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October 2012 |
Wednesday Evening
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Wednesday, 31-October-2012 20:42:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Disney have bought Lucasfilm and already have plans to release another Star Wars trilogy. In a shocking announcement linking two of the best-known names in the movie business, Disney said today that it is buying Lucasfilm, maker of the "Star Wars" films, for $4.05 billion. In addition to bringing the "Star Wars" franchise under the Disney umbrella, the deal also means that Disney will now be the studio behind "Star Wars: Episode 7," which it said is slated to be released in 2015. Disney also said that it will subsequently release Episodes 8 and 9, and then release a new "Star Wars" film every two or three years. Discussion here.
Choice Magazine have revealed Australia's shonkiest products. "The Shonky awards serve as a reminder that businesses cannot provide misleading, less than truthful or dangerous products to consumers," said CHOICE spokesperson, Ingrid Just.
It seems the recent iOS Maps incident has caused a senior exec shakedown at Apple. The biggest of the changes involved the departure of Scott Forstall, an Apple veteran who for several years ran software development for Apple’s iPad and iPhone products. Mr. Forstall was an important executive at the company and the one who, in many respects, seemed to most closely embody the technology vision of Steven P. Jobs, the former chief executive of Apple who died a year ago.
Tech Report have a Windows 8 System Guide. We've refreshed our famous system guide to account for AMD's new A- and FX-series processors, the latest GPU releases, and of course, the arrival of Windows 8.
Wednesday Morning Reviews
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Wednesday, 31-October-2012 10:57:09 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Motherboards & CPUs:
Asus Maximus V Extreme on Bjorn3D.
MSI Z77A-GD80 with Thunderbolt on PC Perspective.
MSI FM2-A85XA-G65 on t-break.
AMD Piledriver FX-8350 on Vortez.
ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 (A85X) Motherboard on eTeknix.
Storage:
Vantec NST-D400SU3 NexStar Dual Bay Hard Drive Dock on Pro-Clockers.
Intel 335 240 GB SSD on HardcoreWare.
CineRAID CR-H212 on Techreaction.
Mach Xtreme MX-ES 16GB USB 3.0 on PureOverclock.
Intel 335 Series SSD on The SSD Review.
Cooling:
Corsair Hydro H100 Water Cooler on Frostytech.
Xigmatek VENUS XP-SD1266 CPU Cooler on NikKTech.
Deepcool ICE BLADE PRO V2.0 CPU Cooler on Hardware Secrets.
Input etc:
Epic Gear Medusa Gaming Mouse on XtremeComputing.
MadCatz S.T.R.I.K.E.7 Keyboard on eTeknix.
AZiO KB505U Large Print 3 Color Backlit Keyboard on TweakTown.
Steelseries Kana gaming mouse CS: Global Offensive Limited Edition on Funky Kit.
Cooler Master Storm Skorpion Mouse Bungee on TweakTown.
Cooler Master Recon, Skorpion, & Speed RXL Mouse & Accessories on Neoseeker.
Portables & Prebuilt:
Lenovo ThinkCentre M92z All-In-One Desktop PC on Silent PC Review.
Apple MacBook Pro (13-inch, Retina) on TechReviewSource.
Misc:
Silverstone SFX Series ST45SF-G 450w PSU on techPowerUp.
Lantronix xPrintServer Home for iOS on PC Perspective.
Asus GeForce GTX 680 & GTX 670 DirectCU II Top on Legit Reviews.
Optimus Prime Chicken Coop
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Tuesday, 30-October-2012 15:47:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I can't really find the words to describe this project from shOOter---, so I'll simply use its name: OPTIMUS PRIME CHICKEN COOP! :)
click for the worklog!
Tuesday Afternoon
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Tuesday, 30-October-2012 14:49:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Our thoughts are with those suffering the effects of Hurricane Sandy. The reports coming in from New York City are pretty grim at the moment. Updates are being posted in this thread.
Google cancelled their Android event as the storm approached, but still announced new tablets and phones and a new Android 4.2, "Jelly Bean". Android 4.2 isn't a complete overhaul of the software, but adds such features as a new keyboard, wireless video streaming services, a 360-degree photo feature, and a new Google Now service. Lots of discussion in our Google Android Forum.
