IT News Head Lines (TweakTown) 1/22/2015

'Powers' the PlayStation exclusive TV show debuts on March 10
Sony will be debuting its PlayStation-exclusive original series Powers on March 10, with the first season taking part over 10 episodes. The first episode will be teased to all PSN owners for free, after which you'll need to be a PlayStation Plus subscriber to watch the rest.

The show itself is based on the ongoing Image Comics series from writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Michael Avon, with the world of Powers set in a police show based in Chicago where two homicide detectives investigate cases that citizens with superhuman abilities, or, well, powers. Better yet, the show stars Sharlto Copley, who was in District 9 and Elysium, who plays Christian Walker.

Walker is a former superhero who becomes a detective after he loses his powers, while his partner Deena Pilgrim, who is played by The Following's Susan Heyward. Eddie Izzard also stars, playing as the villain 'Wolfe'.

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Edward Snowden: GCHQ snooped on emails sent, received by journalists
The GCHQ collected emails sent to and from journalists in the United States and UK, according to documents released by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. It took less than 10 minutes to harvest up to 70,000 emails during the GCHQ exercise, intercepted from fiber-optic cables, and included correspondence between writers and editors.

As part of its surveillance campaign, the GCHQ archived emails related to journalists from BBC, Reuters, The New York Times, Le Monde, the Guardian, NBC, the Sun and the Washington Post - with data saved on its intranet.

It's no surprise that the NSA and GCHQ have invested in a number of different digital surveillance efforts, but the widespread campaigns have shocked critics. The GCHQ is under increased pressure to ensure journalists' emails are protected, as confidentiality is important - despite government skepticism.

"This is the inevitable result of the kind of wholesale surveillance that's now authorized under both UK and US law," said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, in a statement published by the Washington Post. "There is little evidence that this kind of mass surveillance is effective or necessary, but it presents a very real threat not just to privacy but to the freedoms of speech and association as well."


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Valve has added Steam Broadcasting to Steam, bursts out of beta form
Well, that didn't take long: Valve has made its Steam Broadcasting feature official, dragging it out of its quick stint as a beta part of Steam.

You can now update Steam, if it hasn't already been updated for you, and change your settings if you want Broadcasting to be enabled. This will allow your gameplay to be broadcasted to friends when you start gaming, which is an alternative to the super popular Twitch service, that was recently purchased by Amazon for $970 million.

Steam Broadcasting will only broadcast video by default, but you can also stream other applications from your computer if you allow it in the settings. Broadcasting will also take in your computers audio, too.


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Robotoki shuts its doors, leaves Human Element on 'hiatus'
Robert Bowling, who used to be the Creative Strategist with Infinity Ward, has confirmed with Polygon that he has shut down his new game studio Robotoki. This has left their game in development, Human Element, on hiatus.

Bowling said in an e-mail to Polygon: "This week we have ceased operations at Robotoki and the development of Human Element is on hiatus. We were actively negotiating a new publishing deal for the premium version of Human Element but unfortunately I was unable to continue to self-fund development until a deal was finalized".

It's quite unfortunate, as South Korea-based Nexon made a 'strategic investment' into Robotoki in 2013, and many people were looking forward to seeing what Robotoki were going to do with Human Element.


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Facebook is fighting against fake content in news feeds
Users are being asked to flag bogus posts as fake, which will see Facebook limit the amount of news feeds that this content appears on - said to not have any affect on satire websites like The Onion.

Misleading news reports and advertisements are becoming a mainstay in this day and age, seeing click-bait articles often fill up our news feeds and side bars on numerous websites, emails, social media platforms and streaming services. Under new changes announced by Facebook, users will be able to flag misleading content that involve click-bait titles, misleading stories and scams.

Announced on Tuesday, Facebook will make a move to limit how many news feeds this information pops up on - rather than removing it completely. Stories that have been consistently reported and in great number will see an annotation to let Facebook users know that it might be non-legit.

You can report a story as false by clicking the drop-down menu located at the top right of a post and report or hide it. Facebook commented in their announcement that "we are not removing stories people report as false and we are not reviewing content and making a determination on its accuracy."

This change will see posts that include links, photos, videos and general status updates affected - seeing it not limited to company news articles only.


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SplashData unveil their most popular passwords of 2014 list
Once again, SplashData have released their annual list of compiled stolen passwords made public throughout the year of 2014, once again showing that people really don't put much thought, time or effort into protecting their own security.

If your password is anything like these below, please change it immediately for your own safety. It's nice to see these users really confusing hackers and 'changing it up' by pushing '12345' up 17 places to a number three placing - it's definitely going to confuse those nasty criminals from guessing the old '123456' code that was set.

