Nvidia says it’s working to increase supply of GPUs

Nvidia recently spoke out regarding the rising price of GPUs and requested retailers to prioritize gamers over cryptocurrency miners. During an investor call on Thursday, the company’s CEO said that it was working to increase supply in order to meet the high demand spurred by the cryptocurrency boom.

“We’re working really hard to get GPUs out into the marketplace for the gamers. We’re doing everything we can, but I think the most important thing is, we just got to catch up with supply,” Jensen Huang said during the earning’s call.

During the call, the company acknowledged that the surge of interest in cryptocurrencies had driven sales and helped provide a strong quarter for the company. However, the company’s executive vice president, Colette Kress, said that Nvidia’s core focus would be on gamers as the cryptocurrency market is too unstable to rely on in the long-term. This echoes the sentiments of some of the most prominent figures finance.

“Our main focus remains on our core market, as cryptocurrency will likely remain volatile,” Kress told investors, according to Polygon. She also said that the company expects the revenue from cryptocurrencies to remain flat for the first quarter of 2018, which means that gamers may still have trouble getting their hands on a reasonably priced GPU.

“There’s a fairly sizable pent-up demand going into this quarter,” Huang said. “The demand is great, and it’s very likely the demand will remain great as we look through this quarter.”

He also noted that it was retailers who were setting the prices for GPUs and once again stressed that Nvidia had advised its retail partners to serve gamers over cryptocurrency miners, though Nvidia ultimately has no control over the policies of individual retailers.

“… We’re doing everything we can to advise e-tailers and system builders to serve the gamers,” he said.

Both AMD and Nvidia are working to increase the supply of GPUs, but AMD has noted that it faces shortages of various types of memory, including GDDR5 and HBM2, which has hamstrung GPU production. Huang did not comment on memory issues and simply said that they were “constrained.”

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The 2018 Winter Olympics have been the victims of a hack, organizers confirm

It has now been confirmed that the 2018 Winter Olympics was the subject of a cyberattack. On Sunday, game organizers verified rumors that the Olympics were hacked during Friday’s opening ceremony. However, the source of the attack has yet to be revealed. While systems including the internet and television services were affected on Friday evening, organizers assured media that the breach “had not compromised any critical part of their operations,” according to a Reuters report.

Cybersecurity experts noted in January that there were early suggestions that Russia-backed attackers may have been planning a hack as a retaliation against the nation’s ban from the Pyeongchang Games. The Russian federation has not been allowed to compete as a result of anti-doping regulations (though Russian athletes have been taking part of the games as the Olympic Athletes from Russia, or OAR).

That said, Russia has fervently denied any suggestion of hacking. A few days before the Olympics began, the government noted that any claims linking Russian operatives to hacks on Pyeongchang were “unfounded.”

North Korea may also serve as a prime suspect, given the games’ proximity to the long-isolated nation. However, the North Korean team marched alongside the South Korean delegation for the first time at an Olympics opening ceremony since 2006, perhaps as a symbolic olive branch.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC), for its part, is staying mum on the issue. “Maintaining secure operations is our purpose,” said IOC spokesman Mark Adams. “We are not going to comment on the issue. It is one we are dealing with. We are making sure our systems are secure and they are secure.”

Adams added that while he did not know who was behind the attack, “… best international practice says that you don’t talk about an attack.”

Luckily, it would appear that the hack was short-lived and quickly addressed. “All issues were resolved and recovered yesterday morning,” Pyeongchang organizing committee spokesman Sung Baik-you told press. “We know the cause of the problem but that kind of issues occurs frequently during the Games. We decided with the IOC we are not going to reveal the source (of the attack),” he added.

Still, news of the attack makes a number of sponsors even warier, having already been concerned about the possibility of such an event at the Olympics. A number of sponsors have insured themselves against hacks, and now, it would seem as though that was a very necessary precaution.

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Adult content domains are home to half the sites using cryptomining malware

A new study reveals that cryptocurrency miners are turning to porn sites to exploit users’ computing power when they’re online. A Bejing-based company called 360NetLab has analyzed internet traffic patterns and concluded that sites offering adult content, while small in terms of web traffic, make up the vast majority of sites containing web mining code on their homepages.

