Joel Hruska
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
Analyst firm IHS reports that chip supplier inventories have risen for the seven consecutive month. The continued rise in inventories reflects a general belief that consumer demand for electronic products will soon increase, though economic indicators are somewhat sketchy on this point...
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The Adler Planetarium has finished a major two-year upgrade project that's replaced the facility's forty year-old Zeiss Mark VI projector with a "Digital Starball" system designed by Global Immersion Ltd. The new digital system is powered...
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iSuppli has published their findings from a recent teardown of HTC's Thunderbolt and come to some interesting conclusions therein. The Thunderbolt, which is currently Verizon's top-end Android phone, has an estimated bill of materials (BOM) of $262. That's the cost of the phone's components...
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Earlier this week, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar posted a blog entry on the joint venture's second quarter. Overall results were good, with Hulu Plus ramping significantly more quickly than anticipated. Kilar notes that Hulu Plus, the website's paid subscription service, "added more paying subscribers...
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Android's rise to dominance as a smartphone/tablet OS has reshaped the mobile OS market--but recent actions by both Microsoft and Oracle could damage the operating system's appeal. Oracle and Google are locked in an ongoing lawsuit over...
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A few weeks back, we covered Capcom's decision to limit Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3DS to a single save-game slot. That move was widely condemned as an attempt to hamper the game's attractiveness on the second-hand market, despite Capcom's assurances that being unable to restart the title and...
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Phone maker HTC is taking heat from investors over its decision to purchase S3 Graphics. Citigroup cut its rating on HTC citing corporate governance concerns. There's a definite connection between the two--S3 is partly owned by HTC Chairwoman Cher Wang, a fact that raises concerns over just how necessary the deal was. Normally, HTC might have...
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A number of major ISPs have signed on to a new agreement seeking to regulate the pursuit of users who allegedly download copyright-infringing material. In an unusual step, the White House has added its own voice to the discussion. US IP...
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VIA announced today that it's signed an agreement to sell its share in S3 Graphics to the mobile phone manufacturer HTC. S3's GPU technology (dubbed Chrome) powers VIA's various chipsets and is paired with the company's Nano processor as...
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Apple may have a nominal member of the standards group that developed Blu-ray, but the company has shied away from supporting Blu-ray playback for years. Blu-ray disc authoring, in contrast, was added to Final Cut Studio 3 / Final Cut Pro...
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For the past few years, display manufacturers of every stripe have been singing the praises of 3-D displays and their various levels of support for the nascent standard. Consumers, unfortunately, haven't been playing along. Despite marketing initiatives, high-profile film releases, and prominent support for 3-D gaming from the likes of Sony...
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It's been two weeks since US District Judge Roger Hunt effectively decapitated Righthaven's business strategy of falsely claiming copyright ownership before suing everyone in sight. Righthaven and its partner Stephens Media, however, don't...
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Promise Technology recently launched the first Thunderbolt-compatible devices; the company's Pegasus RAID R4 and R6 storage solutions can now be ordered from the Apple Store. There's a catch, however. In order to use either storage array...
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AMD's Llano has now debuted in both mobile and desktop flavors to generally strong approval. While CPU performance significantly lags Intel's, Llano's GPU (officially labeled as the Radeon HD 6550D) steamrolls Intel's integrated Sandy Bridge in virtually every gaming benchmark. The two chips...
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With the iPhone 5 rumored to launch this September, analysts and users alike have turned to wondering what adjustments Apple will make to its pricing structure. Mike Abramsky, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, has stated he expects...
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Last week, Mozilla released Firefox 5--just three months after launching Firefox 4. While the company had previously indicated it was moving to a faster release schedule and a whole-number versioning system, the launch caught many users...
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The right to free speech as defined in the First Amendment is not an absolute, but the US Supreme Court has historically exercised great caution when limiting its scope. Yesterday, the USSC rejected a California law that restricted the sale/rental of violent video games to minors. Prior to...
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As of today, Nvidia's second-generation of mobile, Fermi-based parts is complete--at least, in theory. The 570M and 580M will only be available from select OEMs (at least initially), with the 570M reportedly available "immediately" from MSI as a configuration option on the GT780R gaming notebook. Alienware M18X systems can be ordered today...
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When it comes to video game sales, there's no love lost between game publishers and game retailers--particularly GameStop. Nearly half (48.1 percent) of GameStop's profits come from sales of used games. The company's entire business model is built around the acquisition and sale of previously...
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A number of venture capital firms and individuals have sent an open letter to Congress, asking the legislative body not to support the PROTECT IP (aka Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011, aka PIPA) bill. PIPA is a re-write of an...
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It's been several months since the massive hack that brought the PlayStation Network to its knees. For Sony, the nightmare isn't over. A new lawsuit filed this past week alleges that the company ignored the warnings of its own staff, made...
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AMD announced its share of the TOP500 supercomputer list has grown 15 percent in the past six months. The company credits industry trends, upgrade paths, and competitive pricing for the increase. Of the 68 Opteron-based systems on the list, more than half of them use the Opteron 6100 series...
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