1. 123456 (Unchanged)
2. password (Unchanged)
3. 12345 (Up 17)
4. 12345678 (Down 1)
5. qwerty (Down 1)
6. 123456789 (Unchanged)
7. 1234 (Up 9)
8. baseball (New)
9. dragon (New)
10. football (New)
11. 1234567 (Down 4)
12. monkey (Up 5)
13. letmein (Up 1)
14. abc123 (Down 9)
15. 11111 (Down 8)
16. mustang (New)
17. access (New)
18. shadow (Unchanged)
19. master (New)
20. michael (New)
21. superman (New)
22. 696969 (New)
23. 123123 (Down 12)
24. batman (New)
25. trustno1 (Down 1)

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NVIDIA rumored to release GeForce GTX TITAN X for $1350 with 6GB VRAM
We've been reporting on pretty much every GPU rumor we can, as they're all exciting, but the next-gen TITAN X is shaping up into something more real with each passing day. Now we have some unconfirmed news that the GeForce GTX TITAN X will have an MSRP of $1350.

The stock card will be arriving with 6GB of VRAM, with 12GB of VRAM to arrive at a later date, or through various AIBs if they choose to splash the GPU with a titanic amount of VRAM. The TITAN X will be powered by the GM200 chip, which is the full chip that we've all been waiting for. The GM204 powers the GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 cards while the GM206 reportedly powers the GTX 960 which is said to be imminent.

NVIDIA could slightly cut down the die to start with, but the fully unleashed GM200 core should arrive on a 384-bit memory bus, feature 12GB of VRAM and a huge 3072 CUDA cores. A cut down version of this could feature between 2560 and 2816 CUDA cores, but it would still perform like a champion. The price however, is what has people talking, and with the current GTX TITAN Black Edition still commanding a price of around $1000 on Amazon, the $1350 price isn't too bad. "Isn't too bad" is something worth talking about, because for around $350 more we should see a nice 30-50% performance increase given the specs. The 12GB of RAM is going to come in handy for future titles and super massive multi-monitor setups, which is something I will be getting into in March with these cards if they do materialize.


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Seek unveils a new thermal camera for your phone, the Seek XR
Coming up on the heels of their first thermal camera we reviewed earlier last month, Seek Thermal is releasing their brand new Seek XR which features manual zoom capabilities. The new camera weights only half an ounce but can capture long-wave radiation from as far as 2000 feet.

Seek's patented sensor features a resolution of 206x156 for a total of over 32,000 thermal pixels, which is very high compared to other cameras in the sub $1000 range. Like the first Seek thermal camera, the Seek XR will come in a magnesium case, but feature a custom made chalcogenide lens.

Seek is looking to market their new camera to a more diversified range of users, many of which we depend on every day. Seek Thermal founder Bill Parrish on the Seek XR, "Last year we introduced the first consumer thermal camera, and this new, extended-range camera is based in part on the specific feedback we received from gun experts, law enforcement, boaters and other people excited about thermal imaging." The new Seek XR will come in at only $299 and will be available directly from Seek as well as from Amazon starting this month. The Seek XR will be available for both Android and iOS devices.
We had the opportunity to take a sneak peek at the Seek XR during CES 2015. The build quality was very high, and you can manually turn the lens casing, which is something that should greatly improve the camera's usefulness. The Seek XR will also work with Seek's custom software, which you can check out in our review.


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Amazon building a 150 megawatt wind farm to power data centres
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has just announced that their cloud provider service will be powered by a wind farm in the future. Looking to produce 150 megawatts total of power, this is part of AWS' bid to move toward fully renewable energy supplies.

This farm is aiming to generate half a million megawatt hours by January 2016, seeing the 150 megawatt value being reached at a later date.

Named Amazon Web Services Wind Farm (Fowler Ridge), this project is being developed with help from AWS partners Pattern Energy Group. This announcement is further said to be due to Greenpeace attacking Amazon for refusing to provide details on how it planned to make the more to renewable energy. Amazon also claims that cloud computing is more environmentally friendly than traditional options due to sever capacity usage and less power consumption is needed to power their infrastructure.

Apple has been praised for their environmental responsibility report and information analysis, people are asking that Amazon do something similar.


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HP announces a massive range of business tablets
Aimed at educators, retailers, healthcare workers and other professional industries, Hewlett-Packard has today announced a grand total of eight new tablets to be released in the market. This wide variety is apparently to combat the 'one device suits all' approach that is seen with tablet manufacturers of today, HP is fighting this stigma by releasing a wide variety of options.

Two of these tablets are aimed towards school and education, seeing HP produce a model that is claimed to resist dust, moisture and "the rigors of an education environment," producing something a little more robust than others.

