Version:next-20141030 (linux-next) Released:2014-10-30

Some 50,000 relics have been discovered in Mexico in the ancient city of Teotihuacan, archaeologists have said.

Today Microsoft launched a new platform called Microsoft Health, and to accompany this they are officially launching the long rumored health and fitness band, called, well, Microsoft Band. And to satisfy the new cross platform initiatives by the company, Microsoft Health is compatible with several fitness tracking services such as UP by Jawbone, MapMyFitness, MyFitnessPal, and Runkeeper. The Microsoft Band will be compatible with iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, which should satisfy most smartphone owners, and there is a Heath app available for each platform as well.

Microsoft Health is described as a cloud based service which can unite data from different health and fitness devices and services into a single secure location. This will allow a more holistic picture of your health and fitness activities to be monitored. Microsoft Health will track things such as steps, calories, heart rate, and other data, where it can then be analyzed by the Microsoft Intelligence Engine which will let the user know things such as which exercise they performed that burned the most calories during a workout, and how much restful versus restless sleep they are getting. Over time, and if you allow it access to more data, it will be able to extrapolate if eating breakfast helps you run faster, or if the number of meetings during a day impacts how you sleep, as examples. You can also opt in to connect Microsoft Health data with the already existing HealthVault to share your data with a medical provider. It is early days yet, but as a platform this seems to be where the health and fitness industry is heading. If you can get over the big brother aspects of having all of your movements and activities tracked, there may be some real insights gained in how your work, fitness, and leisure activities affect your health and wellbeing.

Microsoft is planning a steady release of information regarding Microsoft Health over the next while, including additional device and service partnerships and SDK availability.

It has long been rumored that Microsoft would re-enter the smart watch game, but over time the rumors morphed into a fitness band. The Microsoft Band is a smart band designed to be worn continuously, 24 hours a day. It includes 10 smart sensors for heart rate monitoring, calorie burn measurement, sleep quality tracking, and more. It will also include guided workouts which are curated by well-known fitness experts. In addition, it will provide some of the smart watch capabilities such as notifications as well as access to Cortana if you are connected to Windows Phone 8.1. The Microsoft Band is available starting October 30th for $199 from the Microsoft Store.

Microsoft Health Microsoft Band Band Material Thermal plastic elastomer with adjustable fit clasp Display 11mm x 33mm 1.4" TFT Capacitive full color display, 320 x 106 resolution Battery Life 48 hours of normal use; advanced functionality like GPS use will impact battery performance Average Charge Time Full chage in less than 1.5 hours Battery Type Dual 100mAh rechargeable lithium-ion polymer batteries Operating temperature ranges -10°C to 40°C (14°F to 104°F) Maximum operating altitude approximately 12,000m Sensors Optical heart rate sensor
3-axis accelerometer/gyro
Gyrometer
GPS
Ambient light sensor
Skin temperature sensor
UV sensor
Capacitive sensor
Galvanic skin response
Microphone Additional technology Haptic vibration motor Connectivity Bluetooth 4.0 LE Operating System Support Windows Phone 8.1
iOS 7.1 and later
Android 4.3-4.4 phones with Bluetooth Water Resistance Dust and Splash resistant Warranty 1 year limited Price $199

The wearables market is certainly in its infancy, so it is exciting to see the different array of devices appearing. Whether the market will tolerate them has yet to be decided, but companies such as Fitbit have proven that there is certainly a market for the health and fitness band. Microsoft has a relatively affordable offering here which is both cross platform, and a capable smart device. Microsoft Health as a platform is the bigger play here. Allowing access from many vendors is a great way to get initial buy-in from users, and once the fitness data is up in the Microsoft Cloud, I am sure Microsoft is hoping to capture some of these users for their other cloud offerings.

Microsoft

After being leaked just a few hours ago, it's now official: Microsoft's first entry into the wearable space is Microsoft Band, a fitness band.

The gadget isn't a smartwatch and isn't intended to replace your watch. It's a Bluetooth fitness band packed full of sensors: optical heart rate sensing, 3-axis accelerometers with a gyroscope to track movement, GPS to track your runs even if you leave your phone at home, skin temperature, galvanic skin response presumably to measure sweating, ambient light and UV light, and a microphone so it can be used with Cortana on Windows Phone.

Microsoft

The 1.4-inch touch screen with its 320×106 resolution can deliver alerts, and there's a vibration motor too. Twin 100mAh batteries give it 48 hours of what Microsoft calls "normal use" though GPS can shorten this. The charge time is 1.5 hours, using a magnetically attached USB charger. There are three different sizes, so it should fit on most wrists.

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Rumors that Microsoft was coming up with its own cross-platform fitness band appear to have been validated with the perhaps accidental disclosure of apps for OS X, Windows Phone, Android, and iOS designed to support the gadget. Windows Central was first to spot the early publication.

