Every quarter, Jon Peddie Research analyzes the market for graphics and gives us a chance to see where the industry is at. The market for discrete graphics is seasonal, much like other segments of technology, so it is important to compare them not only to the most previous quarter, but more importantly to the same quarter from last year. Q2 is often a weak time in the discrete graphics industry, and 2014 was no exception. For the quarter, the market for graphics cards dropped 17.5% compared to Q1 even though the desktop PC market actually grew 1.3%. On a year-to-year comparison, the discrete graphics market dropped 17.6%, as compared to the desktop PC market as a while which fell only 1.7%. The seasonal drop was higher than the ten year average.

The total number of Add-in boards (AIBs) shipped in Q2 was 11.5 million units, with AMD decreasing 10.7% from last quarter and NVIDIA decreasing 21%, however overall market share still shows NVIDIA holding strong at 62% compared to 37.9% for AMD. Remember this is for discrete graphics only with AIBs, so we will need to examine more data to get a feel for the entire market.

Discrete Graphics Market   AMD Matrox NVIDIA S3 Total Q2 2014 Shipments (Millions) 4.36 0.01 7.13 0.00 11.50 Q1 2014 Shipments (Millions) 4.90 0.00 9.10 0.00 14.00 Q2 2013 Shipments (Millions) 5.32 0.00 8.68 0.00 14.00 Q2 2014 vs Q1 2014 -10.7% flat -21% flat -17.5% Q2 2014 vs Q2 2013 -18% flat -17.9% -0.1% -17.5%

The attach rate of GPUs including integrated and AIBs was 139% which is up 3.2% from last quarter. 139% may seem too high, but practically all desktop, notebook, and x86 tablets ship with some form of integrated GPU, but many desktops and notebooks also have extra graphics, and some have more than one AIB attached as well, which is why the number is over 100%. 32% of PCs have discrete GPUs which means 68% of PCs sold are relying on integrated graphics.

Looking at the total market for all PCs, the numbers shift quite a bit. Intel, which has all of zero discrete graphics cards for sale, commands an amazing 67.34% of the total GPU market. AMD, who trailed NVIDIA in the discrete GPU market owns 17.94% of the market once you combine in the integrated graphics. NVIDIA, being that they only sell discrete graphics, and based on only 32% of PCs even having discrete graphics, falls to third with 14.72%.

Another data point we can use though would be the Steam Hardware and Software Survey. Steam, with over 75 million users, is far and away the largest gaming network on the planet. Every month, they collect opt-in anonymous data to get a feel for where the gaming industry is at. These kinds of data points would be very useful for developers to get a sense for where they can target the graphical fidelity of their upcoming games in order to hit their target market. On the Steam survey, the GPU manufacturer changes dramatically, with NVIDIA holding 50.93% of the market, Intel falling to 18.89%, and AMD holding the middle ground at 29.8%.

GPU Market   AMD Intel NVIDIA All Graphics 17.94% 67.34% 14.72% Discrete Graphics 37.9% 0% 62.0% Steam Users 29.8% 18.89% 50.93%

From the data, we can see some interesting trends. Integrated GPUs are unsurprisingly the bulk of the market. Intel is the volume king here, even though their integrated solutions are not as powerful as AMD APUs for graphics, but by the market share it appears that people are choosing CPU power and efficiency over GPU power for most devices. The majority of users who do not play any sort of graphical game can get by on just integrated graphics alone whether they are from AMD or Intel. Once you move to discrete cards, NVIDIA is a 2:1 seller of discrete graphics over the only other rival AMD. The greater than normal drop in AIBs when the PC market actually grew can most likely be attributed to an upswing in business PC sales which seems to be bringing the PC market back for the time being.

Sources:

Jon Peddie Research AIB Market

Jon Peddie Research GPU Market

Steam Hardware & Software Survey

Five hundred global citizens frustrated at the stalemate over climate policy will learn today if they have won the chance to vent their anger at world leaders.

