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Sara et Sara

Né(e) le 11 août 2016

10 ans

Depuis sa naissance

Suivez les premières fois, les découvertes et tous les souvenirs de notre enfant.

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Tous nos moments

De l’attente aux premières années, retrouvez ici les étapes et les souvenirs qui composent notre histoire.

Les échographies

Battery for ASUS A75VD

It's a great idea with (I believe) real potential... but talk of receiving samples after three years and $1.2 million dollars of investment, frankly, worries me no end, Moore writes. Water cooler El Reg, some friends of mine have been showing me blog posts about Microsoft keeping secret copies of all our encryption keys. What's going on?Since Windows 8, Microsoft has built drive encryption into its operating system, so none of this should really be a shock. And this encryption feature shouldn't be confused with Bitlocker, which is aimed at power users and businesses; think of this feature as a diet Bitlocker.Whenever you first log into a new Windows 10 computer or device using a Microsoft account, the OS quietly and automatically encrypts the internal storage drive, and uploads a recovery key to Redmond's OneDrive servers. While you're logged into your machine, your data is decrypted and accessible. If someone steals your PC or tablet, and they don't know your password, they shouldn't be able to get at your files because they can't decrypt them.If you forget your password or somehow can't log into your PC or device any more, you won't be able to use your drive because it will remain encrypted. If you change your motherboard, you won't be able to decrypt your data either because the system ties the encryption to a crypto key stored in the chipset. The new board won't have that key.


Imagine the tech support calls Microsoft and PC makers must get every day from people – people who think the caps lock key is cruise control FOR COOL. People who can't remember how to turn on Bluetooth. Now imagine the sheer hell of dealing with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who wake up one morning and can't remember their passwords, only to be told: Sorry, it's gone. All your data is gone.It's not a hassle Microsoft wants to deal with, so it provides people a recovery key, stored on the corporation's servers, to sign back in. If you have recovery key for an encrypted drive, you can decrypt it.Can't I just print out my key? Or put it on a USB stick? And not give a copy to Redmond?Yes – you can print it out or save it to a thumb drive in case you need it in future. You can download your key from here. If you can't see a key, and you're a Windows user, then your computer doesn't have the hardware – such as a suitable TPM module – to support the storage encryption, so you don't have to worry about any of this.Well, here's the rub. Maybe if Microsoft was a little more upfront with people, and made it a clear option during installation or during the first boot, this wouldn't be such a shock. Just like its privacy settings in Windows 10 that are on by default and tucked away: some are useful, others not, but a little warning would have been appreciated.



Well, I don't like it. Whoever has my recovery key can decrypt my drive. I don't want Microsoft to have my key.Fine. If you're a Windows Home user, click here, save a copy of the recovery key just in case, and then delete it from OneDrive. Microsoft promises to eventually scrub it from its cloud servers and backups.Beware: if another person logs into your machine using a Microsoft account, the recovery key may be uploaded again. To put an end to this, follow these instructions (skip step four) to create a new recovery password that is just between you and your computer. Obviously, don't lose or forget this password.Alternatively, switch off drive encryption by opening the Control Panel, and navigating to PC and devices, then PC info, then Device Encryption, and doing the deed there. Now you can use another disk encryption tool that doesn't send keys to off-site systems.Go to the Control Panel, open the Bitlocker settings screen, turn the feature off, then reenable it, and then when prompted, don't allow the recovery key to be sent to Microsoft's servers. Pro and Enterprise editions can also store recovery keys in an Active Directory service, which is an obvious thing to do in a corporate environment.Look, this is a breach of my privacy – what if the Feds get hold of the recovery key? They have ways and means to do so.Anyone with the recovery key needs physical access to your machine to use it, so that computer would have to be seized anyway for the key to be any use.


We've been watching the date since we reported on Java 9's new naming scheme a couple of weeks back and named September 22nd, 2016, as the debut date for the new code.Which wasn't entirely right, as reader Sean Coffey pointed out because in this thread Java's overseers were pondering a revised release schedule with March 23rd, 2017, as the day for Java 9's debut.That date has since been all but agreed. The chief architect in Oracle's Java Platform Group, Mark Reinhold, Oracletook to the Java developer's mailing list on December 12th with the new schedule, suggesting that anyone opposed to the new plan make themselves heard by December 16th. That date's come and gone without obvious protest on the list.Now Oracle's seen fit to ventilate the proposed schedule on its blog, proclaiming Reinhold's schedule represents the “Latest Java 9 News”.By now you probably just want us to show you the proposed schedule. So in the interests of not frustrating readers we'd best stop padding this story and just give you the list.The team's given itself an extra six months to get the job done, meaning the world will have to go through another Christmas without a new Java to play with.



Perhaps more importantly, the world will also have to wait for a new Java just as Internet of Things hype gathers even more pace. As Oracle likes to point out, Java's a fine fit for things. History suggests Big Red doesn't need to worry about missing the boat: when a topic is as hyped as the IoT, by the time version 9 emerges developers will probably only just be starting on serious work, just as enthusiasm for apparently inevitable benefits ebbs. Review Against all predictions, Microsoft has made a profitable multi-billion dollar business out of a boutique tablet. It has also turned a bog standard commodity Thing - a Windows laptop - into something desirable. And it has done it all without fully answering the question “Why should I have one?”The Surface began life only three years ago as a cosmic joke, and Microsoft soaked up expensive write-downs. But after turning the tablet into a Windows laptop (only one that came not as one expensive part, like an Apple’s laptop, but three expensive parts), Surfaces began to sell like hot cakes. This year the public’s ardour for Surface has cooled somewhat: it was down to $672m in the quarter ending September 30th, down from $908m annually, but that may reflect that the launch of the SP4 came later in the year.Why get a Surface Pro? Well the immediate answer “because it’s cool”, doesn’t cut it. It’s a circular reply. A solipsism. So is “because I needed a laptop and, er … I could expense it”, which is the second most popular answer I hear, one that's surely closer to explaining the Surface’s success.

Mes rendez-vous

Batterie pour Dell Inspiron 1000

La plupart des systèmes disponibles utilisent un interrupteur marche/arrêt caché à l’extrémité du guidon, tandis que d’autres utilisent un capteur qui fait tourner le moteur lorsque la cadence d’un coureur tombe en dessous d’un certain niveau.Tour de France : le « dopage mécanique », est un problème croissant dans le cyclismeTour de France : le « dopage mécanique », est un problème croissant dans le cyclisme
Si les officiels de course ont déjà opté sur des inspections visuelles pour tenter d’identifier les vélos avec des moteurs cachés, la technologie pourrait désormais les aider. Évidemment, il est toujours possible de scruter le moindre mouvement du doigt pour voir si un bouton est pressé, ou encore regarder le mouvement inhabituel d’un pneu, comme une roue qui continue de tourner après une chute. Mais, ces subtils indices font uniquement allusion à la présence d’un moteur et, dans la plupart des cas, ne suffisent pas pour justifier une inspection d’un vélo.Pour lutter contre cette forme de tricherie, l’Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) utilise dorénavant une caméra thermique, qui peut détecter des moteurs cachés dans un vélo tout au long d’une course.Pendant le Tour de France, deux caméras thermiques ainsi que des tablettes à résonance magnétique seront utilisées par l’UCI au départ et à l’arrivée des étapes. Les caméras thermiques sont capables de détecter des signatures de chaleur liées à la présence d’un moteur sur le moyeu ou le pédalier arrière d’un vélo. Les caméras seront utilisées tout au long de la course, et peuvent être utilisées à la fois pendant la compétition et sur le côté de la route. Les officiels de course ne disent pas où ou quand les contrôles auront lieu. Les membres de l’UCI vont également utiliser le système de balayage par résonance magnétique sur les lignes de départ et d’arrivée. Ce scanner identifie les vélos trafiqués en utilisant un appareil qui émet un champ magnétique. Une tablette analyse alors ce champ magnétique à la recherche d’inhabituelles perturbations dues aux moteurs cachés dans un vélo.


« Dell conçoit des tablettes Android ? » vous pourriez vous demander. La réponse a été oui, mais plus maintenant. En effet, Dell ne proposera pas de nouveaux appareils dans sa gamme Venue.La gamme Venue de Dell a offert une expérience Android assez bonne, en particulier, la Venue 8 7000 et la Venue 10 7000 sont d’excellentes tablettes. Bien qu’elles avaient des éléments qui leur permettaient de se différencier de la concurrence — la gamme Venue a été la première à intégrer la caméra RealSense 3D d’Intel, il semble que Dell n’ait pas réussi à susciter l’intérêt que la firme avait placé en elles. Aujourd’hui, la société va plutôt se concentrer sur ses périphériques Windows 2-en-1.« Le marché des tablettes est sursaturé, et connaît une baisse de la demande de la part des consommateurs. Nous avons donc décidé de mettre fin à la gamme de tablettes Venue basées sur Android », a déclaré un porte-parole de Dell à PC World dans un e-mail. « Nous assistons à une hausse en popularité des périphériques 2-en-1, car ils fournissent un savoureux mélange des capacités de PC avec la mobilité de la tablette. Ceci est particulièrement vrai dans l’espace commercial ».Autrement dit, Dell ne sortira pas de nouvelle itération de ses modèles Android, mais les contrats de garantie et le service sera encore supporté. En outre, vous ne serez plus en mesure d’acheter le Wyse Cloud Connect, un périphérique d’accès au cloud portable et ultracompact, qui peut se brancher à un écran par le port USB.
De plus, et peut-être encore plus triste, la société n’a pas l’intention de pousser les futures mises à jour du système d’exploitation à ses dispositifs qui sont déjà dans la nature.



Ce n’est pas le premier dispositif que Dell abandonne de sa gamme Venue, puisqu’en 2012, la firme a également abandonné la gamme de smartphones Venue sous Android.Quoi qu’il en soit, rassurez-vous, ce n’est pas la fin du pacte entre Dell et Android. D’une part, il y a encore les Chromebook de Dell (qui vont offrir un support aux applications Android), et d’autre part, la firme affirme être toujours ouverte à offrir un support à Android sur ses appareils à l’avenir — seulement probablement pas des tablettes.Facebook veut que vous partagiez rapidement tous les articles, vidéos, et pages Web que vous appréciez à vos amis.Il n’est pas étonnant d’apprendre que Facebook déploie de nouveaux outils : une extension Chrome qui simplifie le bookmarking, et un bouton Like repensé pour notre plus grand plaisir.Les nouveaux plug-ins sont les plus drastiques, visuellement parlant. Ils disposent d’un bouton « Like » redessiné, qui est un peu plus arrondi et un peu moins coloré que l’ancien design. Il abandonne également avec le logo « f » de Facebook, pour laisser place au pouce en l’air. Le nombre de « Like » est désormais intégré dans la bulle du bouton plutôt qu’à l’extérieur, comme ce fut le cas avec le vieux bouton.Ces changements ont été bien appréciés, a déclaré Facebook. Après des tests side-by-side « qualitatifs et quantitatifs », le réseau social a déterminé que la nouvelle conception a encouragé les clics à une fréquence plus élevée que son prédécesseur.


Facebook repense le design de son bouton LikeFacebook repense le design de son bouton Like
Mais, le nouveau bouton Like confère des avantages dans d’autres domaines. Il existe en plusieurs tailles, optimisées pour les smartphones, les tablettes et d’autres dispositifs mobiles (Facebook rapporte que 30 % des impressions du bouton « J’aime » proviennent des périphériques mobiles), et dispose d’une esthétique « raffinée et moderne ». De plus, il est rétrocompatible, ce qui signifie qu’il n’aura pas un impact négatif sur des sites tiers qui mettent en œuvre actuellement le bouton, désormais obsolète. En outre, les nouveaux boutons Like fonctionnent parfaitement avec Instant Articles, la solution hébergée de Facebook pour les éditeurs.Le bouton Like de Facebook est désormais responsiveLe bouton Like de Facebook est désormais responsive
Les nouveaux boutons vont être poussés « au cours des prochaines semaines », a déclaré Facebook. Si vous avez déjà un bouton incrusté sur votre site Web, il va automatiquement se mettre à jour.Les nouvelles extensions Chrome de Facebook sont un peu plus restreintes. L’une d’elles, Share to Facebook, fournit des raccourcis pour partager des liens vers Groups, Messenger et Facebook. L’autre, Save to Facebook, est l’outil de bookmarking du réseau social. Vous pouvez enregistrer rapidement des articles, des vidéos, des produits ou des pages Web entières, qui se synchronisent sur tous vos dispositifs.



Cette semaine, Evernote a annoncé que l’application de prise de notes allait subir d’importants changements. Controversés, ces derniers vont limiter la version de base, gratuite, en synchronisant les notes sur deux dispositifs seulement. De plus, la plate-forme va augmenter les prix de ses offres payantes, Plus et Premium, passant respectivement à 3,99 euros/mois et 6,99 euros/mois.Autrement dit, il s’agit de nouvelles décevantes pour toute personne qui utilise l’application sur son ordinateur de bureau et ses appareils mobiles pour garder une trace de ses notes, rassembler des ressources pour des projets ou noter des idées tout au long de la journée.Evernote a promis de fournir un temps d’adaptation avant que les nouvelles limites soient activées aux utilisateurs actuels, mais si vous êtes à la recherche d’une alternative à Evernote, voici vos options.OneNote fait partie de la nouvelle suite Office de Microsoft. L’Application exécute toutes les fonctionnalités d’EvernoteOneNote fait partie de la nouvelle suite Office de Microsoft. L’Application exécute toutes les fonctionnalités d’Evernote
Si vous utilisez Evernote comme votre outil de favoris multimédia ou de gestion de projets, OneNote est une excellente alternative. L’application est préinstallée avec Windows 10 dans le cadre de la suite Office, et elle est disponible en téléchargement pour les versions antérieures de Windows. De plus, il y a des applications mobiles pour Android, iOS et Windows Phone, en plus d’une application Web.

Les échographies

Akku für Toshiba Satellite L770

Von den vielen neuen Features in macOS Sierra dürften Anwender in deutschsprachigen Ländern vermutlich am meisten von der neuen Speicherverwaltung profitieren. Siri auf Deutsch kann mit den Fähigkeiten seiner englischsprachigen Schwester nicht mithalten. Gelungen sind Detailverbesserungen in den wichtigsten Medien-Programmen: Die Musik-App iTunes erscheint nun etwas übersichtlicher, beim Programm Fotos bietet Apple nun ähnliche Funktionen, die man bereits von Google Fotos her kennt. So können beispielsweise Gegenstände in den Bildern oder Motive wie "Sonnenuntergang" in der Foto-Bibliothek gefunden werden, ohne dass der Begriff im Dateinamen oder den Metadaten der Datei auftaucht.Bei den Hardware-Voraussetzungen wagt Apple bei macOS Sierra einen härteren Schnitt als sonst. Das neue System läuft nur noch auf MacBooks und iMac-Modellen ab Ende 2009 sowie auf einem MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini und dem Mac Pro aus dem Jahr 2010 oder später. Die Vorgängerversion konnte noch beispielsweise auf iMacs und MacBook Pros aus dem Jahrgang 2007 aufgespielt werden. Das Upgrade auf macOS Sierra wird von Apple im Herbst kostenlos zur Verfügung gestellt.


