Joel Hruska
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
We've covered the NSA revelations and subsequent government petitions at some length, but here's a new twist to the story of the government's pervasive monitoring program -- a view of the activity from an ISP's perspective. According to Pete Ashdown, the CEO of XMission, a Utah ISP, the company received its first FISA...
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You've got to hand it to Microsoft -- the company is willing to find novel ways of promoting its products. The company is now offering anyone who buys a year of Office 365 ($99.95 annual rate) a free year of Xbox Live Gold. That's worth $60 a year -- a not-inconsiderable value relative to the cost of Office itself...
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According to Steve Ballmer, Microsoft is now one of just a handful of companies with a seven-digit server deployment. Speaking at the company's Worldwide Partner Conference, Ballmer claimed that Microsoft had entered rare territory and used the number as an example of how few companies really understood how to run a...
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Edward Snowden's leaks have shaken something loose in the IT industry. For years, companies have been afraid to talk about the requests and data sharing procedures the NSA and FBI have forced upon them as a result of the Patriot Act. Companies that went to court to fight these demands lost, and lost in silence...
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Microsoft is smarting in the wake of the Guardian's discussion of how chummy it's gotten with the NSA over the past few years, and the company wants permission to clarify its relationship with the federal government. To that end, the company has sent a follow-up letter to the Attorney General's office, asking it to...
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Every now and then, someone has a fabulous idea in gaming. Sometimes that involves hordes of undead zombies, or a rocket launcher and the literal forces of Hell. Sometimes it means spending hours thinking "Just one more turn" as you craft the destiny of a city or an entire civilization. Sometimes it means being two...
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Late last month, the Wall Street Journal leaked news of a partnership with TSMC, in an agreement that put a formal signature on what sources have previously implied was years of behind-the-scenes collaboration. Apple has explored its options with foundry partners that aren't Samsung for several years as its...
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Just yesterday, we addressed the dubious claim that Intel's Clover Trail+ low power mobile processors had somehow seized a massive lead over ARM's products and we noted some of the suspicious discrepancies in the popular AnTuTu benchmark. It turns out that the situation is far shadier than we initially thought. The...
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Interest around Google Glass has revived the idea of wearable computing in many circles and inspired research into areas that might, at first glance, seem a bit far-fetched. One such program is FIDO -- Facilitating Interactions for Dogs with Occupations. The idea? Build a harness that would allow a dog to communicate...
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A new chapter in the Deus Ex universe dropped yesterday and all reviews indicate that it's actually a pretty good mobile game, relative to the limits of that platform. Unfortunately, there's a substantial hidden caveat. If you own a jailbroken device, Deus Ex: The Fall won't let you pull the trigger. You're allowed to buy the game no problem,...
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For months, there've been questions regarding just how secure Skype's encryption was. After Microsoft bought the VOIP company it began moving to a more centralized node structure that made it easier to scale the product but at the cost of intrinsic security. Now, it seems such concerns were valid -- new leaked...
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A few weeks ago, the analyst company ABI Research published a report claiming that Intel's new CloverTrail+ platform (dual-core Medfield) for smartphones was significantly faster and more power efficient than anything ARM's various partners were shipping. If you follow the smartphone market, that was a very surprising...
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When Microsoft announced that it was canceling the much-hated always-on Xbox One requirements, a collective cheer went up from the Internet -- and also, a collective grumble. A number of players were ready to get rid of physical discs altogether, looked forward to the Family Share features that Microsoft had promised...
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In Part I of this series, we discussed ARM's business model and how it works with its various partners as compared to Intel. Today, we're diving into a specific technology that ARM believes will allow it to differentiate its products and offer superior performance to Santa Clara and the upcoming 22nm Bay Trail. big.LITTLE is ARM's solution...
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GameStop executives and spokespeople never said much about Microsoft's original plan for the Xbox One, but the company must surely have breathed a sigh of relief when Microsoft unexpectedly canceled its original plans a few weeks later. Had the company pushed ahead with the goal of leaving game sharing in the hands of publishers, it could...
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When Microsoft reversed its Xbox One policies a few weeks back, there was momentary hope that the company has listened to its customers and understood the features they were asking for. Granted, this was brief -- the company promptly dashed such ideas by throwing out all the Xbox One's good ideas alongside the 24 hour...
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Boston University is a prestigous, research-oriented university that can claim a number of famous alumni. Unfortunately, one of the classes it's added in recent months is aimed at a demographic that's been under increasing fire in the United States -- the humble patent troll. BU sued Samsung in April, Amazon in June...
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When news broke earlier this week that Apple had finally inked a deal with TSMC to produce processors with the company beginning in 2014, the first round of chatter was on what this might mean for Samsung. Apple, after all, has been by far Samsung's single largest customer. With that topic out of the way, talk has...
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Last week, we paid a visit to ARM's headquarters in Cambridge, England and sat down with the company for multiple deep dives into its structure, processor architecture, and the future of its product design. The semiconductor market for mobile and hand-held devices has changed dramatically in the past six years and ARM has had to evolve along...
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There are certain headlines you don't expect to see on a regular basis. "BMW Executives Prefer Driving Kia." "Ryan Gosling Weds Dowdy, Middle-Aged Housewife." "Game Industry Leaders Agree: Industry Peaked With Colecovision." Or, in this case: "Microsoft Entertainment Head Don Mattrick Leaves For Zynga." This is...
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Ever since Microsoft unveiled the Xbox One in May, the user community has raised holy hell about the 24-hour mandatory online check in, the loss of used game sales, and the onerous online requirements that prohibited game or console imports into countries where the Xbox One service hasn't officially launched...
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For the last 20 years, NVIDIA has developed and used its own graphics IP in-house. While the company engaged in several prominent cross-licensing deals with companies like Intel, those deals never resulted in an Intel-branded graphics card or an equivalent product from another company. Today, that changes -- NVIDIA...
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