The Top Technology Trends Dominating 2016

 With the year almost running by, lets take a look at the technology trends dominating in 2016.


1. Live streaming

 Live streaming technology, particularly via Twitch, Facebook Live, Periscope, and other similar apps, is developing at a faster rate thanks to a combination of factors that is making live streaming more popular amongst users; some of these factors include the practicality of mobile devices, better Internet connections, and a greater expectation to be “in the moment” in a social media context. As a result, live streaming technologies are coming to a more diverse range of platforms—including social media platforms—and are becoming more efficient, with fewer interruptions and greater accessibility.

2. Virtual and augmented reality

 It was supposed to be a big year for virtual reality (VR) with the emergence of Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. To date, it’s seen modest popularity, but nothing that’s revolutionized the way we experience the world. On the other hand, augmented reality apps are starting to see breakout popularity (and Pokémon Go is the major notable example here), bringing millions of users together for a shared physical/digital hybrid experience. VR technology is still new, and there’s always a learning curve, but I believe we’re witnessing our first baby steps into an era with a much blurrier line between the physical and digital realms.

3. Automation, machine learning, and AI

People have been anticipating the onset of artificial intelligence (AI) for decades, and though it’s been around in various forms for the past several years (and even beyond that), we’re now bearing witness to the advanced learning systems that may soon come to define our interactions with technology. Digital assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Cortana, which were mocked just a few years ago, now have a stunning ability to recognize and decipher human speech, and Google updates like RankBrain are now able to update themselves, learning from complex user inputs and making automated adjustments.

4. The Internet-of-Things (IoT)

The Internet-of-Things is a phenomenon driven by the fact that so many everyday items—such as refrigerators and televisions—are now becoming capable of accessing the Internet, or even enjoying “smart” technology. Theoretically, groups of these appliances and devices could be linked together on a single network, resulting in a “smart home” that can be controlled independently by a single user on a single system. This technology could soon revolutionize the way we engage with our environments and interact with each other.

5. Big data and visualization

To be fair, it’s been a few years since “big data” started becoming popular as a buzzword, so it can’t be counted as a trend exclusively in 2016. For the past few years, businesses have been upgrading their systems and investing more to collect greater quantities and quality of data on their customers. This data is useful—but only if it’s interpreted correctly, and only if those gathering it are asking the right questions. Enter the era of data visualization, where advanced software programs and analytics platforms are able to automatically gather and project big data in meaningful ways, helping users form accurate, actionable conclusions.

6. App streaming

App streaming is one of the most interesting developments in the field of online search and mobile user experiences. Google has been pushing the visibility and functionality of apps in its search engine for the past few years, but its recent push to “streaming” apps in search results for users is an insightful indication of where things might develop from here. App streaming allows users to access content to apps they haven’t even downloaded yet, opening a potential door to the eventuality of apps replacing traditional websites as the central medium to gather new information.

7. Better in-app experiences

The dominant apps of our era—like Google and Facebook—are fighting hard to keep their apps in the top ranks, and keep users in those applications for as long as possible. Social media apps are starting to venture into new territory, with better, more diverse messaging experiences, and new functionality that overrides the necessity to leave the app and pursue functionality elsewhere. Most users are finding these in-app provisions helpful, and they’re only going to grow more sophisticated from here.

With these seven trends already in place and shaping the world around us, I can only imagine what wonders are down the pipeline. Of course, some technological trends are bound to fizzle while others continue for many years—but since it’s so hard to focus on the distant future, the short-term future is your best bet for setting goal.

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Bizarre Facts About the World Wide Web and the Internet

Although the World Wide Web is often referred to as the Internet, the two are not the same thing. The Internet is a huge network of networks that links computers together all over the world using a range of wires and wireless technologies. The World Wide Web is the collection of linked pages that are accessed using the Internet and a web browser.

Since the inception of the internet in the 1960's, it has grown from a military experiment into a gigantic living organism made of millions of oddities and thousands of subcultures.  Since the World Wide Web launched 25 years ago, the Net has seen truly explosive growth in tech, business, and culture.

Here are some of the bizarre facts that describe the Internet and the World Wide Web.

