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Today; topics include Google’s efforts to run Android Wear on iPhone software, news about cyber-attacks apparently related to the Chinese government, details about Intel and Cray receiving a contract to build a new supercomputer, and the conclusion of a lawsuit between Getty Images and Microsoft.
Google has nearly completed development efforts to enable Android Wear to run on iPhones, according to reports. Currently, Android smartwatches can only be used in conjunction with an Android smartphone.
The development is particularly interesting because Apple Watch preorders opened on April 10 and largely sold out in a few hours with the first devices scheduled for delivery to customers starting on April 24. Already, there are long waiting lists of at least four to six weeks or more to get an Apple Watch, according to the company’s Website.
Massive Distributed Denial of Service attacks on major Web sites at the end of March were likely the result of cyber-attack technology located within the “Great Firewall” of China, according to a report from Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary research program, at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.
The DDoS attacks, against GreatFire and GitHub, were the first use of the cyber-attack capability that was dubbed “Great Cannon” by Citizen Lab. The Web sites were apparently attacked because they host content that could help Chinese Internet users circumvent Web censorship controls maintained by their government.
Intel and supercomputer maker Cray were awarded a $200 million contract by the Department of Energy to develop Aurora, a supercomputer that will deliver processing speeds of up to 180 petaflops.
Aurora will be housed at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, and is part of the DOE’s larger CORAL initiative. The system, scheduled to be delivered in 2018, is the third of three supercomputers being built under the DOE’s CORAL program.
Getty Images’ lawsuit against Microsoft’s short-lived Bing Image Widget was settled this week. Getty Images had accused the Redmond, Wash.-based IT giant of wholesale Web harvesting to build its image index and infringing on Getty copyrights.
Microsoft quickly pulled the widget after Getty Images filed its suit. And now, seven months later, the companies have settled the case.