Mawson sent in this Myst book project. Inside the book is a full desktop computer, completely self-contained without any external wires or hardware. In the above photo, the embedded screen isn't just showing a still photo or a video: it's running a full copy of realMyst PC edition. Onboard is a copy of all the Myst games. It's fast enough it plays all of them smoothly (even End of Ages at ~30fps). You play the games by touching the touch-screen.
Everything changes in V8 Supercars next year, and Nissan have unveiled their entry, an Altima with a V8 engine from a Patrol. When the final homologation process is complete the team will begin testing the first Nissan Altima V8 Supercar along with the construction of the three other cars. Four Nissan Altima V8 Supercars will make their race debut at the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide, South Australia on March 2 2013.
Also in motoring, but I'm not sure if it's nationwide or just NSW, you'll need a phone-holder gadget instead of your hand or lap while driving now. Authorities warn there will be no grace period for drivers who flout the rules that come into effect from Thursday. The only way motorists will be able to use their phone to make or receive calls is if it's sitting in a cradle mounted on the dash.
IBM have made a breakthrough towards carbon nanotube CPUs. The I.B.M. scientists at the T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., have been able to pattern an array of carbon nanotubes on the surface of a silicon wafer and use them to build hybrid chips with more than 10,000 working transistors.
Meanwhile AMD have plans for new 64-bit ARM processors for servers. AMD’s first ARM technology-based processor will be a highly-integrated, 64-bit multicore System-on-a-Chip (SoC) optimized for the dense, energy-efficient servers that now dominate the largest data centers and power the modern computing experience. The first ARM technology-based AMD Opteron™ processor is targeted for production in 2014 and will integrate the AMD SeaMicro Freedom™ supercompute fabric, the industry’s premier high-performance fabric.
Tuesday Morning Reviews
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Tuesday, 30-October-2012 07:17:54 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Motherboards & CPUs:
ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 on Overclockers Club.
Gigabyte Z77X-UP7 on Bjorn3D.
EVGA Z75 SLI on Hardcoreware.
Storage:
Vantec MRK-425ST-BK EZ Swap F4 Quad Bay 2.5" SATA SSD/HDD Rack on Pro-Clockers.
Intel 335 Series SSDs on Tech Report.
Intel 335 Series 240GB SSD on PC Perspective.
Intel 335 Series 240GB SSD on Benchmark Reviews.
Intel 335 Series 240GB SSD on Legit Reviews.
Intel 335 Series 240GB SSD on Anandtech.
Cases:
Gigabyte Luxo M10 Case on Hardware Secrets.
Fractal Design Define R4 on APH Networks.
Cooling:
be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 2 CPU Cooler on Vortez.
Zalman CNPS9900DF Twin Tower CPU Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Zotac ZBOX nano XS AD11 PLUS on techPowerUp.
Alienware M18x R2 Gaming Laptop on HotHardware.
Asus Vivo Tab RT on TechReviewSource.
HTC Windows Phone 8X on Anandtech.
Input etc:
Ozone Xenon Gaming Mouse on eTeknix.
Cooler Master Storm Recon Optical Gaming Mouse on TweakTown.
Misc:
CM Storm Ceres 400 Ultra-Portable Gaming Headset on Ninjalane.
Asus VG278HE 27” 144Hz Gaming Monitor on Hardware Canucks.
Motoring Worklogs
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Monday, 29-October-2012 21:22:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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One busy corner of OCAU is our Motoring Forum. Here's a few interesting projects from the Motoring Worklogs subforum:
Monday Evening
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Monday, 29-October-2012 20:51:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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It's being suggested that Wikipedia is filling up, with the number of edits and new articles slowing dramatically. It may seem impossible for an encyclopedia of everything to ever near completion, but at least for the major articles on topics like big wars, important historical figures, central scientific concepts, the English-language Wikipedia's pretty well filled out.
The EFF have won renewals of certain exemptions to the DMCA, covering areas like smartphone jailbreaking and video remixing. "If you bought your gadget, you own it, and you should be able to install whatever software you please without facing potential legal threats," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "We're pleased the Copyright Office renewed our smartphone jailbreaking exemption request, but we're disappointed that it couldn't see that consumers deserve the same rights for all the gadgets they own. We'll be back with more exemption requests in the next rulemaking, and we're hopeful the Copyright Office will keep moving in the right direction."