These cryptocurrency mining programs usually download without permission when you click on the site and run in the background, using the computing power of your CPU to create new cryptocurrency (usually Monero). This can significantly diminish the performance of your computer while you’re online.

According to 360NetLab, 628 websites out of Alexa’s top 300,000 contained cryptomining code within their homepage (Alexa is a web traffic and analysis service that ranks websites by visitors, not to be confused with the ubiquitous voice assistant of the same name).

While small in terms of actual traffic, the research found that a whopping 49 percent of the domains containing cryptomining software were sites offering adult content.

We’re not linking to any of these sites for obvious reasons, but in terms of traffic the most-visited sites were mejortorrent, firefoxchina, scamadviser, and thepiratebay.blue. The most prevalent coin-mining tool is coinhive, which is used by 57 percent of the sites. Others include jsecoin, webmine, and cryptoloot.

More and more mining site providers want a piece of the action as well. The coin-mining software downloads started to become more prevalent around September of last year, and saw a big surge in January.

As the International Business Times points out, what these companies are doing is not technically illegal in most countries. Some sites claim that cryptocoin mining is a way to fund their websites, just like hosting advertising or asking for subscriptions. Most users would argue that it should be opt-in only. In fact, one new site called authedmine only mines with the user’s permission.

600 websites is a pretty small number, however, so there’s no need to panic. Any decent antivirus software can protect your computer by detecting the mining software before it’s downloaded. As always, make sure your operating system and security software are up to date.

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BitGrail cryptocurrency exchange loses $170 million in Nano tokens

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Italian cryptocurrency exchange BitGrail has lost about 17 million Nano tokens. In total, the stolen tokens were worth $170 million.

BitGrail made the announcement on its website and said that it had lost about $170 million due to fraudulent transactions. It has already notified the authorities, who are investigating the matter. In addition, the exchange has placed a hold on all transactions in order to verify their authenticity.

A similar theft occurred earlier this year with Japan’s Coincheck exchange. That particular hack was much larger, with the exchange estimated to have lost as much as $534 million in cryptocurrency. Coincheck has said that it will reimburse the affected users, but BitGrail founder Francesco Firano said it would be impossible to completely refund the affected clients.

The team behind Nano have released a statement saying that theft was not due to an issue with Nano’s protocol, and lays the blame on BitGrail’s software. The announcement went on to state that they believe that “Firano has been misleading the Nano Core Team and the community regarding the solvency of the BitGrail exchange for a significant period of time.”

The team said that they would not be responding to any accusations from Firano, and are turning over all of their information regarding the incident — such as blockchain entries, screenshots, and chat logs — to law enforcement.

Additionally, the team published a copy of the conversation with Firano. They allege that he suggested modifying the Nano ledger to cover his losses. Nano said that was impossible and not something they’d do even if they could.

In a tweet, Firano called the accusations against him “unfounded” and said that he told the police that the Nano development team may have compromised their investigation by releasing the transcript of his conversation with them.

In the wake of the unfounded accusations made against me by the dev team and of the dissemination of private conversations that compromise police investigations, Bitgrail s.r.l. is forced to contact the police in order to protect its rights and users

— Francesco The Bomber (@bomberfrancy) February 10, 2018

In a later tweet, Firano denied that he or Bitgrail were at fault for the theft.

No, if was our fault, all coin should be hacked.
I can’t say why they were stolen because there is an ongoing investigation by police

— Francesco The Bomber (@bomberfrancy) February 10, 2018

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How to partition your hard drive in Windows

Partitioning your hard drive is a great way to organize your files, folders, and applications into their own virtual drives. Although there are advantages to having multiple physical drives for the same purpose, with the rise in multi-terabyte hard drives, partitioning a single drive is a viable method to give your system that multi-drive functionality with plenty of space on each, without shelling out for a second drive.

If you have just bought a new drive and want to split it up, you’ll need to partition it before using it. Whether you’re working with a new drive, or just looking to partition an existing one though, the process is much the same. Fortunately, learning how to partition your hard drive in Windows 10 is quick and easy. If you follow the steps below, we’ll help take you from a single drive system, to one with as many virtual drives as you want in just a few quick steps.

