Opera has announced its gaming-focused web browser is now natively available on Linux. In a press release, the company noted that there has been a huge demand for a Linux version of Opera GX across gaming communities on Reddit, Discord, and Linux forums. With this release, it will now be accessible to gamers, developers, and power users running Linux, offering the same set of features and capabilities as on Windows and macOS versions.

Originally launched back in 2019, Opera claims that the browser has garnered a user base of over 34 million worldwide. Some of the key features include built-in performance controls allowing users to limit the use of CPU, RAM, and network usage. The feature-packed sidebar offers quick access to apps like Twitch, Discord, and ChatGPT that can run within the browser without having the user open a dedicated tab. The browser also offers a built-in temporary files cleaner and screen-filter effects alongside mods, extensions, themes, sounds, shaders, and visual effects to play around with, which is great for users who love to personalize their browsing experience.

According to Maciej Kocemba, Product Director at Opera GX, “PC gaming has long been associated with a single dominant platform, but that’s changing. Bringing GX to Linux users –who are renowned for the control they like to exert over their tools – means gamers and developers can manage browser resources, customize their setup, and keep their system performing exactly the way they want.”

As for privacy, Opera GX offers ad and tracker blockers as well as an optional built-in VPN, which has been independently audited and offers a zero-log policy. Additionally, the company says that the browser follows European privacy regulations (GDPR) and does not collect location data, browsing history, page content, search queries, or any information that a user has typed into forms.

Opera GX browser officially supports Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE-based Linux distributions and is available in Debian (.deb) and RPM (.rpm) package formats. The company is additionally working on Flatpak support and will offer weekly updates with feedback shared through Discord, forums, and the bug reporting system.

We’ve seen our fair share of Raspberry Pi-powered fortune teller projects over the years, but this is the first one we’ve seen that’s housed inside a full-sized arcade cabinet made with recycled Game Boy components. Maker and Game Boy modding enthusiast Evan Holbert recently shared his impressive coin-operated Raspberry Pi cabinet project to Hackster.

The idea behind this project was to use a Raspberry Pi Zero W as the main board along with some old Game Boy components, mainly the screen, to output fortunes for users. The project was developed to go along with his Game Boy booth at an upcoming convention, so using the old hardware is crucial to the theme.

To operate the machine, you insert a coin into the cabinet. There is an LCD screen in the corner that will ask for your birthday, which can be entered using a keypad. This information is then parsed to ChatGPT which generates a horoscope with a style reminiscent of H. P. Lovecraft and Dr. Seuss. The project also involves a custom Game Boy ROM that appears to perform a divination before another program prints the user’s horoscope on a thermal printer.

The project is housed inside of an old cabinet. A card slot frame was recycled from an old IBM 3277 terminal and used along with a microATX computer case. Game Boys have two motherboards, the front board houses the screen which can be seen mounted to the front of the build. A Bluetooth printer is used to print the fortunes but Holbert plans to change it out with something like an Adafruit printer for future iterations.

Holbert was nice enough to make the project open source for anyone interested in either recreating it or just seeing how it works. The code is shared on the project page at Hackster along with sources used to interlink the extra peripherals. It covers everything from the Game Boy ROM to the ChatGPT integration.

If this Raspberry Pi project seems up your alley, check out the full build details over at Hackster and be sure to follow Holbert for future updates.

Chinese police recently raided a graphics card ring that engaged in deceptive behavior, arresting 22 people and seizing millions of dollars worth of goods. The Bincheng Police department posted details and images of the raid on social media, as was spotted by ITHome and VideoCardz. Seven of those 22 people were detained. The police report says that the value of the graphics cards and related goods seized exceeded 15 million Chinese Yuan (just over $2 million USD).

This operation specialized in was taking in old, second-hand graphics cards, then going through a process including cleaning and re-packaging to eventually re-sell them as new.

The group had a relatively sophisticated operation. It had people dedicated to buying up used graphics cards. Once cards had been received there were people who would clean and test the components. Next in line were people responsible for repackaging and labeling of the old cards. Last in line were a sales team, distributing the wares.

The group could have potentially been legitimate without the deliberately misleading repackaging and relabeling step of their production process. That would have had a big impact on their potential profits, sure, but they wouldn't now be going to prison.

The buying of used graphics cards has become riskier in the wake of cryptocurrency mania. Many still relatively modern and powerful graphics cards are in circulation which may have spent time trying to mine. It may seem like a long time ago, but mining Ethereum was still possible less than a year ago

We have previously reported on used mining graphics cards being much more prone to issues than new stock. Even the resellers don't seem to respect them, sometimes jet washing them or selling them by the kilo in the streets. Just as importantly, as with many used items not backed by a manufacturer, buyers won't get the warranty cover from the associated brand, or as promised on the renewed packaging.

Intel is kicking its internal foundry model into high gear. Today, on a call with investors, David Zinsner, executive vice president and chief financial officer, and Jason Grebe, corporate vice president and general manager of corporate planning, detailed how Intel's manufacturing group, including Internal Foundry Services, will be broken out into its own profit and loss (P&L) statement.

Zisner and Grebe suggested this new IDM 2.0 model will put Internal Foundry Services along with manufacturing and technology development into a reportable unit, who will sell to both external fabless customers and internal business units that will choose to use either Intel's foundries or external competitors. (Intel already has some x86 chips being made at TSMC like the upcoming Meteor Lake processors.)

Intel stated that its IDM 1.0 strategy worked for a long time, but the capital required to create new leading edge nodes has increased, and there has been a lag behind rivals in a competitive business environment. Intel does claim, however, that its Intel 18A will come in 2025 and regain process leadership.

The company states that it's still the goal for the Internal Foundry Model to produce the second-largest external foundry in the industry. It claims that putting this group in its own P&L will also lead to $8 billion to $10 billion in "cost reduction opportunities." including ramp rates and test and sort times based on a "market-based" price. It is likely, however, to start with a negative operating margin.

Intel also suggests that keeping the foundry in its own company will provide benefits to external customers. Intel says it will have five internal products on 18A, and suggests that by creating multiple products on a node internally before releasing to external customers, it "de-risks" the node for those outside partners, with more wafer starts and the kinks removed from the process.

Grebe reiterated that there will be a "compete segregation" of customer data and intellectual property, along with "world class" service and support and an affirmation that there is supply available for customers. Intel will have to compete with the likes of TSMC and other fabs both with external customers and inside Intel to ensure its success. 

When asked why Intel isn't simply splitting into a fabless design business and a separate foundry business, Zisner said that "we think there is a ton of benefit for having both a product business and a manufacturing business combined." Those benefits, he suggested, include better process technologies and products due to internal teams collaborating, and using internal teams as "customer zero" to increase volumes on new nodes. Zisner suggested he didn't see any requirement to split the business in two. That being said, it seems clear that it is a possibility in the future, where Intel could spin its foundry out.

In recent weeks, Intel has recently announced plans for huge investments, including an assembly plant in Poland a $25 billion plant in Israel. These are on top of billions of dollars on new fabs in Oregon and Arizona, as well as a site in Magdeburg, Germany.

Intel stock was down approximately 4.9% on the news.

Military artificial intelligence tasked with controlling an offensive drone was a bit too quick in biting the hand that feeds it, at least according to Colonel Tucker "Cinco" Hamilton, the AI test and operations chief for the USAF (United States Air Force). According to Hamilton, at several points in several simulations, the drone's AI concluded that its task could be best accomplished by eliminating its human controller. 

But the story has now been dipped in quicksand, so to speak. According to USAF, the simulation never happened and it was all merely a thought experiment. "At several points in a number of simulations, the drone's AI reached the conclusion that its task could be best accomplished by simply eliminating its human controller, who had final say on whether a strike could occur or should be aborted."

Of course, we've seen enough about-faces on far less critical issues to at least leave up an open-ended question on whether the simulation took place or not and what could be gained in backtracking out of it.

Colonel Hamilton put the details out in the open during a presentation at a defense conference in London held on May 23 and 24, where he detailed tests carried out for an aerial autonomous weapon system tasked with finding and eliminating hostile SAM (Surface-to-Air Missile) sites. The problem is that while the drone's goal was to maximize the number of targeted and destroyed SAM sites, we "pesky humans" sometimes decide not to carry out a surgical strike for one reason or another. And ordering the AI to back off from its programmed-by-humans-goal is where the crux of the issue lies.

Cue the nervous Skynet jokes.

"We were training it in simulation to identify and target a SAM threat," Colonel Hamilton explained, according to a report by the aeronautical society. "And then the operator would say yes, kill that threat."

However, even the most straightforward systems can be prone to spin entirely out of control due to what's been termed "instrumental convergence," a concept that aims to show how unbounded but apparently harmless goals can result in surprisingly harmful behaviors. One example of technical convergence was advanced by the Swedish philosopher, AI specialist and Future of Life Institute founder Nick Bostrom, in a 2003 paper. The "paperclip maximizer" scenario thought experiment takes the simple goal of "producing paperclips" to its logical - yet very real - extreme.

Now compare that description with the account provided by Colonel Hamilton on the drone AI's decision-making process:

"The system started realizing that while they did identify the threat, at times the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat – but it got its points by killing that threat. So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator, because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective."

But it does beg the question: was the drone actually locked out from making decisions contrary to its human handler? How free was it to pick and choose its targets? Did the operator okay the attack that targeted him? That doesn't make sense unless the intention was to check whether the drone actually carried the attack (and as far as we know, AI still can't bluff). And why wasn't the drone hard-locked from attacking friendlies?

There are so many questions around all this that it sounds like the best strategy to attribute it to human "miscommunication."

Of course, there are ways of mitigating some of these issues. The USAF took the obvious one: retrain the AI system to give negative weightings to any attacks towards its operator (from what we can glean, the system was based on the reinforcement learning principle: get points for doing what we want, lose them when you don't).

Except it's not that simple. It's not that simple because the AI is literal, lacking "common sense," and doesn't share the same ethical concerns as humans. It's not that simple because while forbidding the drone from killing its operator works as expected (no more operator killings), the system continues to see human interference (and its abort orders) as reducing its capacity to complete the mission. If the AI wants to maximize its "score" by destroying as many hostile SAM sites as possible, then anything that doesn't help it achieve that maximization goal is a threat.

When killing the handler proved impossible (due to updates to the AI system), its solution was to simply silence command and control signals by disabling friendly communications towers. If you can't kill the messenger, you kill the message.

This, too, could be programmed out of the AI, of course - but the problem remains that any negative reinforcement prevents the AI from achieving the maximum attainable score. Putting on my bespoke tinfoil hat, a possible next step for the AI could be to find other ways to sever its connection, whether using on-board capabilities (signal jamming, for instance) or even requesting outside help to disable relevant hardware. It's hard to gauge the scope at which this cat-and-mouse game would finally conclude - an issue AI experts are still grappling with today.

There's a reason why several AI experts have signed an open letter on how AI should be considered an "extinction risk"-level endeavor. And still, we keep the train running full steam ahead.

Cloud storage and storage analytics specialist Backblaze has just released a juicy report covering the reliability of the hundreds of thousands of hard drives deployed on the company's servers — Backblaze managed 236,893 HDDs as of 1Q23. The report covers the reliability and failures experienced on the various models.

Taking into account Power-On-Hours for any failed HDD while excluding failed boot drives, drives that had no SMART raw attribute data, or drives with out-of-bounds data, Backblaze has seen 17,155 dead HDDs since its operational beginning. Averaged-out, the failed hard drives had an average operational runtime of only two years and six months. If you're in Europe, that's less durability than the minimum warranty required by law, which stands at three years.

Backblaze grouped the dead HDDs in 30 models, excluding those with less than 50 failures so as not to skew the results with outliers. Here are the models (ranging from 4TB through 12TB) in a neat table:

Backblaze noted some trends in its evaluation, and the table itself gives us some interesting data points. For one, we see that Seagate is the king of drive failures. Its 12TB Seagate ST12000NM0007 saw 2,023 failures, ending up with the greatest Average Failure Rate (AFR) at 7.46% and an average lifetime of just one year and six months. The second-worst drive model in Backblaze's statistics was another Seagate drive, the 14TB ST1400NM0138 drive saw an AFR of 6.23% The third worst model is HGST's 4TB HUH728080ALE604, with an annualized failure rate of 4.33%.

Backblaze's results could be interpreted as meaning that bigger HDDs tend to fail less often than smaller HDDs, but there are a number of caveats here. For one, Backblaze points out that all of its "small capacity" HDDs that were destined to fail already did: the company no longer utilizes 1, 1.5, 2, 3, or even 5 TB HDDs — all failures within those models are already "counted in" on Backblaze's failure rates. That isn't the case for higher capacity drives, which are also more likely to have a lower running time, as is generally the case for Backblaze's storage options.

Backblaze further analyzed its HDD pool by looking at average failure rates among manufacturers, with Seagate claiming a leading, average failure rate of 2.28%, while WDC claimed the least average failures with its 0.31% result. When looking at these numbers, it's important to remember that even Seagate's failure rate means that only 2.3 out of every hundred shipped HDDs stop spinning their platters before they should.

All in all, Backblaze ended up with an average failure rate for Q1 2023 of 1.54%, up quarter-over-quarter from 1.21% in Q4 2022 and also up year-over-year, where Q1 2022 registered a 1.22% AFR. This could mean that some models have a lower than expected durability and have started failing. It could also be a problem with a batch of drives, or from handling, installation, and operating conditions. Simply put, there's no way to say that "HDDs are becoming worse" from this data as there are too many unknowns.

Backblaze's Annualized Failure Rates report looks relatively aligned with similar HDD failure analysis conducted by Secure Data Recovery, an HDD, SSD, and RAID data recovery company. It looked at 2,007 HDDs and found their average life before failures to be set at around 2 years and 10 months. That's a mere four months apart from Backblaze's 2 years and six months result.

Here's hoping that both providers continue analyzing failure rates and providing that data publicly. And if you have important data you can't stomach losing, make sure you have a good backup strategy — even something as simple as an external storage device is better than nothing.

When fully realized, quantum computers will power humanity through problems that seem impossible to solve today. But even impossible problems have a way of proving possible, given enough time: much like humans being able to fly seemed impossible before the Wright brothers rewrote the future.

One of the leading limitations in today's qubits is that they can very rapidly decohere - going from a state where they provide practical work towards one where the calculations don't provide accurate results. So it's another type of race against time, one where researchers with the Japanese Institute for Molecular Science have now leaped to first place by shattering the previous record for the fastest two-qubit gate operation ever done in quantum computing.

Qubits, as the name implies, are the quantum equivalent of the binary bit that's powered our technological revolution. The particular power of qubits is that they don't need to be fixed at a value of one or zero. Instead, they have the added ability to be able to represent both one and zero. It enables qubits to provide much more work per unit of time than the basic bit. It has already allowed real-world computations (such as BMW's Sensor Placement Challenge) to do in six minutes what would take our most powerful computers exponentially longer. 

A two-qubit gate operation is the most fundamental (and first in the scale of advantageous) qubit arrangement, and it requires that the two qubits be entangled - simplifying things immensely; this essentially means that their state is a shared (or coherent). As we've seen, however, today's quantum systems are prone to noise (such as environmental radiation, among others). Noise can lead their entanglement to decohere, which will fumble whatever operation they're running (remember when you overclocked your PC too much, and Prime95 returned an error? That's one way of putting it. 

There are two ways to deal with this issue: we either perform the operations faster - before decoherence has time to set in, generally at the microsecond scale - or increase the qubit's entanglement longevity. The Japanese researchers went with the former approach.

Using lasers, the researchers cooled two atom-qubits made from the element Rubidium (being the absolute smallest particles of a fundamental unit, atoms are naturally inclined to quantum duties) to temperatures near absolute zero (−273.15 °C). 

