When it rains, it pours—Apple introduced no truly new products for the first eight months of 2014, but tomorrow we'll be attending its second media event in as many months. In September we got two new iPhones, a new version of iOS, and a preview of the Apple Watch, but all of those products represent just a sliver of Apple's complete hardware lineup. For tomorrow's event, Apple will reportedly be turning its attention to its tablets and computers. Here's all of the most credible information about what we'll be seeing.

New iPads Look for the iPad Air to get some (mostly internal) tweaks. Andrew Cunningham

iPad sales have leveled off a bit lately, but in terms of both revenue and units sold, the tablet is still Apple's second-largest product line. For the third October running, Apple is set to introduce new tablets. The interesting thing is that we've seen plenty of part leaks for a new iPad Air, but much less solid information about a new iPad Mini—we're assuming both will be updated in some way, but the bigger tablet may end up receiving the bigger boost.

We wouldn't expect the physical appearance of last year's iPad Air and Retina iPad Mini to change a whole lot, but some part leaks are already showing us what to expect on the inside. Apple's TouchID fingerprint sensor is reportedly set to migrate from the iPhone to the iPad. The aforementioned part leaks and other rumors suggest that at least the larger of the two iPads will use a more powerful A8X processor and 2GB of RAM, the latter of which would be a first for any iOS device.

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This week our North America Correspondent, Aleem Maqbool, is travelling to a different state each day along the so-called Blues Highway, looking at some of the big issues, and how they're being reflected in the music of today.

An American Airlines flight heading from San Francisco to Dallas made an emergency landing after the cabin's wall panels cracked loose.

Interest in secure communications is at an all time high, with many concerned about spying by both governments and corporations. This concern has stimulated developments such as the Blackphone, a custom-designed handset running a forked version of Android that's built with security in mind.

But the Blackphone has a problem. The mere fact of holding one in your hand advertises to the world that you're using a Blackphone. That might not be a big problem for people who can safely be assumed to have access to sensitive information—politicians, security contractors, say—but if you're a journalist investigating your own corrupt government or a dissident fearful of arrest, the Blackphone is a really bad idea. Using such a phone is advertising that you have sensitive material that you're trying to keep secret and is an invitation to break out the rubber hoses.

That's what led a team of security researchers to develop DarkMatter, unveiled today at the Hack In The Box security conference in Kuala Lumpur. DarkMatter is a secure Android fork, but unlike Blackphone and its custom hardware, DarkMatter is a secure Android that runs on regular Android phones (including the Galaxy S4 and Nexus 5) and which, at first glance, looks just like it's stock Android. The special sauce of DarkMatter is secure encrypted storage that selected apps can transparently access. If the firmware believes it's under attack, the secure storage will be silently dismounted, and the phone will appear, to all intents and purposes, to be a regular non-secure device.

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Poodle Gothic Redux by Amanda Wray

From the researchers that brought you BEAST and CRIME comes another attack against Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), one of the protocols that's used to secure Internet traffic from eavesdroppers both government and criminal.

Calling the new attack POODLE—that's "Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption"—the attack allows a man-in-the-middle, such as a malicious Wi-Fi hotspot or a compromised ISP, to extract data from secure HTTP connections. This in turn could let that attacker do things such as access online banking or e-mail systems. The flaw was documented by Bodo Möller, Thai Duong, and Krzysztof Kotowicz, all of whom work at Google. Thai Duong, working with Juliano Rizzo, described the similar BEAST attack in 2011 and the CRIME attack in 2012.

The attack depends on the fact that most Web servers and Web browsers allow the use of the ancient SSL version 3 protocol to secure their communications. Although SSL has been superseded by Transport Layer Security, it's still widely supported on both servers and clients alike and is still required for compatibility with Internet Explorer 6. SSLv3, unlike TLS 1.0 or newer, omits validation of certain pieces of data that accompany each message. Attackers can use this weakness to decipher an individual byte and time of the encrypted data, and in so doing, extract the plain text of the message byte by byte.

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Crowds of pro-democracy protesters have clashed with riot police in Hong Kong as tensions escalate following more than two weeks of demonstrations.