The OS X app

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The device will be called "Microsoft Band." Thanks to the app in the Mac App Store, we have a good idea of what it will look like: a black wristband with a screen. Functionally, it looks like it's going to be a pretty standard fitness band: it'll count footsteps (and use this information to attempt to count calories burned) and appears to monitor heart rates day and night to tell you how well you're sleeping.

The Windows Phone app. The apps for iOS and Android look all but identical.

5 more images in gallery

As we should expect, there will also be a cloud service for accumulating and analyzing the data the band collects.

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The builders of an unmanned supply rocket, which exploded on the way to the International Space Station, are searching for the cause of the catastrophic explosion.

Not content with launching five Yoga-branded tablets earlier this month, Lenovo has added a sixth device to its range.

The new device almost rounds out the range announced before. The new lineup has 8-inch and 10-inch tablets in both Android and Windows variants, and a 13-inch Android tablet, the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro, that also includes an integrated projector that can cast a 50-inch picture.

Lenovo

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Today, the company has announced a 13-inch Windows tablet, the Yoga Tablet 2 Windows. This is almost a counterpart to the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro, matching its 13.3 inch 2560×1440 screen, quad core Intel Atom Z3745 processor at up to 1.86GHz, 802.11a/b/g/n dual-band Wi-Fi, 15-hour battery life, and a 2.27lb weight. But it's not quite identical. The Windows tablet doesn't have the integrated projector. It does, however, double the RAM to 4GB and double the storage to 64GB.

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The latest version of the Android operating system, Lollipop, adds encryption by default, along with a variety of easy-to-use ways to lock and unlock the phone and a more secure foundation to help protect devices against current threats.

In a blog post published on Tuesday, Google described the features, which will begin shipping with the Lollipop operating system in new Android devices in the coming weeks. While some of the capabilities, such as encryption, are already included in the current Android OS, the new version will turn them on by default.

Many of the security features were born of Android’s open-source foundations and the fact that other researchers and companies can create and test new security features for the operating system, Adrian Ludwig, lead security engineer for Android at Google, said during a briefing on the security features.

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The US mid-term election is projected to be the most expensive ever, and the BBC takes a look at where the millions of dollars comes from.

University of Virginia

Early in my training, I learned one rule: loss is not your friend. In laser physics, loss means that every photon that goes missing is a photon that no longer stimulates emission. And, with every lost photon, it becomes just that little bit harder to keep a laser going. So, when Science published a paper showing that this rule doesn't always hold, I was intrigued.

Also it gives me the chance to talk about lasers, which I never tire of.

Gain, loss, and lasers

Before we get to the experiment, let's talk about lasers in general. Lasers emit light through a process called stimulated emission. Stimulated emission only dominates under two conditions: there have to be more emitters ready to emit light instead of to absorb light. This is referred to as population inversion and provides the gain (or the source of light amplification). The other requirement is that there is light present to stimulate emission. To put it slightly incorrectly, the amplifier needs something to amplify.

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Some 2011 MacBook Pros with AMD GPUs are experiencing graphical corruption issues. Apple Support Communities poster abelliveau

Last week three men filed a class action lawsuit in Northern California District Court alleging that Apple's 2011 MacBook Pro laptops were defective and that Apple did not take proper steps to compensate customers whose hardware broke.

The lawsuit specifically addresses 15” and 17” MacBook Pros from 2011, which the plaintiffs claim suffered from “random bouts of graphical distortion, system instability, and system failures.” The plaintiffs also assert that the problem is widespread, with an online survey conducted by the plaintiffs receiving over 3,000 responses from 2011 MacBook Pro owners in a single week.

In the complaint, the plaintiffs blame the solder used to connect the dedicated GPU in the laptops to the main circuit board, saying that the solder was lead-free to comply with EU regulations, and made its way into US products so Apple could save on manufacturing costs.

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After listening to our resident alien life form and cable industry sleuth Jon Brodkin lament yesterday evening that he hadn’t been invited to join Verizon’s funded cadre of tech writers over at SugarString, I popped over to the site and flipped through the articles, wondering what Brodkin was missing out on. SugarString's layout isn’t afflicted with what StackExchange developer Jeff Atwood once referred to as "Pinterest Cancer," so I scrolled through and clicked on a few things to get a feel for what kind of reporting—or possibly "reporting"—the Verizon-controlled site was producing.

This story caught my eye:

Not sure if entitlement or just hyperbole. SugarString

In the piece, author Meredith Haggerty reached out to three different professionals and gauged their reaction to the idea of being made to work in an office where the employer disallows the use of Google Chat (informally, "GChat"). Haggerty’s first interview subject drew a line in the sand, responding strongly in the negative when asked whether or not he would work in such an office:

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Today was the third day of Ars UNITE, our virtual conference, and the topic of the day was the advent of the self-driving car.

