VIA is working on a new x86 compatible CPU codenamed Isaiah II, the first in years from the company. Its low power, highly efficient design compares favorably to offerings from AMD and Intel in the same market. It was tested on a VIA branded motherboard with a VIA chipset, giving hope to Free Software users who currently struggle with locked down or unsupported boards from the major manufacturers.
You want to play Adventure, but don't know how to turn on the PDP-11? These instructions are for booting our dual rack machine from its RL01 drives, although booting the single cabinet machine from the RK05 is very similar.
How to boot a PDP-11. Yes.
Behind the term TrustZone lies a security technology that is almost omnipresent in ARM-based devices, ranging from low-cost development boards to most mobile phones. Yet, there hardly exists a public body of knowledge around it. This prompted the Genode developers to investigate. Today, they published their findings in the form of a comprehensive article and an demonstration video.
In contrast to TPMs, which were designed as fixed-function devices with a predefined feature set, TrustZone represented a much more flexible approach by leveraging the CPU as a freely programmable trusted platform module. To do that, ARM introduced a special CPU mode called "secure mode" in addition to the regular normal mode, thereby establishing the notions of a "secure world" and a "normal world". The distinction between both worlds is completely orthogonal to the normal ring protection between user-level and kernel-level code and hidden from the operating system running in the normal world. Furthermore, it is not limited to the CPU but propagated over the system bus to peripheral devices and memory controllers. This way, ARM-based platforms become effectively kind of a split personality. When secure mode is active, the software running on the CPU has a different view on the whole system than software running in non-secure mode.
The Genode team is nothing short of amazing. Not only are they developing unique software, they're also doing stuff like this. Much respect for these women and men.
Out of the millions of things Samsung throws at a wall each year to see what sticks, they seem to have picked the fake leather on devices. The most recent victim? A Windows 8 laptop - the ATIV Book 9 'Style'. This thing joins the phones, tablets, and ChromeBooks Samsung has already tacked the fake leather onto.
Genuine question: is there anyone in the audience here who likes this look? If so, why?
The Mozilla Foundation has begun an investigation after tech juggernaut Dell appeared to be asking customers to pay GBP 16.25 ($27) to install its free web browser Firefox on newly purchased Dell kit.
What.
So, convertibles. Laptop/tablet hybrids. I think their popularity started with early Asus Transformers, but since then, they've become a pretty big staple in the device landscape. Since I'm in the market for a replacement for my dreadful ARM Surface RT, I've been looking at this market segment again, and have noted that there's a lot of choice out there.
After the dreadful experience with the Surface RT, I'm steering clear of anything Windows RT-related. An x86-based convertible Windows 8.1 machine, however, still has some major appeal due to its excellent desktop application support that fits in nicely with my existing workstation. The tablet side of Windows 8.1, however, is still woefully underserved, with very few applications, and even those that do exist are of abysmal quality.
As far as hardware goes, the Lenovo Miix 2 10" (not to be confused with the older Miix 2!) has really grabbed by attention. It's supposed to end up at around EUR 400-500, which is acceptable. The Surface 2 Pro is also interesting, but quite expensive - although it does have a far better processor than the 10" Miix 2. There's also an 11" Miix 2 which sports the same processor as the Surface 2 Pro, but 11" seems a bit large in my view.
I've also been looking at Android convertibles, and here I run into a bit of trouble - most of them tend to run outdated versions of Android, and I'm really not looking forward to figuring out which of them have the best AOSP support. Do any of you have any suggestions here? Any models to look for? Experiences with custom, AOSP-like ROMs?
An even bigger question regarding Android on convertibles is just how well Android handles laptop-like computing. Does it do a good job of it, considering where Android comes from? It seems like to me that where Windows has the upper hand on the laptop side of the convertible, Android rules on the tablet side of it. Am I right in thinking this is so?
Tantos took over working with the disk. He rewrote the recovery tools, plus a simulator for the software and supporting equipment like printers, monitors, keyboards and more. For the greater part of the last year, he arduously reverse engineered the OS from the image. Despite a few remaining bugs, the Cray OS now works.
This is quite, quite an amazing journey.
About a year and a half ago, I engaged on an admittedly quixotic project to build my own laptop. By I, I mean we, namely Sean "xobs" Cross and me, bunnie. Building your own laptop makes about as much sense as retrofitting a Honda Civic with a 1000hp motor, but the lack of practicality never stopped the latter activity, nor ours.
Quite, quite amazing.
And all this is actively promoted and supported by Intel. So, Microsoft creates an operating system that is supposed to be both desktop and tablet operating system. However, nobody wants it. So, Intel and PC makers confuse everything even more by... Adding Android to the mix? What?
