BetaNews Staff

Intel's RealSense camera used in first 'intelligent consumer drone'

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich has revealed his company’s entry into the burgeoning drone market during a keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Yuneec's Typhoon H drone utilizes Intel’s RealSense camera and infrared lasers to instinctively avoid collisions, making it the world’s first "intelligent consumer drone" according to Krzanich.

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Intel Curie arrives this quarter, costs under $10

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich announced new details today at CES 2016 in Las Vegas regarding the button-sized wearable hardware module, Curie. The Intel Curie module features 32-bit Intel Quark SE SoC, (system on a Chip) and runs for extended periods on a coin-sized battery.

Intel unveiled the Curie SoC module a year ago, and demonstrated it through a partnership with BMX to develop the first smart BMX bike. Curie was able to measure through sensors on the seat and handlebars of the bike the speed and movement metrics. However, now the button sized SoC module is being used on athletic sports clothing to bring the same analytical capabilities to all athletes. "We believe it will change how athletes are judged, how they train", Krzanich said.

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Nvidia unveils Drive PX2 solution for autonomous vehicles

At CES 2016, NVIDIA has announced the release of its Drive PX2 which is the company’s latest offering in the autonomous vehicle hardware market. NVIDIA hopes that the Drive PX2 will provide the ability to train, optimize and develop the neural networks which will be the foundation of self-driving cars in the future.

Several earlier NVIDIA components combine to form the Drive PX2 such as DIGITS and DriveWorks. However, Drive PX 2 hardware is also the successor to the Tegra-powered Drive PX released last year with the new Drive PX 2 representing  a major computational power jump with 12 CPU cores and two discrete "Pascal"-based GPUs.

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Tesla meets Q4 2015 sales goal, but only just

Elon Musk’s car company Tesla just managed to meet its low end production target during the final quarter of 2015. The company was only able to manufacture 17,400 of its luxury electric cars despite having previously projected that it would produce 17,000 to 19,000. Tesla did however reach its target for 2015 by delivering a total of 50,580 cars.

Tesla currently produces two models of electric cars: the Model S sedan and the Model X SUV. The Model S was introduced in 2012 and it has been well-received by both critics and consumers. The Model X SUV however, just began being delivered to consumers in September of 2015. Its production was delayed quite heavily due to various problems regarding how difficult it is to manufacture.

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Xiaomi's new ultrabook goes up against Apple's MacBook Air

Xiaomi is entering the laptop market with a device that looks to carry on the company tradition of delivering high specs at low cost.

The model has not yet been named, but is available for pre-order via Chinese retailer Banggood for £490.50.

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How smart, connected devices can help businesses prosper

You might already know that the number of mobile-connected devices has already exceeded the world’s population, and in order to survive, businesses will need to respond.

Smart, connected devices can improve your business efficiency while reducing operational costs. In order to take advantage of these systems, it is important to know what they are, their benefits, and some of the best options to use within your organization.

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Can you use SMART tools with SSDs?

S.M.A.R.T. which stands for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology is a fantastic tool for anticipating hardware errors on hard disk drives. The utility can test for bad sectors and some software can even test for temperature, core speed and system fan speed anomalies. When S.M.A.R.T. software indicates an imminent hard drive failure, the user is notified so that data can be backed up and data loss avoided. Diagnostic programs are widely used on mechanical hard disk drives and RAID, but how reliable are they on solid state drives SSDs?

Checks include electrical and mechanical performance and read/write error rates. Electrical tests include RAM and read/write circuitry. Mechanical tests seek servo information on data tracks, scanning for bad sectors across the entire disk surface. However solid state drives are constructed very differently, although flash media does develop errors over time -- normally bad flash blocks in the NAND memory chips. Just like traditional hard disk drives, the controller manages these bad blocks and re-maps them to ‘extra’ blocks. Eventually the drive will run out of ‘extra’ blocks and S.M.A.R.T. is quick to identify this.

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What's next for Internet of Things?