If you’re looking to create new volumes for backup purposes, we’d still recommend you use one of the best external hard drives instead. If you’d rather someone else handled the backup process for you, these are the best cloud providers.

Windows Disk Management

The simplest way to partition your new or existing hard drive is with Windows’ built-in Disk Management tool. Although some third-party applications have slightly expanded feature sets, the standard Windows tool is perfectly capable of creating new partitions for you to work with.

Note: Although the below steps are specifically for Windows 10 systems, they are also applicable to Windows 7 and 8.1, where the process is much the same.

Step 1: Use the Windows search box to search for “Disk management” and select “Create and format hard disk partitions” from the results box. Alternatively, use the Windows “power user” menu (Win key + X) and click “Disk management.”

Step 2: Select the hard drive you want to partition from the list of available drives. If it is a new drive, skip to Step 4. If it is an existing drive with files and even your operating system installed on it, you’ll need to create some “unallocated space” before you can partition it. Right-click it and select “shrink volume” from the resulting drop-down menu.

Step 3: Your PC will then calculate how much free space you can allocate to the new partition. Once completed, it will ask you how much of it you want to use. If you want to use all the free space on the hard drive, simply click the “Shrink” button. If you want to specify the size of the eventual partition, input it in megabytes in the respective field, before hitting Shrink.

The process can take a minute depending on the speed of your drive but when complete, you’ll have a new “unallocated” space shown next to the corresponding physical drive in the bottom-half of the Disk Management screen.

Step 4: Right-click the “Unallocated” space and select “New Simple Volume” from the resulting menu.

Step 5: Follow the on-screen instructions and select the size of the volume (the default will use all unallocated space) and the drive letter.

Step 6: It’s wise to format new and old drives when creating a new partition. When given the option, select to do so. For “file system” select “NTFS.” The “exFAT” option is more commonly used for portable devices. You can also add a volume label — name — if you want. You can leave the “allocation unit size” at default. Select “quick format” if you are short on time. A full format is rarely required.

Step 7: Continue to click through “Next” buttons and finally, hit “Finish” to create the volume. Your hard drive will now have a brand new partition with its very own designation. You’ll be able to see it, and all the information about it, on the Disk Management page.

Third party alternatives

If you’d rather use a specific third-party tool to partition your hard drive in Windows 10, there are a few out there worth considering. These are some we can recommend:

EaseUS Partition Master Free

With tools for moving and resizing partitions, wiping them clean, and altering labels and designations, EaseUS’s Partition Master Free is a great tool enjoyed by millions of users around the world. It even comes with a “Partition Recovery Wizard,” which can help you recover lost or deleted partitions after a hard-drive failure.

Mini Tool Partition Wizard Free

Mini Tool’s partitioning application is fully featured, even in the free version, and adds the ability to convert file systems without formatting a drive and even test the stability of your hard drive to see if there are any bad sectors.

GParted

Incredibly lightweight, GParted isn’t the prettiest of partition managers, but it has broad support for file systems and formats and has a full suite of partitioning creation, resizing and deletion abilities.

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Pennsylvania wants a paper trail on all voting machines, but money is an issue

The term “voter fraud” seemed to be as ubiquitous as the candidates’ names in the 2016 presidential race, and now, Pennsylvania is hoping to do something about it. On Friday, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf ordered counties planning on replacing their electronic voting systems with machines that would maintain a paper trail, hopefully guarding against interference in a future election.

According to the governor’s office, these new systems will improve the security of voting systems, and will also simplify the process of auditing votes. The addition of the paper backup is, in some ways, an antiquated yet effective solution to a decidedly modern problem.

“This directive will ensure that the next generation of the commonwealth’s voting systems conforms to enhanced standards of resiliency, auditability and security,” Acting Secretary of State Robert Torres said in a statement.

Pennsylvania is not requiring all counties to throw away their equipment yet, however. Rather, the directive only applies to counties that are already in the process of switching systems — those counties will be required to buy new machines with the paper backup addition.

While this all sounds well and good, there is one glaring problem — Pennsylvania does not have the budget to help pay for these new machines. In fact, Governor Wolf released a new budget plan just this week that does not include any additional funding to help counties replace old voting machinery.