There's another world's fastest supercomputer on the way. Titan, the U.S. Department of Energy's top open science computer, is going live on Monday with an upgrade that will likely make it the fastest supercomputer on the planet. At 20 petaflops -- that's 20 quadrillion calculations each second -- Titan outperforms by four petaflops the DOE's Sequoia supercomputer, which has held the crown since June.
BenchmarkReviews have an article detailing the fall of OCZ in recent times. In August, OCZ annouced that their Chief Financial Officer, Arthur F. Knapp Jr., would retire from the company. A few weeks later OCZ would sharply reduce Q2-2013 revenue guidance and on 17 September 2012, OCZ Technology Group's Board of Directors forced the resignation of Ryan Petersen.
From mpot, an idea to deflect problem asteroids using paintballs. As demonstrated in the video below, a pair of perfectly-timed white paintball rounds should be enough to knock an asteroid off its current trajectory, but the really clever bit happens after. By coating the asteroid's surface in white paint its albedo (reflectivity) would increase. The highly-reflective asteroid would then be taken further off course by the pressure of the sun's photons bouncing off the white surface.
Shaun spotted this cool Apollo 11 moon landing recreation, using data traces from the actual event. Over 43 years ago, the entire nation watched as three men explored the unknown. Watch, listen, and relive the excitement of the Apollo 11 lunar landing as experienced minute-by-minute by the courageous crew of Apollo 11 and Mission Control.
Yaleman meanwhile noticed this video about the first talking clock in Melbourne in 1954.
Monday Morning Reviews
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Monday, 29-October-2012 10:28:02 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Graphics Cards:
HIS Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition on Rage3D.
MSI Geforce GTX 650 Ti 1GB Power Edition on TweakTown.
Storage:
Lexar JumpDrive S73 16GB USB3 Flash Drive on Funky Kit.
OCZ Vertex 4 512GB SSD on VR-Zone.
Cases:
Xigmatek Asgard 381 Mid-Tower on eTeknix.
Bitfenix Prodigy mini-itx on Rbmods.
AzzA Solano 1000 on OCmodshop.
HighSpeed PC Top Deck Tech Station on ThinkComputers.
Raidmax Orion Case on Overclockers Club.
In-Win GRone on PureOverclock.
Cooling:
Zalman CNPS9900DF CPU Cooler on Hardware Secrets.
Cooler Master Excalibur 120mm Fan on eTeknix.
Input etc:
Func Surface 1030 XL Gaming Mouse Pad on HardwareHeaven.
SteelSeries Free Mobile Wireless Controller on HardwareHeaven.
Audio:
Plantronics GameCom 780 7.1 Surround Sound Headset on NikKTech.
CM Storm Ceres-400 Portable Gaming Headset on TweakTown.
Logitech UE Boombox on techPowerUp.
Steelseries Siberia V2 Frost USB-Powered Headset on Legit Reviews.
Palo Alto Cubik Speakers on Techreaction.
Memory:
G.Skill 2x4GB DDR3-2666 C11 Memory Kit on Anandtech.
GeIL Evo Veloce 2x8GB DDR3-2400 C11 on Anandtech.
Misc:
HP Spectre One all in one on t-break.
Photography Gallery
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Sunday, 28-October-2012 20:56:57 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's a quick snapshot of what people are up to in our Photography Gallery forum.
Australian MotoGP
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Sunday, 28-October-2012 15:33:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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On Ch10 in a few minutes the Australian MotoGP race will kick off. We've seen good results from Australians in Moto3 and Moto2 earlier today, but now the big bikes are up. This is Casey Stoner's last visit to Phillip Island as he is retiring from the sport at the end of the season, with two World Championships under his belt. His fitness has been a cause of concern in the last few rounds, but surely he'll want to win this race more than any other in his career. So, tune in, and join in the discussion towards the end of this thread!
Saturday Night
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Saturday, 27-October-2012 23:39:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Windows 8 came out yesterday as expected, with coverage on PC World, TechReviewSource, MaximumPC, Tech Report and lots of other places. Lots of discussion going on in our Windows Operating Systems forum.