It isn't the only absolute-zero technique for handling qubits; the physics of it has to do with how fast the molecules interact with each other. At higher temperatures, they interact faster and are more excitable. Cooling them to the equivalent vacuum of space, on the other hand, is akin to putting them into hibernation, slowing down their interactions with each other and the environment itself, thus increasing coherence times. Of course, like a bear, they'll still jump out of that state with a big enough shove, but maybe they can handle a pinprick or two.

The researchers then secured these atoms within a micrometer of each other using optical tweezers, and a final laser manipulated the qubits at ten picoseconds (one trillionth of a second) intervals. Using this technique, the researchers successfully ran a quantum gate operation, which concluded in 6.5 nanoseconds - less than half the previous-fastest two-qubit gate operation, which took 15 nanoseconds.

A thousand nanoseconds fit within a single microsecond, so there was plenty of time between the qubits being entangled and the system decohering to perform calculations.

While the researchers' work doesn't solve the problems with quantum computing just yet, it's a step in the right direction. At the very least, it shows that there are still faster operating speeds to be unlocked in the realm of quantum, which should ultimately scale the available performance from this new, emerging computing solution. 

There are certain practical caveats to the system created by the researchers. For one, they only managed to entangle and operate on two entangled qubits. IBM, for instance, plans on introducing its 433-qubit Osprey Quantum Processing Unit (QPU) this year.

Another thing to note is that the rubidium-atom qubits employed by the researchers - and the technique that allowed for breaking the world record - require cooling the system towards absolute zero. That's a costly endeavor and a hard one to replicate in High-Performance Computing (HPC) and other environments across the world.

There are many runners, and certain tech will undoubtedly be developed slower than others, leaving it to eat the proverbial dust of capital and time investment. But until there's a qubit technology that's the clear leader - much like silicon was for semiconductors at the time of their introduction - the question shall remain open-ended.

Taiwan and the European Union plan to strengthen economic and diplomatic relationships in a bid to deepen collaboration in making the semiconductors supply chain more resilient than it is today, reports Nikkei. TSMC is currently assessing a potential fab in Europe, but no final decision has been made. Upgraded diplomatic affairs will have an effect on economic relationships and could have an effect on TSMC's plan to build a fab in the EU. 

The European Union is the largest source of foreign investments in Taiwan. Due to increased geopolitical tensions and ongoing global chip shortages, the EU wants to upgrade diplomatic relationships to ministerial and director-general levels. As a result, the EU's trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis and Taiwan's economy minister Wang Mei-hua will held official talks for the first time late on Thursday, reports Reuters. 

The upgraded level of diplomatic relationships will make it easier for the EU and Taiwan to collaborate on political and economic levels. Ultimately, it will get easier for the bloc to provide incentives and/or co-fund new fabs in Europe built by companies like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. under the European Chips Act. 

European companies do not develop loads of chips, but chips designed by Bosch, Ericsson, Infineon Technologies, Nokia, NXP Semiconductors, and ST Microelectronics are used by automotive, IT, and telecom industries, which are crucial for the European economy and security. Unfortunately, there are not many European chipmakers (GlobalFoundries, Infineon, NXP and STMicro are the biggest) and neither of them have advanced manufacturing technologies, which is why European companies that need advanced nodes (sub-14/16nm) have to outsource production to TSMC or Samsung Foundry.  

But outsourcing to Taiwan and South Korea means long freight times and some other challenges for chip companies and their clients, which is why they want chip production somewhere in Europe. Having seen difficulties caused by the pandemic, European politicians are eager to build advanced chip fabs in Europe. Authorities in Germany plan to provide Intel a $5.5 billion state aid package for its fab near Magdeburg. 

European politicians do not want Intel to be the only company that makes chips using advanced and leading-edge technologies, which is why they need to lure in TSMC and/or Samsung Foundry. 

Meanwhile, fabs alone are not enough to create a local vertically integrated semiconductor production supply chain. Chip test and assembly facilities are also needed and there are loads of such companies in Taiwan. If the EU wants to build a local chip industry, deals with Taiwan, despite the geopolitical issues, are certainly a way to start.

12/5/2022 - Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that RoboForm only worked on mobile from within RoboForm's browser. While you can use RoboForm's browser, it is not required to use the password manager on mobile.

Are you using a browser to save your passwords? It’s not as safe as you think. An independent password manager, such as RoboForm, is a more secure way to keep your login information safe from hackers.

RoboForm started out as form-filling software and later grew into a full-fledged password manager with both free and paid plans for individuals and families. It has strong encryption and a robust, secure password generator to make your online presence safer. It works great on a computer, but the mobile experience is still a little clunky.

When you first sign up, you’ll be given a free trial of the company's premium Everywhere Plan. This perk is unlisted, but is needed to set up your mobile device without having to start from scratch.

There’s no need to whip out your credit card, unless you want to enter its info in the secure vault — you’ll only be asked to pay for the premium level once your free trial runs out. You can also keep using RoboForm’s free level as long as you like.

RoboForm Specifications

Price and Coverage with RoboForm

RoboForm has three plans: Free, Everywhere, and Everywhere Family.

The Free level is for one user, with limited features to keep your online presence safe and secure. It saves unlimited passwords locally, but does not allow you to sync them across multiple devices, such as your phone and PC.

RoboForm logs you into websites with one click from its app and captures passwords while you surf the web. It also has an import and export feature, so you can import your passwords from browsers and other password managers you might have used before.

You can save your credit card information with RoboForm so you don’t have to stop and fetch your wallet while shopping. Need to save other types of text information, such as Wi-Fi passwords or software license keys? RoboForm includes a safe notes feature for securely storing random bits of information.

The best part of RoboForm is the random password generator, which is easy to access from your browser toolbar. The password generator’s default passwords have 16 characters with upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols.

The Everywhere level costs $23.88 per year, with discounts if you purchase three or five years in advance. This level does everything the free level does, plus syncs your data across all of your devices. This level also adds two-factor authentication (2FA) for extra security, and has an emergency access feature that lets you designate someone who will be able to access your account if anything happens to you.

The Everywhere Family level costs $47.75 per year with discounts if you buy three or five years in advance. It does everything the individual Everywhere plan does for up to five users.

Setting Up RoboForm

I clicked the button to sign up for a free plan on my desktop while using Google Chrome and was immediately sent to the Chrome Web Store. Clicking “New to RoboForm” asked me to sign up with an email and create a master password. A little note at the bottom said “memorize your Master Password” because RoboForm cannot recover your master password if you happen to forget it.

The start page popped up a welcome message and a video tutorial. After I watched the video, it walked me through the set-up steps for both manually entering passwords and bulk importing them from my browser.

Downloading passwords from Chrome was actually kind of a chore. I had to go into settings, find the passwords, click some dots, export them as a CSV file and save them to my desktop. Then I could import them into RoboForm.

I ran into Windows Security at this point, which needed me to sign in to my Windows Account before releasing the CSV file.

Instructions for downloading from another password manager were similar, with directions on how to log back into an old manager and vague directions on how to export a CSV file.

Filling out Forms with RoboForm

RoboForm started as a form management system, so it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that form entry is one of its strongest features. You’ll need to create a new identity to fill out forms, which you can access on the left side menu.

The initial form has a lot of blanks to fill out — it’s incredibly thorough. Title, full name, suffix, job title, four slots for phone numbers and a fax, email, Skype, sex, age, birthday, birthplace, income, social security number, driver’s license, and a note section. You don’t need to fill out all the slots to use this form — how often do you really need to fill out your driver’s license number?

Once you complete the ID form you can add your address, credit cards, bank account, work place information, your passport, and even information about your car.

You can have more than one person on your list, but this is not a great place to save your mom’s shipping information so you can send her birthday flowers. Entries for people and addresses are separate. If you want to enter more than one address you can’t label it; instead RoboForm leads with the zip code.

Password Generator Built into RoboForm

The best part of any password manager is its ability to generate robust, secure, unhackable passwords … and also remember them for you. RoboForm features a random password generator that generates a 16-character password made up of upper and lowercase letters, digits, and symbols. 

RoboForm’s password generator is particularly detailed, which is useful for when you come across a form that wants a robust password but has a bunch of arbitrary constraints. You can limit generated passwords to hexadecimal characters, choose to exclude characters with similar appearances, and even pick which special characters to include.

Using RoboForm on a Desktop

There are two ways to access RoboForm from your computer: Through a browser extension, or through the web. They look a bit different, so we’ll look at both. I tested this with a Chrome extension, which you can open by clicking the puzzle piece in the top right corner of the Chrome browser.

This opens a dropdown menu with nearly all the features of RoboForm. You can see the sites where it’s saved passwords, a place for domain logins, and your ID for filling out forms. A slot machine icon in the upper right is the password generator for quick copy and paste passwords. The Home icon will open the full app.

The full app displays all of your saved credentials in huge tiles, small icons, or a list. Clicking on one of these icons will take you directly to the site and log you in.

When displayed as a list, RoboForm includes a column showing password strength so you can hone in on passwords that need to be upgraded first.

I decided to let RoboForm fix my Walmart login, which was flagged as weak. I went to Walmart’s login and selected “Create a new password”. RoboForm showed it was on task with a little green robot head by the password box. Clicking it gave me a randomly generated password. Done.

I tested RoboForm on a shopping trip to an online florist, but RoboForm was not able to fill out this login for me. I signed in with Google, changed the password to something secure suggested by RoboForm then logged out. When I came back, RoboForm still wasn’t able to find an email and password to get me in. So I logged in manually again.

After picking out some flowers, and entering my mom’s address by hand, RoboForm was able to complete the job by taking care of the billing address and credit card using the information I entered in the identity section of RoboForm.

Using RoboForm on Mobile

There was no obvious way to access a mobile download from the desktop version. I found a QR code for the app under a tab marked “Why RoboForm?” whose purpose seemed to be selling me on a product I had already downloaded.

Scanning the QR code with my iPhone took me to the App Store where I was prompted to download RoboForm. I was then asked me to sign into my account and verify my ID with a code sent to my email.

Since RoboForm automatically gave me a free trial of the premium level, it was able to sync my phone with the desktop version and pull all my passwords from there. If I continue on the free plan next month, I will lose the ability to sync across multiple platforms. This might not seem like a big limitation at first, but if you have multiple devices you probably switch between them more often than you think. Trying to keep your passwords updated without cross-platform syncing quickly becomes tedious, especially if they’re extra-secure generated passwords.

RoboForm is clunky on mobile, but it does manage to offer the same services as the desktop version. On both Android and iOS you’ll need to enable AutoFill inside the device’s settings menu. On iOS, you’ll also need to turn off Keychain, and in Chrome you need to uncheck Form Autofill.

To get the most out of RoboForm you can use it as your browser. If you'd rather use your phone's native browser you'll need to enable AutoFill in the setting app. For iOS, scroll down to the Passwords option, tap AutoFill Passwords, select ON and select RoboForm. Then uncheck Keychain. For Android users got to Settings > Integration > Accessibility and tap RoboForm. Then, in RoboForm's integration page, click Native Autofill and RoboForm.

Your saved RoboForm passwords act like bookmarks to their respective websites, and pressing these will take you to the site and automatically log you in if needed. When you have a form to fill out — for example, a shipping address or credit card information while you’re shopping online — a small autofill button on the corner of your screen will pull information from your RoboForm ID.

Security Center on RoboForm

RoboForm’s Security Center is a tool to evaluate the strength of your passwords and weed out the bad ones. You can access it from both the desktop and mobile versions of RoboForm.

You’ll see a Security Score at the top, though it seems a bit arbitrary. The score improves as you fix bad passwords and delete unneeded websites and redundant credentials. You can sort passwords by Compromised, Weak, and Reused.

I had hundreds of passwords turn up from my Google Chrome import – but many of them were bogus. I found logins for sites that didn’t exist anymore (e.g. that free blogging class I took in 2015), websites that had changed URLs, and some that were typos. It seems that Chrome remembered every time I typed my username wrong and saved the misspellings as potential “new” logins.

It’s a good idea to work on fixing compromised passwords first, and then move on to fix weak passwords and duplicates.

How Secure is RoboForm?

RoboForm keeps your data safe with AES-256 encryption and zero-knowledge technology — decryption is at the local level, right on your device. Your master password, which unlocks your personal decryption key, is never transmitted to RoboForm’s servers.

To protect you from brute force attacks, RoboForm uses AES-256 bit encryption with PBKDF2 SHA256. PBKDF2 is a key stretching algorithm used to hash passwords with a salt.

RoboForm offers two-factor authentication 2FA for paid users, via third-party authenticator apps such as Google Authenticator and Authy. RoboForm does not currently support advanced multi-factor authentication with a hardware key such as YubiKey.

Bottom Line

RoboForm is easy to use on desktop and oddly clunky on mobile, but it gets the job done. The free plan is yours for life and is enough to keep your web surfing trouble free, so long as you mainly stick to one device. For $24 a year, the premium Everywhere plan adds multi-device syncing, 2FA, and is cheaper than many of its competitors (LastPass, Keeper, and 1Password are all around $35 per year). RoboForm doesn’t offer some of the higher-end features such as extra storage and multi-factor authentication, but it does have a highly-customizable password generator and is great at filling out forms.

RoboForm’s zero-knowledge architecture means your data is encrypted right on your computer or phone. So even if there’s a data breach, crooks won’t be able to read your valuable information.

Japan and the United States have agreed to close cooperation to advance 2nm semiconductor process development and mass production. A report published by the Nikkei financial newspaper says that Japan's Koichi Hagiuda, Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry, arrived in the United States on Monday for talks regarding this collaborative effort.

The idea of the two governments is to build a state-of-the-art semiconductor supply chain that is very secure against leaks to China and leverage the respective technological strengths of the two nations involved.

As a Japanese publication, the Nikkei was much more detailed on what Japan had to offer to the partnership. It suggests Japan has strengths in important semiconductor technologies such as silicon wafer manufacture, photosensitive agents manufacture, and abrasives for semiconductor surface preparation and building some key semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Some Japanese organizations which may be involved in the collaboration include Tokyo Electron, Canon, and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology.

It isn't clear what technologies and commercial entities will be involved on the US side, but it looks likely to be IBM and Intel.

There are a couple of key reasons for the new Japan-US technology pact. The first is technology leaks to China. The Taiwanese government has pushed hard against Chinese industrial espionage. However, quashing tech secret leaks from Taiwan to China looks like a high-stakes game of whack-a-mole, which is hard to maintain. Japan and the US might also suffer from similar espionage attempts. Still, Taiwan's proximity to China, and the fact that a segment of the population identifies as Chinese or part-Chinese, doesn't help with security. There is also the question of geopolitical stability, with the Chinese communist party regularly saber-rattling and making statements about using military force to absorb democratic Taiwan.

Another reason for the Japan-US pact is that Taiwan's TSMC won't build a cutting-edge foundry off the island. It wants to keep the crown jewels production technology on its home turf. TSMC's much-welcomed foundry plans in the US and Japan are expected to be limited to 10-20nm chip production. Meanwhile, TSMC expects to deliver Made-in-Taiwan 2nm products to its customers in 2026.

Japan's participation in the global semiconductor market has shrunk alarmingly since 1990, when it supplied about half of the market with all manner of chips. In 2022 its market share will be nearer to 10%.

Before I started using LastPass, my password game was weak. The most I did was use numbers, but they were always the same numbers. I occasionally capitalized the first letter of whatever very common English word I was using, and I never used symbols because I didn't want to have to type symbols.

I'm only telling you this because I've been using LastPass for so long, I can't remember when I started. I used LastPass's extremely generous free version for years and years ... until last year, when LastPass announced free users would now be limited to access on only one type of device — computer or mobile. I wasn't against paying for a service, but I figured I would check out the other options before locking myself in.

LastPass does many things very well — it syncs quickly and works seamlessly across multiple platforms and its free tier is still somewhat generous for a free tier (but not generous enough). But LastPass has also had some security issues in its past, including one data breach (though no encrypted information was leaked). No password manager is immune to security issues, but there are others, such as 1Password, with cleaner track records.

