Jeremy Clarkson certainly has a way with words, and when he applies his wit to a topic the result is quite often an enjoyable reading experience. Clarkson has plied his wit upon the subject of Volkswagen’s redesigned 2012 Beetle. It’s no secret that Jeremy and his Top Gear cohorts are not fans of the people’s car. Perhaps Volkswagen can change his mind with the newest iteration of its iconic automobile? Nope. In fact, his choice of descriptive words gets a little blue towards the end of the piece. Sample:
“Launching a modern-day incarnation that has sporty credentials is like launching a modern-day incarnation of the Mona Lisa who’s crapping herself laughing.”
Hop over to the Top Gear website to read Mr. Clarkson’s musings on the reborn icon.
These two months looks like it’s been a nightmare for those who own an internet service, first it was Sony PlayStation, then it was Sony again but a different division, let’s not mention our local government websites, and now, it’s Sega’s turn to get its Sega Pass, the company’s web portal, hacked. Now, the attackers may not be the same group of people, but the trend on the internet of late seems to be hacking. Sega was reported to have leaked almost 1.3 million user information including usernames, real names, birth dates, passwords, email addresses and well, pretty much everything including credit/debit card details.
While Sega is keeping Pass offline while the team is probably hard at work right this moment to fix the problem, if you have an account, you’d better change your passwords used on other internet services, especially if your bank account share the same password. I wonder whose turn it will be next; if this is going to keep itself up, Nintendo, EA, Ubisoft, and Microsoft better watch their back.
It’s time to queue up and sell your kidney again, if you have any left that is. The guys from Computerbase.de managed to score some details regarding Intel’s upcoming 710 series SSD codename Lyndonville and 720 series SSD code name Ramsdale. Although, we already wrote about Lyndonville and Ramsdale SSDs, Computerbase.de managed to score some details regarding the actual performance and specs of these two SSD series.
The 710 series, also known as the Lyndonville will be based on 25nm HET MLC NAND flash chips with 64MB of DRAM cache. It will be available in 100, 200 and 300GB capacities and will offer transfer speeds of up to 270MB/s for read and 210MB/s for write. The IOPS performance is set at 36,000 IOPS and 2,400 IOPS for 4K random read and write. It will feature AES-128 encryption and will be packed in a 2.5-inch form factor.
The more interesting part is the Ramsdale 720 series that will be available in 200 and 400GB capacities. This one is based on 34nm SLC NAND flash chips with addition of 512MB DRAM cache. As you probably already know, Ramsdale uses PCI-Express interface and according to the specs it will offer read and write performance of up ot 2200MB/s and 1800MB/s. The 4K IOPS performance is set at 180,000 for random read and 56,000 for random write.
According to rumours, the 710 sereis should enter mass production in July while the Ramsdale 720 series should be ready sometimes later in Q3. Unfortunately, there are no details regarding the pricing of these models but judging by the specs you can expect the 720 series to cost an arm, leg and probably a good kidney.
A new Call of Duty: Black Ops map pack is on the way, offering four new multiplayer maps and a new zombie survival map set in Shangri-La. The video above takes us through some of the increasingly mad settings Treyarch have chosen for the new levels, including one set in Area 51, and another on a golf course. If snipers have a heaven, it looks like that wide open fairway. The map pack is hitting the Xbox on June 28, and is set to come to PC shortly afterwards.
Lulzsec and Anonymous have just declared full open war against all governments, banks and big corporations in the world. They are calling all hackers in the world to unite. Their objective is to fully expose all corruption and dark secrets:
Salutations Lulz Lizards,
As we’re aware, the government and whitehat security terrorists across the world continue to dominate and control our Internet ocean. Sitting pretty on cargo bays full of corrupt booty, they think it’s acceptable to condition and enslave all vessels in sight. Our Lulz Lizard battle fleet is now declaring immediate and unremitting war on the freedom-snatching moderators of 2011.
Welcome to Operation Anti-Security (#AntiSec) – we encourage any vessel, large or small, to open fire on any government or agency that crosses their path. We fully endorse the flaunting of the word “AntiSec” on any government website defacement or physical graffiti art. We encourage you to spread the word of AntiSec far and wide, for it will be remembered. To increase efforts, we are now teaming up with the Anonymous collective and all affiliated battleships.
Whether you’re sailing with us or against us, whether you hold past grudges or a burning desire to sink our lone ship, we invite you to join the rebellion. Together we can defend ourselves so that our privacy is not overrun by profiteering gluttons. Your hat can be white, gray or black, your skin and race are not important. If you’re aware of the corruption, expose it now, in the name of Anti-Security.
Top priority is to steal and leak any classified government information, including email spools and documentation. Prime targets are banks and other high-ranking establishments. If they try to censor our progress, we will obliterate the censor with cannonfire anointed with lizard blood.
It’s now or never. Come aboard, we’re expecting you…
History begins today.
Lulz Security
How will this end up? Thus far plenty of big shot gaming developer companies have fallen victim to LulzSec, while Anonymous has been heavily participating in “freedom of speech” and “human right” causes. But how will this actually change the world?
Opening the vaults of dark secrets and exposing corruption everywhere would certainly help towards that goal: Real change. Perhaps this is just the beginning of a quiet and angry revolution that will make the world a better place. Maybe making that information public will be instrumental to wake everyone up.
That said, exposing emails and private information from normal people or sinking ships that are neutral in this battle will not help towards that cause. That’s not good and will not help anyone but those who they declare their enemies.
Minecraft, Eve Online, League of Legends, and The Escapist are the most recent high-profile games industry targets to get hit by hackers. All three of the sites went down at some point yesterday. At the time of writing, all are back online.
LulzSec has claimed responsibility for the attacks. The hacking group started taking requests for targets via Twitter, but the exact criteria for the choices are unclear.
Aside from the game devs and website, LulSec also claim to have targeted IT security company Finfisher saying “apparently they sell monitoring software to the government or some shit like that.” The group claim to have received over 3500 calls and over 1500 voicemails pointing out potential victims. They proclaimed yesterday TitanicTakeoverTuesday.
The developers and website join Codemasters, Epic, Bethesda, Nintendo, Square Enix and Sony on the list of industry figureheads to get hacked this year.
LulzSec’s most recent tweet implies that the group are taking a break from the criminal activity, saying: “The Lulz Boat must sail off and organise itself.”
Are you having a lol with LulzSec, or are they just making you sad? PC gamers got to play fewer games than usual last night – that’s not cool.
Some gaming enthusiasts prefer gaming laptops with spray-painted red dragons and speaker grilles that look like belt buckles, but plenty of you just crave something that isn’t going to embarrass you at your next LAN party. Grown-ups, meet the ASUS G74, that buttoned-up fellow you see there. So far, we’ve found two configurations, both of which include a quad-core Core i7-2630QM CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M graphics with 3GB of video memory, 12GB DDR3 RAM (out of 16GB), dual 750GB 7200RPM drives, a 1080p display, Blu-ray player, backlit keyboard, and a USB 3.0 socket (along with three of the 2.0 variety). That’s what the G74SX-A1 ($1,745) looks like, and there’s also a $1,979 version with a 3D display, dubbed the G74SX-3DE. That generally matches what the new $1,899 Qosmio X770 has to offer, though the G74 is the clear winner in the memory department and, well, you can’t put a price on taste, right?
Minecraft, Eve Online, League of Legends, and The Escapist are the most recent high-profile games industry targets to get hit by hackers. All three of the sites went down at some point yesterday. At the time of writing, all are back online.
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