The RSPCA is calling for a ban on keeping primates as pets after a rise in the number of calls to its cruelty and advice line concerning animals such as monkeys and marmosets.

An extremely rare Galapagos tortoise thought to be 100 years old has been given a new home at a zoo in Ohio.

Google / The Atlantic

On Thursday, Google unveiled its latest project: a product delivery service powered entirely by drone aircraft. Coming from the same Google X teams that developed the likes of self-driving cars and Google Glass, the drone program, currently dubbed Project Wing, received a feature-length reveal in The Atlantic.

The article's video showed a prototype drone dropping a package at an apparent height of dozens of feet, which was guided to the ground by a combination of a wire and an attached "egg" that slowed the drop to a near-halt just before reaching the ground and releasing a box. MIT roboticist Nick Roy received the lion's share of credit for putting the machine together during his two-year stint with Google X; he came to the project with experience in helping Navy drones navigate through zones that lacked GPS signals.

In particular, Roy pushed for Google to employ a hybrid design, combining fixed-wing and helicopter elements, so that it could take off vertically in tail-sitter configuration. Google did not confirm that it will settle on this design for any final model. However, the wired "egg-drop" configuration will probably remain for the sake of both wind factors and safety concerns. Speaking of safety, Roy admitted the drones' detect-and-avoid system is far off, and this, among other concerns, has added years to Google's Project Wing time expectations.

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A screenshot of a domestic abuse scene from Watch Dogs used as an example in Anita Sarkeesian's "Women vs. Tropes in Video Games" series. Feminist Frequency

"Oh, Anita, you're so beautiful and sexy, you know that?" was the nicest terrible thing a random Twitter user said to Anita Sarkeesian, creator of the Tropes vs.Women in Video Games series, as he peppered her with threats of rape, death, and the address of her home and that of her parents following the posting of her latest video on Monday. The video, which would be right at home on PBS in tone if not content, suggested that many mainstream games represent women as accessories and shorthand rather than as humans, a viewpoint that generated swift and unrelenting rage.

The attack on Sarkeesian was among a number of incidents in the last few weeks that exposed some of the ugly (yet familiar) attitudes and prejudices that remain deeply ingrained in the gaming culture. This time, those sentiments have gotten tied up in ethical arguments in an attempt to highlight the toxic behavior.

A lie gets halfway around the world

The tide of abuse first surged over Zoe Quinn, creator of the game Depression Quest, who got a deluge of negative attention, abuse, threats, and harassment over a blog post written about her by an ex-boyfriend that was published August 16. The post, composed of narcissistic analysis mixed in with screenshots of several online conversations, exposed many personal details about Quinn irrelevant to her profession or professional conduct.

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Poor Robocallman just wants to make a friend. Kordite

On Thursday the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the winners of a robocall-defeating contest that the commission held at DefCon in early August. Three groups of contestants each won $3,133.70, and two runners-up each won $1,337 (for being just that elite). The FTC says it receives 150,000 robocall complaints each month, down from 200,000 per month one year ago.

The contest was called “Zapping Rachel,” for the well-known scam in which a pre-recorded woman's voice tells an unsuspecting phone answerer, “Hi this is Rachel at cardholder services." The FTC separated the contestants into Creator, Attacker, and Detective categories—Creator entrants were asked to build a honeypot to lure robocallers, Detective entrants were given the honeypot data and asked to analyze it, and Attacker entrants were tasked with finding honeypot vulnerabilities. Contestants were given between 24 and 48 hours to submit their entries, depending on the category they entered.

For the Creator category, Jon Olawski, who is a software engineering director for an Internet marketing company by day, won the prize. He built a honeypot that used “an audio captcha filter, call detail analysis, and recording and transcription analysis” to automatically rate an incoming call as to whether it came from a robocaller or not. In an e-mail to Ars, Olawski described his idea as “a 10-point 'strike' system,” and if a caller hits a certain number of strikes, that number is known to be a robocaller and can be placed on a blacklist.