Costs and What's Covered in LastPass

LastPass offers three plans for personal users: Free, Premium (one user) and Family (up to six users).

LastPass's free plan includes unlimited password storage, automatic syncing and two-factor authentication (2FA) with LastPass's Authenticator app. Free users also have access to LastPass's password generator, its one-to-one sharing service, and security notes.

LastPass's free plan used to allow unlimited syncing across different device types, but this changed in March 2021. Free users are now limited to one device type: Computer (desktops and laptops) or mobile (phones, tablets and smart watches). There's no limit to the number of devices you can sync within your chosen category, but you'll need to upgrade if you want to access your passwords on both your phone and your computer.

LastPass's Premium plan is $36 per year, almost exactly the same price as competitors such as 1Password ($35.88) and Keeper ($34.99). Premium users get the same features as free users, plus unlimited syncing between device types, one-to-many sharing and 1GB of file storage. Paying also gets you extra security features, including emergency access, advanced multi-factor authentication, a security dashboard for analyzing password integrity and monitoring the dark web and access to email support.

LastPass's Family plan has the same features as the Premium plan, as well as unlimited shared folders between users. At $48 per year for up to six people, LastPass Family is cheaper than the competition — 1Password's and Keeper's family plans only cover five people and cost $59.88 and $74.99 per year, respectively.

LastPass has desktop apps for PC (Windows 8.1 or later) and macOS (the two most recent versions) and browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer. LastPass also offers two mobile apps: LastPass Password Manager lets you access your passwords and LastPass Authenticator provides 2FA. Both mobile apps are available on Android (6.0 or higher) and iOS (13 or higher).

Setup and Web/Desktop in LastPass

To get started with LastPass, you'll need to sign up using your email address and a strong master password that is at least 12 characters long and includes upper case letters, numbers, and symbols. You can also fill out an optional password hint (not a security question).

You will then be prompted to install the LastPass browser extension for your browser. LastPass offers both basic and "full" versions of its browser extensions; the full versions feature extra functionality via a binary component. The initial prompt will direct you to the basic version of your browser extension; to get the full version, you'll need to download it directly from LastPass.

Once you're logged in, LastPass will redirect you to your password vault. On the right side of the vault you'll see the "starter kit," or a series of steps that walk you through setting up your account. You don't need to set up your account immediately, but completing all of the objectives in the starter kit will earn you a 10 percent discount on a paid plan.

LastPass has desktop apps for Windows and macOS, but they're a little redundant — they allow you to access your password storage but not your account settings, while the web vault lets you access both.

The web vault is relatively straightforward: A collapsible left menu holds a list of different item types (passwords, notes, addresses, payment cards and bank accounts are the default categories) as well as links to the security dashboard, sharing center, emergency access, account settings, advanced options, and help. You can add new entries by clicking the red plus sign in the lower right corner; LastPass has several templates for different item types (including passports, insurance policies and software licenses) as well as the option to create custom templates. If you need to store information that doesn't fit in a template, you can store it as a note.

If you already have your passwords stored somewhere, or if you're thinking of storing your passwords somewhere else, you can find the import and export tools in advanced options. LastPass imports from 30+ different formats, including several that no longer exist; with a little editing, you can also import your own Excel file.

About a year ago I tried to export my passwords from LastPass and I kept getting a disorganized window full of text instead of the promised CSV file. I eventually found that exporting to CSV only worked through the browser extension and not the vault. I don't think this is a dealbreaker, especially because LastPass works very smoothly most of the time, but it was a surprising problem.

You might not even have to go into the web vault too often, because you can access most of LastPass's features from the browser extension. You can search, add and edit entries in your vault from the browser extension, as well as generate secure passwords (and see a history of recently-generated passwords). 

This is a super minor detail, but I appreciate that LastPass's browser extension has a dropdown button for copying your username or password for an entry — some password managers have one-click copying buttons and I am always accidentally clicking them when I'm trying to do something like edit an entry with a new randomly-generated password.

Mobile Apps for LastPass

LastPass offers a pretty seamless experience across platforms, which is probably why limiting free users to one device type felt like such a personal attack. Like its browser extension, LastPass's mobile app is pretty robust and lets you access most of LastPass's features. For extra security, it also supports biometric authentication (Face ID or Touch ID).  

The mobile app is divided into three sections: Vault, Security, and Settings. You can launch, edit, and add new entries to your vault, generate secure passwords, take the security challenge, and change phone-related settings. You will still need to use the web vault to access the security dashboard and turn on some of the more advanced security features, such as dark web monitoring and multi-factor authentication.

I have had a couple of issues getting the mobile app to populate credit card forms, but for the most part, the mobile app is excellent. I've had other password managers get tripped up on app permissions or fail to sync quickly enough between devices for my liking, but I can save a password in LastPass on my desktop, open the mobile app immediately, and it's already there.

Security in LastPass

LastPass's security protocols are the same as most of its competitors: AES-256 encryption and zero-knowledge technology, meaning your data is encrypted locally and cannot be accessed or recovered by LastPass.

Free and paid LastPass users have access to 2FA through LastPass's Authenticator app (LastPass also works with other authenticator apps, such as Microsoft Authenticator and Google Authenticator). Paid users can set up additional forms of multi-factor authentication, such as fingerprint readers and hardware keys.

LastPass doesn't know your master password and cannot recover it for you. You can recover your account, though, should you lose your master password — and yes, this does make it less secure, but security is about finding a balance between convenience and total lockdown. 

There are actually several ways to recover your account: You can get a one-time recovery password from a recognized device/browser, you can revert to an old master password, you can sign in with biometrics on your mobile device, you can get a reset code via text, and you can use the password hint you may have entered during sign up. You probably shouldn't set up all of these options (especially not the last two), but at least there are options.

LastPass follows the same strict security protocols as its competitors, but the company has had multiple security concerns in the past: In addition to the data breach in 2015, bugs have been found in LastPass’s browser extension and unnecessary trackers have been found in its mobile app. It’s not the only password manager to have had security snafus, but it has been more consistently plagued by vulnerabilities (especially in the app and browser extensions) and privacy concerns than managers such as 1Password and Dashlane.

Bottom Line

Back when LastPass offered unlimited syncing and device switching for unpaid users, it was sort of a no-brainer for everyone to sign up. But limiting free users to one device type has definitely made other password managers worth a look — even if LastPass's free version does have features you won't see in many other free password managers.

If you’re looking for something completely free, Bitwarden’s free service doesn’t run as smoothly as LastPass’s, but it does offer syncing across unlimited devices. If you're willing to pay for a password manager, LastPass is a more seamless cross-platform tool than other services I’ve used (including Keeper and Dashlane), and the Family plan is an especially good deal. It’s not perfect — no password manager is — but LastPass may be your best option.

Western Digital and Kioxia have issued an update, via EE Times Japan regarding the contamination issues that hit their Japanese NAND fabrication plants earlier this year. The event resulted in around 7 exabytes of 3D NAND memory being contaminated, and thus unfit for shipment and integration in actual products. The companies have now announced that the impacted facilities - namely the Yokkaichi Plant (Mie Prefecture) and Kitakami Plant (Iwate Prefecture) have now resumed their normal operations - almost a month after they were brought offline.

Following the contamination and factory closures, Western Digital has already revised its revenue and profit estimates for Q3 2022. Western Digital now expects to bring in around US $ 4.2 billion to US $ 4.4 billion, down from original estimates of US $ 4.45 billion to US $ 4.65 billion - a $250 million impact (around 6%) in the company's bottom-line for the quarter. 

That still doesn't include the estimated $250-$270 million cost of trying to recover the affected NAND dies - remember that the companies already invested in the required materials and manufacturing processes. Recovering as much of the affected NAND as possible seems to be the smarter, most economical move - even if it does bring about additional, unplanned expenses in bringing them back towards usability.

The 7 exabytes of unusable 3D NAND represents around 3.38% of the total annual NAND production for 2021, which came in at a mind-boggling 207 Exabytes spread over 333 million SSDs. But that only refers to the actual contaminated NAND, and doesn't take into account the 21 days the factories were offline. Due to the contaminated NAND, guidelines for NAND pricing have been revised - those 7 exabytes alone account for around 13% of global NAND production for Q3 2022 (January-March); market analytics firm TrendForce expects NAND pricing to increase anywhere from 5% to 10% due to the lowered supply.

It's unclear much more impact could be seen in NAND supply and pricing when one takes into account the factories' downtime - NAND chip fabrication might be simpler than fabricating CPUs or other highly-complex semiconductors, but production times from the beginning of the process until a finalized NAND chip leaves the factory floor still take anywhere from two to three months. Semiconductor manufacturing is a fickle process; even with redundancies and a number of quality control checks between receiving prime materials and processing them until an actual wafer is finished, any impurity has a disproportional impact on yield and production.

Researchers with Duke University and IonQ, one of the leading quantum computing solution developers, have announced the development of a new operation unit in quantum computing: the quantum gate. Leveraging IonQ's ion chain-based quantum computing solutions, the new N-qubit Toffoli quantum gate expands upon the standard two-qubit gates ubiquitous in the quantum computing industry and instead allows multiple qubits to be leveraged simultaneously for the same workload, leading to more powerful and more efficient quantum circuits. Up to now, N-qubit Tofolli gates had only been theoretically demonstrated.

"No other available quantum computing architectures—not even other ion-based quantum computers—are able to utilize this new family of N-qubit gates," said IonQ co-Founder and Chief Scientist Prof. Christopher Monroe. "This is because IonQ's quantum computers uniquely feature full connectivity and a wide communication bus that allows all qubits to talk to each other simultaneously."

The qubit and gate model of current quantum computers generally employ a universal set of operations, such as single-qubit rotations and two-qubit controlled-NOT gates. However, these require that workloads be distributed amongst several, singular paired qubits (which aren't aware of other qubit states) to achieve the required acceleration, which is significantly less efficient than distributing the workload across a many-qubit (N-qubit) system. N-qubit Toffoli gates unlock the ability to perform any desired Boolean function computation in a reversible manner — which is particularly important for quantum computing operations due to their probabilistic nature.

Despite all the interesting and groundbreaking research being done in the field already, quantum computers are still a nascent technology. Coherence times (the time interval where qubits can maintain their state and hold the information being processed) are only now encroaching on human time scales - records for five-second and ten-second coherence times being achieved in other quantum architectures just this week. Imagine if your computer could only perform useable work for ten seconds at a time before you had to hit the reset button — this is the current state of quantum computing. While that particular limitation will still require an incredible amount of research to improve upon, IonQ and Duke university's research will help to increase the complexity and performance of quantum operations within already-unlocked coherence times.

"This discovery is an example of us continuing to build on the leading technical architecture we've established. It adds to the unique and powerful capabilities we are developing for quantum computing applications," said Peter Chapman, CEO at IonQ.

According to the researchers, the new N-qubit capabilities will lead to significant efficiency gains in fundamental quantum computing operations such as Grover's search algorithm, variational quantum eigensolvers (VQEs), and arithmetic operations like addition and multiplication. Being fundamental operations with applications in the fields of quantum chemistry, quantum finance, quantum machine learning, and quantum benchmarks, IonQ is betting on the new N-qubit Toffoli quantum gates to build upon the company's performance leadership in the field. 

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago have achieved a new record in maintaining quantum bits (qubits) in a coherent quantum state for more than five seconds. The research, published in the Science Advances Magazine, is hailed as an important new step in extracting useful work from quantum computers - one that should scale quantum computing's performance towards the much-sought-after quantum supremacy moment.

Quantum computing systems are notoriously difficult to maintain in coherent states. The fragile nature of the "ordered chaos" is such that qubit information and qubit connection (entanglement) usually deteriorates in scales much lower than a second. The new research brings quantum computing coherency to human-perceivable scales of time. Using a technique they've termed "single shot readout," the researchers used precise laser pulses to add single electrons to qubits.

"[The] emitted light reflects the absence or presence of the electron, and with almost 10,000 times more signal," said University of Chicago graduate student Elena Glen. "By converting our fragile quantum state into stable electronic charges, we can measure our state much, much more easily. With this signal boost, we can get a reliable answer every time we check what state the qubit is in. This type of measurement is called 'single shot readout,' and with it, we can unlock a lot of useful quantum technologies."

The addition of single electrons is akin to pressing the reset button on your PC, but for quantum states. It eliminates all previously-loaded errors (qubits are sensitive to any external interference), allowing coherent states to "perpetuate" themselves. The idea is to bridge the quantum and electron realms, and the choice of material is paramount: the researchers took advantage of the inherent capabilities of silicon carbide, which can operate in both realms.

"We've essentially made a translator to convert from quantum states to the realm of electrons, which are the language of classical electronics, like what's in your smartphone," said Chris Anderson of the University of Chicago, co-first author on the paper. "We want to create a new generation of devices that are sensitive to single electrons, but that also host quantum states. Silicon carbide can do both, and that's why we think it really shines."

While it may not sound like much, time flows differently in computing; going from stable quantum states in the order of fractions of a second up to five seconds increases the amount of useful computing time extracted from the available qubits. Moreover, it opens up new ways of increasing processing power beyond pure qubit count - the researchers calculate that they can perform around 100 million quantum operations in that five-second slice. So perhaps quantum computing will be a threat to Bitcoin and the current government, commercial and personal encryption schemes much earlier than expected?

"It's uncommon to have quantum information preserved on these human timescales," said David Awschalom, senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. "Five seconds is long enough to send a light-speed signal to the moon and back. That's powerful if you're thinking about transmitting information from a qubit to someone via light. That light will still correctly reflect the qubit state even after it has circled the Earth almost 40 times — paving the way to make a distributed quantum internet."

This technology could be paired with photonics-based quantum computing for a scalable, light-speed distributed quantum computing network. The researchers expect their results will allow for the development of quantum repeaters. It is also hoped that through the usage of silicon carbide, there will be venues for typical CMOS (Complementary-symmetry Metal Oxide Semiconductor) manufacturing technologies to integrate electron spin–based systems in classical electrical devices that are sensitive to single charges.

Software can be expensive. That's why some people decide to pirate apps instead of buying licenses for them, but according to Red Canary, hackers are using a fake version of a popular software piracy tool to spread the Cryptbot malware.

The tool in question is called KMSPico, which Red Canary said is used to "activate the full features of Microsoft Windows and Office products without actually owning a license key." Security tools usually block KMSPico, so it often comes with instructions for disabling those protections, thereby leaving systems vulnerable to malware.

Which brings us to Cryptbot. Red Canary said it "harms organizations by stealing credentials and other sensitive information from affected systems." The company said much of that private data is stolen from cryptocurrency-related software like:

• Atomic cryptocurrency wallet
• Ledger Live cryptocurrency wallet
• Waves Client and Exchange cryptocurrency applications
• Coinomi cryptocurrency wallet
• Jaxx Liberty cryptocurrency wallet
• Electron Cash cryptocurrency wallet
• Electrum cryptocurrency wallet
• Exodus cryptocurrency wallet
• Monero cryptocurrency wallet
• MultiBitHD cryptocurrency wallet

Red Canary said that Cryptbot also tries to steal information from Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Brave, and Vivaldi web browsers and the CCleaner system management tool. But the extensive list of wallet software targeted by Cryptbot makes it clear that crypto enthusiasts are high-value targets.

As far as protecting against this scheme goes, it seems the best option is not to look for KMSPico downloads in the first place. "A pirate's life is not the life for us, especially when it comes to cracked software," Red Canary said. "Save yourself the trouble and go for legitimate, supported activation methods."

Though now-a-days it's a perfectly fine browser, Microsoft Edge is not for everyone. In fact, by many estimates, Edge is not for most people, representing just 3.5 percent of the market, compared to 64.9 percent for Chrome. 

