Opera, the Norwegian browser company, is releasing Opera One R2, the new major version of its AI-powered browser. Building upon the modular design and integrated AI capabilities of Opera One, which was released in 2023, the new Opera One R2 introduces a host of new features and enhancements, making it the most powerful and best-looking Opera browser to date.

Opera One R2 features Opera's latest AI innovations. It also introduces dynamic themes that allow users to personalize their browsing experience with a static or animated interface, sound effects, and music.

According to a recent report from Reuters, tech giant Intel is facing a significant legal challenge as shareholders file a lawsuit following a dramatic plunge in the company's stock price. The legal action comes from Intel's recent announcement of dividend suspensions and plans to lay off over 15,000 employees. The semiconductor behemoth saw its market value plummet by a staggering $32 billion in a single day, leaving investors reeling. The Construction Laborers Pension Trust of Greater St. Louis has initiated a proposed class action suit, naming Intel, CEO Pat Gelsinger, and CFO David Zinsner as defendants. The plaintiffs allege that the company made misleading statements about its business operations and manufacturing capabilities, artificially inflating its stock price between January 25 and August 1.

Intel's financial woes stem from underperforming contract foundry operations and 1% drop in revenue during the second quarter of 2024. While it may seem miniscule, declining revenue is paired with a negative 15.3% operating margin, resulting in a net loss of $1.61 billion. The company's August 1 announcement caught many shareholders off guard, prompting accusations of inadequate disclosure and transparency. This lawsuit is just one of several legal battles Intel is currently strangled in. The company is also locked in a patent dispute with R2 Semiconductor across multiple European countries, centering on voltage regulation technology. While Intel has secured a victory in the UK, it faces ongoing litigation in Germany, France, and Italy. Adding to Intel's troubles, a separate class action lawsuit is being explored on behalf of customers who purchased potentially faulty 13th and 14th-generation processors. The company also canceled its September 2024 Innovation event, citing poor financials, without any words on Arrow Lake or Lunar Lake. While the cancelation of events is sad, it is necessary to get financials back on track, and product launches should continue as usual.

According to Financial Times, a regional court in Düsseldorf, Germany, created a significant setback for Intel on Wednesday, issuing an injunction prohibiting sales of some of its processors due to allegations they infringe on a patent held by R2 Semiconductor. R2, a technology firm based in Palo Alto, California, accused Intel of violating its patent related to processor voltage regulation. The ruling applies to Intel's 10th, 11th, and 12th generation Core processors, known as Ice Lake, Tiger Lake, and Alder Lake, as well as its Ice Lake Xeon server SKUs. Newer processors generations (13th, 14th, etc.) don't infringe the patent. Even though Intel noted that it plans to appeal the decision, the ramifications could extend beyond the company itself. Industry experts warn the court order could lead to a sweeping ban on products containing the disputed Intel chips, including laptops and pre-built PCs from major manufacturers like HP and Dell. R2 has waged an ongoing legal fight across multiple jurisdictions to defend its intellectual property.

After initially filing suit against Intel in the United States, R2 shifted its efforts to Germany and other European countries after its patent was invalidated stateside. Intel strongly denied R2's patent infringement claims, alleging the company's entire business model relies on extracting legal settlements through serial litigation. Intel believes the injunction serves only R2's financial interests while harming consumers, businesses, and the economy. The two firms traded barbs in official statements about the case. R2's CEO, David Fisher, rebuffed Intel's characterization of his company, saying it has only targeted Intel for infringement of its clear IP rights. As the war of words continues, the practical impact of the German court's decision remains uncertain, pending Intel's appeal. However, the preliminary injunction demonstrates the massive financial consequences at stake in battles over technological patents.

Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 customers still represent a large group, as Microsoft has announced an additional year of Extended Security Updates (ESU) with a caveat. Only available for Microsoft Azure customers, the ESU program will allow Windows Server 2008 and R2 users on Azure cloud to get security updates until January 9, 2024. By no means is this not a free program, and Microsoft will bill this extensively as it is available internationally. Many customers are forced to join the ESU program for their Windows Server 2008 and R2 systems, as upgrading the OS to the latest version is not always possible without significant downtime or a hardware update.

The following customer base has legibility to the fourth year of the ESU program:

• Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1)
• Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (SP2)
• Windows Embedded POSReady 7
• Windows Embedded Standard 7
• All Azure virtual machines (VMs) running Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 operating systems on Azure, Azure Stack, Azure VMWare Solutions, or Azure Nutanix Solution.

TrendForce estimates that global shipments of VR devices will come to around 8.58 million units for 2022, showing a YoY drop of 5.3%. There are three notable factors behind the decline. First, the ongoing high inflation has been suppressing the consumer demand for end products this year. Second, VR brands have either opted to not release a new product this year or pushed back the schedule for releasing a new product. Lastly, the demand for Meta's Quest devices has been dampened by a significant pricing adjustment. As for 2023, TrendForce forecasts that global shipments of VR devices will bounce back to a total of 10.35 million units and show a YoY growth of 20.6%. New products including the Sony PS VR2 and the Meta Quest 3 are scheduled for release next year, so they are expected to be a significant demand driver.