Die Libratone One Click und ihr rundes Schwestermodell Too sind zwei spritzwassergeschützte Bluetooth-Streamingboxen mit 360-Grad-Sound im skandinavischen Design. Bedient werden sie per Smartphone-App (iOS und Android) und dem eingebautem Touchbedienfeld. Die Batterien halten mit einer Ladung nach Herstellerangaben rund zwölf Stunden durch. Unterschiede gibt es beim Design: Während der Libratone One Click im Taschenbuchformat mit austauschbaren stoßfestem Rahmen und Griff daherkommt, ist der Libratone Too zylinderförmig. Sie passt so auch in für Trinkflaschen vorgesehene Seitentaschen von Rucksäcken oder Umhängetaschen. Der Preis: Rund 200 Euro für den One Click und etwa 150 Euro für den Libratone Too.Netgears Aircard AC810 verbindet sich per LTE mit dem Internet. Per WLAN können Notebooks, Tablets oder Smartphones mit dem kleinen Router verbunden werden und erhalten so schnellen Internetanschluss. Bis zu 15 Geräte können angeschlossen werden. Der eingebaute Akku hält das Gerät nicht nur rund 11 Stunden in Betrieb, per Jump Boost können auch Smartphones oder andere kleine USB-Geräte vom Energiespeicher des Aircard AV810 gespeist werden. Netgears LTE-Router funktioniert mit Prepaid- und Vertragstarifen und benötigt eine Micro-SIM-Karte. Das Gerät kostet rund 240 Euro.



Zeitversetztes Fernsehen für Panasonic-TVs: Per Softwareupdate bekommen die 2015er 4K-Modelle ab der CXW684-Serie eine Timeshiftfunktion nachgerüstet. Damit können Nutzer das laufende TV-Programm pausieren und bis zu 90 Minuten später weiterschauen. Die 2016er-Modelle 4K HDR ab der DXM715-Serie können mit dem jüngsten Update außerdem das HDR-Angebot des Streamingdienstes Netflix wiedergeben. Beide Updates können über die Einstellungen des Geräts abgerufen werden.München (dpa) - Der Video-Streamingdienst Maxdome will im Wettbewerb mit starken US-Rivalen wie Netflix und Amazon Kunden in ICE-Zügen der Deutschen Bahn erreichen. Filme und Serien sollen von in den Zügen installierten Servern aus abgespielt werden.Eine Internet-Verbindung ist damit nicht notwendig, wie die Tochter des TV-Konzerns ProSiebenSat.1 erläuterte. Der Service soll ab Ende des Jahres verfügbar sein.Dabei sollen auch Fahrgäste ohne Maxdome-Abo auf ihren Notebooks oder Smartphones und Tablets Zugriff auf rund 50 wechselnde Filme und Serien bekommen. Für den Zugang zu 1000 Videos sind ein Maxdome-Abo oder ein Probemonat notwendig.


Auch die Konkurrenz arbeitet daran, wie Kunden unterwegs besser erreicht werden können. So ist Netflix seit vergangenem Herbst in einigen Flugzeugen der US-Fluggesellschaft Virgin America verfügbar. Amazon ermöglicht dagegen seinen Kunden, Inhalte auf ihre Mobilgeräte herunterladen.Cupertino (dpa/tmn) - Apples neuer Browser Safari 10 wird ab Werk keine Flash-Inhalte mehr wiedergeben. Das haben die Safari-Entwickler im WebKit-Blog erklärt.Statt der für viele Sicherheitslücken bekannten Multimedialösung Flash soll künftig HTML5 der Vorzug gegeben werden. Neben Flash sollen auch andere Lösungen wie Silverlight, Java oder Quicktime blockiert und nur noch auf Einzelanforderung aktiviert werden. Neben mehr Sicherheit soll das auch zu längerer Batterielaufzeit bei Notebooks führen.Safari 10 wird als Teil des neuen macOS Sierra im Herbst veröffentlicht. Für Nutzer von OS X 10.10 Yosemite und 10.11 El Capitan wird es Updates auf die neueste Version geben.Frankfurt/Main (dpa/tmn) - Fotos und Videos anschauen, ein bisschen im Internet surfen, zwischendurch mal ein Spiel zocken oder nachgucken, was es Neues auf Facebook gibt: Wer dabei gerne einen größeren Bildschirm hätte als das Smartphone bietet, der greift zum Tablet.


Soll das Gerät auch noch zum Arbeiten taugen, dann kommen Tablets mit Displays in Notebookgröße und externer Bluetooth- oder Ansteck-Tastatur zum Einsatz. Deren Preise liegen dann aber auch im gehobenen Preisniveau um und über 1000 Euro.Und genau dieser Tablet-Typ, die sogenannten Computer-Tablets, ist derzeit besonders gefragt. "Das sind Geräte mit dem Microsoft-Betriebssystem Windows 10, so wie ein klassischer Desktop-PC oder ein Notebook, die wachsen auch gut zweistellig", erklärt Rudolf Aunkofer vom Marktforscher GfK.Microsoft wolle aus dem Tablet ein Profi-Gerät machen, sagt Sven Schulz von der "Computerbild". In den Top-Geräten stecke reinrassige Notebook-Technik, dazu ein guter Bildschirm und eine flache Tastatur. Dass man diese Tablets wie ein Notebook nutzen kann, ließen sich die Hersteller aber auch entsprechend bezahlen.



Wer die Notebook-Funktionen nicht braucht, sondern einfach nur ein gutes, neues Tablet sucht, steht vor einem riesigen Angebot an Geräten und drei verschiedenen Betriebssystemen: Android von Google, iOS von Apple und Windows 10 von Microsoft. Wobei die größeren Tablets auch schon zum Arbeiten genutzt werden können, erklärt Alexander Spier vom "c't"-Fachmagazin. Für die gebe es oft auch Tastaturen sowie Office-Programme, deren Funktionsumfang meist nicht sehr groß ist, für viele Arbeiten aber ausreicht. Wer den vollen Funktionsumfang braucht, sollte zu einem Windows-10-Tablet greifen. Die Preise für höherwertige Geräte starten bei 600 Euro.Alltägliche Aufgaben erledigen alle drei gängigen Tablet-Betriebssysteme, sagt Sven Schulz. Windows-Geräte haben den Vorteil, dass normale Windows-Software installiert werden kann. Die App-Auswahl ist aber deutlich geringer als bei den beiden anderen Plattformen. Apple wiederum sei immer noch eine Welt für sich. "Die iPads sind zwar die teuerste Lösung, was die Bedienung angeht aber auch die beste", meint Schulz. Allerdings verwende Apple eigene Stecker - und man kann keine Speicherkarten in die iPads einsetzen.


Les échographies

Battery for Lenovo FRU 42T4783

Firmware-level vulnerabilities (eg, LightEater) and bungled implementations of boot security (eg, Intel TXT), alongside the small horde of attack vectors introduced through peripherals, provide ample ammunition to attackers, according to Rutkowska.This means you can't really trust your sensitive data with your hardware, and instead crucial information should really be kept apart from the main machine. She said a strict separation of state-carrying (trusted) element from the rest of the hardware has become necessary as people and personal computers become increasingly interdependent.Rutkowska said the communal effort on improving personal security in the application layer in recent years – from GnuPG and Tor, through to OpenVPN and disk encryption tool LUKS – “is meaningless if we cannot trust our operating system, because the operating system is the trusted part – if it is compromised then everything is lost.”There have been notable efforts to create a trustworthy operating system stack. Rutkowska herself had started the open-source Qubes OS project five years ago, which now has dozens of contributors. Qubes works by running different applications in their own virtual machines – for example, the VM running a browser used to visit any old website is separate to the VM running GPG; if the browser is compromised, the attacker has to break through the Xen hypervisor to get to the encrypted email client.


Version 1.0 of Qubes OS was released in 2012, while 3.0 was released in October of this year.The core of her talk dealt with the widespread assumption of trustworthiness in hardware, particular in regards to laptops, which it doesn't deserve.Intel's x86 platform is ubiquitous in modern laptops, and “present Intel processors really integrate everything and the kitchen sink,” said Rutkowska. “Ten years ago we used to have a processor, a Northbridge, a Southbridge, and perhaps even more discrete elements on the motherboard. Today, nearly all of these elements have been integrated into one processor package.“Of course there is only one company making these,” Rutkowska said. “It's an American company called Intel, and it's a completely opaque construction. We have absolutely no ways to examine what's inside [its chips]. The advantage is that it makes the construction of laptops very easy now, and lots of vendors can produce little sexy laptops.”
When we talk about processors today, we are no longer talking about just the CPU, said Rutkowska. “The processor is now the CPU, GPU, the Memory Controller Hub, PCI express, some southbridge – so for example SATA controller – and so on, as well as something called Management Engine (ME).”Intel ME is a microcontroller, and part of Intel's AMT hardware and firmware technology which allows administrators to remotely manage the hardware over network – all underneath whatever operating system is running. As this management is conducted at a low-level in the stack, it dodges the OS – meaning overwriting your out-of-the-box Windows installation with a Linux distro will not guarantee any trustworthiness.



The ME microcontroller comes with its own RAM, it can access the system's RAM, and it has its own private ROM of firmware code, which nobody may inspect. “It runs a whole bunch of proprietary programs,” said Rutkowska, “and even runs Intel's own proprietary operating system, and this is all happening whenever you have some power connected to your processor, even in sleep mode, and it could be doing anything it wants.”The first thought for security people is that this is an ideal backdooring or rootkitting infrastructure. Which is true. However there is another problem, what I call the 'Zombification' of personal computing.
As a former stealth malware researcher, Rutkowska said she could not imagine a more ideal infrastructure for malware than the Management Engine: “ME has access to everything that is important. It has unconstrained access to DRAM, to the actual CPU, to GPU, it can also talk to your networking card, especially your Ethernet card, the controller for which is also in the Southbridge in the processor. It also has its own dedicated partition on the SPI Flash which can be used to store whatever ME wants to store there. This is really problematic, and we don't know what it runs.”Typically, people run software in the application layer, and expect all the decision making by software to happen there; the low-level code below acts as a middleman, instructing the hardware to do what the users wants it to do.


Citing a book by one of the Intel architects who had designed ME – as “it's about the only somehow official source of information about Intel ME,” according to Rutkowska – the researcher reckons Intel wishes to completely invert this model.Intel “essentially wants to eliminate all the logic that touches data from apps, and the operating system even, and move it to Intel ME. Remember, Intel ME is also an operating system, a separate operating system... nobody knows how it works. Nobody has any possibility to look at the source code, or even reverse-engineer as we cannot analyse the binaries. It is an operating system which is fully controlled by Intel, as is any functionality it offers,” she said.The ME blackbox is not trustworthy, says Rutkowska: “The complexity of the architecture … doesn't look like it could be solved effectively.”Although this seemingly borked Qubes OS's confidence that it could securely lock down and compartmentalize software on a machine, there may be a different way to win the game: “You cannot really win under the old rules, said Rutkowska, who added that it was perhaps time to begin to change those rules. That starts with recognising that most of the problems here begin with the persistent state.”Infosec wild man John McAfee has taken time off from his US presidential campaign to launch a fresh funding drive for a password replacement product.



The proximity-based authentication and access control product, dubbed EveryKey, is also touted as a replacement for physical keys, as the pitch explains.Everykey replaces your passwords and keys. When Everykey is close to your phone, laptop, tablet, house door, car door, or another access-controlled device, it unlocks that device.
When you walk away, that device locks back down. Everykey can also log you into your website accounts. If you lose your Everykey, you can remotely freeze it, so no one else can use it.Everykey, which is designed to be paired with an associated smartphone or laptop using Bluetooth, would also store a password keychain.The whole idea is still at the prototype stage despite three years of development and repeated delays. Estimated delivery currently stands at March 2016.McAfee, chief evangelist at Everykey, has launched an Indiegogo campaign to fund production for Everykey. Would-be early adopters have already shelled out $61K with 13 days of the funding drive still to run.A YouTube promo video of McAfee demoing EveryKey can be viewed below.The idea tackles an all too real problem but caution is still advisable. Infosec consultant Paul Moore argues that there's still little to show for the project after three years of development and multiple delays.

Les présentations

Battery for Lenovo BATEFL31L9

The agency's announcement is here. At the time of writing, RITA's site was down, but it appears to be staggering to its feet now. Here's a copy in Google's cache just in case. We launched as an email newsletter in 1994, hit the web four years later and are now a multinational media entity operating on three continents. Millions of people read us every month, which is humbling.We may have missed our birthday, but did do some proper “we've turned 21 and that means we're probably quite grown up now” introspection, and resolved to make a few changes.We're not changing the fundamentals. You'll still get a very familiar Reg package complete with cracking headlines, stories written in playful language, plus a mix of business, personal and weird technology. There’ll be plenty of science and bootnotes. Regulars like BOFH aren't going anywhere.But you will see us re-focus our energies on the things we do best: serving IT professionals of all sorts by breaking news and offering insightful analysis on business technology and the policies that shape it.We'll continue to Bite The Hand That Feeds IT, a phrase we understand to mean considering information with studied scepticism informed by long experience, not negativity or cynicism.


It's never been more important to take that stance than it is today, a time when governments and vendors subject you to pervasive surveillance and therefore make deep consideration of policy essential. 2016 is also a year in which suppliers will accelerate their moves to subscription models, an arrangement promoted as flexible and cheap by an army of communications professionals dedicated to putting a ShinyHappyTM sheen on everything.In that and in every other area we cover, The Reg will crunch the numbers, reveal the gotchas and try to keep the wool off your eyes.Among our plans are a new way to treat the news of the day, so that you – and our team – can get across a day's news quickly, then delve into deeper coverage of the things that matter most to you.As an older and wiser publication, we've also come to realise that some of our more adolescent behaviours are starting to look a little inappropriate. Expect less SHOUTINESS, an evolving sense of humour, more modern and global cultural touchstones, science coverage that gives proper prominence to peer-reviewed, evidence-based research and a recognition that attempted self-aware hopefully ironic sexism is almost always indistinguishable from actual sexism.



Forgive us the use of the term “reader experience” but we're going to try to improve it too. We'll revisit the site's design on all devices and for those of you who read through aggregators. We're also conscious that the web can now host any form of content, but we rely heavily on the written word. Indulge us in an experiment or three as we explore how to use the medium.Regular readers have probably noticed that we've already made some changes. A few of our writers have moved on. We've retired the Weekend Edition, which did lovely things for our Saturday and Sunday traffic but turned out not to be the best use of our resources.The Reg team thinks it has given itself a nice set of challenges to chase in 2016. Our overall resolution is to become an even better business tech news publication. We want new regular readers to admire our improvement, former readers to find reasons to return and of course to attract new readers too! Those readers might be career techies, technology managers, a CIO, a CEO or a student. Whatever your role in making IT a part of business, we're aiming to be one of your valued sources for insightful news. And hopefully the number one source.


So there you have it: our resolutions for 2016. We’re also going to do something about that big pile of sweets and doughnuts at the end of the editorial desk, iron shirts more often and stop splitting infinitives once we figure out the rules of grammar and what they have to do with our mother’s mother.From all of us to all of you: all the best for a healthy, prosperous, stimulating and healthy 2016. If we get this right, we plan to be a big part of the prosperity and the stimulation.The last 365 days (give or take) have produced more than 11,000 articles on The Register. We covered the biggest tech purchase in history (Dell/EMC for $67bn), the trashing of the US-European Union safe harbour data export deal by European judges, the Ashley Madison hack, and, well, so much more.Big subjects, but what actually got you reading and clicking? Here's our Top 10 of our most read stories of 2015:1. First, there was Duncan Campbell's account of his life’s work exposing the government’s surveillance programs and disclosure of documents confirming the existence of the mighty ECHELON intercept project. This article appeared in Intercept.2. Then came the creation of Microsoft’s own Linux distro – Azure Cloud Switch (ACS) – which Redmond described as: “Cross-platform modular operating system for data centre networking built on Linux” and “our foray into building our own software for running network devices like switches.



