Some months ago we tested the new "Fanless" series from Seasonic. Today we will take a look at a semi-passively-cooled version with the same design and more power. The Seasonic X-560 ends up as the direct competitor of the Enermax Modu87+ 500W, as well as FSPs Aurum alternative (without modular cables). We purchased this particular PSU from a retailer, so we'll be able to see if they use the same capacitors as in their review samples, and if Seasonic is able to reach the promised 80 Plus Gold efficiency. We'll also look at the sound pressure level at various loads.

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itwbennett writes “Yahoo plans to release some technologies, including storage technologies, to the open source community, a senior executive of the company said. These are systems that Yahoo built to help it handle large numbers of users on its websites, but that don’t necessarily give it a competitive advantage, said David Chaiken, chief architect at Yahoo.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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International Business Times

McAfee: Corporate Data is the New Cybercrime Target PC Magazine High-end cybercriminals have shifted from targeting credit cards and other personal data to the intellectual capital of large corporations, according to a new study from McAfee and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). … Corporate Espionage Easier and Lucrative as Companies Under-Report Breaches …eWeek Corporate data is new target of cybercrimeSC Magazine US Cybercriminals Refocus on Stealing Corporate InformationNewsFactor Network Infosecurity Magazine (US) -TG Daily -International Business Times all 60 news articles »

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RedEaredSlider writes “Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said it detected several kinds of radioactive material in the water on the floor of reactor buildings at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The isotopes found in the water were cobalt-76, technetium-99, silver-108, iodine-131, iodine-134, four isotopes of cesium, barium-140 and lanthanum-140. All have half-lives measured in hours or days, with the exception of cesium-137.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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SAN ANTONIO—After a slow start last Thursday in which they were upset in the first round by 13-seed Morehead State, the Louisville Cardinals have come roaring back in the NCAA Tournament, putting together several dominating performances and advancin…

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SAN FRANCISCO—Barry Bonds, the San Francisco Giants outfielder who in 2007 capped his 22-year baseball career by becoming the MLB’s all-time home run leader, arrived in Courtroom 10 of the Phillip Burton Federal Courthouse at 8 a.m. Monday to appear in Case No. 3:07-cr-00732-SI, USA v. Steroid-Using Liar Barry Bonds.

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Last month at Mobile World Congress Samsung announced the Galaxy Tab 10.1, a NVIDIA Tegra 2 based Honeycomb tablet. Since then, Apple's iPad 2 raised the bar for ergonomics and performance. Not wanting to be outdone, Samsung just announced a redesigned Galaxy Tab 10.1 that's both thinner and lighter than Apple's iPad 2.

The new Galaxy Tab 10.1 measures only 8.6mm thick and weighs 595 grams. The iPad 2 by comparison is 8.8mm thick and weighs 601 grams. The display is a Xoom-like 1280×800 using Samsung's PLS display technology.

Read on for more information on the new 10.1 as well as the new Galaxy Tab 8.9.

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Barence writes “Identifying individuals using nothing more than their IP address has become a key part of anti-piracy and criminal investigations. But a PC Pro investigation casts serious doubt on the validity of IP-based evidence. ‘In general, the accuracy of IP address tracing varies depending on the type of user behind the IP address,’ Tom Colvin, chief technology officer with security vendor Conseal told PC Pro. ‘Whilst big businesses can be traceable right back to their datacenters, standard family broadband connections are often hard to locate, even to county-level accuracy.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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SAN FRANCISCO—Minutes after arriving at Scott Clark’s apartment Friday, college friend Marc Karam, 26, announced that he didn’t really have any plans in mind for his visit, and that he would be fine doing pretty much whatever this weekend.

