Opera 10.50 for Windows is released

Windows 10.50 is released and we are still the fastest browser available!
If you haven't downloaded it yet, what is taking you so long? Head over to www.opera.com/download, to get your hands on it now.

We have gone from Pre-Alpha to Final in just over two months (with a Christmas holiday in between I might add).
Never has the development of the desktop browser been so fast. Our developers are rivalling Carakan for speed!
But the thanks doesn't just go to them, we simply couldn't have done it without your testing and feedback. So give yourselves a big pat on the back for all that we have achieved together.

In the last couple of blog posts, several of you commented that our developers deserve some time off and whilst that is true,
I know the Mac and UNIX teams are still hungry to get their own versions of 10.50 out. So there will be no slacking off, just yet. Development continues apace!

Whilst you Mac and UNIX users await your respective finals, we thought we'd give you another snapshot. Like the Windows final,
these builds have the latest rendering improvements but are understandably still rougher around the edges,
as they have not yet been fully optimised and integrated into their environments (though Mac is getting close).

What could simultaneously bring down Sony's PlayStation Network worldwide and make it impossible for millions of gamers to play single-player games like Heavy Rain, Bayonetta, and BioShock 2?

Hackers? A terrorist attack? CIA black ops? Full-scale alien invasion?

Think stupider. Like: A requirement that players synchronize trophy information with Sony's online servers in order to play trophy-based games. UPDATE: Or think goofier, like a hardware-related time and date glitch that resets your PS3's clock to 12/31/99, corrupts local trophy data, prevents you from connecting to the PlayStation Network, and only affects older "fat" retail and debug PS3 models.

Late Sunday night, Sony's PlayStation Network appared to experience a problem that garbled its trophy sync process, which sounds harmless at first blush. You don't need trophies synchronized to actually play a game, right? After all, Xbox 360 games doesn't require achievement synchronization to function offline.

Well it seems Sony's PlayStation Network does, because the glitch prevents you from playing trophy-using games whether you're offline or online.

I had a taste firsthand this morning. I slipped a review copy of Final Fantasy XIII into my debug PS3 and, after the Square Enix logo flashed, received the following error message:

Registration of the trophy information could not be completed. The game will quit. (8001050F)

Cue drop to PS3 XMB menu and a few repeat attempts with other games like Heavy Rain and White Knight Chronicles to verify the issue had to be something bigger than a local ISP glitch.

A quick scan for the error code online turned up a rash of users complaining about the same error, including this story by our own Japan-based Martyn Williams confirming that yes, indeed, there's Big Trouble in Not-So-Little Sony-land.

Games like Metal Gear Solid 4 and the recent God of War duology reissue work fine, presumably because they don't use trophies (MGS4) or don't require the preliminary trophy sync (God of War).

About eight hours ago, Sony posted this to its PlayStation Twitter feed:

"We're aware that many of you are having problems connecting to PSN, and yes, we're looking into it. Stay tuned for updates."

That was followed about five hours ago with this:

"PSN status update: We're narrowing down the issue and continue to work to restore service to all. Updates as soon as we have them."

And shortly after that, this:

"PSN status update (part 2): Readers/followers are confirming that "slim" units (120/250 GB models) are connecting normally."

Stand by for further updates. Presumably the trophy-sync "requirement" isn't really (required) and Sony will have things back to normal shortly, allowing you to play offline (Ethernet unplugged, wireless disabled) at leisure.

UPDATE: It seems the issue has something to do with a hardware date reset to 12/31/99 (per my own "fat" retail and debug units) that occurred with the February 28 to March 1 turnover, even though this wasn't a leap year. I say 'hardware', because it reportedly occurs whether you've gone online with your PS3 or not.

It's not the first time the error's occurred. Run a date-filtered Google search on error code '8001050F' and you'll see it popping up time and again. Sounds like we'll either need a 24 hour cycle or a firmware update to see this fixed (and no, manually setting the correct time and date doesn't fix the issue).

UPDATE 2: Wondering whether Sony could remotely patch an issue that prevents connecting to the PlayStation Network? I assume the firmware update process works discretely, since clicking 'System Update' generates a standard "There is no need to update" message and not an error.

UPDATE 3: According to The Examiner, Sony tech support says both trophy and savegame data should be fine, and that a fix should be up 'by morning' (US time zones).

http://www.pcworld.com/article/190392/playstation_network_corrupted_prevents_offline_play_worldwide.html

Intel on Monday will officially release the latest Atom N470 processor, which should bring faster performance and longer battery life to netbooks, a source familiar with Intel's plans said.

Atom chips go into small, low-cost laptops called netbooks that are designed to surf the Web and run productivity applications. The N470 chip processor will run at a speed of 1.83GHz, making it Intel's fastest chip for netbooks to date.

