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Thanks to Rezin and Baker this week! This post brought to you by eyeLikeCarrots's time machine. ;)
     
     
     
     
     
Friday Afternoon
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Friday, 30-September-2016 14:24:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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NBN Co are abandoning the Optus cables they purchased. A trial of the Optus HFC network in Queensland had shown the network "can deliver good speeds and is in satisfactory condition", a spokesman said. But on Wednesday NBN announced it would abandon the Optus HFC rollout entirely and instead deploy a new technology, fibre-to-the-distribution-point (FTTdp), to up to 700,000 premises. Internet Australia have applauded the decision.
Some big names in tech have come together to create a Partnership on AI, presumably to stop us all being enslaved by sentient pizza delivery drones. Whichever company owns the data, effectively owns AI. Right now that means companies like Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet, IBM and Microsoft have a ton of power. In an act of self-governance, these five companies came together today to announce the launch of the new Partnership on AI. The group is tasked with conducting research and promoting best practices. Practically, this means that the group of tech companies will come together frequently to discuss advancements in artificial intelligence. The group also opens up a formal structure for communication across company lines. It’s important to remember that on a day-to-day basis, these teams are in constant competition with each other to develop the best products and services powered by machine intelligence.
Blackberry have finally accepted their fate, and will stop making phones soon. The mobile phone manufacturer BlackBerry has announced that it will no longer manufacture its own smartphones after a rollercoaster 14 years in the business. Once upon a time, the QWERTY keyboard-equipped phones were the choice of businessmen, executives and even President Barack Obama. But they fell upon hard times as the world moved over to the sort of touchscreen phones made by Apple or Samsung.
NVIDIA are having a fan meetup in Melbourne in October. Simply register below, and you could be attending an evening with the NVIDIA ANZ team and have fun learning about what NVIDIA has planned in the future, get exclusive hands-on experience, play some games, win prizes and more importantly, meet with other members of our NFAN community!
Forum Projects
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Thursday, 29-September-2016 11:01:48 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's some more projects and reviews from the forums:
Elon Musk and Mars
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Wednesday, 28-September-2016 16:49:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Elon Musk continues his development into a James Bond villain without the evil, announcing an interplanetary transport system as part of his overall personal goal of making humans an interplanetary species. The first ship to go to Mars, Musk said, would be named Heart of Gold as a tribute to the ship powered by an “infinite improbability drive” from Douglas Adams’ science fiction novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. More details here.
Discussion continues in this thread in our Science forum.
Wednesday Morning Reviews
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Wednesday, 28-September-2016 08:10:07 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Motherboards:
MSI X99A XPower Gaming Titanium on ocaholic.
ASUS Rampage V Edition 10 on PC Perspective.
Storage:
SanDisk Extreme 510 Portable SSD on Hot Hardware.
Seagate IronWolf 10TB NAS HDD on TweakTown.
Plextor M8PeG 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD with Heatsink on eTeknix.
Drobo 5N 5-Bay NAS on eTeknix.
Crucial MX300 750 GB SSD on OCinside.
Samsung 850 EVO 4TB SATA III SSD on TweakTown.
QNAP TS-251A 2-Bay SOHO NAS on eTeknix.
Samsung 850 EVO 4TB SSD on Custom PC Review.
Kingston SSDNow UV400 480GB SSD on ThinkComputers.
Cooling:
Be Quiet! Silent Loop 280 on Guru3D.
Bequiet Silent Loop 240 AIO Water Cooler on Madshrimps.
Input etc:
Zalman ZM-K900M Gaming Keyboard on Benchmark Reviews.
Evoluent VerticalMouse C Right Wireless Mouse on PC Perspective.
Misc:
Patriot Viper 4 8GB DDR4 3400MHz Memory Kit on Neoseeker.
InWin Classic Series 750W Fully-Modular 80 Plus Platinum PSU on eTeknix.
TP-LINK Neffos Y5L Smartphone on Madshrimps.
Raijintek Aeneas case on techPowerUp.
