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Prime minister Sheikh Hasina on Thursday said that digital connectivity would be the key to transform Bangladesh into a smart nation in every way.
‘Digital connectivity will be the key tool to build smart Bangladesh. smart citizens, smart economy, and smart government and smart society will be developed on the basis of digital connectivity,’ she said in a video message aired at the inaugural ceremony of the Digital Bangladesh Fair-2023.
Posts and telecommunications ministry arranged the three-day Digital Bangladesh Fair at the Bangabandhu International Conference Centre for showcasing the IT and ITES products and services in the country.
She also hoped that the digital goods would play a significant role in investments and exports.
Hasina said that Digital Bangladesh was now a reality and the next target is to build smart Bangladesh and smart Nation.
‘There is no substitute for using ultra modern technology to achieve the target of building smart Bangladesh,’ she said.
The prime minister said her government wanted Bangladesh to become prosperous economically, ensuring maximum use of the digital technology that includes artificial intelligence, internet, virtual reality, augmented reality, robotics and big-data.
In this connection, she said that 5G services would be ensured at the industrial regions.
She mentioned that a revolution had taken place in Bangladesh in terms of digitisation.
‘Young generation is now seeing the dream of building smart Bangladesh.’
The prime minister said that her government had launched Bangabandhu Satellite-1 in the orbit in 2018 which had brought a revolutionary change in the broadcasting and telecommunications sectors.
She said that Bangladesh was earning a huge amount of foreign currency by using unused frequencies from satellites.
PM Hasina said that steps had been taken to install Bangabandhu Satellite-2 with multifaceted working capacity aiming to materialise the target of establishing smart Bangladesh.
She said that her government was going to set up a third submarine cable by 2024 as they had already installed the first and second submarine cables, adding that Bangladesh had so far achieved a bandwidth capacity of 3400 GBPS.
‘The bandwidth capacity will be increased to 7200 GBPS in the middle of this year, while it will be 13200 GBPS after installation of the third submarine cable.’
She mentioned that Bangladesh was earning $4.81million every year through giving bandwidth leases to Saudi Arabia, France, Malaysia and India.
The PM said Bangladesh didn’t need to depend on foreign satellites any more.
She noted that nearly 956298 kilometers optical fibre cables have been set up at union levels across the country while 10 Gigabyte capacity has been ensured in every union which help give high speed internet to the people and the government offices.
She said that a total of 8600 post offices across the country had been turned into digital ones using the infrastructure.
‘Nowadays 18 crore mobile SIMs are being used while the number of people using the internet is 12 crore. The digital inequality and prices of broadband internet between the rural and urban areas has been erased due to it,’ she added.
At the function, the newly introduced Posts and Telecommunication Award was distributed among 22 organisations and individuals in 14 categories in recognition of their praiseworthy works in the telecom sector to build digital Bangladesh.
Education minister Dipu Moni, Posts and Telecommunications Division minister Mustafa Jabbar, Posts Telecommunications and Information Technology Ministry’s Parliamentary Standing Committee president AKM Rahmatullah, and secretary of Posts and Telecommunications Division Abu Hena Morshed Zaman spoke at the function.


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LG announces US availability for OLED TV
A few days back we mentioned that LG had started taking pre-orders in Korea for its new 55-inch WRGB OLED TV set. That TV pre-order would cost you the equivalent of $10,000 in Korea. LG has announced this week that it will be making its incredibly thin OLED TV available in the United States starting in March.
Deliveries of the TV to Korean customers are set to begin in February. If you thought the Korean price, which worked out to $10,000 here in the US was expensive; you won’t like the official US pricing at all. LG has confirmed that the MSRP for the TV in the United States will be $11,999.
One of the hallmarks of the OLED TV is an incredibly thin design that is only 4 mm thick. The TV also weighs less than 22 pounds and promises exceptional color reproduction along with vivid and realistic images. The TV uses LG’s unique Four Color Pixel system with a white sub pixel working with conventional red, blue, and green pixels to create the perfect color.
The TV also has LG’s exclusive Color Refiner technology to provide greater tonal enhancement that results in images that are more vibrant and natural. The TV also has an infinite contrast ratio that maintains optimal contrast levels regardless of ambient light or viewing angles.
LG announces US availability for OLED TV is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

domain: news


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Its companion token, LUNA, which was meant to stabilize UST’s price, fell from $80 to a few cents by May 12. Luna Foundation Guard, the nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the Luna ecosystem confirmed it depleted its BTC reserves from around 80,000 Bitcoins to 313 bitcoins during the attempt to save UST’s peg. This eventually lead to the largest crypto crash ever, with an estimated $60 billion wipeout, shaking the complete global digital currency market. You may notice that cryptocurrencies listed on different exchanges have different prices.
Chinese authorities in the south-west province of Sichuan ordered bitcoin mining projects to close. China’s largest bitcoin-producing provinces have intensified a crackdown on cryptocurrency mining in the latest sign of how authorities are toughening their stance on the rapidly growing digital asset markets. China declared that all crypto-related transactions will be considered illicit – including services provided to offshore exchanges according to the announcement made by the People’s Bank of China. It added that cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Tether, are not fiat currencies and cannot be circulated.
US Senate Holds Hearing On Bitcoin – November 18, 2013
The decision is widely derided as unwieldy and overly complex, requiring users of the currency to record Bitcoin’s market price with every transaction, subject to an array of largely unfamiliar calculations. Others, however, remark that the net tax paid may often be less than if Bitcoin were treated as currency proper – but to a market that emerged in tax-free innocence, it is a difficult blow to soften. Nearly 30,000 government seized Bitcoins, obtained by the US Marshals Service during the October 2013 bust of the Silk Road website, are auctioned off in chunks of 3,000 bitcoins. Bidders are required to deposit $200,000 USD via bank wire in order to qualify for the auction. A single bidder won every auction, indicating that his winning bid prices were far higher than the current market price.
Binance said it would cover the incident “in full” and no user funds affected. Bitcoin price jumped after China’s government threw its backing behind the digital coin’s underlying ledger technology. China’s President Xi Jinping said Beijing will increase investment in blockchain technology. An official with China’s central bank also said blockchain technology can help with commercial banks’ risk control and ease borrowing difficulties for smaller businesses. According to the SEC’s lawsuit, the duo ignored legal advice that the cryptocurrency could be considered an investment contract and therefore was a security.
Securities and Exchange Commission files charges against Shavers for defrauding investors in a Ponzi scheme. Mt. Gox, Bitstamp, and BTC-e all experienced a stoppage of trading due to massive DDoS attacks that were apparently aimed at exploiting transaction maleability in the exchanges’ software. Mt. Gox halted withdrawals first, on February 6, evidently contributing to a sharp drop in BTC price; the DDoS attack was detected on February 11, 2014. The theft represented “a small fraction of Bitstamp’s total bitcoin reserves” as the majority of the company’s Bitcoin funds remained untouched in offline “cold” storage. However, according to a leaked internal Bitstamp report on the incident, the damage to the company’s reputation and customer confidence far exceeded its monetary Bitcoin loss. The VC backed startup Coinbase Inc., a popular Bitcoin outlet and payment processor, announced the release of its own Bitcoin trading platform.
If all the world currencies disappeared right now. Then how much is one bitcoin worth? Assuming there’s a social agreement to trade with crypto as currency what determines BTC’s worth. Can’t be supply and demand when there will be many possible currencies others might accept.
— Plasticcreep (@plasticcreep) January 26, 2023
Bitcoin has a circulating supply of 18,832,712 BTC and a maximum supply of 21,000,000 BTC tokens. Circulating supply shows the number of coins or tokens that have been issued so far. The percentage of Binance customers who increased or decreased their net position in BTC over the past 24 hours through trading. Needs to review the security of your connection before proceeding. An American nonprofit called the Bitcoin Foundation was founded in 2012 to support the development and adoption of the Bitcoin protocol.
https://www.beaxy.com/, bitcoin’s smallest unit, is now added to Oxford English Dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, has officially added the word “Satoshi” to its database. Cryptocurrency picked up a bid at lows after the U.S. launched an airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport, killing top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Tensions escalated over the weekend, with Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei promising revenge and President Trump warning Tehran against retaliatory actions. Blockchain sleuths at ZenGo, a wallet startup, have found a vulnerability that affected at least three major competing crypto wallets – Ledger Live, Edge and Breadwallet – and potentially more. Crypto hackers took over the Twitter accounts of prominent users including Bill Gates, Kanye West, Elon Musk and Barack Obama and many more.
- If BTC is worth $10,000 and the price increases $1,000 to $11,000, but you have 0.1 BTC, you have not made a $1,000 profit, because you do not have one whole bitcoin.
- Ruble/Bitcoin trading volume has surged as the Russian currency collapsed against the dollarin the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
- BIPs like these change Bitcoin’s consensus rules, resulting in forks.
- The word ‘crypto’ in ‘cryptocurrency’ comes from the word ‘cryptography’, a technique that allows for secure communication, meaning that it is impossible to counterfeit bitcoin, unlike fiat.
- In each case, the wallets are cryptographically secured, and to send ‘bitcoins’ or ‘BTC,’ users need to have access to a passphrase called a ‘private key’.
Bitfinex, the largest Bitcoin exchange by volume, announced that 119,756 bitcoins of customer funds had been stolen via a security breach, a value roughly equivalent to $72 million USD. Bitfinex was holding the customer funds in multi-signature addresses in conjunction with its security partner BitGo. It is presumed that the attacker obtained access to the private keys GMT for nearly all Bitfinex customer accounts, as well as access to the BitGo API for the Bitfinex account.
How Much Will Bitcoin be Worth in the Future?
Chinese authorities have ordered Beijing-based cryptocurrency exchanges to cease trading and immediately notify users of their closure, signaling a widening crackdown by authorities on the industry to contain financial risks. Mark Karpeles, the former head of Mt. Gox — a bitcoin exchange that went bankrupt in 2014 — was found guilty of data manipulation by the Tokyo District Court and handed a prison sentence of 2.5 years that will be suspended for 4 years. He was found not guilty on a separate charge of embezzling millions of dollars through customer accounts.
The BTC committee provided a list of 60 major ICO platforms for local financial regulatory bodies to inspect. According to the Bitcoin Gold pitch, returning to home users will bring forth greater decentralization. Since Bitcoin Gold was issued, its price has plunged over 66 percent within the first couple of hours.
What is 24h Volume in the Table Above?
Square said it represents about 5% of the company’s total assets as of the end of 2020. El Salvador became the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender. The government even went a step further in promoting the cryptocurrency’s use by giving US$30 in free bitcoins to citizens who sign up for its national digital wallet, known as “Chivo,” or “cool” in English. Foreigners who invest three bitcoins in the country will be granted residency. Bitcoin has rallied to a record high a day after a bitcoin exchange-traded fund launched on Wall Street for the first time, garnering strong demand in a sign of the booming investor interest in the asset class.
Can I buy one dollar of Bitcoin?
You can purchase or sell as little as 1.00 of digital currency denominated in your local currency ($1 or €1 for example).
Bitcoin’s market cap, its large circulating supply, and the high volume of Bitcoin transactions have attracted individual and corporate investors. The balance sheets of many companies (and, according to surveys, most of the world’s billionaires) now include strategic amounts of Bitcoin purchased as an investment. How is it that this cryptocurrency works as a store of value at all? If you’ve wondered about questions like these, you have come to the right place. We’ve compiled all the Bitcoin news, everything you need to get a better understanding of the intricacies of BTC’s price and the factors that influence it. Because it was the first cryptographically secured blockchain currency.
The second part of Proof-of-Keys supposedly serves to test the trustworthiness of the exchanges. If every single user requested every single coin on the same day, would the exchange be able to pay them all? If it turned out they could not then the platform in question would be not only guilty of deceiving its users but also guilty of artificially inflated the total supply of the currency. Cboe Global Markets Inc., the first mainstream exchange to let people buy and sell Bitcoin futures, said in a web posting that it’s reviewing its approach to cryptocurrency derivatives and doesn’t currently plan to list more contracts. The New York attorney general accused the operator of bitcoin exchange Bitfinex and tether issuer Tether Limited of hiding an $850 million loss.
Thailand’s $1B crypto sacrifice, Mt Gox final deadline, Tencent NFT … – Cointelegraph
Thailand’s $1B crypto sacrifice, Mt Gox final deadline, Tencent NFT ….
Posted: Fri, come avere un erezione sicura main come avere un 10 Mar 2023 00:33:45 GMT [source]
Rapidly growing how much is one bitcoin worth right now investment from China steadily drives prices higher and higher, reaching a peak on November 29th. With a majority of the Bitcoin network hashing power, GHash.io could temporarily reverse transactions that they send and prevent other transactions from being confirmed. An unknown trader places nearly 30,000 BTC for sale on the Bitstamp exchange at a limit price of $300 per bitcoin, worth roughly $9 million USD. The order was dubbed the “BearWhale” by the Bitcoin community due to its unprecedented size.