Marybeth Kuznik, the founder and executive director of nonprofit VotePA, noted that this is a serious issue. “The General Assembly needs to step up to the plate and budget for this,” she told local news stations. But even so, Kuznik calls the order itself “a huge step forward for Pennsylvania for better elections.”

There are a total of 13 states across the U.S. in which most or all voting systems store votes entirely electronically without any paper backups to verify the results. While this may have been borne of an eco-friendly initiative, the result is a machine whose counts are effectively impossible to audit, making hacks particularly dangerous.

“In the world’s leading democracy, we can’t take the position that we can’t afford to do elections correctly,” said David Hickton, a former federal prosecutor and founding director of the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security. “The recent attacks on our election should concern everybody, and a priority has to be placed on doing what is necessary.”

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‘Fortnight’ overtakes ‘PUBG’ record with 3.4 million players at one time

Like two sumo wrestlers going at each other, the big multiplayer shooters continue to one-up each other with more and more players joining the fray. This time it was Epic Games’ Fortnite, who boasted in a blog post that they had beaten the record for most concurrent players previously held by Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds.

Although Fortnight recorded 3.4 million players at one time over the weekend — besting PUBG’s previous mark of 3.2 million — the accomplishment was blemished by the repeated server crashes caused by the massive number of players.

“The extreme load caused 6 different incidents between Saturday and Sunday, with a mix of partial and total service disruptions to Fortnite,” they wrote. The post goes into some pretty technical details about what caused the various outages, which involved everything from matchmaking to account retrieval to instant messaging to overwhelming their cloud servers. Basically, they just got clobbered.

PC Gamer was quick to point out that the Fortnight count encompasses players on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4, while PUBG’s numbers only reflect Steam players. As Epic didn’t break their numbers down by platform, it’s impossible to say who truly has the upper hand.

It’s the biggest game they’ve ever had, and the company recently pulled the plug on their free-to-play MOBA Paragon, with many team members moving to Fortnite.

“It’s been an amazing and exhilarating experience to grow Fortnite from our previous peak of 60K concurrent players to 3.4M in just a few months, making it perhaps the biggest PC/console game in the world!” they wrote. Epic obviously needs some help, as their blog post opens and closes with a plea for people with “domain expertise” to apply for a job at the company.

More game updates are planned for the near future, however, with an earlier post promising 60 FPS for all console versions later this month. Extra servers will also soon be online for West Coast and Brazilian Xbox players. Epic also announced upcoming integration with Facebook and other social networks for friend invites.

Several cosmetic updates are also in the works, with new outfits, gliders, and animations. New weapons and consumables are also mentioned, as well as the promise of different items in future updates.

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7 Exotic technologies that were once science fiction, but now exist in reality

It’s no big surprise that engineers and scientists working in cutting edge tech are often fans of science fiction. Nor is it a surprise that, when many of them get to a place in their career where they can choose which projects to work on, a whole lot of folks seek to bring to life the kind of amazing sci-fi technology they grew up reading about and watching in movies.

Here are seven examples of tech that was once the domain of science fiction, now turned science fact.

Universal translator

The Hitchhiker’s’ Guide to the Galaxy, Star Trek

Where it appeared in sci-fi:  As a plot device that removes the problem of having to explain why aliens all speak English, Universal Translators have been a staple of science fiction for years. An early appearance is in Murray Leinster’s 1945 novella First Contact, but notable examples can also be found in Star Trek, Doctor Who, and The Hitchhiker’s’ Guide to the Galaxy.

In the latter, a so-called “babel fish” is inserted into a person’s auditory canal to feed off the mental frequencies of people speaking to its host. It then excretes a translation directly into the brain. Tasty!

Babel Fish, Waverly Pilot

In reality: The name Babel Fish was actually adopted by Yahoo! For its web-based multilingual translation app launched in 1997. Things have come a long way since then, however. While there are numerous translation services out there, the most sci-fi sounding one is the Waverly Pilot, a set of wireless earbuds that connect to your phone and promise to translate several languages in real time.

