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Thursday Morning (17 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 17-April-2014  01:48:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg A few people pointed out that Optus have a court-ordered correction posted on their homepage. In a television advertisement broadcast from about 26 January 2014 until 18 February 2014, Optus represented that the difference between the Optus mobile network and Telstra's mobile network is minimal and insignificant. The Supreme Court of Victoria has found that by broadcasting the advertisement, Optus engaged in conduct that is misleading and deceptive and made false representations in breach of the Australian Consumer Law. TPG meanwhile have been fined $400k for not ensuring customers could dial emergency numbers. Telco TPG has been fined $400,000 for failing to provide access to emergency numbers for customers who had not paid bills. Federal Court Justice Mordecai Bromberg on Wednesday found TPG failed to give access to triple-0 and 112 on more than 190 occasions between March and September 2011. He also found the company did not ensure that almost 6000 lines had access to emergency numbers over that period. The ACCC has had a data breach on some of its websites. The affected websites are Recalls Australia, Product Safety Australia, SCAMwatch and the ACCC Public Registers website. The email addresses of some subscribers to the ACCC’s information alert services were inadvertently made accessible online. They were not indexed by search engines or linked from a web page on our sites. They could only be found if specific URLs were tried. If you have a Windows phone and want to check out the Windows Phone 8.1 Preview for Developers, it seems you now can. Even if you’re not really a developer you can join the Preview for Developers to get Windows Phone 8.1 today. Every handset running Windows Phone 8 in the wild now is capable of the upgrade. Here’s how to get Window Phone 8.1. Of course you shouldn't use your phone while driving, and Victorian Police can now spot you doing it from more than half a kilometre away. The Herald Sun reports Victoria Police began deploying the cameras last week, which will also focus on selt belt infringements and other distractions such as applying make-up or eating at the wheel. Wait, what? Is eating in a car illegal in NSW too? Wednesday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 16-April-2014  14:51:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg Motherboard & CPU: ASRock FM2 A85X-ITX on FutureLooks. Overclocking The AMD AM1 Athlon & Sempron APUs on Phoronix. Are AMD Athlon/Sempron APUs Fast Enough For Steam On Linux, Steam Machines? on Phoronix. AMD Athlon 5350 APU and AM1 Platform on LegitReviews. ECS KBN-I/5200 AMD A6-5200 Mini-ITX on PureOC. AMD Athlon 5350 / 5150 & Sempron 3850 / 2650 on Phoronix. Cooling: Corsair H105 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler on PCPerspective. SilentiumPC Fera 2 HE 1224 CPU Cooler on MadShrimps. Cooler Master Nepton 140XL CPU Cooler on HWSecrets. Cooler Master Nepton 280L Water Cooler on APHNetworks. be quiet! Dark Rock 3 CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers. Cases: SilverStone PS10 on PureOC. Nanoxia Deep Silence 6 HPTX on Tweaktown. Noctua NH-D15 Dual-Tower CPU Cooler on Modders-Inc. Scythe IORI Scior 1000 CPU cooler on OCaholic. Cooler Master Elite 110 Mini-ITX on BenchmarkReviews. In Win 901 Mini-ITX on HWAsylum. Thermaltake Urban T81 Full Tower on NikKTech. Input Etc: Mad Catz R.A.T. TE Gaming Mouse on LegitReviews. SteelSeries Rival Optical Mouse on APHNetworks. Portable & Prebuilt: Acer TA272 HUL All-in-One Android desktop on TechSpot. Samsung Galaxy S5 Android Smartphone on MegaTechNews. KobraLan Extreme mini-PC on OCaholic. Storage: CoreRise Comay BladeDrive E28 1.6TB Enterprise PCIe SSD on Tweaktown. OCZ Vertex 460 