Microsoft said to have finalized Windows Phone 8 OS Chalk up another one for those Windows Phone tipsters. Back in July, I heard whispers that Microsoft would release to manufacturing (RTM) the Windows Phone 8 operating system in September. The plan, as of then, was that the first Windows Phone 8 devices would ship in November 2012. On September 14, Microsoft's phone team shipped the OS, codenamed "Apollo," according to a couple of my contacts. WPCentral is reporting they are hearing the same. ZDNet
How Windows Phone 8 can succeed Big projects sometimes fail, no matter how much money, time, effort and brainpower is devoted to making them succeed. Big-budget movies and video games end up returning a mere fraction of their budget; high-profile startups release products that fail to impact the market; beautiful pieces of hardware gather dust on store-shelves. Microsoft is trying very hard to ensure that Windows Phone is a big project that doesn’t fail. In the two years since the platform’s launch, however, it’s failed to take much territory... Slashdot
Cosmo, the hacker 'god' who fell to Earth Cosmo is huge -- 6 foot 7 and 220 pounds the last time he was weighed, at a detention facility in Long Beach, California on June 26. And yet he’s getting bigger, because Cosmo -- also known as Cosmo the God, the social-engineering mastermind who weaseled his way past security systems at Amazon, Apple, AT&T, PayPal, AOL, Netflix, Network Solutions, and Microsoft -- is just 15 years old. He turns 16 next March, and he may very well do so inside a prison cell. Cosmo was arrested along with dozens of others in a recent multi-state FBI sting targeting credit card fraud. Wired
Intel’s Haswell is an unprecedented threat to Nvidia, AMD Intel's next-generation architecture, codenamed Haswell, isn’t just another "tock" in Intel's tick/tock cadence; it’s a serious threat to both AMD and Nvidia. For the first time, Intel is poised to challenge both companies in the mainstream graphics market while simultaneously eroding Nvidia’s edge in the GPGPU business. Its low-power, 10W TDP ULV parts will challenge the price/performance ratio of AMD’s second-generation Brazos SoC (codenamed Kabini) as well as any ARM-based Windows 8 notebooks... ExtremeTech
Anonymous’ Barrett Brown raided by FBI during online chat For the second time this year, self-proclaimed Anonymous spokesman Barrett Brown was raided by the FBI. The latest dramatic incident occurred late Wednesday evening while Brown and another woman identified by some as his girlfriend were participating in an online chat on TinyChat with other individuals. Two minutes into the recorded chat session, loud voices could be heard in the background of Brown’s residence in Texas while the woman in the room with him was in front of the computer screen. Wired
The iPhone 5's A6 SoC: Not A15 or A9, a custom Apple core instead When Apple announced the iPhone 5, Phil Schiller officially announced what had leaked several days earlier: the phone is powered by Apple's new A6 SoC. As always, Apple didn't announce clock speeds, CPU microarchitecture, memory bandwidth or GPU details. It did however give us an indication of expected CPU performance. Prior to the announcement we speculated the iPhone 5's SoC would simply be a higher clocked version of the 32nm A5r2 used in the iPad 2,4. AnandTech
Nvidia confirms departure of mobile-chip chief Nvidia, a chip maker that grew up around the personal-computer industry, has made some headway lately in moving its technology into newer-wave mobile devices. But the man who spearheaded that effort has quietly departed. Mike Rayfield, general manager of Nvidia’s mobile business unit, resigned effective Aug. 24 to take a role at another company, said Hector Marinez, an Nvidia spokesman, in an emailed response. Details about the new job have not been disclosed yet, Marinez added. The WSJ
Who wants to be a billionaire? Twice a year, close to 200 teams of aspiring tech entrepreneurs, most in their 20s, converge on Mountain View, in Silicon Valley, vying for a spot at Y Combinator, the seven-year-old seed-funding firm–cum–accelerator co-founded by venture investor Paul Graham. Their dream: becoming the next Y.C.-backed sensation, like Dropbox, Airbnb, or OMGPOP. In an adaptation from his new book, Randall Stross follows one of the summer 2011 start-ups from tryout to “Demo Day,” to see what it takes. Vanity Fair
MGM, 'Narnia' producer pick up rights to Russian sci-fi novel 'Metro 2033' MGM has picked up the screen rights to Metro 2033, a Russian sci-fi novel by Dmitry Glukhovsky, setting F. Scott Frazier to pen the script. Mark Johnson, whose credits include The Chronicles of Narnia movies and Galaxy Quest, is producing via his Gran Via Productions. The story is set in 2033, after a nuclear holocaust devastates Moscow and survivors head under ground. The focus is on a young survivor who is forced to go on a journey... The Hollywood Reporter
Just Cause 2 multiplayer mod Forget Grand Theft Auto: Just Cause 2 is the ultimate virtual playground for gamers. The lush island of Panau stretches across 400 square miles of territory - roughly the same size as Hong Kong, except somebody drew it. You can fly stealth bombers, steal boats, ride monster trucks. Your player, Rico, is equipped with a grappling hook and a parachute by default. And it has a multiplayer mode which can support more than 1,800 players at a time on the same server. RedBull
USB cables could power PCs, peripherals Today, you likely charge your phone with a USB cable. Tomorrow, you might well use one to charge your laptop and other devices. With a new Universal Serial Bus technology called Power Delivery (USB PD), Intel and its allies hope the ubiquitous cable will become even more widespread. "One USB cable does it all," said Brad Saunders and Bob Dunstan, two Intel architects in a presentation at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco this week. CNET
Firefox OS: Disrupting the market by aiming low! With this week's hulaballoo around the iPhone 5, it’s tempting to dismiss Firefox OS, the mobile operating system from browser maker Mozilla. But of the two, Firefox OS is the one which aims to shake things up -- while the new iPhone is just an update. Why do we need another OS when the existing ones are fighting so hard for market share, and previously strong players like RIM are going down the drain? TechWeekEurope
Elon Musk, the 21st century industrialist On Fridays, Elon Musk gathers his engineers in an old hangar in Los Angeles. The building, next to a municipal airport a couple miles south of the Hollywood Park race track and casino, is now a research and development facility for Musk’s electric car company, Tesla Motors (TSLA). Musk uses these meetings to check the team’s progress and give straightforward, often withering, design critiques. Businessweek
The software patent solution has been right here all along Software patents have been an agent of change in open source over the last decade, as I explained in my keynote at the 8th International Conference on Open Source Systems this week. Most notably, the astonishing proliferation of software patents has forced technology companies to spend a lot of time and energy assembling defensive portfolios. InfoWorld
https://www.techspot.com/news/50170-weekend-tech-reading-windows-phone-8-apollo-hits-rtm.html