3. At three we revealed why nobody should ever, ever search the data belched online by hackers from the Ashley Madison marital cheater’s website.4. Then came The Reg’s interview with rarely interviewed physicist Freeman Dyson, who looked at the climate system before it became a hot political issue, over 25 years ago, who has campaigned against nuclear weapons proliferation, and who advised Bomber Command during WWII.5. At five we have Lenovo being busted for shipping Windows PCs containing crapware that re-installed itself via the firmware should it be discovered and deleted.6. Along similar lines at six we have automated update in Windows 10 that clashed with Nvidia drivers, forcing PCs to crash.7. Then came Erik Meijer, who has worked on C# and Visual Basic in addition to other critical elements of Microsoft's .NET, and who slammed the exceptionally fashionable Agile as a “cancer, adding that we talk too much about code, we don’t write enough code. Others disagreed.8. At eight, we have our analysis of a 75-byte sequence of Unicode that can be smuggled into text messages and take down your iPhone.9. At nine it was the attendees of Download Festival having their faces captured on CCTV, scanned and fed through facial recognition software and compared with a database of known offenders under a new system from Leicestershire Police.


10. Finally, we saw Microsoft pushing Windows 10 on unsuspecting Windows 7 and 8 user via a seemingly innocuous and rather vaguely worded updated, KB 3035583. 32c3 Security concerns around Intel's x86 processors – such as the company's decision to force the secretive Management Engine microcontroller onto its silicon – have raised fundamental questions about trust in personal computers, whatever architectures they may be based upon.
The founder of Invisible Things Labs, security researcher Joanna Rutkowska, delivered one of the first talks to the 32nd Chaos Communications Congress (32c3) in Hamburg on Sunday, restating the issues she considers make Intel x86 insecure and untrustworthy before explaining how she believed they may be practically solved in her talk, Towards (reasonably) trustworthy x86 laptops.The lecture was based on Rutkowska's October paper (PDF), which asserts that most modern operating systems are too trusting, plus her December recommendations (PDF).That issue is that kernels, drivers, and other low-level code are assumed to be trustworthy even though bugs hidden within them can be exploited to disable whole security mechanisms. Rutkowska added: A successful exploit against one of the thousands of drivers, networking protocols and stacks, filesystem subsystems, graphics and windowing services, or any other OS-provided services, has been considered unlikely by the systems architects.


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Battery for DELL Alienware M15x

We shall focus our commemoration on the IBM ThinkPad, which hit the business world in 1992 and quickly became a design favourite.The clamshell-styled black laptop was apparently modelled on a cigar box and famously incorporated a tiny red nipple joystick - officially called a Track point - for navigation around the screen.IBM sold the brand in 2005 to Lenovo and today, almost 25 years on from its launch, the ThinkPad is still black and still features the red nipple - a somewhat retro feature in 2016. We are all perfectly happy with our existing high-end technologies and aren't planning to upgrade any time soon.That's according to Accenture, which carried out a survey of 28,000 people across 28 countries, and found sluggish demand for the most popular consumer electronics.Not that we've stopped buying them: just 48 per cent of us plan to buy a new smartphone in the next year – still huge demand but demand that has fallen 20 per cent from last year. Likewise, across the board, only 30 per cent of us are planning to get a new TV, tablet or laptop: a drop of roughly 10 per cent on last year.Why are we noticeably less excited about these consumer devices? Because we're satisfied with what we've got. Most satisfying is the TV – 56 per cent; then the laptop with 49 per cent, smartphones with 47 per cent and lastly tablets with 36 per cent.


This is all very depressing for Accenture, especially since its survey is called Igniting Growth in Consumer Technology.The slowdown in the consumer technology market is irrefutable, serious and global, the group's managing director of high tech Sami Luukkonen said. The market is not about the glitzy gadgets any more – rather, it's about providing secure, innovative and practical digital services and more open collaboration.And so in a bid to keep those dollars coming in, it turned to: the internet of things! And was equally disappointed.Demand for smart goods is increasing, but only slightly (one per cent), which is not nearly enough to offset the drop in traditional electronics. So while 13 per cent of us are apparently planning to get a smart watch this year, all those Apple Watches are not going to fill iPhone-sized gaps.It's good news for smart thermostats: nine per cent of consumers are planning to ditch their beige box and pay the premium for things like the Ecobee and Nest. Eight per cent said they were planning to get virtual reality headsets – presumably because they've heard that 2016 will be the year of VR.



What's promising is that the most famous of them – the Oculus Rift – will be going into pre-order on Wednesday. What's less encouraging is that still, no one knows how much they will cost, which almost certainly means too much.And price is the biggest factor stopping us from purchasing IoT goods, according to Accenture: a whopping 62 per cent of us aren't sure they're worth the price tag. Second biggest obstacle is privacy and security concerns: 47 per cent of us aren't sure we want our highly personal information out there just waiting for a poorly patched server to provide it to the world.And there is a roughly 15 per cent uncertainty aspect with this new wave of devices: they're too complicated, they don't work right, they're clunky.Oh how IoT manufacturers must long for the day that consumers don't buy their goods because they're satisfied with what they've got. The Backup Plus Ultra Slim is claimed to be the world's thinnest 2TB mobile hard drive, being a thinner version of the existing Backup Plus Slim, which has a 2TB capacity as well.For file-sharing purposes, 200GB of Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage for two years is included. The BPUS has Lyve software bundled with it which helps users to protect ... photos and videos from their digital cameras and smartphones and automatically organises them into a single unified library accessible from any mobile device or computer.


There is additional software – the Seagate Dashboard, which offers users either one-click on-demand or customisable, scheduled backups for their devices.The BPUS box is 9.6mm thick, and Seagate says it's more than 50 per cent thinner than other 2TB drives on the market. It has a golden or platinum metal finish, designed to complement the looks of stylish computers, tablets and phones.The drive inside is likely Seagate's Ultra Mobile Technology product, which was announced as a technology in September, 2015, with two platters, a 7mm thickness, 2TB capacity, and 3.17oz weight. The rotation speed was unspecified but we think it's 5,400rpm.The LaCie Chromé is a mirror-finish desktop external drive sitting at an angle on a rounded base:It's a Neil Poulton design; he's designed other LaCie external drives, and features 2 x 500GB M.2 SATA SSDs inside the aluminium casing, with USB 3.1 gen 2 technology (10Gbit/s) with USB-C connectivity and a flash drive inside. The SSDs are in a RAID 0 configuration and the bandwidth is up to 940MB/sec.Seagate suggests two hours of 4K GoPro footage could be written to the drive in a little over one minute. You could edit hi-res video stored on this drive. It does not have a Thunderbolt interface by the way.


The USB-C connector has no up or down side and the connectors at both ends of the cable are the same. It is compatible with standard USB 3.0 (Type-A) ports via an included adapter cable.There is a fan to introduce cool air and a heat sink that draws hot air away from the SSDs.As usual with LaCie and Neil Poulton drives, the launch blurb goes into design rhapsody mode:This signature device has been designed in collaboration with acclaimed industrial designer Neil Poulton to bring uncommon sophistication to a workspace. The elevated form is an homage to a 1935 bronze statue from Constantin Brâncuși, one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th century.
Once machined, the enclosure is hand assembled, then chromed to a mirror polish. Forged from solid chromed zinc, the stand securely docks the product with powerful neodymium magnets – and detaches for easy transport.Enjoy this Neil Poulton quote: The LaCie Chromé is a concept reduced to its essence: a rectangle tilted onto its corner, melting into its base like quicksilver.LaCie's Porsche Design external mobile and desktop drives also use the USB-C connector to hook up their aluminium rectangular slabs to desktop or laptop hosts. The design house is Porsche Design Group (Porsche Lizenz- und Handelsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, not the VW-owned Porsche cars business).There are mobile drives in this set with 1, 2 and 4TB capacities. The desktop versions have 4, 5 and 8TB capacities.



The rounded corners, high-polish beveled edges and a sandblast finish combine to form the distinctly Porsche Design modern and elegant style.
Since 2003, LaCie and Porsche Design have worked closely to deliver products with flawless functionality in its purest form. The sports and luxury-lifestyle brand and the leading technology company complement one another, with technical influence from LaCie and an exclusive and impeccable design presented by Porsche Design.Discerning consumers value elegant design in their devices and accessories, said Dr. Christian Kurtzke, CEO, Porsche Design Group. These new drives meld high-tech materials with the sleek visual purism of Porsche Design's iconic style.If the drive is connected to its own power source then it will power a connected and compatible* notebook and charge its' battery. That's a property of the USB-C connector used.The 1TB LaCie Chromé has a 2-year limited warranty that can be extended and upgraded. It includes complimentary web-based resources, in-house technical support and worldwide repair and/or replacement coverage.


Its MSRP is a cool $1,100.00 and this shiny little desktop exec toy should be available this quarter through the LaCie Online Store and LaCie Resellers.The Porsche Design drives have a 2-year extendable warranty like the Chromé product. A 1TB Porsche Design mobile drive starts at $109.95 while a 4TB desktop version starts at $209.95. Buy them from the LaCie Online Store and LaCie Resellers as well as Porsche Design Stores and online. * When the product is connected to a standard electrical wall outlet, it delivers up to 30W of power to charge compatible laptops such as Apple’s MacBook.Ohio's Regional Income Tax Agency (RITA) slipped out a quiet end-of-year confession that it has lost a backup DVD with information and documents on 50,000 individuals.The loss was discovered on November 10, 2015, but only made public on December 31. RITA's statement says the agency was preparing a bunch of backup DVDs for destruction when it noticed that one of the cases was empty. The backups had been stored offsite at a third-party vendor's secure facility.By November 17, the agency had worked out what data was held on the missing DVD: copies of income tax documents, as well as names, addresses, social security numbers and possibly dates of birth.Individuals who may have been affected will be offered a year of free credit monitoring by Experian.News website Cleveland.com notes that it's not the first time RITA has mislaid data. In 2006 a laptop belonging to the agency was stolen from an employee's vehicle.


Les échographies

Battery for HP Compaq 6715b

I was just completely flummoxed. What do you mean a court order? her daughter Donna said. I said that was ridiculous, because we've been able to transfer the title of the house, we've been able to transfer the car, all these things, just using a notarized death certificate and the will.Donna wrote a personal letter to Tim Cook explaining the situation but got nothing back from Apple other than an affirmation that the firm would have to have a court order to allow her mother to use the iPad as intended.The family went to their local media to protest the situation and, lo and behold, Apple swung into action. The firm said that the whole thing had been a misunderstanding and has since begun working with the family to sort out the situation.The case highlights what is going to become a growing problem for those shuffling off this mortal coil. Very few people take the time to pass on their passwords when dealing with death, and unlocking electronic equipment can be an unwanted frustration for a family dealing with the death of a loved one.This gets worse with people's media increasingly being online. Under a strict interpretation, passing on your digital possessions like music and (in this case) games is illegal, since the buyer is only renting them for the length of their lives, rather than owning them outright.


Leaving a digital will containing logins and passwords for key accounts is increasingly being recommended. Naturally, writing all this stuff down is a security risk, so be sure to encrypt the data and – just to be on the safe side – give one half of the key to your executor and the other half to a good friend in rude health. Efforts to expand IT and internet connectivity in developing countries are producing results that are far less than expected, according to the World Bank.The 2016 Digital Dividends report [PDF] said that when it comes to quality of life and economic development, campaigns to bring poorer nations online have failed to meet their goals.Researchers found that, despite the growth in internet connectivity, productivity and economic growth in those newly connected regions have been far less than anticipated. Additionally, the report found that the divide between the rich and poor has grown, and more than 60 per cent of the world's population remains offline.The findings suggest that the efforts of many technology companies and non-profits to offer internet connectivity as a way of bringing large populations out of poverty will not accomplish their goal, and in many cases will only serve to increase the income gap between the wealthy and the hard-up in those areas.



One reason for this is a continuing gap in education and in the business climate in many developing countries. With large numbers of the labor force lacking access to education and job skills, the introduction of technology is serving to automate work and cost jobs for the poor while only creating opportunities for those with wealth and access to job training.Public sector investments in digital technologies, in the absence of accountable institutions, amplify the voice of elites, which can result in policy capture and greater state control, the report reads.And because the economics of the internet favor natural monopolies, the absence of a competitive business environment can result in more concentrated markets, benefiting incumbent firms.In addition to worsening economic divides, the report found that the unequal access to technology also leads to a decline in free elections, giving government regimes tools to rig elections in their favor.Rather than simply look to expand digital connectivity, the World Bank says, governments and institutions should invest in so-called analog factors including education, business growth and government oversight that will allow the growing connectivity to be used by a larger portion of the population and discourage abuse by government and powerful business groups.


We must continue to connect everyone and leave no one behind because the cost of lost opportunities is enormous, said World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim.But for digital dividends to be widely shared among all parts of society, countries also need to improve their business climate, invest in people's education and health, and promote good governance. In case anyone doubted that their work communications can be legally monitored by their bosses, the European Court of Human Rights has now ruled that employers can indeed spy on online chats.The continent-wide ruling came at the end of a case involving Romanian engineer Bogdan Mihai Bărbulescu, who was dismissed in 2007 for communicating with his fiancée via Yahoo Messenger while at work, which violated his employer's internal policy.Bărbulescu claimed he used the chat service only for professional purposes. But his superiors showed him a transcript of his conversations on Yahoo Messenger, which included messages exchanged with his fiancée and his brother.After terminating his contract for breaking policy, the engineer claimed his bosses broke the law by violating his privacy. He reckoned emails and other electronic missives are protected by article eight of the convention on human rights, which safeguards citizens' private lives and correspondence.


However, on Tuesday, the European court dismissed [PDF] Bărbulescu's argument that the company had violated his rights.In its ruling, the panel of judges said: [T]he court finds that it is not unreasonable for an employer to want to verify that the employees are completing their professional tasks during working hours.The court concurred with an earlier ruling by Romanian judges that the employer in Bucharest had acted within its disciplinary powers. It said the worker had not “convincingly explained why he had used the Yahoo Messenger account for personal purposes.” Acer's 5.5-inch Liquid Jade Primo, first announced in September last year, is a premium device set to be available in February at prices from €569.The phone runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 CPU with 3GB RAM and 32GB on-board storage. There is a 21MP rear camera and 8MP front.The key feature in the Jade Primo is support for Microsoft's Continuum feature, allowing you to use the phone like a PC when connected to a larger display – though limited to apps that run on the device's ARM processor.You can connect the phone to an external display using either a USB Type-C monitor, a wireless connection, or the optional Display Dock. Acer will also market a Desktop kit bundle, complete with Display Dock, keyboard and mouse.The idea, claims Acer, is that you can leave your laptop at home, though with all that kit the amount of space you save may be disappointing.



The company also notes the phone's support for BitLocker encryption (not new for Windows Phone) and support for device management using Microsoft Intune or other systems, pitching for the enterprise market.A more affordable Windows 10 phone is on the way from Alcatel OneTouch. The 5.5-inch Fierce XL has a 1280x720 HD display, 1.1GHz Snapdragon quad-core processor, 8MP rear camera and 2MP front camera. This will cost $139.99 in the US, exclusively on T-Mobile. Information on wider availability and pricing is not yet available.Unfortunately, it appears that the Fierce XL will not support Continuum, which requires hardware with dual display capability. The ability to connect to an external display is not enough.Although the advent of new Windows Phone vendors seems positive for the platform, these new models also reflect Microsoft's problems in this market.The success of the Jade Primo depends on enthusiasm for Continuum, which is unproven, and is it hard to see the low-end Alcatel OneTouch device winning much traction in a market dominated by Android. The ThinkPad’s answer to Johny Ive has died. Richard Sapper, a German industrial designer who orchestrated the look of the iconic laptop for IBM, was 83 years old.He designed lots more stuff - you can read his obituary here.