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X-bit Labs

Japanese DRAM Makers' Woes Echo Rest of Industry After Quake PCWorld Japanese DRAM maker Elpida Memory on Monday said its factories are operating "at close to normal levels" two weeks after the 9.0-magnitude earthquake in Japan, and that it has "sufficient parts and materials to continue … Elpida says Japanese eqarthquake has not disrupted suppliesInquirer Elpida: Operations At Hiroshima, Akita Plants Almost Back To NormalWall Street Journal Elpida expects no DRAM supply disruptions after quakeElectronicsWeekly.com evertiq.com -YTWHW -Reuters Canada all 40 news articles »

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Julie188 writes “The McAfee.com website is full of security mistakes that could lead to cross-site scripting and other attacks, researchers said in a post on the Full Disclosure site on Monday. The holes with the site were found by the YGN Ethical Hacker Group, and reported to McAfee on Feb. 10, YGN says, before they were publicly disclosed to the security/hacking mailing list. Embarrassing? Yes, especially given that the company aggressively markets its own McAfee Secure service that is supposed to assure consumers that McAfee has scanned a website and found it to be safe.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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International Business Times

Intel Announces 320 Series Third-Generation SSD PC Magazine Intel on Monday announced the release of its third-generation family of solid-state drives (SSDs): the 320 Series. The drives will replace Intel's current X25-M SSD. The 320 Series drives are based on 25nm NAND Flash memory process … Intel Announces New 320 SSD SeriesTom’s Hardware Guide Intel doubles capacity, drops price in refresh of popular SSD lineComputerworld Intel Rolls Out New Solid State Drive LineupInternational Business Times X-bit Labs -InternetNews.com -eWeek all 72 news articles »

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The first two rounds of March Madness provided more than their share of great drama. Here are the moments that will live on long after the tournament is over.

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It's called the Intel SSD 320, but the part number should give away just what we're looking at here:

This is the long awaited third generation Intel based SSD. This is the G3. And at this point it's around 6 months late.

Back then it was simply called the Postville Refresh on Intel's roadmaps (Postville was the 34nm Intel X25-M G2). It would use 25nm Intel NAND, feature improved performance and full disk encryption – all behind a 3Gbps SATA interface.

Read on for our full review!

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NewsFactor – Will Apple introduce iOS 5 at the Worldwide Developers Conference this summer? Will an iPhone 5 make its debut on time? Yes and — we don’t know.

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NEW YORK—A recent outpouring of negative criticism levied against the Big East for the conference’s poor showing in the NCAA Tournament has had absolutely no affect on anyone or anything, and will reportedly continue to have zero effect on the world…

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Gateway announced this past Moday that they're releasing to the market a trio of value-oriented desktop (well, really nettop) replacement notebooks built around AMD's Fusion platform. Brazos has been a big hit with OEMs as nearly every major manufacturer is producing machines based around it, particularly the extremely popular E-350 APU.

The new NV series from Gateway features across the board 15.6" LED-backlit 1366×768 displays, wireless-n connectivity, HDMI, 1.3-megapixel webcams, and six-cell, 44Wh batteries. They also feature the now-traditional Acer/Gateway island-style keyboard that remains the bane of my existence, much to Jarred's continued amusement. As a whole the line may not seem too exciting, but remember these notebooks are gunning for users on the strictest of budgets and top out at an MSRP of $470.

Gateway's flagship model is the catchily-named NV51B05u. This is the $470 one, and it ships with the AMD E-350 APU, 3GB of DDR3, and a 500GB 5400-RPM hard drive. Presently, the NV51B05u is the only model on Gateway's website, but it can be found here. Gateway quotes over four hours of running time on the battery, and our experience with the E-350 suggests that figure is probably accurate for moderate loads.

On the other hand, Gateway is a little more cagey with detailed specs about the other models that are rounding out the line. At $450 is the NV51B02u, which also features the E-350. Odds are good this model has a smaller hard drive and/or less RAM. And at the extremely entry-level $400 price point is the NV51B08u which swaps out the E-350 for the C-50. The AMD C-50 retains both cores, but runs at a much slower 1GHz and clocks the graphics core at just 280MHz, though it also features a TDP of just 9W, half that of the already frugal E-350.