The Internet Archive recently celebrated 10 Petabytes of cultural material saved on their servers. On Thursday, 25 October, hundreds of Internet Archive supporters, volunteers, and staff celebrated addition of the 10,000,000,000,000,000th byte to the Archive’s massive collections.
There's another de-blurring program out called SmartDeblur. With photos, out-of-focus used to be a permanent condition. Not any more. De-blurring algorithms, written by people who paid lots of attention in math class, reduce and sometimes almost eliminate several kinds of blurring: incorrect focus, motion blur, and Gaussian blur. Which is why you should pattern-fill things you are actually trying to obscure.
3D printing is a hugely exciting new area of technology, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are hoping to make sure it doesn't get locked up in patent battles. EFF and the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society are working together to use this new process to challenge patent applications that particularly threaten growing 3D printing technologies. As a first step, we are evaluating 3D printing patent applications currently pending before the Patent Office to identify potential target applications.
Yaleman spotted some free codes for plants vs zombies, in what appears to be a drive to promote dental care for kids. This Halloween, the ADA and PopCap Games are redefining what a Halloween “treat” can be… by giving FUN instead of candy. We’re giving away Plants vs. Zombies™ download games as a sugar-free alternative, and you can join in the fun.
Also from yaleman, today's timewaster is Typing Karaoke!
Thanks to wojee and Davo1111 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
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Friday, 26-October-2012 13:24:39 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Sony's Playstation 3 seems to have been hacked again, with no possible fix. The release of the new custom firmware - and the LV0 decryption keys in particular - poses serious issues. While Sony will almost certainly change the PSN passphrase once again in the upcoming 4.30 update, the reveal of the LV0 key basically means that any system update released by Sony going forward can be decrypted with little or no effort whatsoever. More info here. Keep an eye out for more updates in our Sony Consoles forum.
I missed this earlier, but the Prime Minister of New Zealand has apologised to Kim Dotcom. “I apologize to Mr. Dotcom,” Prime Minister John Key said on Thursday, according to TVNZ. “I apologize to New Zealanders because every New Zealander that sits within the category of having permanent residency or is a New Zealand citizen is entitled to be protected from the law when it comes to the G.C.S.B., and we failed to provide that appropriate protection for him.”
The robot apocalypse looms ever closer, with robots cooperating and working together to perform simple tasks like the enslavement of all humanity, thanks Gunna. "Spatially Targeted Communication and Self-Assembly," by Nithin Mathews, Anders Lyhne Christensen, Rehan O'Grady, and Marco Dorigo, from Universite Libre de Bruxelles and Instituto Universitario de Lisboa, was presented at IROS 2012 in Vilamoura, Portugal.
Tech Report look closer into the AMD Gaming Evolved program. The number of games bearing the AMD Gaming Evolved logo seems to be growing exponentially. Why is that? We've traveled to AMD's offices and spoken to game developers in order to find out what's been happening behind the scenes.
DangerousMinds have an article about Facebook's pay to promote system. We've seen this happen with OCAU posts on our FB page, where people who have "Liked" us, indicating they want to recieve our updates, are not recieving them unless we "pay to promote" each individual post. FB are a free service and they can run it how they like, and for a business page it makes sense to pay to promote the occasional post, but I notice you can now pay to promote your posts as an individual too. How long until your friends stop seeing your idle musings unless you pay to put it in front of them? Would anyone pay to let their friends know where they are and what they're up to? Naturally I am constantly seeing a particular commercial (and presumably paid-to-promote) "Like" from a friend of mine who I know barely uses Facebook, so I assume the business has paid FB to promote them to my friend's friends. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see where FB go with this model in the future.
Friday Morning Reviews
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Friday, 26-October-2012 11:31:34 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Motherboards & CPUs:
Asus F2A85-M Pro microATX FM2 on Silent PC Review.
Gigabyte Z77X-UP7 on HardwareHeaven.
Asus Sabertooth Z77 on Hardware Secrets.
AMD FX-8350 Processor on Xbit Labs.
AMD Vishera CPU performance on Guru3D.
AMD FX-8350 Processor on TechwareLabs.