1. The Internet Requires Approximately 50 Million Horsepower in Electricity

Yes. With an estimated 8.7 billion electronic devices connected to the Internet, the electricity required to run the system for even one day is very substantial.  According to Russell Seitz and the calculation of Michael Stevens, 50 million brake horsepower worth of electrical power is required to keep the Internet running in its current state. More »

2. The Internet Weighs As Much As One Strawberry

Russel Seitz is a physicist who has crunched some very precise numbers.  With some atomic physics assumptions, the billions upon billions of 'data-in-motion' moving electrons on the Internet add up to approximately 50 grams.  That is 2 ounces, the weight of one strawberry. More »

3. Of the 7 Billion People on Planet Earth, Over 2.4 Billion Use the Internet

While most of these calculations cannot be precisely confirmed, there is high confidence amongst most internet statistics that more than 2 billion people use the internet and the Web as a matter of weekly habit. More »

4. It Takes 2 Billion Electrons to Produce a Single Email Message.

According to Michael Stevens and Vsauce calculations, a 50 kilobyte email message uses the footprint of 8 billion electrons.  The number sounds ginormous, yes, but with electrons weighing next to nothing, 8 billion of them weigh less than a quadrillionth of an ounce. More »

5. Over 8.7 Billion Machines Are Currently Connected to the Internet.

Smartphones, tablets, desktops, servers, wireless routers and hotspots, car GPS units, wristwatches, refrigerators and even soda pop machines: the Internet is comprised of billions of gadgets.  Expect this to grow to 15 billion gadgets by 2015, and to 40 billion gadgets by 2020.  More »

6. Every 60 Seconds, 72 Hours of YouTube Video Is Uploaded

 ...and of those 72 hours, most of the videos are about cats, Harlem Shake dance moves, and insane things that no one is interested in.   Like it or not, people love to share their amateur videos in the hopes that it will go viral and achieve a small bit of celebritydom. More »

7. Electrons Only Move a Few Dozen Meters Before Stopping on the Net.

Yes, an electron doesn't travel very far through the wires and transistors of our computers; they move perhaps a dozen meters or so between machines, and then their energy and signal is consumed by the next device on the network. Each device, in turn, transfers the signal to the adjacent set of electrons and the cycle repeats again down the chain. All of this happens within fractions of seconds.  More »

8. The Internet's 5 Million Terabytes Weigh Less Than a Grain of Sand

Weighing even less that all the moving electricity, the weight of the internet's static data storage ('data-at-rest') is freakishly small.  Once you take away the mass of the hard drives and transistors, it boggles the mind that 5 million TB of data comprises less mass than a grain of sand. More »

9. Over 78% of North Americans Use the Internet

The USA and the English language were the original influences that spawned the Internet and the World Wide Web.  It makes sense that the great majority of Americans rely on the Web as a daily part of life. More »

10. 1.7 Billion of the Internet's Users Are in Asia

That's right: over half of the regular population of the Web resides in some part of Asia:  Japan, South Korea, India, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore are just some of the countries with this high adoption rate.  There are a growing number of web pages published in these asian languages, but the predominant web language continues to be English. More »

Source : About.com 

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The first ecommerce transaction wasn’t a Pizza Hut pizza or weed, it was a Sting CD

There are a lot of theories online as to what exactly constitutes the Web’s first ecommerce transaction.

Was it the purchase of weed by students at Stanford from students at MIT between 1971 and 1974?

Nope. This was more of an instant message transaction and no money exchanged hands.

It could have been Jane Snowball, a 72-year-old British woman. In 1984 she used the Video Tex to buy margarine, eggs and Corn Flakes from her local grocer.

Nope. The transaction didn’t use mainstream technology and Snowball paid for her goods in cash.

It seems the first ecommerce transaction actually took place at a tech startup called Net Market. On August 11, 1994, the startup saw the first secure online transaction when founder Dan Kohn saw his friend buy a Sting CD using a credit card.

That day, Dan Kohn and his three co-founders had no idea what a big business ecommerce would become. But like all great journeys, it started with a single step.

Source : The Next Web 

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This is what you really need to know about smartphone cameras , not just megapixels

What's the most important thing in a smartphone camera? If you answered megapixels, you've been paying too much attention to marketing. Sure, the more megapixels a camera has, the more detail it'll be able to offer when zooming in. But there are many other features of the mobile camera that matter to photo quality far more than megapixels count – which probably explains why Apple's iPhone has managed to outperform competitors for years. In the meantime, the best Androiddevices rivaling the iPhone have gotten much better when it comes to camera performance,improving in several key areas such as overall picture quality and user experience. So what matters most about the smartphone camera?

