News Archives

Our news archive search is now powered by Google. You can search the main site or the guest-viewable forums. To search the entire forums, log in and use the forum search engine. Search the main OCAU site with Google: Search OCAU Forums with Google: View News : Last 7 Days, Last 14 Days, Last 30 Days. View Monthly Archives. Monday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 8-December-2013  14:43:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg If you've seen some instructions for unlocking backwards compatability for your Xbox One - don't do it! There’s just one hitch: Actually following the directions will totally destroy your new toy. You know. The one that retails anywhere from $500 to $900. More info here. Intel have a 15-core server CPU on the way. Intel confirmed Thursday that it will release a 15-core server chip code-named Ivytown, which will be based on the Ivy Bridge architecture. Intel until now had topped off at 12 cores with the Xeon E5 v2 chips that shipped in the third quarter of this year. TheAge have a fairly dramatic-sounding article about Telstra vacuuming up data. Australia's leading telecommunications company, Telstra, has installed highly advanced surveillance systems to "vacuum" the telephone calls, texts, social media messages and internet metadata of millions of Australians so that information can be filtered and given to intelligence and law enforcement agencies. A couple of people sent in this demo video of the Snowdrop Engine used in Tom Clancy's The Division - claimed to be the most detailed video game ever. There's a little more info here. The Division is an online experience, where players team up to survive in a ravaged America, both in the game and through the companion app. The game is slated for PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. Bit of a quiet morning, so here's some photos from Timbot, showing how not to open one of those annoying sealed boxes! Misc Pics (30 Comments) (link)  Friday, 6-December-2013  02:19:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg Thanks to mpot, Sciby and Hoff this week! And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive. Friday Afternoon (3 Comments) (link)  Friday, 6-December-2013  02:16:50 (GMT +10) - by Agg A couple of days ago, the last five analogue TV stations in Sydney shut down for good. On 3 December 2013, Sydney and surrounding areas highlighted in purple will switch off their analog TV signals and switch to digital-only TV. Here's a YouTube video showing the last few seconds of broadcasting. Only Channel 7 made an effort, it seems! There's been another big password theft - but this time it was client-side. The massive data breach was a result of keylogging software maliciously installed on an untold number of computers around the world, researchers at cybersecurity firm Trustwave said. The virus was capturing log-in credentials for key websites over the past month and sending those usernames and passwords to a server controlled by the hackers. Tech Report investigated claims that retail R9 290X cards seem to be slower than press samples. Is this really a thing? Are the Radeon R9 290X cards shipping to consumers really slower than the review units sent to the press? Well, let's see what we can find. They now have an answer from AMD. Based on feedback from the enthusiast community, we’ve implemented an all new PowerTune mechanism in the AMD Radeon R9 290 series that exploits the full capability of the individual GPUs rather than clamping performance to a least-common-denominator type of capability level. Bathurst fans will want to see this comparison video between Gran Turismo 6 and the real world. Australian racing fans had been clamouring for years for Bathurst to appear on a racing game of note. Now two have come along at once. Forza Motorsport 5 has been in the wild for a couple of weeks now, but Gran Turismo’s version is just about to hit stores. This comparison video between Bathurstreal life and its virtual equivalent is ridiculous. Here's a video from the Internet Governance Forum back in October, where John Selby talks about throwing out preconceptions about Cybersecurity. Friday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 5-December-2013  20:14:12 (GMT +10) - by booj Motherboards & CPUs: Asus A88X-PRO on Hardware Secrets. MSI Z87 Motherboard Roundup on Hot Hardware. Gigabyte G1.Sniper 5 Motherboard on Techgage. Graphics Cards: HIS R7 250 iCooler Boost Clock 1GB on Madshrimps. VisionTek Radeon R7 260X 2GB on TweakTown. GeForce GTX 760 SLI vs GTX 780 Ti on ocaholic. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti vs AMD Radeon R9 290X at 4K Ultra HD on Legit Reviews. Storage: Toshiba PX02SS 12Gbps SAS Enterprise SSD Review (400GB) on The SSD Review. WD Black² Dual Drive on Legion Hardware. Western Digital My Cloud 2TB on eTeknix. Adata DashDrive HV620 External HDD on Benchmark Reviews. Input etc: Func KB-460 Gaming Keyboard on techPowerUp. Func KB-460 Gaming Keyboard on Guru3D. Ducky 2108S Zero Cherry MX Brown Mechanical Keyboard on eTeknix. Cooling: Thermaltake Massive 14 Notebook Cooler on Hardware Asylum. Noctua NH-U12S CPU Cooler on OCC. Titan Master USB Fan on OCC. Audio: Corsair Vengeance 1400 Gaming Headset on Legit Reviews. Cooler Master Storm Ceres 300 Headset on PureOverclock. SteelSeries H Wireless Headset on LanOC. Sonos PLAY:1 Wireless Speakers on MegaTechNews. Audioengine 2+ (A2+) Powered Desktop Speakers on Custom PC Review. Misc: IN WIN 904 Mid Tower Case on Vortez. Crucial Ballistix Sport VLP 2x 8 GB 1600 MHz C9 Memory on techPowerUp. Cancer Petition (5 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 5-December-2013  00:55:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg A few people pointed out that OCAU member Supersize is doing it tough, with his wife having a rare type of cancer. The strange thing is that there is an extended delay for surgery which, although not without its own issues, can save people's lives in cases like this. This is partly due to a recent change to interstate patient transfers and a limit on number of operations. NSW Health Minister, Mrs Jillian Skinner said on 15th October 2013 that "Until recently patients were also being accepted from interstate and overseas, but that practice has now stopped." There are a limited number of doctors in Australia that can perform this surgery. Hospitals with experienced doctors, like the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, have waiting lists compounded by a limit to the number of surgeries they are able to perform, they perform only 12 a year. So, there's an online petition to change the system and hopefully save more lives. More info on Facebook, this website and of course this OCAU thread. Interesting Forum Threads (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 4-December-2013  09:55:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg Here's a snapshot of what's going on in some of the forums. You can also find new interesting things you might have missed via the Who's Online page, the New Posts page and the Live forum view. Also try the Today's Posts link (find it on the Quick Links menu) and the handy Who Quoted Me? feature. Anyone else feeling a bit nostalgic about overclocking? in Overclocking & Hardware. OMFG Water Cooling gone WRONG! in Extreme and Water Cooling. Classic G15 Keyboard Revival in Modding. DIY Solar panel setup on a budget in Hobby Engineering. Electrolysis - Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen in Hobby Engineering. Best basic 3d printer (for kids) in Hobby Engineering. Business PC naming schemes in Business & Enterprise Computing. Creating a modern Mac environment in Business & Enterprise Computing. Site to stop NBN turning into insulation batts debacle in Networking, Telephony & Internet. OS X Mavericks for Free in Apple Desktop Hardware / Software. Intel Xeon Phi co-processor (GPGPU) in Intel x86 CPUs and chipsets. AMD 2014 Lines in AMD x86 CPUs and chipsets. Should AMD build a NUC alternative? in AMD x86 CPUs and chipsets. Have I committed some photographer faux pas? in Photography. Aussie spider warning - I love my job in Photography Gallery. Calgary Stampede Snacks in Geek Food. Recipes to cook on a date! in Geek Food. World's strongest beer contains 67.5% alcohol in Geek Grog & Homebrew. Port Barrel in Geek Grog & Homebrew. RF Safe-Stop shuts down car engines with radio pulse in Motoring. Tesla's Worst Nightmare Sparked as Car Catches Fire in Motoring. Hypothetical: Indonesia attempts to invade Australia in Current Events. Wednesday Evening (5 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 4-December-2013  08:55:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg With Amazon's drone-delivery announcement (the marketing move of the year, it seems), it's no surprise that UPS and others might have similar ideas. FedEx founder Fred Smith has spoken repeatedly about his desire to move to a fleet of unmanned aircraft, something he believes could generate major cost savings. The impediment so far has been regulators. "We have all this stuff working in the lab right now, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel," remarks