There have been rumors of an Apple iCar for much longer than five years. But it was five years ago that there was enough heat under them for a German newspaper to report that Steve Jobs and Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn had met to discuss the idea. A year later another German outlet printed a photo of a VW concept (pictured above) alongside an iPhone, and a columnist in the New York Times kindly asked Steve Jobs to save Detroit.

But did the iCar ever really exist as more than an idea? Mickey Drexler is the CEO of J. Crew and sits on the board of Apple Computer, and at a recent conference in New York he said that Steve Jobs’ “dream before he died was to design an iCar.” Drexler doesn’t say when Jobs had this dream, whether it was just before he died or so long ago that it could substantiate the ancient rumors. No matter, Drexler said “He never did design it.”

The edited video of Drexler’s comments is posted below. And know that this doesn’t mean the rumors, nor the iCar itself, are dead.

Read more…

Typically, SSDs use flash as cache memory as opposed to the much faster DRAM, but Buffalo says that MRAM can bridge the gap between NAND flash and DRAM and provide a much better cache solution as a result.

Flash is used today as it has non-volatile properties and does not lose its content like DRAM when the power is cut off. MRAM, which is similar to DRAM structure, is also a non-volatile memory technology, but faster than flash. The technology has been in development for more than a decade. In the 2005 time frame, MRAM was believed to have an opportunity to succeed flash as a mass-market solid state memory technology, but has been held back by low density and, as a result, high cost.

In the Buffalo device, however, the SSD uses 4 GB of NAND flash storage and just 8 MB of MRAM cache, which makes the use of MRAM a much more compelling proposition. It’s not a consumer device either as the SSD will be targeted at extreme industrial applications and for integration in machinery that runs at up to 85 degrees Celsius. Buffalo states that the use of MRAM makes its SSD more reliable overall and reduces power consumption as well. However, we know that new technologies and expensive ideas tend to trickle down from the high-end if they make sense. It’s not entirely unreasonable to foresee an MRAM SSD for the consumer market at some point in the future.

SOURCE via Nikkei BP

Market research firm IHS predicts a fast increase in HDD storage densities and, as a result, a similarly strong increase in storage capacities. The faster pace will be driven by a need to record massive amounts of audio and video data and require a new technology that can break through the density barrier of the current perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology.

IHS believes that the average density of 744 Gb per square inch in 2011 will grow at an average of about 19 percent over the next few years and reach 1.8 Tb by 2016. 2012 will see a density of 780 Gb per square inch per platter, and then rise to 900 Gb per square inch next year, the market research firm forecasts.

The trend calls for a technology that will allow an increase of the number of bits that can be safely stored on a platter without interfering with each other. The density improvements of storage densities have been nothing short of amazing over the past 15 years. In 1997, Seagate acquired Quinta, a developer of heat-assisted magnetic recording technology that was believed to drive the then believed physical limited of about 100 Gb per square inch to about 250 Gb per square inch using its OAW (Optically Assisted Winchester) technology.

Manufacturing improvements and especially the transition from longitudinal recording to PMR delayed the introduction of the rather expensive production of heat-assisted magnetic recording drives and gave the industry an opportunity to approach 1 Tb per square inch. OAW, however, has been in development as HAMR (heat-assisted magnetic recording) technology at Seagate and has already reached 1 Tb per square inch in a lab environment. If IHS is correct, we can expect the arrival of this technology in commercial drives by 2014.

Think back to childhood for a moment. What did you do when you wanted, say, a new skateboard, but mom and dad were dragging their heels about ponying up for one? That’s right, you built your own, out of bits of scrap plywood and some old wheels discarded by an older sibling. And it sucked.

We see the same situation playing out here. The children at Top Gear are absolutely gaga for the DeltaWing race car, which Nissan will be campaigning at this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. And even if they are Top Gear, nobody at Nissan is going to just give them an experimental race car for futzing around. So they are building their own. Or at least a simulacrum of the DeltaWing, out of what appears to be junk.