On the eve of LG's launch, I sat down with webOS's head of product management and design, Itai Vonshak, as well as Colin Zhao, director of product management for LG's Silicon Valley Lab. As they demoed LG's new interface to me, I was by turns intrigued, bemused, and doubtful that it was up to the task of convincing people that it would be worth buying a new TV for. Most of all, I was impressed by the clarity of vision behind the new interface. For better or worse, webOS has an opinion about how smart TVs should treat their users, and by all appearances that opinion is executed very, very well. LG is better known for pretty schizophrenic Android skins on its smartphones, so to see the company produce something this coherent was a shock.
It looks quite amazing - but I still find it very hard to be excited over a TV.
The PC industry isn't doing so well. Sales have dramatically slumped, despite the industry's efforts to tempt consumers with Windows 8 tablets and transforming touchscreen laptops. But next week, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas may be the launching pad for a new push - a new brand of computer that runs both Windows and Android.
Sources close to the matter tell The Verge that Intel is behind the idea, and that the chipmaker is working with PC manufacturers on a number of new devices that could be announced at the show. Internally known as "Dual OS," Intel's idea is that Android would run inside of Windows using virtualization techniques, so you could have Android and Windows apps side by side without rebooting your machine.
I'm going to make a very daring prediction, that is sure to send ripples across the entire industry: this is not going to turn the tide for the PC.
The CDC6600 and its family members are part of the computer industry history. A decade before the Cray 1, the members of the CDC6000 family were not only expensive and the most powerful systems at the time of introduction. They were also lean and wonderful architectures ! The elegance was also conveyed in several publications (many by CDC), where all the necessary knowledge was explained from the ground up. All you needed to know was supplied, clearly laid out, not just hints for efficient programming. Basically, you could rebuild your own computer by reading these books. 50 years later, they are invaluable reminders and tools, we can see where the computer industry comes from and realise that it is not that hard to do it ourselves, too.
Via HackerNews. This is an amazing resource.
The French Minitel never ceases to amaze me.
In 1984 the government allowed developers to create services for the Minitel. The government took a 30% cut and passed the rest on to developers (sound familiar?) creating the world's first app store. From a user's perspective using apps on the Minitel was frictionless - you were just billed for what you used through your phone bill.
How big was this app store? In the nineties it was pulling in over a billion USD a year! This is an astronomical sum when you consider France's population size. Though the crossover point is near, the Minitel in its lifetime paid out more to developers than Apple has to iOS developers to date. Companies would advertise their apps in the subway, on highway billboards, and on television.
Amazing. This could very well be the first application store, something many people think is a new phenomenon invented by Apple.
With Intel's new Haswell chip, manufacturers can choose to either build slimmer notebooks or try to optimize battery life as much as possible. Dell has clearly shown its dedication to the latter with the new Inspiron 11 3000 series. Budget notebooks don't always have big batteries, but Dell claims the $379 Haswell version of the Inspiron 11 lasts up to eight hours and 20 minutes on a single charge.
Something I've been pondering for a while: if we can have high-quality tablets and smartphones at low prices, why can't we have high-quality laptops at said prices too? Cheap laptops are almost always crap, but this Inspiron 11 actually looks like it could reverse the trend. Since I don't really need an expensive laptop anymore, a cheap but still relatively high quality 11" laptop is right up my alley. Is anyone aware of any alternatives?
Also, when did Dell find the design stick?
Michael Dell has the won the battle for control of the computer company that he created, after shareholders backed his $24.8bn offer to take Dell private and revive the struggling business away from the incessant pressure of Wall Street.
The vote clears the way for the huge buyout, in which Dell is working with private equity partners Silver Lake after seeing off a challenge from activist investor Carl Icahn.
Must have been hard for him to see his baby slide into irrelevance. I hope for him he can turn things around, but I'm not sure if they'll be able to - they missed the boat, and it's probably in Fiji by now.
The 8-bit Z-80 processor is famed for use in many early personal computers such the Osborne 1, TRS-80, and Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and it is still used in embedded systems and TI graphing calculators. I had always assumed that the ALU (arithmetic-logic unit) in the Z-80 was 8 bits wide, like just about every other 8-bit processor. But while reverse-engineering the Z-80, I was shocked to discover the ALU is only 4 bits wide! The founders of Zilog mentioned the 4-bit ALU in a very interesting discussion at the Computer History Museum, so it's not exactly a secret, but it's not well-known either.
I have been reverse-engineering the Z-80 processor using images from the Visual 6502 team. The image below shows the overall structure of the Z-80 chip and the location of the ALU. The remainder of this article dives into the details of the ALU: its architecture, how it works, and exactly how it is implemented.
Ken Shirrif's blog is an absolute must for fans of ultra-low-level hardware stuff. This goes way over my head, but interesting nonetheless.
Samsung is set to reveal its Galaxy Gear smartwatch next Wednesday, Sept. 4, in Berlin. But this weekend, we got a first look at the watch.
I love watches (I have several watches for different occasions and clothing styles), but this thing looks ridiculous. A three inch contraption shaped like a Galaxy phone strapped to my tiny wrist?
What?
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