Julien GONG Min

PCs may not be thriving the way they once were, but Microsoft has posted a strong set of financials for the fourth quarter of its 2014 financial year on the back of substantial, sustained growth in its cloud businesses.

Revenue for the quarter was $23.38 billion, up 17.5 percent on the same quarter a year ago. Operating income rose 6.7 percent to $6.48 billion, and earnings per share were down 5 percent to $0.56, with the drop largely attributed to a hefty tax adjustment.

The results for the quarter were complicated by Microsoft's purchase of Nokia's Devices and Services business, which closed in April. In the wake of the purchase, the company has adjusted the way it breaks down its earnings. The "Devices and Consumer Hardware" segment has been renamed "Computing and Gaming Hardware." This includes Surface and Xbox hardware. A new segment, "Phone Hardware," will cover the Nokia business.

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Given the recent product releases in the SSD industry, it is now a good time to do another purchase recommendation post. We did our first "Best SSDs" post in November last year and it received quite a bit of interest by providing simple recommendations instead of a several thousand word analysis like we usually do in our reviews. Quite surprisingly, our previous recommendations were still accurate until about a month ago when Crucial rolled out the MX100, so despite the fact that the article is now eight months old there was no immediate need for an updated post until now. 

Similar to the previous post, I will be splitting the recommendations in different categories by form factor and performance. Note that pricing fluctuates constantly and there may be regional differences, so I would still recommend to check the prices from several stores and use your own consideration when buying a drive. 

Enthusiast and Professional Level: Samsung SSD 850 Pro & SanDisk Extreme Pro

The Samsung 850 Pro is one unique drive. It is the first mainstream SSD to utilize 3D NAND, which gives Samsung substantial advantages in performance and endurance. As a result, the 850 Pro is the fastest SSD we have tested and is backed up by an industry-leading 10-year warranty or 150TB of writes, which ever comes first. Feature wise the 850 Pro supports both TCG Opal 2.0 / eDrive and DevSleep, meaning that the drive is suitable for mobile as well as corporate environments. The 850 Pro also has a feature called RAPID, which utilizes a portion of the system DRAM (up to 4GB) to cache reads and writes to further increase performance.

The 850 Pro's toughest competitor is SanDisk's Extreme Pro. While the 850 Pro is generally a faster drive, the Extreme Pro comes very close. It too is backed up by a 10-year warranty, although the write endurance is only rated at 80TB. Due to higher over-provisioning, the usable capacities in the Extreme Pro end up being slightly smaller compared to the 850 Pro and you also lose TCG Opal 2.0 / eDrive support.

  Samsung SSD 850 Pro SanDisk Extreme Pro Pros - Higher performance
- Higher usable capacities
- Higher endurance
- TCG Opal 2.0 & eDrive support
- RAPID - Price of the larger capacities Cons - Price of the larger capacities - No hardware encryption support
- Lower endurance

I am usually not a big fan of pros&cons tables because they tend to oversimplify things, but in this case I think the comparison does justice and provides a quick way to compare the 850 Pro and Extreme Pro. It is clear that the 850 Pro is ultimately the better drive but the Extreme Pro can be a better option if you are in the look for a high performance 1TB-class drive but do not see any additional value in the 850 Pro's features (namely hardware encryption and RAPID). 

Capacity 120/128GB 240/256GB 480/512GB 960/1024GB Samsung SSD 850 Pro $130 ($1.02/GB)
£90 (£0.70/GB) $200 ($0.78/GB)
£155 (£0.61/GB) $400 ($0.78/GB)
£295 (£0.58/GB) $700 ($0.68/GB)
£485 (£0.47/GB) SanDisk Extreme Pro - $210 ($0.88/GB)
£135 (£0.56/GB) $370 ($0.77/GB)
£252 (£0.53/GB) $600 ($0.63/GB)
£392 (£0.41/GB)

That said, if you want the best SATA 6Gbps drive in the market, the 850 Pro is the drive to buy. You will have to pay a small premium at the higher capacities, although the price delta may even out in the future and make the 850 Pro a better buy in all aspects. Alternatively, if the prices of the Extreme Pro come down (or you are in a region where the price difference is higher than in the US), the Extreme Pro is a viable alternative as long as you have no need for hardware encryption.

Mainstream Level: Crucial MX100 & Samsung SSD 840 EVO

In the mainstream segment, the MX100 dominates the market. The exceptional pricing alone makes the MX100 an alluring drive but the fact that the drive supports power-loss protection, DevSleep and hardware encryption (TCG Opal 2.0 & eDrive) makes it an excellent bang for the buck. With performance good enough for typical client workloads, there is simply no way you can go wrong with the MX100, unless your workload requires a higher performance drive.