On Tuesday, Apple's lawyers filed a motion asking the court to let it secretly object [PDF] to the Chapter 11 Bankruptcy proceedings of GT Advanced Technologies (GTAT), a company that had partnered with Apple to manufacture sapphire components like camera lenses and TouchID buttons. Apple told the court that it had numerous confidentiality agreements with GTAT and that it needed its objection to be sealed to protect those agreements.

“Apple seeks to file under seal the Objection in order to protect the confidential commercial information contained therein and to comply with the terms of its confidentiality agreements with GTAT,” Apple's lawyers wrote.

The company only vaguely hinted at what it would take issue with in GTAT's bankruptcy filing. “The bases for the Objection involve confidential research, development, or commercial information regarding Apple’s business processes,” the motion read.

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USU's ad for Sarkeesian's appearance is still up at their site as of publication. They should probably change the "Don't Miss!" tagline.

On Tuesday, games critic and Feminist Frequency host Anita Sarkeesian canceled a planned speech at Utah State University after receiving a lengthy death threat.

The threat, which Sarkeesian and other USU officials received early on Tuesday via e-mail, was later published by Ogden, Utah, newspaper the Standard Examiner, and it warned officials to expect "a Montreal Massacre-style attack," referring to the 1989 shooting spree at a Montreal university involving a killer who railed against feminism. Similarly, Tuesday's threat used anti-woman slurs and repeatedly mentioned feminism, including such claims as, "Women like Sarkeesian want to punish us for even fantasizing about being men."

USU officials initially responded to the Standard Examiner's report by claiming the speech would go on as planned by the school's Center For Women And Gender, complete with security precautions like not allowing backpacks into the venue. However, that changed with USU's announcement later that day claiming that Sarkeesian herself canceled her appearance after learning that "if a person has a valid concealed firearm permit and is carrying a weapon, they are permitted to have it at the venue."

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Following up on last week’s Radeon pricing observations, it looks like there has been one final shift in Radeon R9 290 series pricing. While R9 290 has held steady around $299 with the occasional small rebate, we’ve seen R9 290X continue to fall and drop below the roughly $400 price they were going for last week. Finally stabilizing, the R9 290X has leveled out at around $370, with a handful of cards going for even a bit less than that. At $370, the R9 290X is now $30 less than the week before and this puts it just $40 over the MSRP of the GeForce GTX 970.

Though I had been expecting prices to fall further, I am a bit surprised to see R9 290X prices drop below $400 so soon. With GTX 900 series availability still being outstripped by demand, Radeon prices needed to come down from their initial MSRPs in reaction to the NVIDIA launch, though not necessarily this quickly. Regardless, this does mean that the R9 290X is in a better position than it was last week; AMD can’t completely close NVIDIA’s technology advantage gap, but from a price/performance ratio anything that brings R9 290X closer to the similarly performing GTX 970 will help AMD’s partners move cards. In the meantime it’s worth noting that AMD appears to be sticking to their guns on influencing product value through game bundles rather than engaging in a pure price war, as the $370 R9 290X goes hand-in-hand with the continued inclusion of AMD’s Never Settle Forever bundle.

Speaking of game bundles, NVIDIA sends word this afternoon that Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is now shipping for customers who received vouchers as part of NVIDIA’s recent game bundle. This bundle was never extended to the GTX 900 series – NVIDIA is clearly having no trouble selling those cards right now – but this offer is still active on the higher-end GTX 700 series cards as part of the company’s efforts to sell off the remaining GTX 770/780 inventory.

Fall 2014 GPU Pricing Comparison AMD Price NVIDIA Radeon R9 295X2 $1000     $550 GeForce GTX 980 Radeon R9 290X $370     $330 GeForce GTX 970 Radeon R9 290 $300   Radeon R9 280X
Radeon R9 285 $250   Radeon R9 280 $200 GeForce GTX 760

Today Intel released their financial results for the third quarter of their 2014 fiscal year, which ended September 27, 2014. Q3 was a record quarter for Intel, with the highest revenue in the company’s history. Their major markets of the PC Client Group was up 9% year-over-year and the Data Center Group was up 16% year-over-year.

Earnings per share was up 14% compared to Q3 2013 at $0.66, beating analysts’ expectations of $0.65. Year-over-year, revenue was up 8% at $14.6 billion, Gross Margin was up 2.6% at 65.0%, Operating Income was up 30% at $4.5 billion, and net income was up 12% at $3.3 billion.