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The coronavirus pandemic has affected virtually all industries in many ways. In the wake of the global pandemic, countries across the globe had to introduce new restrictions to try to control the spread of the virus, including lockdowns, social distancing, and halted certain economic activities. This created a lot of trouble for players in many industries. Consumers also lost confidence in spending on certain products and services, especially expensive and non-essential ones.
The tech sector experienced a positive impact and there has been a lot of economic activity in this sector. As things start returning to normal, various sectors are going to experience most investor activity.
Airlines & MRO
Airlines have experienced plenty of financial trouble due to the pandemic. The entire travel industry has been hit hard by the pandemic. Since airlines receive lots of government support, they are not going to fail, and once the COVID-19 is eventually controlled, there will be an increase in demand for travel. Publicly traded airlines will then experience a lot of investor activity.
Media & Advertising
Businesses were truly affected when the economy shut down in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Many had massively cut down on their advertising budgets, thus affecting the advertising industry. Once we return to normal, businesses will increase their advertising spending, thus benefiting the advertising sector.
Restaurants have been closed since covid-19 restrictions started. Small and medium-sized restaurants globally have experienced the hardest hit. Publically traded restaurants are likely to survive, and once the COVID-19 is contained, people will rush to eat out again.
Various business services, including human resources consultants, accountants, janitorial services, and more suffered losses as many companies had to close down, while others cut down on expenses. As we recover from the coronavirus pandemic, these business services will see an upswing.
People haven’t been going to recreational centers since the onset of the COVID-19 restrictions. Stocks across recreational companies have been low. As we recover from the pandemic and the restrictions lifted, people will get back to recreational activities.
Technology has been the major driving force of the economy in the global coronavirus pandemic. Businesses have seen the need to be digitalized and business owners are taking their businesses online. The technology sector saw a huge growth in 2020 and will continue through post covid.
The importance of healthcare has been emphasized since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis. The sector has seen fast growth in innovations, making it a good investment opportunity for dynamic investors.
As consumer discretionary spend increases again and electric mobility picks up, we will see commensurate increased activity in new launches, investments, partnerships ets.
These are the top sectors that you need to watch in the post-covid-19 pandemic. Some of these sectors have taken massive hits, such as travel, restaurants, advertising, sports, event, and party suppliers, and outdoor recreation. Once we recover from the pandemic, these sectors will see an upswing.


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An Italian design company is paying tribute to the iconic Citroën H-Van with a special edition styling kit that turns the company’s latest Relay model into a replica of the 70-year old classic.
ili is selling the vans complete for around £36,500, and will initially build just 70 of them in left and right-hand-drive.
However, the company has confirmed that it will also be producing further variants starting later this year, including a rugged 4×4, a camper, a recovery truck and a specially-adapted food truck – which many original H-Vans have since become.
The replica’s designers, David Obendorfer and Fabrizio Caselani, created the styling kit to coincide with the H-Van’s 70th anniversary, which was celebrated last month at the CV Show in Birmingham. The pair plan to expand their business into retrofitting vans with the kits from 2018 onwards, while the following year, the kit will be made available to order on its own.
The kit will fit the post-2006 Citroën Relay, as well as its partner vehicles the Fiat Ducato and Peugeot Boxer. The designers say the kit may also be sold in the USA, where it can be fitted to the Ducato-based Ram Promaster.
Obendorfer said, “With the design we did not intend to copy the forms of the original model, but rather we aimed to capture the soul of the iconic vehicle, reinterpreting it through a nostalgic fibreglass ‘suit’ which at the same time is deeply rooted in contemporary style.”
“The Type H 70th Anniversary Van is a fusion of direct references to the predecessor with modern solutions, combined with the reliability and the technological content of the current Citroën Relay series.”


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MEMPHIS, Tenn. (localmemphis.com) – Your private information is at risk. Equifax acknowledged as much after the massive data breach that exposed the personal information of nearly 150 million people.
The settlement includes up to $425 million to help people affected by the data breach, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
The FTC and the Better Business Bureau are getting reports of scammers trying to exploit the system designed to help people find out if they were targeted.
Fake sites are designed to look like the official settlement claims site.
The FTC wants you to know you do not have to pay to file a claim for these benefits, and anyone who calls and tries to get you to file a claim is likely a scammer.
To file a claim, the website http://www.equifaxbreachsettlement.com/file-a-claim was created.
You can file a claim for:
- Free credit monitoring or $125 cash payment
- Reimbursement for your time and other cash payments (capped at $20,000)
- Free help recovering from identity theft
- Free credit reports for all U.S. consumers
The FTC posted Wednesday on its blog the response has been so overwhelming, that if you haven’t submitted your claim yet, think about opting for the free credit monitoring instead. The FTC believes the free credit monitoring is worth a lot more – the market value would be hundreds of dollars a year.
Randy Hutchinson with the Better Business Bureau of the Mid-South encourages you to check the Equifax link to see if you were impacted by the data breach and file, sooner, rather than later, because of important deadlines for benefits.
“If you already have credit monitoring, it’s really an individual decision as to whether the credit monitoring you already have or what’s being offered here is a better deal,” said Hutchinson. “It’s for four years and most of the credit monitoring programs I found on Google cost more than that for one year.”
Even if you weren’t impacted by the breach or decide not to file a claim, Hutchinson suggests you pull the free credit report you’re entitled to from each credit reporting agency annually, and perhaps one or two more of the six extra ones from Equifax for the seven-year period they’re offered as part of the settlement.
“Pull them more frequently if you have any reason to suspect you may become the victim of identity theft,” he said.
The FTC reports the monitoring service is probably stronger and more helpful than what many consumers have already because it monitors your credit report at all three nationwide credit reporting agencies. It also features up to $1 million in identity theft insurance and identity restoration services.
Hutchinson said you can sign up for important updates about the settlement. Do that by going to the FTC link: ftc.gov/Equifax.


