IT News Head Lines (TweakTown) 4/20/2015

Sony Xperia Z4 teased thanks to WikiLeaks' dump of internal Sony docs
WikiLeaks released over 30,000 internal Sony documents recently, a dump that included presentation files, financial information and what looks to be some details on the upcoming Xperia Z4 smartphone.

Thanks to the new information and leaks, we can hope to receive a full-metal design on Sony's upcoming flagship handset. It looks like we can also expect a fingerprint sensor on the Xperia Z4, bringing it up to the same level as the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge from Samsung, and the iPhone 5, 5S, 6 and 6 Plus from Apple.

The leaked images show a bigger power button, which looks like it might be the fingerprint sensor too, as well as the all-metal back and front of the Xperia Z4. The internal documents and early renders are using words such as "seamless" and "solid", which means we can expect a beautiful new design from Sony for its Xperia Z4 smartphone.

We should expect more information on the Xperia Z4 from Sony at KFA 2015 in September.


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Tesla's gigafactory is coming together, thanks to satellite images
One of the most exciting projects right now is Tesla Motors' gigafactory, which is being built in the middle of the Nevada desert. Construction has been underway since last July reports Mashable, which is also reporting some new satellite imagery of the secretive facility.

Mashable got its hands on the satellite imagery, which shows how far construction has come since July last year. Back in 2013, Tesla Motors founder and real life Tony Stark told Forbes: "This will be a giant facility. We are talking about something that is comparable to all of the lithium-ion battery production in the world - in one factory".

With the gigafactory being a gigantic battery producing beast, it needs some serious power - with Tesla looking to use many forms of renewable energy. The company will be using sources like solar panels, wind turbines and hydroelectric plants in order to power 500,000 electric vehicles by 2020. Once the facility is finalized, it will take up around 5 million square feet of space, with a final cost of around $5 billion.

Some people, myself included, forget just how big this gigafactory is going to be not just for electric vehicles, but for the entire automotive market. With the promise of a 30% or higher drop in lithium-ion battery pricing, we could see electric vehicles literally take off and become mainstream in the next decade.

Tesla won't have the gigafactory operational until 2020.


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Acer's XB280HK 28-inch 4K NVIDIA G-Sync monitor is just $599 right now
One of our favorite 4K monitors is on sale right now, with the Acer XB280HK available at Newegg for $599, down from its normal price of $899. The Acer XB280HK is a 28-inch 4K monitor that has NVIDIA's G-Sync technology built-in, with our review available right here.

Sure, it's a TN-based panel and not IPS, but for $599 you're getting a silky-smooth 4K monitor if you have the VGA chops to get there. 4K 60FPS isn't too hard these days with a mix of Medium/High details in most games, with Grand Theft Auto V able to hit 4K 60FPS on something like a GeForce GTX 970 without a problem.

You'll need the following promo code "EMCARKW22", which is available until April 22, so get in quick. The code only works for those who are signed up to Newegg's newsletter, so you'll need to sign up for that if you haven't already. If you're already signed up for it, you would've received the e-mail alerting you to the sale, but if you've missed that e-mail, consider this your notice.


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Samsung's new M.2 NVMe PCIe-based SSD capable of 2.2GB/sec reads
Samsung is on the forefront of storage technology, leaping directly into the arms of 3D V-NAND flash, and the world of M.2 NVMe PCIe SSDs. The South Korean giant is looking to really heat up the storage space with the industry's first M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD that is blazing fast.

According to Jeeho Baek, the Senior Vice President of Memory Marketing at Samsung: "Our new NVMe SSD will allow for faster, ultra-slim notebook PCs with extended battery use, while accelerating the adoption of NVMe SSDs within the consumer marketplace. Samsung will continue to stay a critical step ahead of others in the industry in introducing a diversity of next-generation SSDs, that contribute to an enhanced user experience through rapid popularization of ultra-fast, highly energy-efficient, compact SSDs".

The new SSD will be capable of 2.2GB/sec and 1.6GB/sec sequential read/writes, respectively. It will arrive with 300,000 IOPS and a form factory of no thicker than 3.73mm, which is as thick as "two stacked nickels" reports WCCFTech. It will only weigh 7g, and use 2mV which is a big drop in power from normal storage products that use up to 50mV.