Asus F2A85-M PRO on Vortez.
Gigabyte GA-F2A85X-UP4 on PureOverclock.
Storage:
Western Digital VelociRaptor 1TB 2.5" HDD on eTeknix.
Synology DS213+ NAS on techPowerUp.
PNY XLR8 Pro 480GB SSD on The SSD Review.
Cooling:
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 2 CPU Cooler on eTeknix.
Swiftech Maelstrom Standalone Bay Reservoir on TweakTown.
Input:
ROCCAT Kone XTD Mouse on Vortez.
Speedlink Kudos RS Gaming Mouse on Benchmark Reviews.
Portables & Mobiles:
Toshiba Satellite U925t on TechReviewSource.
Cyberpower X6-9120 Gaming Notebook on Bjorn3D.
Dell XPS 12 on TechReviewSource.
Samsung Galaxy Note II Smartphone on HotHardware.
Misc:
Patriot Memory Intel Extreme Masters 1866MHz DDR3 Memory Kit on Futurelooks.
Aerocool XPredator X1 Evil Black Edition Case on Overclockers Club.
Antec High Current Pro 1000W Platinum PSU on Legit Reviews.
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 25-October-2012 15:24:01 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Mr.T sends word that Adam Internet have been bought by Telstra. Executive director and sole shareholder Mr Hicks would not confirm the $55 million takeover sum. But he said the deal would ensure the jobs of 200 SA-based staff and survival of a business which had about 25 per cent of the local broadband market. Mr Hicks, who began the business from his Flagstaff Hill home in 1984, said he had staved off dozens of takeover offers over the years, including one from iiNet two months before it bought Internode for $105 million in 2011.
Apple have a new iPad Mini - Engadget covered the launch. There's also a new iMac, which includes some new NVIDIA GPUs. The new GeForce GTX 680MX and GTX 675MX are equipped with more CUDA cores than their M variants. GeForce GTX 680MX is now considered the fastest mobile GPU, since it has full 1536 CUDA cores known from desktop GTX 680 with Kepler GK104.
As part of their plan to have us explore the world from our PC chairs, Google have been trekking the Grand Canyon for Street View. On its first official outing, the Street View team is using the Trekker—a wearable backpack with a camera system on top—to traverse the Grand Canyon and capture 360-degree images of one of the most breathtaking natural landscapes on the planet.
CNET UK went to a recent 3D printer conference to see the current state of the art. Experts from industries as diverse as fashion, movie production, and architecture are taking advantage of the new technology to assist them creatively. That doesn't necessarily mean we'll all be wearing clothes and shoes melded from spools of plastic in the future, but the speed and relative low cost of printing has significantly simplified the process for sampling and testing new designs.
Microsoft's Windows 8 event will be tonight our time, and PCWorld wonder what we don't already know about it. Windows 8 is the new operating system that will run on desktop PCs, Ultrabooks, hybrids, all-in-ones and almost all tablets—basically any hardware stuffed with x86 silicon. Windows RT is the system that runs on low-cost, ARM processor-based tablets, of which only a small handful have been announced.
Showing that fanboys from either camp are just as annoying, there's a video of what Android fanatics say, following up on the earlier Apple fanatics say one. :)
Gigabyte have a questionnaire with prizes.
Thursday Morning Reviews
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Thursday, 25-October-2012 01:33:38 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Motherboards & CPUs:
MSI Big Bang Z77 MPower on Bjorn3D.
AMD "Vishera" FX-8350 & Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z on PureOverclock.
AMD FX-8350 on Legit Reviews.
AMD FX-8350 on Bjorn3D.
Asus F2A55-M Motherboard on t-break.
Graphics Cards:
PowerColor DEVIL13 Radeon HD 7990 6GB on TweakTown.
MSI GTX 650 Ti Power Edition on PureOverclock.
Matrox DualHead2Go External Multi-Display Adaptor on Overclockers Club.
MSI GEFORCE GTX 650 1GB Power Edition on TweakTown.
Palit GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB JetStream on eTeknix.
Storage:
Seagate 1TB Back Up Plus USB 3.0 Portable HDD on Legit Reviews.
Mach Xtreme MX-DS Turbo 120 GB SLC on techPowerUp.
Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB SSD on Silent PC Review.
Cases:
NZXT Phantom 820 on Hardware Secrets.
NZXT Phantom 820 on techPowerUp.
CM Storm Scout 2 on OCinside.
CM Storm Scout 2 on Vortez.
In-Win BUC on OCmodshop.
Cooling
Silverstone HE01 CPU Heatsink on Ninjalane.
Glacialtech Igloo 5761 Silent Heatsink on Frostytech.
Tablets:
Asus Vivo Tab RT on Hot Hardware.
Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 Tablet on TweakTown.
Audio:
Razer BlackShark Battlefield 3 Edition PC Gaming Headset on eTeknix.
I-MEGO Throne Headset on Techreaction.
Misc:
Patriot Intel Extreme Masters DDR3-2133 16GB Memory Kit on ThinkComputers.
LG ND5520 Docking Station on t-break.
Razer Naga MMO Gaming Mouse on ThinkComputers.
Super Flower Golden Green 350W PSU on Silent PC Review.
Canon S110 Camera on Gizmodo.
Recipes by RETARD
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Tuesday, 23-October-2012 18:27:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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We need to bestow some kind of OCAU Master Chef award on RETARD, I think. Despite his unfortunate nickname he's a bit of a demon in the kitchen, and has posted these threads since my last Geek Food roundup!
Tuesday Afternoon
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Tuesday, 23-October-2012 17:46:58 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Simon Hackett from Internode has a presentation about deploying IPv6 in Australia. On October 18th 2012 in Melbourne, I delivered a presentation about the history and current deployment status of IPv6 into the national customer base of Internode. If you’re interested, you can take a look at that presentation in a couple of ways.
Meanwhile Steve Johnson has an article on SMH about why he thinks the NBN will kill TV. Australian television broadcasters are at the very same tipping point newspapers reached a few years ago, just before their problems became near-terminal. While new technology is already eating away at TV's margins, faster broadband speeds will demolish the business model altogether.
Scientists have rebuilt Flossie, the oldest working British computer. In a Kent shed, two scientists have been working for nine years to refurbish (re-boot rather) one of the world’s oldest computers. The five-ton Flossie is good enough (pun intended) to run a digital watch; so, theoretically, you would need millions of them to run a basic 8GB smartphone. However, what interests us is the pure intent and devotion that has gone into the remaking of the oldest working British computer.
Amazon's cloud hosting service had major issues recently, taking down some high-profile websites. AWS's massive computing footprint has been estimated to generate 1% of all Internet traffic, with nearly one-third of Internet users accessing sites that use AWS daily, according to a report from DeepField Networks, which provides cloud mapping capabilities.
Speaking of Amazon, the number of people I know who are addicted to their Kindles seems to grow almost daily, but here's a cautionary tale from Matt. Linn travels a lot and therefore has, or should I say had, a lot of books on her Kindle, purchased from Amazon. Suddenly, her Kindle was wiped and her account was closed. Being convinced that something wrong had happened, she sent an e-mail to Amazon, asking for help.
Anandtech report on AMD's new Catalyst 12.11 and game bundles. AMD’s holiday plans will be taking a two-pronged approach. The first prong (and likely to be the greater interest to most of our readers) will be the release of a new performance-optimized driver branch for AMD Graphics Core Next hardware. The second prong will be what can only be described as an incredibly aggressive series of game bundles, with AMD capitalizing on their much improved developer relations offering vouchers for multiple different games. Coverage on TechPowerUp and PC Perspective too.
Trevor68 sent word that PAX is coming to Australia in 2013, with tickets on sale now. The organizers behind the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) today announced that a new show is coming to Melbourne, Australia, running from July 19-21, 2013. Discussion here.
Gaakor warns that the latest CPU-Z downloads seem to have some annoying toolbar/"security" stuff bundled with them.. so be careful. Apparently there's a .zip option which doesn't have the extra stuff in it.
AMD FX-8350 'Vishera' reviews
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Tuesday, 23-October-2012 16:04:42 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Today marks the launch of AMD's Vishera AM3+ processors. These CPU's use the updated 'Piledriver' architecture. Most reviews focus on the top FX-8350 model.