Guinn. Asher meanwhile spotted this drone-seeking drone. Serial hacker Samy Kamkar has released all the hardware and software specifications that hobbyists need to build an aerial drone that seeks out other drones in the air, hacks them, and turns them into conscripted army of unmanned vehicles under the attacker's control. A leaked roadmap seems to suggest AMD might exit the CPU business to focus on APUs. We'd feared something like this would happen for some time now, but leaked AMD product roadmaps confirmed it that AMD FX "Vishera" is the last line of CPUs from AMD. The company will only focus on APUs from here onward, and at the very most, one could expect CPU core counts to go up from their current quad-core stale-meat since A-series "Llano," which will continue into the 2014 A-Series "Kaveri," too. Well, a grain of salt required until anything official is announced. A new ad for the Hobbit film includes blueprints to 3D print your own props. While the ads offer standard fare like links to buy tickets and check out movie trailers, there's one particularly clever component to the campaign — viewers will be able to download 3D-printing blueprints for the Key of Erebor, a prop that should feature prominently in the second part of the Hobbit film trilogy. John Selby contributed towards this SMH article about giving away too much on social media. An estimated 12 million Australians regularly use social media to update friends, family and followers. What many don’t realise is that tweets, posts and images are read, analysed and stored by the brands they are talking about. Social media has become big business for advertisers, helping them find ‘‘brand advocates’’ and measure opinions. Phoronix have a 27-way NVIDIA/AMD GPU Linux roundup. Twenty-seven different AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards were tested over the past week using the latest binary Linux drivers: AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta v9.4 and NVIDIA 331.20. All testing happened from an Intel Core i7 4770K "Haswell" system running at 4.40GHz and with Ubuntu 13.10 x86_64 using the mainline Linux 3.12 kernel. More space stuff from BlueRaven: Gamma Ray burst event believed to be "birth of a black hole" captured by Los Alamos National Laboratories robotic & computer-guided RAPTOR (RAPid Telescopes for Optical Response) system. More from Los Alamos National Laboratory here. IntelInside sent in this story about Windows 8's lack of adoption. In the past month, Windows 8's market-share growth of 0.05 per cent was actually significantly lower than that of Windows 7 (0.22 per cent). In other words, Windows 8 is actually falling farther behind its own four-year-old predecessor even today. Wednesday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 4-December-2013  03:19:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg Cooling: Titan Dragonfly 4 CPU cooler on OCClub. Titan Dragonfly 4 CPU Cooler on PureOC. Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler on PCPerspective. Video Cards: HIS Radeon R9 270 IceQ X2 2GB on Tweaktown. PowerColor R9 270X PCS+ 2 GB on TechPowerUp. Gigabyte Radeon R9 270X OC on LegitReviews. Power Supply: Corsair CS650M on HWHeaven. Fractal Design Tesla R2 650W on LegitReviews. Input Etc: CM Storm Power-RX mousepad on OCaholic. Corsair Vengeance K95 keyboard on Guru3D. ROCCAT Apuri Active USB-Hub with Mouse Bungee on Tweaktown. ROCCAT Ryos MK Glow Illuminated Gaming Mechanical Keyboard on OCClub. Portable & Prebuilt: Acer C720 Chromebook on HotHardware. Lenovo Erazer X700 Gaming Desktop PC on TechSpot. Storage: Seagate Business Storage 8-Bay Rackmount NAS on Tweaktown. QNAP TS-470 Network Attached Storage on APHNetworks. Misc: Biostar Z87X 3D Motherboard on Bjorn3D. Noontec Zoro HD Fashion Hi-Fi Headphones on NikKTech. Tuesday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 2-December-2013  21:48:18 (GMT +10) - by booj Motherboards & CPUs: AMD A10-5800K vs A10-6800K Gaming-Performance on ocaholic. Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H on ThinkComputers. Graphics Cards: Asus R9 270X DC II TOP 2 GB on techPowerUp. Asus R9 280X DirectCU II TOP 3GB on TweakTown. Storage: Lexar JumpDrive P10 32 GB USB 3.0 on techPowerUp. Seagate Wireless Plus 1 TB External HDD on Hardware Secrets. Transcend ESD200 Portable USB 3.0 SSD on TweakTown. Thecus N2560 NAS Server on NikKTech. Adata DashDrive Choice HC630 500GB External HDD on TweakTown. Corsair Flash Voyager GS 128GB on Vortez. VisionTek Data Fusion PCIe SSD Review (480GB) on The SSD Review. Cases: BitFenix Prodigy M mATX on Benchmark Reviews. Corsair Graphite 230T Mid Tower on Legit Reviews. Cooling: Cooler Master Nepton 280L AIO Liquid CPU Cooler on TweakTown. Noctua NH-U14S CPU Heatsink on Frostytech. Corsair Hydro Series H75 on Vortez. Zalman Reserator 3 MAX Ultimate Liquid CPU Cooler on TweakTown. Audio: MP4Nation Brainwavz HM9 Headphones on techPowerUp. Razer Kraken Forged Edition Headphones on Custom PC Review. Sennheiser G4ME Zero Gaming Headset (Video Review) on HardwareHeaven. SteelSeries 5Hv3 Gaming Headset on NikKTech. Diamond Xtreme Sound 7.1 XS71HD Soundcard on HCW. Portable & Mobile: Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition Tablet on HotHardware. Amazon Kindle Paperwhite E-reader on Benchmark Reviews. Nvidia Shield on OCC. Misc: Gigabyte Aivia Uranium Wireless Gaming Mouse and Macro Station (Video Review) on HardwareHeaven. Seasonic Platinum Series SS-660XP2 PSU on ocaholic. Tuesday Morning (6 Comments) (link)  Monday, 2-December-2013  13:49:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg Amazon have unveiled Prime Air, which would have your order arrive at your door by unmanned drone in 30 minutes. It's not April 1st, is it? No, but it's a fair way off, still. Bezos told the news program he anticipates the project could be rolled out within the next four to five years (with the timing impacted by the FAA's ever evolving approach to drone regulation). More here and a video here, thanks asher. TheReg flash back to the Telecom Australia Computerphone. In early 1980s Australia if you wanted a home computer, chances are you were a Commodore user, a TRS-80 user or … a Commodore user. Famous British micros from the likes of Sinclair and Oric never really got a foothold down under, leaving the field to the Vic 20, C64 and the occasional local contender like Microbee. DigitalTrends meanwhile look at some weird peripherals from the past. If you’re like most people, everything you do on your computer is controlled by a keyboard and a mouse. This setup has worked well for over three decades, but it isn’t the only way to go. Ergonomic needs and computer games that need subtle inputs have encouraged some firms to come up with some pretty bizarre peripherals over the years. Some work well. Others don’t. And one is simply disturbing. ForeignPolicy have an article about Stuxnet's secret twin. Three years after it was discovered, Stuxnet, the first publicly disclosed cyberweapon, continues to baffle military strategists, computer security experts, political decision-makers, and the general public. A comfortable narrative has formed around the weapon: how it attacked the Iranian nuclear facility at Natanz, how it was designed to be undiscoverable, how it escaped from Natanz against its creators' wishes. Major elements of that story are either incorrect or incomplete. More worrying is the fact that nuclear passwords were simple, deliberately. Today I found out that during the height of the Cold War, the US military put such an emphasis on a rapid response to an attack on American soil, that to minimize any foreseeable delay in launching a nuclear missile, for nearly two decades they intentionally set the launch codes at every silo in the US to 8 zeroes. Bing have unveiled the top global searches of 2013.. by people who use Bing. Ahem. Ladies appeared to rule 2013, since a woman was the most-searched person of the year in eight of the 12 participating countries around the world — Beyoncé reigned in the U.S., while Miley Cyrus’ highly publicized twerking made her the top-searched person in both Australia and Canada. The fan film Star Wars Downunder has been released in full. Misc Pics (27 Comments) (link)  Friday, 29-November-2013  03:01:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg Friday again! And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive. Friday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)  Friday, 29-November-2013  03:00:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg OCZ have been in trouble for a while, but they have finally filed for bankruptcy now. Apparently Toshiba have put in an offer for their assets. The Company has received an offer from Toshiba Corporation to acquire substantially all of the Company's assets in a bankruptcy proceeding. The parties have substantially completed negotiations on an asset purchase agreement and OCZ believes that all the material terms have been agreed to. Coverage on Slashdot and PC Authority, thanks PP and Sniper. Ouch - a UK man has thrown out a hard drive, forgetting it had 7,500 bitcoins on it. Buried somewhere