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Ethereum is a smart contract platform that enables developers to build tokens and decentralized applications (dapps). ETH is the native currency for the Ethereum platform and also works as the transaction fees to miners on the Ethereum network. Ethereum is the pioneer for blockchain based smart contracts.
The largest derivatives exchange in the United States finally launched its micro Ether product. The price of the cryptocurrency cryptocurrencies are digital currencies that use cryptographic technologies to secure their operation. rose slightly after the announcement.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange businesses that allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies for fiat money or other cryptocurrencies. (CME), one of the world’s largest derivatives exchanges, introduced the long-awaited microfinance futures, which are expected to be traded on theEthereum a decentralized open-source blockchain with smart contracts functionality. (ETH) este moons.
The market an area or arena, online or offline, in which commercial dealings are conducted. is already had announced in November plans to introduce the new ‘micro’ investment product based on the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. The new contract in traditional finance, a contract is a binding agreement between two parties. In cryptocurrencies, smart contracts execute functions on the blockchain. for micro futures a futures contract is a standardized legal agreement to buy or sell a particular commodity or asset at a predetermined price at a specified time in the future. Ether the form of payment used in the operation of the distribution application platform, Ethereum. has a size of 0.1 ETH and is settled in cash.
As reported byDiarioBitcointhe product is based on la reference rate CME CF Ether-Dólar which is used as a daily reference rate for the price of that digital digital technologies are these electronic tools that have the ability to generate, store or even process data. currency currency is a medium of exchange that defines value. in U.S. dollars. CME already offers a number of cryptocurrency derivative a financial instrument deriving its value from the value of an underlying asset. products, including the micro futures Bitcoin the biggest and most popular cryptocurrency in the world. It is a decentralized digital currency that enables users to make trustless peer-to-peer transactions. which began to be negotiated in May .
The launch represents the second ‘micro’ cryptocurrency derivatives product to be introduced by CME this 2021.
With the launch of the new product, the exchange seeks to provide investors with an efficient means of hedging their exposure toEther. This was reported on Monday Tim McCourt, global head of equity equity is the funds that would be returned to a company's shareholders if all of the company's assets were dissolved and all debts were paid off in the event of liquidation. index and alternative investment products at CME Group in an email to CoinDesk .
The launch of micro Ether futures underscores the significant growth and liquidity how easily a cryptocurrency can be bought and sold without impacting the overall market price. we have seen in our cryptocurrency futures and options.
The price of ETH experienced a drop this weekend that took it below the USD $4,000 mark. The decline came amid a general bearish movement who sawBitcoin dip a dip is when markets experience a short or protracted downturn. below USD $50,000. However, the price of Ether seems to recover slightly after the CME announcement. to trade at $4,171 at the time of publication.
- Ethereum could displace Bitcoin as a store of value, says new study
- Google Invests $1 Billion in CME Group and Signs 10-Year Cloud cloud servers are typically located throughout different data centers all over the world. Use Agreement
- CME Group Reports 170% Increase in Average Daily Bitcoin Futures Volume for Third Quarter
Article by Hannah Estefania Perez /DiarioBitcoin
Imagen de Unsplash


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Exact Logistics, based at the Dunchurch Trading Estate in Rugby, has joined up with fellow Rugby firm R&N Plant Specialists to help drive an environmental project called Time 4 Trees.
THE GARDENS at Coventry University have been stopping passers-by in their tracks.
EXPERTS say the UK construction industry suffered a fragile start to the year as the sector continues to struggle during a challenging climate.
COVENTRY'S new £50million shopping park - which opened its first store last month - is making a mark for more than just its retail offering.
MIDLANDS TV presenter Kay Alexander has been named as the host of the Coventry Telegraph Business Awards 2013.
BUSINESSES across Coventry and Warwickshire will once again have the chance to shine under the spotlight at the region's most prestigious annual awards ceremony.
AS a growing number of otters are making urban waterways their home, environment reporter Mary Griffin looks at a new project to further boost their population.
SO you've turned your garden organic, cut your energy bills and increased recycling but are you going far enough to reduce your carbon footprint. Mary Griffin meets a group who are taking their duties to the extreme.
IT IS not a topic for the faint hearted – but it does affect every single one of us on the planet.
In recent times, being environmentally conscious has been pushed to the forefront of many people’s agendas, whether it concerns the food you buy, the transport you use or even how you dispose of your waste.
CAMPAIGNERS have suffered a “serious setback” in their battle to stop houses being built on picturesque green fields in Nuneaton.
HIGH speed trains are threatening some of the region’s key nature sites, including country parks, ancient woodland and the National Forest.
A RENEWABLE energy company is powering ahead by expanding into the Middle East from its base in Warwickshire.
SCHOOL NEWSPAPER / SCHOOL WEBSITE AWARD
WHEN a man reduced his rubbish to one bin bag for a whole year it sparked the imagination of people across the Midlands.
COVENTRY’S two universities are to showcase the city at a major international development event for the first time.
Wildlife experts have discovered a murky problem in the city's rivers and brooks.
Across the UK, hundreds of thousands of street lights are being switched off to save carbon emissions and cut costs.
How many of us dream of a calmer Christmas, without the stress of shopping and the financial burden of a glut of gifts?
A GROUNDBREAKING green energy company has embarked on an exciting new chapter of its life.


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* To relocate hard disk drive plant from Singapore
* To lay off 2,000 workers out of 8,000 staff in Singapore
* Sees $80 mln costs, $40 mln annual savings (Adds financial forecasts)
SINGAPORE, Aug 4 (Reuters) - Computer hard disk maker Seagate Technology (STX.O) said it will lay off 2,000 workers in Singapore, or more than 4 percent of its global workforce, as it closes manufacturing facilities in the city-state in a bid to cut costs by $40 million a year.
The move, which Seagate said would result in restructuring charges of $80 million, follows a slide in electronics exports from Singapore this year due to weaker consumer demand in the economic downturn.
“We are moving our hard disk operation at Ang Mo Kio (in Singapore) to other Seagate sites in other countries,” company spokeswoman Lotus Tan told Reuters but did not provide further details.
She said Seagate employed a total of 8,000 workers in Singapore and would keep Seagate’s Asia headquarters, media operation as well as a product development and design center there. According to Seagate’s website it has about 45,000 employees around the world.
Seagate said the Ang Mo Kio hard drive factory would be closed by the end of 2010 but would not meaningfully change its production capacity as it will move manufacturing to other locations, which include Thailand, China and Malaysia.
Seagate said in a filing with U.S. regulators that total restructuring charges of approximately $80 million would include about $60 million for severance payments and about $10 million for the relocation of manufacturing equipment.
It plans to record the severance charges of up to $60 million in the current quarter, with the remainder of the charges to be incurred throughout the calendar year of 2010. Seagate’s fiscal year 2009 ended on July 3.
The company expects the move to generate annual savings of $40 million when the closure is completed.
Singapore’s overall unemployment rate stood at 3.3 percent in the second quarter but the number of people employed in Singapore fell by 12,400 in April-June, twice as much as in the first quarter. [ID:nSIN384892]
Tuesday’s announcement came after Seagate already said in May it had initiated a restructuring plan that included a reduction of about 1,100 employees or 2.5 percent of the company’s global workforce. [ID:nN13385184]
In July, Seagate raised its forecast for margins and overall industry sales in the current quarter, citing a larger-than-expected increase in corporate demand for computers. [ID:nN21260962] (Reporting by Nopporn Wong-Anan and Harry Suhartono and Sinead Carew in New York; Editing by Anshuman Daga)


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While the Mac Mini may have been left out of recent Apple announcements, the small, book-sized computer will see a refresh sometime in the very near future, according to AppleInsider sources.
For the past several weeks, the spotlight has been on Apple’s notebook line. With brand new MacBooks and MacBook Pros, as well as a MacBook Air refresh, nary a word was spoken about the Cupertino-based company’s desktops. While that is sure to change before the holiday season gets under way, many are asking: What about the Mac Mini?
The Mini, which introduced many to the world of small computing back in 2005, has not had a spec refresh since August of 2007. With rumors swirling about the dissolution of the Minis development team, many assumed that the little desktop that could was destined to be discontinued.
According to sources at AppleInsider’s disposal, the Mac Mini is far from dead. In its "State of the Mac Mini" report, Las Vegas-based Macminicolo, who uses over 400 Minis in its server farm, states that the Mini is far from dead. Furthermore, it clears the air regarding Mini sales, saying that the Mini is sold to businesses over consumers at a 2:1 ratio. "For instance, here in Las Vegas, I know there are at least 10,000 Mac minis running in the different hotels and casinos on the strip," said Brian Stucki, owner of Macminicolo. "Certain casino companies use Mac minis in each of the slot islands on a casino floor to manage the back end. I know of one nationwide salon franchise that uses two Mac minis for each one of their stores."
While business customers may be loving the Mini, the lack of any update in over a year has left many consumers turning to alternative options. However, Stucki claims several significant updates are on the way. Along with upping the total usable memory to 4GB, Apple will also add the mini DisplayPort on the back. Because current Mini’s offer a DVI connection, the introduction of a smaller display solution will clear out the clutter and potentially offer room for other improvements, like extra USB ports. Stucki also claims that the optical drive in the Mini, which is currently an IDE drive, will be replaced by a SATA optical drive, allowing for better performance. Furthermore, Apple will offer an optical-free version of the Mini, allowing consumers to get two hard drives and utilize the Remote Disc option in Leopard, similar to the MacBook Air.
These new features, coupled with the new Intel processors and the possibility of a new graphics solution (perhaps an X4500 or the Nvidia 9300), would make for a completely redone Mini, and could boost popularity to 2005-2006 levels. Also, with the new style and color scheme, it wouldn’t be a complete surprise to see the Mini adorned in aluminum, depending on manufacturing costs.