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It is the end of August already, which means two things. School is back, and Xbox Games with Gold has released the upcoming games for September. On the Xbox One, as usual, there are two games for the entire month but unfortunately one of the games is carried over from last month. The Xbox 360, with its much larger catalogue of games has two new games to the program though, but as is standard with the Xbox 360, one game is for the first half of the month, and the second game is for the latter half of the month.

Xbox One Crimson Dragon

“Available Sep. 1-30, Crimson Dragon, originally an Xbox One launch title, and acts as a spiritual successor to the much-beloved Panzer Dragoon saga. It’s a fast-paced rail shooter set in a beautiful fantasy world, where you can join with up to three other players for online co-op battles. You have a half-dozen majestic draconian steeds to choose from, and they level up as you progress through the game’s epic story. Crimson Dragon also features a killer soundtrack, courtesy of Panzer Dragoon composer Saori Kobayashi.”

This is the carryover game from last month. The game is set in a science fiction universe where humans have recently colonized a planet inhabited by dragons, which can be befriended and controlled. The game is a spiritual successor to the Panzer Dragoon series, however critical and user reviews of the game have been mixed. The game scores a 56/100 on Metacritic and 6.6 for the User score. Crimson Dragon normally sells for $19.99.

Super Time Force

“Super Time Force is an action-packed platformer with a time-travelling twist! You’re in control of time itself, bending and stretching it to your advantage on the battlefield. Rewind time and choose when to jump back into the action, teaming-up with your past selves in a unique single-player co-op experience! Take control of up to 16 unique characters, and battle across 6 different time periods, from the long-ago past to the far-away future.”

Super Time Force is from the developer Capybara Games, and was originally released May 14th, 2014. This unique take on the side scroller allows the player to rewind their timestream when they die or if they choose in order to play as a previous character. It has a Metascore of 81 from Metacritic, and a 6.6 user score. Super Time Force normally sells for $14.99.

Xbox 360 Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine

“Assemble a crack team of thieves and execute the perfect crime. Sneak, steal, and run for your lives in single player or with up to four friends in local or online co-op. Find out why it won the 2010 IGF Grand Prize and has been described by Rev3Games' Anthony Carboni as "quite possible the best co-op ever."

The first game for the Xbox 360 is available starting September 1st, and comes from developer Pocketwatch Games. Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine is a stealth action game where you can play single player or co-operatively with up to four players that plays out on a top down perspective, but you can only see what is in your character’s line of site. The game scored an 81 Metascore with a 7.2 User Score on Metacritic, and normally retails for $14.99.

Halo: Reach

“Halo: Reach,” developed exclusively for Xbox 360, is theblockbuster prequel to the landmark “Halo” video game franchise and is the biggest game yet in the Halo series.“Halo” is one of the biggest video game series in history, and is the top selling franchise on Xbox. It has defined a generation of gamers and changed how people view video games.

“Halo: Reach” tells the tragic and heroic story of Noble Team, a group of Spartans, who through great sacrifice and courage saved countless lives in the face of impossible odds. The planet Reach is humanity’s last line of defense between the encroaching Covenant and their ultimate goal, the destruction of Earth. If it falls, humanity will be perched on the brink of destruction.”

The second game for the Xbox 360 is Halo: Reach by Bungie. On September 16th, Xbox 360 owners with Xbox Live Gold will have access to the prequel to the biggest Xbox franchise ever – Halo. This game got an outstanding 91 Metascore and 7.8 User Score on Metacritic, so if you have not played it this is a great chance to try it out. Halo: Reach normally retails for $24.99.

As seems to be the norm, the Xbox 360 lineup appears quite a bit stronger than the Games with Gold for the Xbox One, but that is not hard to understand with eight years of titles to choose from. If you happened to miss last month’s games, you still have a couple of days to grab them so pick them up soon before they are gone.