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Local piracy rates heavily influence Netflix's pricing in the region
Netflix has come out on record saying that it takes in the local piracy rates of a country to determine the pricing of it subscription, so if there is a high level of pirate downloads in the country, Netflix is cheaper for you.

With over 60 million subscribers and counting, Netflix doesn't have much competition - apart from piracy. But Netflix looks at online piracy as a form of competition, which is great, as it can tune its pricing model to entice those who would otherwise download the episodes illegally. Netflix CFO David Wells has explained: "Piracy is a governor in terms of our price in high piracy markets outside the US. We wouldn't want to come out with a high price because there's a lot of piracy, so we have to compete with that".


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Study: Iran increasing cyberattacks, developing new cyber arsenal
The Iranian government has a growing cyber arsenal capable of launching more attacks against political rivals and foreign governments, according to the Norse cybersecurity firm and the American Enterprise Institute. Even with international sanctions, the country has been able to create tools used for reconnaissance and intelligence collection from compromised targets.

"Cyber gives them a usable weapon, in ways nuclear technology does not," said Frederick Kagan, director of the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project, in a statement published by the New York Times. "And it has a degree of plausible deniability that is attractive to many countries."

There is concern that Iran would spend even more money to help develop its cyberweapons - but the country has already continually improved its current attack capabilities. China and Russia have developed capable cyberattack efforts, but cybersecurity experts show the most concern that North Korea and Iran are trying to improve their hacking tools.


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US Air Force testing 3D glasses to more accurately pick targets
The US Air Force's 363rd Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group (ISRG) is testing 3D glasses paired with the Common Geospacial System to provide an enhanced view of environments. Each person wearing the headset can view ground elevations, building heights and other geographical data used for more precise missile strikes.

To provide this view, two overlapping images, captured from different viewpoints is used - as part of a custom $17,000 bundle that provides software, monitors, and goggles. Unfortunately, the 3D images cannot be created in real-time, so it takes time and patience to create superimposed data used by the ISRG team.

"The glasses used to bigger and have batteries," said Tech Sgt. Tiffany, who has tested the system at Langley, in a statement published by The Daily Press. "They are much smaller and easier to use now. They look like regular sunglasses."


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Report: 29 million healthcare records compromised in past four years
There were at least 29 million US healthcare records stolen between 2010 and 2013 in data breaches, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). More than 58 percent of data breaches occurred by theft, with two-thirds of the incidents caused by electronic data that was stored on laptops, USB drives, and other portable media.

Stanford University and Kaiser Permanente researchers studied data breaches that involved at least 500 victims or more, so the 29 million figure could actually be even higher. It's also worth noting that some healthcare patients could have been victimized more than once, as some data may have been duplicated.

Cybersecurity professionals believe 2015 could be the year of healthcare record chaos, as Anthem suffered a breach - and more could be on the way.

Cybercriminals are changing their tactics to target consumer data that they can easily compromise and then resell easily - increasingly targeting payment information and healthcare records.


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NBA 2K15 predicts the Golden State Warriors will win NBA championship
The NBA playoffs start later today, and 2K Games' NBA 2K15 simulation has predicted that the Golden State Warriors will win the title this year.

The simulator predicts the Warriors will beat the New Orleans Pelicans, Portland Trail Blazers, San Antonio Spurs, and Cleveland Cavaliers en route to a 2015 NBA Championship. The Warriors are predicted to beat the Cavaliers 4-2 in a best-of-seven series, as Steph Curry will be NBA Finals MVP.

Professional sports playoffs matchups are popular for game simulators, with EA's Madden NFL rocking a 9-3 Super Bowl prediction record. It was accurate during the 2015 Super Bowl, picking the New England Patriots to win. Sports fans throughout the San Francisco Bay Area hope 2K's NBA simulator will prove successful in predicting the NBA championship.


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Small businesses plagued by successful ransomware cyberattacks
Small businesses are a lucrative target for cybercriminals trying to launch ransomware malware attacks, and the problem is only getting worse. Careless employees are tricked, typically using phishing emails, and the custom malware encrypts various files - demanding a ransom payment or the files will be permanently encrypted.

"They set the ransom so low that, as violated as I feel and as much as I wanted to fight, at the end of the day I realized I can pay and get back to work," said Mark Stefanick, president of Advantage Benefits Solutions, in a statement published by the Wall Street Journal. Stefanick chose to pay the $400 ransom so files were quickly decrypted and his company could get back to normal operation.