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The KeyPoint Report on retail real estate in Greater Hartford, Connecticut will be available soon at KeyPointPartners.com. This is our third report of 2011, and follows our Reports on Eastern Massachusetts/Greater Boston and Southern New Hampshire, both of which are available at KeyPointPartners.com. The 2011 Greater Hartford report will be released shortly. Here are just a few highlights from this year’s report:
Total retail space in the Greater Hartford region included 37.5 million square feet at the end of the 2011 study period, a modest increase from the 37.3 million square feet reported last year. The most significant new development in the region was the construction of the Stop & Shop-anchored Elmwood Plaza in West Hartford, which added approximately 79,000 square feet of new retail space. This was the only significant shopping center constructed during the study period, reflecting the dramatic slowdown in new development.
Following an alarming rise in the Greater Hartford vacancy rate during the prior study period from 10.6% to 13.1%, the region reversed the trend, lowering the level of unoccupied space to 11.8%. This equates to a reduction of unoccupied space of approximately 448,000 square feet, which stood at 4.4 million square feet at the close of the study period.
Similarly, vacancy rates in all Greater Hartford submarkets improved during the study period, a year after each suffered declining occupancy. Receiving the only “A” for effort, however, was the City of Hartford, which lowered its vacancy rate from 19.3% to 15.0%. However, it had the most room to improve and still remains the sector with the highest vacancy rate.
Nevertheless, all other sectors showed significant improvement, lowering vacancy rates by 1-2%, with the exception of the Northwest submarket, where the rate declined by 0.7%. But even though improvement was shown throughout the region, high vacancy remains a concern with the Northwest sector ending up as the only submarket in single digits at 9.0%.
At the municipal level, the Town of Manchester remains the dominant retail community by total retail space, with approximately 5.6 million square feet of inventory, with no appreciable change from a year ago. Enfield, Hartford, West Hartford, and Newington follow, all encompassing between 2.5 and 3.0 million square feet of space. Among municipalities with at least 500,000 square feet of retail space, after holding the spot for the past three years, Simsbury no longer tops the list of healthiest retail communities. That honor now goes to Wethersfield, which has the lowest vacancy rate in the region at 4.0%. Much of the Top 10 remains the same as last year. The only addition to the list is Bolton, replacing Simsbury, which dropped out due to the closing of the local Borders store.
Although Hartford had the highest vacancy rate among submarkets in the Hartford region, it was not the worst among municipalities. Vacancy rates in both Berlin and East Hartford exceeded 20%, coming in at 23.9% and 22.5%, respectively. New Britain, East Windsor, and South Windsor also experienced higher vacancy rates than Hartford.
Store Size Rankings
The 2011 KeyPoint Report on the retail real estate marketplace for Greater Hartford, Connecticut focuses on changes in the region's retail activity, and examines supply, vacancy and absorption, retailer activity, and market composition by store size and retail categories between May 1, 2009 and June 1, 2010, a 13-month span. The Greater Hartford market includes 26 cities and towns and represents more than 835 square miles and approximately 808,700 persons, equating to 23% of the Connecticut total population.


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Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer is expected to elaborate on the new version of Exchange in a speech to business partners Monday at its Fusion conference in Los Angeles.
The new version of Exchange messaging software, which handles e-mail, calendars and contact lists, will be the company's first major update of the product sinceExchange 2000 nearly two years ago. Microsoft, which competes against IBM, Novell and others in the market, will release a test version of the new Exchange later this fall, with a final version expected by mid-2003, company executives said.
The new version of Exchange, code-named Titanium, will be more secure because the company will, by default, disable certain messaging features to prevent hackers or virus makers from taking advantage of openings, said Jim Bernardo, Microsoft's Exchange product manager.
In the current version of Exchange, all messaging features are automatically in use when installed. Now, there are fewer security loopholes because features that customers don't need or use are automatically turned off, he said.
The new security measure is based on the results of testing that Microsoft conducted earlier this year after Chairman Bill Gates mandated that security was the company's main. Security has long been a for Exchange and the Outlook e-mail program because it's a favorite target for virus writers. The new security feature will be built into the new version of Exchange. For existing Exchange users, Microsoft this month will come out with a software update, called a service pack, that will offer the new security measure plus some bug fixes, Bernardo said.
Analysts say the move makes sense.
"The point is that when Microsoft designs features to enable developers and people to take advantage of certain things, that opens hackers to also take advantage," said IDC analyst Mark Levitt. "By locking things down, they're saying 'We will protect you, but we have to take away flexibility.'"
The forthcoming version of Exchange will also be easier to install, Levitt said. The difficulty stemmed from customers having to migrate to Microsoft's new Active Directory, technology that serves as a sort of "white pages" of information about computer users and resources, such as PCs and software.
Half of Microsoft's customers still haven't moved from the older Microsoft Exchange version 5.5 to Exchange 2000, partly because they're happy with the older version of Exchange and partly because it's hard to upgrade to Exchange 2000, Levitt said.
"With Titanium, Microsoft is trying to show that it's paying attention to its customers and making it easer to use," Levitt said.
Ease of use is a big issue because Microsoft is battling IBM's Lotus for the lead of the e-mail and messaging software market, which is expected to reach $1.5 billion in sales this year, according to IDC. While Microsoft's biggest nemesis in the market is Lotus, the company also competes against Novell andOracle, which plans to release its own e-mail and messaging software later this year.
"There's money to be made and market share to be grabbed," Levitt added.
Freshening up its Outlook
To coincide with the new version of Exchange, Microsoft will make some cosmetic changes to the Outlook e-mail program.
Outlook will sport a new look, with Microsoft moving the window that previews the text of an e-mail from the bottom of the screen to the right-hand side, Bernardo said.
Another new feature is the ability to group e-mail based on when messages arrived. "It will provide some visual cues and better navigation of what's important and timely in my inbox," he said. "You can group messages from when they came in--today, yesterday, last week, two weeks ago."
Outlook will also feature improvements in sorting mail, including new multicolored flags that people can use to determine each e-mail's importance. Computer users can then put flagged e-mail in multiple folders in their inbox. If they forget where they put the flagged e-mail, they can do a search to find all their important messages all at once, Bernardo said.
In addition, Microsoft plans to spruce up its stripped down Web-based version of the Outlook e-mail program, adding new features to make it as comprehensive as the regular version, he said.
The new version of Exchange will also be more powerful and handle more users and allow network administrators to more easily store company e-mail by taking regular "snapshots" of the data, Bernardo said.
The new version of Exchange will also have Microsoft'sbuilt in, allowing companies to more easily send e-mail and calendar information to mobile devices, such as cell phones. Mobile Information Server was previously sold as a standalone product.


