The Tegra 4i was one of the first to use the modem technology acquired by Nvidia when it bought Icera. Nvidia

Qualcomm is the biggest chipmaker in the mobile industry today, and it looks like at least one company isn't happy about it. Reuters today reported that the EU is preparing to open an antitrust investigation of Qualcomm, according to "people familiar with the matter." The probe was triggered in part by a modem company named Icera, which complained in June of 2010 that Qualcomm was using its market position to hamstring competitors. Qualcomm is currently under investigation in China because of similar allegations that it is "overcharging and abusing its market position."

Whatever phone you're using, the odds are pretty good that your smartphone includes one or more Qualcomm chips. The last few iPhone generations have all used Qualcomm modems and transceivers alongside Apple's SoCs. Most high-end Android handsets (and, increasingly, many budget handsets) in established markets use Qualcomm SoCs, even when they use other chips in other territories. Windows Phone 8 and BlackBerry 10 handsets use Qualcomm chips almost exclusively, in part because Qualcomm is a large company capable of giving phone makers plenty of support. When chipmakers become this powerful, it becomes easier for them to abuse that power.

Icera was purchased by Nvidia in 2011, and Nvidia now uses Icera's "soft modems" in a few of its chips—many modems need to be built specifically to accommodate wireless bands used by different wireless operators in different countries, but Icera's and Nvidia's modems can be programmed to support different bands without requiring separate hardware configurations for different markets. Qualcomm's modem technology (and its often-close integration with its Snapdragon CPUs and Adreno GPUs) is one of the reasons why the company's hardware is used so widely in phones and tablets.

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Police in Brazil say rioters in a jail in the southern city of Cascavel have killed five fellow inmates and injured several others.

Google's Android One slide from I/O 2014 (with edits). Google/Ron Amadeo

The Economic Times is reporting that Android One, Google's initiative for "high-quality, affordable" smartphones, will be ready to launch in India "early next month." Android One was announced at Google I/O as a plan to work with OEMs in developing markets to build devices costing less than $100.

The report says the project will be ready to go in just a few weeks, but that Google will miss its "under $100" price target, as the device is expected to cost between Rs 7,000 ($115) and Rs 10,000 ($165). Android One will have Google build reference devices and provide OEMs with a "turnkey solution" to make a phone. Google also handles software, using stock android and automatic updates. Indian OEMs Micromax, Karbonn, and Spice are onboard.

With something like 84-percent market share worldwide and a billion active Android users, Google's next focus is on getting people that don't normally use smartphones to use smartphones. Android One is launching in India first, and if the program proves successful, the plan is to roll it out to other countries.

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Jawbone's graph of users who were woken up by the earthquake in California early Sunday. Jawbone

Wearable computing company Jawbone released a graph on Monday showing its users being woken up by the 6.0-magnitude earthquake centered in the Napa Valley region of California on Sunday morning. 120 people were injured, a lot of wine went to waste, and a few people wearing Jawbone's Up fitness bands lost some sleep, according to a huge spike in the percentage of users who were up and moving in affected regions at about 3:20am (close to 80 percent in Berkeley, Vallejo, and Napa Valley itself).

The graph accurately plots the nexus of the earthquake, with smaller spikes of activity in more distant regions, including San Francisco and Oakland (around 60 percent of users), Sacramento and San Jose (25 percent), and Modesto and Santa Cruz, with only a tiny bump of a few percent from the baseline. Together, the locations form a basic map of the earthquake's reach, not dependent on scientific measurements and existing equipment waiting for a disaster, but just a large, distributed population wearing tracking devices.

The Up bands don't collect location data themselves, so they can't pinpoint where a user was asleep with perfect certainty. Rather, the data is based on the locations logged by the app used to store users' information, which always records a user's location when the app is opened.

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Today Google updated the stable version of their Chrome browser to version 37.0.2062.94 on Windows, OS X, and Linux. This is a highly anticipated release for users on Windows specifically, as it marks the move from Microsoft's Graphics Device Interface rendering method to Microsoft's DirectWrite text rendering API. Using GDI resulted in significantly worse text rendering in Chrome compared to other browsers like Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. The issue was also non-existent on Google's versions of Chrome for OS X and Linux which use font renderers native to their own operating systems. Switching to DirectWrite has been requested for years by users on Windows, and Google has stated that it took significant rewriting of their font rendering engine which is why it has taken so long.

The issue was more pronounced in some areas than others. Below we have a screenshot of a section of my own website which has always had significant issues with font rendering in Chrome. Somewhat funny is the fact that the fonts used are sourced from Google fonts.

Chrome 36 on the left, Chrome 37 on the right

The aliasing in the font rendered on Chrome 36 is quite apparent. Some letters even have entire areas that appear to be chopped off, like the top and bottom of the letter 'O'. On Chrome 37 the rendering is significantly improved. There's far less aliasing on fonts, no missing chunks from letters, and even the double down arrow glyph inside the circle looks much sharper.

While Google didn't detail it in their changelog, Chrome 37 also includes the new password manager interface that existed on the beta for Chrome 37. When on the login page for a website, a key will appear in the search bar with a list of all saved passwords for that website. This also replaces the bar that would appear at the top asking to save a username and password after entering it for the first time.

