OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing - Page 407

Fuzix, a New Unix 5 like OS for Zilog Z80 by Alan Cox

Submitted by Bill Shooter of Bul 2014-11-03 OS News 9 Comments

In a Google Plus post, Alan Cox, of linux kernel fame, announced a new Unix V like operating system for the zilog z80 architecture. He's been on a z80 kick the past couple of years, even getting into hardware board design. For those interested, he has has a git repo.

US Internet Speed and Affordability

Submitted by Alfman 2014-11-03 Internet 16 Comments

The reason the United States lags many countries in both speed and affordability, according to people who study the issue, has nothing to do with technology. Instead, it is an economic policy problem - the lack of competition in the broadband industry.

Overview of e-book Tools for Linux

Submitted by Alan James 2014-11-03 Linux 11 Comments

Linux has a good range of open source software which helps users to organise their e-book collection, catch up on a novel, and to create, validate and publish their own e-book.

Tizen Smartphone Spotted at FCC

Submitted by Desiderantes 2014-11-03 Wireless No Comments

The Samsung SM-Z130H/DS with dual SIM, Samsung’s first low-end Tizen phone, has just been spotted undergoing certification at the FCC. According to the FCC filing under FCC ID "A3LSMZ130H," The Samsung SM-Z130H is a dual-sim smart phone. The device will come with support for GSM 850/1900, Wi-fi 802.11b and GSM 850/1900 bands.

Xiaomi: World’s #3 Handset Manufacturer?

Submitted by twitterfire 2014-11-03 Wireless 7 Comments

China’s Xiaomi only sells its smartphones and other devices in a handful of marketsâ€¦ but they’re big markets with large populations including China and India. So even though you can’t easily buy a Xiaomi phone in the US or Europe, we probably shouldn’t be surprised that the company is selling a lot of phones. In fact, with Xiaomi shipping 18 million phones in the third quarter of 2014, two different reports suggest the company just became the third biggest smartphone company in the world.

Run IE On Android, iOS And OS X

David Adams 2014-11-03 Internet 5 Comments

You can now run the latest version of Internet Explorer on your Android, iOS, OS X or non-Windows 10 Windows machine. Microsoft has built and released something it calls RemoteIE, which allows developers to run the company’s browser preview builds without requiring them to be on the most current version of Windows.

Try Windows 93 Today

David Adams 2014-10-30 Humor 29 Comments

What if Microsoft released an operating system in the chasm between Windows 3.1 and Windows 95? It might look something like Windows 93, an interactive art project by Jankenpopp and Zombectro that you can try right in your browser.

Yosemite Hackintosh with UniBeast and MultiBeast

David Adams 2014-10-30 macOS 28 Comments

Those who are eager to try out OS X Yosemite on any compatible Intel-based PC can follow a simple guide to install the same using UniBeast tool. The UniBeast tool creates a bootable installer via downloaded version of OS X Yosemite.

eComStation, OS/2 Warp and WarpStock

Submitted by martini 2014-10-30 OS/2 7 Comments

The Warpstock annual conference was held on Oct 24 to 26 on St. Louis, Missouri. These conferences are related to the OS/2 and eComStation platform. Currently there are two reviews of the event online at OS2World and at WarpCity2 blog. Between the relevant news there is a new company called "Arca Noae" that will focus on software development for the platform. They are working on ACPI, USB, Network and other drivers for the platform. Additionally Mensys also gave some light why there haven't been activity on the last year. Arca Noae announced driver releases and software subscription products for the users of this platform.

Osquery From Facebook

David Adams 2014-10-30 Privacy, Security 1 Comment

Facebook released an open-source tool for monitoring operating system state changes across large infrastructures, which could help engineers quickly diagnose performance and security issues.

