Sam Reynolds, Author at VR World

VR World

Security Firm FireEye Offers a Free Cure for CryptoLocker Victims

Victims of the infamous ransomware CryptoLocker now have some relief in the form of a free decryption tool that frees their files held ransom. FireEye and security research firm Fox IT have released a tool called DecryptoLocker which provides a private key that’s able to decrypt files encrypted by CryptoLocker. Users simply need to upload a file encrypted by CryptoLocker and the site will email the user a private key used for decryption. In a blog post Kyle Wilhoit and Uttang Dawda from FireEye explain that this tool is possible because an international law enforcement effort called Operation Tovar was able to commandeer key servers

Apple, Companies, Mobile Computing, VR World

Apple Delisted From China Government’s Approved Vendor’s List

The Chinese market continues to sour for US technology companies as China’s government has removed another from its approved list procurement vendors for government purchases. According to a report from Bloomberg, 10 Apple products — including the iPad Air, iPad Mini, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro — have been dropped from July’s procurement list of approved products. If Bloomberg’s report proves to be correct, Apple would have joined the ranks of Symantec and Microsoft which have both been barred from government procurement over tension from cyber espionage allegations and fears of possible backdoors for US electronic eavesdropping. While Apple will not be barred entirely from

Graphics, Hardware, VR World

AMD Launches the FirePro S9150, Upping the Ante Against Nvidia

AMD launched Wednesday the FirePro S9150, and was quick to claim that it’s the most powerful GPU ever built for High Performance Computing (HPC) applications. While the S9150 is yet to be independently benchmarked, the performance numbers coming from AMD would put the card squarely ahead of Nvidia’s high-end Tesla K40. With its 2,816 processing cores and 16 GB of GDDR5 memory, the FirePro offers double-precision peak performance of 2.53 teraflops, while Nvidia’s high-end Tesla K40 can push out 1.43 teraflops. When looking squarely at single-precision performance the margins narrow, with the FirePro S9150 clocking 5.07 teraflops, compared to the 4.29 teraflops for Nvidia’s Tesla

Mobile Computing, VR World

Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 Goes International on August 28

Microsoft launched the Surface Pro 3 earlier this year to critical acclaim. While the Surface has been a money losing dud for Microsoft to date, the Surface Pro 3 has interested critics and consumers and may just reverse Microsoft’s bad luck streak with tablets. Though the Surface Pro 3 has already launched in the US and Canada in June, the rest of the world has so far been left out. Not anymore. On August 28 the Surface Pro 3 will be launching in Australia, Austria, Belgium, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Korea, Luxembourg, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore,

Hardware, Mobile Computing, VR World

Apple and Samsung Agree to Drop Litigation Outside of US

The patent battle between Apple and Samsung, which started out in a California courtroom then spanned across the globe, appears to be drawing a truce as the two companies have agreed to drop all claims against each other outside of the United States. “Apple and Samsung have agreed to drop all litigation between the two companies outside the United States,” the companies said in a press release. “This agreement does not involve any licensing arrangements, and the companies are continuing to pursue the existing cases in U.S. courts.” What started in the spring of 2011 as Apple v. Samsung in the United States District Court

Hardware, Memory & Storage Space, VR World

Yet to be Announced OCZ ARC 100 Solid State Drives Make Appearance Online

OCZ has yet to give its upcoming line of ARC 100 SSDs the official unveiling, but it looks like two retailers have beat OCZ to it. First spotted by Legit Reviews, both Amazon.com and Scan.co.uk have posted drives in the series online for pre-order. Drives in the series will be available in 120 GB, 240 GB and 480 GB capacities and are capable of sequential read speeds of 490 MB/s and reach write speeds 430 MB/s (400 MB/s for the 120 GB model) and 80,000 IOPS. The SSD series sports a 2.5-inch form factor, a Barefoot 3 M10 controller and 19nm MLC NAND chips supplied

Business, Software Programs, VR World

Here’s Snapchat’s Plan to Make Money

While Snapchat has the following and growth metrics that would be sure to make most app developers jealous, it does have one problem: it doesn’t appear yet to be making any money. For the investors behind Snapchat Inc., monetizing the incredibly popular app is no doubt a priority. But how will this be done? Likely a combination of sponsored content and data-driven advertising. Snapchat by its own admission has 30 million users, 50% of those are aged 13-17, and as they send over 700 million photos a day Snapchat gathers all kinds of data on them. Crunched into something marketable, Snapchat could easily prove the

Technology Security, VR World

China Government Targets Symantec, Kaspersky

Anti Virus firms Symantec and Kaspersky have been removed from China’s official list of anti-virus vendors approved to sell to the government and state-owned corporations, continuing a trend of creating a hostile market for foreign technology companies. The removal of these two companies from the list leaves only five, which, uncoincidentally, all all Chinese firms: Qihoo 360 Technology, Venustech, CAJinchen, Beijing Jiangmin, and Rising remain on the list. Last year, the list, which comes via a procurement bureau for government agencies had many recognizable foreign brands including ESET, Panda Security and Trend Micro. But while Symantec and Kaspersky are no longer allowed to sell to

Hardware, Memory & Storage Space, VR World

HGST Showcases 'Fastest Ever' SSD

Storage company HGST demonstrated this weekend at the Flash Memory Summit 2014 in San Jose, California what it calls the “world’s fastest” SSD. HGST’s new SSD uses a PCIe interface and delivers three million random read IOPS of 512 bytes and random read access times of 1.5ms. Latency was reportedly close to 1us. HGST says this performance is orders of magnitude faster than existing Flash based SSDs. “The PCM SSD demonstration is a great example for how HGST sets the pace of the rapidly evolving storage industry,” said Steve Campbell, HGST’s Chief Technology Officer, in a release. “This technology is the result of several years

Android, Apple, Companies, Exclusive, Hardware, Mobile Computing, Operating Systems, Software Programs, VR World

@Evleaks Signs Off

The web’s most prominent serial leaker has announced his retirement from the business. Evan Blass, better known by his nom-de-web Evleaks, announced his retirement on Twitter over the weekend. Citing his declining health due to multiple sclerosis, and his inability to find a sustainable way to monetize hardware leaking, Blass decided to call it quits. All good things must come to an end. Thank you for an amazing two years. [RETIREMENT] — Evan Blass (@evleaks) August 3, 2014 “It mostly comes down to money,” Blass said in an interview with The Next Web. “Trying to monetize a stream of Twitter leaks is not easy. First I

Analysis, Exclusive, Gaming, VR World

The Playstation 4 is a Bright Spot for Stumbling Sony

For shareholders of Sony, the company’s most recent earnings report was likely the small piece of good news they had long waited for. Buoyed by strong sales of the Playstation 4, the much leaner Sony — which had recently shed its PC business, shares in Square Enix and spun off its TV business into a separate subsidiary — posted a profit for the first quarter of its fiscal year spanning from April to June 30. In a conference call with investors and subsequent earnings release, Sony announced it had sold a combined total of 3.5 million PS3 and PS4 units in the quarter. While Sony has

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