Respected YouTube gadget reviewer Marques Brownlee released a short video that explains the main features of a camera. The size of the pixels, the quality of the sensor and the aperture are some of the factors that impact overall camera performance. Electronic image stabilization (EIS) and optical image stabilization (OIS) are also important factors to consider.

Finally, there’s the software side of the camera, which can make or break photos and videos as well as the overall user experience.

Ultimately, Brownlee points out that it’s all about how you enjoy your smartphone camera, and whether you like the pictures and videos you take with it. Check out the full clip below.

Source :YouTube 

Via :Slash gear 

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Everything you say and do is public: five rules for living with the internet

Hackers made good on a threat, publishing the data belonging to over 30 million accounts from adultery dating website Ashley Madison. The impact this breach could have on millions of marriages — not just of celebrities and politicians but people typically out of the public spotlight — could be historical. While the implications of a data breach like this have been analyzed in the past, the lessons have been largely ignored.

Take this moment to consider the five laws of your life online. Like laws of the state, whether or not you choose to learn these laws is irrelevant, as you will be tried by them regardless.

1.
Assume everything you do and say will be made public.

2.
Do not be seduced by privacy settings and passwords, which are temporary illusions that distract from the reality of the previous point.

3.
Understand that context and data are often one in the same. When you enter information on the internet, assume that you include the who (you), the what (the data), the when (the time of data input), the where (the site on which the data is being placed), the how (the device on which you input the data), and the why (the purpose of the site).

4.
Believe that all of your credit card transactions are being kept in a colossal, searchable ledger that one day will be made available for all to study.

5.
Believe that data does not disappear when you delete it.

Everything goes mainstream eventually. Soon you'll be able to say you were paranoid before it was cool. Take solace in knowing everyone may now join the ranks of celebrities, who have lived for decades in constant fear of the infringement of their privacy. Now, we will all be celebrities, and our gossip-worthy dramas will be of our own doing, should we not consider our actions — in the real world and online — have repercussions.

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How dangerous is public Wi-Fi?

How often do you take advantage of the public Wi-Fi network? Do you choose restaurants or cafes based on their free Wi-Fi? Great. Now, answer this: What do you do on your smartphone or laptop when you connect? I know it’s none of my business, but if you aren’t protecting yourself, snoopers and cyber criminals may have a field day at your expense.

Public Wi-Fi is everywhere. We all use it, but most of us are unaware of the risks and fail to take the necessary precautions to protect ourselves.

“The major hazard with public Wi-Fi is the fact that all the information you’re transferring between your computer and the computer that you’re accessing is available to everybody on the network,” explains David Maimon, Assistant Professor in the department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland. “What attackers do is try to intercept the communication between your computer and the computer you’re trying to get information from or send information to. They can get passwords, usernames, you name it.”

Maimon is in the midst of a study into how we use public Wi-Fi networks. He has been visiting locations across Maryland, connecting to public Wi-Fi networks, and collecting data.

The 3 dangerous amigos of public Wi-Fi

There are three common avenues of attack to worry about with public Wi-Fi: man-in-the-middle attacks, malware, and Wi-Fi sniffing.

Main-in-the-middle attacks: “Man-in-the-middle attacks are where attackers are putting together their own network and standing between your computer and the computer you’re trying to access and all the information is routed through their device,” Maimon explains. “If they use this kind of approach then all the information is accessible to them, it doesn’t matter if you are accessing an HTTPS website, an encrypted website or not.”

Malware: Malware is even more dangerous, because it potentially gives an attacker access to everything on your device. They can steal your files or photos, and even turn on cameras or microphones to eavesdrop. If the attacker can get your login info for a cloud service, for example, it’s easy for them to slip malware onto your device.

Wi-Fi sniffing: The last method is known as Wi-Fi sniffing and it involves monitoring network traffic. Attackers record huge swathes of data as it travels across the network and then analyze it later to uncover useful details. Sadly, it’s not even illegal to sniff through packets a lot of the time.

“When we started we had to get approval and the legal team in Maryland checked whether it’s okay to sniff and couldn’t find any law preventing you from sniffing,” says Maimon. “Banners before you log in to public Wi-Fi, where you agree terms of use, sometimes specifically mention you’re not allowed to sniff and that makes it illegal, but if there’s no banner then it’s not illegal at all.”

It’s alarmingly easy to snoop

You might imagine that you’d need expensive specialist equipment or some kind of programming ability to monitor Wi-Fi and get your hands on other people’s information, but you don’t. Maimon uses the same tools that the hackers use and they are very easy to get your hands on.