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How do you negotiate the best licensing deals with companies like Oracle? How do you provision servers and storage efficiently and make changes to software without screwing up the other software configurations in the data center?
The answer to all of these questions is “information,” said Richard Muirhead, CEO of Tideway, a New York-based software company with products that identify all the software – physical and virtual – within the data center.
“You have to know what you have and what you use to negotiate well, so understanding your environment pre- and post- virtualization is necessary to negotiate licenses,” Muirhead said. “We help people cut millions of dollars in costs in their data center by helping them find out what is already out there.”
Their newest product release, Tideway Foundation 7.2, is an automated discovery and application dependency mapping software that scans the data center continuously and tells the end user what is going on under the hood. It also lets IT analyze power consumption statistics for business applications, view their carbon footprint, and keeps end-of-life, unsupported software away from production.
“People usually don’t realize there is a product that gives this type of insight, so they muddle on as they always have…we have seen millions of dollars wasted on software licenses. One customer even had a million dollar server that they weren’t aware of that wasn’t being used,” Muirhead said.
According to Muirhead, users typically take about half a day to become proficient at using the software, which is deployed as a virtual appliance using the standard OVF format. The software is currently “optimized” for VMware, and will be supported for Hyper-V and XenServer later this year, Muirhead said.
Tideway’s software costs around $8-9 per server, per month, and a free community version, which can be applied to up to 30 servers, is available for download on their website. As for ROI, people typically see a 5X return within 90 days, Muirhead said. “It is very quick to deploy and cost effective.”
If you want to do some comparison shopping, other companies that offer application interdependency mapping software include IBM, BMC, CA, and Integrien.
Sun Microsystems, Inc.’s SPARC Enterprise T5440 server won the Bronze award in the server category in SearchDataCenter.com’s Product of the Year 2008 awards, but the system is performing at the platinum level for René Wienholtz, a CTO / CIO for STRATO, the second largest web hosting provider in Europe.
Wienholtz recently emailed me about STRATO’s experience using T-series servers for the company’s internet service farms. Their data center is full of T5220 and T2000 servers and some of the latest T5440 systems, which the company is quickly adding more of because it supports their Web 2.0 applications so well, Wienholtz said.
The T-series systems support STRATO’s Web Services (https), Mail Services (SMTP-In/-Out, IMAP, POP3, AntiSpam/-Virus Filters), Shop and Database farms and makes up about 80% of all the company’s infrastructure today, Wienholtz said.
The T5440 is used mainly in STRATO’s Web & Mail farms, as that is where the highest load profile and the most parallel requests per second are, Weinholtz said.
“What we like most about the T-Series, and the T5440 especially, is their energy efficiency. The CoolThreads architecture is literally designed especially to our needs. We run multi-threaded internet applications that don’t need much calculating power, but the amount of parallel requests per second is absolutely massive – billions of hits per hour or a billion mails per day have to be handled,” Weinholtz said. Because of this, “the
CPU speed itself is not king – it’s the high amount of thread units that helps these applications to perform.”
Another great feature of this architecture is that upgrading the number of “T”-CPUs in a system equal a nearly linear upgrade in performance, so two T5220’s are equivalent to one T5440, Weinholtz said.
While one T5440 performs just as well as two T5220’s, the T5440 uses less power than its predecessors; “it has more efficient power supplies and [other power efficiency technologies] built in. This helps us saving money in OPEX (operating expenses) and CAPEX (capital expenditures), as a single T5440 is a little cheaper than two T5220,” Weinholtz said.
Pricing for the T5400 starts at about $45,000 and maxes out at around $200,000, according to Sun.
Pretty hot review of the T5440, to put it mildly. If anyone has a love story about a server you can’t live without, please share. By the same token, if you are dealing with a system you can’t stand, I’d love to hear your horror stories.
The TPC’s four active benchmarks are TPC-C and TPC-E for online transaction processing, TPC-H for decision support for ad hoc queries and TPC-App for business-to-business transactional Web services.
In November, the TPC announced plans to add an energy efficiency spec to its repretoir because power consumption is one of the top concerns of data center managers today, whereas performance and price were of utmost importance in prior years, according to Mike Nikolaiev, chair of TPC Energy who explains the new TPC spec in a YouTube video.
This new metric will give IT a way to measure price, performance and energy efficiency of a system. “It is very easy to have high performance and high energy, it is very difficult to sustain high performance and reduce energy. That is the call of the IT community today,” said Nikolaiev.
The new energy metric is performed while running other standard TPC benchmarks. It measures power consumption of the system at full load, and also measures power while the system is idle, Nikolaiev said in the video.
“With those parameters, IT managers wil be able to make more intelligent decisions and better utilize the energy in their data centers,” Nikolaiev said.
Jason Waxman, Intel’s general manager of high-density servers, told The Register that in the next few years, about one-quarter of all chip sales will go to so-called “mega data centers.”
Currently, that number is at about 10%, but Waxman predicts it growing as “the world continues to embrace distributed grid cloud architectures from the net’s biggest names,” according to the story.
It’s important to note what Waxman considers a “mega data center:” Google, Amazon, Microsoft, “but also telcos doing hosting like AT&T and Verizon.” He further defined it as companies purchasing thousands of machines a month and putting them into megawatt data centers.
As the story points out, this growth only occurs if cloud computing takes hold and grows. Currently Google and Microsoft have put the brakes on data center construction, for data centers largely thought to be cloud computing-based.
Frank Baetke of Hewlett Packard’s Scalable Computing & Infrastructure (SCI) organization just gave me an update of what HP is doing to add power efficiencies to its highest performing servers, and one answer is the addition of Solid State Disks (SSD).
Though HP has not made any official announcements regarding the addition of SSD, and Baetkey could not give any details about the release date or which servers will have them, he said SSD is a greener alternative to spinning hard disks because SSD’s have no moving parts that consume power.
Instead of having spinning parts like hard disks, SSD’s are based on flash memory, can be up to hundreds of times faster than hard drives and use less power than traditional hard drives.
Intel Corp., Samsung, sTec Inc., Violin Memory and Texas Memory System are all offering flash SSD products today. Around October of last year, Texas Memory introduced a 20 TB flash SSD module that delivers one million inputs/outputs per second (IOPS), the RamSan-5000, which is essentially an array of flash solid state disks designed for memory intensive workloads and is “designed from the chip level up for better reliability and performance than the types of flash used in low end markets,” according to executive vice president of Texas Memory, Woody Hutsell.
Up until the last year, Texas Memory only produced RAM based SSD because flash based SSD was too expensive to be viable on the market, Hutsell said. “But cost of the media has gone down, and the density has gone up, driven by the consumer electronics industry, so flash has become more competitive with SSD storage arrays.”
Some companies have already begun replacing their hard disks with SSDs to improve the speed of their servers, according to Jim Handy of Objective Analysis, but this is a pretty narrow slice of the market. Uptake is expected to grow; the IDC predicts SSD uptake in enterprise computing will pick up by 2010 and enterprise computing applications will grow from 12% of SSD revenue in 2007 to more than 50% by 2011, but others, including storage administrators, think mainstream adoption of SSD in enterprise data centers will take much longer.
In general though, flash SSDs are a good alternative to hard disk arrays in data centers that use 10,000-100,000 hard disks today, Handy said. “In such a system you might find 1-2% of the hard disks being replaced by SSDs in a ratio of one SSD for every ten hard disks or so.”
Still, if SSDs can bring better performance, lower power consumption, and a smaller footprint for a competitive price today, we will no doubt see more and more server vendors adding SSD options to their x86 boxes.
Yup, all the operations for the largest sporting event in America ran on IBM’s smallest systems, the BladeCenter S, which is similar in size to a briefcase.
In addition to the big game, next month, IBM will officially announce that every one of the NFL’s 32 teams will be standardizing on BladeCenter S, according to Alex Yost, VP of IBM BladeCenters.
The BladeCenter S is actually designed for small to medium sized businesses that don’t have their own data center and need a compact, all-in-one piece of equipment, according to IBM. It is esentially a data center in a box that contains up to six IBM BladeCenter servers, 9 terabytes of local shared storage and networking components. Everything in the BladeCenter chassis is redundant – power, switching, cooling, and storage, so there is no worry about failures, either, Yost said.
As it turns out, this little data center box on wheels has made life for the NFL’s IT team a lot easier; in the past, for every Super Bowl, the NFL’s IT staff have had to lugg all the necessary servers, storage and networking to the event site and set up an entire data center within just a couple of weeks, said Jonathan Kelley director of infrastructure computing for the NFL.
As a long time IBM BladeCenter H customer that trusts IBM equipment, the NFL contacted IBM last year for some help setting up for the 2008 SuperBowl in Arizona – which this New England fan dares not discuss – and heard about the BladeCenter S.
“When the NFL came to IBM to help them set up multiple data centers for last years Super Bowl, our IBM BladeCenter S was still about three weeks away from deployment, but the NFL was confident enough in IBM to use a brand new type of server, and it went off without a hitch,” Yost said.
To support the operations of Super Bowl 44 last night, the NFL used four BladeCenter S chassis with eight, quad-core processor powered blade servers in them and about eight virtual machines running on each server to support security and credentialing for 60,000 temporary employees and around 11,000 media personell.
They also deployed about 300 PCs, wireless networks, and other necessary computing functions using IBM’s BladeCenter blades, said Joe Manto VP of Information Technology for the NFL.
“The operations at the NFL are all supported IBM blades. We chose them because their technology has proven itself,” Manto said. “These servers are almost over-engineered for what we do with them, and they are reliable.”
(The NFL wouldn’t disclose which CPU vendor they use, or name a specific virtualization vendor; they said they use a mix of virtualization vendors, but IBM reported the NFL uses VMware Inc.)
The BladeCenter S enclosure also has extra space for UPSs or other components that might need to be added, and plugs into a regular wall outlet and Ethernet connection.
“It is great for events because it is portable and can be configured at a partner site then shipped to the right location,” Yost said. “Also, their own storage can be connected to the Bladecenter S. It is super quiet and could be placed in office environments without worrying about the noise, and both the front and the back doors of the chassis lock.”
A tyical deployment is in the $15,000 range, the chassis itself is a few thousands dollars. Cost depends on the number of servers in it and other configurations, Yost said.
Gartner, Inc. reported this week that data centers are being attacked by processing cores at a rate their software, operating Systems and applications can’t handle.
“The relentless doubling of processors per microprocessor chip will drive the total processor counts of upcoming server generations to peaks well above the levels for which key software have been engineered,” Gartner reported. “Operating systems, middleware, virtualization tools and applications will all be affected, leaving organizations facing difficult decisions, hurried migrations to new versions and performance challenges as a consequence of this evolution.”
Wow. Sounds serious, huh? Maybe I am simplifying things a bit here, but doesn’t it make sense to upgrade to quad-core chips only if you have applications that can benefit from those chips? Otherwise, why spend the money?
I suppose I am being naive. Perhaps CPU cores are like crack, and once you get a taste of the power in a dual core chip, you want four cores, and then six, and will keep adding more and more cores until your systems are balls to the wall and your software implodes. It’s a vicious cycle, man.
In all seriousness though, people should be aware that throwing cores at applications does not automatically equal better performance; it’s been reported time and time again on SearchDataCenter.com since 2007 that not all your apps can use mutilple cores, because they aren’t written for paralellism.
According to Gartner, “the impact [of putting apps that aren’t written for parellelism on multi-core chips] is akin to putting a Ferrari engine in a go-cart; the power may be there, but design mismatches severely limit the ability to exploit it.”
In fact, software developers are doing their best to design products that can take advantage of multiple cores, but find it hard to keep up with the tick-tock advancement model of Intel Corp. and AMD.
Many apps are designed to run on just one core, and work just fine in that one core. In this case, the software doesn’t know what to do with more than one core, and will actually run slower on multi-core chips. Of course, the processor makers don’t advertise this point.
“It’s important to understand that if the software developer doesn’t do something, the majority of software applications will run on a single core. The application will not leverage the multiple cores available and, in fact, the application may even get slower,” said Ray DePaul, president and CEO of RapidMind Inc., in Waterloo, Ont. “There is talk about 80-core processors (from Intel) now and this is scary to software developers. They can’t wrap their head around how that is going to work.”
Meanwhile, organizations get double the number of processors in each chip generation, approximately every two years, according to Gartner. Each generation of microprocessor, with its doubling of processor counts through some combination of more cores and more threads per core, turns the same number of sockets into twice as many processors. “In this way a 32-socket, high-end server with eight core chips in the sockets would deliver 256 processors in 2009. In two years, with 16 processors per socket appearing on the market, the machine swells to 512 processors in total. Four years from now, with 32 processors per socket shipping, that machine would host 1,024 processors,” Gartner reported.
There are apps inherently designed to use multiple cores, like heavy workloads used in virtualization, Java, expansive databases and complex enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications. Apps like these use more than one core and perform up to 50% better on multi-core chips, according to analysts.
So, heed Gartner’s warning and don’t go core-crazy; do your research and make sure the apps you run on multi-core chips before you take money from your tight IT budgets to buy them.
Intel Corp. dropped prices up to 40% on some of their Xeon processors this week following the release of some ugly financials for the fourth quarter of 2008 – so if you are in the market for an upgrade (and have any money in your IT budget) now’s the time.
According to Intel spokesperson Nick Knupffer, the company regularly makes price cuts throughout the year and that is what the recent price change reflects.
But, one would presume that these cuts aren’t just a routine act; Intel’s Q408 profit plummeted 90% and the company predicts even weaker conditions ahead. Intel, which twice lowered its fourth-quarter sales forecast, reported quarterly sales fell 23% from a year earlier to $8.23 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Of course, Intel isn’t alone in the gutter; AMD’s CPU sales also slummped in 2008 and it expects sales to decline further through the first quarter of this year due to poor economic conditions.
Despite AMD’s reported a $1.42 billion fourth-quarter loss, a spokesperson claims there aren’t any price cuts on the docket for its server CPUs. “AMD moves prices on their products, and in this case speaking for Opteron, as required by the market. There is no regular price move schedule in place.”
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is now shipping seven new versions of its latest Opteron processor, the 45 nanometer quad-core chip, code-named Shanghai; five are high efficiency (HE) and two are designed for higher performance than the standard version of Shanghai.
The new versions of Shanghai are essentially identical to the original flavor, only the HE is more power efficient and the SE offers better performance than the standard versions.
The 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron HE processor is 55-watts, compared to the standard 75-watts, and speeds range from 2.1 to 2.3 GHz. A server with an HE version can save 20% more than similarly configured systems during idle times, AMD reported.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/lemZfw0Dl78" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
The new HE processors are available in eight server systems from HP, Rackable Systems, Dell, Sun Microsystems, and other vendors are expected to start shipping the CPUs by mid-year.
Additionally, two new 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron SE processors (2.8 GHz) are designed for performance-intensive workloads; this compares to the standard Shanghai chip speed of 2.7 GHz. The SE chips aren’t conservative on power though; they come in a 105-watt ACP thermal envelope and are aimed at data centers where performance trumps power efficiency, said John Fruehe, AMD’s director of business development for server and workstations.
“Depending on the application, the SE version offers up to 5% better performance [than the standard version], but it also uses more power,” Fruehe said. “The customers that use these chips are less interested in the power efficiency and more interested in the performance, so we don’t do power testing on these.”
The new SE processors are also immediately available in three new systems from HP and other AMD technology partners.
The AMD Opteron pricing model for HE versions range from $316 to $1,514, and the two SE models are $1,165 and $2,649.
The value of a configuration management database (CMDB) is proportionally dependent on the level of involvement from the IT staff using the tool. Two of the biggest challenges of a successful CMDB implementation are propagating the configuration items and keeping the thing up to date.
If data center managers could get employees to spend as much time updating server configurations as they do updating their Facebook status, the accuracy and immediacy of the tool would be a huge boon.
This is the concept behind Novell’s myCMDB, a software layer interfacing between the CMDB and the users that purports to bring social networking aspects to CMDB data use. Today Novell announced the rebranded myCMDB, from Novell’s acquisition of Managed Objects in October 2008.
The tool is designed for companies that have homegrown CMDBs, built by users on MySQL or Sybase, but will also work on CMDB offerings from HP, BMC and IBM. According to Peter O’Neill, Research Vice President at Forrester, around half of the existing CMDBs in production are homegrown, and “limited in their reporting and visibility outside of the team that created it.”
Web 2.0, you know: Wikipedia, Facebook, del.icio.us and us!
During my conversation with Siki Giunta, former CEO of managed objects and Richard Whitehead, director of marketing for data center solutions with Novell, they spent a lot of our briefing comparing the product to Facebook and Wikipedia.
“Incorporating Web 2.0 in the myCMDB design allows a CMDB to propagate faster, drives more adoption and improves the quality of the data,” Giunta said. “Wikipedia is a huge database, contributed by the end user, federated by news sources. A CMDB is created by people, federated by HelpDesk. Why do people go to Wikipedia? They feel that they can contribute.”
Giunta said myCMDB uses inboxes, RSS feeds, and the atmosphere and look and feel of Facebook. It also features “Google-like” search, and for social bookmarking, myCMDB took a page from del.icio.us. “When you’re navigating this data, it’s easy to lose your place.”
Are these just marketing buzzwords, or are there real “Web 2.0” attributes to this product?
“Sure, there are functional comparisons to be made,” said Michael Coté, an analyst with Redmonk. “The emphasis on including people’s profiles and activity streams is the most relevant. They’re also trying to pull the community and sharing aspects you’d expect to see in consumer apps. These collaborative IT management features, like being able to share different reports or views in myCMDB, are pulled from the Web 2.0 world.”
O’Neill agreed. “The release does provide CMDB insight and reporting in a very modern mode (“Web 2.0” being the metaphor for that) – much more than any other provider,” he said. “This new style is being increasingly adopted, and preferred in businesses. One of the reasons for the adoption of software-as-a-service solutions is their modern user interface.”
But the question remains, is an updated Facebook-like user interface (UI) enough to encourage employees to spend more time on the CMDB, thereby utilizing it more and also keeping it up to date and useful?
“Definitely. The IT management space has a chronic case of terrible UI syndrome. I often consider a fresh, well done UI that matches current trends in UI and usability a self standing feature on its own,” Coté said. “While myCMDB has a nice looking UI, the thing that will make the difference with it is getting users to interact with the system and build up the ‘content’ in it.”
Giunta said this may be the only way to get the next generation of IT administrators to interact with systems management tools in the future. “In the IT operations side, if you keep maintaining old consoles, all the kids will go to work on the application side of the house and we’ll end up with only old people in the data centers,” she said.