Around 30 percent of ransomware victims choose to pay the ransom to end the cyberattack, according to Trend Micro chief cybersecurity officer Tom Kellerman. There were at least 250,000 new ransomware samples studied by Intel Security during Q4 2014, a whopping 155 percent increase quarter-over-quarter.

SMBs are seen as a soft target by cybercriminals because they often lack sophisticated cybersecurity defenses, and don't have an IT staff on-hand to address problems.


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Microsoft Bing search engine now has more than 20% market share in US
For the first time since launching in 2009, the Microsoft Bing search engine now has over 20 percent market share of the US desktop search market, according to comScore.

Google still leads the way with 64.4 percent of the increasingly competitive market, while Bing has 20.1 percent - Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other companies are trying to adapt to a growing mobile market.

Bing has been a major effort for Microsoft, which has continually dumped money and development time into Bing. The search engine is now integrated into Xbox, Office, Windows and the Windows Phone, as Microsoft wants to try to lure users away from Google.

In the international market, Google has 87.95 percent market share, while Bing (4.4 percent) and Yahoo (3.87 percent) are essentially left fighting for scraps, StatCounter reported.


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Star Wars: Battlefront confirmed to run at 60FPS on both Xbox One, PS4
Star Wars: Battlefront is shaping up to be one of the best-looking games of the year, with the unveiling of the gameplay trailer yesterday, the Star Wars community has been super excited.

We've now found out that Battlefront will be running at 60FPS on both the Xbox One and PS4 thanks to DICE Producer Craig McLeod. He said: "We're making sure, first and foremost, to ensure it runs at 60 frames per second on everything because that's what delivers the best gameplay experience". McLeod continued: "When you couple the talent that we have in the office with the technology and new generation of consoles has allowed us to achieve, that's how you can get these environments that you're seeing which simply wasn't possible before".

The gameplay trailer that the studio released was running at 1080p with 8x MSAA enabled and a very high level of adaptive tessellation has lead to gamers looking at one of the best graphics in a game yet. With a 60FPS target, we should expect no level of MSAA to be used, or at the maximum possibly 2x MSAA on the consoles, and whatever your VGA card is capable of on the PC.

Star Wars: Battlefront has been confirmed for November 17, 2015 on the Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

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Qualcomm has made $9.2 billion in royalties from Samsung over 4 years
Samsung released their Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge handsets a little over a week ago now, with Qualcomm feeling the loss of getting its Snapdragon processors into the new handsets.

With the previous Galaxy S smartphones, Samsung has usually had its Exynos processor in certain models, while Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor makes it into another. Not this time around, and rightly so since Qualcomm reportedly asks for 2.5 to 5% of the selling price of every handset that is powered by its Snapdragon processor. This is a big chunk of sales, especially when handsets are spilling over the $1000 mark.

Samsung has thus saved itself many millions of dollars by opting for its own Exynos processor in the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge, and after giving Qualcomm $9.2 billion in royalties over four years, this has come to an end. Qualcomm continues to expand its pile of cash, which is hovering at around the $30 billion mark right now. Most of this $30 billion has been made from the patent and licensing royalties, and not just from its processors - a smart move by Qualcomm.

But now there's juicier news: Qualcomm is reportedly looking to split its chip making division, to better focus on its licensing business. This is coming from a source of The Business Korea, which reported: "Qualcomm is mulling over a cut in patent royalties to not lose the largest mobile application processor chip customer in the world. According to industry sources, in addition, Qualcomm is looking to split the technical licensing business unit from its chip manufacturing division due to the dim outlook of its application processor business".


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'Star Wars: Battlefront' in-game trailer released
Fresh from the 2015 'Star Wars' Celebration in Anaheim which saw the release of the second teaser from 'The Force Awakens', and the first tantalising render of a Stormtrooper, Electronic Arts have now released the first trailer for the much anticipated game, which promises to originate from "game engine footage".

DICE also made the interesting admission that the game omits a story narrative, but hinges on separate missions, including locales from the original 'Star Wars' trilogy. EA will make available a free downloadable content pack called the 'Battle of Jakku'; the new desert planet glimpsed in both 'Force Awakens' trailers (previously assumed to be Tatooine) and which will serve as a prequel to the film.

The latest 'Battlefront' is the third in the franchise, and the first in a decade. The title will also mark the first 'Star Wars' game to be released for current-gen consoles. 'Battlefront' is scheduled for release on November 17, 2015 for Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.