under four feet of mud and rubbish, in the Docksway landfill site near Newport, Wales, in a space about the size of a football pitch is a computer hard drive worth more than £4m. It belonged to James Howells, who threw it out when he was clearing up his desk in mid-summer and discovered the part, rescued from a defunct Dell laptop. He found it in a drawer and put it in a bin. C|Net have listed their 2013 Tech Turkeys - it is Thanksgiving over there, after all. Some spacey stuff from BlueRaven: Awesome photo of supernova cloud and high-emission "star factory" nebula in the same shot of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Also some cool timewasters in the form of interactive solar system and comet ISON trajectory models. Lots of options to play with. Nice music too. Links posted in the General Astronomy/Space thread. Friday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 28-November-2013  21:28:00 (GMT +10) - by booj Graphics Cards: XFX R7 240 and R7 250 vs GT 640 and GT 630 on HardwareHeaven. Gigabyte AMD Radeon R9 270X WF OC on Madshrimps. GeForce GTX 760 SLI vs GTX 780 on ocaholic. Asus Radeon R9 270 DirectCU II OC on ocaholic. Storage: Corsair Flash Voyager Slider 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive on TweakTown. Western Digital Red (WD40EFRX) 4 TB NAS HDD on TechARP. OCZ Vector 150 240GB on Legion Hardware. Western Digital WD My Cloud on Megatechnews. Cases: Aerocool GT-S Black Edition on techPowerUp. NZXT Source 530 on OCC. Cooling: Antec KUHLER H2O 1250 on Vortez. SilverStone Tundra TD02 AIO CPU Cooler on PureOverclock. Thermalright AXP-100 CPU Cooler on LanOC. Audio: Sennheiser Presence Bluetooth HD Headset on TechnologyX. CM Storm Pulse-R Headset on ocaholic. Corsair Vengeance 2100 Wireless Dolby 7.1 Gaming Headset (Video Review) on HardwareHeaven. Input etc: Gigabyte Aivia Uranium Mouse on PureOverclock. Max Keyboard Blackbird Tenkeyless Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on Custom PC Review. CM Storm Reaper Mouse on Ocaholic. Networking: Rosewill RPLC-200PKIT Powerline Adapter Kit on Benchmark Reviews. Netgear R6250 Dual Band Gigabit Smart WiFi Router on eTeknix. Mobile: Apple iPad mini Retina on Techspot. LG G2 Smartphone on TweakTown. Misc: Compro TN600W IP Wifi Camera on Vortez. ASRock Z87 Fatal1ty Killer motherboard on Guru3D. Friday Morning (6 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 28-November-2013  14:12:31 (GMT +10) - by Grec Something that I'm looking forward to in the new year - The return of Cicada 3301. For the past two years, a mysterious online organization has been setting the world's finest code-breakers a series of seemingly unsolvable problems. But to what end? Not sure who would wear a vibrating "Smartwig" - But Sony patented the idea just in case. The hair-raising design, released by the US Patent, is "a wearable computing device, comprising of a wig" that has sensors "GPS", "tactile feedback" and the ability to communicate wirelessly to computing devices. And whilst we're on the topic of odd "Smart Objects", here's a tongue stud that can be used to place phone calls, play video games and drive wheelchairs. The new device, a barbell-shaped titanium ring, has a magnetic field that changes when the tongue is moved. The changes are picked up by sensors on a headset and relayed to an iPod connected to a wheelchair or computer. Researchers at ETH Zurich, a university of science and technology, have teleported information from one end of a superconducting circuit to another. The experiment has two unusual features: 1) It is the first time quantum teleportation was conducted over a circuit without the use of a powerful laser beam; and 2) the information was relayed making use of the laws of quantum physics rather than classical physics. The suns been awfully quiet of late, with sunspots dropping an awful lot of late. Solar storms can interrupt telecommunications and electronic networks on Earth. Sunspot activity can also have an impact on the Earth's climate. Science has proven that gaming can actually improve your reactions, memory and social skills. An experiment at the University of California found a game called NeuroRacer resulted in "60- to 85-year-old subjects improved to the point that they outperformed 20-year-old subjects who had never played it before." This new found ability to upgrade your ability to juggle more than one task could help you become more efficient when you work, shop or are around the home. All gaming has given me is an extra few kilos and glasses. And speaking of gaming, for anyone having issues