Google's changelog also states that Chrome 37 has a number of new APIs for apps and extensions, as well as many under the hood changes for improved performance and stability. There are also 50 security fixes, with the most interesting or significant fixes detailed in the source below.

Aurich Lawson

As opposed to our last edition, this month's System Guide catches the market in a bit of a lull.

Next-generation GPUs and SSDs have yet to arrive, and the same story goes for CPUs from both AMD and Intel. While a few refreshed versions of existing products are floating around, most of the changes in this update are fairly minor. Even at the high end, things like 4K (3840×2160, aka "UltraHD" or UHD) monitors seem to be caught between major improvements at the moment.

Minor, of course, is relative. As always, much of system building is in the details—and some of those changes are worth paying attention to. So we'll continue to focus more on the tangible benefits for the System Guide: better overall performance and performance for your dollar (aka value) while trying to stay within the average enthusiast's budget for a new system.

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Version:3.12.27 (longterm) Released:2014-08-26 Source:linux-3.12.27.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-3.12.27.tar.sign Patch:patch-3.12.27.xz (Incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-3.12.27

During the 30 Years of Graphics & Gaming Innovation celebration on the weekend, AMD took the opportunity to announce several new models of FX Processors that will be coming to market soon. The new models announced are the FX-8320E, the FX-8370, and the FX-8370E. The E at the end represents a lower TDP than the normal model.

As this was not a true product launch, details were light, but based on previous releases of the FX processors we should be able to make some assumptions. The turbo clock speed was announced as 4.0 GHz for the FX-8230E which is the same as the older FX-8320 which is 3.5 GHz as a base, so we can assume the base clock will be 3.5 GHz. The FX-8370 and FX-8370E are new to the product lineup however, with an announced boost speed of 4.3 GHz for both. No base clock speed was revealed for these processors though, but the previously announced FX-8350 comes in at a base of 4.0 GHz, so the higher model number should be slightly higher than that.

AMD FX CPU Comparison   FX-
8320 FX-
8320E FX-
8350 FX-
8370 FX-
8370E FX-
9590 Release Date October 2012 August 2014 October 2012 August 2014 August 2014 June 2013 Modules 4 L1 Cache (Code) 256 KB L1 Cache (Data) 128 KB L2 Cache 8 MB L3 Cache 8 MB TDP 125 W 95 W 125 W 125 W 95 W 220 W Base Frequency (MHz) 3500 3500 (est) 4000 4000+ (est) 4000+ (est) 4700 Turbo Frequency (MHz) 4000 4000 4200 4300 4300 5000 Core Name Vishera Microarchitecture Piledriver Socket AM3+ Memory Support DDR3-1866

The E designation is slightly interesting. As a tradeoff for a lower TDP of 95 watts versus the 125 watts of the standard CPU, only the amount of boost time is affected. Base and boost clocks are the exactly the same as non-E chips.

The final announcements on the FX side of the presentation were to do with pricing. The FX-9590 will see a “significant” price cut this month, and AMD will now offer CPUs in a six-pack bundle to offer a lesser price per chip when bought in a relatively small volume. Whether the price cut of the FX-9590 affects the rest of the lineup is unclear, but we should know more soon.

Source:
AMD 30 Live

The US was "caught off-guard" by air strikes against Islamist militia in Libya, a senior official has told the BBC, as Rana Jawad reports from Tripoli.

OCZ launched the Barefoot 3 platform and the Vector SSDs in late 2012, and with their new direction OCZ has been trying to change their image to become a premium manufacturer of high performance SSDs rather than a budget brand. The Vector remained as the only Barefoot 3 based product for months until OCZ introduced the Vertex 450, a not exactly cheap but more mainstream version of the Vector with a shorter three-year warranty. Now, almost two years after the introduction of the Barefoot 3, OCZ is back in the mainstream SSD game with the ARC 100. Read on to find out what has changed and how the ARC 100 performs.

Malaysians have observed a moment of silence following the arrival in Kuala Lumpur of the bodies of 20 Malaysian victims of Flight MH17, which crashed in Ukraine in July.

The Mexican government has unveiled new measures to prevent migrants from Central America travelling on the roofs of freight trains heading north towards the US.

Two farmers in Tasmania have found a sheep they believe has been wandering wild and for six years and never been shorn.

Many women who have fled the fighting in North Waziristan find they have to go against tribal customs at the relief camp to get access to food and medical facilities.

The world's rarest bird is facing extinction unless it finds a new home, say conservationists

The European Space Agency releases time-lapse footage of the Aurora Australis, or southern lights, filmed from the International Space Station.

The European Space Agency releases time-lapse footage of the Aurora Australis, or southern lights, filmed from the International Space Station.

Version:next-20140826 (linux-next) Released:2014-08-26

It was a good night for Sherlock at the Emmys, in Los Angeles, where Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman won best actor and best supporting actor in a miniseries.

Ukrainian and Russian leaders are set to meet in Minsk on Tuesday, sparking hopes that an agreement can be reached to ease tensions in the region.