 

 

The raid and its aftermath start at the 6:30 mark.

Police in Littleton, Colorado are investigating a prank call on Thursday that led a SWAT team to raid an online video gamer's office. Heavily armed officers forced a well-known gamer to the ground in what is believed to be a case of "swatting" by an unknown rival gamer.

"This is not a game. It's not an online game. We have real guns and real bullets. There's some potential there for tragedy," Littleton Police Department Chief Doug Stephens told local media.

Nearby schools and businesses were immediately closed and sealed off after a 911 caller said he had shot at least two coworkers and was holding others hostage at the local gaming facility on Wednesday.

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The Windows Store has come under fire recently for its sheer amount of misleading apps. Scam apps that claim to offer downloads or training for other applications are abundant, and these bogus programs routinely abuse others' trademarks.

This situation doesn't sit well with an app store that's supposed to be curated and vetted to avoid scams.

Similar complaints have been made practically since the Windows Store's inception, and it appears that Microsoft has at least responded. Stricter rules on application naming and icons have been introduced and are being retroactively applied to existing apps.

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Photograph by langleyo

While controversy still swirls over whether the Internal Revenue Service has backup tapes with the “lost” e-mails of former IRS executive Lois Lerner, an IRS attorney confirmed that the agency had disposed of Lerner’s government-issued BlackBerry in June of 2012.

That would mean that the destruction of the data on the phone—including e-mails that may have been part of the missing messages both Congress and the conservative advocacy group Judicial Watch have sought from the agency—happened after congressional staffers had begun asking her about the alleged targeting of conservative nonprofit groups. But it was over a year after the loss of e-mails on Lerner’s personal computer due to a reported hard drive crash.

In a declaration by the IRS in response to Judicial Watch’s lawsuit, IRS Deputy Assistant Chief Counsel Thomas Kane wrote that the BlackBerry phone had been “removed or wiped clean of any sensitive or proprietary information and removed as scrap for disposal in June 2012.”

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Who thought this up anyway? University of Central Arkansas

Update: Following complaints, the ALS Association dropped its trademark applications on Friday Aug. 29.

Unless you've been living in a sensory-deprivation chamber for the past few weeks, you've heard of the "ice bucket challenge" being shown off on all types of social media. People get buckets of ice water dumped on them in order to encourage donations to the ALS Association, the foundation that supports research and care for those living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a muscle disease that's also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

It's impossible to know exactly what makes something like the ice bucket challenge go viral. Whatever the case may be, the sensation been an incredible benefit for the ALS Association. Yesterday, the group said it has raised $94.3 million since July 29, compared to just $2.7 million during the same time period last year. That's nearly 35 times as much money.

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Packets on packets... Flickr user: timcaynes

In a paper presented at the prestigious ACM SIGCOMM conference last week, researchers from the University of Michigan, the International Computer Science Institute, Arbor Networks, and Verisign Labs presented the paper "Measuring IPv6 Adoption." In it, the team does just that—in 12 different ways, no less. The results from these different measurements don't exactly agree, with the lowest and the highest being two orders of magnitude (close to a factor 100) apart. But the overall picture that emerges is one of a protocol that's quickly capturing its own place under the sun next to its big brother IPv4.

As a long-time Ars reader, you of course already know everything you need to know about IPv6. There's no Plan B, but you have survived World IPv6 Day and World IPv6 Launch. All of this drama occurs because existing IP(v4) addresses are too short and are thus running out, so we need to start using the new version of IP (IPv6) that has a much larger supply of much longer addresses.

The good news is that the engineers in charge knew we'd be running out of IPv4 addresses at some point two decades ago, so we've had a long time to standardize IPv6 and put the new protocol in routers, firewalls, operating systems, and applications. The not-so-good news is that IP is everywhere. The new protocol can only be used when the two computers (or other devices) communicating over the 'Net—as well as every router, firewall, and load balancer in between—have IPv6 enabled and configured. As such, getting IPv6 deployed has been an uphill struggle. But last week's paper shows us how far we've managed to struggle so far.

