Roxanne Briean

No more IPv4 addresses for North America, It’s Time for IPv6

September 25, 2015 By Roxanne Briean Leave a Comment

The time has come. North America has finally exhausted their IPv4 addresses. If you’re not aware what this entails, it means that the numbering system which the Internet is based on, sort-of, is running out of numbers allocated for IPv4.

We are on the brink of meeting the new era of networking.

ARIN, which is the American Registry for Internet Numbers, is a non-profit NGO that distributes these addresses for the NA region. They have announced on the 24th of September that it has run out of numbers. Yesterday, the organization assigned their last addresses.

This comes after years of warnings from ARIN and other related companies. The time has come to see who has listened to them. Carriers, enterprises and the majority of the tech industry will need to quickly adopt the next-in-line protocol – IPv6.

In 1981, IPv4 was brought to life with 4.3 billion unique addresses. In 1999 IPv6 was introduced and ARIN notes that this protocol has enough addresses to last Internet users for generations to come.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t get hold of an IPv4 address. If somebody relinquishes his, or hers, authority over an IPv4 address, you’ll be able to take the returned address for yourself. But the waiting list is pretty huge. It has been set up at the beginning of 2015.

Furthermore, if IANA, which is the global Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, gives North America more IPv4 addresses, users will be able to request one. Yet again, firstly you’ll have to wait in line.

What's the difference between IPv4 addresses and iPv6 addresses?

The difference between IPv4 addresses and IPv6 addresses, thanks to ARIN.

If you aren’t keen on waiting, you can take to the transfer-market. There are quite a few users who want to make a quick buck out of this situation. Currently, addresses are going for around $10 to $12 each. Yet, we expect the price for an address to go up once people find out they can’t request one from ARIN.

Quite the tech-shock considering that other Regional Internet Registries across the world, simply called RIRs, have announced that they are also depleting their existing pool of IPv4 addresses at a fairly alarming rate. Until the end of 2015, we might not have any IPv4 addresses available.

The change from IPv4 to IPv6 will definitely cause a huge ruckus for different types of organizations across the planet. The thing is, some companies are waiting for consumers to start using IPv6 so they can also migrate to the new protocol.

It’s basically a chicken-and-egg problem.

However, we have to thank Google and Facebook. In the past couple of years, both companies have gone out of their way to make IPv6 more common. With their continued help, the Internet world won’t reach Bedlam level anytime soon.

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Google Glass Team Re-Branded as Project Aura, Not Ara

September 17, 2015 By Roxanne Briean Leave a Comment

Project Aura is Google’s new Glass team name. This time around Google is looking mostly at business rather than focusing on consumers.

The Project Aura team has been hiring straight from Amazon’s Lab126. Software developers, engineers and even project managers are being swooped over to Google’s side – It is unknown at the moment if there were cookies involved or not.

Regardless, Google capitalized on Amazon’s phase 1 of laying off staff members. Due to their Fire smartphone failure, Amazon fired more than a dozen engineers.

Ivy Ross will be in charge of Project Aura. However, she still reports to Google’s head of connected-home business Nest Tony Fadell. There hasn’t been any significant change in the hierarchy that comprises the Glass team. Ross previously ran the project.

While Project Aura is working hard on the new iteration of the Glass, the team is also meddling with other kinds of wearable technology. This is according to job descriptions found on LinkedIn.

One software development manager that worked on Lab126, and later on joined Project Aura in August of 2015, described the project simply as Glass and Beyond. He also noted on his LinkedIn profile that the team is developing cool wearables.

Dimitry Svetlov, the manager in this case, didn’t quickly reply to a message seeking answers on LinkedIn, the Wall Street Journal adds.

Unfortunately for Google, their first try at selling the Glass failed, miserably. Partly do to the whole NSA scandal and because it featured a more than hefty price. Their first iteration of Glass retailed at $1,500.

People across the US were seeing Google’s Glass as a devilish thing that someone can use to record them in public places without nobody noticing.

Google couldn’t handle the backlash. They stopped selling the Glass in January and the company’s execs confirmed that their device was clearly not ready for consumers.

Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman at Google, noted earlier this year that the big G won’t give up trying to develop and market the Glass because they see this kind of technology as having a huge potential.

It’s a new market that doesn’t yet have a standard of quality imposed.

In the last couple of months, Google has been spreading Glass 2.0 to select few companies in the energy, health care and manufacturing industries.