Unfortunately these prices seem a little on the high side for what you get. Compare the NV51 series to Gateway's own NV50: starting at $450, you get bumped up to a 2.1GHz Phenom II triple-core and 4GB of DDR3. Of course you'll sacrifice mobility and battery life for the privilege, so for users who are going to want to take their 15.6" notebook onn the go, the newer NV51 with the E-350 may seem like the better call. Ultimately, though, an important takeaway is that this extreme budget market segment may not be for you, but users who don't need much from a machine are going to get more mileage out of these notebooks. This is a market that used to be served by AMD's dire V-series processor, so the E-350 is going to be a major upgrade. 

And just to sweeten the pot, we'll have Toshiba's 15.6" Brazos model, the C655D, in house soon.

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Reuters – Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter met with Cuban Jews on Monday at the start of a private three-day visit to the island, but he did not discuss with them a U.S. aid contractor jailed for allegedly providing illegal Internet access to Jewish groups.

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Appolicious – I should start by saying that I’ve listened to nearly every Slate Political Gabfest podcast since early 2006. Slate’s weekly Hang Up and Listen sports talk show and its Culture Gabfest are also on my list of favorite programs delivered in any medium.

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Stone tools recently uncovered in a Texas creek valley were found to be 15,500 years old, making them the earliest known artifacts of what may have been the very first Americans.

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Lucas123 writes “Intel today launched a line of consumer solid state drives that replaces the industry’s best selling X25-M line. The new 320 series SSD doubles the top capacity over the X25-M drives to 600GB, doubles sequential write speeds, and drops the price as much as 30% or $100 on some models. Intel also revealed its consumer SSDs have been outselling its enterprise-class SSDs in data centers, so it plans to drop its series of single-level cell NAND flash SSDs and create a new series of SSDs based on multi-level cell NAND for servers and storage arrays. Unlike its last SSD launch, which saw Intel use Marvell’s controller, the company said it stuck with its own processing technology with this series.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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WASHINGTON—Expressing a reaction similar to millions of other dismayed Americans, Newt Gingrich admitted Monday that he too was feeling "pretty bummed out" about the prospect of a Newt Gingrich presidential campaign.

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PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla—In an attempt to move the organization into a new era, the New York Mets announced Friday they will part ways with the New York Mets, releasing all 40 of its roster players and its entire farm system.

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Mashable – SimpleGeo is introducing a cloud-based geospatial database Tuesday, called SimpleGeo Storage. It’s an extension of the company’s à la carte location services platform.

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AP – Jack Dorsey, the Twitter co-founder responsible for the messaging service’s first tweet five years ago, is returning to oversee the company’s products.

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NetScout Systems plans to buy Psytechnics, a small developer of service management software for unified communications, for an undisclosed sum.

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When 3DMark11 launched earlier this year, it seemed like the time was right for an update to PCMark Vantage as well. While we don't have an exact release date or pricing, Futuremark has now confirmed their intention to update the product, but instead of PCMark11 we're getting PCMark 7. The release does say "coming soon", which usually means Futuremark is less than a month or two away from the official launch (but don't hold us to that).

Over the years, we've complained more than a few times about Futuremark's 3DMark scores; It's a long story, but I've posted a comment below for the interested. PCMark on the other hand has been more useful at giving us an easy to run application suite. (If you haven't tried it, SYSmark requires some serious voodoo to get it to run on most modern systems—many of the patches for Vista will break the benchmark, and let's not even get into Windows 7.) The new version looks to provide an updated performance analysis for modern Windows 7 PCs, which may mean Vista is no longer supported. [Update: It should run on Windows Vista, but "missing API support" means the full suite won't run properly, so the final score will be affected.]

We've been a bit critical of PCMark Vantage with regards to inflated SSD results, so it will be interesting to see if PCMark 7 provides a more realistic picture of what an SSD can do for the overall system performance. Yes, we know they're faster, but the problem with Vantage is that even relatively mediocre SSDs did an excellent job at inflating benchmark scores. The PCMark 7 press release states, "Hardware innovations like solid state drives (SSDs), and new form factors such as netbooks and tablets are greatly increasing the range of PC performance available to businesses and home users," so we should see some new metrics addressing such changes at the very least.