With pricing ranging from $199 to $1,599, this is apparently a massive move by HP to take some market share from the tablet scene, with reports stating that this large-scale technology company has been struggling to catch up with the growing consumer preference for tablet design. According to Jack Gold, a tech analyst, "this is a logical extension of their current strategy, which is to stay competitive in the business market. They have an opportunity to become more than just a commodity supplier of tablets, which is where the market is headed. Many companies won't invest in tablets until they find a compelling reason to do so. And HP offering specialized devices geared to specific markets could be the catalyst for those companies eyeing tablets but still cautious about the expense and management risks, as well as the less-than-optimum designs in general-purpose devices."

Gold's words are backed up by Patrick Moorhead, who commented that this new range of devices "could be very successful."


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Microsoft: 'More work' to be done, but admits holiday season was good
Microsoft had to grind its way to the top of the sales chart, with the Xbox One outselling the PlayStation 4 game console in November and December last year.

"Most important thing was Xbox fans sticking with us, they kept believing," said Phil Spencer, Microsoft's top Xbox overlord, in a statement on Twitter. "More work to do but it was a good holiday."

Spencer also responded to a fan via Twitter pointing out the PS4 still outsold the Xbox One: "PS4 is also doing very well. Console and game sales are strong, which is a good thing for the industry."

Microsoft hasn't publicly released sales figures for the Xbox One since November 2014, but analyst groups confirmed it likely won the 2014 holiday console battle. Considering the Xbox One price drop - designed to boost holiday sales - has gone away, there are new gaming bundles and price cuts reportedly looming in early 2015.


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Potential downside of smart tech: Humans in less control of our lives
The Internet of Things (IoT) may yield great potential to simplify lives, but there is growing concern that these connected devices could eventually begin to take over our lives. The use of artificial intelligence to help simply - and enhance - new products opens the door to human-like capabilities, but that has increased concern.

"When we're not being tracked, we're more free to experiment, to be our authentic selves, to read new things, to be different kinds of people," said Neil Richards, law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, in a statement published by the San Jose Mercury News. However, connected monitoring opens the door to "menaces our society's foundational commitments to intellectual diversity and eccentric individuality."

IoT-based technologies will continue to increase in popularity, as companies expand research and development efforts - but there are numerous concerns that must also be addressed.


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Ex-UK spy: Peace between government, tech firms needed to stop terror
Government agencies in the United States and UK increasingly rely on wide-scale surveillance programs, in their efforts to collect intelligence. It's not uncommon for politicians and department heads to claim efforts are designed to prevent terrorism, which is the line being used by a former high-level spy from the UK.

"There needs to be some new compact between the technology companies and those who are responsible for security if we're not to see events like we saw in Paris last week... becoming more and more features of our lives," said John Sawers, former head of the Secret Intelligence Service, in a statement published by BBC.

British elections take place in May, and national security is expected to be a major political talking point.

Sawers also had this to say regarding user privacy and security concerns: "I don't believe there is a trade-off between privacy and security; I think they go together. If you have a society which evades and abuses privacy, then ultimately there will be a reaction against the damage to your security."


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No surprise: Worst passwords of 2014 are still quite terrible
SplashData has published its list of the most common passwords used on the Internet, compiling data mainly from Internet users in North America and Western Europe. The top 10 worst passwords, per the SplashData list: 123456, password, 12345, 12345678, 1234, baseball, dragon, football.

Simple numerical passwords remain common, with nine of the top 25 passwords consisting of numbers only. However, passwords such as "iloveyou" have disappeared, which was prevalent on the 2013 list, has dropped from the top 25 list for 2014.

"The bad news from my research is that this year's most commonly used passwords are pretty consistent with prior years," said Mark Burnett, an online security expert. "The good news is that it appears that more people are moving away from using these passwords. In 2014, the top 25 passwords represented about 2.2 percent of passwords exposed. While still frightening, that's the lowest percentage of people using the most common passwords I have seen in recent studies."


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British Secret Service tracked internet usage on Apple iPhones
The Apple iPhone has strong internal security that is hard to bypass, and iOS 8 encrypts data by default. Google has also followed suit with stronger protections for Android, much to the chagrin of government agencies, which are unable to hack into the phones directly to retrieve information. Apple and Google are also refusing to decrypt the data for anyone, so phone security is locked up pretty tight.

Where there is a will there is a way. According to Der Spiegel, the publication with access to Edward Snowdens documents, the British Secret Service had figured out how to track iPhone users when they connect their phone to a computer. Once the phone is connected to an infected computer the agency analyzes the downloaded data. This eliminates the need to directly hack the phone, thus proving to be a working model for circumventing encryption and security features on the phone itself.

The British Secret Service also tracked internet usage on the device through a vulnerability in Safari and Google's Admob advertising service. The UDID, a device identifier number, is exposed through the tactic, and then the user can be tracked online. These methods were used by the agency in 2010, and likely the loophole has since been closed. However, variants of the same method may still be in use that are successful.