Mes rendez-vous

Battery for Lenovo ThinkPad T410

IDC in December reckoned on compound annual growth rate of one per cent over five years for portable PCs, and a decline of 2.5 per cent for desktops. That’s alarming for Intel, which relies on a cadence of PC sales of three years in notebooks and four for desktops to help drive sales.Also, Intel has historically relied on new releases of Windows – businesses and consumers buy fresh PCs to cope with the system demands of Microsoft’s new OS.“When people move to a new operating system they almost always do so on new hardware so it’s a benefit to us as well,” Garrison said on a trip to the UK. He estimated people are “excited” about Windows 10, released in July, a fact that will drive PCs sales and therefore mean business as usual.“What you get from your old PC versus what you can buy is a significant cost for the business, plus the PC starts to wear out and break frequently,” Garrison said. But, if Gartner and IDC are correct, Windows 10 hasn’t so far (and won’t in the near future) do anything to prompt growing PC sales.Microsoft hasn’t exactly helped by giving Windows 10 away for free to download – an offer that, at times, has seen Microsoft forcing Windows 10 on existing users. Worse, Microsoft has said there will be no new versions of Windows after Windows 10 – that it’ll be incremental updates, instead.


Garrison reckoned this won’t hurt PC sales, and the raw fact that the older a PC becomes the slower and cruddier it gets, will somehow prick the conscience of corporate IT purchasers. “Do we expect to see any change in the hardware purchase? The answer is 'no'. If they are on a three-year cycle we expect to see them still on a three-year cycle, he said.Intel won’t admit it, but Microsoft will (or has), and the author of the Windows client seems to have recognised both the implications and the limitations of its “free” policy. Microsoft will refuse to release updates for Windows 7 PCs to take advantage of new chipsets from January 2020 and January 2023 for 8.1.Whether it’s ignorance about ending support deadlines, lack of money to spend on new PCs, or just a willingness to gamble, Microsoft's dangling of the carrot hasn't forced them to upgrade in the past. It's unlikely to do so in the future. On Tuesday, the California chip giant sprung this news on the world, revealing what it seemed to be saying was a really big secret: all this time, the sixth-gen Core family, launched in September, has had brand-spanking new multi-factor authentication support, and no one knew? Blow me down with a feather.



However, the technology appears to be an extension to various security mechanisms Intel has been eking out for years.The multi-factor authentication – dubbed Intel Authenticate – hopes to do away, in part, with passwords, and is aimed at businesses, large and small. Right down at the firmware layer, the chipset stores policies and authentication data that are supposed to be safe from hackers.Authentication data could, for example, be the user's fingerprint, or a PIN. A policy could, for example, state that a recognized work-issued smartphone within close range of the machine, plus the entry of a correct PIN, is enough to log into the device. The policy could add that if the machine is not connected to a corporate network, then a smartphone within range, a valid PIN, and a valid fingerprint, read from a builtin sensor, is needed to unlock the computer.So, if you're using a laptop in the office on the corporate Wi-Fi, with your phone on the desktop within Bluetooth range, all you need to do is type in a PIN to log back into the PC. If you're in a cafe at the weekend, you'll need to provide a fingerprint to make sure you're not a thief.


Intel Authenticate embeds multi-factor authentication into hardware in the platform architecture, said Thomas Garrison, a vice president in Intel's client computing group.By doing so, the most common software based attacks that steal user credentials through viruses or malware are rendered ineffective. Intel delivers a secure PIN, a Bluetooth proximity factor with your Android or iPhone, a logical location factor with vPro systems, and fingerprint biometrics.The operating system – so far Windows 7, 8 and 10 support Intel Authenticate – has to communicate with the firmware to get the yes or no confirmation for allowing the login. The OS isn't supposed to see the fingerprint or the PIN, so it can't be stolen by code running inside the kernel or in user space.If you can't login – such as you lose your phone – you can optionally fall back to a password. It's supposed to help employees who are bad at remembering complex passwords, and IT support desks who have to do daily resets for people.Intel Authenticate uses two firmware-level systems that give security researchers and privacy activists the heebie-jeebies: Intel's Management Engine (ME), and Intel's Active Management Technology (AMT). Both of these have been around for years, work below the operating system, and are mostly invisible to the layers of software above them. They are supposed to allow sysadmins to control machines remotely, but offer other features. AMT, for example, provides the network location detection used by Intel Authenticate.


The Management Engine built into the motherboard chipset provides the secure memory area for storing policies and the user's authentication data, which aren't allowed to leave the secure area nor allowed to be tampered with unless you've got the right privileges. This is supposed to stop miscreants from setting lax policies or swiping people's login details.This is why you need a firmware download to activate Intel Authenticate; the software runs only on vPro editions of Intel's new sixth-gen Core CPUs, aka the Skylake family. The Skylake vPro parts were announced this week.This whole system appears to be an iteration of the two-factor authentication methods we've seen before in Chipzilla's business-friendly chips, such as the 2011 Sandy Bridge vPro parts, and the Broadwell vPro family in 2015. Back then, it was known as Intel Identity Protection, which provides support for two-factor authentication, such as logging in with a username, password and hardware token, or a username, password and one-time code sent to a smartphone.



Now, Intel's added Bluetooth and fingerprint-reader support, made it a bit more user-friendly, thrown in PIN codes, and voila. It might explain why these two press releases on the vPro series, a year apart, seem so similar.A Canadian widow won't have to go through the courts to get the password to her dead husband's iPad after Apple, in the face of media pressure, withdrew its insistence on legal action.Last August 72-year-old Peggy Bush lost her husband to lung cancer and, among other belongings, was left her husband's Apple laptop and iPad. But when she fired up the fondleslab she found it was password protected and her husband had neglected to write it down anywhere.I just had the iPad. I didn't touch his computer, it was too confusing to me ... I didn't realize he had a specific password I should have known about ... it just never crossed my mind, Bush told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.Her daughter got in touch with Apple support and explained the situation. The customer support operators said it wouldn't be a problem – they would just need the will bequeathing the hardware to Mrs Bush, along with a death certificate.These she gathered, but when calling back the customer support representative claimed never to have heard of the case. Bush's daughter spent the next two months being given the runaround, as she put it, before an Apple staffer told her they would need a court order to hand over the password.

Les échographies

Battery for Lenovo ThinkPad X300

“We need that first crack and we’ll look and look to find it,” he said. “There’s a reason its called and advanced persistent threat; we’ll poke and poke and wait and wait until we get in.”The goal is to find weak points, whether they be within the network architecture, or in staff who maybe work from home or bring in unauthorized devices. There’s also areas where the target network interconnects with other computer systems, like heating and ventilation controllers, which can be useful for an attack.Companies need to pay particular attention to cloud providers, he said. Once you use a cloud company you are essentially handing your data over to them and relying on their security, so he warned due diligence is even more important than usual.For the initial exploitation phase the key attack vectors are malware attachments in email, injection attacks from websites, and removable media - the latter being particularly useful for penetrating air-gapped systems that aren’t even on the network; Iran found that out the hard way with Stuxnet.Another common attack vector is common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) that haven’t been patched, he said. Companies need to make automatic patching the norm to protect themselves against nation-state hackers he warned. As for zero-day flaws, he said they are overrated.“A lot of people think that nation states are running their operations on zero days, but it’s not that common,” he said. “For big corporate networks persistence and focus will get you in without a zero day; there are so many more vectors that are easier, less risky, and more productive.”


As for the NSA’s own collection of zero-day exploits, Joyce said that in fact the agency had very few and each new one was discovered was evaluated by an outside committee to see when software manufacturers should be informed to build a patch. The NSA doesn’t have the final decision on this, he claimed.To protect against this admins need to lock things down as far as possible; whitelisting apps, locking down permissions, and patching as soon as possible, and use reputation management. If a seemingly legitimate user is displaying abnormal behavior, like accessing network data for the first time, chances are they have been compromised, he said.Reputation-based tools are particularly useful against malware, Joyce explained. Signature-based antivirus won’t protect you against a unique piece of attack code, but when used in conjunction with reputation databases it can be effective - if code or a domain hasn’t been seen before there’s a high chance it’s dodgy.It’s amazing how often simple issues come up and allow access to target networks, he explained. Things like administrator credentials being left embedded in scripts, how many networks are unsegmented, and how often suspicious activity reported in network logs got missed.



He cited cases where NSA hackers have performed penetration testing, issued a report on vulnerabilities, and then when they go back two years later to test again found the same problems had not been fixed. When the NSA hacking squad comes back, he said, the first thing they do is investigate previously reported flaws and it’s amazing how many remain un-patched even after the earlier warning.Once inside a network, the next stage is to establish persistence, primarily by establishing software run lines or subverting other applications. Application whitelisting is key to locking down this phase of an attack he said.A 0-day security breach at Lincolnshire County Council has exposed locals' medical records, addresses, and bank details, claimed an anonymous tipster, though the council denies any data was stolen.The breach was reported by The Lincolnite, which stated anonymous reports from inside the council suggested a major breach of its main adult care system had spaffed the sensitive personal information of constituents.Talking to The Register this morning, a council spokesperson denied that any data had been lost and claimed an email attachment with a zero-day exploit had managed to infect its internal system after being sent to multiple members of staff.In addition, The Lincolnite reported that another system which stored staff details and bank details, as well as the G Drive, which holds various other documents and forms, had been breached.According to the local paper's source, emails were not initially affected by the breach, however the attackers' access seems to have been extended to include them.


The council's response has been to order staff to close their computers and turn the power off.Judith Hetherington Smith, the council's CIO, told the local paper that the council closed down our systems very quickly to protect the data and are investigating the cause but at this stage have found no evidence of any breach.A spokesperson for Lincolnshire County Council added that, as a precautionary measure, [we] have suspended IT use until the extent of it is clear.As part of a campaign into UK councils' cyber security conducted last year, The Register was told that Lincolnshire County Council's AV solution(s) - the specifics of which the council declined to disclose - had thrown up 196,553 malware alerts in 2015.The Register has learned that the council has outsourced its IT operations to Serco since last April, although what AV solutions the outsourcer company uses has not been disclosed.The council told us that there had been 32 malware infections, via email, over that period. The areas and machines affected were not recorded, however. Faster, longer battery life, chip-based security – innovation is alive and well in its sixth-generation Core chips, Intel claims, with the company officially launching its sixth-generation Core vPro processors on Tuesday, wrapped in a series of changes it claimed would inevitably drive sales.


Two and a half times the performance of a fifth-gen CPU-powered laptop, three times the battery life, and four times faster wake-up are the promises. Also, we're looking forward to Intel authenticate – multi-factor authentication that also works with PINs and biometrics in association with a smartphone.If the phone strays further than a specified Blue-toothy connection distance from the i7 vPro machine in question, it locks you out. No more PCs going walkies in public places, mid-session documents, and data open to plunder.PC makers are lining up behind the chips, claiming about 200 business PC designs – 160 for vPro and 30 ultra book designs. Machines are coming from Acer, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and others in a variety of form factors – 2 in 1s, ultra books, and desktops, you name it.The thrust is very much the business user, with Intel citing one Gartner analyst claiming the chips make PCs part of businesses’ overall security solution with users more secure and productive than ever.Innovation is still the industry’s muse: as a phrase it's over used, often mischaracterised, and its application frequently divorced from cold, hard market realities. Explaining recent years' falling PC sales and the eclipse of the PC by the tablet, vice president and general manager of Intel’s business client platform division, Tim Garrison, told The Register he believes the “innovation” on display now will shift boxes.



“Years ago we got in trouble [because] there wasn’t much innovation going into the PC. It was the same old PC we’d had for generations and people said ‘I don’t see a future here', said Garrison. “Since then, with the sixth generation core, you see so much more innovation going on.”However, the PC market's structural dynamics, which have blighted sales for the last few years, are still in place. PC makers, and those middlemen in the channel responsible for getting devices into the hands of buyers, remain saddled with a backlog of unsold PCs using old chips.They’ve been stuck for a variety of reasons: consumers flocking to new tablets, businesses holding out on Windows XP and Windows 7 on old PCs, and OEMs and channel partners burned by buying big into Microsoft’s promises on Windows 8.That was a version of Windows where Microsoft was playing the “innovation” card – innovation around the touch interface, which ultimately proved about as popular as John Lennon proclaiming the The Beatles were more popular than Jesus.Gartner this week reckoned 232 million traditional PCs would be shipped in 2016, equating to a 1.7 per cent drop on 2015. In the last quarter of 2015, 22.5 million PCs shipped into third-party sellers in EMEA, according to the research giant, a decline of 16.1 per cent year-on-year.


Mon quotidien

Battery for Lenovo ThinkPad SL500

Now are you sure you've got the A and B drives in the right order? I ask. Wouldn't want to duplicate the formatted drive over the top of the original.I think you may have torn some of the tracks off the motherboard there, I say, leaning in and tapping on a suspiciously barren chunk of circuit board where some pads used to be whilst dropping the remains of the paper bag in the bin. After the PFY has scraped himself off the ceiling, that is.No - I have some ultrafine self-adhesive gold repair tape which should do the trick nicely, he counters.And it's true. There are only two legitimate uses for a brown paper bag in the workplace: hiding your single-malt breakfast headache medicine or scaring the crap out of a workmate. I expected more from the PFY...The Home Office has admitted to The Register that among its data breach incidents last year was one in which security vetting documents disappeared from within secured government premises.Through the Freedom of Information Act, The Register has learned that the Home Office – responsible for the UK's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency, MI5 – lost documents containing sensitive personal information relating to security vetting. In a separate incident, at least one birth certificate was lost.


The documents were lost internally between the recipient of the postal package and the vetting team within a Home Office government building, the department admitted, adding that the contents had not been reviewed.Last year we reported that the Home Office suffered 33 data breaches which were not reported to the Information Commissioner's Office, although the department has now claimed one incident was noted incorrectly.There were eight instances in which inadequately protected electronic equipment, devices or paper documents had been lost from outside secured government premises, 13 instances of Unauthorised Disclosure and nine listed under Other.All of the information lost outside of secure government premises related to borders and immigration activity and held content which the owners could not recall in its entirety. The time frame was financial year 2014/15.Why is it that an office printer manages to churn out pages day after day without delay or complaint, yet chooses to play silly buggers the moment you are in a hurry?The green activity light is blinking nicely and my print queue is processing correctly but nothing is coming out of the printer apart from long stretches of silence punctuated by an increasingly frustrating staccato of noisy mechanical buzzes, crunches and farts.



The clock ticks, I don my shoes and coat, ready for a quick getaway. I don’t have a vast number of sheets to print but I do want them printed right away so I can catch the train. The alternative is to hunt for a print shop close to my destination, or plead with my client on my arrival to let me use one of their printers, and that always looks unprofessional.Hee-haw-hee-haw-hee-haw-hee-haw. Guh guh guh guh guh. Whoo dang-dang, whoo dang-dang.Great, it’s gone full beatbox. Stop all that electro-grunting and just print, you techno twat.I think it has switched into pornstar mode and is trying to shag the adjacent document shredder.Opening its front panel, I pull out the tray to check the cartridges. It appears that the printer components have been celebrating Holi nine weeks early: it is swirling with multicoloured powder everywhere.I pull out the carts and deadly toner continues to trickle out. There is now multicoloured powder on the floor, my hands and swirling through the office air, seeping dangerously through my pores, darting murderously into my lungs.“Toner running low” reads the LCD display on the front of the machine. My printer is nothing if not a sarcastic bastard.I dash out to catch the train, paperless. I am confident there is a print shop right next to the station when I arrive, but it turns out that it has been closed down so the site can be redeveloped into yet more luxury penthouse flats.


How many of these luxury flats do we need? Is the long-term plan to ensure that the entire population of central London is made up of Russian gangsters while the rest of us commute in daily from our hovels in the nearest affordable suburb, such as Inverness?Arriving at my client, I plead to make use of a printer so I can get my presentation documents done. A great deal of fuss is caused to accommodate my request, quite unnecessarily in my opinion, accompanied by a chorus of childish snorting and harrumphing by several of my client’s minions who have been forced to temporarily share their oxygen with someone who actually works for a living.Their firewall is so strict that I am not allowed to print from my laptop, so I cause more upset by forcing one minion to suspend his terribly important Facebook session so I can print from his PC.I log in to Dropbox, only to find that it hasn’t properly synced from my computer at home and my documents aren’t there for me to print. To save face, I output a few random business PDFs anyway, plus a few pages from a bestiality porn site so that the harrumphing tit whose PC I have borrowed can enjoy a wild-eyed visit from Human Resources later that week.