System requirements list a DX9 video card as the minimum, but DX10 and DX11 are necessary for some additional tests (i.e. tests that aren't part of the main PCMark score). There are seven test suites with 20 different workloads designed to give various views of system performance. The seven test suites are PCMark, Lightweight, Entertainment, Creativity, Productivity, Computation, and Storage. The Lightweight suite is the one truly new entrant, and Computation could be interesting if there's any support for GPGPU type workloads; the other suites tend to correlate with one or more of the suites in Vantage (Memories, TV and Movies, Music, Communications, Productivity, and HDD—thankfully, the Gaming Suite that tended to be more of a storage benchmark is now MIA).

The full (and somewhat short) press release is below.

New Benchmark Includes 7 Suites for Complete PC Performance Analysis

HELSINKI, FINLAND – MARCH 21, 2011 – Futuremark®, the developer of the world's most popular benchmarking software, announced PCMark® 7 today, a new benchmark offering complete PC performance analysis for Windows 7. PCMark 7 includes 7 separate test suites combining more than 20 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. A release date has not been announced though the official website states that PCMark 7 is coming soon.

"Hardware innovations like solid state drives (SSDs), and new form factors such as netbooks and tablets are greatly increasing the range of PC performance available to businesses and home users," said Jani Joki, Director of PC Products and Services at Futuremark. "With so much choice available, PCMark 7 is an essential and easy to use tool to test and compare PC performance accurately and reliably across a wide range of usage scenarios."

PCMark 7 provides a set of 7 suites for measuring different aspects of PC performance with a high degree of accuracy. Overall system performance is measured by the PCMark Suite. The Lightweight Suite measures the capabilities of entry level systems and mobility platforms unable to run the full PCMark suite. Common use performance is measured by the Entertainment, Creativity and Productivity scenario suites. Component performance is measured by the Computation and Storage hardware suites. The Storage suite is ideal for testing SSDs and external hard drives in addition to the system drive.

For more information please visit http://www.pcmark.com/ or follow Futuremark on Facebook.

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Hugh Pickens writes “Ted Dziuba has an interesting and amusing post on how he made a big mistake when he was offered a choice for his company laptop. His options were a Lenovo Thinkpad or a MacBook Pro, and he picked the Mac, thinking it would be closer to what he was used to. So what’s wrong with using the Mac as a development machine for Milo, a Python application backed by PostgreSQL and Redis? ‘I’ve only poked around a little, but so far I’ve found three separate package managers for OS X: Fink, MacPorts & Homebrew,’ writes Dziuba, adding that when you are older, you will understand the value of automated version dependency satisfaction. Next is that your development platform should be as close as possible to your production platform, but ‘OS X and Linux have different kernels, which means different I/O & process schedulers, different file systems, and a whole host of other implementation details that you’ll write off as having been abstracted away until you have your first serious encounter with “It Works On My Machine.’” Finally, he says, Textmate sucks. ‘Sooner or later, you have to face facts. Man up and learn Emacs.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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TopNews New Zealand

Firefox 4 races out the gate, doubles share in 6 days Computerworld Computerworld – Mozilla's Firefox 4's browser usage share grew over two-and-a-half times in the six days since its March 22 launch, a Web analytics company said today. According to California-based Net Applications, Firefox 4 accounted … Make Firefox 4 work for youBetaNews Benchmark battle: Chrome vs. IE vs. FirefoxCNET Firefox 4 Fallout: Chrome Wins?ConceivablyTech InformationWeek -Mashable -PC Magazine all 104 news articles »

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It's been a busy yet incredibly productive second day at CTIA 2011, and we've been getting hands on with all the latest and greatest from LG, HTC, and Samsung. We've seen a few familiar faces since MWC getting more polished and closer to launch, like the LG Optimus 3D and 2X – turned G2x. We've also gotten hands on with a few more devices that we didn't make it to last time at MWC, including the HTC Flyer and some physical prototypes of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 8.9

Read on for our impressions of all these devices.

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When we reviewed the LG Optimus 2X a while ago, we weren't quite sure what carrier it would wind up on when it came stateside. T-Mobile seemed the most likely (and heavily rumored) suspect, but the picture wasn't entirely clear at that point. Today T-Mobile officially announced at CTIA 2011 that the LG Optimus 2X is coming to the soon-to-be-acquired carrier as the T-Mobile G2x. 