“You can turn on Wi-Fi sniffing, log into a public Wi-Fi network and the software allows you to listen to and see all the traffic that’s transferred over the network,” Maimon explains. “I can pretty much see whatever you’re doing on your computer.”

For man-in-the-middle attacks, you can buy devices online and operate them without being a computer science student.

“One of the tools that the hackers are using is the Pineapple Wi-Fi device — it helps them generate spoofed websites,” says Maimon. “All the information is routed through the device. You think you’re sending it to the HTTPS website, but it’s actually a spoof website that the device created.”

Unless you’re snooping yourself, there’s no way to tell if you’re being exposed on a public Wi-Fi network. There’s no easy way to detect sniffing or man-in-the-middle attacks.

How do you protect yourself?

“When you’re on a public Wi-Fi network don’t access your bank account and sensitive details,” says Maimon. “Even Facebook and email, sometimes you send sensitive information over emails, if you don’t want to expose information, don’t use these things on public Wi-Fi. Use it for Web browsing or using Netflix maybe, but nothing else.”

Remember, the apps on your phone may automatically transmit data in the background, as well. 

You also have to make sure that you’re connecting to the right network. The next stage in Maimon’s research is to travel around public areas with his own unsecured Wi-Fi hotspot and see how many people connect and what they do. He has been surprised by how readily people will connect to networks that they know nothing about.

“If you don’t know who’s running the network then you probably shouldn’t use it,” he says. “You’re taking the risk that it’s a bad guy operating it.”

You should also stop your devices from automatically connecting to public Wi-Fi whenever it’s available, just in case it connects to a dodgy network. Criminals will set up their own hotspots in busy areas, so always ask the café owner or someone who works at the location for the connection details to make sure you’re connecting to a legitimate network.

If you’re willing to expend a little effort, there’s also another way to keep yourself safe.

“A VPN service is the best way to go. All the information you transfer is protected, it’s like a tunnel that protects the data from attackers,” says Maimon.

Protect yourself with a VPN service

“I think people should use public Wi-Fi because it’s becoming more ubiquitous as the Internet spreads, when people are traveling and they’re outside their house they should use it,” says Golden Frog president, Sunday Yokubaitis. “But they need to protect themselves and be aware of the dangers.”

VPN stands for virtual private network, and there are many services out there that you can use with apps for smartphones and computers. Golden Frog is the company behind one of the most popular VPN services around: VyperVPN.

“Users connect to our servers using an encrypted connection, really protecting that last mile,” explains Yokubaitis. “It wraps the entire internet connection in encryption and keeps you protected, protecting beyond the Wi-Fi router all the way to our servers.”

If you’re using a VPN then snoopers engaging in Wi-Fi sniffing won’t be able to see what you’re up to. Stronger protocols like OpenVPN can also defeat man-in-the-middle attacks. But this protection comes at a price, and you should choose your service carefully.

“You may be protected from public Wi-Fi, but end up with a provider with a business model predicated upon selling your data,” explains Yokubaitis. “The price of free is too high. A VPN service requires network, and servers. If it’s free, you really need to look into the business model.”

There have been a few scandals in the VPN space.Hola was found to be selling user’s bandwidth, though it’s not actually a VPN; it’s a proxy service. A Chinese provider called Terracotta was also recently exposed by RSA Research for selling stolen infrastructure access to hackers.

If you’re concerned about privacy then you may raise an eyebrow at VPN services owned by the likes of Facebook and App Annie. Data analysis and sales is big money. You could be giving up more than you realize.

“This isn’t just demographic data like another website might sell, this is every website you’re visiting, every app on your phone,” says Yokubaitis. “Think of it like dropping your kids off at daycare, you’re relinquishing control, and in order to do that you really need to look into who you’re dealing with.”

A VPN service is the best protection you can employ if you’re going to use public Wi-Fi, just make sure that you choose carefully. Read the privacy policy, check the provider’s background and location, and do a little research.

If you plan on using public Wi-Fi without one, make sure that you’re connecting to the right network and don’t access anything sensitive, like your bank account. It’s simply not worth the risk.

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SSD vs. HDD: What's the Difference?