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A pan-EU initiative on real-world emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) from new cars is to launch next year.
The NOxaccreditation initiative from specialist company Emissions Analytics will help buyers identify the cars emitting the lowest quantities of pollutants, allow manufacturers to demonstrate their vehicles’ clean credentials, and provide data to policymakers on progress in the drive to improve air quality.
Working across the European Union, the scheme will measure the NOx performance of passenger cars in real-world driving conditions and comes at a time when there is increasing focus on emissions and air quality, following vehicle certification irregularities and legal actions against European countries for air quality violations in cities.
Emissions Analytics said the accreditation scheme was intended to complement the forthcoming Real Driving Emissions regulations for new vehicle certification.
“It will help ensure that vehicles remain compliant when driven normally on roads, and thereby contribute towards real air quality improvements. Furthermore, it will give consumers a rating that allows the comparison of the relative performance of different cars,” the company said in a statement.
Emissions Analytics has brought together a group of experts to provide advice and guidance, review the test and rating methodology, monitor the regulatory context, and provide input into the wider development of the scheme.
The ratings will be published and publically available for all, including manufacturers, consumers, local and national governments, and fleet operators.


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- Google faces antitrust challenges relating to their Play store and advertising technology practices.
- A jury found that Google’s strict controls on its Play store were an illegal monopoly.
- U.S. District Judge James Donato will hear arguments in January on Epic’s request for a court order to change how Google operates the Play store.
- The verdict in Epic’s case could encourage other potential plaintiffs like businesses and app developers to launch a class action lawsuit.
Google’s Antitrust Conundrums
We delve into what’s upcoming in this case, along with other significant antitrust problems Google is facing.
After a mere three hours of deliberation, the jury determined that Google’s stringent control over its Play store constituted an unfair monopoly on app distribution to Android users and app payment processing. Epic refrained from seeking monetary compensation from the court.
Google’s Evidence Deletion
Earlier, a judge decided that Google incorrectly eradicated internal online “chat” logs pertinent to Epic’s assertions. The jury was informed that the evidence would have cast Google in a negative light.
In January, U.S. District Judge James Donato is set to listen to opposing arguments on Epic’s plea for a court decree to reform Google’s Play store operations. Google might contest that any changes Epic suggests are too excessive.
Google to Contest Verdict
Google announced it will challenge the jury’s decision, and also possibly appeal Donato’s eventual ruling on Epic’s proposed solutions. This could instigate additional years of litigation.
Epic’s Battle Against Apple
Google’s protest will reach the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which previously presided over Epic’s 2020 antitrust case against Apple (NASDAQ:) regarding its App Store regulations.
Outcome of Epic vs. Apple
In April, the appeals court primarily ruled in favor of Apple, confirming a 2021 verdict by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers (NYSE:) that Apple’s application regulations did not contravene antitrust legislation.
Difference in the Two Cases
Legal experts emphasized that the case specifics were unique. They suggested a crucial distinction was that the case against Apple was directly adjudicated by the judge, absent a jury.
Epic’s attempt to resurrect the Apple case is currently awaiting judgement at the U.S. Supreme Court. Apple has also appealed a portion of the court order requiring adjustments to its App Store.
Google’s Ongoing Antitrust Legal Battles
Google is also entangled in multiple private civil antitrust lawsuits from U.S. advertisers and publishers, along with U.S. government allegations implicating its search and advertising technology practices.
In Europe, Google strives to repeal a $2.6 billion antitrust penalty levied by the top court for purported market abuses related to its shopping service.
Implications of the Verdict
Though the verdict in Epic Games’ lawsuit does not directly impact Google’s other ongoing cases, it may stimulate other potential claimants such as businesses and app creators to unite for class action litigation, according to antitrust attorneys.
Google is expected to face a jury trial in Virginia next year over a case initiated by the U.S. Justice Department and a collection of states regarding its digital advertising dominance. Google has refuted any indiscretions.
The financial impact of these antitrust cases against Google could potentially affect stock value and investor confidence, influencing trading decisions for those dealing in tech sector forex assets.