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Swansea University scientists are conducting the largest field trial in Europe to find new ways of killing Japanese knotweed.

I originally bought Bioshock for PC a number of years ago during one of Steam's summer sales. It was $2, and I had heard good things about it so I decided to buy it. Unfortunately like many of the inexpensive purchases I made, the game sat in my library unplayed for a long period of time. A couple of years after purchasing it, a friend of mine mentioned that I had quite a number of unplayed games in my Steam library and insisted that I play some of them. At that time I finally sat down and played Bioshock, and it became one of my favorite first person shooter games of all time. While some of the visuals seemed dated as a result of me playing it so long after its release, the atmosphere, setting, environments, and the story were some of the best I had experienced in a video game.

When I recently heard that Bioshock would be coming to iOS, I felt both excitement and worry. The excitement was obviously due to my love of the game and the appealing prospect of being able to play it on a smartphone. The worry came from my fear that the game would be severely crippled to run on mobile devices. Deus Ex: The Fall was a recent disappointment for smartphone gaming based on a successful PC and console franchise, and I worried Bioshock would meet a similar fate. But I was hopeful that it would be a faithful experience so long as they maintained the original experience which wasn't designed for the limitations of mobile hardware. Thankfully from my experience with the game so far, my hope wasn't misplaced.

Getting Set Up

Bioshock was originally released in 2007, and includes support for DirectX 9 on Windows XP and DirectX 10 on Windows Vista. Windows 7 has never really been an officially supported operating system, and I find that Bioshock gives me more trouble than other games do. Just do a Google search for "Bioshock crash windows 7" and you'll see what I mean. The issues seem to relate to audio, as on a new Windows install I will either have issues with crashes to desktop or a lack of audio in an otherwise functioning game. Disabling all sound output devices except for the one in use seemed to fix the issue this time.

Once the game was booted I jumped into the graphics settings menu to make sure everything was at its highest setting. For the purposes of these comparisons the PC versions of the game was run at 1920x1080 for a 16:9 aspect ratio matching that of the iPhone 5s version.

There's one option here that needs to be discussed and that's the option for "Horizontal FOV Lock." Essentially this setting keeps the horizontal FOV at the same value it would be on a 4:3 display regardless of the aspect ratio of the monitor being used. For 16:9 displays this means a more zoomed in appearance. Below I've put screenshots of the game with this option on and off, as well as the iPhone version for reference.

Top: FOV lock off. Middle: FOV lock on. Bottom: iPhone version

The iOS version of the game doesn't have any sort of graphical settings menu. As you can see above, it definitely uses the horizontal FOV lock setting and the field of view is essentially the same as on a PC or console with the setting enabled. At the very least, this ensures a consistent experience going from iPhone to iPad, but I'm still not a fan of how zoomed in it feels at times.

Bioshock on iOS doesn't really require any setup like the PC version. There are settings for difficulty, subtitles, object highlight, the quest arrow, and vita chambers, but like other mobile games there's nothing involving graphical settings. The menus themselves are the same as the PC version which really helps to make it feel like you're playing the full Bioshock and not a cut down mobile experience.

Graphics

The first thing to talk about here is what devices Bioshock runs on. This is definitely the most demanding game on the App Store, and despite the visual concessions in bringing a PC game to mobile it still requires significant processing power. Because of that, only devices sporting Apple's A6 or A7 chips can run the game properly. It will open on an older device but the frame rate is very low and the game becomes essentially unplayable. This means that every Apple A5 (and A5X in the third generation iPad) device is unsupported which is quite a long list of devices. First generation iPad Mini owners may be especially disappointed since their device is still sold and isn't even two years old, but given that it launched with the same hardware platform as the iPad 2 from 2011 it was to be expected that it wouldn't have a record setting length of time for software support. 