Until recently, PC buyers had very little choice for what kind of file storage they got with their laptop, ultrabook, or desktop. If you bought an ultrabook or ultraportable, you likely had a solid-state drive (SSD) as the primary drive (C: on Windows, Macintosh HD on a Mac). Every other desktop or laptop form factor had a hard disk drive (HDD). Now, you can configure your system with either an HDD, SSD, or in some cases both. But how do you choose? We explain the differences between SSDs and HDDs, and walk you through the advantages and disadvantage of both to help you come to your decision.

HDD and SSD Explained
The traditional spinning hard drive (HDD) is the basic nonvolatile storage on a computer. That is, it doesn't "go away" like the data on the system memory when you turn the system off. Hard drives are essentially metal platters with a magnetic coating. That coating stores your data, whether that data consists of weather reports from the last century, a high-definition copy of the Star Wars trilogy, or your digital music collection. A read/write head on an arm accesses the data while the platters are spinning in a hard drive enclosure.

An SSD does much the same job functionally (saving your data while the system is off, booting your system, etc.) as an HDD, but instead of a magnetic coating on top of platters, the data is stored on interconnected flash memory chips that retain the data even when there's no power present. The chips can either be permanently installed on the system's motherboard (like on some small laptops and ultrabooks), on a PCI/PCIe card (in some high-end workstations), or in a box that's sized, shaped, and wired to slot in for a laptop or desktop's hard drive (common on everything else). These flash memory chips differ from the flash memory in USB thumb drives in the type and speed of the memory. That's the subject of a totally separate technical treatise, but suffice it to say that the flash memory in SSDs is faster and more reliable than the flash memory in USB thumb drives. SSDs are consequently more expensive than USB thumb drives for the same capacities.

A History of HDDs and SSDs
Hard drive technology is relatively ancient (in terms of computer history). There are well-known pictures of the infamous IBM 350 RAMAC hard drive from 1956 that used 50 24-inch-wide platters to hold a whopping 3.75MB of storage space. This, of course, is the size of an average 128Kbps MP3 file, in the physical space that could hold two commercial refrigerators. The IBM 350 was only used by government and industrial users, and was obsolete by 1969. Ain't progress wonderful? The PC hard drive form factor standardized in the early 1980s with the desktop-class 5.25-inch form factor, with 3.5-inch desktop and 2.5-inch notebook-class drives coming soon thereafter. The internal cable interface has changed from Serial to IDE to SCSI to SATA over the years, but it essentially does the same thing: connects the hard drive to the PC's motherboard so your data can be processed. Today's 2.5- and 3.5-inch drives use SATA interfaces almost exclusively (at least on most PCs and Macs). Capacities have grown from multiple megabytes to multiple terabytes, an increase of millions fold. Current 3.5-inch HDDs max out at 6TB, with 2.5-inch drives at 2TB max.

The SSD has a much more recent history. There was always an infatuation with non-moving storage from the beginning of personal computing, with technologies like bubble memory flashing (pun intended) and dying in the 1970s and '80s. Current flash memory is the logical extension of the same idea. The flash memory chips store your data and don't require constant power to retain that data. The first primary drives that we know as SSDs started during the rise of netbooks in the late 2000s. In 2007, the OLPC XO-1 used a 1GB SSD, and the Asus Eee PC 700 series used a 2GB SSD as primary storage. The SSD chips on low-end Eee PC units and the XO-1 were permanently soldered to the motherboard. As netbooks, ultrabooks, and other ultraportables became more capable, the SSD capacities rose, and eventually standardized on the 2.5-inch notebook form factor. This way, you could pop a 2.5-inch hard drive out of your laptop or desktop and replace it easily with an SSD. Other form factors emerged, like the mSATA miniPCI SSD card and the DIMM-like SSDs in the Apple MacBook Air, but today many SSDs are built into the 2.5-inch form factor. The 2.5-inch SSD capacity tops out at 1TB currently, but will undoubtedly grow as time goes by.

Advantages and Disadvantages
Both SSDs and HDDs do the same job: They boot your system, store your applications, and store your personal files. But each type of storage has its own unique feature set. The question is, what's the difference, and why would a user get one over the other? We break it down:

Price: To put it bluntly, SSDs are very expensive in terms of dollar per GB. For the same capacity and form factor 1TB internal 2.5-inch drive, you'll pay about $75 for an HDD, but as of this writing, an SSD is a whopping $600. That translates into eight-cents-per-GB for the HDD and 60 cents per GB for the SSD. Other capacities are slightly more affordable (250 to 256GB: $150 SSD, $50 HDD), but you get the idea. Since HDDs are older, more established technologies, they will remain less expensive for the near future. Those extra hundreds may push your system price over budget.

