VR-Zone has got their hands on some new leaks regarding Nvidia’s next generation Tegra mobile SoC, likely to be labelled as Tegra 4. The upcoming 28nm chip is said to be getting GPGPU support in order to boost CUDA, OpenCL and other general purpose activities.

The addition of GPGPU hints that Nvidia is putting more emphasis on the GPU, something they have failed to do so far. This would indicate a multiple generation stepup over the current 2006-era Tegra 3 GPU. Tegra 3 currently falls well behind the new Apple A5X chipset find in the new iPad in terms of graphics performance.

It is possible that Tegra 4 will use the Kepler core introduced with the Geforce GTX 680 last week. This would not be all that suprising considering Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has already said Nvidia has plans to bring Kepler to mobile chips.

Expect some real console quality games in the Tegra Zone if Tegra 4 brings impressive GPU performance

The next generation Tegra chip could also include a quadruplet of ARM Cortex A15 cores with at least 24 GPU cores. As a rough comparison the GPU found in Tegra 3 only has 12. Also expected is integrated celluar chipsets due to Nvidia’s acquisition of Icera, so far phone manufacturers have been forced to use Qualcomm chips to offer LTE support in Tegra powered smartphones and tablets.

It is expected that we may see Tegra 4 late this year but a rumoured Tegra 3 refresh un-originally named Tegra 3+ could delay this by at least a few months.

NZXT have been gaining popularity among the enthusiast community by releasing a range of competent and appealing cases, such as the Phantom.  Today we are going to look at something a little different from the company.  NZXT have released a kit of four very attractive sleeved extension cables.  What makes them so appealing besides their great look is the price, which should be around £18/$25.

Let us take a look to see which cables are included and how easily a low cost item like this can improve the appearance of a system build.

The cables are packaged in clear plastic, shaped to fully display the product to a potential buyer.  Each cable is shipped in its own separate section.

NZXT have included extensions for the two main set of power cables required for any build.  They have included the CB 24P which is an extension for the main 24 pin connection to the motherboard. They have also added the CB 8P which is every bit as important to a system builder. The CB 8P provides an extension for the 8 pin power connection on the motherboard.  The 8 pin power connection is often located in a tight spot so having this extension is a real bonus.

Another area that can benefit from these sleeved cables is a graphics cards.  We all know that the powerful graphics cards available today often have 2 x 6pin connections or a single 6pin and an 8pin power connection.  Having the individually sleeved extensions for these required power cables cleans up the appearance and can help improve the overall cable management of your build, allowing the thick cable from the power supply to be hidden behind the motherboard tray.

NZXT has included one of each GPU cable type to complete what we feel is an excellent selection of their premium cables.

These extension cables are very convenient and look so much better then the multiple colored cables attached to many power supplies.

Pros:

• good build quality
• great looks
• very reasonable price

Cons:

• Nadda.

We would be hard pressed to find a negative comment about this inexpensive, yet useful little bundle.  For anyone looking for a simple way to clean up the look of a system, this starter kit is an ideal solution.  NZXT have once again found a great way to provide buyers with the maximum dollar value making this a “Must Have” item at KitGuru.

They should be available soon in the UK for less than £20 inc vat.

The universe is all about action and reaction. You can tell how bad something was by the things that follow. Seeing Visa shares drop in value by almost 1% in a day and Mastercard by almost 2%, tells you almost everything you need to know. Tecnobitsfills in the scary (credit card security) gaps.

Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Global Payments Inc is a Fortune 1000 company [For now, at least - Ed] with its pants around its ankles and the reddest cheeks of shame. Normally, that’s not its preferred business model, but it has been caught out by a huge breach in its defences. If you thought the Wall Street plunges by Visa and Mastercard were bad, then the one for Global Payments was enough to see trading halted as almost 14% of the company’s value disappeared in a day.

Trust will be a big issue with the follow-up investigation, because while Global Payments Inc says is hopes that only 50,000 people will have been hacked and had their details revealed – an independent industry expert says that the figure is more likely to be closer to 10 million.

That Global Payments Inc let itself get ‘hacked’ is one thing. That it mis-understood the level of the problem 200-fold is a disaster. If the figure of 10 million is more accurate, then either Global Payments Inc is deliberately misleading investors or it does not understand the nature of the attack/disaster. In which case, possible charges of incompetence would follow.

One thing is certain, Global Payments Inc has known for weeks that its back door was penetrated, but the extent of the damage is still unclear.

The only positive thing we can take from what we’ve learned so far is that Global Payments Inc CEO, Paul Garcia, is confident that the whole situation is his company’s fault. He’s gone on record to say that no one else is to blame, “It is crucial to understand that this incident does not involve our merchants or their relationships with their customers”. Nice job standing up – we applaud Paul for his honesty.

