Get ready for the Galaxy S5: Could be unveiled in January 2014

Numerous reports have suggested that sales of Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S4 have fallen well short of the company’s internal projections, and Samsung might not be confident that its universally panned smartwatchand new curiously curved smartphone can pick up the slack. According to a recent report from South Korean news site Naver, Samsung plans to launch its next-generation flagship Galaxy S5 smartphone well ahead of schedule. The site claims the phone could be unveiled as soon as January 2014 ahead of a release in February. Samsung’s Galaxy S III and Galaxy S4 each debuted in the second quarter.

Naver says Samsung is rushing the phone out because Galaxy S4 sales have been weak, and the company hopes the various new technologies in the Galaxy S5 will help turn the slump around. Of course, Samsung just posted record-shattering unaudited third-quarter earnings that included at least $9.2 billion in operating profit, and Galaxy S4 sales certainly had a lot to do with the company’s monster quarter.

The report also makes mention of a 64-bit, eight-core Exynos processor for the Galaxy S5, as well as a 16-megapixel camera with optical image stabilization. Earlier reports suggested that the Galaxy S5 might finally feature a metal housing in place of the flimsy-feeling plastics Samsung typically uses, which would absolutely be a welcome change.

Facebook policy change opens users to the world

Facebook users who prefer to lurk in the shadows will not be terribly pleased to learn of a new change toFacebook’s privacy settings that is currently in the process of being rolled out. Facebook users until now have had the option to hide their accounts from the website’s search service. Enabling the setting would mean that their profiles would not be included in search results even when people search for them by name. This will no longer be the case once Facebook removes the privacy option in question, however. Facebook says that the new change will only impact a single-digit percentage of its user base, but we’re not sure how comforting that is. Considering Facebook is currently home to about 1.2 billion users, that means this change could impact more than 100 million people around the world.

Robot walks, breathes with artificial parts

Indeed, technology can provide aesthetic prostheses for people who have lost parts of their faces

Now, a team of engineers has assembled a robot using artificial organs, limbs and other body parts that comes tantalizingly close to a true "bionic man." For real, this time.

The artificial "man" is the subject of a Smithsonian Channel documentary that airs Sunday, Oct. 20 at 9 p.m. Called "The Incredible Bionic Man," it chronicles engineers' attempt to assemble a functioning body using artificial parts that range from a working kidney and circulation system to cochlear and retina implants.

The parts hail from 17 manufacturers around the world. This is the first time they've been assembled together, says Richard Walker, managing director of Shadow Robot Co. and the lead roboticist on the project.

Walker says the robot has about 60 to 70 percent of the function of a human. It stands six-and-a-half feet tall and can step, sit and stand with the help of a Rex walking machine that's used by people who've lost the ability to walk due to a spinal injury. It also has a functioning heart that, using an electronic pump, beats and circulates artificial blood, which carries oxygen just like human blood. An artificial, implantable kidney, meanwhile, replaces the function of a modern-day dialysis unit.

Although the parts used in the robot work, many of them are a long way from being used in humans. The kidney, for example, is only a prototype. And there are some key parts missing: there's no digestive system, liver, or skin. And, of course, no brain.

The bionic man was modeled after Bertolt Meyer, a 36-year-old social psychologist at the University of Zurich who was born without his lower left arm and wears a bionic prosthesis. The man's face was created based on a 3D scan of Meyer's face.

Beer Fridge Causes Blackout For Mobile Network Service In Australia

A mobile network blackout across several neighborhoods near Melbourne, Australia, and Telstra technicians tracked the interference to a beer fridge in the garage of Wangaratta resident Craig Reynolds.

Technicians believe electric sparks emitted from the refrigerator’s faulty motor generated enough radio frequency noise to knock it out the cell network.

A spark with a large enough magnitude, according to engineers, would interfere with the 850mHz spectrum, which carries mobile voice calls and internet data to smartphones and tablets.

Greg Halley and his crew are black-spot detectors for the telecom company, and tracked the interference using “Mr. Yagi” antennas, named after their Japanese creator. After locating the address, Halley said, they just knocked on the door.

Reynolds was shocked to discover his beer fridge could do such damage. “I’m amazed something like that could knock out part of the network,” he told the Herald Sun. “I’m going to run and see if my fridge is all right next time there’s a problem with the network,” he said.