In the end, I improvise at the client meeting with the help of a flipchart and a thick black pen that I keep at the bottom of my backpack for just these occasions. I duly win the contract and head home feeling more relaxed and less intent on kicking the shit out of my laser printer when I get there.On the way back, I read the results of a survey which says small businesses like mine are proving resistant to office technology. Apparently, 65 per cent of us would rather write things down with a pen than manage our diaries, notes and to-do lists with tech solutions.No less astonishing is the discovery that as many as one-fifth of those questioned in the business survey shamefully admitted to relying on “nothing more than memory” to know what they are doing at any time.Admittedly, I have consciously cultivated my image in this column as a grumpy old Luddite but those who know me also know that I enjoy surrounding myself with tech gadgets. My grumpiness is simply the result of my honest appreciation that none of these gadgets can be relied upon in any respect whatsoever, and least of all on those occasions when you absolutely need them to work.The survey’s sign-off line giggles at twerps like me for making heavy use of smartphones and tablets for document creation without even being able to print documents directly from them. “Many who think they are up to date with business technology are often very poorly connected,” it says.Well, it’s hardly my fault that Apple has specifically designed iOS to be wirelessly incompatible with my existing printer. Expecting me to purchase a new printer to support the inadequacies of the iPhone is taking the piss. If a mobile phone’s audio speaker is weak and tinny, should I upgrade my friends and only accept calls from people with deep, booming voices?


I reach home and, still burning from my close shave earlier in the day and now determined to prove the survey wrong, I send a print job over local Wi-Fi from my Google Nexus 7. Poorly connected? Hah, I’ll teach them.Usenix Enigma The United States National Security Agency (NSA) is a notoriously secretive organization, but the head of its elite Tailored Access Operations (TAO) hacking team has appeared at Usenix’s Enigma conference to tell the assembled security experts how to make his life difficult.Rob Joyce has spent over a quarter of a century at No Such Agency and in 2013 he became head of TAO, with responsibility for breaking into non-US computer networks run by overseas companies and governments. Joyce's presentation on network security at the event boiled down to one piece of advice.“If you really want to protect your network you have to know your network, including all the devices and technology in it,” he said. “In many cases we know networks better than the people who designed and run them.”NSA tiger teams follow a six-stage process when attempting to crack a target, he explained. These are reconnaissance, initial exploitation, establish persistence, install tools, move laterally, and then collect, exfiltrate and exploit the data.During the reconnaissance phase agents examine a network electronically and, in some cases, physically. They work out who the key personnel are, what email accounts matter, how far the network extends, and maintain constant surveillance until they can find a way in.

Les présentations

Batterie pour Apple A1080

Avec la mise à jour installée, vous pouvez maintenant faire utiliser le « face-swap » de Snapchat avec une image stockée dans la bibliothèque photo de votre smartphone. Par le passé, la populaire fonctionnalité « face-swap » (échange de visage) de l’application ne pouvait être appliquée qu’à des images et des vidéos prises par l’appareil photo du smartphone, ce qui signifie que vous deviez convaincre un ami (ou un animal indiscipliné) de poser pour une photo.Plus maintenant ! En effet, désormais vous pouvez faire un échange de visage avec absolument toute image que vous désirez. Pas besoin de traîner votre pauvre chat dans le cadre, il suffit de prendre une photo, et d’utiliser le nouveau filtre pour échanger des visages une fois que vous avez terminé. Les possibilités sont illimitées, puisqu’à peu près toutes les images du Web peuvent être sauvegardées sur votre smartphone.Si vous êtes déjà habitué à la fonctionnalité actuelle face-swap, tester la nouvelle mise à jour devrait être un jeu d’enfant. Juste au cas où vous ne soyez pas au courant, voici comment la mise à jour fonctionne :


Ouvrez Snapchat et commencez par lancer la caméra frontale afin de prendre votre plus beau portrait
Maintenez votre doigt sur votre visage pour faire apparaître les options de lentilles (« Lenses ») dédiées au selfie
Faites glisser votre doigt pour parcourir toutes les lentilles disponibles, et sélectionner le nouveau face-swap
Appuyez sur le bouton de capture et vous verrez des photos de votre Pellicule, que vous pouvez faire défiler pour choisir votre image préférée afin de l’échanger avec votre visage
Maintenant, vous pouvez échanger des visages avec une image sur votre smartphone, y compris des captures d’écran, des images des autres, et même des clichés que vous avez créés à l’aide d’autres applications. Laissez la folie s’emparer de vous.De plus, avec la nouvelle mise à jour, Snapchat apporte une autre petite fonctionnalité. Comme d’habitude, tout le monde a le droit de revoir n’importe quel Snap une fois, seulement maintenant, les utilisateurs les plus riches pour payer pour revoir de multiples snaps.C’est fait ! Microsoft vient d’annoncer la fin de la production de nouvelles consoles Xbox 360 en raison de « la réalité de fabrication d’un produit qui a plus de dix ans », a annoncé le chef de la division Xbox, Phil Spencer, hier.



Initialement publiée en 2005, la console Xbox 360 a fêté son dixième anniversaire au mois de novembre de l’année dernière. La plate-forme a vendu 84 millions d’unités dans le monde entier jusqu’en 2014. « La Xbox 360 signifie beaucoup pour tout le monde chez Microsoft », a déclaré Spencer. « Et, alors que cela a été un incroyable succès, les réalités de la fabrication d’un produit de plus de dix ans commencent à se faire sentir. C’est la raison pour laquelle nous avons pris la décision d’arrêter la fabrication de nouvelles consoles Xbox 360. Nous allons continuer à vendre l’inventaire actuel des consoles, avec une disponibilité variable par pays », dit-il.Plusieurs versions de la Xbox 360 se sont succédé depuis le lancement de la console en 2005, y compris une « mince variante » qui est depuis devenue le modèle standard disponible sur le marché. Les premières unités de la Xbox 360 manquaient de disques durs, d’une sortie HDMI, et d’une connectivité Wi-fi — des caractéristiques qui sont rapidement devenues des exigences pour la dernière génération de console.En plus d’accueillir des centaines de jeux sur des cartouches, la Xbox 360 est en capacité de prendre en charge du contenu numérique. La vitrine Xbox Live Arcade de la plate-forme est devenue un refuge pour les développeurs indépendants, et de nombreux jeux de grande envergure libérés au cours de la dernière décennie restent exclusif à la console de génération précédente de Microsoft.


Microsoft a déployé la console de successeur de la Xbox 360, la Xbox One, en 2013. Beaucoup de jeux populaires de la Xbox 360 sont jouables sur la Xbox One grâce à la toute récente fonctionnalité de compatibilité descendante de la plate-forme. Et, la liste des titres pris en charge continue de croître mensuellement.Bien que la production de la Xbox 360 soit terminée, Microsoft note que les joueurs pourront toujours jouer aux jeux Xbox 360 en ligne depuis le Xbox Live. Les abonnés au Xbox Live Gold continueront à recevoir gratuitement les jeux de la Xbox 360 par mois, et le support continuera depuis le site Web de Microsoft.« Je tiens à remercier personnellement la communauté Xbox », a déclaré Spencer. Vous venez de verser une petite larme ? Pas trop de regret quand même !Même si Opera est loin derrière ses concurrents en matière de parts de marché depuis son introduction, cela n’a pas empêché le navigateur Web de mettre en œuvre de nouvelles fonctionnalités exclusives dans un effort de changer cela. Parmi celles-ci, la plus récente décision d’Opera est d’ajouter un VPN gratuit au sein de son navigateur.



Lorsque Opera a acquis le service de réseau privé virtuel (VPN) SurfEasy en mars dernier, il était évident que cette acquisition allait conduire cette technologie dans le navigateur de la firme, et peut-être dans son application Opera Max. Il a fallu plus d’un an, mais maintenant Opera vient de lancer une version intégrée de SurfEasy dans la première version développeur de son navigateur.Pour ceux qui ne connaissent pas, l’intégration du VPN offre aux utilisateurs une expérience de navigation Web plus privée, et permettra de protéger votre session non cryptée qui peut être exposée sur les réseaux Wi-fi publics, ainsi que contourner le pare-feu de temps en temps sur votre lieu de travail, votre école, ou dans des pays comme la Chine. Il va également vous attribuer une adresse IP virtuelle, rendant plus difficile le pistage de votre position.Cependant, et contrairement à la version complète de SurfEasy, ce service intégré protège seulement votre session de navigation, et aucun autre trafic qui provient de votre ordinateur.« Tout le monde mérite d’avoir une navigation privée en ligne s’ils le souhaitent en ajoutant un VPN gratuit et illimité directement dans le navigateur, sans un téléchargement supplémentaire ou une extension d’un fournisseur tiers et inconnu », a indiqué Krystian Kolondra, Opera SVP, dans la publication de la firme.


Mon quotidien

Akku für Dell Studio XPS 1645

Bei den inneren Werten drücken die Koreaner aufs Gas: Vier Gigabyte Arbeitsspeicher, rund 30 Prozent mehr Prozessorleistung, zwei Drittel Leistungszuwachs gibt es bei der Grafik. Um den hochgezüchteten Prozessor auf Temperatur zu halten, ist gar eine Flüssigkeitskühlung eingebaut. Samsung will mit den neuen Geräten auch mobile Spieler ansprechen. Eine neue, Vulkan getaufte Grafikschnittstelle soll PC-ähnliche Darstellungen ermöglichen, zusammen mit der Virtual-Reality-Brille Gear VR wird die dritte Dimension zum Spiel hinzugefügt. Die neuen Smartphones passen in das jüngst veröffentlichte VR-Brillenmodell, ein Update ist vorerst nicht geplant. Wohl auch deswegen werden die neuen Smartphones weiterhin per Micro-USB-2.0 geladen und nicht über den neueren USB-Typ C.Neue Wege geht Samsung auch bei der Kamera. Statt 16 gibt es nun nur noch 12 Megapixel Auflösung, dafür aber größere und lichtempfindlichere Bildpunkte, einen schnelleren Autofokus und Funktionen wie kurze Panorama-Videos. Der unpraktische Kamerabuckel des Galaxy S6 ist beinahe verschwunden. Auf der Geräterückseite schaut nur noch ein weniger als ein Millimeter erhabener Rahmen hervor.


Weiter mit an Bord ist die drahtlose Ladetechnik, die nun auch um die weniger verbreitete Powermat-Technologie erweitert wurde. Samsung liefert die Geräte ab dem 11. März zum Preis von rund 700 Euro (Galaxy S7) und 800 Euro (Galaxy S7 Edge) aus. Weil der Speicher nun erweiterbar ist, werden die Geräte in Deutschland nur mit 32 Gigabyte Speicher ausgeliefert.Barcelona (dpa/tmn) - LGs neues Smartphone-Flaggschiff G5 will mehr sein als nur ein Telefon. Das auf dem Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (22. bis 25. Februar) vorgestellte Smartphone soll laut LG-Manager Juno Cho ein Freizeitpark in der Tasche sein.Bei dem neuen Gerät setzt LG zumindest teilweise auf modulare Bauweise. Die Unterseite des Telefons ist abnehmbar. Hier kann nicht nur der Akku ausgetauscht werden, sondern auch gleich weitere Funktionalität über Zusatzmodule nachgerüstet werden. Per Kameramodul Cam Plus wird das Smartphone um zusätzliche Bedienelemente und Batteriekapazität erweitert, ein Audioprozessor von B&O namens Hifi Plus bringt HD-Audio für Musikfreunde.



Zusätzlich bringt LG eine ganze Reihe von Geräten auf den Markt, die mit dem G5 zusammenarbeiten. Unter den LG Friends genannten Gadgets sind eine 360-Grad-Kamera (360 Cam) und eine 180 Gramm leichte Virtual-Reality-Brille (360VR), die per Kabel ans Smartphone angeschlossen wird. Im Gegensatz zu Samsungs Gear VR ist sie kleiner und leichter. Außerdem muss das Smartphone nicht als Display in die Brille eingesteckt werden, sondern überträgt per USB-C-Kabel Inhalte direkt auf die Displays der VR-Brille.Weitere Friends sind etwa ein Steuergerät für Kameradrohnen und ein Rolling Bot genannter Hausroboter in Kugelform. Er ist mit Kamera, Mikrofon, Lautsprecher und einem Infrarotmodul zum Fernsteuern von Unterhaltungselektronik ausgerüstet. Mögliche Einsatzbereiche sind die Heimüberwachung von unterwegs, aber auch Spiele mit dem Haustier sind möglich: Der Rolling Bot hat einen Laserpointer eingebaut, um die Katze auf Trab zu halten. Künftig dürfte es noch weitere Geräte geben, die mit dem G5 auf der LG Playground genannten und für Drittanbieter offenen Plattform zusammenarbeiten.


Das G5 kommt mit einem metallenen Unibody-Gehäuse, einem 5,3 Zoll großen QHD-Display (2560 zu 1440 Pixeln) mit Always-on-Funktion zur Anzeige von Uhrzeit und weiteren Informationen im Stand-by-Modus, Qualcomms Snapdragon-820-Prozessor, 32 Gigabyte (GB) Festspeicher (per SD-Karte zum bis zu zwei Terabyte erweiterbar) und 4 GB Arbeitsspeicher. Die 16 Megapixel (MP) auflösende Hauptkamera ist auf der Rückseite neben einem 8-MP-Modell mit Weitwinkellinse und 135 Grad Aufnahmewinkel eingelassen. Das G5 soll noch in diesem Jahr in den Farben Silber, Gold, Pink und Titan auf den Markt kommen - wann genau, verriet LG ebenso wenig wie den Preis.Barcelona (dpa) - Sony hat am Montag drei neue Modelle seiner Xperia-Smartphones vorgestellt. Während Konkurrenten wie Samsung, LG und Huawei Erlebniswelten der virtuellen Realität auf der Messe in den Vordergrund rücken, setzt Sony auf sogenannte Augmented Reality, was so viel wie erweiterte Realität heißt.Das Unternehmen präsentierte mit Xperia Eye, Ear, Projector und Agent gleich eine ganze Reihe von Gerätekonzepten, die den fest auf das Display gerichteten Blick des Smartphone-Nutzers wieder in den Alltag richten helfen sollen.



So fungiert das Gerät Xperia Ear nicht nur als Headset, sondern navigiert den Nutzer künftig auch intelligent an sein Ziel - ohne dass er einen Blick auf das Smartphone werfen muss. Xperia Eye, eine kleine Kamera, die an Apples iPod erinnert, lässt sich ans Revers klemmen. Sie soll Gesichter erkennen und automatisch Bilder machen, sobald sie ein Lächeln erkennt. Wir haben schon sehr viel in die Forschung und Entwicklung solcher Technologien gesteckt, sagte Sony-Mobile-Chef Hiroki Totoki der dpa. Wir wollen Intelligenz in die Geräte bringen und das Verhalten der Smartphone-Nutzer verändern. Sie sollen den Blick wieder frei auf ihre Umgebung richten können. Mit Xperia Projector schlägt Sony einen ganz ähnlichen Weg ein wie etwa Microsoft. Inhalte wie Bilder oder Dokumente sollen sich damit einfach auf die Oberfläche eines Tisches projizieren und gemeinsam anschauen lassen. Xperia Agent soll schließlich als persönlicher Assistent künftig auch Hausgeräte steuern können. Xperia Eye soll in diesem Sommer auf den Markt kommen, alle anderen Entwicklungen befinden sich noch in der Entwicklungsphase. Doch auch sie wolle Sony zeitnah auf den Markt bringen, versichert Totoki.