The PC Client Group, which includes all business related to desktops, notebooks, two-in-one systems, wired and wireless Ethernet (for the PC), home gateway, and set-top-box components, continues to be the largest division for Intel with $9.190 billion in revenue this quarter. For the first three quarters, the PC Client group has contributed $25.789 billion in revenue, up $1.1 billion over the same period a year ago. This group had an operating income for Q3 2014 of $4.120 billion, up from $3.243 billion last year. Q2 seemed to indicate that the PC market has bounced back, and these revenues and income from the PC division for Q3 indicate that the trend will continue. The volume of sales for the quarter were up 7% over last quarter, and up 15% year-over-year. At the same time, the Average Selling Price (ASP) was down 2% from last quarter and down 5% year-over-year. Notebook volumes were up 21% year-over-year with the ASP down 10%, and desktop volumes were up 6% with the ASP down 2%. Intel is forecasting Q4 revenue at $14.7 billion, plus or minus $500 million, so their expectations are that the PC industry will continue its rebound. For Q3, Intel continued to sell the 22 nm range of processors, but has started production of 14 nm Broadwell parts, with a modest increase in inventory which they will likely utilize to keep up with demand for the new parts. Clearly the 14 nm node was a challenge, with the 22 nm node now being the primary process for the last ten quarters, with the average length of time between nodes being 8.5 quarters, starting with the 130 nm process. Q4 looks to be exciting with a whole new type of device able to be created from the Broadwell processors. We should start to see actual devices for sale within the next couple of weeks.

The Data Center Group, which is platforms for server, workstation, networking, and storage computing segments, was also up for Q3, with revenue up to $3.7 billion from $3.178 billion a year ago. Operating Income rose $395 million over Q3 last year to $1.915 billion. Unit volumes were up 6% year-over-year and sequentially, and the ASP was down 1% sequentially and up 9% over Q3 2013.

The Internet of Things group, which is a relatively new division focused on embedded platforms for retail, automotive, home, and transportation, had revenues for the quarter of $530 million, up 12% year-over-year. Revenues were only up $1 million over last year, with $153 million in revenue for this quarter.

The Mobile and Communications Group, which is the division responsible for platforms for tablet and smartphones, as well as mobile communications with baseband processors, RF transceivers, GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and power management chips continued its slide for Q3. Revenues were down around 100% year-over-year, at a meager $1 million. This division is also responsible for the majority of Intel’s losses, with a Q3 operating loss of $1.043 billion. For the nine months ended September 27th, this unit has lost $3.096 billion. Intel is pushing hard to drive adoption of its mobile processors, and they seem to be OK with losing money on them in the short term to gain the foothold for the future. We have seen a slew of low priced tablets packing Intel Bay Trail processors, including the HP Stream tablets and just recently a $65 tablet from Emdoor out of Hong Kong. It seems hard to believe that you can buy a Windows tablet for less than the cost to fill your tank with gas, but with both Intel and Microsoft dropping fees, you have to wonder how low things will go before they stop. Luckily for Intel, their strong performances in other segments allows them to be a loss leader in this category, and they must see the long term gain here by not just allowing ARM SoCs to rule the space.

The final division for Intel is the Software and Services segment, which includes McAfee which they acquired a few years ago, and the Software and Services Group which delivers products and services that promote Intel architecture as a platform for development. This unit had a slight bump in revenues, up $13 million over last quarter to $558 million, and operating income was up 97% at $29 million.

Intel Q2 2014 Financial Results (GAAP)   Q3'2014 Q2'2014 Q3'2013 Revenue $14.554B $13.831B $13.483B Operating Income $4.918B $3.844B $4.910B Net Income $3.317B $2.796B $2.950B Gross Margin 65.0% 64.5% 58.3% PC Group Revenue $9.2B +6% +9% Data Center Group Revenue $3.7B +5% +16% Internet of Things Revenue $530M -2% +14% Mobile Group Revenue $1M -98% -99.7% Software and Services Revenue $558M +2% +2% All Other Revenue $558M +2% +2%

Q4 expectations are for revenue to increase slightly to $14.7 billion, plus or minus $500 million and Gross Margin will be 64%, plus or minus a couple of points. With Broadwell soon to be shipping to consumers, Intel is clearly expecting another record quarter. It is great to see the PC market recovering, and one has to wonder to what level it will continue. The expectations of the tablet replacing the PC seem to have subsided for the moment, due to a slump in overall tablet sales. With Broadwell now shipping, we will of course anxiously await Skylake, which will be the new Core architecture available on 14 nm, and the Cherry Trail Atom chips which will also use the new node.