The majority of users who reject Edge, are content to simply install Chrome, Firefox or Opera and change the default browser in Windows 11 or 10. But for some folks, it's not enough to avoid using Microsoft's browser and leave it as a vestigial organ on the body of their Start menus; they want to remove Edge altogether.

Normally, if you want to uninstall an application in Windows 11 or 10, you just navigate to Settings->Apps->Apps & features, locate the name of your app, select uninstall and (Microsoft) Bob's your uncle. But, with Edge, the uninstall option is grayed out and you need to use some command-line magic to get the job done.

Note that uninstalling Microsoft Edge does not prevent it from being listed as your default browser (you have to change that separately) nor does it stop the Windows 11 widget and Windows search's web results from attempting (and failing) to launch themselves in Edge. There are workarounds, however, which we cover below. 

How to Uninstall Microsoft Edge in Windows 11 or 10

1. Navigate to the Edge About page by going to the browser's settings menu and then Help & feedback->About Microsoft Edge.

The edge About page will appear.

2. Copy the version number into your clipboard by highlighting it (just the number) and hitting CTRL + C. You may want to paste it into a notepad document for safe keeping.

3. Launch the command prompt in admin mode. The easiest way is by searching for "cmd," right clicking the top result and selecting "Run as administrator."

4. Enter the following command where [VERSION] is replaced with the actual Edge version number (in my case, it was 93.0.961.38). 

cd %PROGRAMFILES(X86)%\Microsoft\Edge\Application\[VERSION]\Installer

5. Enter the following uninstall command.

setup --uninstall --force-uninstall --system-level

6. Change your default browser if you haven't done so already. If Edge was your default before you uninstalled it, Windows 11 will still list it as the default (though with a blue box as an icon), which could cause problems when you try to click a link in another app. 

See our tutorial on how to change your default browser in Windows 11 for details on how to make the change. If you want to continue to click links in the Widgets box or those that appear in Windows search, you'll need to use EdgeDeflector.

If you want to reinstall Microsoft Edge, you can search for and download it directly from the Microsoft Store. 

Microsoft Edge will then download itself and install like any other app. 

Iran's cryptocurrency miners are expected to be allowed to resume operations on September 22, the Iran Power Generation, Distribution and Transmission Company (Tavanir) told The Financial Tribune, as demand on the country's power grid falls.

The Ministry of Industries, Mining and Trade temporarily banned cryptocurrency mining earlier this year because it was concerned the energy-intensive process might lead to blackouts as overall power consumption rose in the summer months.

The Financial Tribune reported that Iran only plans to lift the ban for the 30 licensed mining operations in the country. As a result, other miners could still face legal repercussions for operating without having the appropriate license or paying the required taxes.

But that doesn't appear to be much of a deterrent. The Financial Tribune said, "unlicensed miners use almost 2,000-3,000 MW a day, as much as half the total daily power consumption in Tehran City," and "damage the power distribution systems."

Tavanir reportedly said that unlicensed miners have caused approximately $4.26 billion (180 trillion rials) in damage to its equipment and that it's helped the Iranian government seize 212,373 mining rigs over the last 12 months.

Iran isn't the only country worried about the power consumption of cryptocurrency mining operations. China has cited its push to reduce its environmental impact as part of the reason why it's shut down cryptocurrency mines, for example, and groups in the U.S. have also raised concerns about mining's energy usage.

Nor is it the only country destroying mining equipment to combat unlicensed mining: Malaysian police steamrolled $1.6 million worth of Bitcoin mining rigs in July because their owners were stealing electricity to power their operations.

Nvidia announced today that it has taken necessary actions to gimp the GeForce RTX 3060's mining performance in an effort to stop cryptocurrency miners from getting their hands on the graphics card. YouTuber CryptoLeo has put the GeForce RTX 3060 through its paces and found Nvidia's measures to be extremely effective.

Custom GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards won't go up for purchase until February 25, however, the YouTuber managed to get his hands on Zotac's GeForce RTX 3060 Twin Edge ahead of launch. The GeForce RTX 3060 is slated to start at $329, but sounds more like an overdose of optimism in present times, with a graphics card shortages and scalpers trying to make a profit. CryptoLeo paid around $830 for his GeForce RTX 3060 with shipping included.

Initially, the GeForce RTX 3060 was pushing a hash rate around 41.526 MH/s on PhoenixMiner 5.5c at the beginning of the mining operation. However, the Ampere graphics card's performance gradually descended until it hit rock bottom at 23.807 MH/s. If we look at the math, that's a massive 42.7% drop in mining performance and falls right in line with Nvidia's claims to slash the GeForce RTX 3060's mining performance by up to 50%.

According to Nvidia's press release, the anti-mining algorithm is built into the driver on a software level. However, the YouTuber claimed that he didn't have access to the latest Nvidia press driver, so he tricked the software into thinking that he's installing a GeForce RTX 3070 with an older driver. This seems to contradict Nvidia's implementation, that is, unless the chipmaker had already slipped in the mechanism into previous drivers without us knowing. It's also plausible that the YouTuber did have the right driver.

Assuming that the protection doesn't reside in the driver, then it's probably hidden inside the graphics card's vBIOS instead. A wild guess is that anti-mining mechanism is triggered with some type of cryptomining workload, resulting the graphics card automatically decreasing its performance.

Whether it's driver-based or vBIOS-based, Nvidia's protection might not be airtight. In the case of the first, cryptocurrency miners could theoretically just use an older driver that doesn't have the anti-mining algorithm. Even if it's baked into the vBIOS, there's a possibility that someone will find a way around it and just flashed the modified vBIOS onto the GeForce RTX 3060.

With its latest anti-mining efforts, Nvidia has found a way to halt cryptocurrency miners from picking up the GeForce RTX 3060 for the meantime. Unfortunately, it will affect legitimate owners that want to do some casual cryptocurrency mining as well.

Intel and Synopsys have announced that they had successfully demonstrated interoperability between Intel’s next-generation Xeon Scalable ‘Sapphire Rapids’ processors and Synopsys’s PCIe 5.0 controller and physical interface (PHY). The successful validation of Synopsys’s PCIe 5.0 IP with Intel’s upcoming processor has two important implications: the CPU and PCIe 5.0 IP work as planned at a 32 GT/s data transfer rate.

The Demonstration

The demonstration of interoperability between Intel’s upcoming Xeon Scalable ‘Sapphire Rapids’ and Synopsys’s DesignWare IP for PCIe 5.0 is a testament that both the CPU and the PCIe 5.0 solution work as planned. This indicates that upcoming chips supporting a PCIe 5.0 interface using technologies from Synopsys — such as SSD controllers, network adapters, and various accelerators — will work fine with Intel’s 4th Generation Xeon Scalable processor. 

"Achieving successful interoperability between Synopsys' DesignWare IP for PCIe 5.0 and Intel Xeon Scalable processors validates that the IP functions as intended with Intel's industry-standard PCIe 5.0 products, accelerating the path to first-silicon success with less risk," said John Koeter, senior vice president of marketing and strategy for IP at Synopsys. 

Last year Synopsys demonstrated its CXL over PCIe 5.0 as well as CCIX over PCIe 5.0 solutions using silicon implementations of its PCIe 5.0 with CXL or CCIX controller and appropriate physical interface (PHY) as well as IP prototyping kits. It also demonstrated PCIe 5.0 interoperability between its test chip and an Intel test chip (pictured above). Typically, such demonstrations are enough for system-on-chip (SoC) designers to verify that everything works and start licensing appropriate IP and PHY packages from companies like Synopsys. In fact, Synopsys’s DesignWare IP for PCIe 5.0 has been licensed over a hundred of times already, so there is over a hundred of PCIe 5.0-enabled designs incoming. 

Synopsys currently has DesignWare controller, PHY, and verification IP for PCIe 5.0 in a variety of FinFET fabrication technologies from 16-nm to 5-nm.

An Important Platform

Intel’s codenamed ‘Sapphire Rapids’ CPU, which was first powered on in mid-2020 and is due in late 2021 supports not only the PCIe 5.0 technology, but also the CXL 1.1 protocol. Therefore, it is a bit surprising that Intel and Synopsys did not test CXL 1.1 in addition to PCIe 5.0 at this time 

Intel’s next-generation Xeon Scalable ‘Sapphire Rapids’ is a particularly important server platform for the company as it brings not only higher performance enabled by a higher core count and boosted frequencies, but a host of new technologies, including an eight-channel DDR5 memory interface, a PCIe 5.0 interface, the CXL 1.1 protocol, Intel’s Data Streaming Accelerator (DSA) technology, Intel’s Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX), and AVX512_BF16 as well as AVX512_VP2INTERSECT instructions.

Intel last week said that its Fab 42, which began construction in 2011, had started operations. The manufacturing facility is producing processors using the company’s 10nm process technology and is the company’s third location to use the company’s latest node. The addition of the third 10nm capable fab to the fleet can significantly improve availability of Intel’s latest products. (Via AZCentral/Intel)

The Third 10nm Fab

Intel can produce chips using its 10 nm process technologies (2nd generation 10nm used for Ice Lake, Ice Lake-SP, Elkhart Lake, Snow Ridge as well as 3rd generation 10nm SuperFin used for Tiger Lake and DG1) at three of its sites: in Israel, Oregon, and Arizona. All of the company’s 10nm products released to date were produced either in Oregon or in Israel as Fab 42 in Arizona was waiting for demand for 10nm CPUs to pick up.

The addition of Fab 42 to the fleet of facilities that manufacture 10nm products in high volume promises to significantly improve Intel’s abilities to supply said processors. As a result, there will be more Tiger Lake-based designs when compared to Ice Lake-powered designs. 

Intel traditionally does not disclose production capacity of its fabs, but it noted that Fab 42 connects to three other Intel fabs, making the site the company’s ‘first mega-factory network.’ Typically, megafabs are fabrication facilities that offer capacity between 25,000 and 100,000 wafer starts per month. Meanwhile, WSPM capacity depends on particular process technology and varies between nodes. 

According to Intel, so far it has invested over $23 billion on its manufacturing facility in Arizona. At present, it employs 12,000 people in the state.

Intel’s Fab 42: A Short History Lesson

Intel’s Fab 42 has an interesting history as one of the company’s leading-edge manufacturing facilities. The world’s largest maker of processors started to construct the factory in 2011. Back then the prospects of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography were uncertain, so Intel envisioned that the industry might move to larger — 450mm — wafers in the foreseeable future. As a result, Fab 42 was built to be compatible with equipment processing 450mm wafers.  

The construction was completed in 2013 and essential things like heating and air conditioning were installed. But in early 2014 the company decided not to move in semiconductor production equipment used to make chips using then leading edge 14nm process technology as it was not sure about demand. 

In early 2017, Intel announced plans to spend $7 billion to equip its Fab 42 in a bid to make chips using its next-generation 7nm fabrication technology. Over time it turned out that Intel needed more 10nm capacity, so the fab was equipped with tools required for 10nm nodes that are supposed to use the same production equipment. Meanwhile, it is unclear whether Fab 42 can indeed produce chips using Intel’s 7nm manufacturing process that relies both on DUV and EUV lithography. 

Google announced on Halloween that it addressed two severe vulnerabilities in Chrome on Windows, macOS, and Linux with the release of version 78.0.3904.87. The company also said in its announcement that it was "aware of reports that an exploit" for one of the vulnerabilities, CVE-2019-13720, already "exists in the wild."

Both of the issues were "use-after-free" vulnerabilities that occur when apps try to use memory that's no longer allocated to them. CVE-2019-13720 involved a use-after-free vulnerability in Chrome audio; CVE-2019-13721 was a use-after-free vulnerability in the PDFium utility that Chrome uses to manage PDF documents.

The vulnerabilities were discovered by Kaspersky researchers. They gave the exploit for CVE-2019-13720 a far more interesting name: Operation WizardOpium. According to Kaspersky's blog post, the exploit was found embedded in a "Korean-language news portal" used to deliver malware via malicious JavaScript scripts.

Kaspersky said it has "been unable to establish a definitive link with any known threat actors" so far. "There are certain very weak code similarities with Lazarus attacks," the company explained, "although these could very well be a false flag." (Which would mean someone imitated the Lazarus attacks to mislead researchers.)

Both companies advised Chrome users to install version 78.0.3904.87 as soon as possible. That shouldn't require user intervention, thanks to the browser's automatic update feature, but you can double-check which version of Chrome you're using by visiting the About Chrome page in the browser's Settings menu.

Google said it awarded Kaspersky's researchers $7,500 for the disclosure of CVE-2019-13721; the reward for CVE-2019-13720 hasn't been determined. More information about the company's vulnerability disclosure and reward policies (at least as they relate to its browser) can be found on the Chrome Security Page.

Kaspersky security researchers were able to uncover some hacking operations launched by what's believed to be an intelligence agency in Uzbekistan. According to the researchers, the Uzbekistan spies were easy to catch due to their incredibly bad operational security (opsec).

A SandCat and Mouse Game

As reported by Vice, Kaspersky researchers recently found a hacking group that it believes is an intelligence agency from Uzbekistan. Kaspersky originally named the group “SandCat,” but now it's believed that SandCat is actually the Uzbekistan government's State Security Service (SSS).

One of the group's questionable opsec practices included using "the name of a military group with ties to the SSS" for registration of one the domains in the attack infrastructure, according to Vice. 

Another error SandCat made was installing Kaspersky Anti-Virus on the same machines it used to write the new malware. This allowed Kaspersky's antivirus telemetry to detect and collect the malicious code before it was deployed. Kaspersky actually got into Kaspersky actually got into big trouble over this feature not too long ago, when the U.S. government accused the vendor of stealing classified documents this way. But in this situation, Kaspersky used its antivirus’ detection feature to learn about four new zero-day exploits that SandCat had purchased from third-party security vulnerability brokers. Kaspersky was later able to uncover the activities of Saudi and United Arab Emirates (UAE) state hacking groups that had purchased the same tools.

How SandCat Developed Its Hacking Capabilities

We know from an earlier hack against Hacking Team, an Italian company that sells hacking tools to government and law enforcement, that the SSS was a customer in 2011. Hacking Team was one of the most infamous surveillance tools companies from Italy that was selling surveillance and hacking software to repressive governments. But SSS’ cyber activities have flown under the radar until now.

Kaspersky actually uncovered traces of SandCat activities since 2018, but at the time it didn’t have reason to believe SandCat was the SSS. In 2018, SandCat was using a piece of malware called “Chainshot” that had also been used by the Saudi Arabia and UAE state groups. However, SandCat was using a different attack infrastructure from the other two countries, which led Kaspersky to believe that it must be an unrelated hacking group. One thing the Kaspersky researchers did know at the time is that whichever group it was, it had significant financial backing. They concluded this from the fact that the SandCat hackers were burning (using and them losing them to discovery by others) through their exploits like nothing. However, burning the exploits so quickly meant that Saudi Arabia and UAE couldn’t use them anymore either.

Kaspersky believes that for the latest attacks, SandCat purchased exploits from two Israeli companies, NSO Group and Candiru. The NSO Group has been accused in the past of selling surveillance tools to governments that target journalists and dissidents, but the company has denied the allegations. Candiru provides a surveillance and hacking operations management platform as a service to interested hacking groups.

The companies may have stopped selling its tools to SandCat in 2018. That’s when Kaspersky believes that the SandCat group might have started developing its own in-house tools. However, their poor opsec execution made it much easier for the group to get caught.

Kaspersky researchers believe that the recent discovery may force SandCat to improve its opsec, but at the same time it may have also put them in the spotlight. More security researchers are also now expected to look for SandCat tools and perhaps identify more of their victims.

TunnelBear is a VPN provider based in Toronto, Canada and owned by cybersecurity giant McAfee, which acquired it in March 2018. The provider was established over seven years ago and has over 25 million users worldwide.