Maximum and Common Capacity: As seen above, SSD units top out at 1TB, but those are still very rare and expensive. You're more likely to find 128GB to 500GB units as primary drives in systems. You'd be hard pressed to find a 128GB HDD in a PC these days, as 250 or even 500GB is considered a "base" system in 2014. Multimedia users will require even more, with 1TB to 4TB drives as common in high-end systems. Basically, the more storage capacity, the more stuff (photos, music, videos, etc.) you can hold on your PC. While the (Internet) cloud may be a good place to share these files between your phone, tablet, and PC, local storage is less expensive, and you only have to buy it once.

Speed: This is where SSDs shine. An SSD-equipped PC will boot in seconds, certainly under a minute. A hard drive requires time to speed up to operating specs, and will continue to be slower than an SSD during normal operation. A PC or Mac with an SSD boots faster, launches apps faster, and has higher overall performance. Witness the higher PCMark scores on laptops and desktops with SSD drives, plus the much higher scores and transfer times for external SSDs vs. HDDs. Whether it's for fun, school, or business, the extra speed may be the difference between finishing on time or failing.

Fragmentation: Because of their rotary recording surfaces, HDD surfaces work best with larger files that are laid down in contiguous blocks. That way, the drive head can start and end its read in one continuous motion. When hard drives start to fill up, large files can become scattered around the disk platter, which is otherwise known as fragmentation. While read/write algorithms have improved where the effect in minimized, the fact of the matter is that HDDs can become fragmented, while SSDs don't care where the data is stored on its chips, since there's no physical read head. SSDs are inherently faster.

Durability: An SSD has no moving parts, so it is more likely to keep your data safe in the event that you drop your laptop bag or your system is shaken about by an earthquake while it's operating. Most hard drives park their read/write heads when the system is off, but they are flying over the drive platter at hundreds of miles an hour when they are in operation. Besides, even parking brakes have limits. If you're rough on your equipment, a SSD is recommended.

Availability: Hard drives are simply more plentiful. Look at the product lists from Western Digital, Toshiba, Seagate, Samsung, and Hitachi, and you'll see many more HDD model numbers than SSDs. For PCs and Macs, HDDs won't be going away completely, at least for the next couple of years. You'll also see many more HDD choices than SSDs from different manufacturers for the same capacities. SSD model lines are growing in number, but HDDs are still the majority for storage devices in PCs.

Form Factors: Because HDDs rely on spinning platters, there is a limit to how small they can be manufactured. There was an initiative to make smaller 1.8-inch spinning hard drives, but that's stalled at about 320GB, since the MP3 player and smartphone manufacturers have settled on flash memory for their primary storage. SSDs have no such limitation, so they can continue to shrink as time goes on. SSDs are available in 2.5-inch laptop drive-sized boxes, but that's only for convenience, as stated above. As laptops become slimmer and tablets take over as primary Web surfing platforms, you'll start to see the adoption of SSDs skyrocket.

Noise: Even the quietest HDD will emit a bit of noise when it is in use from the drive spinning or the read arm moving back and forth, particularly if it's in a system that's been banged about or in an all-metal system where it's been shoddily installed. Faster hard drives will make more noise than slower ones. SSDs make virtually no noise at all, since they're non-mechanical.

Overall: HDDs win on price, capacity, and availability. SSDs work best if speed, ruggedness, form factor, noise, or fragmentation (technically part of speed) are important factors to you. If it weren't for the price and capacity issues, SSDs would be the winner hands down.

As far as longevity goes, while it is true that SSDs wear out over time (each cell in a flash memory bank has a limited number of times it can be written and erased), thanks to TRIM technology built into SSDs that dynamically optimizes these read/write cycles, you're more likely to discard the system for obsolescence before you start running into read/write errors. The possible exceptions are high-end multimedia users like video editors who read and write data constantly, but those users will need the larger capacities of hard drives anyway. Hard drives will eventually wear out from constant use as well, since they use physical recording methods. Longevity is a wash when it's separated from travel and ruggedness concerns.

The Right Storage for You
So, does an SSD or HDD (or a hybrid of the two) fit your needs? Let's break it down:

HDDs
• Multimedia Mavens and heavy downloaders: Video collectors need space, and you can only get to 4TB of space cheaply with hard drives.
• Budget buyers: Ditto. Plenty of space for cheap. SSDs are too expensive for $500 PC buyers.
• Graphics Arts: Video and photo editors wear out storage by overuse. Replacing a 1TB hard drive will be cheaper than replacing a 500GB SSD.
• General users: Unless you can justify a need for speed or ruggedness, most users won't need expensive SSDs in their system.