Our self-driving car feature this morning looked at the technological solutions that will soon allow our cars to drive themselves under certain circumstances, assuming the regulations and other policy issues are in place. That piece has seen a lively discussion covering a number of different areas. Ars reader mexaly suggested that “[t]o succeed, robots need only drive better than average humans. That's not a high bar.”

Some were skeptical that self-driving cars would be safer. caldron writes, “I think it is a big leap to assume a self-drive is better than a human at driving. Sure in certain conditions and in terms of reaction time, but no computers have been able to reach our level of decision making and ability to react in abstract and unpredictable situations, and there is none in the foreseeable future. We make constant micro-decisions all the time. When there is a grey-area situation that requires deduction I am not so sure a computer will be able to react properly.”

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It's never a good day when the Halon discharges in the server room. Keith4048

It all began when the monitors started bursting into flames. Well, at least that’s when I knew I had walked into a tech support horror story.

Back in the day when the cathode-ray tube was still the display of choice and SVGA really was super, I was working as a network engineer and tech support manager for a government contractor at a large military research lab. I spent two years on the job, and I learned in the process that Murphy was an optimist. The experience would provide me with enough tech horror stories and tales of narrow escape through the most kludged of hardware and software hacks ever conceived to last a lifetime—and to know that I would much rather be a writer than work in tech support ever again.

Of course, all of us have tech horror stories to tell, especially those of us who were “early adopters” before the term was de rigueur. So we’re looking for you, our readers, to share yours. The most bone-chilling and entertaining of which we’ll publish tomorrow in honor of Halloween—that day each year when some people change their Twitter handles to pseudo-spooky puns, and others just buy bags of candy to have ready for the traditional wave of costumed home invaders.

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Let's start with some homework. Go to Google (or Bing) and search for "privacy is dead, get over it". I first heard this from Bill Joy, cofounder of Sun Microsystems, but it's attributed to a number of tech folk, and there's an element of truth to it. Put something on-line and it's in the wild, however much you'd prefer to keep it under control. more>>

redditmade

reddit has launched its own crowdfunding platform dubbed "redditmade" as of Wednesday, according to a post on the site. redditmade focuses on campaigns for T-shirts and knick-knacks associated with subreddit communities, but the boundaries expand as far as "the best designs and products by the community."

redditmade joins platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, but with a more specific focus on redditors and items they want to see made. Sample projects on the redditmade front page currently include a "Not A Cocktail" book associated with r/cocktails, a t-shirt for r/redditblack, and bumper stickers for the r/camping subreddit.

While anyone can open any project for funding, the redditmade FAQ clarifies that "Official subreddit campaigns are distinguished on redditmade as featured campaigns, and they can also receive complimentary ads on reddit for the subreddit they are associated with." The ads are auto-generated but are not shown if the ad space has already been sold, reddit says.

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Our enterprise storage coverage has mainly been focused on individual enterprise SSDs from the likes of Intel and Micron, but there's a lot of interesting action in the storage array space. I met with most of the big names in the array business at Flash Memory Summit this year, so with a better understanding of the market and with the right contacts, I think it's logical that we expand our enterprise storage content to cover arrays as well.

Since we haven't covered storage arrays or the companies involved in the past, I'll start with a brief introduction of Skyera. While Skyera is a relatively new company, the company is filled with experience and knowledge of storage and non-volatile memory industries. The founders of Skyera, Radoslav Danilak and Rod Mullendore, both worked at SandForce before founding Skyera in 2010. Mr. Danilak was actually the co-founder and CTO of SandForce, whereas Mr. Mullendore served as the Chief Hardware Architect. 

While Mr. Danilak and Mr. Mullendore bring a lot of system-level hardware design knowledge to the company, what really separates Skyera from the rest is the NAND expertise. This is especially thanks to the CEO, Frankie Roohparvar, who was one of the founders of Micron Quantum Technologies in the early 90s. Micron Quantum Technologies was a manufacturer of NOR flash that was then acquired by Micron and basically formed the foundation of Micron's NAND business. Before joining Skyera in 2012, Mr. Roohparvar served at Micron for 13 years with his most recent position being the Vice President and General Manager of the OEM Division of Micron's NAND Solutions Group. 

Skyera's approach to flash array design is to start from the lowest level, i.e. the NAND silicon. Obviously the company doesn't manufacture its own NAND but Micron, Toshiba, and SK Hynix are all investors in the company, which ensures a steady supply of NAND and also gives Skyera much deeper access to NAND than what typical customers get. What this means is that Skyera can run its own validation and 'trimming' (optimizing the read/write parameters etc.) process on the NAND to boost the endurance. The benefit is lower cost because Skyera's own process can increase the endurance of normal MLC NAND from ~3,000 P/E cycles to over 30,000 P/E cycles (or so I was told), whereas most companies are limited to buying off-the-shelf NAND, which either means cheap but low endurance cMLC or expensive eMLC. 