Mes rendez-vous

Battery for HP ProBook 6465b

The government has another robo-problem on its plate, also caused by opening up policy to the wisdom of the slacktivists.Last summer the IPO sought views (pdf) on industrial scale online copyright infringement.This is mildly remarkable in itself; we don’t normally invite criminals to decide how long they should spend in prison, and sentencing has historically been left to our independent judiciary, not crowd-pleasing politicians. An independent judiciary is regarded as the hallmark of a free and open society. But let’s park that one for a moment.In the UK, punishments for criminal-scale infringement are different for physical and online infringement, with punishments for physical infringement, such as bootlegging DVDs, set higher – to a maximum of 10 years. But broadband is now ubiquitous, and you can “bootleg” online by operating a pirate site on a far greater scale and far more easily than you can copy physical DVDs.The 2005 Gowers Review recommended raising the online sentences to match the physical sentences. The consultation posed the question: “Should the maximum custodial sentence available for online and offline copyright infringement of equal seriousness be harmonised at 10 years?”


Once again, a pressure group swung into action. The law shouldn’t keep pace with technology. The Open Rights Group, while acknowledging that online infringement could lead to economic losses in the millions, argued that sentences were already too tough.Like OpenMedia, the ORG raised a scare-based campaign, advising, improbably, that:“Many internet innovators, prosumers, online creative communities that create non-profit derivative works, fandom producers, etc. All these people – many of whom technically breach copyright in their activities – could find themselves facing prison sentences if making available carried a maximum sentence of ten years.”This was indisputably incorrect. A case of industrial scale infringement meriting a custodial sentence would never be brought to a fandom producer with an audience of a few dozen fans, and made to stick. Such cases are very rare anyway. The law simply doesn't apply to these cases.However the IPO now has a problem. Altogether 28 organisations responded, with 20 supporting bringing the online law into line with physical. Eight organisations opposed. Sixty-six individuals responded. And 938 responses came from the Open Rights Group’s campaign. That’s 92 per cent of all responses.



Given that the ORG’s own response was misleading, we can conclude that many of the ORG-inspired respondents were in reality answering a question different to the one the IPO had actually posed. It’s a bit like asking the public whether grapefruit should be made illegal, and you get 1,000 respondents who are adamant that bananas shouldn’t be banned. What do you then do with replies? (There is a Two Ronnies sketch in this vein, which some older readers will remember).We gather that the IPO is weighing up how to grapple with this thorny issue. Perhaps it could it use 1/720th of the response, on the basis that even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.And it isn’t just slacktivist NGOs. In India, the telecoms regulator TRAI has rejected more than three-quarters of the 1.8 million responses it received on a public consultation because they were auto-generated by Facebook.Either way, the strange notion that we people would participate more by doing less, but by doing less electronically, no longer looks very persuasive. Bastard Junket Watch, a website entirely devoted to plausible-sounding technical events, has sent up the email equivalent of an emergency flare. An event company which knows very little about IT (and cares even less) is hosting a five-day Service Delivery for Technical Professionals course in a month or so.


Ordinarily a course like this is about as appealing as the shower scene in a Turkish prison during stabbing season, however the company concerned DOES distinguish itself by awarding fancy looking achievement certificates at the end of the course which look impressive on the office wall.(Again) Ordinarily I usually ask the certificate printers to just ensure that the output of the printer is as adjacent to the input of the shredder as possible, however in this particular case the certificates are like gold - partly because they have gold lettering (told you they were fancy) but also because they act as a form of proof of attendance.The event company is about as interested in IT as I am in the finer points of regulation international lawn bowls' grass height, however they do put a lot of effort into their social events - which often start around the time you check in and finish about the time you check out - either from the event or life itself. They like to think of themselves as innovators. So obviously you're in need of some proof that the course was robust and worthwhile...The Junket Watch priority signal is because the Service Delivery for IT Professionals gig has an overview of Investigating case studies of Service Delivery methods in local industry - the finer print noting that the local industry they're talking about is whisky distilleries in Islay. And it's basically a five-day coach tour...



Given the company's policy of not permitting all members of a support team to be absent at the same time, the PFY and I are now engaged in an unspoken competition to be the person that the Director sends. In the words of the Highlander, there can be only one...The PFY lurches into play almost immediately, laughing at the Director's rubbish jokes and promising to upgrade the RAM on his top-of-the-line Ultrabook. He choked on his words a little when he found out that the stuff was soldered into the motherboard, but then a promise is a promise.So here we are: the PFY with his static protected needle-tip solder reworking station, the Director's laptop on the actively static-protected workdesk (which, to my knowledge has never been used since it was installed at great cost) – and me, with my paper bag to collect all the bits left over... which always happens when you take a priceless piece of kit to bits.In a rare show of sportsmanship I did point out to the PFY the wisdom of backing up the machine prior to starting work, however he just saw this as me trying to make the job take longer than he'd promised - so his hybrid solution is to plug the drive into a duplication cradle while he does the hot work. Sneaky.


Mes rendez-vous

Battery for DELL XPS 1530

The committee noted: “Apple and other communications companies have expressed concerns about whether the draft Bill might require them to adopt weaker standards of encryption. Apple have also reportedly stated that the draft Investigatory Powers Bill could be a catalyst for other countries to enact similar measures, leading to significant numbers of contradictory country-specific laws.”As former MP for Cambridge, Dr Julian Huppert, noted, it is “unclear what would happen if a court were to be asked to take action against an operator who was unable to comply with this power because of the fundamental nature of their product: Any decentralised communications system is likely to render this clause impossible to comply with.”The Government needs to do more to allay unfounded concerns that encryption will no longer be possible.
The Home Office told the committee that communications service providers would be expected to serve up plaintext data when ordered to do so. The report understood that this “would not apply to content that is encrypted end-to-end before being passed to the communications provider for transmission: 'What has to be removed is the electronic protection that the service-provider itself has put on the message. It is not removing encryption; it is removing electronic protection.”


The report concluded that the Government “should clarify and state clearly in the Codes of Practice that it will not be seeking unencrypted content in such cases, in line with the way existing legislation is currently applied.”Blackwood herself concurred: “Encryption is important in providing the secure services on the internet we all rely on, from credit card transactions and commerce to legal or medical communications. It is essential that the integrity and security of legitimate online transactions is maintained if we are to trust in, and benefit from, the opportunities of an increasingly digital economy.”She asserted that: “The Government needs to do more to allay unfounded concerns that encryption will no longer be possible.”The report also considers "equipment interference" - hacking - and notes that it “encompasses a wide range of activity from remote access to computers to downloading covertly the contents of a mobile phone during a search.” Such interference has been consistently defended in in an environment increasingly featuring the widespread use of cryptography.In his submission, the University of Cambridge's Ross Anderson acknowledged that the “right way to get around encryption is targeted equipment interference, and that is hack the laptop, the phone, the car, the Barbie doll or whatever of the gang boss you are going after, so that you get access to the microphones, to the cameras, and to the stored data. The wrong way to do it is bulk equipment interference.”



The report cited Big Brother Watch, which noted that “weakening a system does not mean that only law enforcement or the intelligence agencies can exploit it—'The system can be exploited by anyone who uncovers the weakness, including malicious actors, rogue states, or non-Government hackers'.”We believed the industry case regarding public fear about 'equipment interference' is well founded.
Alarmingly clause 99 of the Snoopers' Charter would oblige domestic communication service providers to assist the Government in its hacking activities, while clause 102 wold make it a criminal offence for “any person employed for the purposes of the business of the relevant telecommunications provider” to disclose “any steps taken in pursuance” of this assistance.According to industry witnesses, this offence would be inevitable for companies who open source their code, and thus were unable to conceal anything which had been tampered with from the public. The committee reported that it believed “the industry case regarding public fear about 'equipment interference' is well founded.”As such, the committee recommended that the new Investigatory Powers Commissioner should report to the public on the extent to which these measures are used for security reasons, and should also “carefully monitor public reaction to this power.”


Blackwood said: “It is vital we get the balance right between protecting our security and the health of our economy.We need our security services to be able to do their job and prevent terrorism, but as legislators we need to be careful not to inadvertently disadvantage the UK’s rapidly growing Tech sector.”Years ago, we were told that mass democratic participation was was going to be revolutionised by the web. One click was all it would take to effect change - if only enough people clicked. We would tweet truth to power. Instead of arranging to see an elected representative, we could fill in a handy web form. The future belonged to the web savvy, and their “swarm intelligence”. Against this, The Man wouldn’t stand a chance!Three examples this week suggest otherwise, reminding us that robo-responses are zapped faster than any shredder in the world can destroy paper.Last week the UK government ripped up a public consultation into the future of the BBC because almost all the responses came from one source, the pressure group 38 Degrees. The group claims to have 3 million members and organises campaigns on a range of Left-leaning issues, describing itself modestly thus:



“38 Degrees is the angle at which snowflakes come together to form an avalanche – together we're unstoppable.”
The group generated 177,000 ranty emails to the Ministry of Fun*, warning Culture Minister John Whittingdale not to “rip the heart out of the BBC”.38 Degrees didn’t put any checks in place to stop people sending multiple letters. DCMS had to pull 25 staff from their normal duties to deal with the robotically assisted avalanche, or 10,000 man-hours of work. Eventually 92 per cent of all the responses for the consultation were sourced via 38 Degrees. Whittingdale decided this was unrepresentative, scrapped the consultation, and has started it all over again.The EU this week binned thousands of responses to a copyright consultation generated by a Canadian lobbying group OpenMedia, a groupuscule funded by Canada’s technology industry. In December, OpenMedia declared that the European Commission was going to “copyright the hyperlink” and urged people to submit a roboform to “Save The Link”. Scared out of their wits, 75,000 people did just that.The problem was that the scare was entirely bogus. Even academics hostile to copyright declared that the EU wasn’t proposing anything of the sort. The protections safeguarding publishers large and small would remain intact.


Mes rendez-vous

Battery for LENOVO ThinkPad X130e

From Taiwan, an advance on a tantalising rumour: Toshiba, Fujitsu and Vaio look to be seriously considering a merger of their laptop-making operations.Vaio, the laptop spin-off from Sony, publicly floated the idea in late 2015. At that time it was thought that Toshiba would probably like the idea, as relieving itself of its laptop division in a declining market would mean one less thing to worry about as it wrestles with its accounting scandal. Fujitsu's LifeBook products are well-regarded, but are not big sellers globally.Now Taiwan's Digitimes says news of the merger is causing nervousness among the nation's manufacturers, who fear consolidation of contracts if the three do pursue a deal.The rumour is hard to dismiss, as PC sales are falling fast and none of the three companies make it into the world's top half-dozen vendors, meaning they're selling fewer than 20 million units a year.Even if the three are doing well in Japan, that market's not in great shape: analyst firm IDC's assessment is that “a weaker Yen, high inventory, and lack of Windows 10 marketing continued to constrain PC sales” in 2015.Consolidation into a combined brand could help to defend the Japanese market and make it easier to compete abroad. It's even possible that the three brands could survive, with Vaio in consumer-land, Fujitsu concentrating on the business sales its global services business brings and Toshiba straddling both markets as it already does today.


IPB The first Parliamentary report into the UK's draft Investigatory Powers Bill, commonly referred to as the "Snoopers' Charter", says it has great potential to damage the nation's technology sector and the public should therefore pick up the tab for the £2bn (US$2.85bn) or so it will require to implement the data-harvesting legislation.That's the gist of the report into the Bill, issued today by the UK's Science and Technology Select Committee.The report argues that complying with the Bill will cost business so much that they'll be disadvantaged when competing with foreign rivals. The report also worries about reputational costs associated with the Bill's provisions for state hacking and mandatory decryption.Focusing on the technological aspects of the Snoopers' Charter, the inquiry assessed it only in terms of its feasibility and cost, rather than whether its legal powers were proportionate to the threats they were intended to address. That second assessment is being made by the Joint Committee on the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill which is likely to publish its report within the next fortnight.Nicola Blackwood MP, the committee's chair, stressed the bill's poor definitions of matters like decryption-on-demand (the removal of electronic protection) and the state's legalised hacking abilities (equipment interference). The committee's greatest worry, however, regarded "the feasibility of collecting and storing Internet Connection Records (ICRs), including concerns about ensuring security for the records from hackers."



"The Bill was intended to provide clarity to the industry, but the current draft contains very broad and ambiguous definitions of ICRs," wrote Blackwood, echoing the sentiments of the submissions her committee had received from almost every party except from the Home Office itself.Does anyone here know what an 'Internet Connection Record' might be?
A consensus among those providing witness statements to the Science and Technology Committee's inquiry, as well as to the Joint Committee providing pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft legislation as a whole, criticised ICRs.Some ISPs simply confessed ignorance as to what the Home Office could possible mean by the term, while other witnesses gave more robust denials regarding whether ICRs even existed. No witnesses believed they current possessed the capacity to collect ICRs, and there was much echo of The Register's analysis that £2bn was a far closer assessment of its implementation costs than £250m.The report declared that “the Government must work with industry to improve estimates of all of the compliance costs associated with the measures in the draft Bill.”Blackwood noted that there are "widespread doubts over the definition, not to mention the definability, of a number of the terms used in the draft Bill”, and the report specifically highlighted that there are "questions as to how collecting and storing ICRs is technically possible, and whether Data Retention Notices to retain all user ICRs are 'necessary and proportionate'."


When such concerns were first raised, UK home secretary Theresa May dismissed them before Parliament by claiming that: “If someone has visited a social media website, an internet connection record will only show that they accessed that site, not the particular pages they looked at, who they communicated with, or what they said. It is simply the modern equivalent of an itemised phone bill.”Government must urgently review the legislation so that the obligations on the industry are clear and proportionate.
This has been disputed, however. As legal expert Graham Smith told The Register: “We didn't read books over the telephone, but as an entirely accidental by-product of communications technology, our reading habits are now trackable.”Smith was further cited by the report as “pointing out that the draft Bill itself uses the term 'internet connection record' only in clause 47 and that this differs from the way in which 'relevant communications data' are defined in clause 71 (which details the powers to require retention of certain data).”



The report stated that Smith “described how the scope of 'relevant communications data' depended on thirteen interlinked definitions, and concluded that 'the clause 71 power looks as if it may cover a wider range of communications data than is achieved by adding 'Internet Connection Records' to the current list of retainable communications data.'”All of which the committee found important, as any assessment of the feasibility of collecting and storing ICRs “depends on what they actually are.” The committee chair advocated that Government "urgently review the legislation so that the obligations on the industry are clear and proportionate."For many onlookers one of the most concerning clauses of the bill is 189(4)(c), as it provides the government with the ability to impose “obligations relating to the removal of electronic protection applied by a relevant operator to any communications or data.”The Government's line on the matter is that it has no desire to “ban or limit cryptography”, and indeed this was trotted out recently in its response to a January petition on cryptography. How service providers were expected the fulfil their obligation under 189(4)(c) while transmitting end-to-end encrypted communications was unexplained.