Top: PC. Bottom: Mobile

The game looks very impressive for a mobile shooter. Scenes like the introduction with the plane crash and the burning wreckage on the water have impressive fire and smoke effects that compare well to the PC version. However, there were definitely sacrifices made with the lighting and the shadows. The images for the HUD and the menus are also surprising low resolution, and I think the quality reduction there had more to do with fitting inside Apple's 2GB limit for applications than any issue with hardware capabilities.

Below are some more comparisons of Bioshock on iOS compared to on PC. In all cases the mobile version is on the left and the PC version on the right. I've tried to take screenshots of several different areas and objects to give an idea of where the graphics were toned down to work on mobile, and where they really hold up well compared to the PC version. You can click the images to view in a larger size.

I feel like 2K did a good job in maintaining the quality of the models in the game when bringing it over to mobile. The effect for the electro bolt plasmid is really close to the PC version. Something that needs to be kept in mind is that some of the areas that look low quality in the iPhone screenshots are harder to notice when the game is in motion on a 4" display.

I chose the last two comparisons for a reason, as they do well to demonstrate the affect that the reduced lighting and shadows have on the game's atmosphere. Graphical fidelity aside, the game just isn't as dark and creepy on mobile. The shadow of the splicer playing with the baby carriage being missing was especially disappointing as that's a very disturbing scene and it doesn't have the same impact without it.

The aliasing is also a significant issue as well. I don't know what resolution the game has to render at to run at an acceptable frame rate but I think I would have taken some more graphical reductions for either anti-aliasing or a higher rendering resolution. My big concern is that the aliasing is really noticeable even on a 4" iPhone 5s which has the best CPU and GPU speed relative to its resolution of all the devices the game runs on. While the iPad Mini Retina and iPad Air are less thermally constrained and can sustain higher clock speeds for a greater period of time, they're likely to have even more issues with aliasing with the game being scaled up to larger displays. I also began to wonder about the overhead impact of OpenGL ES and if the game could look even better if it had been made to run using Apple's Metal API that will be launching with iOS 8. I emailed 2K and they were unable to comment on any plans for using Metal on Bioshock or any future releases so we'll have to wait and see how future iOS games can look with Metal.

Below I have an album of all the screenshots I took while playing. At the time of writing I was at the medical pavilion level and I do intend on completing the game on mobile. One final thing to note is that there's no significant compression to the game's audio to reduce the size. The audio contributes greatly to the atmosphere of Bioshock and I'm very happy it was preserved.

Gallery: Bioshock iOS Screenshots

Gameplay

In my opinion the gameplay is really what matters. I would rather have a game that visually mediocre but enjoyable to play than one that looks amazing but feels like a glorified tech demo when played. I don't have access to a Bluetooth controller so I'll be evaluating the touch control experience for Bioshock on iOS. I believe that's how most users will play the game anyway.

Before I talk about how the HUD functions, I really do need to reiterate that the blurriness of all the controls is distracting and annoying. I don't know why they're so low resolution and I really hope 2K updates the game to fix them.

Bioshock has a more complex control scheme than other first person shooters. This is partly due to the inclusion of plasmids which necessitates a way to switch between them and your weapons. Before the game released I had wondered if the game would be altered to allow plasmids and weapons to be used simultaneously like in Bioshock 2, but the original system has been preserved.

Movement is controlled by a virtual control pad on the left side which only appears when in use. Crouching and standing is controlled by the button on the left of the screen. On the right side of the screen there is a button with three bullets on it which is used for reloading weapons. When using plasmids the icon of this button changes to an eve hypo syringe. The section below the reload icon controls switching between weapons and firing. Tapping on the icon for the selected weapon or plasmid fires it. Tapping the other icon is how you switch between weapons and plasmids. When using a weapon or plasmid, the arrow icon cycles through them. This can be troublesome when trying to switch from the wrench to a weapon like the chemical thrower which requires several presses. Update: I've just been informed that holding the button brings up a quick menu with all weapons which is a very fast way to switch between them. The last menu section is the ammo selection menu at the top which allows you to cycle through the various ammo types for your weapon.

