The art of numbers: Who knew Big Data could look so cool?
via PCWorld http://www.techhive.com/article/2048715/the-art-of-numbers-who-knew-big-data-could-look-so-cool-.html#tk.rss_all
iPhone 5s Stocks Said To Be Low, Get In The Queue Now If You Want One
News has surfaced that supplies of the iPhone 5s are considerably lower than past releases. Carriers and Apple stores alike have both reported that there will be fewer phones available than usual.
AllThingsD has reported that its sources at carrier level have expressed concerns over phones supplies, with one even going as far to say , “We will have grotesquely unavailable inventory.”
According to another report, 70-80 percent of iPhones in stock at Apple stores on Friday will be the iPhone 5C, whilst the silver and gold models of the 5S will be very difficult to come by.
The cause of this shortage has not been commented on officially but with Apple releasing two new handsets at once, as well as the impending release of iOS7, it’s not really surprising that there could be less iPhones to go around.
Another expantion could be that Apple is just saving the bulk of the iPhones for itself, getting more customers to go directly to them when the handset becomes unavailable through carriers, then maybe shoppers will be tempted into other purchases at the same time.
Whatever the reason, if you plan to get your hands on the iPhone 5s on Friday, then choose your queue carefully. Carriers could potentially have shorter lines but less stock, whereas Apple stores will have more stock but longer queues. It’s a tricky one!
[Image via digital trends]
Source: http://gigaom.com/2013/09/17/uh-oh-iphone-5s-inventory-on-friday-said-to-be-grotesquely-low/
The post iPhone 5s Stocks Said To Be Low, Get In The Queue Now If You Want One appeared first on TechBeat.
via TechBeat http://techbeat.com/2013/09/iphone-5s-stocks-said-low-get-queue-now-want-one/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=iphone-5s-stocks-said-low-get-queue-now-want-one
The 2013 HTPC Build
I no longer own any laptops. Everything in our house is a tablet: multiple Nexus 7s, multiple iPad 4s, and a Surface Pro. In fact, the only traditional computers I own are my triple-monitor desktop home office beast, and the small Home Theater PC (HTPC) that drives all our home entertainment in the living room.
It's a Mini-ITX case with compact, console-like 3.8" × 8.7" × 12.9" dimensions. It is totally at home in any civilized home theater environment.
I love that little HTPC to death. It is such a versatile, flexible, always-on box. The longer I work on my HTPC project, the more I believe the evolution of the HTPC is a nice metaphor for the overall future direction of the PC. In summary:
| 2005 | ~$1000 | 512 MB RAM, single core CPU | 80 watts idle |
| 2008 | ~$520 | 2 GB RAM, dual core CPU | 45 watts idle |
| 2011 | ~$420 | 4 GB RAM, dual core CPU + GPU | 22 watts idle |
| 2013 | ~$280* | 4 GB RAM, dual core CPU + GPU×2 | 14 watts idle |
14 watts at idle! Incredible, isn't it? But you probably also noticed how some of these stats aren't improving, too. Basically, they don't need to – we've reached such an absurd overabundance of computing power that adding more no longer gets us much. It's been about 2½ years since my last HTPC build, and (*) all I did this year is swap out the motherboard, CPU, and RAM:
- Intel Core i3-4130T ($139)
- MSI B85M-ITX motherboard ($79)
- 4GB DDR3-1866 ($49)
I started by removing the overhead drive tray, then pulling out the motherboard and anything attached to it. Notice there's a ton of room in the front of the case where the old power supply used to be. No need for it. We're using a more efficient and way smaller PicoPSU. That space is now available for an extra 2TB 2.5" drive, sitting there on some mildly sticky sheets of sorbothane. Once you factor in the PicoPSU, it's a roomy build despite the compact dimensions.
Then I mounted the motherboard, attached the front USB and eSATA headers, the power/reset switches, and the aforementioned PicoPSU, which you can see sticking out of the motherboard's power header near the hard drive. Note that everything not directly attached to the motherboard is driven off a single power connector, so there are two SATA splitters in use. This particular PicoPSU and power brick are rated to 60 watts which is enough for what we're doing.