Microsoft has also carried out a pretty astonishing demo using deep learning tech, which even incorporates the voice of the speaker when it carries out its translations.

A.I. assistants

2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL 9000, Alien‘s “Mother”

Where it appeared in sci-fi: While lots of science fiction included computers whose principle functions could be operated via voice, the idea of a voice-activated artificial intelligence is slightly less widespread.

It was used to memorable effect with 2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL 9000, the sentient A.I. which controls the systems of the Discovery One spacecraft and interacts with (not entirely in the best interests of) the ship’s astronaut crew. Another prominent example is “Mother,” the ship’s computer in Alien. Both made an indelible mark on sci-fi fans, although HAL is by far the more iconic.

Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant

In reality: Minus HAL’s more murderous side, A.I. assistants are everywhere today. The technology was introduced to a mainstream audience for the first time with the iPhone 4s in 2011 (although there had been research projects before then), and it’s only grown from there.

Here in 2018, the smart speaker product category is hotly contested by Google, Amazon and Apple, and can be used to do everything from searching for information to controlling the various features in your smart home. Many, like Siri, even include “in joke” nods and references to their great uncle HAL.

Rayguns

Star Trek, James Bond movies

Where it appeared in sci-fi: Who needs bullets when you can fire far more futuristic beams of destructive energy? The form factor and scale of these weapons has varied depending on the story.

Rayguns first fleetingly appear as a reference in Victor Rousseau’s 1917 The Messiah of the Cylinder. Star Trek, meanwhile, introduced an entire generation to the “phaser,” while Star Wars’ Stormtroopers carried (somewhat useless) “blasters.” Heck, even James Bond used one in Moonraker, the most sci-fi of the 007 movies.

200W DIY laser canon, Lockheed Martin’s ATHENA

In reality: Okay, so most of us still think guns over lasers when we hear about the right to keep and bear arms. But as Bob Dylan once sang, the times they are a-changin’.

Examples of real life laser guns range from DIY efforts like a terrifying 200W laser cannon, 400x more powerful than the most dangerous laboratory lasers, to Lockheed Martin’s modular ATHENA laser cannon. In the future, the defense giant claims its laser cannons will help protect soldiers from threats such as “swarms of drones.”

Tablet computers

2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek‘s PADD

Where it appeared in sci-fi: A decidedly iPad-style device appears in Stanley Kubrick’s classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. An even more sci-fi appearance for tablet computers, however, comes in Star Trek.

Yes, there were examples of “electronic clipboards” in the original Star Trek, but they were far more prevalent in the follow-up, Star Trek: The Next Generation and in subsequent series. They were even called PADD, an acronym for Personal Access Display Device.

Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, etc

In reality: We very nearly didn’t include tablets on this list. The reason? Because once a gadget is so mainstream that your grandparents own and use one, it loses a bit of its cutting edge, science fiction cool. But isn’t that exactly the point of this list? No-one in Star Trek wasted time gushing about how cool it was to have a pencil-thin computer touch screen to look things up on; they just used it like the intuitive form of computing it is. That’s exactly what’s happened in real life.

While tablets haven’t totally replaced PCs, over the last decade they have proven themselves to have a crucial role to play in our lives. You can check out our list of the best tablets available to buy here.

Holograms

Star Wars: A New Hope

Where it appeared in sci-fi:  For any kid who grew up in a slightly boring place, dreaming of the day we’d get dragged into some grand adventure, there are few sci-fi movies scenes more iconic than the one from Star Wars, in which Luke Skywalker gets a call to action from a holographic Princess Leia.

Brigham Young University

In reality: Holographic projection still isn’t mainstream by any means, but there’s some fascinating work being done in this space. At Brigham Young University, researchers have demonstrated technology involving clear, realistic 3D holograms being projected into thin air.

“Our technology uses a tractor beam to capture a tiny particle of paper,” Daniel Smalley, assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, told Digital Trends. “That particle is then dragged around and illuminated by red, green and blue lasers to make points. The primary difference is that when you look at an image point in our display you’re looking at a material object.”

What did the team choose as an early demo for their tech? Projecting a miniature Princess Leia, of course.

