We are excited to announce the availability of P2 instances, a new instance type designed for compute-intensive applications that require high-performance GPU coprocessors and massive parallel floating point performance. P2 instances are ideal for deep learning, computational fluid dynamics, computational finance, seismic analysis, molecular modeling, genomics, and rendering workloads. For graphics workloads requiring DirectX and OpenGL, you can continue to use G2 instances. 

You can now use time zones as part of time stamps in Amazon Redshift. The new TIMESTAMPTZ data type allows you to input timestamp values that include a time zone. Amazon Redshift automatically converts timestamps to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and stores the UTC values. Also, the COPY command now recognizes timestamp values with time zones in the source data and automatically converts them to UTC.  You can retrieve and display timestamps in Amazon Redshift by setting your preferred time zone at the session level , user level or client connection level.  

Amazon Game Studios announced their new game, Breakaway, at TwitchCon this year. Breakaway is a mythological sport brawler built for fast action, teamwork, and live streaming. AGS also announced new upcoming features that are built for Twitch: Stream+, Twitch Metastream, Broadcaster Match Builder and Broadcaster Spotlight.

To learn about Breakaway and more, visit playbreakaway.com and follow @PlayBreakaway on Twitter .

Amazon Elastic Transcoder lets you convert source media files into formats that will playback on devices like smartphones, tablets and PCs. It manages all aspects of the media transcoding process for you transparently and automatically. There’s no need to administer software, scale hardware, tune performance, or otherwise manage transcoding infrastructure. You simply create a transcoding “job” specifying the location of your source media file and how you want it transcoded. Amazon Elastic Transcoder also provides transcoding presets for popular output formats, which means that you don’t need to guess about which settings work best on particular devices. All these features are available via service API, AWS SDKs and the AWS Management Console . 

Desalitech has won the IDA Industry Technology and Innovation Leader in Water Reuse and Conservation Award of Distinction, thanks in part to its work at Padre Dam Advanced Water Reclamation plant in Southern California.

Linear Technology is aiming at RF and microwaves with a log-responding RMS to DC converter chip which can achieve 1dB accuracy and 35dB dynamic range.

Read full article: Linear releases 100MHz to 40GHz log RMS power detector

Toshiba has added two new N-channel devices to its U-MOS IX-H family of high-efficiency, high-speed switching MOSFETs.

Read full article: Toshiba adds to n-channel MOSFETs

Secure remote access and control software will be included in the latest release of the Raspbian operating system for Raspberry Pi. This follows a partnership between its developer RealVNC and the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Under the  terms of the new agreement, RealVNC software becomes the official standard for remote access connectivity on all Raspberry Pis, …

Read full article: Raspberry Pi gets VNC remote access bundle with Raspbian

GlobalFoundries has joined the 5G Lab alliance which has about 50 members including Vodafone, National Instruments, Nokia, Rohde & Schwarz, NEC, Claas, Ericsson and Deutsche Telekom.

Read full article: GloFo joins 5G Lab

Mass-radio created a domestic revolution in the 1920s. Homes, hitherto isolated from eachother bar a chat over the garden fence, became connected to the world which poured music, comedy, news and learning into them. Radio shrank the world by giving people a commonality of experience as a 1930s song-writer pointed out: Just think of those …

Read full article: Fable: The Connectivity Revolution