China Busts Major Hacking Site

China took down their country’s largest hacker training site, Black Hawk Safety Net. It’s illegal to distribute tools that can be used for malicious Internet attacks. Doing so is considered “hacker training” and the site made a lot of money with this idea, generating around $1 million in income and had a healthy base of 12,000 subscribers and an additional 170,000 free members. Three people were arrested and the site was taken down along with 1.7 million yuan were seized in assets including cash, nine servers, five computers and a car.

It’s interesting to see China acting on it’s own criminal-law clause it just introduced last year that made distributing of online attack programs an illegal act. What’s more interesting is the large audience and amount of followers to the site in respect to it’s actual physical footprint. Literally, a handful of people and a handful of servers was enough to create a large enough entity that made the Chinese government get serious and come busting down the door.

The Apple iPad

Of course the biggest news today is the unveiling of Apple’s iPad. It’s all over the web news outlets and will no doubt be hitting the even new broadcasts as well.

A little bit:

For months now, many have speculated what the mythical Apple iTablet would be like. Well, for one, it’s the iPad. And it’s no longer a myth because the news hit today. 9.7 inches of multitouch screen in a slab of computing power at 0.5 in. thick and 1.5 lbs. Powering the little guy is a 1GHz Apple A4 chip, designed by their in-house chip manufacturer PA Semi. The screen comes at you in nice 1024 x 768 resolution for your viewing enjoyment. And viewing you will be doing as one bit of information I found extreme, 10 hours of video watching. 10 hours! Throw in 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1+ EDR, accelerometer and a compass.

It’s going to be available in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB versions, and also come in 3G and non-3G flavors. It’ll run nearly every single current iPhone app either in the center of the screen or using software called pixel-doubling. Future apps will run at native resolution. Speaking of apps, the iPad comes with a slew of desktop-sized applications, so  for example, dinky little calendar and email apps from the iPhone are large and offer a new interface, along with YouTube playing it’s own HD content. And Safari runs it’s gamut here as it can load webpages in their full-sized glory.

I say:

It all boils down to being a large iPod Touch. A really big, beautiful iPod Touch. One I would love to have. But that’s because I love Tech and there’s no doubt Apple makes quality products. But what about other people? This would truly be a competitor in the mid-to-high range market of netbooks. It strikes where netbooks have been playing to that niche market: a small-screened, lightweight computer capable of surfing the web, playing music and videos, word process and email, and doing it with a long battery life. It also trudges into the ebook category with it’s new ebook store, iBooks. Not only does it pit itself against the Kindle, but it supports ePub, a widely supported format.

I have an iPhone already and nearly everything the iPad will do, my iPhone already does. In fact, with the exception of making cellular phone calls, I would probably use the iPad at home the exact same way I use my iPhone at home. Listening to podcasts in bed, surfing the web from my sofa in the living room, typing up emails to friends while preparing food in the kitchen. Ok, maybe not that last one. But, I can see myself using it nearly the same way and for most people, it’ll be just like that. Totally embalmed into your lives because now, it’s that iPod that can do much, much more. It’ll be shipping in 60 days without 3G and 90 days for the 3G model. I want one, today.

Text by Truck and Bus drivers Banned

Texting while driving is indeed dangerous, even more dangerous than making a phone call. Not only would your hand(s) be busy with a device, now your eyes are equally as busy to see what you’ve typed and to read the response. It’s been noticed by the government and various states have pass legislation banning texting while driving. A bill is currently being considered that would ban texting while driving in nearly all states. For now, at least larger vehicle drivers will be restricted from this dangerous activity.

The Department of Transportation will enforce new rules that will not allow commercial truckers and bus drivers to send text messages while try are driving. To discourage the drivers, the DOT is imposing a fine of up to $2,750 that can count as civil or a criminal fine. This is the first step they are taking towards reducing distractions and increasing safety. A driver texting can have their eyes away from the road for up to 5 seconds, allow enough time for the vehicle to traverse the span of a football field in that time if it’s traveling at regular freeway speeds. That’s a long distance and extremely dangerous.

I certainly do not text while driving, not only is it dangerous but it literally is almost impossible to do with an iPhone while driving. And if I desperately need to take a phone call, I will only do it if and only if I have a Bluetooth headset on. Even then, I try to limit the duration of the call so I can go back to focusing on the road. Many a time have I seen another driver playing with their phone, no doubt texting or something, while they sped along on the freeway at ridiculous speeds. People, please drive safely, there are some dangerous drivers out there.

Kingtons ups to 512GB SSD

Kingston is now offering a solid state drive in it’s SSDNow V+ line up to 512GB in capacity. Read speeds up to 230MB/sec and write speeds of 180MB/sec are screaming fast. They’re also available in 256GB, 128GB, and 64GB versions as well. The drives support TRIM and will help in maintaining speed and performance throughout their lifespan. The 512GB model will go for as high as $1968 and the 64GB model can be had for $268.