Videophone calling

2001: A Space Odyssey, Thunderbirds

Where it appeared in sci-fi:  As with several items on this list, video calling was introduced to a mass audience in 1968 through the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. As someone living in the U.K., however, for me it’s more synonymous with the TV series Thunderbirds, in which Jeff Tracy uses video calling to communicate with his sons.

Skype, Amazon’s Echo Show, FaceTime

In reality: Skype appeared in 2003, followed by rival services like Apple’s FaceTime a few years later. Devices like Amazon’s Echo Show are even built around the concept of video calling. Science fact has even further than science fiction through research into areas like 3D video calling.

Communicator watches

Dick Tracy

Where it appeared in sci-fi:  Okay, so Dick Tracy isn’t really science fiction, but his watch sure was. For years, anyone writing about wrist-worn communications tech pretty much had to, by some obscure law of journalism, reference Dick Tracy. The plainclothes cop got his famous two-way wrist radio in 1946 and upgraded it to a two-way video calling (see above) device in 1964.

The Apple Watch

In reality: The Apple Watch made this technology a real thing, and later improved it with the Apple Watch Series 3 by adding greater iPhone independence. The exact moment when sci-fi dream merged with actually-happening reality was captured on video in late 2016 when Jeb Bush received a call on his Apple Watch during a meeting. “My watch can’t be talking?” he said. “That’s the coolest thing in the world.”

It sure is, Jeb. It sure is. Well, with the exception of the other items on this list.

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HomePod repairs cost nearly as much as a new speaker

If you’re getting a HomePod, be sure to place it somewhere safe… depending on what you break, it might be expensive to get a fix. Apple has updated its support pages to reveal that an out-of-warranty HomePod repair will cost $279 (£269). Throw in the shipping fee ($20 US, or £13) for a mail-in repair and you’re not far off from the price of a brand new smart speaker. This is one of those times where the AppleCare extended warranty ($78 if you include the incident fee, or £68) may be the better value, at least if you’re in a household where an accident is a real possibility.

Thankfully, the power cable won’t cost such a hefty sum. The 9to5Mac team has learned that you’ll need to pay $29 (£25) to repair a damaged cord. That’s more than a detachable cord might have cost, but definitely easier to justify if your pet has gnawed the cable to oblivion.

In practice, you’re not nearly as likely to need a fix for a HomePod as you would for an iPhone or a Mac — it’s a stationary object in your home that you’ll rarely need to touch. However, you’ll definitely want to keep these costs in mind if you have young kids or otherwise think the speaker might take a tumble.

Via: MacRumors, 9to5Mac

Source: MacRumors, Apple

Exile sues Facebook in hunt for Cambodian leader’s paid ‘likes’

Facebook doesn’t normally have to answer questions about government leaders’ public pages, but it might have to very shortly. Exiled Cambodian politician Sam Rainsy has sued Facebook insisting that it provide any information that might show Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen (above) bought millions of fake “likes” to feign popularity. Rainsy himself is the target of a defamation case for making the allegations, and is betting that Facebook’s data can clear his name.

A study of Hun’s page suggests something is off. He only launched his Facebook page in 2016, but it quickly ballooned to 9 million “likes” (it’s the third most active page worldwide), about 80 percent of which come from accounts in foreign countries like India, Mexico and the Philippines. Hun has claimed that it’s just a reflection of his global popularity, but these accounts could easily be the product of fake follower services.

He certainly has the incentive to use bogus followers. As the de facto dictator of Cambodia, he has used Facebook to attack critics and his political powers to silence opposition. Hun also shut down Rainsy’s party (the only opposing party in the country) in December, guaranteeing that he would face no opposition in the next election.

Rainsy said he contacted Facebook about his concerns 18 months ago, but the social network hadn’t responded, prompting the lawsuit. Facebook has so far declined to comment on the case, but did note to the Guardian that it blocks the registrations of “millions” of fake accounts every day.

It’s not clear if Facebook can or will hand over the data. However, it has taken down a leader’s page (Russia-supported Chechnya leader Ramzan Kadyrov) for violating policy. If Facebook does find evidence of fake “likes,” it could pull Hun’s page regardless of how Rainsy fares in court.

Source: Guardian