Internet of things

In 2015, the Internet of Things (IoT) developed significantly and saw increased interest from a range of industries. A whole host of new devices emerged, especially in the wearable sector. In fact, the global market for wearable devices grew by 223 percent. FitBit shipped 4.4 million devices, and Apple sold 3.6 million Apple Watches.

IoT also fueled important advances in healthcare in 2015, including the continuing development of IoT devices to monitor the supply chain of medicines and patients’ adherence to medical regimens. In addition to this, IoT was a hot topic in the automotive industry in 2015, as driverless cars seemed to be in the headlines every week.

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IPv6 adoption nearly doubles in a year

New data released by Google has shown that the uptake of IPv6 -- the most recent version of the internet communications protocol -- has grown considerably in the last 12 months.

Google revealed that 10.09 percent of all traffic to its websites was made of IPv6 connections as of January 2 2016, nearly double that from the same time last year when the number was 5.47 percent.

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Lenovo launches business versions of MIIX 700 and Yoga 900

Lenovo has decided to relaunch the MIIX 700 tablet and the Yoga 900 convertible with added security to appeal to business consumers. The company is hoping to target users whose workplaces support the BYOD movement by offering Business Editions of these two devices.

The MIIX 700 Business Edition offers the portability of a tablet with a detachable keyboard which will entice users who prefer a physical keyboard. Lenovo has positioned the device as an alternative to Microsoft’s Surface. The Business Edition of this device retains the design of the original version but now includes a TPM chipset to allow for enterprise-level security. It also has support for Intel’s RealSense R200 3D camera.

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Google Nexus 5X: An Android Marshmallow smartphone worthy of your attention [Review]

Phones have been gradually getting bigger in the past few years. That makes for better displays for watching videos and viewing documents and web pages, but there’s a downside too.

For many people it makes them more awkward to carry around and can mean they’re harder to use as a phone because you need two hands to operate them.

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How to settle your storage woes in a virtualized world

Flash is undoubtedly considered a superhero within the world of storage. However, it is unlikely to save the day all on its own. Whilst playing an important role, flash is just one of multiple solutions required to address the most common storage pain points in the data center.

Just like any superhero, it needs to work as part of a team in order to save the world or at least save you time. And in that respect, there is an underlying problem (or villain) that needs to be fought off. After all, without villains, there would be no need for superheroes in the first place.

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How to go paperless in the office

The aim of a paperless office was coined years ago, but is only slowly becoming a reality. Research by AIIM to mark 2015’s World Paper Free day in November found that the use of paper at offices is declining with solutions for a paperless office becoming cheaper, better and faster.

While many organizations still have difficulties becoming more sustainable and efficient, the survey shows that only 35 percent of organizations developed a policy on the use of paper.

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Walmart Pay takes a giant leap into the mobile payment industry

The upcoming launch of Walmart’s mobile payments service, Walmart Pay, is one of many signs that the mobile payments landscape is shifting in a curious direction. As one of the first US retailers to branch out on its own and create a merchant branded payment and loyalty application, Walmart is paving the way for other retailers to simplify payments and provide new ways of enhancing the consumer shopping experience. Following closely in Walmart’s footsteps is Target, with a recent speculation of a similar mobile wallet app in the works.

The introduction of Walmart Pay is significant to the payments market as it sends the message that Walmart is seemingly departing from the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) consortium and its pending CurrentC mobile payment platform, which has been plagued by numerous delays and concerns over the underlying technology platform. While Walmart will still continue its partnership with MCX, Walmart Pay will be the company’s main focus. This could mark the beginning of the end for CurrentC, an industry-wide payment system that was created for MCX restaurants and retailers, including Walmart, to utilize as a single payment solution.

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How the Internet has forever changed five major industries

The digital revolution has resulted in disruption to many industries, with whole new business models created, new brands rising to the top of many industries and those companies failing to adapt, falling by the wayside.

The digital age has impacted industries in both goods and service -- from travel and transport, to publishing, retail and music. The switch from physical to digital has revolutionized both the production and distribution of books and music.

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