Probably the only non-stock thing about this photo and screenshot is that 4G status indicator up top, which I don't belive is official Android 2.2.x iconography from the AOSP

Superficially it appears there's nothing physically different between the G2x and the Optimus 2X. The front side has the exact same button layout and subtly curved capacitive touchscreen. There's a T-Mobile logo up top instead of LG, but everything else remains the same. The backside appears to be the same earth-tone soft touch material, and likewise the sides retain the silver metallic texture. I didn't think anything needed changing with the Optimus 2X, it's nice to see that nothing is changed with the G2x. 

Unsurprisingly, the G2x also trades 900 / 1900 / 2100 MHz UMTS support for some T-Mobile friendly AWS 1700 / 2100 MHz support, but interestingly keeps the 1900 / 850 MHz around. Maybe that isn't so surprising considering the imminent acquisition of T-Mobile by AT&T, who will likely repurpose nearly all the carrier's AWS 1700 / 2100 MHz spectrum for its LTE buildout, and transition T-Mobile customers to AT&T's existing 850 / 1900 MHz 3G UMTS/HSPA. That band support is according to the current T-Mobile specs page, at least. HSPA+ support is noted, but no specific HSDPA class or speed is given. I think that's a notable improvement from the HSDPA 7.2 kicking around in the Optimus 2X. 

The G2x also differs from the Optimus 2X in that it foregoes the LG skin for a pure Android 2.2.x (Froyo) experience. I didn't find the LG theme nearly as claustrophobia-inducing as say motoblur, but it's definitely nice to see T-Mobile demanding unskinned Android on so many smartphones. The G2x still comes with a number of software preloads, including a trial version of N.O.V.A., full version of NFS Shift HD, T-Mobile TV and Qik video chat, Zinio eReader, and some DTS software audio enhancements. It's still not quite as stock as the Nexus line, but pretty close, and dual-core to boot. The G2x also will be the first smartphone to launch with NVIDIA's Tegra Zone preinstalled. 

Along those lines, I guess it's worth noting that all the other hardware choices remain the same: it's still packing a Tegra 2 AP20H 1 GHz dual-core A9 SoC with GeForce GPU, 8 MP rear camera with LED flash and 1080P video capture, 1.3 MP front facing camera, 800×480 4"  LCD capacitive touchscreen, 8 GB internal NAND, microSD card slot, and 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1. 

The T-Mobile G2x will be available later this spring. Nvidia has a blog post up about the G2x and T-Mobile G-Slate as well. 

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RedEaredSlider writes “As the New York Times’ new paywall went live this afternoon at 2 p.m., discussion of the move has made the natural transition to methods of bypassing it. As expected, a number of loopholes and hacks have appeared. One of the more notorious methods appeared almost instantly. Using a Twitter account named @FreeNYT, an anonymous user aggregated every article the newspaper posted to Twitter. The site caught The Times’ notice and before long, The Times requested that Twitter suspend the account, arguing that it violated its trademark. Another loophole uses four lines of CSS and JavaScript. Canadian developer David Hayes managed to strip the Times’ website of any mention of digital subscriptions in addition to getting past the paywall. The hack was released in the form of NYTClean, a bookmarklet easily added to web browsers.”
It’s likely that the paywall is deliberately porous; as paywalls go, it’s a relatively unrestrictive one. Readers referred from search or other sites are unlikely to notice a difference. Workarounds at least keep readers on their site.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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AP – The New York Times began charging Monday for full access to its website and mobile services.

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Reuters – A pair of artist managers have filed a lawsuit seeking royalties from the hit Justin Bieber song “One Less Lonely Girl.”

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NEW YORK—In a move that media executives, economic forecasters, and business analysts alike are calling "extremely bold," NYTimes.com put into place a groundbreaking new business model today in which the news website will charge people money t…

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CLAYTON, MO—According to easygoing voices inside the head of local man Tom Kepler, 39, the husband and father of three should maybe consider murdering his whole family when he has a minute, if it isn’t too much trouble.

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