Meta has been the most aggressive in committing resources into the VR/AR market. However, the effect of its attempt to offer hardware at a low price has been quite disproportionate to its massive investments in related technologies. Due to mounting cost pressure, Meta has adjusted its pricing strategy for Quest devices. The Meta Quest 2, in particular, is now priced at US$1,499, which is more than three times its previous price. On account of this price hike and its relatively short battery life, the Quest Pro will unlikely follow the footsteps of the Quest 2 with respect to maintaining a strong shipment growth momentum. TrendForce estimates that that shipments of the Quest Pro will reach just to the level of 250,000 units for 2022. Meta will have to wait until next year, when the Quest 3 hit the market, to again see a notable positive growth in its shipments of VR devices. TrendForce currently forecasts that Meta's shipments for 2023 will total around 7.25 million units.

Japanese company Logitec introduced the LSV-MS2MWG series 2-bay NAS. The LSV-MS2MWG is driven by Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 (WSS) with support for Active Directory. It holds two 3.5-inch SATA hard drives in RAID 1 configuration, lending fault-tolerance. It comes with hard drives in-built, with capacities of 1 TB (500 GB volume), 2 TB (1 TB vol.), and 4 TB (2 TB vol.). It has two gigabit Ethernet interfaces to connect to the network, two USB ports, and one eSATA port, to expand storage and connect devices that can be shared over the network, such as printers.

It also packs energy-saving modes, and a programmable stand-by timer, which ensures the NAS draws full power (30W) only during work hours. Slated for mid-March, the LSV-MS2MWG is priced at 126,000 JPY (US $1,550) for the 1 TB model, 136,500 JPY (US $1,672) for 2 TB, and 155,400 JPY (US $1,911) for the 4 TB one.

I-O Data unveiled its latest home and small business NAS server, the LANDisk HDL-Z2WSLP. This model, measuring 102 x D216 x 150 mm (WxDxH), is powered by what some would argue as being overkill for a 2-bay NAS, the Intel Atom D510 (1.66 GHz), and is driven by Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system pre-configured to run headless. The OS can also be loaded with anti-virus software so you could free up system resources on other machines that pool user data on this device.

It also doubles up as a small network and print server, as it's equipped with five USB 2.0 ports, and a further two eSATA 3 Gb/s ports to expand its storage using external enclosures. Out of the box, it comes with 2 TB of capacity brought about by two 2.5-inch 1 TB hard drives. The disk trays, support both 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch drives. It has two gigabit Ethernet network connections. Common protocols such as CIFS (SMB), HTTP, FTP, WebDAV, are supported. Slated for February, the I-O Data HDL-Z2WSLP will be priced at 120,540 JPY (US $1,542).

VR-Zone have been having a little chat with Intel 'sources', who have leaked some juicy tidbits for us to enjoy in the form performance and power news. The upcoming next generation Medfield platform is Intel's first true System on a Chip (SoC) and is designed to compete with various low power ARM offerings in the tablet space. To help achieve this, they've gone through an internal restructure, merging four business units into just one: Ultra-Mobility, Mobile Wireless, Mobile Communications and Netbook & Tablet PC. The business unit is now simply known as Mobile and Communications. It's being run by Mike Bell and Hermann Eul and the first product to emerge from it will be is the 32 nm Medfield SoC solution.

VR-Zone explained that the competition will be "Apple's A-Series, NVIDIA Tegra, Qualcomm Snapdragon, Samsung Exynos, Texas Instruments OMAP and the likes. Out of all the chips mentioned above, only Samsung's Exynos is currently manufactured in 32nm process, just like Medfield."

Today Windows updater may have brought "Bulldozer" users a little surprise. A hotfix that increases the AMD flagship processors performance. As this "hotfix" is bleeding edge news any benchmarks have yet to be seen but this confirms Windows 7 was in fact hampering "Bulldozer" from performing at 100% in all prior benches. What percentage it was previously performing at has yet to be determined. Here is a small snippet from the Hotfix release notes.

This article introduces an update that optimizes the performance of AMD Bulldozer CPUs that are used by Windows 7-based or Windows Server 2008 R2-based computers. Currently, the performance of AMD Bulldozer CPUs is slower than expected. This behavior occurs because the threading logic in Windows 7 and in Windows Server 2008 R2 is not optimized to use the Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) scheduling feature. This feature was introduced in the Bulldozer family of AMD CPUs.

You can download the Hotfix here.

Microsoft Corp. today announced the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, the next versions of its flagship desktop and server operating systems. With the completion of this development phase, industry partners are readying products in time for the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 worldwide general launches. Windows 7 will be generally available to customers around the world on October 22, and Windows Server 2008 R2 will be generally available on or before that date. As always, current customers of the Windows Volume Licensing program, Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) subscribers and TechNet subscribers will be among the first to get customer access to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 in the coming weeks.

Microsoft will make the announcement on its Windows Team and Windows Server Blogs later today. More information about today's news is available via the following links:

• Windows Team Blog
• Windows Server Blog
• Partner Web sites: readyset7.com and talkingaboutwindows.com
• Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 for businesses: microsoft.com and microsoft.com/windowsserver2008