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WP Carey Acquires Property in Poland
W.P. Carey (NYSE: WPC ) has ventured all the way to Central Europe for its latest acquisition. The company announced that one of its affiliates has purchased a distribution center operated by European clothing retailer H&M in the city of Poznan, Poland.
Source: poland – Google News
Sharing information is key – Poland News in UK. Social Commerce and Social Media Management playing a big part. Suaju Ltd


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Editor Bob Byrne firstname.lastname@example.org
Business, Public Safety
Taylor Farms New Jersey products are being pulled from some area stores.
Nikki McGonigal competed in the August 21 episode of the TLC show.
Frozen yogurt is trending across the region, but it hasn't landed in the borough yet.
More than a dozen frozen yogurt shops have opened in the last 18 months and six more are set to open soon.
Frozen yogurt shops are popping up all over the area this summer. Have you tried Petrucci’s?
OSHA determined the company put its employees at serious risk.
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Check out the open houses in Phoenixville this weekend.
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A new study by Edison Research shows that American Teens now spend more time with streaming audio services like Pandora and Spotify than they do with AM/FM radio. For years, streaming audio consumption among teens has been climbing, leading to this year’s inevitable tipping point.
This is a future trend indicator, however, not an immediate fire alarm to vacate the building. AM/FM listening levels still lead streaming by a significant margin among all other ages groups, making 2015 the “today forward” point from which researchers will monitor the media consumption of today’s teens as they mature through adolescence into adulthood.
Will today’s teens continue to favor streaming audio as they age? Or will there be a shift to AM/FM, including digital streams of those AM/FM properties? If they stay true to online audio, future revenues of AM/FM broadcasters are most certainly in jeopardy. It will become increasingly difficult to maintain current levels of market share, let alone meet or exceed the annual sales targets that radio group owners boost perennially out of habit.
One thing is certain: the technological sophistication of today’s teens surpasses any group in history. These are the teens that grew up playing sophisticated educational and strategic video games, swiping iPads and gaming on Mom and Dad’s smart phones long before they entered middle school.
Marketers are still wrestling with a universally-accepted name for this group. “Post-Millennials,” “The iGeneration” and “Generation Z“ are three of the most commonly-used monikers.
Whatever you call them, they’ve already got staggering spending power. A 2014 Teen Spending Insight report from FONA International shows that teens aged 13-18 are responsible for a whopping $208.7 billion in annual spending. Targeting and reaching these growing consumers necessitates bringing the marketing message to them where they live and play, rather than hoping they stumble across messages using the media mix of their parents, or even the choice of the Millennial generation ahead of them.
All eyes will be on future studies to see if this audio trend extends to future generations, as well as to gauge whether or not today’s teens migrate to AM/FM. But if you look at current and past generations, all indicators point to the discovery and usage of newer forms of technology, rather than a retreat or reversal to yesterday’s favorites. This is a bellwether moment in audio advertising, one that historians will likely cite as a turning point in the history of radio and radio advertising.
This story includes information and assumptions culled from the Fall 2014 “Share of Ear” report from Edison Research and “2014 Trend Insight Report” from FONA International.