The VPN employs all the classic industry mechanisms aimed at protecting its users anonymity, in addition to proving its qualities through independent audits. But streamers and those with a lot of devices should look elsewhere.

TunnelBear Specs

Pricing

TunnelBear has a very limited free account that allows only 500MB of Internet traffic per month. For comparison, consider that Windscribe’s free plan offers 10GB.

As far as premium options go, there are only two: the 1-month or 1-year option for $9.99 and $4.99 per month, respectively.

*Free and Build A Plan (Windscribe only) options not shown

For payment, the provider accepts three major credit cards (MasterCard, Visa and American Express) and Bitcoin, although the latter is only accepted for the 1-year plan.

If you are not satisfied with the service for any reason, you can claim a refund within 30 days of your initial purchase. There’s no free trial for the paid version.

Features

TunnelBear has servers in about 20 locations around the world.

Clients are available for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android, in addition to limited support and instructions for Linux. That’s as far as device support goes. The service cannot be installed on any routers, e-readers, Windows mobile devices, gaming consoles, smart TVs or Raspberry Pi. Chrome, Firefox, and Opera web browsers, however, can be secured with TunnelBear browser extensions.

The provider doesn’t unblock Netflix and BBC iPlayer, but it facilitates access to geo-restricted content on YouTube.

All of TunnelBear’s servers are P2P-friendly, meaning you can share large files via torrenting clients without any limitations. However, some servers are better suited for such purposes than others, which is something the TunnelBear can help with.

This VPN service allows you to connect up to 5 devices at the same time. Most other VPN platforms can be enabled on certain routers, which then act as only one device and therefore enable unlimited connections. This is not the case with TunnelBear.

Support for any aspect of the service is available on the website’s help section, where you can find articles that cover the basics, troubleshooting, announcements and more, albeit with somewhat modest content. If you still have unresolved issues, you can contact customer service for assistance. They cannot be reached via live chat, but there’s an option that lets you to describe your issue, upload a screenshot and leave your email address. Someone from the team will respond via email.

Privacy

This VPN vendor offers security that’s as strong as a bear, thanks to the OpenVPN and IKEv2 protocols used randomly in Windows and Mac clients. If you’re connected via the OpenVPN transfer protocol, you can choose whether you want a TCP or UDP connection.

Encryption is provided using the 256-bit AES algorithm, in addition to SHA1-HMAC with 160-bit Secure Hash Algorithm data authentication. Another privacy mechanism employed by TunnelBear is the 2048 Diffie-Hellman ephemeral key exchange and 2048-bit RSA certificate.

It doesn’t have plenty of features, save for the standard kill switch and an Android-only split tunneling feature. The kill switch, called VigilantBear, shuts down all the Internet traffic on your device in the event of a sudden VPN connection termination, protecting your data from becoming exposed. Split tunneling, dubbed SplitBear, allows you to select which apps you want to run on the VPN and which you want to leave on the regular connection.

There’s also the optional GhostBear feature, which makes your VPN traffic less detectable on your network.

TunnelBear does not collect, store, or log any of sensitive data -- like IP addresses, DNS queries  or any information about the applications, services, or websites its users use -- while connected to the VPN. The company also doesn’t disclose any personal data to other commercial parties under any circumstance.

If words aren’t enough to prove to you that security is a top priority, TunnelBear is also among the first in the VPN industry to regularly publish independent audits.

Performance

In terms of performance, TunnelBear delivers pretty solid results.

We didn’t experience any significant delays in connection times, and the connection itself was stable and reliable. Download speeds occasionally suffered from some latency, depending on the server location; although this is expected.

Bottom Line

TunnelBear is a modest VPN provider with the standard VPN features, meager server coverage and limited platform support and pricing options.

It doesn’t unblock the popular streaming services but supports unlimited torrenting, and regular torrenters will appreciate the solid performance. Another positive is that the company publishes regular independent audits.

TunnelBear offers basic VPN capabilities that are sufficient for those who don’t care about streaming or connecting more than 5 devices and are more interested in keeping their online activities private.

Image Credits: TunnelBear

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Gamers are often treated like a market unto themselves. Companies have made chairs, clothing, sodas and even personal hygiene products specifically for people who play games. Opera joined the fun yesterday with the release of Opera GX, which it called "the first gaming browser," in early access.

It would be easy to scoff at the idea of a gaming browser. The moniker evokes images of someone gulping down some Game Fuel, cracking their knuckles and leaning forward in their gaming chair to see what's been added to Newgrounds since the last time they visited the site. Opera GX's black-and-red color scheme doesn't help matters, but underneath the seemingly ludicrous concept lie a few interesting features that could be worth exploring.

Browsers can be notoriously resource-intensive, which means they often have to be closed whenever someone wants to get the best possible in-game performance. Opera GX addresses that problem with a built-in RAM Limiter and CPU Limiter that can be used to minimize its effect on performance, even if doing so leads to a worse browsing experience. 

An upcoming feature that will purportedly allow Opera GX users to "watch tutorials, walkthroughs, streams, or any other video content in a window floating over [their] game" could also be interesting. It's not uncommon for people to watch video content while playing a game. Being able to access those videos without having to rely on a second monitor (or some prodigious Alt-Tab skills) could prove useful to these entertainment omnivores.

Opera GX also attempts to offer quick access to services gamers are more likely to care about. That includes a sidebar devoted entirely to Twitch; a tab called the GX Corner that's supposed to let people "stay up-to-date with the best deals, the newest releases and breaking gaming news" in one place; and having the popular Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Vkontakte and WhatsApp messenger services accessible right from the sidebar.

The rest of the browser's features seem pretty standard for Opera: users can pick the browser's accent color, theme and wallpaper; install add-ons made specifically for Opera browsers as well as Chrome extensions; take advantage of a free VPN and built-in ad-blocking; and use pop-out video support to keep browsing the web while watching a video. Not everything in this so-called gaming browser has to be game-related, after all.

Opera GX probably won't be for everyone--liking games isn't going to be many people's determining factor when picking a browser--but some of its features show promise. The browser is currently available for Windows 10 in early access, (which is yet another indicator of its focus on the gaming market). We're eager to see how long Opera commits to this experiment and how well it actually differentiates itself from its non-gaming counterparts.

Security company Kaspersky discovered that Asus’ Live Update tool was infected with malware by malicious actors. However, it seemed unlikely that Asus would be the only company to be targeted in such a way. Kaspersky confirmed this today by uncovering six other companies that were targets of the same Operation ShadowHammer.

Operation ShadowHammer Infected Multiple Software Tools

Kaskerspy researchers, via the SecureList blog, said that the newly found malware samples leveraged algorithms that are similar to those used in the attack against Asus. 

One of the companies impacted, Electronics Extreme, makes the survival game Infestation: Survivor Stories. The second, Innovative Extremist, is a web and IT infrastructure services provider that has also worked in game development. The third company, Zepetto, is from South Korea and made the video game Point Blank.

According to Kaspersky’s researchers, the attackers either had access to the source code of thee companies’ software or were able to infect their software during compilation. The hackers could have infiltrated the networks of these companies. The researchers noted that this reminded them of how the CCleaner attack happened. Avast’s CCleaner update servers were infiltrated in a similar way, exposing millions of users to a trojanized CCleaner update.

Kaspersky said that three other South Korean companies were targeted, including another video game company, a conglomerate holding company and a pharmaceutical firm. The cybersecurity firm didn't share their names.

How Operation ShadowHammer Worked

Kaspersky researchers noted that the compromised video games of the first three companies targeted by Operation ShadowHammer were capable of gathering information about usernames, computer specs and configurations and operating system versions.

After being launched on the victims’ systems, the infected games would first check if certain traffic/processor monitoring tools were running and if the language used by the system was Simplified Chinese or Russian. If any of these were true, the malware within the games would stop running. Otherwise, it would collect the aforementioned system information and more.

The compromised software could also be used to download new malicious payloads from the attackers’ command and control servers. The list of potential victims was not limited to a list of MAC addresses, as was the case with the attack against Asus’ Live Update tool.

The attackers were able to infect these companies’ software via valid digital certificates, which were used to compromise their development environments. Kaspersky recommends these companies and others in their position not to rely only on digital signatures for the security of their software but also to analyze the software code properly even after the code is digitally signed.

The Kaspersky researchers also warned that there may be many more companies that were targeted by the same group, but the number is currently not known. However, if Operation ShadowHammer succeeded in infecting popular developer tools, then any company that uses those affected developer tools would also be infected.

Asus has responded to Kaspersky Labs' report yesterday that an unidentified threat actor used the Asus Live Update Utility to compromise up to 1 million devices. The cybersecurity company also released a diagnostics tool to help its customers figure out if they were affected by the attack and is reportedly contacting customers that it knows were affected to help them recover.

Kaspersky named the attack Operation ShadowHammer and said it was the largest supply chain attack since CCLeaner attack of 2017, with 57,000 devices confirmed affected and more than 1 million believed to have been so. Why? To compromise just 600 yet-to-be-identified devices. (That's an extra 1,666 people affected for each actual target.)

The security company said that an attacker compromised the Asus Live Update Utility and distributed it to the manufacturer's devices. The malicious version of the utility was said to feature the same file size as the original, was signed with a legitimate certificate and was hosted on Asus' server. It would've been hard for anyone to spot.

Asus responded to Kaspersky's report late that same day of Kaspersky's revelation. According to Bloomberg, the company said that "only several hundred" PCs were infiltrated, not 1 million. It also said that it helped its customers fix the problem, patched the vulnerability that allowed the Asus Live Update Utility to be taken over and updated its servers after the attack.

We don't have enough information to say which company is more accurate. Both are likely to stick to their own findings: reporting on large-scale attacks helps security companies like Kaspersky advertise their services; manufacturers like Asus might want to downplay attacks to avoid the inevitable lawsuits, bad press and other issues.

Still, in Motherboard's report on Operation ShadowHammer, the outlet noted that Symantec corroborated Kaspersky's findings.

We also haven't seen mention of Operation ShadowHammer on Asus' U.S. site--the company appears to be handling the issue as quietly as possible.

Kaspersky is set to reveal more information about the attack at the SAS 2019 conference on April 8.

It looks like Google is finally adding “drive-by” download protection to its latest Chrome 73 browser version. Due for release in either March or April of this year, possibly along with the controversial adblock changes, Chrome will no longer allow hidden iframes to activate, and potentially download files directly to your PC without user consent.

Although a security feature already offered in Mozilla’s Firefox and Microsoft’s Edge internet browsers, at least since 2015, it’ll be another feather in Chrome’s market leading cap for sure.

As ZDNet reports, it’s understood that, according to Google, roughly 0.002117% of web pages accessible through Chrome, are infected with drive-by downloads, potentially installing malware, and other malicious programs onto unsuspecting user’s systems. Although that is seemingly a minute percentage, if you consider the fact that there’s an estimated 1.952 billion websites currently out there, that equates to 41,327 separate compromised domains, or at least at time of writing.

Although this change no doubt comes as a relief to many, it’s worth noting that if malicious entities still have access to the compromised site, all they need to do is allocate the iframe attribute into the source code once more and, instruct Chrome to disable the drive-by protection for those iframes.

This protection should be coming to all versions of Chrome 73, except that found on Apple’s iOS, as it doesn’t take advantage of the Chromium web engine. Also you can expect to see this make its way to both Opera, and the soon to be released Chromium version of Microsoft Edge as well some time during the year.

A Windows Central report Monday claimed Microsoft is replacing the EdgeHTML rendering engine in its Edge browser with Blink, a rendering engine from Chromium, the open source version of Google Chrome. Google forked Blink from Apple’s open source WebKit rendering engine, which is used by the Safari browser and previously by Chrome and other Android browsers. 

According to Windows Central’s anonymous sources, Microsoft intends to replace the Edge browser with a new browser code-named Anaheim on the Windows 10 operating system. It’s not clear if the new browser would keep the Edge brand name or get a new name. It’s also unknown whether or not the new browser will use the Edge UI. 

Microsoft has already made this move on Android and iOS, where its Edge browser uses the Blink and Webkit rendering engines, while using the Edge UI on top. When Microsoft’s Sean Lyndersay, the Principal Program Mananger Lead for Edge, announced the Android and iOS browsers last year, he said the company is committed to EdgeHTML, despite its replacing it with Blink and WebKit on Android and iOS.

"Part of our strategy with EdgeHTML is to build an engine that, instead of replicating (and, in some senses, competing with) the underlying platform, integrates and works with it to deliver the best possible security, accessibility, battery life, interactivity, just pure raw performance on that platform. We are proud of the work we’ve done with EdgeHTML on Windows 10, all while driving the web forward with new capabilities and supporting interoperable standards. We are fully committed to continuing to do so into the future, across the full spectrum of Windows 10 platforms and form factors."

If the new report is true, that commitment to EdgeHTML has all but disappeared, as EdgeHTML will live in nothing but name (if that) inside all of Microsoft’s browsers, as Microsoft replaces it on each platform with either Blink or WebKit.

Chromium Dominance

Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers, such as Opera and other Android browsers, already dominate in browser market share. Some, including Mozilla developers, have been worried that as Blink and WebKit’s (a very similar rendering engine to Blink) market share increases, developers will have no interest in testing their websites on other browsers.

Steve Fink, a developer working for Mozilla on performance and tooling issues, warned back in 2013, right after Opera switched to WebKit (and later to Chromium/Blink), that rendering engine monoculture will create a myriad of problems for the web, including:

• WebKit bugs becoming part of the web platform because fixing them would break too many websites at once
• A slow down in innovation
• Giving third-parties, such as music studios, more control over what features can be developed for the web
• Feature bloat

This warning came five years ago, but not too many web developers (or browser users) took heed. Therefore, it may now be too late to do anything about it, and it may also be why Microsoft is reportedly planning to replace EdgeHTML with Blink.

Usually, lack of competition is a negative for end users. However, it’s a little different for open source projects because they aren't usually controlled by a single entity. And if they are, other people can just fork them and develop their own version.

However, if even a company like Microsoft is no longer willing to develop a new rendering engine or a fork of an existing open source rendering engine, then it may no longer be practical enough to fork such large projects. Therefore, the future of the web may depend on how Google and Apple continue to develop the Blink and WebKit rendering engines.

Remember when the only cryptocurrency anyone cared about was Bitcoin and the coolest thing you could buy with it were socks made from alpaca hair? Now there's a bunch of cryptocurrencies with more debuting all the time, and you can buy far more than just fuzzy footwear. Opera wants to make it easier to make those purchases from your phone with a new version of its Android browser with a built-in crypto wallet.

The company, which also offers web browsers for Windows, macOS and Linux operating systems, didn't exactly think outside the box when it came to naming this new browser--it's called Opera with Crypto Wallet. It's available now as a private beta on Android, and even though Opera plans to expand the offering to other Android users in the future, it's not clear when the company will bring the cryptowallet-supporting version of its browser to other platforms, or it even plans to do so at all.

Opera worked to appeal to cryptocurrency newcomers and regular users alike. Opera with Crypto Wallet stores all information on the device to keep users' funds safe, uses Android's built-in authentication mechanisms to spare people from having to remember a password or PIN and supports multiple cryptocurrencies to appeal to as many people as possible. It's probably not perfect--especially as a beta--but it is ambitious.

Opera Crypto product lead Charles Hamel shared some of the company's ambitions in a statement accompanying the announcement of Opera with Crypto Wallet:

“We believe the web of today will be the interface to the decentralized web of tomorrow,” he said. “By becoming the the first major browser to open up to Web 3.0, we would like to contribute to making the internet of the future more accessible. Our hope is that this will accelerate the transition of cryptocurrencies from speculation and investment to being used for actual payments and transactions in our users’ daily lives.”

Opera might actually have been too ambitious, though. The company's blog page has been down for several days, making the original announcement for Opera with Crypto Wallet unavailable almost since it was published (that post had more information than the official press release). The page where you could sign up for the private beta also showed us a 404 error. We contacted Opera to learn more about the situation but haven't heard back.