Microsoft Band: A wearable device with support for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone

David Adams 2014-10-30 Wireless 20 Comments

It's got a built-in GPS, so you can wear in around and don't have to take your phone. It's svelte and stylish. The display is small (keeping the device small) but it's high resolution and touchscreen. In addition to all the standard quantified self stuff, it supports mail, messaging, calendar, and alerts. It costs $199, and it's on sale now (for preorder). Most importantly, you can load it with Starbucks credit and use it to pay for lattes. Looks like a winner.

Windows Update Bricking Counterfeit USB Dongles

Submitted by Alfman 2014-10-29 Hardware 31 Comments

The FTDI FT232 chip is found in thousands of electronic baubles, from Arduinos to test equipment, and more than a few bits of consumer electronics. It’s a simple chip, converting USB to a serial port, but very useful and probably one of the most cloned pieces of silicon on Earth. Thanks to a recent Windows update, all those fake FTDI chips are at risk of being bricked. This isn’t a case where fake FTDI chips won’t work if plugged into a machine running the newest FTDI driver; the latest driver bricks the fake chips, rendering them inoperable with any computer.

NoPhone Promises Unparalleled Interaction With Reality

Submitted by M.Onty 2014-10-29 Humor 6 Comments

"The NoPhone is shatterproof, waterproof, doesn't have a camera, is Bluetooth incompatible and probably doesn't bend, but you'll be too immersed in the real world to know or care" reports The Independent. Could well be revolutionary.

Visopsys 0.75 Released

Submitted by andymc 2014-10-29 OS News 4 Comments

Visopsys is an alternative OS for PC-compatibles. Version 0.75 is the third update this year, and is particularly focused on hardware, adding USB 3.0 (XHCI) and APIC interrupt controller support, as well as improved USB 2.0 and hub support. Downloads are available from here, and details are available in the change log

On Asm.js

Submitted by Alfman 2014-10-29 General Development 25 Comments

Asm.js deserves closer inspection for two reasons. First, it's the one "native browser VM" that doesn't massively reinvent wheels. Second, it's the only time a browser vendor's "next-gen JS" attempts have actually gotten everybody else to pay attention. But what are we transitioning into exactly?

Serious wget Security Flaw Discovered

Submitted by XxXxX 2014-10-29 Privacy, Security 8 Comments

A critical flaw in the open-source Wget application that is widely used on Linux and Unix systems for retrieving files has been patched quietly. A Metasploit module is available for testing. The disclosure is here. Red Hat's bug report is here.

HTML 5 Finalized

Submitted by Adurbe 2014-10-29 Internet 1 Comment

Ars tells us The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the industry group that oversees the development of the specs used on the Web, today announced that the fifth major version of the hypertext markup language specification, HTML5, was today given Recommendation status, W3C's terminology for a final, complete spec.

What’s Up With Android and Chrome OS?

David Adams 2014-10-28 Google 21 Comments

Cnet interviews Google Senior Vice President Sundar Pichai, who's in charge of both Android and Chrome OS, and asks whether the two Google OSes will work more closely together or eventually merge. Merger is apparently not on the roadmap. The interview covers operational housekeeping among the Google OS teams, seriously moving into the "phablet" space, anti-theft mechanisms for mobiles,

20 Tips to Use Yosemite Like a Pro

David Adams 2014-10-28 macOS 3 Comments

Macworld UK has the details on minor interface and usability tweaks that are new or expanded in OSX Yosemite. Did you know that RSS support in Safari is back? That you could see an overview of all images that a chat partner has sent? That you can un-flattify the UI somewhat? Or that the super-useful document annotation features in Preview are now even better? Now you do.

How to Get Yosemite’s Handoff to Work

David Adams 2014-10-28 macOS No Comments

I guess today's the day that people finally got around to trying to make Handoff work, because both Time and Gizmodo published short articles outlining the finicky steps it takes to get your Mac and iOS device to recognize each other. The key step seems to be to log off and back on to iCloud in both devices, because as with everything dealing with iCloud, it's a bit of a crap shoot. But when it does work, it's pretty nifty. The best part of the read was one of the comments on the Gizmodo with a classic quote from Anchorman: "60% of the time, it works every time."