In practice these controls work fairly well as far as touch controls go, although I really want to try the game out using a Bluetooth game controller. The one control you may notice is missing is for jumping. Bioshock for iOS actually doesn't have a way to jump, and some levels have had changes made as a result. For example, the very first level in the PC version has a fallen pillar on the ground and when approaching it the game tells you to hit the space bar to jump over it. Since the iOS version has no jumping, this tutorial and the fallen pillar was removed. While this does feel like a concession to make the game work on mobile, jumping was never a big part of Bioshock to begin with and when playing I never wanted to jump but was unable to.

One thing I would like to see is an update to allow the placement of the controls to be changed. The current position of the controls for firing and weapon switching end up covering the viewmodel for your weapon and I would like to move it further to the right side of the display.

The rest of the gameplay is very faithfully brought over to mobile. Plasmids, hacking, upgrades, and everything else is still in the game. The hacking in particular translates very well to mobile, it may actually be better on mobile than it was on PC.

Conclusion and Thoughts on Handheld Gaming

As I'm writing this I'm actually anxious to get back to playing because it's very exciting to have a full fledged first person shooter game that can be put right in your pocket. When I was younger I remember that Call of Duty 4 for the Nintendo DS was the best you had for a handheld first person shooter and as you can see in the image on the right it's not too impressive. We've come a long long way with what phones and handheld gaming devices can do. Although you often hear the term "console quality" thrown around regarding mobile GPU capabilities, I don't think we're quite there yet. But the gap between current generation smartphones and the previous generation of game consoles is certainly closing, and there's nowhere for the quality of mobile games to go but up. I'm very excited to see what the future holds for mobile gaming.

Bioshock for iOS is available on the App Store now for $14.99. The download is 1.65GB in size (and takes up 2.6GB installed on my iPhone 5s) and it only runs on devices with Apple's A6, A6X, or A7 chips which includes the iPhone 5, 5c, 5s, iPad 4, iPad Mini Retina, and iPad Air. I really think it's worth checking out if you can spare the money and are a fan of the original game.

Last year, we saw the introduction of HomePlug AV2 (HPAV2) silicon from both Broadcom and Qualcomm Atheros. In conformance with the usual product development cycle, we saw the announcement of various HPAV2 products at CES in January. TP-LINK and TRENDnet were the players that seemed to be taking the lead in getting them to the market. Even though their products were supposed to ship in Q2 / Q3, we are yet to see them outside tradeshows.

ZyXEL is springing a surprise by launching two powerline adapters based on the HPAV2 standard with confirmed ship dates

• PLA5206
  • Broadcom BCM60333 HPAV2 SISO Chipset
  • PLA5206KIT contains a pair of adapters, MSRP of $160
  • Available Sept. 1
  • Delivers speeds of up to 1Gbps
  • Utilizes HomePlug AV2 standard to transmit multiple HD video streams simultaneously
  • 128-bit encryption
  • Green power saving options
• PLA5405
  • Qualcomm Atheros QCA7500 HPAV2 MIMO Chipset
  • Pricing TBD
  • Available Oct. 1
  • Delivers speeds of up to 1.2Gbps
  • Line-Natural / Line-Ground MIMO smart-antenna technology allows data to be sent simultaneously over different wires, delivering faster throughput / extended coverage
  • Utilizes HomePlug AV2 standard to transmit multiple HD video streams simultaneously
  • 128-bit encryption
  • Green power saving options

Things have been relatively quiet on the powerline networking front from a home consumer perspective (with Wi-Fi advancements being the primary networking market driver right now). That said, these solutions will be a welcome addition in buildings where Wi-Fi remains ineffective due to reach issues. Powerline technology remains attractive for service providers and consumers in the EMEA / APAC markets.