Les présentations

Batterie pour Toshiba PA3533U-1BAS

Ce sont les caractéristiques les plus importantes, mais pas tous. Un certain nombre d’autres extras, comme une nouvelle icône de l’Explorateur de fichiers a fait son apparition dans la mise à jour. Découvrez l’article sur le blog Windows de Microsoft si vous voulez passer au crible chaque détail.Microsoft a lancé une nouvelle version de Windows 10 Mobile à son programme Insider, pour tous ceux qui ont opté pour le canal Rapide, passant ainsi l’OS à la build 14327. Cette version introduit le service de messagerie unifiée de Microsoft sur mobile, ajoutant quelques langues supplémentaires à Cortana, et apportant quelques corrections de bugs introduites avec de précédentes builds.La nouvelle build se joint à une version mise à jour de l’application Skype UWP qui va jouer un rôle important dans les prochaines builds de Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview.Pour commencer, les membres du programme Insider peuvent maintenant obtenir un avant-goût de ce que Microsoft cache derrière son application « Messaging everywhere ». Ce service permet aux utilisateurs d’envoyer et de recevoir des SMS sur un ordinateur de bureau sous Windows 10, associé à un appareil sous Windows 10 Mobile. Cela devrait être utile pour les clients qui sont constamment sur un ordinateur portable, et qui ne peuvent pas être sur un smartphone pour passer un appel, ou répondre à un SMS.La version preview de Windows 10 Mobile ajoute une messagerie unifiée
Pour activer ce service, les utilisateurs doivent s’enregistrer avec leur compte Microsoft. Puis, sur le smartphone, activez l’option « Send texts on all my Windows devices » (« envoyer des messages à tous mes appareils Windows ») dans l’application Messages. Et, vérifiez que la version de Windows 10 sur PC est configurée pour que le smartphone sous Windows soit la cible désignée de tous les SMS.


Microsoft note que l’intégration de Skype dans l’application Messages a été retirée pour « rationaliser l’expérience ». Au lieu de cela, la prochaine build de Windows 10 Mobile va ajouter l’intégration de l’application Skype UWP Preview dans l’application Messages. Les utilisateurs sont encouragés à utiliser l’application Skype existante sur un dispositif sous Windows 10 Mobile pendant ce laps de temps, qui est évidemment disponible dans le Windows Store.En parlant de l’application Skype UWP, la nouvelle version de bureau ajoute plusieurs fonctionnalités basées sur des groupes tels que la création et l’ajout de messages de groupe. La messagerie instantanée de groupe avec des outils pour éditer et supprimer des messages à postériori est également au menu, ainsi que la possibilité de taguer un groupe spécifique comme un « favori ».
Cependant, la bonne nouvelle est que la version mobile de l’application Skype UWP Preview arrive bientôt. Cette application va inclure un tas de nouvelles fonctionnalités.Pour en revenir à Windows 10 Mobile, la build 14327 injecte maintenant des langues supplémentaires dans Cortana. L’assistant numérique de Microsoft prend désormais en charge l’espagnol (Mexique), le Portugais (Brésil), et le français (Canada). La saisie vocale est également disponible dans ces langues.



Comme mentionné précédemment, la nouvelle version de Windows 10 Mobile corrige un certain nombre de problématiques. Une liste complète des corrections et des problèmes connus avec la build 14327 est disponible sur le blog de Microsoft.Ces dernières années, AMD a tâtonné pour un impact quand elle a officiellement dévoilé sa prochaine génération de l’architecture Polaris au Consumer Electronics Show plus dans l’année. Et, il semble que ses efforts ont payé. Des rumeurs circulent sur la toile, affirmant que AMD va fournir des pièces, à la fois pour Apple et Sony.Apple a apparemment l’intention d’utiliser l’architecture Polaris dans ses futurs ordinateurs portables et ses ordinateurs de bureau. Les puces Polaris 10 et 11 — autrefois nommées sous les noms de code Ellesmere et Baffin — devraient être utilisées dans des périphériques qui seront sur le marché plus tard dans l’année.Une relation avec Apple ne va évidemment pas être le must-have pour AMD en matière de volume de pièces vendues, mais le prix de luxe sur un produit comme le MacBook suggère que le fabricant va percevoir une bonne commission, comme le souligne Tech WCCF. Le fait que le vice-président senior et architecte en chef du Radeon Technologies Group, Raja Koduri, a déjà travaillé sur le graphisme chez Apple a peut-être contribué à faciliter cet arrangement. Apple s’est tourné vers AMD il y a environ trois ans, abandonnant NVIDIA.


Pendant ce temps, il semble que AMD va également contribuer au développement de la PS4K. La version mise à niveau de la PlayStation 4 n’a pas encore été officiellement annoncée, mais devient de plus en plus évoquée sur la toile — il semble que la nouvelle console agira comme une version gonflée de l’actuelle console, pour permettre de rivaliser avec des PC.Les spécifications du périphérique récemment divulguées ne référencent pas la puce Polaris 10 par son nom, mais le GPU décrit semble terriblement similaire, selon Hexus. La nouvelle puce permettrait à la PlayStation 4K de profiter d’une bande passante de l’ordre de 218 Go/s, contre 176 Go/s actuellement. Elle aurait 8 Go de GDDR5.Bien sûr, cela aurait du sens, puisque Sony aura besoin d’une mise à niveau de sa PS4 pour être complètement compatible avec la bibliothèque de jeu en cours. Mettre à niveau le GPU avec la dernière architecture de AMD faciliterait grandement le travail de Sony pour s’assurer que sa plate-forme reste compétitive.La WWDC 2016 du mois de juin semble être le choix évident pour une annonce officielle sur les nouveaux Mac. À contrario, Sony est susceptible de dévoiler la PS4K à l’E3.Vous rappelez-vous quand il y a eu les premiers indices sur la façon dont nous pourrions interagir avec la réalité virtuelle en 2012 et 2013 ? Si aujourd’hui le Magic Leap a été présenté au grand public, une technologie de réalité augmentée pourrait changer la façon dont nous interagissons tous les uns avec les autres et avec notre technologie. Dans la dernière vidéo de l’entreprise, la technologie continue d’impressionner, mais nous ne savons toujours pas grand-chose de celle-ci.



Si l’on parle de Magic Leap depuis un certain temps maintenant, et dans laquelle Google a fortement investi en 2014, nous avons seulement eu quelques vidéos de teasing sur la technologie. La vidéo a été impressionnante, et c’est clairement ce que les gens recherchent pour l’achat d’un tel périphérique. Cela ressemble à certains des casques de réalité virtuelle que nous voyons débarquer ces derniers mois.Alors que la technologie semble trouver son rythme de croisière, la dernière vidéo de Magic Leap montre plus le côté pratique de son utilisation. Visualiser des notifications push, des conversations, ou encore des informations sur divers logiciels, tous sont représentés au sein de votre espace de travail, suggérant la possibilité de faire entièrement disparaître la nécessité des écrans. Et, il y a même un superbe « économiseur d’écran » de méduses à la fin de la vidéo.Mais, tout reste une nouvelle fois de la pure spéculation, puisque nous ne savons pas grand-chose à propos de la technologie. Magic Leap n’a pas encore montré un casque ou des lunettes, des détails sur le prix, ou de mentionner quel périphérique va être en mesure de projeter de telles images. Nous ne savons rien de tout cela à ce jour.


La chambre de bébé

Akku für Sony VGP-BPL18

Allerdings erreichte keine der getesteten Fotoclouds die Note sehr gut. Und grundsätzlich sollte man sich drüber im Klaren sein, dass man Persönliches in fremde Hände gibt, und genau überlegen, welche Bilder man auf den Internetservern der Dienste speichert, so die Experten.Da kein Anbieter so etwas wie eine Sicherheitsgarantie abgibt, sei eine zusätzliche Sicherung der Fotos daheim unabdingbar, etwa auf einer externen Festplatte. Und auch wenn die ausschließlichen Zugriffs- und Nutzungsrechte der Bilder dem Kunden gehörten: Niemand könne letztlich kontrollieren, ob ein Dienst Fotos auswertet, Dritten zugänglich macht oder sie effektiv vor Dieben schützt.Fotocloud-Einsteigern empfehlen die Warentester einen Zugang auf Probe, den man schnell wieder kündigen kann: Sie sollten die Dienste zuerst mit wenigen Bildern einrichten und ausprobieren, aber keine großen Fotomengen hochladen. Der Teste findet idealerweise am PC oder Notebook statt, weil man damit den Angaben nach steuern kann, welche Fotos auf den Servern der Anbieter landen. Anders als auf mobilen Geräten lässt sich am Rechner ein Ordner bestimmen, aus dem der Dienst die Fotos hochlädt.


Ganz ohne Macken sind die Angebote aber nicht: Einige Dienste haben nur wenig Gratisspeicher im Angebot, andere unterstützen bestimmte Fotoformate nicht, und manche benachteiligen den Nutzer in den Allgemeinen Geschäftsbedingungen (AGB). Außerdem sind einige der Apps, die von fast allen Diensten angeboten werden, neugierig, warnen die Warentester. Sie sammeln Daten, die für die Funktionsfähigkeit des Angebots nicht notwendig seien, mit denen sich aber Nutzerprofile erstellen ließen.Wem Komfort wichtig ist, dem empfehlen die Experten den vielseitigen Testsieger Flickr (Gesamtnote 2,3), der mit 1 Terabyte (1000 Gigabyte) Gratisspeicher und vielen nützlichen Funktionen überzeugte. Ein Wermutstropfen ist aber die datenhungrige Android-App des Yahoo-Tochterunternehmens. Beim zweiten mit gut bewerteten Dienst handelt es sich um Google Fotos (Gesamtnote 2,5), die den Angaben nach fast so vielseitig wie Flickr ist, aber deren Android-App ebenfalls unnötig Daten sendet - etwa Informationen zum Gerät und zur Nutzung.Aus der Wertung genommen wurde das ebenfalls getestete Telekom Mediencenter, weil das Unternehmen dieses Angebot zwischenzeitlich eingestellt und einen Nachfolger namens Magentacloud herausgebracht hat. Das alte Mediencenter hätte aber mit reibungsloser Bedienung, mängelfreien AGB, unbedenklichen Apps und 25 Gigabyte Gratisspeicher ebenfalls die Note gut (Gesamtnote 2,4) erreicht.



Frankfurt/Main (dpa/tmn) - Technik aller Art gehört längst zum Alltag und bestimmt diesen zum Teil sogar. Doch nach der Freude über ein Geschenk oder einen Neukauf stellt sich schnell die Frage: Was tun mit dem alten und ausrangierten Kram? Die Antwort ist nicht immer ganz leicht.Sicher ist: Es war wohl noch nie so einfach wie heute, alte Geräte sinnvoll loszuwerden. Im Sinne von Umweltschutz und Ressourcen-Schonung gilt grundsätzlich, dass Wiederverwendung vor Wiederverwertung vor Entsorgung geht, erklärt Rolf Buschmann von der Umweltorganisation BUND. Das Beste sei deshalb, noch verwendbare Geräte einfach zu verkaufen. So könne man damit auch noch ein wenig Geld machen. Denn für Gebrauchtelektronik habe sich ein reger Markt entwickelt.Das gilt besonders für Smartphones. Schon 2014 schätzte der IT-Branchenverband Bitkom die Zahl der hierzulande in Schubladen schlummernden Althandys auf 100 Millionen. Es dürften seitdem wohl noch einige dazu gekommen sein. Handys kann man per Anzeige oder Auktion nicht nur direkt selbst verkaufen, es gibt auch zahlreiche Ankaufportale. Oder man spendet sie für den guten Zweck: Dazu starten etwa Vereine immer wieder Sammelaktionen.Ähnliche Möglichkeiten bestehen auch für PCs oder Notebooks. Wenn man sich nicht sicher ist, ob die Geräte noch in Ordnung sind, kann man sie auch bei einem Wertstoffhof abgeben: Oft werden die Geräte dort geprüft und an Sozialkaufhäuser und ähnliche Einrichtungen weitergegeben, wenn sie noch funktionieren, sagt Buschmann.Um gebrauchte Geräte und deren Weiterverwendung kümmern sich auch Vereine und Organisationen wie etwa Reuse in Berlin. Smartphones, Notebooks, PCs seien gerne gesehen, sagt Stefan Ebelt, Vorstandsvorsitzender von Reuse. Noch schöner ist es, wenn die Geräte auch vollständig sind. Beim Notebook gehörten immer auch Netzteil, Akku und Festplatte dazu. Ein solches Notebook hat für uns sonst nur den halben oder gar keinen Wert. Bei den meisten alten Geräten sei es sonst oft schwer, noch passende Ersatzteile zu finden. Und der Einbau koste Zeit. Wir erleben es aber immer wieder, dass Leute aus Datenschutzgründen die Festplatte lieber ausbauen.


Das kann Christof Windeck vom c't-Magazin nachvollziehen. Das Wichtigste bei alten Datenträgern sei es, die Daten durch Überschreiben sicher zu löschen. Da gibt es Software dafür. Für alle, die sich da unsicher seien, gelte im Zweifelsfall: Platte ausbauen und physisch zerstören - wie auch USB-Sticks.Gerade bei Festplatten gebe es ohnehin einen starken Wertverlust: Ein halbes Terabyte geht gerade noch, aber kleine Platten mit 128, 160 oder 250 Gigabyte haben nur noch einen beschränkten Wert, erklärt Windeck. Aber man kann sich überlegen, sie selbst für Backups zu nutzen, so der Experte weiter. Man kann gar nicht genug Sicherungen haben, die man dann in den Schrank legen kann.Gebrauchte RAM-Speicherriegel könnten dagegen noch gute Preise erzielen, sagt Windeck. Bei Kabeln sei das aber schon wieder schwieriger. Micro-USB-Kabel und -Ladegeräte könne man bedenkenlos behalten, weil man sie eigentlich immer braucht - und diese gerade in billigeren Ausführungen häufig kaputt gehen. Andere USB-Kabel lägen hingegen oft nur herum. Ausnahme USB-3-Kabel: Die sollte man besser aufheben, weil sie je nach Gerät manchmal unterschiedlich arbeiteten.



Alte Drucker-Kabel seien meist etwas für den Wertstoffhof, zumal es in dem Bereich auch Kabel gebe, die identisch aussehen, aber intern unterschiedlich geschaltet seien, sagt Windeck. Auch bei Adaptern lohne sich das Aufheben oft nicht. Das seien Pfennigartikel, die meist direkt aus China kommen. Das ist praktisch nichts mehr wert.Zu viele Kabel, Adapter und Geräte daheim aufheben sollte man also besser nicht, sagt auch Georg Abel von der Verbraucher Initiative. Einiges könne man inzwischen auch schon beim Händler oder Hersteller zurückgeben, in manchen Städten gebe es auch praktische Wertstoff-Container. Wichtig ist, sich klar zu machen, dass da wertvolle Rohstoffe drin sind, die man weiterverwerten kann, sagt Abel. Da geht es um Ressourcenschonung.Kabel und Adapter könne man auch bei kommunalen Entsorgungsstellen abgeben, ebenso Kartons und Verpackungsmaterial wie Styropor. Füllmaterial sei aber oft einfach etwas für die gelbe Tonne, so Abel. Aber vor dem Entsorgen sollte immer die Frage stehen: Wenn ich es nicht mehr gebrauchen kann, wer kann es dann gebrauchen?


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Battery for Acer AS07A42

While the T1000 was ahead on that front, it also offered a rather archaic LCD display as illustrated above (here for readers on mobile devices and in this manual that Toshiba thoughtfully keeps on the web.The machine ran MS-DOS 2.11 on a ROM, an oddity at the time when booting from removable media was commonplace. Toshiba seems to have figured out that carrying around an OS disks was not going to be a hit with mobile users, so made the extra investment. The computer came with a colossal 512KB of RAM (enough for anyone!) and a single 3.5-inch floppy drive.Holrum says the T1000s are taken offline every few years for just the few minutes required to replace the NiCad batteries and give them a clean, before they are returned to duty as process monitoring terminals.That's not the only oldie Holrum has running: he says he mailed us on a 2005 Mac Mini G4 Power PC machine and typed on an original IBM PC/AT keyboard with an AT to USB adapter. “The keyboard is borrowed from my still working IBM PC/AT purchased the week before they were released to the public (it has a low three digit serial number).”Impressive. But perhaps not as impressive as another tale Holrum shared, of the solar-powered remote monitoring systems he built in the mid 1980s and which have been running ever since, except for after a mud storm. And that one time a guy shot up the solar panels.