Capacity 120/128GB 250/256GB 500/512GB 1TB Crucial MX100 $75 ($0.59/GB)
£54 (£0.42/GB) $110 ($0.43/GB)
£94 (£0.37/GB) $215 ($0.42/GB)
£161 (£0.31/GB) - Samsung SSD 840 EVO $90 ($0.75/GB)
£57 (£0.47/GB) $140 ($0.56/GB)
£88 (£0.35/GB) $260 ($0.52/GB)
£165 (£0.33/GB) $470 ($0.47/GB)
£300 (£0.30/GB)

The only disadvantage of the MX100 is the lack of a 1TB model, which is why I am recommending the 840 EVO as well since it comes in 1TB flavor. In terms of features and performance the MX100 and 840 EVO are very close with the biggest difference being that the EVO has no power-loss protection, although on the other hand it supports RAPID, which the MX100 does not have. As a result, the only reason I am picking the MX100 over the 840 EVO is the price but if you can find the 840 EVO cheaper (or are looking for a 1TB drive), then do not hesitate to buy the 840 EVO instead of the MX100.

Killing Off The SATA Bottleneck: Samsung XP941

PCIe has certainly been one of the most discussed topics within the SSD industry this year. While the true roll out of native PCIe SSDs will not happen until next year, there are now a couple of drives available. The only drive that I find interesting is the Samsung XP941 because it is currently the only native PCIe 2.0 x4 drive, whereas the other drives in the market are limited to x2, which does not provide that much benefit over SATA 6Gbps. As a result the XP941 is the fastest client SSD we have tested to date and is hence the ultimate drive for performance hungry enthusiasts.

The only downside is that you will need a Z97 based motherboard (or a Mac Pro) to be able to boot from the drive and even then you are limited to certain models (at this point ASRock Z97 Extreme6 is the only board with official boot support, although the drive can be made bootable in some ASUS boards as well). Thus I would only recommend the XP941 if you are running a supported motherboard because otherwise the XP941 can only be used as a secondary drive. Compared to the 850 Pro you will also lose hardware encryption plus RAPID support and the warranty drops to three years. 

Capacity 256GB 512GB Samsung XP941 $311 ($1.21/GB)
- $500 ($0.98/GB)
£400 (£0.78/GB)

The pricing is also rather high compared to the 850 Pro but that is the premium you have to pay for cutting edge technology. Interestingly enough, the 512GB XP941 is currently available in NewEgg even though the drive is an OEM product. Unfortunately the 256GB model is not but you can still find it from RamCity, which was the first vendor to sell the XP941 to consumers and also supplied us with review samples. 

All in all, if you are willing to pay the premium and sacrifice support for the opportunity to be at the edge of a new technology, the XP941 is the drive to buy. 

The Tiny, Yet Powerful mSATA: Crucial M500 mSATA, Samsung SSD 840 EVO mSATA & Plextor M6M

While the SSD and PC industries are moving away from mSATA to M.2, there is a notable upgrade market for mSATA drives. mSATA never really took off so the available SKUs are still rather limited, but fortunately there are a couple of drives that stand out. The first one is the mSATA version of the Samsung 840 EVO, which is the little brother of the 2.5" 840 EVO we already recommended above. You get the same set of features (hardware encryption, DevSleep, RAPID...) and performance as with the full size 840 EVO, so the EVO mSATA is a great value despite its small size.

An alternative to the 840 EVO mSATA is Plextor's M6M. The M6M lacks TCG Opal 2.0 and eDrive compliance and is also a bit slower than the 840 EVO, but it is still a good option for typical client workloads as long as the lack of hardware encryption is not a deal breaker. 

Update: I have added Crucial M500 mSATA to the list since it is the most affordable mSATA SSD and still offers a great set of features (hardware encryption and power-loss protection) and decent performance. Initially I left it out as I thought it had been discontinued like its 2.5" sibling but looks like it is still available and seems to be the best value. 