With the brief introduction of Skyera out of the way, let's focus on the skyHawk FS. It's offered in raw capacities of 16, 32, 68 and 136TB with all models utilizing the same 1U form factor. The final usable capacity depends on the provisioning of the array as well as the compressibility of the data since the skyHawk FS does compression in hardware (similar to what SandForce does). For comparison, Pure Storage, which is one of the leading all-flash array suppliers, only offers up to 11TB in 2U form factor, so Skyera has an enormous advantage in terms of density.  

EDIT: Skyera doesn't actually do de-duplication like I initially said, so sorry for the mix up. The compression is still there, though.

The density advantage comes from Skyera's NAND expertise because the company builds its own drives (or blades as they are usually called) and can utilize the latest NAND lithographies available. While Skyera didn't specify the exact NAND that is used in the skyHawk FS due to the fact that there are multiple suppliers, I was told that the die capacity is 128Gbit and Micron's 16nm is one of the processes that is used. For the record, Crucial's MX100 and Micron's M600 are the only other products that I know of that use 16nm NAND right now and I know for sure that 16nm isn't available to the public in volume yet, so Skyera has an enormous advantage thanks to the close relations with the NAND manufacturers.

Software wise the skyHawk FS uses Skyera's own SEoS that has been designed solely for NAND. The vertically integrated business model allows Skyera to build the whole software stack around NAND, which enables a more global and adaptive Flash Translation Layer (FTL) for instance (i.e. the FTL can be managed at the system level instead of drive level). The design also allows the load to be split between the master controllers and the individual controllers in the blades for higher and more efficient performance, whereas with third party drives the drives would be doing their own management and the global/host management would be left for the master controller, resulting in a less efficient design. 

In terms of performance, Skyera is rating the skyHawk FS at 2.4GB/s throughput and 400K IOPS with microsecond latencies, but unfortunately the IO sizes and queue depth are unspecified, so it's hard to draw any conclusions or comparisons from the numbers. The skyHawk FS has three 10Gbit Ethernet ports for connectivity and both iSCSI and NFS v3 protocols are supported. The skyHawk FS carries a 3-year warranty with no write endurance limitation, which is yet another advantage of Skyera's NAND knowhow. 

The skyHawk FS is available immediately and is priced at $2.99 per raw gigabyte (i.e. with compression the real cost per gigabyte will come down).

Since this was our first flash array news post, I'd like to hear your feedback in the comments below. Would you like to see more content like this from us in the future? And if so, are there any specific topics or companies that you would like us to cover? The enterprise storage space is rather complex and there are a lot of companies involved, but we want to do our best to cover it (even in a limited matter) in the future, so let us know your thoughts.

Biblioteca de Art

A movie theater industry group and the Motion Picture Association of America updated their anti-piracy policies and said that "wearable devices" must be powered off at show time.

"Individuals who fail or refuse to put the recording devices away may be asked to leave. If theater managers have indications that illegal recording activity is taking place, they will alert law enforcement authorities when appropriate, who will determine what further action should be taken," said a joint statement from the MPAA and the National Association of Theatre Owners, which maintains 32,000 screens across the United States.

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A very SCARY Wednesday to you, fellow Arsians! On this fine fall day, our partners at TechBargains have lined up a truly BOO-TIFUL selection of FRIGHTENING deals, sure to make your HAIR STAND ON END! (Cue maniacal laughter here!)

Yeah, OK, jumping the gun on Halloween a bit, but we watched the Tales from the Crypt intro on YouTube a few minutes ago and are feeling the vibe. OR SHOULD WE SAY... THE... knife... vibe? No, that doesn't work. TERRIFYING GHOST SOUNDS! OOOooooOOOO!

Below are our most HAUNTING bargains, featuring a Dell Inspiron with a Haswell i5 for just $549—a price guaranteed to make anyone SCREAM! But in delight, not terror, because it's a pretty good deal.

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The Sprout PC. HP

You know in Iron Man 2 when Tony Stark has JARVIS scan the diorama of Stark Expo and then manipulates a computerized version of the model with his hands?

HP today unveiled the peculiarly named Sprout, a PC that will let creative professionals do the same... more or less.

The Sprout projector houses a DLP projector, 3D camera, and a light. HP

The all-in-one desktop PC has an integrated 3D scanner that can digitize physical objects and a projector with a 20-inch touch-sensitive mat. The 3D scanner uses Intel's RealSense 3D capture, which combines the images from multiple cameras to construct its 3D models; it can also capture 14 megapixel 2D images. Both the 3D scanner and the projector point at the touch mat, creating a workspace enabling the "physical" manipulation of digital objects.

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