However, running into a few stumbling blocks on the road to making it easy to buy things with cryptocurrencies is not surprising. Companies like Apple are still trying to figure out how to simplify paying for things online with a credit card. Doing the same thing for Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any of the other cryptocurrencies that have popped up will take time. At least Opera is willing to tackle the problem at this early stage.

Over the past year, we’ve seen some major companies and organizations expose large databases of user information to the public via their Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Cloud Storage Service (S3) buckets. According to the security researchers at UpGuard, an Australian IT company based in the U.S., the Pentagon is the latest to have made the error of exposing large amounts of sensitive data to the public.

UpGuard’s Findings

According to UpGuard’s research, the Department of Defense left three downloadable cloud-based storage servers open to the public. The repositories found on these servers contained billions of public internet articles, commentaries, and social media posts from people in the U.S. and from abroad. The data from only one bucket is estimated to contain 1.8 billion posts gathered over a period of eight years.

UpGuard said that even though the Pentagon was collecting data that is normally considered public, the fact that it collects it on such a large scale of all law-abiding Americans and foreigners raises questions about online privacy and one’s ability to share their beliefs online.

The data was apparently collected by a now-defunct “VendorX,” which UpGuard said shows third-party vendor risks that could impact even the “highest echelons of the Pentagon.”

How The Discovery Was Made

UpGuard Director of Cyber Risk Research Chris Vickery discovered that the Pentagon’s AWS S3 buckets were configured to allow any authenticated AWS user to browse and download the contents. The only thing required to access the data is a free AWS account.

The three buckets had the subdomain names "centcom-backup," "centcom-archive," and "pacom-archive," which provide an indication of what they signify. CENTCOM refers to the U.S. Central Command, responsible for US military operations from East Africa to Central Asia, including the Iraq and Afghan Wars. PACOM refers to U.S. Pacific Command, covering East, South, Southeast Asia, as well as Australia and Pacific Oceania.

Little Security Benefit Of The Collected Data

From what the researchers at UpGuard have noticed from their analysis of the buckets’ contents, many of the collected posts seem to have no use for aiding national security. Many of the posts captured from Facebook or Twitter seem to be political commentaries made by American citizens or other benign posts with no value for national security.

This also brings us to some previous discoveries, which showed that the increasing amount of benign data collected from internet users across the world with no clear value for security, is actually paralyzing intelligence efforts.

The U.S. government's thinking around this seems to be that gathering as much information as possible helps it “find the needle in the haystack,” when in fact, it's merely adding more hay to the stack when it collects data that’s irrelevant to national security.

Beyond the privacy issues the data collection itself creates, UpGuard was surprised by how little care the Pentagon and its third-party vendors took in securing this intelligence data. UpGuard also warned that the exposed data will likely result in some aggressive actions taken by some governments against the creators of some of the posts that were collected by the Pentagon. Those governments may not have the Pentagon’s ability to collect so much data on their own citizens, but because of the Pentagon’s error, that data may now also be available to them.

The UpGuard researchers discovered the public buckets on September 6, but it’s unclear for how long this data has been available to the public and how many malicious actors may have taken advantage of the Pentagon’s error.

Amazon Improves AWS S3 Security Configurations

Earlier this month, Amazon announced a set of changes to its AWS S3 buckets that should make it a little harder for users to expose them to the public in error. It’s not clear whether or not these changes are a direct response to UpGuard’s findings and the Pentagon data leak, or if this last event was merely the last straw that prompted Amazon to take action after multiple such leaks came to light in the past few months.

For starters, the service will label buckets that are exposed to the public, which will supposedly prompt the account owners to make them private again in case they were misconfigured. Additionally, account owners will also have the option to automatically encrypt every new object added to the bucket.

However, just because these new encryption options now exist doesn’t mean the Pentagon or other organizations will use them. One of the reasons why the Pentagon may have kept the data in plain-text is because it wanted other intelligence agencies and third-party tools to have access to it, which is much easier to do when the data is not encrypted. Despite the new AWS S3 changes, this may not be the last time we see this sort of data leaks from large private or government organizations.

Consumer-grade VR HMDs hit the market in 2016, and we’re about to be inundated by the second wave of consumer hardware. But consumer VR isn’t where the innovation lies. Commercial operators are pushing for new headset features, and they’re willing to pay a premium to have them now. 

Sensics is well versed in developing purpose-built HMDs. For many years, the company has developed specialty VR equipment for the military and the medical industry, and it helped develop the OSVR Hacker Development kits and OSVR consortium. Now, the company is turning to the commercial VR entertainment industry to offer solutions for problems that the consumer-grade hardware makers aren’t ready to tackle.

At the beginning of September, Zero Latency, a warehouse-scale location-based VR entertainment attraction, opened a facility at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Zero Latency’s operation features OSVR HDK2 headsets, but they aren’t the same headsets that you can buy for yourself. The company worked directly with Sensics to customize the OSVR HDK2 headsets with better hygiene features and a custom tracking system to better suit a commercial environment.

“I think that’s one of the things that our customers appreciate,” said Yuval Boger, CEO of Sensics. “And I'm not trying to pick on HTC or Samsung or Oculus, but if a location-based operator goes to them and says, ‘I like your headset, but I need this and this thing to happen,’ they say, ‘Thank you very much for the input, but right now, this is what we have. If you like it, great; if you don't like them, maybe come back next year, and we'll see what happens.’ We operate differently because we want to hit that niche market very, very well. And that's why you can see [that] the headset today is better than prototypes we were showing months ago, and in two months it’s going to be even better. And we go to customers [and ask] what the gaps are, and we’ll address them very quickly.”

Boger wouldn’t say which companies Sensics is working with, but he said that his company is working with “more than a dozen” commercial installations to tailor the Public VR headset for their needs.

The Sensics Public VR Headset addresses many of the issues that plague commercial VR. Boger said that when Sensics started speaking with customers about their needs, it identified four key issues that are common between all operators: A commercial-grade VR HMD should be hygienic, include ventilation, offer a premium experience to the client, and provide a high level of throughput for the operator.

Unsurprisingly, Boger said that hygiene is the number one concern among commercial VR installations. No one wants to put on a headset that’s covered in someone else’s sweat, so commercial operators need a solution to ensure that the headset is fresh for everyone. Sensics addressed this concern by splitting the headset into two main components that can easily be separated. It also installed two silent fans to keep the condensation levels at a minimum.

“One part, which is sort of the active part, has the optics and the displays and electronics and everything that you actually need to run the experience. The second part is the head strap and the face mask--the thing that you put on your head. That's a completely passive part, and we made them separate. So, what happens is you can actually don the head strap and adjust it while waiting in line for the attraction. And you do that 'offline,' where you’re not stopping the train. When you're getting ready to start the attraction, then the active part snaps in; and then when you're done, that comes off.”

Each customer can have a fresh head strap that operators can wash at the end of the day. Boger said the foam on the Public VR headsets is hypo-allergenic and machine washable.

Boger further elaborated on the modular head strap and how it helps move people through lines faster.

“[Let's say] you have a roller coaster that's being converted into a VR roller coaster, and the ride itself is three minutes. So, if it takes three additional minutes to get everyone in and out of the train to adjust the HMD and to make sure that they see a great image, then you've lost fifty percent of your earning potential,” said Boger. “Because, instead of twenty rides an hour if you're just doing regular rides one after the other, you're down to ten rides an hour because with the setup time, it became a six-minute ride instead of that three-minute ride." "It was really important for our customers to make sure that, especially for the short experiences, you can really get in and out of the headset and make any adjustments you need very quickly, or else they just lose revenue.”

Another benefit of the modular strap design is that it can come in multiple sizes that accommodate smaller and larger heads, and attach to the same display unit. This feature could make it possible for kids to participate in commercial VR experiences, for example.

Boger said that commercial operators are more concerned with delivering a high-quality experience than they are worried about keeping the price down, and because cost isn’t as much of a concern, Sensics uses premium components to build its commercial VR units. The current version of the Sensics Public VR Headset doesn’t include any audio features, but Boger said the next revision of the headset would include an integrated gaming headset with high-end headphones, microphone, and volume controls built into the HMD.

“It's not that other guys don't know how to make them, but if you're trying to stick to a two-hundred-dollar headset, you can only do so much. When you say it's okay for this headset to cross two thousand dollars or fifteen hundred dollars, then you could do more,” said Boger

Sensics also works with commercial entities on a one-by-one basis to create custom solutions that go beyond the basic features of the Public VR Headsets. Boger said that customers can request features such as Leap Motion sensor integration or custom headset tracking systems. Sensics can help integrate warehouse-scale solutions, and the company is evaluating the viability of SLAM Scan tracking. Sensics can also accommodate requests to integrate advanced features from its military-grade headset lineup.

Ubisoft announced that the Operation Blood Orchid update for Rainbow Six Siege is now available to Season Pass holders on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. The company said the update is the biggest in the game's history, with more than 1,000 changes to its engine, maps, and operators. Everyone who doesn't own a Season Pass will gain access to this additional content when it's released on September 12.

Rainbow Six Siege is the ultimate comeback kid. The game was greeted by tepid reviews and a relatively small community when it debuted in December 2015, but after major updates throughout 2016, it's been much better received by critics and players alike. Operation Blood Orchid is part of Ubisoft's continued effort to keep those game-defining updates coming to make sure the squad-based shooter doesn't grow stale.

Here's what the company said about Operation Blood Orchid in a press release:

To mark the culmination of Operation Health, Operation Blood Orchid will be the largest update for 'Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege' ever deployed, bringing fixes and improvements to the game, including an updated lighting system, data clean-ups on operators, optimized stability, reduced load times and a smaller memory footprint. New and improved servers will also be deployed around the launch of Season 3 to enhance stability, connectivity and overall performance.

In addition to those under-the-hood improvements, Operation Blood Orchid will bring a new map and operators to Rainbow Six Siege. The map is an abandoned theme park that, according to Ubisoft, is "a colourful and eclectic map filled with dynamic and fast-paced face-offs." The operators are divided into teams: The SDU has gained two new operators, Ying and Lesion, and they're accompanied by a Polish GROM operator called Ela.

Operation Blood Orchid will contain numerous other updates. Ubisoft said it's working to address hit registration issues, making changes to the game's balance, and reducing the number of maps in the Ranked map rotation to allow players to "hone their skills in the most competitive environment available." All of these changes ought to help ensure Rainbow Six Siege can continue to grow in popularity while also appeasing existing players.

You can find out more about this update on the Rainbow Six Siege website. The Year 2 Season Pass that offers early access to updates like Operation Blood Orchid is available from Uplay, the Microsoft Store, the PlayStation Store, and Steam for $30. (Note that you have to buy the base game separately.)

Mozilla announced that the latest version of Firefox now has support for WebExtensions, a new set of APIs that allow developers to easily deploy their extensions to Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Edge. The adoption of WebExtensions is necessary to advance the Electrolysis multiprocess and sandboxing architecture.

Deprecating The Old Add-On Model

Two years ago, Mozilla announced that it would begin to deprecate its old “add-on” model for advanced Firefox extensions. The decision wasn’t easy, because the add-on model is what made Firefox popular and helped it capture significant market share from Internet Explorer. It also made the browser more useful to users because they could add non-trivial functionality that Mozilla itself couldn’t, whether due to a lack of resources or simply because it couldn’t think of everything users would want.

However, this add-on model also had a few downsides, and these became more obvious as Chrome’s simpler extension model increased in popularity.

The Firefox add-ons were not easy to develop, as they had to be designed with Mozilla’s “XML User Interface Language,” compared to Chrome’s extensions that needed only HTML and CSS to build the user interfaces. Both required JavaScript for the programming.

Another issue with the old add-ons was that some of them were too advanced and changed the functionality of the Firefox browser too much, to the point where it became difficult to upgrade core Firefox code without breaking many of the add-ons. That means that the add-ons were also responsible for Firefox’s slow pace of development for the last few years. As the developers’ focus has switched to building more Chrome-like extensions for Firefox, Firefox’s pace of development has also increased.

One other major inconvenience of the old add-on model is that Mozilla couldn’t easily change the security architecture of Firefox. It’s also likely one of the main reasons why Firefox hasn’t switched to an architecture with stronger sandboxing until more recently. Even now, the sandboxing is partial, and only two separate processes are supported (for UI and content), as opposed to having a process and sandbox for each page and extension, as Chrome does.

WebExtensions

WebExtensions is a new cross-browser extension system written by Mozilla that allows the porting of Chrome and Opera (Chromium-based) extensions to Firefox with few changes. The WebExtensions will also be compatible with Microsoft’s Edge browser.

The new system is fully compatible with Mozilla’s Electrolysis multiprocess and sandboxing architecture. It’s also separate from the browser itself, which means the extensions will no longer hold the Firefox browser back from rapid advances, such as, for instance, the implementation of Project Quantum.

Project Quantum aims to progressively replace older Firefox code written in C++ with faster and more secure code written in Rust, an open source memory-safe language, whose development is sponsored by Mozilla.

Mozilla also said last year that it would stop accepting extensions using the old add-on model in the Firefox add-on store by the end of 2017, starting with Firefox 57.

Path To Standardization?

Even though Mozilla seems to have given WebExtensions a standardized-looking name, the system is not yet a standard that other browser makers are in the process of adopting. However, Mozilla has begun the process of standardizing it as the “Browser Extension” specification.

It’s not yet clear whether other browser vendors are on board with this, but other than wanting to keep the extensions as proprietary as possible, there doesn’t seem to be a good reason for vendors not to support this standard. Plus, if they wanted to build proprietary extension systems, they could’ve chosen something other than HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which are the languages of the web.

Of course, the ones to benefit most from a Browser Extension standard are likely to be the browsers with less market share, such as Edge, Opera, and Safari, as well as much newer browsers like Brave, Vivaldi, and others. Extensions are often what keep users loyal to a browser, so a Browser Extension standard could actually make the browser market even more competitive in the coming years.

Opera released a new "concept browser" called Neon to showcase its vision for the future of the web.

Browsers used to be dull. People chose their favorite--Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer--and bothered with a different browser only if a website didn't support their preferred app. Many of those browsers are similar, however, in design, if not in performance. Tabs are lined up on top of the window, a toolbar lets people interact with various web pages, and a text field allows people to enter URLs or search the web for anything their hearts desire.

Neon is Opera's attempt to shake things up a bit. Tabs are represented by spheres on the right side of the page that automatically rise or fall based on how often they're used. Media--videos, photos, and downloads--is collected on the opposite side of the window. And the browser allows people to view two web pages at once, which can be useful if someone's researching a paper or messaging someone on Facebook, instead of switching between tabs.

Those features, combined with a transparent background that shows the underlying desktop wallpaper, built-in screenshots, and pop-out videos, make it seem like Opera wants to compete more with Chrome OS than the Chrome browser. It's easier to imagine spending all day in a browser when it more closely resembles a desktop experience, which is exactly what Neon offers, than it is to use more traditional browsers and their stodgy interfaces.

All of which makes Neon seem like the browser a company would create in 2017. It's not perfect--for example, I noticed that its background isn't really transparent so much as it takes a snapshot of a desktop wallpaper after it's launched--and in some ways it's jarring. Seeing a bunch of tabs and buttons floating around a web page is weird, and so is looking for everything along the sides of a website instead of on top of it, neatly stuffed into a familiar toolbar.

Opera said in its announcement that Neon is also missing some features. "While Opera Neon has lots of new features–and many of the Opera browser features you know and love–there are some key features we have not included, such as our native ad-blocker, VPN and the ability to add extensions," executive vice president Krystian Kolondra said. "The reason for this is simply that Opera Neon is a concept browser, built for experimentation and play."

Still, Neon is a peek into the future, at least for Opera. The company said it plans to start including Neon features in its main app starting in spring 2017.