Capacity 64GB 120/128GB 250/256GB 500/512GB 1TB Samsung SSD 840 EVO mSATA - $100 ($0.83/GB)
£70 (£0.58/GB) $160 ($0.64/GB)
£105 (£0.42/GB) $300 ($0.60/GB)
£185 (£0.37/GB) $500 ($0.50/GB)
£330 (£0.33/GB) Plextor M6M $60 ($0.94/GB)
£50 (£0.78/GB) $86 ($0.67/GB)
£83 (£0.64/GB) $150 ($0.59/GB)
£116 (£0.46/GB) $360 ($0.70/GB)
- - Crucial M500 mSATA - $75 ($0.59/GB)
£52 (£0.43/GB) $125 ($0.52/GB)
£89 (£0.37/GB) $240 ($0.50/GB)
£168 (£0.35/GB) -

The 840 EVO mSATA does not come in 64GB flavor at all, so if you are looking for a small and cheap boot mSATA drive, then the M6M is our only recommendation, although I strogly advice that you pay $26 more for doubled capacity. At 120/128GB the M6M is a better pick due to its cheaper price, unless you see added value in the features of the 840 EVO mSATA. However, at 250/256GB and higher the EVO is certainly a better value for the money.

Given the price of the M500 mSATA, it is the best value for most consumers. While performance is not as good as with the 840 EVO, the M500 mSATA is fast enough for average consumer workloads and is thus the drive we recommend. Users who seek for more performance in an mSATA form factor may find the 840 EVO to be worth the extra money but otherwise the M500 mSATA is a better buy. The only exception is at 1TB where the 840 EVO mSATA is the only option.

The Gumstick M.2: Crucial M550 M.2

The market for aftermarket M.2 SSDs is relatively small right now since systems with M.2 have not been shipping for long but the market is constantly growing. I could not find many available on NewEgg but if I was on the market for one I would pick Crucial's M.2 version of the M550. We have not reviewed the M.2 version but it is fairly safe to assume that the performance is similar to the 2.5" version (our review). The M550 M.2 is type 2280, so make sure that it is compatible with your motherboard or laptop since some only accept smaller M.2 sizes. Like the MX100, the M550 M.2 features an extensive feature set including power-loss protection and TCG Opal 2.0 / eDrive support along with DevSleep support. 

Note: The M550 M.2 is a SATA 6Gbps drive, so before buying the drive make sure that the slot in your motherboard or laptop supports SATA. Some only support PCIe, meaning that the M550 will not work in such slot. 

Capacity 128GB 256GB 512GB Crucial M550 M.2 $100 ($0.78/GB)
£68 (£0.53/GB) $170 ($0.66/GB)
- $330 ($0.64/GB)
£228 (£0.45/GB)   To Conclude:

The last couple of months have been very interesting in the SSD industry. We have seen quite a few new SSDs and it seems like the flow will not end. From what I have heard, we should see several TLC NAND based SSDs this year, which will help to drive the cost per gigabyte down. Additionally, more PCIe SSDs should start to roll out early next year, so the XP941 should finally see some real competition.

Two planes carrying bodies from crashed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 have landed in the Netherlands.

The Federal Communications Commission will face a lawsuit if it tries to invalidate state laws that restrict the ability of cities and towns to offer Internet service, the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) wrote in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler yesterday. Such a move would infringe on states' rights protected by the Constitution, the group claimed.

Wheeler has said he intends to "preempt state laws that ban competition from community broadband," relying on authority detailed in a court decision that overturned the FCC's net neutrality rules. These state laws make it difficult or impossible for municipalities to create their own broadband networks that compete against private Internet service providers like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon.

The US House of Representatives has already approved a budget amendment that would prevent the FCC from invalidating these laws.

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A screenshot posted by "w0rm" showing he had dumped the user table from a Wall Street Journal database.

Dow Jones & Co. took two servers that store the news graphics for The Wall Street Journal website offline yesterday evening after a confirmed intrusion by a hacker calling himself “w0rm.” The hacker was offering what he claimed was user information and server access credentials that would allow others to “modify articles, add new content, insert malicious content in any page, add new users, delete users, and so on,” Andrew Komarov, chief executive officer of cybersecurity firm IntelCrawl, told The Wall Street Journal.

W0rm, according to Komarov, is the same individual previously known as “Rev0lver” and “Hash,” a Russian hacker who tried to sell access to the BBC’s servers last December and attacked the Web servers of Vice Media earlier this year. At 5:30pm ET on July 21, he posted a screenshot to Twitter that showed the e-mail address, username, and hashed password for the database admin on a wsj.com server. He offered to sell the full dump of the database table of authorized users for one bitcoin through an exploit marketplace at w0rm.in.

According to The Journal, Dow Jones has taken the servers offline to isolate them and prevent further intrusions into their systems. A spokeperson for the company said, “At this point we see no evidence of any impact to Dow Jones Customers or customer data.”

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Four days after a forensics expert warned that undocumented functions in iOS could leak personal user data, Apple has documented three services it says serve diagnostic purposes.