Upgrading from Windows Sever 2003

Upgrading from Windows Server 2003 to 2008 got tricky, so I thought I should share some points to have in mind when upgrading

1) You cannot upgrade an x86 version (processor architecture) to an x64 version (processor architecture)
2) If you have an x86 version of Windows Server 2003, you'll only be able to upgrade it to an x86 version of Windows Server 2008
3) You can upgrade to an equivalent edition if the processor architecture is the same 
4) You can upgrade from Standard edition to Enterprise edition as long as the processor architecture is the same
5) You can upgrade to Datacenter edition only if the previous operating system is running Datacenter edition and the processor architecture is the same
6) You cannot upgrade Windows Server 2003 to any Server Core Installation option of Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2
7) You can upgrade from a Server Core installation option of Windows Server 2008 to a Server Core installation option of Windows Server 2008 R2 so long as the processor architecture is x64
8) To Upgrade from Windows server 2003 to Windows Server 2008 requires that at least Service Pack 1 is installed on the Windows Server 2003 host
9) For Itanium-Based System: Although Itanium is a 64-bit architecture, it's not the same as the x64 architecture. Hence, you cannot upgrade from or to an Itanium version of Windows Server 2008 R2 unless your existing version of Windows is the Itanium edition of Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008

Frozen Android phones give up data secrets

This is an interesting one - Freezing an Android phone can help reveal its confidential contents, German security researchers have found.

A team of researchers froze phones for an hour as a way to get around the encryption system that protects the data on a phone by scrambling it.

Google introduced the data scrambling system with the version of Android known as Ice Cream Sandwich.

The attack allowed the researchers to get at contact lists, browsing histories and photos.

Android's data scrambling system was good for end users but a "nightmare" for law enforcement and forensics workers, the team at Erlangen's Friedrich-Alexander University (FAU) wrote in a blogpost about their work.

To get around this, researchers Tilo Muller, Michael Spreitzenbarth and Felix Freiling from FAU put Android phones in a freezer for an hour until the device had cooled to below -10C.

The trio discovered that quickly connecting and disconnecting the battery of a frozen phone forced the handset into a vulnerable mode. This loophole let them start it up with some custom-built software rather than its on-board Android operating system. The researchers dubbed their custom code Frost - Forensic Recovery of Scrambled Telephones.

The Frost software helped them copy data on a phone that could then be analysed on a separate computer.

A chilled phone also helped their hacking project. Data fades from memory much more slowly when chips are cold which allowed them to grab the encryption keys and speed up unscrambling the contents of a phone.

PhD student Tilo Muller told the BBC that the attack generally gave them access to data that had been put in memory as users browsed websites, sent messages or shared pictures.

The researchers tested their attack against a Samsung Galaxy Nexus handset as it was one of the first to use Android's disk encryption system. However, they said, other phones were just as likely to be vulnerable to the attack. The team are planning further tests on other Android handsets.

While the "cold boot" attack had been tried on desktop PCs and laptops, Mr Muller said the trio were the first to try it on phones.

"We thought it would work because smartphones are really small PCs," he said. "but we were quite excited that the trick with the freezer worked so well."

The German research group is now working on defences against the attack that ensures encryption keys are never put in vulnerable memory chips. Instead they are only used in the memory directly attached to a phone's processor.

Web based 'brain' For Robots Goes Live

Robots confused about what they encounter in the world of humans can now get help online.

European scientists have turned on the first part of a web-based database of information to help them cope.

The online "brain" is Called Rapyuta, it describes objects robots have met and can also carry out complicated computation on behalf of a robot.

Rapyuta's creators hope it will make robots cheaper as they will not need all their processing power on-board.

The Rapyuta database is part of the European Robo Earth project that began in 2011 with the hope of standardizing the way robots perceive the human world.

Instead of every robot building up its own idiosyncratic catalogue of how to deal with the objects and situations it encounters, Rapyuta would be the place they ask for help when confronted with a novel situation, place or thing.

In addition, the web-based service is able to do complicated computation on behalf of a robot - for example if it needs to work out how to navigate a room, fold an item of clothing or understand human speech.

The system could be particularly useful for drones, self-driving cars or other mobile robots who have to do a lot of number crunching just to get round, said Mohanarajah Gajamohan, technical head of the project at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.