Project Aura won’t have a consumer release this year, and rumors have it that they probably won’t have it ready even for 2016. What we do know is that it’s going to be released sometimes in the near future.

Will you give it another go when the time comes? Do you think people will forever hate the Glass?

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Apple TV Apps – Plex and VLC Incoming

September 15, 2015 By Roxanne Briean Leave a Comment

The next gen Apple TV was announced last week. It has been redesigned to better suit its target demographic. It has an overhauled Siri, which comes with a new search function and also its very own App Store.

Apple CEO Tim Cook noted, during the announcement, that the future of television is apps. Therefore, expect a plethora of Apple TV apps in the near future.

This also means that we’ll witness a ton more new apps that were not available for the earlier versions of Apple’s TV. The first to see the light on day on Apple’s TV will be Plex and VLC.

Jean-Baptiste Kemp, one of the lead developers of VLC, unveils that video playback is now possible. He has been also reported of saying that Plex, who he co-founded, will be available on Apple’s new platform. It’s only a time of evaluating their position and which path it’s best to take Plex on.

This isn’t shocking news, but still it’s important, not only for the Cupertino-based company. With these new Apple TV apps, users will have the possibility to stream local content to their box-of-wonders using different devices. This frees up the dependency of using Apple’s pre-installed online streaming services.

Plex will be available on Apple TV soon, founders note.

This is relevant in countries like India and any other place where Netflix’s presence is absent. Apple’s TV, or Amazon’s Fire TV, turns from a highly-appreciated device into a literally useless box in 5 seconds flat.

These Apple TV apps aren’t revolutionary. That’s not the case. They have been available for the majority of Android-enabled set-top-boxes. In India they are witnessing a surge of popularity.

An Android set-top box manufacturer reports that the most used app on his product is YouTube. Following in second, third and fourth place are Plex, XMBC and VLC.

Their target demo for India is going to be different than what Apple has been focusing on in Europe or the US. Yet, it’s a great sign that the big A is starting to focus on markets like China and India.

Huawei and Xiaomi have been relentlessly trying to push their products there and they have achieved brand recognition, among other things.

Huawei is also a big player in Europe. Their smartphones product-line is starting to compete with the likes of Apple and Samsung. It’s just a matter of time until Huawei has the perfect opportunity to go deeper into the set-top box market in Europe and US.

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Find Out How Much Did The Witcher 3 Cost to Make

September 13, 2015 By Roxanne Briean Leave a Comment

Art by Jakub Różalski

How much did The Witcher 3 cost to make? This question has plagued our thoughts ever since we first heard that it was going to feature more than 200 hours of playtime.

The Polish company announced yesterday how much money they actually spent for the beloved open-world RPG – The Witcher 3 The Wild Hunt.

An English translation was published today. CEO Adam Kicinski notes that the budget for The Witcher 3, including marketing and development costs, was 306 million złoty. That is $81 million USD.

Star Wars The Old Republic, an MMO, had a budget of $200 million to develop, and Rockstar Game’s GTA V cost $265 million, including marketing, rumors have it. Considering things, The Witcher 3 is a hit. For their latest financial period, the company made a net profit of 236 million złoty, which translates to $62.5 million USD.

CD Projekt Red has announced that The Witcher 3 was a good investment.

During the presentation, CEO Kicinski notes that CD Projekt Red had to conduct 40 different marketing campaigns for the Witcher 3. He continue to describe them as a frustrating and daunting task. He adds that besides region-specific campaigns, a global marketing campaign accompanied them.

View post on imgur.com

CD Projekt Red unveiled how much time it took for their team of professionals to efficiently develop the game. It took them 3.5 years, 240 in-house staff members that worked on the title, and about 1,500 people across the world that worked on production.

The Witcher 3 was localized in 15 different languages, with seven of them featuring full voice acting. 500 voice actors have worked on the game for its various language versions.

The bottom line is, Kicinski and the whole team at CD Projekt Red is more than happy with their latest Witcher title. It sold over 6 million copies in its first six weeks.

Screenshot of Kaer Morhen

They’ve added countless free DLCs and a the sought after New Game+. On the 13th of October 2015, CD Projekt Red will be launching their first paid DLC. It’s called Hearts of Stone and it won’t be the companies last expansion.

However, don’t expect a Witcher 4 anytime soon. CD Projekt Red wants to take a breather after this. In its stead, the company will focus on a brand new title – Cyberpunk 2077.