"iOS offers the following diagnostic capabilities to help enterprise IT departments, developers, and AppleCare troubleshoot issues," the support article published Tuesday stated. "Each of these diagnostic capabilities requires the user to have unlocked their device and agreed to trust another computer. Any data transmitted between the iOS device and trusted computer is encrypted with keys not shared with Apple. For users who have enabled iTunes Wi-Fi Sync on a trusted computer, these services may also be accessed wirelessly by that computer." As Ars reported Monday, three undocumented services include a packet sniffer dubbed com.apple.mobile.pcapd, a file downloader called com.apple.mobile.file_relay, and com.apple.mobile.house_arrest, a tool that downloads iPhone and iPad files to an iTunes folder stored on a computer.

Jonathan Zdziarski, the forensics expert who brought the undocumented functions to light on Saturday, published a blog post in response that criticized Apple's characterization of the services. He continued to maintain that at least one of the capabilities—stemming from the file relay service—constitutes a "backdoor" as defined by many security and forensics practitioners. He also took issue with Apple's suggestion that the purpose of the services was limited to diagnostics. He reiterated his previous stance that he doesn't believe Apple added the functions at the request of the National Security Agency.

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A pair of Amur leopards, which are said to be the rarest big cats in the world, have been born in Leicestershire.

Scotland Correspondent Lorna Gordon bumps into some of the team from Swaziland on the streets of Glasgow.

Peaches Geldof died of a heroin overdose, a coroner rules.

The United Nations says about 102,000 displaced people are now using shelters across Gaza as the Israeli offensive continues. Those who have stayed are adjusting to the sounds and sights of conflict, as Yolande Knell reports from Gaza.

Nokia has had a lot of success with Windows Phone in the more budget-oriented segment of the market. The Lumia 630, which we recently reviewed, does well in its position in the $150-200 device bracket. But Nokia is hoping to target buyers at even lower price points with the new Lumia 530 which positions itself to take on other Android devices at the $100-150 segment of the market. At least in its name it is a successor to Nokia's Lumia 520 which was the most popular Windows Phone, and the two are compared down below.

Lumia 520 and 530   Lumia 520 Lumia 530 SoC 1GHz Dual Core Krait (MSM8227) + Adreno 305 1.2GHz Quad Core Cortex A7 (MSM8212) + Adreno 302 Memory 512MB LPDDR2 512MB LPDDR2 Storage 8GB NAND + MicroSDHC 4GB NAND + MicroSDXC  Display 4” 800x480 WVGA LCD 4” 854x480 FWVGA LCD Cellular Connectivity GPRS/EDGE/HSPA+ GPRS/EDGE/HSPA+ Dimensions 119.9 x 64 x 9.9 mm, 124g 119.7 x 62.3 x 11.7 mm, 129g Camera 5MP Rear Facing w/ F2.4 aperture 5MP Rear Facing w/ F2.4 aperture Battery 5.291Wh 5.291Wh OS Windows Phone 8.1 Windows Phone 8.1 Other Connectivity 802.11b/g/n + BT 4.0, USB2.0, GPS/GNSS 802.11b/g/n + BT 4.0, USB2.0, GPS/GNSS SIM Size Micro-SIM Micro-SIM (dual SIM variant)

As you can see, the Lumia 530 has many similarities to its predecessor. Inside it makes the move from Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 platform to the newer Snapdragon 200 platform. It'll be interesting to see how the quad core 1.2GHz Cortex A7 implementation fares against the 1GHz dual core Krait implementation. The GPU takes a performance hit, going from the Adreno 305 to the 302. Storage similarly takes a small step down with half the internal NAND of the Lumia 520, but with support for MicroSDXC up to 128GB rather than 64GB in the 520. RAM and connectivity remains the same with 512MB of LPDDR2 memory, single stream 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, and 21.1Mbps HSPA+. The battery chemistry remains the same as well at 1430mAh and 3.7V.

The front of the device sports an 854x480 LCD display, with the extra 54 pixels compared to the Lumia 520 being used for the on-screen buttons in a similar fashion to the Lumia 630. The move from a 15:9 display aspect ratio to a 16:9 ratio allows for a small decrease in the width of the device. The 530 has an appreciable increase in thickness compared to its predecessor with a thickness of 11.7mm at its thickest point compared to 9.9mm on the 520. No apparent changes to the camera have been made with a 5MP F2.4 sensor on the back and there's no front-facing camera.

The 530 seems like a mixed bag of upgrades and downgrades compared to the 520. At 4GB of storage it really necessitates buying a MicroSD card even for users who rarely use apps, while the 8GB in the 520 leaves more breathing room. The increase in thickness is also disappointing but in the 530's price bracket there's no pressure to battle it out for the title of thinnest smartphone. In many ways it feels less like an upgrade and more like a device of its own. It will be interesting to see how users feel it compares to the original Lumia 520.