240GB SSD on eTeknix. Asustor AS-204TE NAS on TechPowerUp. HGST Ultrastar SSD800MH 12Gb/s SAS3 Enterprise SSD on Tweaktown. Kingston 64GB SDXC Class 3 Memory Card & USB 3.0 MobileLite G3 Reader on PureOC. Thunderbolt 2: Ready for Windows with the ASUS ThunderboltEX II on Tweaktown. OCZ VERTEX 460 240GB on Vortez. Plextor M6e 256GB PCI Express SSD on Guru3D. Samsung XP941 Native PCIe M.2 SSD (512GB) on TechnologyX. Synology DS414 High Performance 4-bay NAS Server for SMB & SOHO on MadShrimps. OCZ 240GB Vertex 460 SSD on OCIA. Video Cards: XFX Radeon R7 240 Core Edition on HWSecrets. Powercolor AMD Radeon R7 250X 1GB GDDR5 on eTeknix. EVGA Backplate Install for the GTX 780 Ti Classified on HWAsylum. Gigabyte BRIX Pro And Intel Iris Pro Graphics on HotHardware. Power Supply: Xtorm LAVA CHARGER Universal Solar / USB Charger on NikKTech. EVGA SuperNOVA G2 750W on TechPowerUp. Networking: Diamond Wireless Range Extender WR300NSI on ThinkComputers. Linksys WRT1900AC 802.11ac Smart Wireless Router on Tweaktown. Misc: DXRacer M-Series Game Chair on LanOC. Total Lunar Eclipse This Evening (2 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 15-April-2014  16:22:45 (GMT +10) - by Agg It's been 2.5 years since a total lunar eclipse was observable from Australia - and one's happening tonight. The Total Lunar Eclipse on April 15th, 2014 is well placed for observers in the Western Hemisphere, and will be visible in its entirety for all of North and South America. Most of Europe and Africa experience moonset just as the eclipse begins, while Australians and New Zealands will see the eclipsed moon at Moonrise. None of the eclipse is visible from north/east Europe, eastern Africa, the Middle East or Central Asia. For Australians and New Zealanders, the eclipse will be in progress at Moonrise. The further East you are, the more of the eclipse you'll see. The Total stage of the eclipse starts at 5:08pm AEST, with Moonrise at 5:28pm AEST and maximum eclipse at around 5:46pm AEST, but will change depending on your timezone. Check the table further below for timings in a city near you. More info here and discussion here. Photography Gallery (3 Comments) (link)  Monday, 14-April-2014  21:37:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg Here's a quick snapshot of what people are up to in our Photography Gallery forum. Monday Lunchtime (13 Comments) (link)  Monday, 14-April-2014  12:42:03 (GMT +10) - by Agg The Heartbleed SSL bug remains the top story of the moment, with lots more info from mpot: here's a code analysis of the issue, and the programmer who introduced it claims it was an honest mistake - although some are not convinced. In fact, it's claimed the NSA was aware of and actively exploited the bug for two years. Anyway, here's a list of big sites that were affected and their current status. Discussion continues here. Xbit have a Haswell memory performance scaling test, while PCPerspective cover AMD APU Memory scaling. Meanwhile OCaholic look at Core i7-4960X 3-way SLI gaming performance scaling. In our 3-way SLI gaming performance scaling articles we're going to investigate 3-way SLI scaling factors with different CPUs and different clock speeds. In eight recent games and two theoretical benchmarks we want to find out what difference 3-way SLI makes, when we run benchmarks with the CPU at stock clocks as well as overclocked to 4.5 GHz. Tech Report looked behind the scenes at Intel's SSD division. The city is home base for Intel's Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group, otherwise known as NSG, which is responsible for the development and testing of Intel solid-state drives. The NSG had a story to tell about how its design and validation work produces extremely reliable SSDs. We got hard numbers on failure rates, details about efforts to make SSDs more dependable, and a peek behind the scenes at the Folsom facility. Google Glass