This was a pretty bullish quarter for Intel, which is generally a good indicator of the overall PC market. They still have their work cut out for them in the mobile segment, but with the other divisions pulling in great revenue and margins, they seem to be content to play the long game on what is certainly a very important segment for the future.

Deadspin

An already tense soccer match in Belgrade between the national teams of Albania and Serbia has been suspended after a drone flew over the field waving a Greater Albania flag. Based on online footage, the drone appears to be a DJI Phantom or a Phantom 2, which retails for roughly $500 to $800 depending on the model.

The Tuesday game, which was to be a Euro 2016 qualifier match between the two sides, was the first time they had met in the Serbian capital since 1967. According to The Guardian, away fans were not allowed in the stadiums in either Belgrade or in the upcoming rematch in Tirana, the capital of the Republic of Albania.

The two sides’ enthusiasm for soccer has been overshadowed by a larger political issue: Kosovo, a republic that broke away from Serbia in 2008. Kosovo, which has a majority ethnic Albanian population, is not formally recognized by Serbia but is recognized by the United States, Canada, Australia, France, the United Kingdom, and many other states.

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A UK company is training Kurdish Peshmerga forces to defuse explosives left behind by Islamic State militants in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Hundreds of police in Hong Kong have moved again to try to clear pro-democracy protesters out of an underpass near the city government headquarters.

Since its successful launch back in 2010, the Humble Bundle pay-what-you-want-for-indie-PC-games distribution service has expanded to include AAA games, Android games, music, and even eBooks. Now, the service is expanding in another new direction with the Humble Mozilla Bundle, focused exclusively on games that can be played in any WebGL-compatible browser. For the next two weeks, users can pay what they want for access to DRM-free versions of Super Hexagon, Aaaaa! for the Awesome, Osmos, Zen bound 2, and Dustforce DX. Contributing over certain thresholds adds access to Voxatron, FTL: Advanced Edition, and Democracy 3.

While most of the games can also be redeemed on Steam or downloaded directly (and DRM-free) for Windows, Mac, or Linux, the gimmick here is that all eight titles can all be played in a modern WebGL-compliant browser like Chrome or Firefox (other browsers may work, but they aren't guaranteed to be supported by the Humble Bundle folks). To prove the concept, you can play limited demos of each title right now on HumbleBundle.com, without having to download any executables, plug-ins, storefronts, or game managers (you can also expand to full screen, of course). Just a quick data download in an embedded HTML5 object is all you need to play the game locally, not streamed from a remote server as is the case with some other in-browser gaming "solutions."

While many users no doubt still think of browser-based gaming as the province of bulky, 2D Flash games with huge processor overhead, that impression is pretty outdated at this point. Using HTML5 and WebGL standards and optimized coding subsets like asm.js, developers can now approach native executable performance while still taking advantage of the cross-platform compatibility of a browser window. Epic's in-browser Unreal Engine 4 demos and the Unity engine's addition of browser support earlier this year proved that concept quite well, and now the Humble Bundle is going further to prove it as a viable model for distributing actual games.

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Linksys

Linksys is betting big on its new blue router, a resurrection of the classic WRT54G design with modern components inside. The company (now owned by Belkin) today said it plans a new line of networking peripherals to complement the device, starting with an 8-port Gigabit Ethernet switch.

"It Looks so Cool!" Linksys's public relations squad informed us in an e-mail, which also said the switch saves space by stacking beneath the $250 WRT1900AC router. And it does look pretty neat. But at $70, it's a little pricey. The Netgear GS108NA 8-port Gigabit Ethernet switch is smaller than the new Linksys one and can be had for $47. For $80, you could buy a TrendNet 16-port Gigabit switch. You could even buy an 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch for $50 from Linksys. 

But nothing says "cool" like a sweet looking network switch. "With its sleek lines and designed to physically stack below the WRT1900AC, the SE4008 is a perfect match for the iconic WRT1900AC router (sold separately)—allowing users to expand their local area network and connect devices to the Internet without taking up additional shelf space," Linksys said.

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