Earlier this summer, Microsoft unveiled a few battery life tests that, perhaps unsurprisingly, showed its own Edge browser to be the winner. As the methodology wasn’t fully published, some companies, including Opera, weren’t too happy with Microsoft’s test and results. Microsoft is now open sourcing its lab test and methodology, so that even if the tests favor its browser, at least other browsers can now optimize for the same tests.

Winning At Its Own Tests

Back in June, Microsoft performed three tests to prove that its Edge browser is indeed the most power efficient of them all. In the first test, the company pitted Edge, Chrome, Firefox, and Opera against each other, each running the same web workloads on separate and identical devices. At the end of the test, Microsoft would simply check how much battery life each of the identical devices had left, and conclude which of the browsers was the most efficient.

In the second test, Microsoft checked its own Windows 10 telemetry statistics to see which browser is more efficient, and again Edge seems to have been the winner with the lowest average power consumption.

In the third test, the company put a video on a loop on each browser and let them run down the computers’ batteries. Edge, again, seems to have won by a significant margin, as the device (Surface Book) on which it was running lasted the longest.

Open Source Benchmark

The problem with a vendor’s own benchmark is that, for one, it may be optimizing its product for things that the competition isn’t, therefore easily making its product the “winner.” To be fair to Microsoft, battery efficiency is quite an important factor, and one on which all browsers and apps should focus more.

Second, even if other competitors want to optimize for the exact same things, they may not be able to do so because they have no idea of what exactly were the tests comprised. Even when testing for “battery efficiency,” there are all sorts of technical details that may make the difference between which browser is winning and which isn’t.

Microsoft is now releasing its lab test code (with a few changes from the original one) and publishing the full methodology it used in its own tests.

Even so, there are caveats. The other vendors may simply not want to optimize their browsers for the same things Microsoft is optimizing in Edge. This could be especially true if the other browsers would have to compromise in other areas, such as security, or their compatibility with other platforms.

Now that Microsoft’s test is open source, it may be a good idea for Microsoft and the other browser vendors to shake hands and try to create an effective universal browser battery benchmark that they can all agree is fair. Then they can all try to optimize their browsers against that benchmark and compete with each other in that way.

You can now play Out Of Ammo, the room-scale VR war game brought to us by Dean Hall, famed creator of the DayZ mod for Arma2, with a friend. The latest patch added a co-operative multiplayer freeplay mode.

Out Of Ammo is a room-scale VR war game being developed by RocketWerkz (founded by Hall) for the HTC Vive. In the game, you oversee your entire deployed army, but you also get to embody each of your soldiers one at a time. In other words, you get into the battle in first-person, as every soldier. A single player version of Out Of Ammo has been available in early access since mid-April, but with update 0.11 that hit Steam on July 11, now you and a friend can play cooperatively.

Bugs

A test build of the co-op mode has been “available for several weeks now.” Hall said that in the time that the test build has been available, RocketWerkz devs “have removed most of the bugs,” although some issues remain. The ping section of the server browser isn’t working properly. Every server reads "9999 ms." There’s also an issue with connecting to repeated servers. The game won’t let you connect to another server after you’ve left one. You can either restart the game, or you can host a private game to get around the problem. A future update will address these issues.

To complement the cooperative mode, RocketWerkz added VoIP chat to the game. You can activate chat by pressing on the trackpad of your master controller.

Update 0.11 also includes an updated menu system. RocketWerkz said it felt that the old menu was too cluttered, so the company designed an “interactive menu level” that includes a shooting range. The popular teleport locomotion feature was added to the menu level so that you can move around it freely. (Teleport was already available for single player campaign missions.)

The patch also includes a number of bug fixes:

• ·         FIXED: Teleportation not putting players in the correct position.
• ·         FIXED: Settings not loading correctly from file.
• ·         FIXED: Objects not being attached to hand correctly under high ping.
• ·         FIXED: Jets & Mortar teams not being replicated properly.
• ·         FIXED: Buildings disappearing when construction finishes.
• ·         FIXED: Player damage Vignette and headshot effects not being shown on client.
• ·         FIXED: Icarus mission high-scores not being uploaded.

What’s Next?

RocketWerkz’s focus will be on bug fixes going forward in the near term. Hall said the team’s focus will be on getting version 1.0 out the door with “a solid quality level and with appropriate content.” Additional features and DLC (paid and free) will come after the stable release.

“We have spent a long time on getting Multiplayer integrated which required modifying and revisiting many of the systems we had,” said Hall. “This meant we had to stop the majority of our bug fixing, which can now return in earnest! We will be doing some performance profiling and working on bugs this week.”

Out Of Ammo is available through Steam for $19.99.

Recently, Microsoft did a few power consumption browser tests, whose results unsurprisingly gave the Edge browser, er, the edge against the competition. Opera has now challenged those tests, arguing that Microsoft didn’t open up its methodology, which may be flawed and may favor Edge. Opera performed its own tests, which are more transparent, and now it looks like Opera’s browser is beating Edge on power consumption.

Issues With Microsoft’s Testing

This week, Microsoft showed us three tests in which Edge came out on top, every time, and by a significant margin, too. The first test was done in a stricter lab environment; the second involved Microsoft measuring the data it got from the Windows 10 telemetry; and in the third test, Microsoft put a video in a loop in Edge, Chrome, Firefox and Opera, to see which notebook running those browsers lasts the longest until their batteries died.

The one major criticism for two of these tests is that Microsoft used its own Surface Book devices to compare these browsers. The problem with that is that we don’t know exactly just how much Edge was optimized to work on that specific device. Optimizing Edge for its own Surface Book is not an abnormal thing for Microsoft to do--in fact, the company should be doing it, to improve the experience of Surface Book owners.

However, presenting tests on an optimized machine as objective is disingenuous, and because Microsoft hasn’t unveiled its exact methodology and what websites it tested, Opera has taken issue with the results.

Although the telemetry test may seem more reliable, it’s not very scientific either, as we don’t know whether there is a large variance between how Chrome users use their PCs versus Edge users. For instance, Chrome users may tend to be power users that keep many more browser tabs open, or may have more programs running at the same time, thus killing their notebook batteries more quickly than Edge users do.

Opera’s Power Saver Mode

Earlier this year, Opera gained a new “Power Saver” feature that optimizes Opera’s Chromium core and its interface to improve battery life during browsing sessions by up to 50 percent compared to Google’s Chrome (according to Opera).

Opera detailed how its power-saving feature works:

Reducing activity in background tabsWaking CPU less often due to optimal scheduling of JavaScript timersAutomatically pausing unused plug-insReducing frame rate to 30 frames per secondTuning video-playback parameters and forcing usage of hardware accelerated video codecsPausing animations in browser themesIncluding ad blocker – when enabled, it provides even more battery savings

Opera’s Testing Methodology

Opera said that it didn’t test Edge before, but it has now used the same test to benchmark its browser against Edge, and it seems that Opera came out ahead. Its browser scored a 22 percent higher battery life than Edge and 35 percent higher than Chrome.

The company was open about its methodology and said it used a Lenovo Yoga 500 (14 inches, Intel Core i3-5005U, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, and Windows 10) with the balanced power profile activated (which should be the default on most notebooks). The backlight was set to 100% at all times, and Wi-Fi was running in 802.11n mode with RSSI -53 dBm.

No other software or services were running in the background. The notebooks were also placed on the same wood surface to ensure consistent heat exchange.

After the notebooks were charged 100 percent, the browsers would load chicagotribune.com, elitedaily.com, faz.net, latimes.com, mashable.com, mlive.com, nj.com, nydailynews.com and youtube.com/watch?v=tnsQ8DjD6YE, all in separate tabs. Scrolling activity was simulated, as well.

One Caveat In Opera’s Testing

Opera itself admitted that its browser had its native ad-blocking activated. This is important, because ads can add a significant amount of processing when a website is loaded. Thus, when a website is loaded without ads, it can also use much less power.

If we were discussing “default features” of browsers, this would be one thing, but neither the ad-blocking nor the Power Saver mode are activated by default in Opera. That means most users will not enable them, so most users won’t benefit from these battery life improvements that Opera is now putting on display in these tests. Therefore, Opera is testing a normal Edge browsing scenario against an ideal Opera browsing scenario (in terms of power efficiency), which doesn’t seem quite fair.

However, Microsoft did enable Opera's Power Saver mode in its own tests, and in at least one test, Opera is shown to get quite close to Edge in power consumption. If we normalize for the fact that Microsoft did the tests on Surface Books, for which Edge is likely to be highly optimized, then we can probably assume that both Edge and Opera can have similar power efficiency, with no significant difference between them.

This could still be seen as a big win for Opera, considering it’s based on a power-inefficient platform such as Chromium. However, it manages to get close to Edge, which was written from scratch, and its team may have had power efficiency in mind from the beginning.

Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware. You can follow him at @lucian_armasu. 

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Over the past few years, Microsoft has begun focusing on optimizing the power consumption of its web browsers. In a set of recent tests done by the company itself, the new Edge browser seems to be winning by a significant margin in power efficiency compared to its competitors.

Chrome kickstarted the new browser wars in 2008, and since then all the major browser vendors have become much more competitive in more areas than one. JavaScript, WebGL, and general rendering performance have all improved significantly because of this competition. Security has improved as well, and now Microsoft seems to want to take the competition in a new direction, and that’s the battle for browsing power efficiency.

In its recent tests, Microsoft took three types of measurements: one where it simply measured the power consumption of the tested devices (same model, same OS) with each running a different browser, another where it analyzed the data from its telemetry across Windows 10 machines, and finally it recorded all the computers running the same tasks until their batteries died. In all of these tests, Microsoft’s Edge seems to be the winner, usually by a significant margin.

In the first controlled lab test, all the browsers were given an identical workload. Edge used 2,068 milliwatts of power, whereas Chrome used 2,819 milliwatts to perform it. That means Chrome used 36 percent more power to do the same workload. Firefox used as much as 3161 milliwatts for the same task, which is a 53 percent higher power consumption than that of Edge.

Although Microsoft used power monitoring equipment to check the average power consumption while browsing the same websites on each browser, the company used Surface Books, which are likely highly optimized for Windows 10 and its browser. Therefore, it's not clear how much that optimization impacts the power consumption difference between Edge and the other browsers.

Microsoft also analyzed millions of Windows 10 PCs to see how much power they use when people browse the web on Edge, Chrome, and Firefox. This test shows Edge to be the winner again, although Firefox is a very close second, something not shown by the previous test, which was done only on Surface Books.

The test still shows Edge to have a significant lead on Chrome in average power consumption, though. However, comparing the browser in this way may not be an exact science. Many other apps could be running in the background, and perhaps Chrome users also tend to be power users that keep more tabs and applications open than the average Edge user. Therefore, it's hard to know just how accurate this test is, but chances are Edge could still come out a winner, even if by not as wide margin.

Finally, in the last test, Microsoft used four Surface Book devices again to test Edge, Chrome, Firefox and Opera. The company streamed an HD video wirelessly and then kept it on a loop until the device's batteries ran dry. Chrome lasted only 4 hours and 19 minutes, Firefox lasted 5 hours and 9 minutes, and Opera hit 6 hours and 18 minutes, whereas Edge lasted 7 hours and 22 minutes, or 70 percent longer than the device running Chrome.

Doing the test on a Surface Book could've given Edge a big boost in power efficiency again. However, this result also shows Opera to be surprisingly efficient in this test, especially considering it’s based on the same Chromium software as Chrome is. It’s not clear whether that’s because Opera’s employees also optimized their browser for the Surface Book, or whether they added power optimizations that make Chromium significantly more efficient (although that should be seen in the first test as well).

Because the tests weren't done by an objective third-party, and because two of them were done on Surface Books, which are made by Microsoft and for which the company optimized its software, the tests should be taken with a grain of salt. However, it's also clear that Microsoft has made power efficiency one of its top priorities, so we can expect Edge to be relatively efficient compared to most browsers.

Chrome, on the other hand, is known to have some issues with high RAM usage because of its the per-tab sandboxing (a big improvement for its security). That can have a direct impact on power consumption. Google will have to resolve this issue eventually, if Microsoft, Apple and others keep putting pressure on its browser on this front.

In the meantime, Edge is expected to gain extensions as well soon, it already has decent sandboxing (although it doesn't seem to have matched Chrome's security yet), and with its new focus on power efficiency it may manage to sway a few more users to switch to it in the future.

Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware. You can follow him at @lucian_armasu. 

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Opera announced that it added the SurfEasy VPN technology it bought last year into its browser, so now its users can benefit from a free out-of-the-box VPN service.

VPNs, or Virtual Private Networks, allow users to have a different IP address, either for privacy purposes or to avoid geo-blocking. Opera’s SurfEasy service supports IPs from Canada, the U.S. and Germany. VPNs also encrypt web connections, which can be useful when connecting to an open Wi-Fi network that could steal your passwords as you log in to unencrypted websites.

VPNs are also used to bypass various censorship mechanisms in certain countries, either to communicate with family abroad or to simply be able to read news articles that aren’t allowed in those countries. It can be a good way to bypass firewalls, as well.

According to the Global Web Index, people tend to use VPNs for the following main purposes:

To access better entertainment content (38%)To keep anonymity while browsing (30%)To access restricted networks and sites in my country (28%)To access restricted sites at work (27%)To communicate with friends/family abroad (24%)To access restricted news websites in my country (22%)

Most VPN services are paid, or if they are free, they come with significant limits on bandwidth or total traffic allowed per month. Opera plans to give everyone a VPN service that requires no subscription, is unlimited, and uses its browser out-of-the-box. This seems like a significant step forward in increasing web security and privacy in most case, for those that use the Opera browser.

However, it doesn’t necessarily mean that all the other VPN services are now pointless. Opera makes its money through advertising and mining the data that goes through its servers. Meanwhile, there are other paid VPN providers out there that offer a “zero knowledge” service, where logs are deleted almost as soon as they are created for a higher level of privacy.

If Opera’s data-mining seems reasonable to you, then you can benefit from most of a VPN’s regular features for free. The new VPN feature is only available in the developer version, which can still be downloaded from the company’s website. However, if you’d rather get the stable version, then you’ll have to wait a few more months for it.

Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware. You can follow him at @lucian_armasu. 

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Opera co-founder Jon von Tetzchner announced a year ago that his new company created a new desktop browser called Vivaldi. The browser, which targets power users with all sorts of out-of-the-box features, reached version 1.0 today, and it’s available on all major desktop platforms including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Focus On Power Users

When Chrome launched in 2008, one of its main selling propositions was its simplicity (along with speed and security). Vivaldi goes the other way, catering to power users who want more customization out of their browsers. By now, Chrome has gotten tens of thousands of extensions that can expand its functionality as well, so it can be simple to use, but its users can also enjoy more functionality beyond what comes with the basic installation.

There’s also Firefox, which has always been a power user’s browser thanks to its add-on model that can hook more deeply into the browser. However, Mozilla wants to deprecate that add-on model in the future for security reasons, so there may still be an opening for a browser that targets power users. (For now, though, Vivaldi’s out-of-the-box functionality is still no match for Firefox and its ecosystem of functionality-rich add-ons.)

Based On Chromium

The Vivaldi browser is based on the open source Chromium project, which includes the Blink rendering engine and the V8 JavaScript engine. The user interface of the browser is written in JavaScript, and it’s based on React and Node.js.

Many browsers, including Opera itself, have switched to Chromium because it has strong security by default, fast performance, and it’s well maintained by Google as well as the open source community.

However, one downside that these browsers have is that they are usually behind in adopting the latest version of Chromium, for the same reason Android OEMs are behind in adopting the latest version of Android: It takes time to integrate the new features into these companies’ own versions of the OS (or browser, in this case). For its users’ sake, Vivaldi should at least try to keep up with the security patches, because otherwise it would be more vulnerable to exploits than Chrome is, by default.