will apparently be on limited sale to consumers in the USA. Google Inc will take online orders for its Glass wearable gadget on April 15, in its biggest push to get the $1,500 wraparound Web-ready glasses out to the U.S. public. For a limited time starting Tuesday, Google will make the wearable device available to more than just the select group of users such as apps developers in its Glass Explorer program. In a blogpost, Google did not say how many pairs it would sell, just that the quantity would be limited. I actually saw a Google Glass wearer in the wild the other day, at the AWS Sydney Summit. He was walking around a bit awkwardly, obviously dividing his attention between the screen and the real world. Tech Report also checked out the Steam Controller. After getting myself killed a few times, I put down the controller and spoke with the Valve guy. Was I just uncommonly clumsy, I asked, or was the learning curve really so steep? To my surprise, he said it personally took him eight hours to get fully acquainted with the Steam controller. Red Dwarf will be returning for an 11th season! Announced during a panel at the recent Scarborough, England science fiction convention, series eleven of Red Dwarf is currently slated to go into production in October of this year. This could mean we’ll see new episodes as early as soon as the fall of 2015. Initially that sounds like a long wait, but considering how long we’ve waited before, that’s nothing. I'm not quite sure how I feel about this - with ANZAC Day coming up, you can now experience a minute of silence via the web or by phoning a non-free number. Hrm. Monday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 14-April-2014  01:17:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg Input Etc: Corsair Raptor K40 Gaming Keyboard on eTeknix. Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Stealth Gaming Keyboard on HWHeaven. Cooler Master CM Storm Xornet Gaming Mouse on Tweaknews. Das Keyboard 4 Professional on HotHardware. Logitech G400s mouse on LanOC. Audio Visual: Wavemaster Stax 2.1 Speaker on eTeknix. Logitech Bluetooth Audio Adapter on Techgage. Creative Sound BlasterAxx 200 Axx on TechPowerUp. Acer S241HL bmid 24-inch 5ms Full HD Monitor on Tweaktown. BenQ XL2720Z Gaming Monitor on FunkyKit. Rosewill R-Studio Ampbox Bluetooth Speaker on LegitReviews. Vizio 54" Soundbar 3.0 on GamingNexus. Video Cards: ASUS Radeon R9 290 DirectCU II on XbitLabs. Sapphire R7 250 Ultimate Passive 1GB GDDR5 on eTeknix. GIGABYTE R9 290X OC WINDFORCE 3X on FunkyKit. XFX Radeon R9 280X 3GB Double D Black Edition OC on Tweaktown. Storage: Intel 730 Solid State Drive on XbitLabs. Zalman ZM-VE300 USB 3.0 External Drive Case on LegitReviews. Plextor M6e 512GB PCI Express Solid State Drive on eTeknix. Seagate Backup Plus Fast 4TB USB 3.0 External HDD on Tweaktown. Crucial M550 256GB SSD on Tweaktown. Plextor M6M mSATA SSD (256GB) on Tweaktown. Portable & Prebuilt: Verizon Wireless Nokia Lumia Icon on LanOC. ASUS-G10AC-1B prebuilt desktop on OCaholic. Cases: Cougar MX300 Midtower Gaming Case on TechnologyX. BitFenix Shadow on OCaholic. Cooler Master HAF Stacker on TechPowerUp. Cooling: Dark Rock Pro 3 by beQuiet! CPU cooler on TechWareLabs. Deepcool Gamer Storm Gabriel on Modders-Inc. Enermax Liqtech 120X CPU cooler on OCaholic. Thermalright Silver Arrow IB-E CPU Cooler on NikKTech. Enermax ETS-T40 Black Twister CPU cooler on TechPowerUp. SilverStone Tundra Series TD03 All-in-One Liquid Cooler on PCPerspective. Memory: AVEXIR Blitz 1.1 DDR3 RAM on BenchmarkReviews. ADATA XPG V2 PC3-19200 16GB Dual Channel Memory Kit on Tweaktown. Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 16GB 1600MHz C10 Dual Channel DDR3 Memory Kit on MadShrimps. Misc: Linksys EA6900 AC1900 Smart Wi-Fi Wireless Router on NikKTech. Gigabyte G1.Sniper A88X motherboard on Bjorn3D.

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