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Aviary Studios is thrilled to announce that their live action video game The Gallery will launch this April for PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox and PlayStation consoles, iOS and Android platforms.
And, in a first for Europe, The Gallery will also release in UK cinemas where the audience will play the game by majority decision as part of an immersive and participative interactive experience.
Written and directed by Paul Raschid, one of the most prolific live action video game / interactive film creatives, The Gallery is a thrilling combination of hostage thriller and social drama with a dash of world film festival cinema aesthetic.
Filmed over a 6 week period in February and March, 2021, the game immerses audiences in an interactive experience set in two time periods – 1981 and 2021, both of which are of considerable political, social and cultural significance in UK history, cleverly reflected in the nuanced story. Players will face over 150 decision points as they navigate a story full of mystery and intrigue.
An exciting cast has been assembled for The Gallery including George Blagden (Versailles and Vikings); Anna Popplewell (The Chronicles of Narnia); Kara Tointon (Mr. Selfridge and Eastenders); Rebecca Root (The Queen’s Gambit); Richard Fleeshman (The Sandman and Coronation Street), Shannon Tarbet (Killing Eve and Love Sarah) and Fehinti Balogun (I May Destroy You).
The live action video (FMV) game genre debuted in the mid 1980s and was touted as the future of video games but was finally declared dead in the mid 1990s. The current renaissance of this somewhat niche genre – a confluence of film and games – began around 2015 with such titles as Late Shift and Her Story and was turbo charged in 2019 with Netflix’s Bandersnatch. With filmmakers such as Paul Raschid (who has won a BAFTA Scotland for his linear film work) now looking to extend the live action video game to a wider film and TV audience and offering more diverse genres than the traditional horror experience, this niche genre could well be set for a resurgence.
The Gallery will launch this April for PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox and PlayStation consoles, iOS and Android platforms and a UK interactive cinema release. Please visit the official websites www.aviaryfilms.co.uk and www.paulraschid.com
The Game Awards has launched its first official metaverse experience on Core, a platform for user-created games, interactive experiences and live events.
Fans will be able to watch and interact with the awards show live on Thursday, December 9 beginning at 8:00 PM ET / 5:00 PM PT from inside of Axial Tilt, an interactive world that serves as a metaverse hub for programming and events hosted by Geoff Keighley.
Axial Tilt on Core introduces an entirely new way for viewers to experience The Game Awards, allowing them to watch the show live and simultaneously participate in several unique interactive experiences that are only available during the broadcast. This includes a red carpet experience beginning at 7:00 PM ET / 4:00 PM PT the day of show, and an afterparty immediately following the ceremony featuring a special guest DJ. Fans will be able to predict the winners of select categories live during the broadcast to win exclusive Core-related prizes. Participants can also keep entertained before, during and after the show by playing multiple mini-games available inside Axial Tilt.
“I’m always on the lookout for exciting new ways to bring The Game Awards to new audiences,” said Geoff Keighley, creator, executive producer and host of The Game Awards. “The emergence of new metaverse platforms like Core, and the social experiences they enable around live events, presented an amazing opportunity to give fans a new interactive way to enjoy the show. And considering it’s a show about interactive entertainment, it felt like a perfect fit.”
While The Game Awards’ programming is available exclusively on Core, Axial Tilt is a world that exists as multiple instances across the metaverse, having launched earlier this year on Fortnite Creative. The two versions of Axial Tilt have a similar look and feel, however, the gameplay and worlds are slightly different. Crossover events between the two will happen in the future.
Axial Tilt is available for free on Core today at www.coregames.com/games/a9ea61/axial-tilt or players can take a portal directly from Core World, the starting hub world for all Core players. Core can be downloaded at CoreGames.com or the Epic Game Store. You can download Fortnite from the Epic Games Store and access Axial Tilt by typing in map code 0960-3147-4924 into the Island Code tab.
Produced by Geoff Keighley, The Game Awards is one of the widest distributed digital events on the planet, with a record setting 83 million livestreams in 2020. The Game Awards brings together game industry creators, esports champions, digital influencers and Hollywood names for a night of awards, exclusive game world premieres, announcements and musical performances, including the return of The Game Awards Orchestra, conducted by acclaimed composer Lorne Balfe.
SQUARE ENIX®, Crystal Dynamics®, and Eidos-Montréal™ celebrated the 25th anniversary of the TOMB RAIDER® franchise yesterday by making several announcements about new experiences and offers available now and coming soon for fans of the iconic videogame series.
Launched in October 1996, the Tomb Raider series of videogames has sold over 85 million copies worldwide across more than 20 titles and won dozens of industry awards. Its protagonist Lara Croft® is one of the most recognizable videogame characters in the world and has become an icon beloved by tens of millions of fans around the globe. The Tomb Raider franchise is also a pop-culture mega-hit, with three movies, several comic book series, a variety of successful merchandise, and soon a new animated television series.
Below are just a few of the upcoming 25th Anniversary initiatives Tomb Raider fans can expect in the coming months.
Tomb Raider Videogames
As part of the celebration of Tomb Raider’s 25th anniversary, many Tomb Raider games and add-ons on Steam, Humble Bundle, Green Man Gaming, GOG.com, the Square Enix Store, the Xbox Games Store, and PlayStation Store are on sale, with discounts of up to 89%. Interested gamers need only visit the online store of their choice and search for “Tomb Raider” to see what deals are available on their platform.
In addition, from November 1 through November 14, Crystal Dynamics and Prime Gaming are giving away Rise of the Tomb Raider on PC for free for all Prime members. To claim the free game, Prime members should go to https://gaming.amazon.com/, select “Games with Prime” and choose the Rise of the Tomb Raider offer between November 1 and November 14.
Also announced today is a collaboration between Crystal Dynamics and Feral Interactive to bring Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light and Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris to Nintendo Switch in 2022, the debut of the Tomb Raider franchise on the console. Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light and Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris are arcade-inspired action-adventure games that combine the hallmarks of Tomb Raider, including exploration and discovery, platforming, and puzzle solving, with co-operative multiplayer, character progression and fun fast-paced combat. For further updates about these titles, follow Feral Interactive on Facebook or Twitter.
Square Enix London Mobile today revealed that the three original English-language Lara Croft voice actors will join Keeley Hawes in Tomb Raider Reloaded when the mobile game launches next year. For a limited time, players will be able to embrace their nostalgia by choosing which which Classic voice they’d like for iconic adventurer Lara Croft: Shelley Blond (Tomb Raider), Judith Gibbins (Tomb Raider II, Tomb Raider III: Adventures of Lara Croft), Jonell Elliott (Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, Tomb Raider: Chronicles, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness), or Keeley Hawes (Tomb Raider: Legend, Tomb Raider: Anniversary, Tomb Raider: Underworld, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris). More information about Tomb Raider Reloaded can be found at https://www.square-enix-london-mobile.com/.
Tomb Raider Anime Series on Netflix
Netflix and Legendary Television are hard at work on a new Tomb Raider anime series with Powerhouse Animation, the studio behind such hits as Castlevania, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and Blood of Zeus. Last month it was announced that Hayley Atwell (Captain America, Mission: Impossible 7) will be the voice of iconic adventurer Lara Croft, and today the companies also announced that Allen Maldonado (Heels, The Wonder Years) has joined the cast as the voice of tech expert and colleague Zip, and Earl Baylon will reprise his role from the video game as the voice of one of Lara’s most-trusted friends and voice of reason, Jonah Maiava.
Picking up after the events of the highly successful Tomb Raider videogame Survivor trilogy as told in 2013’s Tomb Raider, 2015’s Rise of the Tomb Raider, and 2018’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the animated series will chart the globetrotting heroine’s next chapter as she takes on the role of the iconic tomb raider that she is destined to become. Twenty-five years after her first game appeared, Lara continues to explore new territory.
Tomb Raider in the Real World
In 2022 Tomb Raider fans will have two new ways to experience the game in the real world.
Crystal Dynamics is working with Little Lion Entertainment to create Tomb Raider: The LIVE Experience in London. Little Lion is an award-winning attractions company with a pedigree in creating five-star immersive theatrical experiences. Tomb Raider: The LIVE Experience will give fans the chance to dive into the world of Tomb Raider. For the first time ever, teams of visitors will work together while fully immersed in a genuine Tomb Raider adventure, forging their own destiny alongside recognizable characters from the blockbuster franchise. This groundbreaking immersive adventure drops visitors into a race against time as they help Lara Croft solve a mystery that will save the world.
Also making its debut in 2022 will be The World of Lara Croft – 25 Years of Tomb Raider, an exhibition curated by the Storyworld museum in Groningen, the Netherlands. Storyworld is a museum dedicated to the art of storytelling in comics, animation, and games, with a focus on the creativity involved in bringing stories to life.
The World of Lara Croft details the history of Tomb Raider games and media, the art and design of the iconic game franchise, and the popular appeal of both the game and its lead character. The exhibit includes content from the game’s origins in 1996 through the most recent Survivor trilogy, which began in 2013 with the rebooted Tomb Raider game. Visitors will learn about design details, developer insights, and elements of Tomb Raider in the real world, including samples of the franchise’s merchandise over the years and appearances of Lara Croft in movies and comics.
Crystal Dynamics believes strongly in giving back to the community and has several charity initiatives underway for the 25th anniversary celebration.
In honor of the many talented women, including writers, voice talent, actors, models, artists, and game developers, who have brought Lara Croft to life over the years, the company has donated $25,000 to the International Rescue Committee.
An additional donation of $20,000 was made in the name of Camilla Luddington to Women for Women International as a special thank-you for the passion and phenomenal performance she brought to Lara Croft in Tomb Raider (2013), Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Her award-winning performances laid the groundwork for the future of the franchise.
In addition, on November 6 Crystal Dynamics will participate in a 24-hour charity drive for Extra Life which will raise funds for local San Francisco Bay Area UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals. The company has set aside a $25,000 donation to celebrate 25 years of Tomb Raider and hopes to raise another $25,000. Starting today, over a dozen rare items from Tomb Raider history have been listed on the eBay for Charity platform to get a head start. Buying one of these items is a great way for fans to own a part of video game history while also donating to a great cause.
Finally, throughout 2021 Crystal Dynamics has been commissioning talented artists from around the world to reimagine Tomb Raider box art throughout time. At the end of the year, the company will host a charity initiative through the Square Enix Store to purchase a full set of 15 physical prints of the reimagined box art with all proceeds going to Girls Make Games. The current set of prints can be seen here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tombraiderofficialflickr/albums/72157718242566762.
25 Years of Tomb Raider and Counting!
These are just a few of the new initiatives that fans can look forward to in the coming months, and they come at the tail end of an entire year celebrating Lara Croft and Tomb Raider’s 25 years of adventures. Throughout 2021 Crystal Dynamics has been highlighting the franchise’s amazing history at https://tombraider.com/25.
More announcements about the future of Tomb Raider will be coming soon as Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix lay the groundwork for the next 25 years of this iconic franchise.


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The Hilton Garden Inn site that is set to become one of the biggest hotels in the region is taking shape next to the world first inland surfing lagoon in the Conwy Valley.
The envelope of the flagship 106-bedroom hotel at Adventure Parc Snowdonia is now complete, with work starting this week on internal walls, along with the mechanical and electrical fit out.
Lead contractor on the build, HH Smith, says that single storey steel works will be complete in the coming week, with the first of 250 floor-to-ceiling windows also now being fitted.
The construction project started last July and the four storey hotel is due to open this winter.
Key measures being taken to reduce the environmental impact of Hilton Garden Inn Snowdonia include an innovative waste-water management system, FSC-approved timber and photovoltaic roof panels.
This will be the first Hilton Garden Inn in Wales and create 90 full time roles - taking the jobs at the lagoon to 200 during the peak summer months.
The hotel will include a wellbeing spa, corporate conference and meeting facilities for up to 230 delegates, and a destination dining restaurant overlooking the surf lagoon.
It will also launch with a new expert Adventure Concierge service delivered by Adventure Parc Snowdonia, which will encourage guests to explore a variety of instructor-led activities in the natural playground of North Wales.
Managing director for Adventure Parc Snowdonia, Andy Ainscough, said: “We’re proud to have brought a one-of-a-kind adventure parc to North Wales, and our Hilton Garden Inn will only enhance our visitor experience.
“It’s great to see the hotel taking shape, and with floors, internal walls and windows now in place we’re able to see just how impressive the guest experience is going to be.”
The inland surfing lagoon was opened in 2015 - attracting global attention and helping push North Wales as Europe’s Capital of Adventure alongside brands like Zip World and Antur Stiniog.
The hotel is part of the ‘phase 2’ £18m investment at the site - backed by nearly £4m from the Welsh Government.
This also includes the new adventure facility Adrenaline Indoors – one of the biggest purpose-built indoor adventure destinations in the UK – which launched last August.
It will be joined by a new pump track and adventure playground at the start of the new surf season in April 2020.


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The developers of Greasemonkey, a popular “extension” for the Firefox browser and
other Mozilla Foundation software, released on July 30 a new version
that corrects a serious security flaw. I warned about this risk in a brief
news update on July 21, 2005.
You wouldn’t think that playing an audio file or a short video clip on your PC
could infect your machine with a virus or spyware. But the growing popularity of
downloadable files called "podcasts" can do just that.
You’re looking at the new design for our Windows Secrets Newsletter updates. We
previously sent occasional updates such as this one as plain text. We’ve
switched to full hypertext format to give you clickable links to breaking
stories that can’t wait for our next complete twice-a-month newsletter.
Wi-Fi devices and software are finally starting to support real encryption to
protect you from identity theft (or worse) when you go wireless. But setting up
a truly secure system is still way too difficult in most cases.
If you’d rather spend your time using Windows for work or play, rather than
spending a lot of time configuring different security products to protect you
from hackers, you might be interested in a fairly new category of product called
Readers had positive reactions — and lots of additional tips to share — to
my May 26, 2005,
article entitled, "Wi-Finally: wireless security that actually works."
The security of Wi-Fi has largely been a joke. Wireless vendors have
routinely shipped their products with all of their security features turned off,
rather than take support calls from end users when things didn’t work. Fortunately, the pieces are now in place for you to have safe and
secure Wi-Fi networking, wherever you may roam.
The popular Firefox browser received a security upgrade, known as version
1.0.4, when the Mozilla Foundation released the new code on May 11. This upgrade closes a security hole that
could allow a hacker Web site to install software without a visitors’ knowledge or
The days are long gone when we could just install Windows and never change it once we got
everything working. Now, we’re faced with a different reality.
Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Windows Server 2003 was released Microsoft on
April 6, and the many benefits of this upgrade are now being weighed against
some minor and not-so-minor incompatibilities it introduces.