winning the significant other over with buying a Xbox 1 - Microsoft has your back with a pre-drafted letter. Thursday Morning (11 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 27-November-2013  15:44:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg This Christmas won't be affected by a lower GST threshhold. The decision to lower the GST-threshold on imported goods worth less than $1000 has been pushed back until March next year. That means Christmas presents bought online this year from overseas will not be subject to the tax. Newegg have lost their patent dispute - although there'll no doubt be an appeal. Newegg, an online retailer that has made a name for itself fighting the non-practicing patent holders sometimes called "patent trolls," sits on the losing end of a lawsuit tonight. An eight-person jury returned to court shortly after 7:00pm and found that the company infringed all four asserted claims of a patent owned by TQP Development, a company owned by patent enforcement expert Erich Spangenberg. Futuremark have responded to the benchmark shenanigans reported on a few months ago, and have removed Samsung and HTC from their listings. Delisted devices are stripped of their rank and scores. In this instance, several Samsung and HTC devices are accused of breaking Futuremark's benchmarking rules. Futuremark didn't elaborate on which specific rule(s) these devices broke, but a look at the company's benchmarking policies reveals that hardware makers aren't allowed to make optimizations specific to 3DMark, nor are platforms allowed to detect the launch of the benchmark executable (unless it's needed to enable multi-GPU and/or there's a known conflict that would prevent it from running). We linked some reviews earlier but here's Western Digital's page on their new dual SSD+HDD drive. Introducing WD Black², the world's first 2.5-inch dual drive storage solution. The WD Black² dual drive is a completely new approach in a compromised solid-state and hybrid storage market. Finally you can have the speed of an SSD that you want and the capacity of a hard drive that you need in your notebook or all-in-one PC. Here's an incredbile bitcoin mining setup in Hong Kong. HK’s new bitcoin farm involves one meter high transparent glass tanks, copper piping, cooling machines and computer boards soaked in bubbling 3M cooling liquid. LED lights flash constantly, though the facility is cool, safe and quiet. Wednesday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 27-November-2013  01:19:29 (GMT +10) - by booj Motherboards & CPUs: ECS GANK Drone Z87H3-A3X L337 on Legit Reviews. ASRock Fatal1ty Z87 Killer on Hardware Secrets. Gigabyte Z87X-UD5 TH on Hardware Asylum. Graphics Cards: HIS R9 270X IceQ X² Turbo Boost 2 GB on techPowerUp. EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti SC SuperClocked ACX on Guru3D. Storage: Adata DashDrive Elite UE700 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive on APH Networks. Corsair Flash Voyager LS 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive on TweakTown. Western Digital Black^2 120GB SSD + 1TB HD Dual-Drive on Anandtech. Western Digital Black^2 120GB SSD + 1TB HD Dual-Drive on LanOC. Western Digital Black^2 120GB SSD + 1TB HD Dual-Drive on Techware Labs. Western Digital Black^2 120GB SSD + 1TB HD Dual-Drive on PC Perspective. Buffalo TeraStation 5400 NAS on Computing on Demand. Cases: NZXT Source 530 Full Tower on Neoseeker. Rosewill Galaxy-03 Mid-Tower on Legit Reviews. Logic Supply LGX ML300 Fanless NUC on Silent PC Review. Power Supplies: Antec High Current Gamer 750W on eTeknix. Corsair RM Series 650 W on techPowerUp. Fractal Design Integra R2 750W on ocaholic. Audio: Tesoro Kuven Devil 7.1 Virtual Gaming Headset (Video Review) on HardwareHeaven. Attitude One Tunguska 7.1 Virtual Surround USB Gaming Headset on NikKTech. Arctic S113BT Portable Bluetooth Speaker on Funky Kit. Noisehush i7 Noise Canceling Headphones on PureOverclock. Networking: Amped Wireless RTA15 High Power Dual Band 802.11AC Router on TweakTown. D-Link DIR-868L Dual Band AC1750 Wireless Router on TweakTown. Tablets: Apple iPad Air on HotHardware. Lenovo Yoga Android Tablet on Benchmark Reviews. Misc: Scythe Kaze Chrono Fan controller on Funky Kit. Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex TV HD Media Player on PC Stats. ADATA XPG v1.0 Black DDR3-1600 CL9 Memory Kit on OCIA. Wednesday Morning (2 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 26-November-2013  22:12:54 (GMT +10) - by Grec A drone hit the Sydney Harbor bridge yesterday that was launched by British man Edward Prescott. An edited version of the video uploaded to YouTube by Mr Prescott shows that the drone's camera was rolling the entire time it flew through and then into the Harbor Bridge, landed on a railway line, was picked up by Sydney Trains crew, placed in the train and taken back to their office. Researchers over at the New York University have developed a small flying machine that flies through the air like a Jellyfish, intended for monitoring traffic. The device has four wings arranged like flower petals, which pulsate up and down. Though it resembles the motion of the jellyfish in water, it is aerodynamically more similar to the flight of a moth. Its tiny motor is tethered to a power cord. The machine can fly and hover. For all of the PlayStation fans out there, here's a rather clever stop motion video on the original PlayStation, comparing it to some new and old technologies. A little while ago, a video about a homemade grenade with components you could buy AFTER having passed security in a Airport came to light - This time Evan Booth has made a blunderbuss.US computer technician Evan Booth has cobbled together an amateur arsenal in his spare time - and it is a deadly demonstration of the danger of a creative mind when applied to everyday objects. "If we're trying stop a terrorist threat at the airport," says Booth. "It's already too late." An interesting discussion is underway in the US over whether or not to implement "Kill Switches" into mobile phones in the US. Led by a district attorney in San Francisco and attorney general in New York, law enforcement would like all smartphones to contain firmware that allows a consumer to "brick" a mobile that's lost or stolen. The largest mobile phone maker in the world, Samsung, is on board with the program, and a developer of kill-switch software has offered its program to Samsung for free. CSIRO, the patent owners of WiFi, have some more bad news - The patents (As of the 26th of November) have expired meaning they no longer receive income from them. In 1992 a team of CSIRO scientists used radio-astronomy to solve the problem of radio waves bouncing off surfaces indoors, causing an echo that distorts the signal. The scientists built a fast chip that could transmit a signal while reducing the echo, a technology now used all over the world in WiFI. If you've ever thought that your friends Instagram photos look good enough to eat, well now you can. Some Instagrams look good enough to eat, especially when they're glorious food photos. You could just pop them in your mouth. With a little assist from Boomf's marshmallow printing abilities, your Instagram-eating dreams could come true. Tuesday Morning (9 Comments) (link)  Monday, 25-November-2013  13:13:48 (GMT +10) - by Agg Virgin Galactic are accepting accepting bitcoins as payment for space flights. In a blog post, Branson explained that one passenger, a female flight attendant from Hawaii, has already purchased a Virgin Galactic ticket using bitcoins and he expects "many more to follow in her footsteps." Mazzanet sent in this article about a patent battle which is worth it for this quote alone: "We've heard a good bit in this courtroom about public key encryption," said Albright. "Are you familiar with that? "Yes, I am," said Diffie, in what surely qualified as the biggest understatement of the trial. "And how is it that you're familiar with public key encryption?" "I invented it." g@z is having a flashback to the Compucolor II, which I have to admit completely passed me by back in the day - I went VIC20, Amiga, PC. Anyway: An enthusiast in the US has set out to preserve what he can of the Compucolor II. He’s uploaded hundreds of programs and disk images that can be run on a java emulator of the Compucolor OS (FCS – File Control System) at and with the disk images. Some of the programs my dad wrote are up there I believe and I’m going to dig out the old collection and see what I can contribute to the project as I ended up with the entire Compucolor Users group of Victoria disk and newsletter library. Sounds like a job for the Retro Forum! JC sent in this wooden table mod. The desk is made out of solid old-growth red wood. Not a knot anywhere. It came from a demolished hundred-year-old water tower. PCPerspective tried improving the storage of the new PlayStation 4. The most dramatic change was seen in the AC IV testing, where the drop from HDD to SSHD was 19% while the drop from HDD to SSD was an impressive 32%. Clearly the SSD is the best option but we saw some interesting results in the SSHD benchmarks. PCPerspective