Fitbit Charge 2 Fitness Band on TweakTown.
Gigabyte RX 480 8GB G1 Gaming edition meets the Red
Devil & the GTX 1060 on babeltechreviews.
GE 13868 Plug-In Outdoor Smart Switch on Bigbruin.
Tuesday Evening
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Tuesday, 27-September-2016 18:04:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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If you get a mysterious USB stick in your mailbox, don't use it - obviously. USB sticks containing harmful malware have been left in Australian letterboxes, police in Victoria have warned. Residents of Pakenham, a suburb of Melbourne, have reportedly found the unmarked sticks in the boxes. Plugging them into a computer triggers fraudulent media-streaming service offers, as well as other malware, the force said in a statement. The devices are "extremely harmful" and should not be used, police say.
HP are also annoying people by stealthily blocking aftermarket ink cartridges in their printers. And consumer advocacy group Choice says it will begin investigating whether HP has breached Australian Consumer Law. Early last week, HP printer owners using non-HP ink cartridges began to complain they were receiving error messages such as "cartridge problem", "one or more cartridges are missing or damaged" or "older generation cartridge".
NZ researchers have restored the first recordings of computer-generated music, credited to Alan Turing. The aural artefact, which paved the way for everything from synthesisers to modern electronica, opens with a staunchly conservative tune — the British national anthem God Save the King. Researchers at the University of Canterbury (UC) in Christchurch said it showed Turing — best known as the father of computing who broke the WWII Enigma code — was also a musical innovator.
ARM have a new safety processor aimed at (among other things) the autonomous car market. James McNiven, general manager for CPU and media processing groups at ARM, provided some background information about the new processor's development: "We are helping partners to meet particular market opportunities, especially in fully autonomous vehicles and robotics systems where specific functionality is required for safety-critical tasks." To meet the industry safety standards ARM has documented the strict development process, fault modelling and supporting software isolation for the Cortex-R52.
Coming soon to a CPU near you: reconfigurable chaos. “We propose utilizing chaos theory – the system’s own nonlinearity – to enable transistor circuits to be programmed to perform different tasks. A very simple nonlinear transistor circuit contains very rich patterns. Different patterns that represent different functions coexist within the nonlinear dynamics of the system, and they are selectable. We utilize these dynamics-level behaviors to perform different processing tasks using the same circuit. As a result we can get more out of less.”
Meanwhile an AMD A12-9800 APU has been overclocked to 4.8GHz on stock cooling. A Korean overclocker, Namegt, has reached 4.8GHz on AMD's new A12-9800 APU using AMD's Wraith Air cooler at a voltage of 1.325V. This is a huge improvement on the overclockability of AMD's older Kaveri APUs, which require much larger cooling solutions and higher voltage in order to achieve the same clock speeds. This overclock is 1GHz higher than A12-9800's base clock speed of 3.8GHz and 0.6GHz higher than this CPUs boost clock speeds of 4.2GHz, which is an impressive overclock given the fact that this CPU is still using AMD's reference CPU cooler design.
Audio:
Jabra ECLIPSE Wireless Headset on NikKTech
HyperX Cloud Revolver Gaming Headset on BigBruin
iClever Wireless Audio Gear on Funky Kit
Monster Fatal1ty FxM 200 Headset on LanOC
Case:
Zalman Z9 & Z11 NEO on OCC
AeroCool XPredator II Full Tower Chassis on NikKTech
Anidees AI Crystal Mid-Tower Chassis on TweakTown
In Win 303 Computer Case on APH Networks
Videocard:
Dual GTX Titan SLI for 4K and Triple Monitor Gaming on Techspot
HIS Radeon RX 480 IceQ X² Roaring Turbo 8GB GDDR5 on Funky Kit
GIGABYTE GTX 1060, 1070 & 1080 G1 Gaming on Vortez
EVGA GTX 1080 Classified Video Card on Hardware Asylum
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming Premium on HardOCP
Storage:
Kingston SSDnow UV400 480GB SSD on NikKTech
Crucial MX300 525GB SSD on Madshrimps
Misc:
Evapolar USB air conditioner on GoodGearGuide
Gigabyte Brix S GB-BSi5HT-6200 Ultra Compact SFF PC on Hot Hardware
ECS Z170-LIGHTSABER Intel LGA1151 Motherboard on TechPowerUp
OPPO F1s Selfie Expert Smartphone on TechARP
FSP Hydro G 850W Gold Power Supply on PC Perspective
If you have a Yahoo account (including Flickr etc), or had one back in 2014, you should be aware of this data breach, possibly the biggest in history. Anyway, thanks to Glock and Adam this week!