Read more…

The day has finally arrived. Porsche cars have returned to the Forza Motorsport series on XBox 360 with the availability today of the Porsche Expansion Pack for Forza Motorsport 4. Pony up 1600 Microsoft Points ($19.99 in real world money) and you’ll get 30 new cars, 20 new events, 10 new achievements and a Porsche-only Rivals Mode. Developer Turn 10 says that seven of the cars (scroll down for a full list) are all-new to the Forza series, which brings the game’s fourth installment – including all of the vehicles released via downloadable content – to a grand total of 625 cars.

We know what you’re thinking. Twenty bones is a lot to drop on a single chunk of downloadable content when you’ve already paid $60 for the game itself and another $30 for the Season Pass, the latter of which has already filled your virtual garage with dozens and dozens of extra cars to drive. That’s all true, and no one would blame you for passing on this Porsche DLC, especially considering that Porsches were included with the price of the game in Forza 1, 2 and 3. Read more…

Numerous players on the Battle.net forums say their Diablo 3 accounts have been hacked. Affected players logged in to find all of their items gone and, in some cases, strangers added to their friends list. There are even a few players with Blizzard Authenticators are claiming that they’ve been compromised.

This morning, PC Gamer’s Tom Hatfield woke up to find all of his items gone, Eurogamer’s Chris Donlan was found wandering around Sanctuary being controlled by someone called “Anna”, Team Dignitas’ Nathaniel tweeted to say that all of his items have been nicked. “I love always on DRM to protect servers,” he says.

It’s often hard to get a handle on the numbers affected by a hacking outbreak, but the amount of anecdotal accounts suggests a significant problem. It’s bizarre enough that players running through Diablo as a single play game are having to put up with account hacks and disappearing items, but there’s another concern. The real money auction house is due to open next Tuesday.

Blizzard earlier told forum-goers that they’re aware of the issue. “Historically, the release of a new game — such as a World of Warcraft expansion — will result in an increase in reports of individual account compromises, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing now with Diablo 3,” they said.

“We know how frustrating it can be to become the victim of account theft, and as always, we’re dedicated to doing everything we can to help our players keep their Battle.net accounts safe — and we appreciate everyone who’s doing their part to help protect their accounts as well.”

Community manager, Bashiok, posted to say that Blizzard have been “taking the situation extremely seriously from the start, and have done everything possible to verify how and in what circumstances these compromises are occurring,” He also mentions that “we have yet to find any situations in which a person’s account was not compromised through traditional means of someone else logging into their account through the use of their password.”

That suggests the Authenticator is still one of the best ways to keep a Battle.net account safe. It’s available as a free app, and can be purchased as a dongle.

Blizzard’s servers have been up and down all week. On Sunday they were down for hours in Europe. Chris and I were trading and crafting as quickly as possible as the ten second countdown expired. Then we were kicked out and unable to play for most of the day. Error 37 and emergency maintenance periods have been locking players out in the US after launch. On the whole, it’s been a mess.

It’s sad, because the game behind the connection issues is awesome.

It’s far from official, but from the looks of things, an update to Dell’s Latitude line may be incoming. According to Dutch site Tweakers.net, the outfit’s 14-inch refresh, bearing model number 6430u, will purportedly sport a 1366 x 768 display, dual-core i3, i5 or i7 Ivy Bridge processor and measure in at a slightly chunky 20.9mm thick. For the business-minded types that it’s being aimed at, this enterprise-ready Ultrabook will also run Intel’s vPro platform, giving IT departments worldwide easy access for data management and remote wipes, in addition to supporting a smartcard reader and an optional fingerprint scanner. As for its SSD innards, the unit should be available in configurations up to 256GB with a maximum of 8GB RAM allotted. Since this fella exists in a grey zone for now, there’s no official pricing or release date to speak of, though rumors do point to a June bow. Check out the source below for a translated take on this pre-release kit.

SOURCE via Tweakers.net (Translated)