also consider how to build a PC from console-equivalent hardware. Education and hard work will reward those who build their own PCs, but not every bit of open source software will achieve the results that the tight integration of the Xbox One will offer casual users who are not interested in getting their hands dirty. The PC might not match the price/performance of the PS4 and the expectation is that Sony will improve the platform over the years with updates to more adequately match the Xbox in terms of media serving capabilities. This cool road-zipper machine caught my eye recently. Commuters on Interstate 15 will have some company in between rush hour commutes. Caltrans is studying the durability and performance of its Barrier-Transfer Machines, also known as "zippers." Monday Afternoon (12 Comments) (link)  Monday, 25-November-2013  04:01:01 (GMT +10) - by Agg It's curtains for Winamp, with the venerable media player being shut down next month. Much-loved media player Winamp will shutter on December 20, 2013, the company has announced, with the AOL-owned software planning to cease all of the related web services and yank the official download. The news, quietly announced alongside version 5.66 of the software, ends fifteen years of the app being offered, with the Winamp team warning that anybody wanting a copy before it’s pulled should download soon. Also making an exit is John Carmack, leaving id Software. This latest move comes after Carmack took on the role of head of technology at Oculus VR, which makes the buzzed-about Rift virtual reality headset. Though Willits essentially says that Id's always-strong technology development is on a steady course, Carmack's departure certainly marks the end of an era. Der8auer has taken an AMD CPU to over 8GHz. Today, Der8auer from Team Germany is the first to go below the 9min 30sec mark on AMD. He accomplishes this with a CPU clocked at - and we advise you to sit down for this - 8026MHz. Yes! That's right! Over 8GHz SuperPI 32M stable! That is pretty darn impressive. LG Australia are apparently investigating the smart TV spying claims from last week. But Phillip Anderson, head of public relations at LG Australia, told Fairfax in a statement on Wednesday: "LG Australia acknowledges the issues that have been identified in the UK. We take the claims very seriously and are currently investigating the situation at a local level." Owen sent in this Google BBS. Ahh, it takes me back. Monday Midday Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 25-November-2013  01:14:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg Video Cards: ASUS R9 270 Direct CU II OC 2 GB on TechPowerUp. 2560×1600: GeForce GTX 780 Ti vs Radeon R9 290X on BenchmarkReviews. GeForce GTX 760 SLI vs GTX Titan on OCaholic. Cooling: Zalman Reserator 3 Max AIO Liquid CPU Cooler on eTeknix. Antec Kühler H2O 920 CPU cooler on OCaholic. Enermax Aeolus Vegas Notebook Cooler on PureOC. Corsair H80i CPU cooler on LanOC. Input Etc: CM Storm Aluminium Keyboard, Mouse & Headset Round-up on eTeknix. SteelSeries Sensei Fnatic Mouse on LanOC. Mad Catz S.T.R.I.K.E. 3 Gaming Keyboard on NikKTech. Audio Visual: Avermedia Game Capture HD 2 on RBMods. Creative Sound Blaster ZxR Sound Card on MadShrimps. Creative Sound Blaster EVO ZxR on Vortez. CM Storm Pitch In-ear Gaming Headset on TechPowerUp. Acoustic Research ARS60 Speakers on PureOC. Motherboard & CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K vs 3770K vs 2600K Gaming-Performance on OCaholic. Storage: Thecus N2560 NAS on Vortez. Thecus N4560 Four-Bay Consumer NAS on Tweaktown. WD My Cloud Personal Cloud Server on HotHardware. OCZ Deneva 2 R 200 GB eMLC SSD on OCaholic. Corsair Flash Voyager GS 256GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive on Tweaktown. Lexar JumpDrive M10 Secure 64GB Flash Drive on eTeknix. OCZ Vertex 450 128GB SSD on NeoSeeker. SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB RAID 0 SSD on Tweaktown. Cases: Enermax Fulmo ST Midi Tower on NikKTech. BitFenix Phenom Micro-ATX on eTeknix. Tranquil PC D33217GKE NUC Case on TechPowerUp. Cooler Master Cosmos SE on TechPowerUp. Fractal Design Arc XL High Airflow Full Tower on LegitReviews. Power Supply: NZXT Hale82 V2 550W White PSU on LegitReviews. OCZ Fatal1ty 750W on Guru3D. Be Quiet! Power Supply Cable Accessories on Tweaktown. Portable & Prebuilt: MSI All-in-One Gaming PC (AG2712) on HWHeaven. EUROCOM Panther 5D High Performance Laptop on HWHeaven. Sony Smartwatch 2 SW2 for Android Smartphones on MegaTechNews.

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