Hasta La Gadget!

Intel is looking to set its sights on 14nm chips soon, but the company needs a new manufacturing plant in order to make it happen. Luckily, after several months of waiting, the country of Ireland has finally given Intel the go-ahead to build a $4 billion chip plant that will be home to 14nm chips in just a couple of years.

The new plant will take approximately two years to build, and it will create 3,500 construction jobs, as well as 800 full-time jobs inside the plant once its complete. Intel CEO Paul Otellini confirmed in May of last year that Intel’s Ireland plant is one of three plants that has been chosen to produce the company’s next-generation 14nm chips. The other two plants will be Intel’s Oregon and Arizona facilities.

Intel taking the success from its 22nm process and will launch 14nm chips in just a couple of years. The company also aims to create 10nm, 7nm, and even 5nm chips beyond 2015. The new Ireland plant will have a total floor area of 2,635,200 square feet, and will operate alongside existing Intel infrastructure and buildings.

The new facility will include a three-story main fabrication plant with a floor area of 1,085,000 square feet. Other buildings include a facility that will house liquid chemicals and collect waste water, as well as a facility support building, a two-story boiler/chiller facility, a water treatment building, and emergency generation and electrical buildings housed with diesel generators.

[via Silicon Republic]

Intel set to build $4bn chip plant in Ireland, 14nm chips on the way is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Logitech‘s Q3 financial report has been published, and the results are cringe-worthy, with the company suffering a $180 million operating loss. Sales have fallen a sharp 14-percent since last year, and as a result, the company has been forced to make some drastic changes to pull out of its nosedive. Among the changes includes the divestment of its remote control division.

Logitech’s Q3 sales came in at $615 million, a substantial drop from last Q3′s $715 million. Net loss is pegged at $195 million, contrasting the quarter’s $55 million net income. Dissecting the sales numbers, we see that sales for the company dropped 8-percent in the Americas, 20-percent in EMEA, and 11-percent in Asia.

According to the company, the lagging global PC market is the main cause of Logitech’s financial woes, and as a result, the company is implementing fairly large changes to mitigate the issue. Among the changes is an expansion in table accessories, as well as dropping the categories that have become deadweight. Among those categories is the company’s Harmony remote division and video security products.

Logitech’s President and CEO Bracken Darrell had this to say. “We are taking immediate actions to shape a faster and more profitable Logitech … As a result, we have initiated the process to divest our remote controls and digital video security categories, and we plan to discontinue other non-strategic products, such as speaker docks and console gaming peripherals, by the end of Calendar Year 2013.”

[via Logitech]

Logitech’s poor Q3 financial results prompt it to divest its remote controls business is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Apple’s shares have dropped 5% and were halted during trading hours at $514 and the after-hours price is down another 10.21% $461. Although Apple is still making a lot of money, the growth indicators have alarmed investors who were betting on “growth”. Just one year ago, analysts were predicting a share price of $1000 and just five months ago, AAPL was worth $700. Apple shipped shipped the expected number of iPhone units (for moderate analysts), but the Macs numbers tanked by 21% year over year… this is bad. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Apple Patents Shoe Sensor To Detect When Shoes Begin To Degrade, Apple Patent Describes A Brightness Auto-Adjust System That Adjusts According to Screen Content,

Last night, Google released its financial report for Q4 2012, and it did not disappoint. Google beat analyst predictions by posting $14.42 billion in revenue and a net profit of $2.89 billion. Revenue was up a very healthy 37% year-over-year, which you know is something that has investors excited to move into 2013.

Those investors are showing Google some love today, with the company’s stock taking a nice jump up during trading. At the time of this writing, Google’s stock price is hovering around $747.30, which is up more than $44. That certainly isn’t bad, and represents a 6.28% gain – perhaps we’ll see Google begin to close in on the $800 point in the next few days?

Apple is enjoying a boost of its own, though it hasn’t unveiled its quarterly report just yet. That comes later in the day, so this slight jump we’re seeing is the product of investor anticipation. Apple’s stock is up nearly $6 or 1.18% to $510.71, so even though it isn’t the biggest of jumps, it’s pretty easy to see that investors are excited for this evening’s financial report.

They have every reason to be, as today’s financial report will give us a good look into how well the iPhone 5 has been performing. The expectation, of course, is that it’s been selling well, which is why we’re seeing this early boost. However, we won’t know for sure until Apple releases that financial information later in the day, so stay tuned.

[via USA Today]

Apple and Google stocks leap up as Earnings flow forth is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week the next-generation iteration of online file hosting known as Mega has taken hold, its creator Kim Dotcom making it clear in an interview that this is no Megaupload, his goal being to usher in a new era for the web. This interview took place with the Wall Street Journal and included no lack of assurances from Dotcom that this web service would not end up like the last. Singing some of the same tunes as he did this past weekend at the official launch of the service from his own New Zealand mansion, Dotcom made clear: “Every single pixel on that site has been looked at by lawyers, and of course we are fully compliant with all laws.”

Dotcom’s service here is what he describes as a culmination of seven years working with the largest file serving service in the world, Megaupload, here in 2013 made to be “the best cloud storage business the world has ever seen.” Dotcom’s questions from WSJ also included a query on how large Mega would be getting, be it as large or larger than Megaupload. Dotcom let it be known that “it will hopefully take off within a year” but that “it’s just so good that it’s going to spread” – confidence indeed!

Perhaps the most important bit that Dotcom went into here in the security and multi-tiered service that Mega is now and will soon offer to its users. The following is what Dotcom describes as new and unique about Mega as compared to the Megaupload and Megaupload-like sites of the past:

“I would say the biggest new development is on-the-fly encryption. Without having to install any kind of application—it happens in your browser in the background—it encrypts, giving you privacy. This means when you transfer data, anyone sitting on that line will get nothing as it is all scrambled and impossible to decrypt without your key. This is going to take encryption to the mainstream.

We have some servers in New Zealand, we have some servers in Europe and we have invited hosting partners to sign up to join us. Basically anyone can connect a server in their hosting facility, hook it up to Internet, give us access and we can make it a Megaserver. Every file that is being uploaded to Mega is not just on one server, meaning if one hosting company goes bankrupt then those files will be on least two servers in the world and in two different jurisdictions.” – Dotcom

Have a peek at the timeline below to see what’s happened with Mega since it’s launch and stay tuned as we follow this service through the future as well. Do you use Mega right this minute? Did you utilize Megaupload before it was cut down at the knees by the government powers that be? Let us know what you think!

Kim Dotcom: Mega will “take encryption to the mainstream” is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.