I’m really interested in SSDs and would love to put one into my main machine. With those blazing read speeds, it would make for a wicked OS/boot drive. The only problems holding me back were the prices and relatively love capacity. My Windows 7 OS partition at the moment is at 45GBs and I’m constantly adding new software. I know some people who have OS drives running at nearly 100GBs. We have a lot of software nowadays and space for a OS boot drive needs to be larger. A 30GB SSD is certainly affordable, but it’s too small. 60+GB models are a little more realistic, but prices skyrocket into the $200+ range. It’s great that capacity has increased, the gap in platter drives versus SSD  capacity just got that much smaller, but prices are a whole other story. For now, it looks like sticking to platter drives is a much better financial tradeoff. I await the day where I can go and pick up an SSD for about $100 and install my OS and my plethora of software onto it.

Oregon to be home of new Facebook data center

Facebook is still growing rapidly with their 350 million users worldwide. It’s come to the point where they are now building their own data center Oregon. In the past, Facebook has shared data centers and taken over old ones, this will be the first time they’re building one from the ground up. It’s going to be a “green” data center and try to save as much energy as possible.

Evaporative cooling systems evaporate water to cool the incoming air instead of using a chiller system that requires more energy. This allows colder air from the outside to be brought into the building and only requires the system to be running 60-70% of the year. During the really cold months, heat from the computer systems will be saved and used to heat up office space. That’s something we wouldn’t really think about. Of course, the entire data center will run on Uninterruptible Power Supplies, albeit using some proprietary form.

One of the main reasons Facebook chose Oregon is because of Prineville’s enterprise zones’ tax break. Facebook is set to receive $2.8 million in the form of a tax break every year. Definitely makes this location worthwhile.

HTML 5 gives online videos without flash

HTML 5 is the next revision of HTML and it’s going to take the internet world by storm. One of the biggest selling points is that it will have built-in support for video playback, namely that which is encoded h.264

This aims to go alongside existing solutions such as Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight. Major video sites such as YouTube use these plugins to playback their videos. YouTube is now offering some videos without the need of Flash. However, only browsers currently support HTML5, such as Chrome and Safari.

This is the first step to approaching internet videos without the need for flash. It may make browsers run faster in the future.

Apple Event Jan. 27th

And we’re back! After quite the hiatus (unexpectedly, so) I’m bringing back TechOnce posts! And to restart the jumps, what better way than to bring news of Apple’s latest event!

Apple has an event planned for Jan. 27th at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. That’s one week from now. News that Apple had booked the center has been circulating for weeks now along with many rumors of what may be unveiled at the event. The biggest one of them all is the rumored iTablet, a tablet computing device. Also on the cutting board is iPhone OS 4.0 and updated hardware. Rounding out the bout will be iLife ’10. Nothing has been confirmed for this event, but the graphic above suggests it’s something new coming from the Cupertino giant.

I’m not an Apple hater nor am I a fanboy, but this event is definitely interesting. Apple knows how to build hype and this event is no exception, the last few weeks time has had the ‘nets buzzing like crazy. As I have an iPhone and adore it, I’m excited over what developments may come forth for it’s future product line. I’m also interested in what the iTablet may be like, but I know I can’t afford it. Oh well, a man can dream. Only bad part is I have class at 9:30 next week, literally right before the 10AM starting time of the event.

Burj Dubai finally opens

Today, the Burj Dubai is finally open to the world. It is now the tallest building, both in structure and in inhabitation. At over 800m in height, it’s taller than the previous world record, the Taipei 101 in Taiwan. To put it into perspective for some of us, the Burj Dubai is nearly twice the height of the Empire State Building (the ESB is 381m at the roof and 443m at the tip of the antenna). The Burj Dubai has been designed to withstand high wind speeds (up to 150kph) at such heights and the base is located near a fault line to boot. It’s been reported that the building has been hit with lightning twice already and it’s also survived an earthquake.

This truly is an impressive building. I’m been following up on this since construction began in 2004. Planned during a boom and finished in a crash, the building definitely has a tough start, but it’s future seems promising. Most, if not all, of the property space inside the Burj Dubai has been sold. It’s tenants will be comprised of both business and residential, housing restaurants and corporate suites to hotels and homes. It’s incredible and I hope that one day, I’ll be able to visit such an architectural achievement.

Holiday break

Hey there, I forgot to mention that the holidays are here, obviously. As such, there won’t be any TechOnce posts until the Monday after Christmas, at the earliest. Check then!

Obama wants more broadband

Today, President Obama released plans to increase American’s access to broadband internet. Over the 75 days, $7.2 billion dollars will be allocated to bringing broadband internet access to many of the unserved or undeserved U.S. communities. Millions of dollars are already being assigned to projects that will build, connect, and improve upon connections that communities will benefit from. They claim that broadband propels innovation.

It’s amazing and definitely something I never thought I’d see, the President spending a substantial sum of money to better the Internet. However, if bulking up access to the ‘Net helps create jobs, such as those whom install the fiber optics or those who will run maintenance, I’m all for it. Hopefully, in the near future, the mass availability of Internet access will decrease the cost of service and increase the quality and speed.