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Next-gen Xiaomi Phone outed by certifications ahead of launch, will again come in three variants (updated)
Having seen the next-gen Xiaomi Phone's more colorful yet rejected designs, we're rather baffled by these dull-looking certification images of the real deal. According to a filing from the good old TENAA, this new device from Xiaomi goes by the codename "2012051" and packs WCDMA radio, but that's pretty much it in terms of specs. Eagle-eyed readers may have already spotted the striking resemblance to the original Xiaomi Phone (aka MI-One Plus), but it appears to be getting an extra front-facing camera and, for some reason, a smaller speaker grill on the back. But wait, there's more! We dug up two additional models in the China Compulsory Certificate database: there's the "2012052" also with WCDMA radio, plus the "2012053" with CDMA2000/WCDMA dual radio. Bearing in mind that the current Xiaomi Phone has three variants, our guess is that its successor will follow a similar pattern: the WCDMA flavor may again have a 1.5GHz version followed by a slower and cheaper version (much like what the Youth Edition aka MI-One is to the MI-One Plus); and depending on Xiaomi's arrangements with China Unicom and China Telecom, the CDMA flavor for the latter may or may not be launched alongside its WCDMA cousin. Let's hope for the best when this alleged quad-core phone gets announced next Thursday. Update: Another possibility is that the design pictured above only applies to the lower-end model, which may just pack a dual-core chip (hopefully a Snapdragon S4). We shall see.
CCC's "Freedom Stick" circumvents China's firewall, just in time for The Games
Rumor has it that a large quantity of genetically-superior human beings are amassing in Beijing at the moment and attempting to squeeze into spandex-like outfits for your entertainment. Those interested in watching such tight-outfitted goings on are going to find themselves faced with even tighter internet restrictions when they get back to their hotel room or local internet cafe, thanks to that handy dandy Great Firewall of China. Lucky for them, the Chaos Computer Club has prepped a solution called the "Freedom Stick" which when plugged into a computer redirects its internet traffic over The Onion Router, a worldwide network of anonymous computers designed to hide your steps. Naturally, you can just download the software yourself, but the $30 USB dongle could come in handy if you're not on your own PC, or just want to leave behind material evidence of your indiscretion. The Freedom Stick will only be available through the duration of the Olympics, so get one while you can.[Via Wired]
Carbon Copy Cloner 3.1
I'm a big fan of SuperDuper! myself, but Carbon Copy Cloner has also long been a great, low cost option for cloning hard disks in OS X (indeed it's been around longer). Mike Bombich has now released version 3.1 of CCC implementing rsync 3.0.0 "to provide even greater fidelity when backing up using the 'Copy selected items' backup method." Other improvements includes an updated interface and various bugfixes, etc.Carbon Copy Cloner is a free download from Bombich Software (donation requested).[via TidBITS]
SuperDuper bumped to 2.1.4
Dave Nanian's highly regarded (and practically foolproof) backup utility SuperDuper! is now at version 2.1.4, available from the shirt-pocket.com website or via the auto update within SD itself. New and fixed items include: Displays are no longer kept active during a copy Scheduled copies work properly in Japanese locale Auto update mechanism extended to support OS X version-specific updates Extended attributes now copied for locked/unchangeable files Preliminary support for 10.5 "Leopard" Bug fix for scheduled copy logs written to the incorrect log file Re-fixed 10.3.9 image creation Fixed 5th parameter to before/after scripts Improved crontab handling Now that Mike Bombich's legendary and free Carbon Copy Cloner is in beta for version 3 UB, SuperDuper may have a bit of a run for its $27.95. Glad to see that the wheels are still turning over there!
Hackers get theirs, RFID tags follow them everywhere at CCC
After spending the better part of '06 ripping the things to shreds in just about every physical and metaphorical sense, hacker attendees of this year's Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin are paying 10 euros to don RFID tags that track their movements all over the conference. What's different about this, in comparison to the RFID-based privacy invasion that these hackers usually eschew, is the visibility and open source nature of the system being used. "The idea was that most of this surveillance technology slowly faded into our lives, and we accepted them," says Milosch Meriac, one of the leaders of the project. The "CCC Sputnik" badges, as they're known, are tracked by 35 monitoring stations, which in turn export a public XML feed so that anyone who wants to can track the wearers around the expo. To generate an accurate position, the tags broadcast at five different power levels, with far-away receivers only receiving the highest powered signals, and close receivers receiving all five, the system can then triangulate the location of the wearer. The technology is par of the OpenBeacon surveillance suite that Meriac is prepping for release under the GPL and Creative Commons licenses.