     
     
     
     
     
Case:
Enermax Ostrog ADV on Ocaholic
Cooler Master MasterCase Pro 3 Micro-ATX Chassis on eTeknix
Prebuilt PC:
Wired2Fire Diablo Elite GTX 1080 Gaming PC on eTeknix
Asrock Beebox-S HTPC on Legion Hardware
ECS LIVA One Mini-PC (H110/Skylake) on techPowerUp
Audio:
Fatal1ty by Monster FXM 100 Over-Ear Gaming Headphones on PC Perspective
Creative Aurvana ANC Headset on Madshrimps
Storage:
Mach Xtreme Barium 64GB USB-C Flash Drive on TweakTown
Sonnet Fusion Thunderbolt 3 PCIe Flash Drive 512GB on TechSpot
PSU:
Gigabyte XTREME GAMING XP1200M PSU on Guru3D
Seasonic Prime 850W on JonnyGuru
Cooling:
Cooler Master Seidon 240V AIO CPU Cooler on eTeknix
Cooler Master MasterLiquid Pro 240mm AIO Liquid CPU Cooler on Techgage
Misc:
Sumo Air Inflatable Lounge Chair on Think Computers
Nest Outdoor Security Camera on Phoronix
Hakko FX-888D Soldering Station on OCInside
FIFA 17 (Xbox) on Gaming Nexus
GE 12718 Z-Wave Plug-In Smart Dimmer on BigBruin
Gigabyte X150M-PRO ECC Xeon Motherboard on TweakTown
MSI GT73VR 6RE TITAN SLI on Vortez
Wednesday Afternoon
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Wednesday, 21-September-2016 17:23:57 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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1TB SD cards are on the way, with Western Digital and SanDisk unveiling prototypes. Except it's the same prototype, because SanDisk is part of WD now. I knew that. The SDXC card is only a prototype at this point, with no details available on price or release date, but it's still an impressive milestone. As SanDisk owners Western Digital points out, it was only 16 years ago that the company introduced its first 64 megabyte SD card, while two years ago they debuted the 512GB card, which was then the world's biggest. Things have moved fast, though, and compared to the 64MB card, today's 1TB version offers 16,384 times more storage.
Samsung meanwhile announced their new NVMe M.2 SSDs. In the past, Samsung has already released consumer oriented of their enterprise/OEM SSDs with their 950 Pro, which was a consumer grade version of their highly successful SP951 SSD. As such this 960 Evo is expected to deliver performance that is similar to Samsung's existing PM961, which uses the same TLC V-NAND and Polaris memory controller. More info and specs on Anandtech.
PC Perspective compared four large CPU air coolers. Many of the large air coolers on the market are built for ultra-efficient cooling at whisper-quiet volume levels. With massive heatsinks (and sometimes pairs of them) they can often cool demanding CPU loads with minimal fan speeds, and this usually results in very low noise output. Another advantage is the increased thermal headroom such a cooler provides, which can allow for overclocking without the need for liquid cooling - or even much additional noise.
Rob sent more info about the GTX970 class action. Unsurprisingly it's only open to US-based purchasers. Nvidia says it will pay each buyer of the graphics card $30 and will pay an additional $1.3 million in attorneys’ fees, according to settlement documents. The overall settlement amount was not publicly disclosed within court papers, however Nvidia agreed to pay all consumers who purchased the GTX 970 graphics card and indicated there would not be a cap on the total amount it would pay consumers.