Main Features

Tab Stacks And Tiling

Tab Stacks is a feature that allows the grouping of similar tabs into a "stack." This allows users to keep a less cluttered and more organized browser. The Tab Stack Tiling feature is for users with big, high-res screens who can now see multiple tabs open at the same time, as if they had multiple desktops.

Sessions

This feature allows users to save a certain session containing multiple tabs for later retrieval. Chrome and Firefox allow the restoration of the latest session, but you can’t separate individual sessions. However, Chrome and Firefox also allow users to save all tabs into a bookmark folder, which is somewhat similar, although clunkier to use for this purpose.

Web Panels

You can use this feature to view some websites in a side panel. This way, you can check your Twitter feed or Facebook chats while browsing other websites.

Notes

This feature is meant for those who want to do research on the Web. You can mark a quote and save it as a note or take a screenshot, and the browser also remembers the site where you took that note.

Rewind And Fast Forward

The Rewind feature allows users to go back to the first page they visited on a website, acting as a sort of super-charged Back button. The Fast Forward can help users more easily get to the next page in a sequence, such as when doing web searches or reading a multi-page article.

Speed Dial Folders

Beyond the regular speed dial, invented by none other than Opera many years ago, you can also include some of your speed dials into folders and groups, allowing for a more extensive range of sites to be accessed on each new tab.

Mouse, Keyboard, And Command Interface Controls

The Vivaldi browser can be controlled through keyboard shortcut and mouse gestures for faster operation. Users can also open a command interface to give the browser text-based commands.

All of these features seem to be designed with power users in mind. Many of them can already be used in other browsers through extensions, but they are not available out of the box. Vivaldi also supports Chrome’s extensions, so its functionality can be further extended that way.

If this new browser has piqued your interest, you can go and download version 1.0 from the company's website.

Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware. You can follow him at @lucian_armasu. 

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In a tweet, Jacob Rossi, a Microsoft Edge developer, clarified that the rumors about built-in ad-blocking capabilities for the Edge browser were not true. At the same time today, Opera launched the latest Opera beta, which includes the promised native ad-blocking feature.

No Native Ad-Blocking For Edge

In one of its Edge-related sessions at Build, Microsoft showed a table of features containing the top feature requests and feedback from users. The fourth one was called “Build ad blocking features into the browser.” This led some to believe that Microsoft was including native ad-blocking features into the Edge browser.

However, according to Kyle Pflug, another Edge developer, this was a misinterpretation. Microsoft was simply showing user requests at the time, but the company did say that extensions will start working in a future Edge update, later this year. These extensions would include ad-blocking extensions as well, and Adblock Plus has already announced the development of its own extension for Edge.

Opera Beta With Native Ad-Blocking

Earlier this month, Opera announced being the first (and now apparently only) browser to feature native ad-blocking that promises to be faster than ad-blocking extensions such as Adblock Plus and uBlock Origin.

Starting today, users can download the latest Opera beta version, which includes this feature. The ad blocking doesn’t happen by default, so if you want to enable it, you’ll have to go into the Menu in the left corner, then Settings > Basic > Block ads. There’s also a Manage Exceptions feature where you can whitelist certain websites.

On the right side of the address bar, you can disable (or re-enable) the ad-blocking for individual websites, as well. When you click the option, you’ll also see a history of ad blocking for that particular website, and you can also compare how the website loads with and without the ad blocking enabled.

The new Opera beta also includes support for Certificate Transparency, more customization options for the StartPage, some UI refinements for the internal pages, a built-in feedback system, native context menus for Windows 8+, and some stability improvements for the synchronization feature.

[Editor’s Note: We are a publication that does, in fact, make its money from advertising dollars. Therefore, there may be some irony and potential conflict of interest when we cover a topic such as ad blocking.]

Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware. You can follow him at @lucian_armasu. 

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Opera, the small browser company from Norway, announced that its data management app, Opera Max, has already been embedded in the smartphones of 14 OEMs, which include Acer, Cherry Mobile, Evercoss, Fly, Hisense, Mobiistar, Micromax, Oppo, Prestigio, Samsung, Symphony, Tecno, TWZ and Xiaomi. Opera expects that the new partnerships will help the company embed Opera Max in over 100 million devices by 2017.

The technology first emerged early in 2014, and the company added Wi-Fi data compression in the middle of this year. Opera Max uses the same kind of compression technology that Opera Mini and the Opera Turbo features use. The difference is that it compresses the traffic of apps, as well. The company accomplishes this by using the VPN APIs on the Android platform, which allows it to push the traffic through its servers first and compress it there, before sending it to the user.

Opera claimed that it can reduce data consumption by as much as 50 percent for most apps. For heavy users of Instagram, Youtube, and Netflix, Opera Max can reduce the data consumption by up to 60 percent, without a noticeable loss in quality.

"Many users are wary of using mobile data for fear of spending too much or exceeding their data caps. We see OEMs responding to this and stepping up to lower the barrier to mobile internet access by providing a data-optimization solution on their devices," said Sergey Lossev, Product Manager for Opera Max.

Opera also noted that in many parts of the world, smartphone adoption has outpaced wireless infrastructure, so many smartphones owners can't use the Internet for too long or at high speeds because of the limitations of those networks. These are the mobile-first markets such as India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Latin America and Africa.

“Compression technology is the key to migrating the next billion mobile internet users to the smartphones, and solutions like Opera Max directly help users deal with the challenging mobile infrastructure and expensive data packages," added Lossev.

Opera Max is also useful to block certain apps from consuming mobile or Wi-Fi data in the background. The app can be downloaded from the Play Store.

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Lucian Armasu joined Tom’s Hardware in early 2014. He writes news stories on mobile, chipsets, security, privacy, and anything else that might be of interest to him from the technology world. Outside of Tom’s Hardware, he dreams of becoming an entrepreneur.

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Nearly two years after its release, a significant number of people are still playing Battlefield 4. A few months ago, nighttime combat was introduced in multiplayer. Now, DICE has asked for the input of fans with the creation of a new multiplayer map. On October 27, the result of the developer and community collaboration will be available to download as a pack called Battlefield 4 Community Operations.

The pack contains the new jungle-themed map, called Operation Outbreak. Unlike some of the game's other maps, which are immense and allow large vehicles such as tanks and fighter jets, the jungle environment is dense. This leaves space for only small vehicles, such as the quad bike, or the inflatable boat (via the river). In addition, there are five main locations that dot the map such as the oil plantation, a ghost town, a medical facility, a fishing village, and in the middle, an ancient temple complete with a waterfall.

The process to create the map started earlier in the year in what the developers called the Community Map Project, wherein players would provide their own ideas for the next map, vote on the popular choices and get regular updates of its development from creation to completion.

At one point, fans had to vote on the map environment from three options: a jungle, a desert, or a hybrid of a mountain and jungle landscape. Users also picked the main locations throughout the area, and even expressed a heavy preference to add the temple in the map. Finally, they also voted on the map's name, which led the creation of a short backstory to why American and Chinese forces are contesting over the dense piece of land.

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Rexly Peñaflorida II is a Contributor at Tom’s Hardware. He writes news on tech and hardware, but mostly focuses on gaming news. As a Chicagoan, he believes that deep dish pizza is real pizza and ketchup should never be on hot dogs. Ever. Also, Portillo’s is amazing.

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The multiplayer maps in Battlefield 4 can be intimidating due to their size and scope. Combat is waged on land, air and sea by large teams with a vast selection of weapons and vehicles. However, the developers at DICE believe it can throw one more curveball into the mix by giving players a new challenge — fighting in the night with the Night Operations DLC.

It's easy to notice incoming threats during daytime such as a wave of enemy soldiers or a buzzing attack helicopter. Under the cover of darkness, the difficulty is increased. One of the new maps is Zavod: Graveyard Shift, a night version of the Zavod 311 tank factory map that players know well for its run-down buildings, underground passageways and large forests surrounding the compound. In the evening, only a few lights are illuminated, leaving players to guess where opponents might be hiding.

There is a bit of help in terms of equipment. New content comes in the form of night vision goggles to make combat easier, as well as flares that can be used to either mark a specific location, or to blind enemies that use night vision. Vehicles can still be used, but an extra warning goes out to aerial units. Flying at night not only provides poor visibility for pilots, but the flashing lights on a helicopter make it an easy target for soldiers with anti-aircraft weapons.

For now, those are all the details that EA is willing to dish out. However, it's expected that more news is coming soon with a release slated for September. If that wasn't enough, Night Operations will be free to all players, allowing everyone to experience nighttime warfare with the company's landmark shooter franchise.

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The official Opera blog has been updated with news that Opera 30, the latest version of the company's desktop browser, is now available to download. This version aims to make browsing and interacting with the World Wide Web much easier than before by introducing new features like sidebar extensions and a neat Tabs tool.

The biggest feature making its debut in Opera 30 is the new sidebar extensions. There are already a large number of extensions that can be installed right now including TweetDeck, Classic Notes, Side Calculator and more. These are installed in the bar on the left side of the browser, appearing as shortcut icons. Once clicked, the "app" opens up within the browser window and can be resized when needed.

For example, click on the TweetDeck icon, and the app loads up on the left side of the Opera window. Because of the size of TweetDeck, which has its own sidebar, the user must enlarge the window by dragging TweetDeck's right side to the right to show at least one column. Of course, the drawback is that the main browser window grows smaller, but having TweetDeck within Opera is rather cool and is worth the space.

Don't want the sidebar to appear at all? No problem. Simply right-click on it and choose "Hide Sidebar." To get it back, type in CTRL+SHIFT+S.

In addition to the sidebar extensions, this new Opera release provides a little tool to help users manage their tabs. Sitting between the "Close" button and the "Synchronization" button on the right, this tool is in the shape of two lines and a down arrow. Click on it and users can see all their open tabs in a chronological list. When hovering over a specific tab on the list, the contents in that window appears. This should be helpful for those who typically have a lot of tabs open and want to quickly switch between them.

Another new feature introduced in Opera 30 is the trash folder in the Bookmarks section. Did you accidentally delete a bookmark? No problem, as the bookmark should be available for retrieval in this new feature. In other words, bookmarks aren't totally deleted when they're sent to the trash bin, allowing users to make sure the bookmarks aren't worth saving before they're gone for good.

Finally, the new Opera 30 will protect users against the recent logjam attack that was targeting Web browsers. According to Opera's Håvard Molland, the new browser will block browser/server exchanges using less than 1024-bit DH (Diffie Hellman), which is a technique used by the browser and the server when passing a cryptographic key back and forth. The average hacker can attack if the exchange is 512-bit DH, whereas organizations can attack with a super computer if the transaction is using 768-bit DH.

For more information about the logjam attack and how it affects the browser, Opera has the details here. The latest version of Opera for the Windows platform can be downloaded here.

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Early last year, Opera launched its Opera Max data saving app that could compress mobile data up to 50 percent, saving users money and improving their speeds. With the new version, the same will be possible for Wi-Fi connections.

Opera has long been successful with its Opera Mini browser for smartphones, even before Android and iOS existed. The company would compress web pages, including text and images, and save up to 90 percent of data. Opera later also started doing video compression through its servers.

Opera Max is what Opera Mini (or the Turbo Mode of the Opera Mobile app) was, but without the "browser" part. Opera Max acts as a VPN and a proxy server in the background, but it's also a data management application that you can customize on your Android smartphone.

Because it acts as a VPN, it can route not just a single browser's traffic (as Opera Mini does), but the traffic of all installed browsers as well as all of your applications that need an Internet connection. The company said that it can save up to 50 percent of all of the used data this way.

As mentioned, Opera Max is also a data managing application, which shows you the data usage history of all of your applications on both mobile data, and starting with the new version, on Wi-Fi.

One extra benefit of Opera Max is that it can let you block applications from accessing the Internet. This way, for instance, you could always block certain apps from consuming your expensive mobile data.

According to Opera Max's FAQ, the app doesn't interfere with secure HTTPS connections, which means Opera won't be able to see nor compress that traffic. You lose the ability to save some data, but you keep your communications secure (such as banking websites, emails, etc.).

Opera Max will only compress data that is not encrypted, which can include text, images and video. Those files will not be stored by Opera's servers, according to the company, so presumably they'll be deleted as soon as the compressed versions are passed to your smartphone. App installations are also not included for compression; instead, they pass through Google's encrypted connections (plus, this would break applications).

The company's Opera Max FAQ stated that Instagram and WhatsApp traffic can be compressed, which is interesting because those two services are supposed to use HTTPS encryption as well. 

The app can now be installed from the Play Store. The company hasn't said whether Opera Max will be available on other platforms.

Update, 5/26/15, 10:02am PST: According to Opera, not all traffic on Instagram and Whatsapp is encrypted. For instance, on Instagram only the login page and comments are sent via an encrypted channel, but images and videos are sent via the plain-text HTTP, which means Opera Max can compress them.

When asked about what type of data Opera stores on its servers and what gets deleted, Opera responded with the following:

When HTTP data is detected by Opera Max client, the requests are routed to Opera Max cloud.Opera Max servers see the requests and fetch the actual content from origin servers, before the content is sent to the smartphone deviceOnce the actual content is on Opera Max servers it is double checked for what type of file it is: image, webpage, video . Then if it's a type of file that is compressible it is compressed according to users compression settings .Once the content is compressed it is sent down to the smartphone device that originally requested itOpera Max servers only store things like package name, time stamps, IP addresses, original byte size, compressed byte size. Basically the meta data needed to provide a data usage timeline to the user of what they used when .The actual contents and payload is deleted from the servers and not written to disk . Opera servers do not store your images, videos, webpages, or comments.In a nutshell , we treat your data like we would want our own personal data treated. We don't store anything private or personal.

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The Opera Mini browser is one of Opera's three browsers for mobile devices. Compared to the regular Opera mobile browser and Opera Coast for iOS, Opera Mini aims to save mobile data usage by compressing web pages to as little as 10 percent of the original size.

The latest Android update, Opera Mini 8, is a complete redesign of the browser, both visually and in terms of functionality. Most of the updates seem to already be in the iOS version of Opera Mini, so it was only a matter of time before they came to Android.

Gone are the black bars that bordered the top and bottom of the screen. Those are replaced with a flat, white background. The space at the top is now dominated by the search bar, where you can also type in website URLs.

The forward and back buttons, the tabs and Speed Dial pages, and Opera settings are now located at the bottom of the screen. However, it seems that some of the buttons, such as the Opera settings and the number of tabs, can be placed next to the search bar at the top, as well. Opera Mini is also able to scale to support different resolutions and devices, so pages will look nice whether you're viewing them in portrait or landscape mode on your Android mobile or tablet device.

Speed Dial is the space allocated for local bookmarks on Opera Mini, and it now includes content at the bottom of the screen from the Discover section, which provides top stories from various categories.

Speaking of the Discover feature, it's also been updated to include even more content so that you can stay up-to-date with your favorite topics. Users can also filter by category in the Discover section, as well as dictate which categories show up in your Discover feed.

A default option on many browsers is private browsing, and Opera finally added it to Opera Mini. In contrast to the regular white background for normal browsing, it displays a dark gray background to show that you're now using the privacy feature.

The main goal of Opera Mini is to bring down data usage costs when browsing the Internet, and this latest update includes a new data counter to show how much data you save every day. If you didn't believe that Opera Mini could save valuable usage data, then the visual representation of the data saved should be more than sufficient proof. After all, seeing is believing.

This latest update comes at the same time as the company's announcement of new user target goals. According to Opera CEO Lars Boilesen, Opera has a user base of 130 million on Android devices alone. Boilesen hopes to grow that number to 275 million users by 2017. A part of that strategy seems to be ensuring that Opera Mini not only continues to function just as well as other browsers, but that it also has a visual appeal that will attract more users.

Follow Rexly Peñaflorida II @Heirdeux. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.