SSDs
• Road Warriors: People that shove their laptops into their bags indiscriminately will want the extra security of a SSD. That laptop may not be fully asleep when you violently shut it to catch your next flight. This also includes folks that work in the field, like utility workers and university researchers.
• Speed Demons: If you need things done now, spend the extra bucks for quick bootups and app launches. Supplement with a storage SSD or HDD if you need extra space (see below).
• Graphics Arts and Engineering: Yes, I know I said they need HDDs, but the speed of a SSD may make the difference between completing two proposals and completing five for your client. These users are prime candidates for dual-drive systems (see below).
• Audio guys: If you're recording music, you don't want the scratchy sound from a hard drive intruding. Go for the quieter choice.

Now, we're talking primarily about internal drives here, but the same applies to external hard drives. External drives come in both large desktop form factors and compact portable form factors. SSDs are becoming a larger part of the external market as well, The same sorts of affinities apply, i.e., road warriors will want an external SSD over a HDD if they're rough on their equipment.

Hybrid Drives and Dual-Drive Systems
Back in the mid 2000s, some of the hard drive manufacturers like Samsung and Seagate theorized that if you add a few GB of flash chips to a spinning HDD, you'd get a so-called "hybrid" drive that approaches the performance of an SSD, with only a slight price difference with a HDD. All of it will fit in the same space as a "regular" HDD, plus you'd get the HDD's overall storage capacity. The flash memory acts as a buffer for oft-used files (like apps or boot files), so your system has the potential for booting faster and launching apps faster. The flash memory isn't directly accessible by the end user, so they can't, for example, install Windows or Linux on the flash chips. In practice, drives like the Seagate Momentus XT work, but they are still more expensive and more complex than simple hard drives. They work best for people like road warriors who need large storage, but need fast boot times, too. Since they're an in-between product, they don't necessarily replace dedicated HDDs nor SSDs.

In a dual-drive system, the system manufacturer will install a small SSD primary drive (C:) for the operating system and apps, while adding a large storage drive (D: or E:) for your files. While in theory this works well, in practice, manufacturers can go too small on the SSD. Windows itself takes up a lot of space on the primary hard drive, and some apps can't be installed on the D: or E: drive. Some capacities like 20GB or 32GB may be too small. For example, the Polywell Poly i2303 i5-2467M comes with a 20GB SSD as the boot drive, and we were unable to complete testing, let alone install usable apps, since there was no room left over once Windows 7 was installed on the C: drive. In our opinion, 80GB is a practical size for the C: drive, with 120GB being even better. Space concerns are like any multi-drive system: You need physical space inside the PC chassis to hold two (or more) drives.

Last but not least, an SSD and an HDD can be combined (like Voltron) on systems with technologies like Intel's Smart Response Technology. SRT uses the SSD invisibly to help the system boot faster and launch apps faster. Like a hybrid drive, the SSD is not directly accessible by the end user; rather, it acts as a cache for files the system needs often (you'll only see one drive, not two). Smart Response Technology requires true SSDs, like those in 2.5-inch form factors, but those drives can be as small as 8GB to 20GB and still provide performance boosts. Since the operating system isn't being installed to the SSD directly, you avoid the drive space problems of the dual-drive configuration mentioned above. On the other hand, your PC will require space for two drives, a requirement that may exclude some small form factor desktops and laptops. You'll also need the SSD and your system's motherboard to support Intel SRT for this scenario to work. All in all it's an interesting workaround.

It's unclear whether SSDs will totally replace traditional spinning hard drives, especially with shared cloud storage waiting in the wings. The price of SSDs is coming down, but still not enough to totally replace the TB of data that some users have in their PCs and Macs. Cloud storage isn't free either: you'll continue to pay as long as you want personal storage on the Internet. Home NAS drives and cloud storage on the Internet will alleviate some storage concerns, but local storage won't go away until we have ubiquitous wireless Internet everywhere, including planes and out in the wilderness. Of course, by that time, there may be something better. I can't wait.