I quite like this retro art project. What would you do if you could travel back in time? Assassinate Marilyn Monroe? Go on a date with Hitler? Obviously. But here's what I'd do after that: grab all the modern technology I could find, take it to the late 70's, superficially redesign it all to blend in, start a consumer electronics company to unleash it upon the world, then sit back as I rake in billions, trillions, or even millions of dollars.
Also with some retro flair is The Floppotron, thanks gasman. The floppy drives are back with multiplied force. Cover of Imperial March by computer hardware orchestra. Which song would you like to hear next? This one and the Game of Thrones theme are also pretty impressive.
Wednesday Afternoon Reviews
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Wednesday, 21-September-2016 13:32:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
MSI X99A Tomahawk Motherboard on HWAsylum.
MSI X99A Workstation Motherboard Runs Nicely On Linux on Phoronix.
MSI X99A XPower Gaming Titanium on ThinkComputers.
Cooling:
MasterLiquid Pro 240 Cooler on BenchmarkReviews.
Reeven Brontes RC-1001b CPU Cooler on APHNetworks.
Video Cards:
MSI GTX 1070 Gaming Z 8 GB on TechPowerUp.
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1080 ArcticStorm on Guru3D.
KFA2 GeForce GTX 1070 EX OC 8GB on MadShrimps.
The TITAN X vs. GTX 1070 SLI on BabelTechReviews.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Motorola Moto Z Force Droid on LanOC.
MSI GE72VR 6RF Apache Pro GTX 1060 Gaming Laptop on eTeknix.
Storage:
QNAP TVS-682 (Core i3-6100) 4+2 Bay Turbo vNAS on Tweaktown.
Samsung SSD 750 EVO SATA Solid State Drive on HotHardware.
TerraMaster D5-300 USB 3.0 External Hard Drive RAID Enclosure on NikKTech.
Seagate Backup Plus Hub 8TB External Drive on Tweaktown.
ADATA Ultimate SU800 512GB SSD on LegitReviews.
Silicon Power Blaze B21 64GB USB 3.1 Flash Drive on MadShrimps.
Misc:
Linksys WRT 1200 AC Dual-Band Wireless Router with ExpressVPN on FunkyKit.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Performance Analysis on OCClub.
Fnatic Gear Rush Pro keyboard on Vortez.
Photography Gallery
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Monday, 19-September-2016 11:36:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's a quick snapshot of what people are up to in our Photography Gallery forum.
Monday Morning
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Monday, 19-September-2016 10:55:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Stephen Conroy has retired from Parliament, claiming the NBN as his greatest contribution to the nation. The 20-year stalwart of the upper house quietly tabled his resignation speech without delivering it to parliament, ending a period of service that saw him fill the roles of Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Digital Productivity.
Meanwhile New Zealand is about to get faster internet than us. Chorus CEO Mark Ratcliffe said by “championing gigabit residential and business services” New Zealand will be “catapulted up the league tables of broadband speed rankings”. The current average download speeds across the Chorus network is 30.5 megabits per second (Mbps) but the upgrade will allow users to achieve download speeds approaching 1000Mbps and uploads of up to 500Mbps.
Nokia are experimenting with terabit-speed fibre. Nokia Bell Labs, Deutsche Telekom T-Labs, and the Technical University of Munich will be showing off how a technique called Probabilistic Constellation Shaping, or PCS, can deliver blistering 1Tbps speeds over a fiber connection. The work provides more momentum behind the push to bring terabit networks to reality. It follows another optical breakthrough earlier this year by researchers at University College London, who achieved speeds of 1.25Tbps. To put that in perspective, they noted it was fast enough to download an entire Games of Thrones series in high definition within one second.
Logitech are acquiring Saitek, makers of flight sim peripherals. PC accessory company Logitech has acquired the Saitek brand and line of flight sim controller assets from MadCatz for $13 million in cash, the company announced today via press release. Saitek is best known for its flight simulator peripherals that are commonly used in games like Elite: Dangerous and Microsoft Flight Simulator X.
