. ...Read more...

Heads up, Windows sysadmins and users everywhere. This is a friendly reminder to let you know that Microsoft has finally stopped providing definition updates for its Security Esssentials anti-malware application for Windows XP. One hopes that the move will serve as another prod for extra-stubborn users to move off the obsolete operating system, which still accounts for a whopping 12% of desktop users, according to Net Market Share.Perhaps more importantly, Windows Server 2003 has also reached its end-of-life threshold : its extended support period ended yesterday. Windows Server 2003 served us well for 12 years, but systems running it are ...Read more...

We've taken a look at a few trailers for Just Cause 3 already at TR, and they've all looked like a lot of fun. Today, Avalanche Studios has put a new twist on the game trailer genre: the latest teaser for JC3 allows viewers to choose their own path through the wide range of options the game offers for tearing stuff down and blowing things up.You can start your own explosive journey with this video. Click one of the ...Read more...

Amazon is having something called "Prime Day" that appears to be really commercialistic and gross, according to everyone on Twitter. But in the midst of this bizarre bazaar shines the light of a pretty nifty deal on SSDs. You can get a Crucial MX100 256GB for $79.99, which is 20 bucks off the regular price. If you'd like more capacity, the 512GB version is going for $159.99. Those folks with Amazon get free two-day shipping, as well.The MX100 performed reasonably well in our review of the drive , ...Read more...

German manufacturer be quiet! has released a new variant of their Silent Base 800 case. Dubbed the Silent Base 800 Window, it features a novel design for its side panel—the window is made of two individual sheets made of scratch-resistant polycarbonate, with 9 mm of air space between them to improve soundproofing. ...Read more...

Overclockin' man K|NGP|N (Vince Lucido) has shown off a few teaser pictures of the custom GeForce GTX 980 Ti card he's preparing in partnership with EVGA. It's not the first time Lucido and EVGA have designed custom graphics cards together, and this one looks to be as extreme as its predecessors.

As Windows 10's July 29 release draws near, Microsoft is temporarily shuttering ISO downloads and cutting off fresh installs of the preview OS. Gabe Aul, general manager of the Operating Systems Group's Data and Fundamentals team, has announced that within 24 hours, no new builds of Windows 10 will be available and preview keys will no longer activate fresh installations. Additionally, whatever build your test system is currently running will show as up-to-date when checking for updates via Windows Update.Aul says this cutoff is being made so that the company can stress-test its final Win10 distribution channels ahead of the public release of the new OS . New builds will now hit ...Read more...

Clear your Thursday evening calendars, folks: The Tech Report Podcast live stream returns this week at 9:30 PM ET (6:30 PM PT), after a brief Radeon Fury-related hiatus. We'll be discussing AMD's air-cooled Fury and answering reader questions related to the new card, as well as our usual smorgasbord of news and review talk. Here's our last episode:...Read more...

SanDisk has updated its Connect Wireless Stick family of Wi-Fi-enabled flash drives. These drives don't require a USB connection to work. Instead, devices like tablets and phones (and plain old computers) can connect wirelessly to stream media or transfer files using the Connect Wireless Stick's own battery-powered Wi-Fi network. The new models feature capacities ranging from 16GB to 128GB. ...Read more...

If you use Firefox, and you've noticed a bunch of dire security warnings about Flash being disabled this morning, there's a reason for that. Mozilla's chief of support Mark Schmidt has made a tweet stating that all versions of Flash are currently blocked by default in its browser. Don't rejoice too much, though—Schmidt later clarified that the block is only in place until Adobe releases a patched version, as per Mozilla's usual policy.BIG NEWS!! All versions of Flash are blocked by default in Firefox as ...Read more...

China's Tsinghua Unigroup, Ltd. may be preparing a $23 billion offer to buy out memory maker Micron Technologies. According to a report by Bloomberg, the buyout offer has already received approval from Chinese authorities, but would still be subject to regulatory approval in the US. If approved, the deal would give China control of the fifth-largest chipmaker in the world by revenue.When contacted for comment, Tsinghua Unigroup Chairman Zhao Weiguo told Bloomberg that the company is "very interested in cooperation with Micron." A ...Read more...

Those of you eager to leverage synergies with Microsoft's Surface Hub will have to wait a little longer than the previously announced September release date. Surface general manager Brian Hall has announced that demand for the wall-mounted collaboration platform has been high, and as a result Redmond has adjusted its manufacturing process to, in his words, "prepare for production at broader scale." Hall said that Microsoft will have an update on its expected shipping timeframe in early August. If you're in the market to distill your identity and visualize a value-added experience, Microsoft is still taking pre-orders for its big-screen collaboration tools.Meanwhile, Hall says more businesses are delivering on their core competencies with Surface Pro 3 tablets. As a result of that high demand, Microsoft is expanding its business channel to include "a ...Read more...