These chaps really seem to know what they are talking about. Chapter and verse on the Global Payments Inc saga

Comment below or in the Tecnobitsforums.

The $35 Raspberry Pi Linux computer continues to be dogged by delays. Earlier in March, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced a “minor” manufacturing hiccup, which involved the diminutive PC getting fitted with the wrong type of Ethernet jack by accident. Now the UK-based charitable organization responsible for the eponymous Pi is having compliance issues in the land of the stiff upper lip. Hit the jump for more.

“Following on from last week’s discussions, both RS Components and element14/Premier Farnell have now informed us that they are not able to distribute the Raspberry Pi until it has received the CE [European Conformity] mark,” the Raspberry Foundation stated on its blog.

“While this differs from our historical view (as we’ve said before, we believed that the uncased Raspberry Pi was not a “finished end product”, and could be distributed on the same terms as earlier versions of the BeagleBoard and other non-CE-marked platforms), we respect their right to make that decision.”

However, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has been told by the UK’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) that the CE mark, a mandatory conformity mark for certain products in European Economic Area (EEA) countries, is required in their case (no pun intended).  Apparently, BIS does not deem the Pi a development board, for the “volumes involved and the demographic mix of likely users” is most likely to result in it being used as a finished product.

“The good news is that our first 2,000 boards arrived in the UK on Monday and that we are working to get them CE marked as soon as is humanly possible, in parallel with bringing the remainder of our initial batch into the country.”

With half the UK population using Facebook, it’s easy to find an opinion on whether the upcoming change over in style/layout to Timeline is a good thing. Even a quick search of the web reveals a huge amount of negative opinion being directed against the new format.

One small group of developers has a solution, and it seems that Facebook’s not happy.

Tecnobitshits ‘Dislike’ on Timeline and heads over to the T-Remove page on Facebook.

Getting grannies to share pics is simple enough. Facebook has exploded through regular society with little/no effort.

Getting itself taken seriously as a business tool was a little more difficult. Many companies are run by old farts who managed to get to the top job in the old-world-ecosystem, so they have little interest in changing an environment which worked so well for them. To get around this, Facebook seems to have something akin to a ‘developer tool kit’ which allows for customisation for businesses.

So far, so good. Now where does Facebook get nasty?

Timeline is facebook’s plan to completely change the interface that has made it the second biggest site in the world. Naturally, that kind of change is going to create controversy. Without interviewing Facebook’s board using sodium pentothal, there’s always going to be an amount of conjecture as to why the change was thought necessary. Our money is on ‘something to do with server configurations and the chronicles of older Facebook data’ – but what do we know.

Certainly, nothing else Facebook is likely to do will have such an impact on its market position. The people who have built Facebook to where it is right now (Er, us), feel invested in the brand. We identify with it.

Change the interface and we either lose that investment – or we accept that the ‘thing we want’ can come in more than one shape/size/colour.

Once humans understand that many variations on a theme can provide the same experience, the door is opened to the competition. No wonder Murdoch and co are revisiting MySpace.

While many users will move straight across to Facebook Timeline with no problem at all, millions more will not move until you put a gun at their head and threaten them.

Remember we started by talking about Facebook’s ability to be adjusted for corporate users – to integrate tighter into their existing business web sites?  Well some clever chaps over in India (T-Remove) look to have taken the development tool and created something a little special.

The original Facebook.

How popular was it?  Well, from what we can tell, around 50,000 people installed the ‘upgrade’ back to pre-Timeline and clicked ‘Like’ on the Anti-Timeline guys’ Facebook page.

Facebook’s response?

The profile was deleted with no communication, even though it claims not to have violated any of Facebook’s rules.

The anti-Timeline developers then recreated the experience, with a new profile.

They now claim to have had an additional 100,000 people go for ‘The Original Facebook’ and then click like on the anti-Timeline brigade’s new profile.

With Vista and Windows 7, Microsoft pushed to get an interface that looked more like Apple. What happened? People moved in droves to Apple OS. Users are a bunch of old dogs that don’t want to learn new tricks – change interfaces at your peril. If you’re not sure about the T-Remove chaps, then we can suggest that you set up a dummy account, choose Facebook Timeline and then apply the T-Remove solution to see what happens. Remember, we’re not recommending you use it – just highlighting some questionable behaviour from Facebook and some community efforts to get around the draconian introduction of Timeline.

Are these guys paranoid or is Facebook really trying to supress any legal/viable alternative to Timeline?

Comments below or in the Tecnobitsforums.