You can watch the whole CD Projekt Red presentation down below.

I haven’t finished it yet. I’ve spent more than 200 hours in-game but I’ve just breached Skellige. It’s fascinating how many activities you have. I’ve been gazing at the marvelous world and forgetting to actually play the main story.

If you have any fun stories about Geralt of Rivia’s night-time escapades in Novigrad, or his adventures in Skellige, tell us in the comments section down below.

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The Next Gen Apple TV Will Be Game-Changing

September 3, 2015 By Roxanne Briean Leave a Comment

On the 9th of September, on a Wednesday, Apple will most definitely unveil their next gen Apple TV.

It will feature more powerful components and a new touchpad-friendly remote.

However, the new remote will be one of the main highlights. The touchpad input greatly improves its usability and the built-in motion sensors will make it function as a game controller.

Software-wise, the next gen Apple TV will be packed-full with features. It will have its very own App Store and, of course, Siri will be fully integrated. The beloved digital assistant will support hardcore voice control, sources add.

Reports note that the next gen Apple TV will come with a feature that old Apple TV users have been craving for years.

I’m talking about universal search.

Think of Popcorn Time, but legal. You can search for a TV series or a movie and results will displayed from various sources.

Sources close to Apple note that this will be a game-changing addition. The end-user is the one to profit out of this. We will have the possibility of choosing from a wide variety of streaming video services – why should I pay $10 for Breaking Bad when I can get it at $5?

Be sure that Apple’s iTunes Store will be displayed each and every single time.

But a search function is pretty useless without filters. The Apple TV’s universal search will allow users to search for directors and actors, among other things.

All these things can be done via Siri.

Yet, not only Siri resides at core of this new functionality. In 2013, Apple acquired a video discovery startup named Matcha.

The Proactive search feature found in iOS 9, along with Matcha, is rumoured to also be part of the stew, 9to5Mac reports.

The universal search feature is going to be a cornerstone for Apple’s TV, a device that suffered immensely from its text-based capability. This may very well transpose the next gen Apple TV as a reliable entry-level video-streaming-oriented device.

9to5Mac also reports that the price of the new Apple TV will start at $149. In the near future, Apple will sell internet TV service subs. The faster they make this happen, the more households will be enticed to install an Apple TV.

Of course, Apple declined to comment on these rumors. Go figure.

We’ll have to wait until the 9th of September for the official announcement.

We are more than curious to see what Apple’s TV main competitors, Amazon Fire TV and Roku, have in store for us. If they don’t act fast, they might just lose the head-start they have.

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Has Google Rigged Search Results in India?

August 31, 2015 By Roxanne Briean Leave a Comment

The CCI, which is the Competition Commission of India, is investigating the big G. They think Google rigged search results in India. If found guilty, Google might be fined 10 percent of the company’s income. That’s a whooping $1.4 billion.

The CCI has received complaints from more than 30 companies around the world. Facebook, Flipkart, Hungama Digital, MakeMyTrip and Nokia’s maps division are among the companies who have told on Google.

The main issue here is that Google has been gaming search results to display their own content and services more obviously, regardless of the fact that other sources have a higher hit rate.

The report filed by CCI notes also notes that sponsored links that are shown in results show a direct correlation with the amount of money an individual, or a company, spends on adverts with sneaky-Google. Flipkart, an ecommerce portal, states that they are a victim in this case.

Google needs to respond until the 10th of September. The company has to present itself in front of a seven member commission on the 17th, a week later. The commission is headed by Chairman Ashok Chawla.

Can we say that Google rigged search results for certain? Welp, we can’t say for sure. However, what we can say is that Google is acting more mischievous than it normally does. A few months ago, in March, the CCI fined Google with $166,000 for failing to cooperate.

More so, just last week they rejected claims that they are rigging search results in Europe. Google faces the exact same charges on the EU front.

We expect a decision being made until the end of the year. If Google is found guilty, they can be fined up to $6.7 billion, or a 10 percent payment of its annual revenue.

If this goes south for G, the decision will most likely be challenged at the Supreme Court. If they still won’t win, the CCI commission will ask the company to make major changes regarding the way they do business.

This is the first time a case goes globally where an antitrust body is formed and rises against Google.

According to Ms. Vestager, who is a Danish politician, Google is also being investigated by the European Union regarding their dominance over its Android OS.