The top drive tray slides in with 3 screws. There's also a place just underneath the two drives above for a slimline Blu-ray or DVD drive, but I found I have virtually no use for optical media any more, so I've skipped it.
The main motivation for this upgrade is the lower power usage and better GPU performance of the Haswell CPU, versus the Sandy Bridge CPU that was in there. Everything else remains the same, though I have been selectively upgrading bits and pieces since 2011:
- Samsung 840 512GB SSD
- Western Digital 2TB 2.5" HDD (× 2)
- Pico-PSU-90 + 60w adapter
- Antec ISK 310-150 ITX case
Yes, that's right, 4.5 terra-friggin-bytes of storage. What can I say? I like me some media, man. The 512GB boot SSD is a little excessive, I'll grant you that, so feel free to replace it with a more modest 128GB version in your build. I'm just addicted to SSD speed and didn't want to compromise too much on total storage.
You may wonder why I bothered upgrading memory, since the trusty DDR3-1333 RAM in the old HTPC works fine in the new motherboard. Fair question. Normally, RAM speeds are little more than a curiosity on any remotely modern computer, as minor improvements in memory speed have long since ceased to produce meaningful differences in benchmarks. But we are using Haswell's on-die GPU, and it relies on main memory for its graphics memory. Even a low-end video card will have 1 GB of ram on it these days, and games certainly expect GPUs with at least 256MB or 512MB of dedicated, extremely high speed graphics memory. This is the rare case where you do care about memory speeds. Consider these AnandTech game benchmark results:
It's a bit difficult to read, but think of it as "percent better than vanilla DDR3-1333", since that's the baseline zero value here. The sweet spot is DDR3-1866 CL9 (light blue bar). That grade of memory is only nominally more expensive, and gets you reasonably near the top of each graph. If you want DDR3-2133 CL9 (the dark purple bar), I can only find it in 8GB kits. I didn't need that much memory in my HTPC.
Other than lower power consumption, and a modest bump in CPU power, the really big improvement is GPU performance. It's kind of a complicated matrix, but the i3-4130T chip has an Intel HD 4400 GPU, compared to the HD 2000 GPU that was in the i3-2100T I upgraded from. For example, Dirt 3 on medium detail at 1024x768 notebookcheck.net shows a gain from 21.4 fps to 44.6 fps for these specific GPUs – more than double the GPU performance, at the same 35 watt TDP!
That's the other reason I was excited about this upgrade: Steam's Big Picture mode. With that doubling of GPU power, this 14 watt idle HTPC we just built … is now a credible gaming machine for the first time!
You will need an Xbox 360 Wireless kit for PC, which works perfectly with Steam Big Picture mode. Just plug and play, provided you stick to the 190 Steam games with full controller support. You'll still have to tinker a bit sometimes to get things to work, but overall it's quite promising and bodes well for a console-like future.
So what exactly do we get for our upgrade troubles, 2½ years on?
- A 37% drop in idle power, from 22 watts to 14 watts. And an overall reduction in power consumption when the machine happens to be doing something. 17 watts when in an active torrent, for example.
- A a credible gaming box for the first time, thanks to 2× the GPU power. It also coincides nicely with the maturing of Steam's Big Picture mode. When Gabe Newell talks about Linux as the future of gaming, this is the kind of box he's referring to.
This HTPC box just keeps getting more versatile over time, while costing me less (in power consumptuon, at least) every year. HTPC, I love you, man. What does the future hold? Smaller builds, lower power, with seriously better GPUs. I'm not sure how much lower we can go on power, but I'm absolutely certain that Intel's on-die GPUs will continue to roughly double in power for the forseeable future.
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via Coding Horror http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/09/the-2013-htpc-build.html
NTIA appeals to FCC to let consumers unlock their own mobile devices
via PCWorld http://www.techhive.com/article/2048927/ntia-appeals-to-fcc-to-let-consumers-unlock-their-own-mobile-devices.html#tk.rss_all
iCloud.com gets the iOS 7 design treatment
via PCWorld http://www.macworld.com/article/2048930/icloud-com-gets-the-ios-7-treatment.html#tk.rss_all