Source : Pcmag

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Everything you need to know about the SR-71 Blackbird — the fastest jet in the world

Ever since Germany began creating the first rocket-powered aircraft in the late-1920s, mankind has developed an immense infatuation with building jets capable of hitting supersonic speeds in the blink of an eye. While most found use during wartime to outrun missiles or spy on the enemy, others were simply built out of a creator’s obsession with velocity and getting from point A to point B as quickly as possible.

However, because jets are perhaps some of the most exciting vehicles on the planet, their popularity extends beyond just those who manufacture them. People all over the globe remain absolutely enthralled with jets and most notably, jets which kick some serious ass when it comes to the speed department. To help fuel said fascination, we’ve tracked down the fastest manned aircraft ever assembled and combed through its impressive resume to see what made it so special. What follows is the story of the fastest jet known to man.

The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird

Developed and manufactured in the 1960s, this monster of a jet plane’s primary goal was to engage in highly classified reconnaissance missions, and to just generally fly faster than anything else of its time. Its best-recorded speed came in July of ’76 at Beale Air Force Base in California, clocking in at an astounding 2,193.2 miles per hour — a healthy 100 miles per hour faster than any other air-breathing manned aircraft. Piloted by Eldon W. Joersz and George T. Morgan, the official time broke an 11-year record previously set by a similarly constructed Lockheed YF-12A, which recorded a top speed of 2,070.1 miles per hour.

Lockheed developed the line of SR-71 jets because of a request from the CIA for a reconnaissance plane which could essentially outrun anti-aircraft missiles and operate at high altitudes. Previous Lockheed jets like the U-2 and the A-12 served as precursors to the Blackbird, with some of the technology native to those former aircraft reappearing in the newly built model. During production, manufacturers intended the SR-71 to fly at speeds above Mach 3 — roughly 2,280 miles per hour and higher — and though the fastest recorded time clocks in just under Mach 3, an SR-71 pilot named Brian Shul claims to have taken the aircraft much faster.

In a 1994 book titled The Untouchables, Brian Shul writes about his experience as a pilot of Lockheed’s SR-71 — he even refers to the position as being a sled driver. While the book doesn’t offer up much in the way of groundbreaking or classified information, Shul does mention one particular mission in Libya in which he claims to have flown in excess of Mach 3.5 while avoiding a missile. While it’s hard to know if he’s telling the exact truth or a version thereof, details on most missions involving an SR-71 remain classified, just like its actual velocity.

The SR-71 saw a brief retirement in 1989 before the U.S. government revived the aircraft in 1993 amid concerns of threats stemming from the Middle East and North Korea. After serving for several more years, the Air Force officially retired the SR-71 in 1998 with NASA following suit in 1999. Over the course of its impressive career, the SR-71 Blackbird logged tens of thousands of hours in flight, with about a quarter of its total hours spent flying at Mach 3 or above.

Though the military recorded 12 SR-71s as missing during its tenure, the craft holds the impressive distinction of never succumbing to enemy fire during any of its missions. It is worth noting the Air Force discontinued fly-overs of the USSR in the 1980s after the Soviet’s developed the MiG-31 interceptor of which they armed with a missile capable of traveling at speeds up to Mach 4.5. Soviet pilots also claim a MiG-31 intercepted the SR-71 in 1986, however, the interceptor did not engage the aircraft.

Even after its second retirement, many believed the U.S. government never fully unleashed the SR-71 to its potential and questioned the decision to send it to the sidelines. Considering the military remains keen on unmanned aircraft in the 21st Century, it seems the SR-71’s retirement was an inevitable one.

Perhaps one of its greatest achievements came in 1990 when an SR-71 broke four new speed records during a cross-country trip from California to Chantilly, Virginia. During the flight, the SR-71 set the record for fastest West Coast to East Coast time (67 minutes, 54 seconds); fastest Los Angeles to Washington D.C. time (64 minutes, 20 seconds); fastest Kansas City, Missouri to Washington D.C. time (25 minutes, 59 seconds); and fastest St. Louis, Missouri to Cincinnati, Ohio time (8 minutes, 32 seconds). For comparison sake, a typical passenger plane has the ability to make the trip from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. in roughly 4 and a half hours — not counting take-off or landing times.

No matter if the U.S. Air Force actually pushed the SR-71 to its limit or not, Lockheed’s impressive jet has a resume any other aircraft of its kind blushes at. With a clocked speed of some 100 miles per hour faster than its closest competition, along with a personal account of the jet traveling upwards of Mach 3.5, the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird is the fastest jet on the planet — and it’s not even a close race.

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