Kent Walker denied these accusations last Thursday via a blog-post. Kent added that Google hasn’t reduced online competition at all, in fact, the company has sent approximately 20 billion referrals to various Internet companies across Europe over the past 10 years. This lead to a 227 percent increase in traffic for the websites targeted.

We’ll see how our search-engine Lord and Savior gets out of this one. What do you think? Is Google knowingly profiting from their stance of top-dog?

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What’s the Difference Between Apple Pay and Samsung Pay?

August 20, 2015 By Roxanne Briean Leave a Comment

Samsung Pay has just been launched in South Korea – it’s a mobile wallet service.

Samsung joins its competitor Apple, which released its proprietary software last year, in trying to convince people to use their smartphones, rather than the traditional plastic card, when they make in-store purchases.

Samsung believes that it has the upper-hand because their tech works with a larger number of payment terminals already present in stores.

In reality, it’s unknown if this trend will start to gain popularity. It has already garnered a small cult following, but what about other non-geeky members of the public spectrum?

The two tech giants, Apple and Samsung are offering full support so the trend kickstarts itself and relinquishes our bulky wallet, or handbag.

A couple of questions are most certain on everyone’s mind – What is Apple, and Samsung Pay? What’s the difference between them?

Basically, this new form of payment replaces your credit card. The huge difference is that Samsung Pay uses a tokenisation system, and Apple doesn’t.

Samsung Pay is only available in South Korea, for the moment being. The company will expand to the States on the 28th of September. The Seoul-based tech firm has plans to further expand into UK, Spain, and China sometime in the near-future. Rumors have it that by the end of 2016, Samsung Pay will be available in the recently mentioned countries.

This represents a more aggressive rollout strategy on behalf of Samsung. Apple’s Pay service has limited itself to the US and UK, with no future plans of expanding its territory.

Samsung Pay will only work on the company’s latest flag-ship smartphones.

Galaxy Note 5
Galaxy S6 Edge plus
Galaxy S6 Edge
Galaxy S6

Those who provide your credit card will have to get involved in this scheme.

How to Use Samsung Pay

All you need to do to use Samsung Pay is to swipe from up to bottom on your smartphone’s/tablet’s face and the app will appear.

Afterwards, you’ll have to choose your credit card from a list. You can add as many as you like. The device will then scan your fingerprint, and you’ll be required to provide the Pin code.

Within 15 seconds of doing this, provide the device to the payment terminal so the transaction can be completed.

Terminals that use tap-and-go through NFC are compatible with Samsung Pay.

How safe is Samsung Pay

Pretty safe. It doesn’t use a static PAN – primary account number; for transactions. In its stead, it uses a tokenissation system to protect against the threat of hackers copying the coded details on a users magnetic stripe.

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Melbourne Is Now The Capital Of Virtual Reality Games

August 17, 2015 By Roxanne Briean Leave a Comment

Buckle up, virtual reality games are gathering speed and are getting ready to conquer the world. The latest update is the new “free roam” gaming center that just opened in Melbourne, Australia. Called Zero Latency, it already has players hooked and lining up to try it out.

The 4,300 square foot warehouse is equipped with 129 PlayStation Eye cameras. Users have to wear a set of virtual reality head mounted displays, Oculus Rift DK2 as well as a backpack that contains an Alienware Alpha PC, powering the Oculus Rift. As science fiction as this sounds, gamers’ reaction didn’t delay to praise Zero Latency and compare it to “being in a video game”.

Once connected to everything, the players are free to roam in the massive warehouse. As its name suggests, the game was designed to create zero latency, which translates into what the users see in virtual reality games matches up with what they’re doing in real life. By setting such high expectations, it’s no wonder the virtual reality games are already fully booked for the first weeks after opening.

Does this mean we can say good bye to laser tag and paintball? While these kind of gaming centers are only budding here and there, I think it’s safe to say they’re here to stay. If you’re from Melbourne or plan to visit, you and five friends can play Zero Latency for one hour and pay around $65 each.

The game’s description presents it as a totally immersing experience. The creators encourage you to imagine a game that doesn’t feel like a game at all. You control everything with your body in a place where digital meets real life. With each of your movements, the game moves with you. After working on the facility for three years, the makers of the virtual reality games guarantee an experience like no other.

Virtual reality games are not the result of a single man’s work, and they surely didn’t have a linear development throughout the years. With continuous development from the 60s till nowadays, 3D pictures have certainly come a long way.