This highlights another effective way that ingenious spy agencies can circumvent even the strongest protections by thinking outside of the box.


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Antec X-1 Xbox One USB Console Cooler Review
If we journey back to the days of the Xbox 360 launch, Microsoft was plagued by a myriad of cooling issues with that console. It took many years and a plethora of revisions before the console was somewhat stable in its chassis and the reports of the dreaded RROD seemed to slow. With the latest console release, Microsoft has seemingly took past experience into account and made the Xbox One a smarter console that can detect when it is overheating and speed up the fan, something our PCs have been doing for many years with PWM control.

With all of the above said, Antec which has deep roots in the PC industry, has taken it upon themselves to aide users of the Xbox One that want to add additional cooling capabilities to their console. The X-1 cooler from Antec is a uniquely designed solution that mimics the appearance of the Xbox One and as such fits perfectly to the consoles' aesthetics. The X-1 carries a footprint of 6.5" x 10.5" x 1.25" that allows the solution to fit perfectly front to back on the console. On the top of the unit, you will find Antec branding, along with a small LCD that displays both the ambient air temperature and the exhaust temperature from the Xbox One.

MSRP of the Antec X-1 Cooler is set at $29.99 with a one-year warranty.

The packaging for the X-1 Cooler carries an image of the solution installed on an Xbox One. To the right, we have a bit of marketing information with Antec saying this solution can decrease temperatures by up to 30%.

The back of the packaging gives you an idea on how to install the cooler, along with an airflow diagram. Down below, we have additional marketing information, including the automatic on/off feature.

Scope of delivery for this solution was rather simple. As you can see we have the cooler at the top of our image and the short USB cable below.

The front of the Antec X-1 carries a logo and the small display as mentioned previously. The top of the unit has a soft rubber coating so there should be no issues with dust and fingerprints.

The rear of the unit houses both the micro USB for the power input and the secondary USB so you don't lose any ports on your console. To the left, we have the large exhaust for the X-1.

Flipping the Antec X-1 over, we find a large blower type fan similar to those used in video cards. This fan utilizes a fluid dynamic bearing so it is quite silent during operation.

In the image above, we have installed the Antec X-1 on our Xbox One console. As you can see, it fits quite well and the aesthetics are nearly perfect.

Above, we grabbed an image of the X-1 while in operation. On the right, the display shows the ambient temperature in this case 64F, and to the right, we have a 79F exhaust temperature from the Xbox One.

In testing the Antec X-1, we deployed a digital multimeter with temperature probes on the exhaust of the Xbox One. This stayed a constant when using the console with and without the Antec X-1 cooling solution.

In our chart above, we played several games and took temperature readings after 30 minutes with and without the additional Antec cooling solution. Watch Dogs topped out around 104 degrees without the Antec, and with it, temperatures did indeed drop a fair bit down to 99 degrees. With Ryse: Son of Rome, we had 108 without, while adding the Antec cooler netted us the same 99 degrees after 30 minutes. And last but certainly not least, we ran through Assassins Creed Unity and reached 106 degrees with the Xbox One in its stock configuration, then added the Antec X-1 and temperatures did drop all the way down to 95 degrees, the best of any game we tested.

In this second chart, we simply did the math to see how much of temperature difference we gained in each situation by utilizing the Antec X-1 Cooler. As you can see throughout, we gained at the least 5% better temperatures, at the peak we tested up to a 10% decrease in overall console temperature.

For those that want the extra security in knowing that their Xbox One console is sufficiently cooled, the Antec X-1 cooler certainly does provide that extra bit of cooling. In our testing, we didn't reach the 30% mark, but we were able to reach slightly over 10%. Of course, that's not to say this solution isn't capable of reaching that 30% mark, it really just depends on the environment your Xbox One resides in.

To that point, the Antec X-1 does require a bit of heat to switch it on. While testing the solution, we noticed the units' automatic on/off feature didn't trigger the unit to power up the fan until the exhaust from the Xbox One reached 87 degrees, at this point a small blue LED lights up denoting the fan has kicked on.

Build quality of the X-1 is quite good, all of the plastics used in the design fit together quite well, the fan is silent during operation and the small display on the unit is easily readable and fairly accurate when compared to our digital multimeter.

In addition to the Antec X-1 cooling capabilities, this unit also allows you to place your controllers, headset and accessories on top of the Xbox One without worrying about blocking the exhaust port of the console, aiding those who have limited space.

PRICING: You can find the Antec X-1 Cooler for sale below. The prices listed are valid at the time of writing but can change at any time. Click the link to see the very latest pricing for the best deal.

United States: The Antec X-1 Cooler retails for $29.99 at Amazon.
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