Madhu Reddy, Author at Mobile and Web Technologies - MEWTE

HGST’s helium-filled HDD offers a world-first 10 TB of storage

Posted by Madhu Reddy on June 10, 2015 Leave a Comment

HGST’s Ultrastar Archive Ha10 is aimed at enterprise users

We first caught wind of HGST’s high capacity hard drives in 2012, when the company claimed it could boost storage capacities by 40 percent by replacing regular old air inside the drive enclosure with helium. The Western Digital subsidiary stayed the course, producing a helium-based 6 TB HDD in 2013 and 8 TB model in 2014, and has now continued the upward trend with the world’s first 10 TB hard drive.

Aimed squarely at enterprise and data centers, the Ultrastar Archive Ha10 is the company’s latest take on a helium-based HDD. The apparent benefits of helium when it comes to HDD storage is its markedly lower density of around one-seventh that of regular air. This means less friction with internal moving parts, resulting in less power needed to drive the device and increased data density of the individual disks.

HGST calls its version of this HelioSeal and has combined it with shingled magnetic recording (SMR), a hard drive technology that records data on overlapping rather than parallel tracks, much like roof shingles (hence the name). The company says this results in an industry-leading storage density, low power consumption and ever-reliable storage solution. However, since SMR requires the writing of entire tracks, the drive is suited for active archive duties rather than frequent update workloads.

Further to its mammoth storage capacity, the 3.5-in drive is rated at two million hours mean time between failure (MTBF) and a 10-15 unrecoverable reduced bit error rate with 600k load-unload cycles. It comes in SATA 6 Gbps and SAS Gbps varieties and HGST claims a 20 percent improvement in Watts per TB over the preceding Ultrastar He8.

To begin with, the Ultrastar Archive Ha10 will be available to cloud and OEM storage clients with the software capabilities to harness the density of the device.

References:http://www.gizmag.com/

Earth’s oceans found to be a much greater source of greenhouse gas than previously believed

Posted by Madhu Reddy on June 9, 2015 Leave a Comment

Researchers pictured with one of the sampling devices used to collect readings of the Pacific Ocean

A new study by MIT has revealed that the quantities of nitrous oxide (N2O), otherwise known as laughing gas, being released by the world’s oceans has been dramatically underestimated. Heightened levels of N2O have the potential to seriously influence the health of our planet’s ozone layer, as the gas is around 300 times more potent than the more prevalent menace of carbon dioxide emissions.

N2O is created, and subsequently largely destroyed, in the boundary between the oxygen saturated layer of water near an ocean’s surface, and the anoxic waters that lie beneath. Nitrogen is initially introduced to the marine environment from a number of sources, including as a runoff from agricultural fertilizer in the form of ammonia. The nitrogen is then consumed by bacteria and marine microbes that produce N2O as a byproduct.

“The denitrifying bacteria that produce N2O also consume it, and it was thought that these two processes are pretty tightly coupled,” states Andrew Babbin, MIT postdoc at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and lead author of a paper on the study. “But that’s not the case in the suboxic layer, resulting in leftover N2O that leaks away to the surface.”

Prior to the study, it was not well understood just how much of the gas was escaping the ocean and entering the environment above, and the potential harm that this could be inflicting on our planet’s fragile atmosphere.

Babbin and his team were able to gain a better understanding by making a computer analysis of water samples from various depths at three different locations in the eastern tropical North Pacific, in order to determine denitrification rates for the region.

Results appear to show that previous estimates on the quantities of N2O escaping the oceans may have been off by as much as a factor of 10. By making use of recent climate models, Babbin and his team estimate that our world’s oceans could be producing as much as 4 million metric tons of N2O per year

This output of the harmful gas has the potential to seriously harm Earth’s ozone layer, and it is predicted that production will rise as agricultural growth continues, introducing ever more nitrogen into Earth’s oceans.

References:http://www.gizmag.com/

iOS 9 introduces app improvements, transit maps and iPad multitasking

Posted by Madhu Reddy on June 9, 2015 Leave a Comment

Apple announced a huge number of additions to its mobile OS at WWDC 2015

Apple has taken the wraps off iOS 9 at its yearly WWDC event in San Francisco. The latest version of the company’s popular mobile operating system doesn’t make any big visual changes, but offers numerous app tweaks, improvements to Siri, new multitasking features for iPad users, and much more.

First up, Siri will be getting a big upgrade with iOS 9, with the company beefing up the service to compete with Google Now. Apple’s personal assistant will be much more context aware with the new release, giving users the ability to make commands such as “remind me about this later” when looking at a piece of content. Siri is also getting a new, more colorful look in iOS 9, and “Siri Suggestions” will debut, offering context aware contact and app recommendations in Search.

There are plenty of additional tweaks to the service. For example, if you’re into yoga, an appropriate app will be recommended when you get up in the morning, and track suggestions will automatically pop up when you plug in a set of headphones.

The new release will also see event invitations added automatically to Calendar, and will provide deep links between Search and third party apps, allowing users to get suggestions and jump straight into relevant apps.

Multitasking comes to iPad

The new OS will also introduce some new multitasking features for iPad users, most notably a new Split View that allows users to use two apps side-by-side. The feature is activated by swiping in with one finger from the right of the display, with app switching handled by swiping down from the top right.

Picture-in-picture video will also arrive on iPad with iOS 9, allowing users to resize and move around videos. Lastly, there’s a big new feature coming to the iPads, with the ability to use the keyboard like a trackpad via two finger gestures.