The Lumia 530 will be launching in single and dual-sim variants in August with a target price point of €85. Ignoring differences in taxes and market situations that translates to rougly $114 in the US or £67 in the UK. 

A rare dwarf galaxy that initiated a burst of star formation within the last billion years. NASA

Large galaxies such as the Milky Way appear to have been built by repeated mergers of smaller ones, but not every small galaxy has ended up being swallowed completely by a large one. The Milky Way is orbited by dozens of dwarf galaxies, some of which have been disrupted and stripped of stars, while others may have slipped into orbit largely intact. Similar dwarf galaxies orbit our nearby neighbors, including Andromeda.

Based on what we know about these mergers and computer modeling of galaxy formation and growth, the collection of dwarfs should be an unruly lot, having approached the galaxy they orbit from directions that are essentially random. Yet the dwarfs orbiting the Milky Way largely inhabit a single plane, orbiting in a manner analogous to moons around a giant planet.

It's easy to dismiss that as a fluke of chance, but that became a bit harder to do as evidence built over the past several years that most of Andromeda's dwarf galaxies were also organized into a single plane. Stranger still, that plane's edge is oriented toward the Milky Way. Now, a French-Australian team of astronomers has figured out a way to search existing data for the presence of planes farther out from the Milky Way, finding that Andromeda's setup is actually quite common.

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This is Yosemite. Andrew Cunningham

CN.dart.call("xrailTop", {sz:"300x250", kws:["top"], collapse: true});It's not difficult to get your hands on pre-release Apple software. For a mere $198 a year ($99 each for OS X and iOS) you can download beta versions of operating systems from Apple's developer site even if you've never written a line of code in your life.

This year, Apple is taking things a step further. The new public beta program for OS X Yosemite officially launches Thursday, taking software that has traditionally been protected from the public by a $99 paywall and distributing it to the first million users who sign up on Apple's site. It's a very Microsoft-esque way to roll out an OS: you give enthusiasts a chance to work with an early-but-reasonably-stable build in exchange for valuable bug-squashing feedback. Ideally, it will keep Yosemite from suffering from some of the general bugginess that affected iOS 7.0 when it launched last year.

In advance of the public beta, we've been given about a week of time to use the third developer preview and get a sense of what Yosemite brings to the table. Beta subscribers will get a slightly newer build of the operating system, but at this point most of the features are locked down and ready for evaluation by the public.

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Exploring Grado Labs' manufacturing space and creating our own pair of headphones. Shot and edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

Buried in a packed townhouse on a quiet street in south Brooklyn is a manufacturing operation that produces some of the most renowned headphones in the business. Despite Yelp reviews for the business, Grado Labs doesn't sell directly from its location to consumers, though it does take the occasional walk-up request for repairs. For the most part, its long-time employees, including owner John Grado and his son Jonathan, tinker away through four crowded floors on audio gear that hasn't appeared in advertising since the 1960's.

In the building, the company assembles and ships models that range from the flagship PS1000, priced at $1,700, to the $79 SR60s. As of early June, Grado has evolved the drivers for the second time in 23 years, from the I-series to the E-series.

The average New York City apartment building is narrow to begin with, but Grado's space is like a house eternally in the middle of moving day. You get around by edging your way around boxes, through the halls, on the stairs, and in the rooms. During the holiday season, Jonathan says, the boxes are stacked high enough to effectively move the walls in.

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UN officials say more than 100,000 people have been forced to take shelter in UN buildings in Gaza because of the violence - double the number of the Gaza conflict five years ago.

Several airlines have suspended flights to Israel after a rocket from Gaza landed near Ben Gurion airport, in Tel Aviv

Version:next-20140723 (linux-next) Released:2014-07-23

Time-lapse footage shows the wrecked Italian cruise ship, the Costa Concordia, being towed on its final journey to the port of Genoa for scrapping.

With every new chipset release, a large part of the community is always interested in the smaller form factor builds. Building a small yet powerful system seems to be an expanding niche, and for Intel’s Z97 platform we took three of the cheaper mini-ITX motherboards to see how they compare. The ASRock Z97E-ITX/AC, the MSI Z97I AC and the GIGABYTE Z97N-WIFI are all between $130 and $140, all feature 802.11ac support but vary in other connectivity, ease of use and their packages. We compared all three.

Real Madrid have signed World Cup Golden Boot winner James Rodriguez from French league club Monaco.