VR heads closer to mainstream, with the first million-dollar game being reported. According to Culver City, California-based Survios, Raw Data, available only for HTC’s high-end Vive, has become the first consumer VR game to hit $1 million in sales in a month. In addition, the company said, at least 20% of all Vive owners have purchased the $40 first-person shooter, and it became the first-ever VR game to top the charts at Steam, a leading game platform and ranking site.
DigitalTrends have a flash from the past, looking back at SoftRAM and snake oil. When Windows 95 launched in August 1995, there was only one piece of software available that was specifically written for the brand new operating system. SoftRAM 95 was a utility intended to double a system’s memory without the need for a hardware upgrade, and it was in stock at retail locations around the country as consumers ventured out to make the jump from Windows 3.1. There was only one problem. SoftRAM 95 didn’t work.
If you're after a big read, this ArsTechnica article on how the internet works from a few months ago should keep you busy. We’re not simply talking about the wonders of TCP/IP or pervasive Wi-Fi hotspots, though those are vitally important as well. No, we’re talking about the big infrastructure: the huge submarine cables, the vast landing sites and data centres with their massively redundant power systems, and the elephantine, labyrinthine last-mile networks that actually hook billions of us to the Internet. And perhaps even more importantly, as our reliance on omnipresent connectivity continues to blossom, our connected device numbers swell, and our thirst for bandwidth knows no bounds, how do we keep the Internet running? How do Verizon or Virgin reliably get 100 million bytes of data to your house every second, all day every day? Well, we’re going to tell you over the next 7,000 words.
Monday Morning Reviews
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Monday, 19-September-2016 10:06:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
ASRock E3V5 WS Workstation Motherboard on FunkyKit.
MSI X99A Gaming Pro Carbon Motherboard on Guru3D.
MSI Z170A MPOWER Gaming Titanium on Modders-Inc.
GIGABYTE P55W v6 on Vortez.
Cooling:
Cryorig C7 CPU Cooler on OCInside.
DeepCool Captain 240 EX AIO Liquid CPU Cooler on NeoSeeker.
Audio Visual:
Dell UltraSharp 4K UP3216Q 32-inch Monitor on TechSpot.
OZONE TriFX In-Ear Pro Gaming Headset on NikKTech.
Sennheiser MKE 2 Digital Lapel Microphone (for iPhone) on FunkyKit.
Cases:
BitFenix Aurora Mid-Tower on Tweaktown.
In Win 509 E-ATX case on OCAholic.
Fractal Design Define Nano S on ThinkComputers.
Rosewill Cullinan on TechPowerUp.
Video Cards:
Gigabyte Radeon RX 480 G1 GAMING on Guru3D.
Sapphire RX480 8GB Nitro+ on LanOC.
Input Etc:
Fnatic Gear Flick Mouse on TechPowerUp.
Logitech G900 Chaos Spectrum Gaming Mouse on Tweaktown.
Fractal Design Define Nano S on ThinkComputers.
Cooler Master MasterKeys Pro S RGB on TechPowerUp.
SteelSeries Apex M500 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on LegitReviews.
Storage:
Samsung SSD 850 Pro 128 GB on OCInside.
Crucial MX300 1TB SSD on LegitReviews.
Seagate 8TB Backup Plus Hub on BigBruin.
Synology DS416play 4-bay NAS on MadShrimps.
Sonnet Tempo AHCI PCIe AIC SSD on Tweaktown.
Networking:
Rivet Networks Killer E2500 Gigabit Ethernet Controller on HotHardware.
Actiontec MoCA WCB6200Q Wireless Network Extender and ECB6200 Network Adapter on PCPerspective.
Portable & Prebuilt:
LG G5 smartphone on HotHardware.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga on HotHardware.
Misc:
Sumo Air Lounger Self-Inflatable Chair on APHNetworks.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided game on TechReport.
Thermaltake TTMod Sleeve Cable on FunkyKit.
ADATA XPG Dazzle DDR4-2800 16GB Memory Kit on Tweaktown.
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