The systems were “deployed in far flung remote locations around the planet” and given a US$10,000 annual maintenance budget. That money was duly set aside year after year, but never used. Except by a “wily manager who noticed the bucks accumulating in an obscure account and for years trousered most of it... until a new accountant noticed.”“He embezzled the money,” Holrum says. “Apparently it went on for several years. I guess that explains why he never accepted any promotions.”Do you have older laptops still running? If so, write and let me know.We may even get around to giving this very old computers column a name if it keeps going. When Eurocom releases new laptops – or 'mobile workstations' as it prefers to call them – it can be hard to keep one's jaw from the floor.This time around the company's released the Sky X9W complete with a quad-core, eight-thread, Intel Core i7 6700K capable of operating at 4.2GHz and nestled amidst an Intel Z170 Express (Skylake) chipset. The NVIDIA Quadro M5000M dwarfs the CPU for core count: it's got 1,536 of its own.



Pack in 64GB of DDR4-2133, 2400 or 2666 RAM, if you please, then throw in up to four NVME SSDs and give them the RAID 10 treatment for data protection.This time around, Eurocom says the machine has a battery, which is a bit of a disappointment because it had previously labelled the portable power source an “uninterruptible power supply”. The company's also managed to shave 700 grams off previous mobile workstations to weigh in at a mere 4.8 kilograms.Which is not to say a call to harden up would be fair: there's at least three fans we can see in this machine, a single USB-C port, a pair of mini display ports capable of driving four monitors, an HDMI outlet, five USB 3.0 ports, a pair of RJ45s and Wi-Fi.Prices start at US$2,930, but the configurator lets you crank that up far higher – just the maximum GPU option we've mentioned above sees the machine hit $4309.If you don't feel the need for a holiday this decade, or need to take a very grunty machine into the kind of place you don't want to go on holiday, the Sky X9W may be for you! BT has blamed a faulty router for knocking its network offline yesterday, leaving hundreds of thousands of customers without the internet.The telecoms giant apologised for the failure, which began at around 2pm yesterday afternoon. Customers across the country were unable to get online, with reports of the outage affecting London, Birmingham, Sheffield and Glasgow.


In a statement yesterday evening, it said: BT is confident that services have been fully restored following an outage that affected several hundred thousand customers earlier today.A faulty router was to blame for the outage and we apologise to those customers who were affected.Earlier this week, BT posted its best quarter results in seven years. Profit before tax soared by 24 per cent to £862m on revenue up three per cent to £4.6bn compared with the same three months last year.Ofcom is expected to decide whether or not to recommend spinning out BT's broadband division, Openreach.More than 100 MPs have called for a separation of Openreach, claiming the company has substantially failed to deliver on its rural broadband commitments.However, in its quarterly earnings call, chief exec Gavin Patterson said the company had been very disappointed by the report. Getting hold of USB-C cables can be a pain, but a Google engineer has found one that actually qualifies as dangerous after it broke three pieces of hardware, including a very expensive Pixel Chromebook.Googler Benson Leung has been on a quest to try out the latest USB Type-C cables and find those that aren't up to snuff. Properly configured Type C connectors should be able to provide power and very high data rates, but most of those on the market have serious flaws, he has found.



His findings have already caused one manufacturer to make a public mea culpa. In his latest review, for a Surjtech 3M USB A-to-C cable, Leung found that the cable had been wired up incorrectly and was actively harmful.He reported that he plugged the cable into his 2015 edition Pixel via a USB power delivery analyzer and connected it to an Apple 12W iPad charger. The second the connection was made it fried both the analyzer and the Pixel laptop.The analyzer, and a second unit he tried, both died on contact with the cable and not even a firmware reinstall would get them working. As for the Pixel, both USB ports died as the current fried the embedded controller, meaning the laptop couldn't be charged or linked to another device.I directly analyzed the Surjtech cable using a Type-C breakout board and a multimeter, and it appears that they completely miswired the cable. The GND pin on the Type-A plug is tied to the Vbus pins on the Type-C plug. The Vbus pin on the Type-A plug is tied to GND on the Type-C plug, he wrote.This is a total recipe for disaster and I have 3 pieces of electronics dead to show for it – my Pixel 2015 and two USB PD analyzers. Needless to say, this cable is fundamentally dangerous. Do not buy this under any circumstances.Leung said that he'd gotten in contact with the manufacturer to discuss the issue. As the item is no longer for sale on Amazon, it appears the company has responded.


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Battery for Apple A1148

I don’t mind the murmuring, nor the sociable way in which office minions seek confirmation from colleagues as a means of bolstering their failing courage. The annoying bit is the way no-one dares express what it is that is supposed to be taking place any minute now.It is, of course, the daily morning status meeting which meets every day and every morning, at the same time: 9:30am. Yet everyone is scared of mentioning it by name, as if they’re afraid it might invoke a hex or cause kittens to be drowned on the other side of the Earth.There is logic to all this. Given that our developers refer to themselves as “wizards” and indeed the entire IT project appears to be largely a work of magical fiction, our daily morning status meeting is probably a kind of Voldemort. It shall not be named.Recently, they have begun referring to it as the “nine-thirty”, which gives it both cryptic anonymity and a kind of numeric retro vibe, like Hawaii Five-O.That said, looking across the meadow of freshly installed desk pods, interspaced around a silk-cushioned breakout area, an incomprehensibly complex Apple Pay-enabled coffee machine and the executive ball-pond, it’s not exactly Hogwarts.


No indeed – it’s a veritable circus of death. Its pathway is painted in red and, behind it, a trail of the dead. Back at Hawaii Five-O, McGarrett is wearing a frown.A juvenile colleague twangs my headphones. “Shall we...?” Typical: blind youth taking the path of least resistance.With heavy heart, I slink my way to the giant aquarium that masquerades as the meeting room, offering all the privacy of a Facebook account.Here’s the worst bit: it is not just a status meeting but a stand-up. The first time I attended one of these, I totally misjudged the concept and baffled my colleagues by telling them about a funny thing that had happened on my way there, before telling them they’d been a great audience and wishing them goodnight.The purpose of a stand-up, I now understand, is to speed up the meeting by ensuring the discomfort all attendees by denying them the opportunity to sit. This is supposed to encourage everyone to be brief in their status reports so the meeting ends quickly and they can dart back to their pods and rest their chins.Each of us in turn delivers a brief update on what we are doing at the moment. When it’s my turn, I give my usual status: “I am standing in a meeting room, when I should really be working, and I am telling you this”.I am a giant of prevarication. I am a colossus of meeting-speak. I am Empire State Human.



Job done, I turn to an adjacent colleague, raise my eyebrows and nod at him to indicate that it’s his turn. I can do this so convincingly now that he gives a little twitch and immediately blurts into his own report before giving the project manager a chance to question mine.As I lean precariously against one of the glass partitions, I return to my dreams of leaving and scroll through the unanswered work calls and emails that are popping up in real time on my smartphone. Instead of dealing with these, I am forced to endure the the stand-up inanities of the glass torture chamber for another half-hour. Life kills, eh?When I did this during a status meeting last week, one of the emails revealed the findings of a Harris Poll, commissioned by SaaS work management outfit Clarizen, into the crushing effect of status meetings on productivity. It claimed that staff spend up to 30 per cent of their working week in status meetings.Logically, this means they spend almost a third of their time explaining to colleagues and bosses what they do during the other two-thirds. Strictly speaking, however, they’d have to spend only two-thirds of my time explaining what they had been doing during those two-thirds, plus another third reporting on the remaining third that they’d spent in status meetings.


Most intriguing was the poll finding that of the 65 per cent who confess to multitasking during a meeting, 11 per cent spend the time on the toilet.This sounded like a terrific idea and I was determined to try it out the next morning, but I can assure you from personal experience it does not work. As it turns out, as soon as you try to sit down on the bucket, the project manager insists that everyone should remain standing. Bloody stand-ups, they’re so inconvenient.I have the feeling that the clunky, over-wrought meetings of the past were rather more substantial than the modern ones that take place every nine-thirty. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of the past. Most things get better over time. But some things get worse and this just happens to be one of them.Just occasionally, originals can sometimes feel meatier than their flimsy modern iterations. A bit like CRT monitors in a way: they might have been clunky with lots of wires and made an irritating buzzing sound, but they had substance and integrity back then before turning into shiny, lightweight crap.Panasonic's the latest company to fall foul of dodgy batteries, finding that the rechargeables shipped with its CF-S10 laptop may overheat, cause smoke, or may ignite causing a risk of a fire or a burn hazard to consumers and the computer.



The CF-VZSU61U rechargeable battery pack is the culprit and appears to have come to the attention of Japanese authorities in late 2015, according to this report: A serious product accident occurred involving a battery pack for a laptop computer manufactured by Panasonic Corporation, causing the product to ignite and to burn its surroundings.Canada has since issued a recall for the battery back and Australia's joined in. Each nation is mentioning different time spans for its recall. Japan and Canada [PDF] say machines manufactured between July 2011 and April 2012 have the combustible batteries. Australia says machines bought between April 1st, 2012 and June 1st, 2013 have the problem.Wherever you are, check out the links above, which provide contact details, so you can secure a replacement that Panasonic is handing out gratis. As it ought. The can of worms we opened when we learned of the server switched off after eighteen years and ten months' service is still wriggling, as a reader has contacted us to tell of nearly 30-year-old laptops still in service.Reader “Holrum” says he has “a couple dozen Toshiba T1000 laptops from the mid 1980's still fully functional (including floppy drives).”The T1000 was introduced in 1987, but that's long enough that we'll forgive Holrum the slight lapse, not least because the machine was one of the very first computers to use a clamshell form factor.


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Battery for HP ProBook 6460b

They note that “current-generation devices might consume on the order of 5 mA when the main processor is asleep. Upon receiving a packet, they might consume on the order of 200 mA for 250 ms, as the packet causes the main processor to wake up, process the RA, attend to other pending tasks, and then go back to sleep. Thus, on such devices, the cost of receiving one RA will be approximately 0.014 mAh”.That's too high, the RFC contends: to keep to their suggested two per cent power budget, the document says the average power budget for router advertisements has to be kept to 0.1 mA, which equates to the device receiving seven advertisements per hour.The RFC lays out how admins can configure devices to throttle down the frequency of router advertisements, and notes that devices that don't need connectivity while they're asleep should be allowed to disconnect from the network completely.The personal computer market has been in the doldrums for years, with global sales falling under 300 million a year, slipping nine per cent in 2015 alone. But there are also some rays of light in the market, as Intel's predictions of a sales rebound were confirmed by a nice little bump in sales over Christmas, due in part to Windows 10.


Windows 10 is expected to help the market again this year, as businesses look at the state of their fleets and consider the fact that Microsoft's already ended mainstream support for Windows 7. It's expected that plenty of organisations will look therefore decide 2016's as good a time as any to take the plunge on a new PC fleet, powered by Windows 10.What else will they buy? We asked folks from the top three PC-makers – Dell, Lenovo and HP – what they see as must-haves in a 2016-vintage PC to give you a feel for what you'll be offered.One thing all three companies think you'll want this year is size. Or more specifically, a lack thereof. Towers and mini-towers are now for workstation-wranglers only. The corporate desktop is now margarine-tub-sized affair.That shrinkage has been made possible by three things, the first of which is the demise of optical drives. Nobody needs to load software from disc any more and USB sticks are now the dominant portable data medium. So out goes optical drives and the space they occupy. Disk density helps, too, as a 500GB 2.5-inch drive is now easy to find at decent prices and solid-state disks are also cheap. Whatever storage device you choose, it needs less space than its predecessor, meaning smaller PCs become possible.



Intel's Skylake processors are the third and biggest space-saver, as they run cooler and also boast built-in graphics. By requiring less cooling and removing the need for a graphics card, Skylake means PCs can shrink.Smaller PCs also have manufacturers thinking about what they can do with a shrunken system. Bolting the client to the back of a monitor is now a common trick. Lenovo's taken the idea further with the “TinyOne 23”, a small form factor PC designed to mate with a slot in a matching monitor. The machine, depicted below, is designed to make it easier to maintain and upgrade PCs without quite going all-in with an all-in-one.Which is not to say all-in-ones are dead: all three of the manufacturers we spoke to said they remain at the forefront of their product lines, if only because businesses like the tidiness they bring to public spaces. That can mean kiosk-style environments, labs in schools or reception areas. Wherever those all-in-ones land, they'll boast 24-inch screens because that's now what users expect. And the monitors will have digital interfaces, as will 2016's PCs. VGA is just about dead, since HDMI and DisplayPort have become the norm. 4K is just-about mainstream and will be one reason Thunderbolt appears in more laptops as that interface has the bandwidth required to drive multiple monitors.


The big three PC-makers are still finding new ways to tweak their kit to make it more manageable. HP will this year refresh BIOSphere, a self-healing BIOS tool that can spot when someone's tried a BIOS-level hack and return things to your pre-determined configurations before reboot. Lenovo has tweaked the USB ports on some devices so they'll work with input devices and will read from storage devices, but won't write to them. Dell's offering automatic data encryption, because the company feels full-disk encryption isn't the best use of a machines resources.2016's laptops will do what laptops have done since day dot: get smaller, lighter and thriftier in the demands placed on batteries.Under the hood, the M.2 interface will make plenty more appearances, as a connector for all manner of devices but especially SSDs. The three manufacturers we spoke to see 256GB SSDs as 2016's sweet spot, with demand for 512GB rising but cost keeping demand muted.USB-C won't appear in all business laptops: consensus is it's too soon for business users to want it, but it's tipped for bigger things next year once its potential to replace desktop docks is realised. Users are tired of proprietary docks, the big three tell us, and USB-C is expected to clean up in coming years.



If WiGig doesn't beat it to the punch. WiGig is a short-range wireless that can transmit audio and video or data. It's felt that the standard will let a laptop drive a monitor and connect to peripherals. The standard will find its way into some laptops this year, with Lenovo planning it as standard and intending to release a WiGig dock. Dell and HP see later adoption.Laptops capable of doing duty as tablets are very much in demand, so touch screens are increasingly common across all three vendors' ranges, bringing with them the ability to contort devices into different working positions.Whatever you buy, in whatever form factor, expect it to pack at least 4GB of DDR 4 RAM. Anything less is seen as cutting corners. Something for the Weekend, Sir? It begins with a murmur. Despite my best attempts to ignore it for as long as possible, the indistinct mumbling gradually becomes intelligible, forcing me to pay attention.I glance at my watch surreptitiously as being seen to do so could make it difficult later to claim ignorance of the time. I shrink down, don a pair of headphones and pretend I’m listening to something while desperately trying to hide behind my computer monitor.


It’s not easy to hide in a client’s open-plan office when all you have for cover is a flimsy LCD display and a Costa Coffee-branded Thermos cup. However, I find that it’s not impossible if you lower the height of your swivel chair so that your chin is just touching the top of the desk. This puts my laptop where it belongs, on my lap, and the key caps automatically illuminate prettily in the inky darkness of the desk underworld.This forces me to maintain an upright spine as I stare directly ahead at the aforementioned display. Like my laptop keyboard, it has a light sensor to enable eco-friendly features that, despite my best efforts, reject any attempt at disablement. This means that the brightness and contrast of the display automatically self-adjust according to ambient lighting conditions – that is, every ten seconds throughout the day – and is incrementally sending me blind, albeit in an environmentally aware manner.Things were simpler in the bad old days of CRT monsters that occupied almost all of your desktop, leaving just enough room for the rear half of a keyboard and an area of four square inches to one side with which to manipulate a mouse. Add an ambient light hood – we don’ need no stinkin’ eco-sensors, señor – and you could hide two people behind one of these old-school display units without anyone else knowing.At a publishing job I enjoyed back in my days of wage-slavery, I was given a vast monolithic CRT monitor of such ridiculous proportions that I used it to shelter a family of six for a week while their exchange of contracts went through. It emitted such quantities of unfiltered radiation out the back that we could discern the detailed bone structure and certain internal organs of the art editor sitting opposite.