6 more images in gallery

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CN.dart.call("xrailTop", {sz:"300x250", kws:["top"], collapse: true});Do you want your smartwatch to look like a regular watch? While some companies are designing wearables that look more like smartphones that you wear on your wrist, the most compelling designs are the smartwatches that look more normal. With its round display and stainless steel body, the Moto 360 has been the standard-bearer for this school of thought. Today, LG has announced the LG G Watch R, which looks even more like a normal watch than Motorola's offering.

After teasing the device over the weekend, LG has come clean about its newest gizmo. The awkwardly named LG G Watch R is modeled after a normal diving watch, and if the press pictures are accurate, you'll have a hard time telling it's a smartwatch at all.

The device has mostly the same specs as the two-month old LG G Watch: a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400, 512MB of RAM, and 4GB of storage. It's also water resistant and runs Android Wear. What's new is the stainless steel body, leather strap, a slightly bigger 410mAh battery (up from 400mAh), heart rate monitor, and, most importantly, a round 1.3-inch P-OLED display.

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Within four days of the first public reports of a major flaw in OpenSSL's software for securing communications on the Internet, mass attacks searched for and targeted vulnerable servers.

In a report released this week, IBM found that while the attacks have died down, approximately half of the original 500,000 potentially vulnerable servers remain unpatched, leaving businesses at continuing risk of the Heartbleed flaw. On average, the company currently sees 7,000 daily attacks against its customers, down from a high of 300,000 attacks in a single 24-hour period in April, according to the report based on data from the company's Managed Security Services division.

"Despite the initial rush to patch systems, approximately 50 percent of potentially vulnerable servers have been left unpatched—making Heartbleed an ongoing, critical threat," the report stated.

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Apple

The rumors were true: Apple has just sent out invitations for an event on September 9 at the Flint Center for the Performing Arts in the company's hometown of Cupertino, California. Apple's invitations often include subtle hints or wink-and-a-nod references to whatever it is the company plans to announce—analyzing (and over-analyzing) these "clues" has become something of a joke among Apple writers—but this invitation is almost entirely unadorned. "Wish we could say more," it reads, as if to tease those who would hope to unlock its secrets.

Of course we already have plenty of indications about what Apple is going to announce—we'll likely be treated to one or more brand-new iPhones, a release date for iOS 8, and possibly even a first look at Apple's long-rumored wearable device.

The event will begin at 10:00am Pacific. We'll be on the ground to liveblog the proceedings, cover the announcements, and go hands-on with any new products.

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The new Leap Motion VR Developer Mount lets you attach a Leap Motion Controller to the front of an Oculus Rift DK1 or DK2 and turn your hands into gloveless VR gloves. Leap Motion

It’s been about a year since we first put our hands on the Leap Motion Controller, the infrared input device that sits on your desk and tracks the movements and gestures your hands make. At the time, we were simultaneously impressed and frustrated—the device seemed to have so much potential, but everything about its software and early app integration felt designed to annoy rather than enable. It came so close to being amazing without actually crossing that threshold.

Over the past year, though, I’ve come to rely on the Leap pretty heavily—not as a game controller but as a way to execute scripts with gestures, using BetterTouchTool. Wave my hand one way, and all the Hue lights in the house turn off. Wave my hand another, and my computer display locks and turns off. I even have a gesture that just sends a "spacebar" command to the active application, enabling me to scroll webpages and pause or unpause video by flicking a couple of fingers at the screen in a crowd-pleasing gesture that never fails to draw a "Whoa!" from observers. It’s cool, and it works reliably well.

And Leap has not spent the last year idle. Work continues on API and software updates for the existing Leap Motion Controller (as well as on the company's follow-up device, codenamed "Dragonfly"). In a blog post this morning, Leap cofounder David Holz talked through the latest improvement that the company has bolted onto its existing product: a small mounting device that, coupled with a software update, enables the Leap to function as a full-fledged virtual reality controller.

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