The new processor is based on a new second-generation Atom chip architecture that Intel released in December. Intel at the time announced the first chip belonging to the architecture, the Atom N450 processor, which runs at a speed of 1.66GHz. The processor can be found in netbooks priced between US$299 and $499.

Systems based on N470 could start shipping as early as next week, the source said. Some PC makers displayed netbooks with the N470 processor at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year in Las Vegas, but no systems have officially shipped yet.

Intel officials declined to comment on the product.

The architecture integrates a graphics processor and memory controller inside the Atom chip, which allows for faster system and graphics performance than its predecessor. Intel has claimed that the integrated graphics processor could smoothly play back 720p high-definition video.

The new Atom chips are also more power-efficient, which could extend the battery life in some netbooks. Some netbooks have shown battery life of more than 10 hours. The integration also makes the chip smaller, which allows PC makers to build smaller and lighter netbooks.

Intel also offers the Atom D410 and D510 processors for low-cost desktops.

More improvements for Atom netbooks are on tap, including a graphics boost in early March when Nvidia launches the Ion 2 graphics platform. The platform couples an Atom processor with an Nvidia graphics processor to bring full high-definition video to netbooks. Acer has already announced a netbook, the Aspire One 532G, with the Ion 2 platform.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/190320/intel_to_release_atom_n470_processor.html

Solar cells are cute and all, but let's be real -- these things are far too inefficient for mainstream use. Scientists at the California Institute of Technology are working hard to remedy that very issue, and they've recently concocted a "new type of flexible solar cell that enhances the absorption of sunlight and efficiently converts its photons into electrons." The solution relies on arrays of long, thin silicon wires embedded onto a polymer substrate, which uses just a fraction of the expensive semiconductor materials required by conventional solar cells. According to professor Harry Atwater, these cells have "surpassed the conventional light-trapping limit for absorbing materials" for the first time, and we're told that the arrays can convert between 90 and 100 percent of the photons they absorb into electrons, and yes, that does mean that they have a near-perfect internal quantum efficiency. Hit the source link for all the technobabble, and cross your fingers for this stuff to get the honored approval of the Governator.

http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=223000119

Apple's famous desire for total control over its operations seems to have extended to its manufacturing facilities as we've come across Cupertino's Supplier Responsibility 2010 Progress Report, which details audits the American company has done of its overseas suppliers and the failures identified therein. The findings are pretty damning on the whole, with more than half (54 percent) of all factories failing to meet Apple's already inflated maximum 60-hour work week, 24 percent paying less than the minimum wage, 37 percent failing to respect anti-discrimination rules, and three facilities holding records of employing a total of eleven 15-year olds (who were over the legal age of 16 or had left by the time of the audit). Apple is, predictably, not jazzed about the situation, and has taken action through train-the-trainer schemes, threats of business termination with recidivist plants, and -- most notably -- the recovery of $2.2 million in recruitment fees that international contract workers should not have had to pay.

It should come as no shock to learn that cheaper overseas factories are cutting illegal corners, but it's disappointing to hear Apple's note that most of the 102 audited manufacturers said Cupertino was the only vendor to perform such rigorous compliance checks. Still, we'll take what we can get and the very existence of this report -- which can be savagely skewed to defame Apple's efforts (as demonstrated expertly by The Daily Telegraph below) -- is an encouraging sign that corporate responsibility is being taken seriously. We hope, wherever your geek loyalties and fervor may lie, that you'll agree Apple's leading in the right direction and that its competitors should at the very least have matching monitoring schemes. They may have to swallow some bad PR at first, but sweeping up the dirty details of where gadgets come from is juvenile and has no place in a civilized world. Hit the source link for the full report.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7330986/Apple-admits-using-child-labour.html

WD's 'Advanced Format' Caviar Green HDD gets benchmarked, minor benefits found

Western Digital has yet to actively market its "advanced format" hard drives -- in fact, there's a decent chance you've no idea what we're talking about if you weren't tuned in on December 11th. In short, it's a technology that alters a hard drive's sector size from 512 bytes (the standard for the past three decades) to 4096K, which enables the ECC data to be stored in a more efficient manner. Just recently, WD began to ship Advanced Format Caviar Green hard drives, and the benchmarking gurus over at Hot Hardware strapped one in to see exactly how much of the hype was warranted. For starters, they debunked the thought that Advanced Format drives offered more usable space; Windows reported 931GB of free space on both AF and non-AF 1TB drives. They also go on to explain how to make AF drives play nice with Windows XP, and on the testing front, they found that an aligned AF Caviar Green drive could (mostly) hang with the higher end (and more expensive) Caviar Black. Pop that source link for the full skinny, particularly if you're a WinXP user looking to snag a new drive. Hot Hardware

http://hothardware.com/Articles/WDs-1TB-Caviar-Green-w-Advanced-Format-Windows-XP-Users-Pay-Attention/