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Hacker group from China has launched coordinated attacks for a decade
A hacker group with support from the Chinese government has operated for more than 10 years without being detected, able to compromise information from companies and reporters, according to FireEye. Many of the attacks started with social engineering, with victims unknowingly installing the Mysterious Eagle malware onto PCs - so the hacker group could remotely monitor and control the compromised systems.

The APT30 group has been in operation from 2004 and was able to collect information "about journalists, dissidents and political developments in relation to China targeting government and military organizations, and targeting economic sectors of interest to China's economy."

The Chinese government has long been accused of funding cybercriminal groups aimed at compromising western targets - much of the attention is focused on the US government and companies with US customers.


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Strontium Nitro iDrive 64GB iOS Flash Drive Review

With our review of our first look at Apple iOS capable flash storage, with the SanDisk iXpand now online, we had the chance to look at yet another solution in that same market segment. As with many storage markets, Strontium continues to release new solutions and today we check out the Nitro iDrive.

As the title suggests, the Nitro iDrive is an iOS-capable flash storage solution. Capacity options range from 16GB to 64GB solutions with marketing numbers of 85 MB/s read and write performance only being said as lower than 85 MB/s depending on your host device. Being an iOS capable solution the iDrive does feature the 8-pin lightning connector, along with the standard USB 3.0 connection.

As we saw in our review of the SanDisk iXpand solution, these iOS drives need the support of an application to work correctly. With that said, the Strontium solution too has an app called iFlash drive, which comes from the PhotoFast line up. MSRP of the Strontium Nitro iDrive in the 64GB capacity is set at $99.99 and features a two-year warranty.

Packaging for the Nitro iDrive is rather substantial for a flash solution. As you can see, we have a full plastic shell protecting the drive. Capacity is listed to the top right with iOS compatibility listed at the very top.

The back houses marketing information, along with capacity limitations. To the far right, we have a QR code for the app.

Scope of delivery is rather simple with just the flash drive and small pamphlet.

The Nitro Plus has a smaller footprint over the last solution we tested, the iXpand from SanDisk. They have also chosen to place a connector at each end of the flash drive.

Above, we see the eight-pin lightning connector for modern iOS devices.

After downloading and launching the app for the iDrive, we were greeted by this splash screen seen above.

Once inside the app, everything is very simple and streamlined. Across the bottom, we have descriptions with the top portion of the screen denoting where you are looking.

As you can see above, we have swapped over to the iDrive with 63.4GB of free space. From here, you can transfer files to and from your iOS device.

The Strontium Nitro iDrive is factory formatted with the FAT32 file system. This does limit file sizes to under 4GB. Useable capacity after formatting is 59GB.

Starting off our testing, you can see just how quick the Nitro iDrive is. Here we reached 86 MB/s read with write at 17 MB/s.

Over on the MacBook Pro, we connected up the iDrive and found we only received 72 MB/s read and 15.4 MB/s write.

Price/performance of the iDrive put it right in the middle of the pack at 87.4%, three percent over the only other iOS solution from SanDisk.

With this being our second look at an iOS capable storage solution, I am certainly glad to see Strontium used the USB 3.0 connection on the drive. This drastically cuts down on the transfer time between the drive and your PC. Moving on, I found the build quality of this drive to be solid, but the capped design does mean there is a risk of losing the provided protection of your ports, especially when there is no included way to tether them to the drive itself.

Performance of the drive is substantial with read numbers upwards of 85 MB/s. However, like the previous solution, write performance is at the lower echelon of what we would expect. Another denominator of the drive's performance comes with the app. With the SanDisk solution we tested, I was very pleased with how well the app was laid out and the features. With the Strontium, the app is just a straightforward solution to allow you to transfer data between your devices, no frills, so there is some work to be done to add to the package as a whole.

Overall, the Strontium Nitro iDrive is the better performing iOS solution at this point in time, but the price is upwards of $2 per GB. With that said, the iFlash drive app is ample enough to get the job done, but could use a little more on the features side.

PRICING: You can find the 64GB Strontium NITRO iDrive USB 3.0 for iOS, Mac and PC 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 64GB Strontium NITRO iDrive USB 3.0 for iOS, Mac and PC retails for $95 at Amazon.

Australia: Find other tech and computer products like this over at PLE Computer's website.

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