Apple makes money hand over fist and water is wet, but just how wet Apple's water is can still be something to behold. Citing an estimate from financial services firm Canaccord Genuity, a report from the Wall Street Journal says Apple raked in 92% of all smartphone profits in Q1 2015, dwarfing second-place Samsung's 15% share—a number that may soon dwindle further. Apple turned in those profit figures while selling less than 20% of all handsets worldwide.The more mathematically inclined might notice that 92%+15%=107%, but these figures take all of the smartphone losers into account, with both Lenovo ( whose numbers include results from subsidiary Motorola ...Read more...

Watch where you point those web browsers: Oracle's Java and Adobe's Flash are both subjects of new zero-day vulnerabilities. As Ars Technica reports, a hole in Java and two more Flash weaknesses have been unearthed as part of the Hacking Team data leak.The Java hole may be the most troublesome. Anti-virus maker Trend Micro warns on its corporate blog that it has detected email messages exploiting the vulnerability addressed to both a NATO ...Read more...

Two new Asus ZenPad tablets are up for sale at Best Buy: the ZenPad S 8.0 Z580C-B1, and the more affordable ZenPad C 7.0 Z170C-A1. These tablets slot in below the higher-end ZenPad S Z580CA that Geoff examined recently.Let's start with the Z580C-B1 . The star of the show is an 8," 2048x1536 4:3 screen, good for 320 PPI. Intel's ...Read more...

Seagate has lowered its financial projections for Q2 2015, which ended July 3. The company expects $2.9 billion in revenue, down from earlier guidance of $3.2 billion to $3.3 billion. Non-GAAP gross margin is also expected to be lower than previously projected at 27%, down from 28.5%. Operating expenses are expected to be about $530 million, down from earlier forecasts of $555 million.The company cites lower-than-expected demand as the key reason for the lowered forecast. Over the past quarter, Seagate says it shipped 45 million units, and estimates that it holds a ...Read more...

A common problem with "big data" analysis, according to MIT, is that the data sets are often too large to fit in RAM on a server or cluster. A team of researchers associated with the university has attempted to solve that problem for some workloads by doing away with RAM entirely.Instead, the researchers' experimental cluster, called BlueDBM, uses a network of solid-state storage controlled by field-programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs, to cut both costs and power consumption for ...Read more...

The Starting Five

No need to check your clocks—we haven't gone back in time. BeamDog has announced an expansion for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, called Siege of Dragonspear. The expansion's storyline fills the space between the events of Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II, kicking off after the demise of main baddie Sarevok. You can watch the trailer below:...Read more...

It's Friday, and that means it's time for another round of deals. As usual, we've picked through the avalanche of promotions, discounts, and rebate offers to bring you the best of what's out there.That's it for this week's deals. Be sure to share any ...Read more...

Gmail product manager Sri Harsha Somanchi has outlined some new steps the free email service is taking to try to improve its spam detection on the official Gmail blog. First, Google is deploying a new service, Gmail Postmaster Tools, which allows "qualified high-volume senders" to analyze what they send and how it's treated. Senders will be able to see data on sending errors, spam reports, and their reputations. (If this sounds familiar, Microsoft offers a similar service for bulk senders in the form of Smart Network Data Services, or SNDS.)Interestingly, Google claims to have implemented ideas from its Google Search and Google Now services to improve its machine learning processes for spam detection. The spam filter now employs an artificial neural network to help identify what the company calls "especially sneaky" spam that might otherwise appear to be legitimate mail. The neural network should also help detect ...Read more...

GameReactor interviewed The Witcher 3's director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz at the Gamelab 2015 conference in Barcelona, and he had some juicy details to spill about the upcoming expansions for the game. He says the expansions will include new fully-developed storylines, cutscenes, and characters, and they also may be quite long. Hearts of Stone, the first expansion, is claimed to be about 10 hours of gameplay, while Blood and Wine will be even longer at 20 hours. Tomaszkiewicz goes as far as comparing them to The Witcher 2 in terms of gameplay length. You can watch the full interview below:...Read more...

According to new research from both Gartner and IDC, worldwide PC shipments continued their decline in Q2 2015. The firms differ on the degree of the shrinkage. Gartner estimates that worldwide PC shipments fell 9.5%, while IDC's results show an 11.8% decline when compared to the same quarter a year ago. Both firms noted that PC shipments were down slightly more than expected, and they both expect continued declines for the rest of this year, with slow, steady growth set to resume in 2016 and beyond.The firms do generally agree on the largest players in the PC market. Both show Lenovo on top worldwide with around 20% of the market, followed by ...Read more...