The simplest way to grasp virtual reality games is to think about them as a three dimensional world generated by a computer. They are founded on concepts like immersion, dealing with data depth and breadth, and latency, the lag time between a user’s change of perspective and the entry of another perspective.

Exactly how much virtual reality will be taking over our lives remains to be seen. While it’s still in its incipient days and it seems limited to games and videos, we’re all eager to take it for a spin and see what it can do.

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Bears Get Stressed Out by Drones, Researchers Say

August 15, 2015 By Roxanne Briean Leave a Comment

Bears Get Stressed Out by Drones, Researchers at University of Minnesota say.

Led by Mark Ditmer, researches have attempted to answer the question found in the study published by Current Biology, which notes that the rising usage of drones we are experiencing can cause irreversible stress on wildlife.

One might say that this news isn’t bearable at all – pun intended.

To be absolutely clear from the get-go, this isn’t an in-depth research. Mark Ditmer, along with his group, frolicked around with a rather small quadcopter around four American black bears. All of the bears were equipped with a heart tracker, and a GPS tracking collar.

Mark and his crew flew-over them 17 times, and only once a bear slightly changed his behavior when he acknowledged the drone’s presence.

But on every occasion, researchers noted a spike in heart rate – one case noted an increase to 123 bpm, and another high bpm for a bear that was supposed to hibernate.

Bears returned to their usual mood after Mark and his drone left. The group didn’t notice any out of the ordinary behavioral change, but they did observe physiological responses.

However, the study didn’t answer the question aimed by the Current Biology study. Instead, they noted that more research should be done on how much of an impact do UAV flights have on wildlife, given the huge surge of users across the world that adopt this new kind of hobby.

The fact that wildlife is stressed-out when encountering low-altitude flights by helicopters, or any other aircraft is already known in the science community, but not regarding drones.

In 2014, paired with results Mark and his team brought-up, the US National Park Service banned the use of UAVs withing the park’s territory, but there are still some drone enthusiasts that don’t abide be these rules.

Park Rangers note that because bears get stressed out by drones, they could react in unforeseen ways, even trying to hunt, and attack the UAV. Considering that quadcopters have an average range of 330 feet, this could be incredibly dangerous to people visiting the park.

Bears are borderline awesome, and they are borderline dangerous. Nobody wants to upset an already pissed-off 800 pound bloodthirsty bear.

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Intel backs Lenovo’s ThinkPad P50, and P70 with Skylake

August 11, 2015 By Roxanne Briean Leave a Comment

Lenovo unveiles ThinkPad P50, and P70 workstations laptops, and they surely aren’t your run of the mill mobile machines. Lenovo combines Skylake, Intel’s A-class Xeon processors, for the first time in their history, with 64 GB of RAM, 1 TB of SDD storage, and not one, but two USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports.

Lenovo notes that their ThinkPad P50, and P70 workstations are the only mobile machines that come with this much RAM.

A first for Intel is the fact that they are incorporating their Xeon processors into a mobile machine. Skylake, which uses the exact same 14 nm processes as its older sibling, the Broadwell product-line, features a much improved architecture, Intel notes.

The ThinkPad P50, and P70 are, simply put, behemoths of the industry, and they come as a refreshing statement that users don’t always look for the slimmest, or the most lightweight laptop. Not everyone wants to chomp on performance, just so the laptop can easily fit in that LV bag.

The 15.6-inch ThinkPad P50 weighs 5.6 pounds, and the 17-inch ThinkPad P70 stands at 7.6 pounds. Both of them clearly outweigh the 2 pound 12-inch MacBook.

They are meatier, they are driven by the fact that users require performance, not shallow machines to showcase in a Starbucks on the weekends. These ThinkPads are aimed to achieve a hardcore productivity status.

The ThinkPad P50 will retail at $1,599, while the ThinkPad P70 will be sold at $1,999. Buyers will have the option of choosing their preferred OS from a list comprised of Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7, and Ubuntu. Customers will also have the option of implementing a touch display, or a 4K display – at additional cost, of course.

Lenovo’s ThinkPad-product line will be available for purchase in Q4 of this year. The ThinkPad P70 will be equipped with a forgotten feature for most desktop users – it will come packed with a DVD-RW drive.

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How to Use Samsung Pay

How safe is Samsung Pay

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