The new multitasking features will be available to iOS 9 users on iPad Air and iPad Air 2, as well as iPad mini 2 and iPad mini 3.

Apps

iOS 9 will also bring introduce a number of improvements to apps, with a new toolbar coming to Notes, providing formatting options, interactive check lists, drawing tools and a new way of viewing entries based on attachments.

Maps is also getting a big upgrade with the addition of a new Transit view, showing public transport routes, with step-by-step directions. Users can click on a train station to see which lines are running through it, and Apple has taken the time to map stations, giving users more detailed directions about which entrances and exits to use than you’ll find on competing services.

Next up is News – a news aggregation app that allows users to pick their favorite publications and topics (there are more than one million of the latter on offer), with the service creating a personalized feed. If you’re familiar with services like Flipboard, then you’ll know roughly what to expect from News, but the app looks to have some nice features, including support for animations, videos and a slick-looking gallery view. It’ll launch first in the US, UK and Australia.

Apple Pay hitting the UK

The company also announced that its mobile payments service – Apple Pay – will make its way to the UK in July, with more than 250,000 retail locations at launch. The service is also being expanded in the US, with support for more retailers, more banks, and more in-app payments using the service.

Apple Pay will also be improving when iOS 9 hits, with the ability to add store and reward cards. The company also announced that PassBook will become Wallet, putting everything from flight boarding cards to credit cards in one place.

The rest

On other fronts, Apple says users can expect an extra hour of battery life after installing the new version of the OS, and it will bring with it a new low power mode that extends uptimes by an additional three hours when juice starts getting low.

There were also a number of announcements for developers at the conference, the biggest of which was is an update to the company’s development language, now known as Swift 2. There are numerous enhancements and changes on the way here, the biggest of which is that the language will be going open source, with compilers available for OS X and Linux by the end of the year.

iOS 9 will be compatible with the same set of devices that are capable of running the current iOS 8 release (see above). The Developer Preview of iOS 9 will be available today, while the public beta will hit this July. Rather wait for the polished public release? It’s scheduled to land in the (Northern hemisphere) Fall of 2015.

References:http://www.gizmag.com/

OpenEars headphones designed to bring binaural sound recording to the mainstream

Posted by Madhu Reddy on June 9, 2015 Leave a Comment

OpenEars Bluetooth headphones promise quick and easy binaural recording

Binaural recordings use two microphones to capture sound in the same way it is captured by human ears. The spatial depth of the resulting 3D sound is often impressive, but it can only be fully appreciated when wearing headphones and the recording process tends to be reserved for professionals as it usually involves a dummy head with a microphone placed in each ear. A German company called Binauric is looking to bring binaural recording to a wider audience with its OpenEars Bluetooth in-ear headphones that feature a microphone in each earpiece.

Binaural recordings are different to regular stereo recordings for a number of reasons. The sound perceived by the ear/microphone closer to the sound source arrives earlier (inter-aural time difference or ITD) and is louder (inter-aural level difference or ILD) than that further away from the sound source. Additionally, the sound arriving at the furthermost ear will be slightly modified as a result of traveling around the head and being reflected off surfaces around the head (masking and head-related transfer functions or HRTFs).Since, binaural recordings don’t offer much of an advantage for studio recordings since studios aren’t that interesting spatially, the technology never really took off for musical artists. However, its ability to provide the acoustic impression of another space makes it more applicable to recordings in the outdoors or locations with interesting acoustic spatial qualities, such as concert halls. It is these markets Binauric is targeting with its OpenEars headphones that are the subject of a crowdfunding campaign.
In addition to the 25 Hz to 22 kHz in-ear speakers, the headphones feature MEMs condenser microphones with a frequency range of 18 Hz to 23 kHz. The wireless units feature an inline volume control connect to iOS or Android devices via Bluetooth and boast a play and record time of 6 hours on a single charge. They can be fully recharged in under an hour, with a 15 minute fast charge providing 1.5 hours of playback time. The headphones are also designed to be water repellent and dust- and sweat-proof.

One group of prolific video content creators whose work Binauric believes could benefit from binaural recordings are GoPro aficionados. To this end, the company has developed OpenMics, a pair of optional standalone microphones that can be attached to a helmet (or drone) and wirelessly relay the sound to a connected GoPro via 2.4 GHz radio frequency.
OpenEars can of course be used as regular Bluetooth headphones for listening to music or for hands-free calls. Thanks to the “Hear Through” functionality users are able to listen to music and their surroundings at the same time and customize how much ambient sound they want to hear, which is a big plus for safety-conscious cyclists and pedestrians.However, you don’t have to be a skater or a bungee jumper to use OpenEars. Binauric wants users to record binaural sound with every video or photo they take and start using spatial sounds to help someone viewing the material feel like they were there with you. The headphones could also appeal to ASMR devotees, many of which have already embraced the technology.
The companion app for iOS and Android lets users share recordings via Dropbox, email or SoundCloud, or stream them in real time.

Binauric has taken to Kickstarter to raise funds to get the OpenEars headphones into production. If all goes well, the company expects the headphones to retail for €199 (US$222), but early bird backers can stake a claim for a pair at €119 (US$133). Delivery is estimated for November, but the team is still some way off the €125,000 goal with just over two weeks left to run.

You can check out a binaural recording of some New York City sightseeing below, but just be sure to use headphones to get the effect.

References:http://www.gizmag.com/