Anandtech
Benchmark Reviews
eTeknix
Futurelooks
Guru3D
Hardcoreware
[H]ardOCP
Hardware Heaven
Hardware Secrets
Hardware Canucks
Hexus
Hot Hardware
Legion Hardware
Overclockers Club
PC Perspective
techPowerUp
Tech Report
Tech Spot
Toms Hardware
VR-Zone
There's plenty of ongoing discussion in the AMD forum.
Tuesday Morning Reviews
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Tuesday, 23-October-2012 10:34:33 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Motherboards & CPUs
Asus M5A99X EVO on Vortez.
Gigabyte X79-UP4 on Vortez.
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP7 on PureOverclock.
A8-5600K vs. Pentium G2120 CPU on Hardware Secrets.
Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 FM2 on [H]ardOCP.
Graphics Cards:
HIS Radeon HD 7750 iCooler 1GB Low Profile on NikKTech.
MSI GeForce GTX 660 HAWK on Guru3D.
MSI GeForce GTX 660 HAWK on techPowerUp.
MSI GTX 650 1GB Power Edition on TweakTown.
Memory:
Patriot 8GB 2133MHz Extreme Masters Limited Edition on PureOverclock.
GSkill TridentX PC3-20800 8GB Dual Channel on TweakTown.
Team Group Xtreem LV DDR3 2600MHz 8GB Memory Kit on eTeknix.
Cooling:
bequiet! Dark Rock Pro 2 CPU Cooler on Futurelooks.
DeepCool Gammaxx 400 CPU Heatsink on Frostytech..
Cases:
Aerocool X1 Devil Red Edition Mid-Tower Chassis on eTeknix.
Enermax Hoplite ST PC Case on [H]ardOCP.
Input etc:
Cooler Master Storm QuickFire Pro Mechanical Keyboard on APH Networks.
Mad Catz Cyborg R.A.T.9 Wireless Gaming Mouse on NikKTech.
Mobiles & Portables:
Samsung Galaxy Note II on t-break.
Motorola DROID RAZR HD on Hot Hardware.
Toshiba Satellite P845-S4200 on TechReviewSource.
Misc:
Mad Catz TRITTON Pro+ 5.1 Surround Headset on Madshrimps.
NZXT HUE RGB LED Controller on eTeknix.
TP-LINK TL-WDR4300 Router on Rbmods.
PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III 500W Power Supply on Pro-Clockers.
Google launched a new cheap Chromebook recently, but it seems they're struggling to hit profit targets. Third- quarter profit excluding some items was $9.03 a share, below estimated (GOOG) profit of $10.65 a share. The stock tumbled 8 percent after the results were inadvertently released early.
OCZ seem to be suffering financially lately too. In the last week, the company has shed nearly 50% of its value and as of this article’s posting shares are trading at a mere $1.49. The company is also staring down the twin barrels of numerous investigations and lawsuits which allege securities fraud alongside other infringements. This situation has prompted some analysts to predict that the only way some of OCZ’s assets can be secured is through a bankruptcy filing.
Meanwhile CloudFlare have an interesting approach to datacentre rollouts. But there was something else relatively significant about the Seoul data center and the other 9 facilities set up this summer: despite the fact that the company owned every router and every server in their racks, and each had been configured with great care to handle the demands of CloudFlare's CDN and security services, no one from CloudFlare had ever set foot in them. All that came from CloudFlare directly was a six-page manual instructing facility managers and local suppliers on how to rack and plug in the boxes shipped to them.
Anandtech compare some Ivy Bridge memory kits. Fast forward a month or so, and we have compiled a series of tests taking advantage of some of the most memory limited examples common to most users – IGP performance using memory from DDR3-1333 to DDR3-2400. Inside this review we have also mixed in some encoding, compression, and you may be surprised to hear that USB 3.0 performance is also affected by memory speed. In this article we also look at and review the memory kits that G.Skill has gracefully provided from their Ares, Sniper, RipjawsX, RipjawsZ and TridentX brands.
A man has hired someone to slap him whenever he goes on Reddit or Facebook. He seems to have a bit of a thing for being slapped though, so it might backfire. Anyway, I recently blocked Facebook, Reddit and a few other time-sucking sites via a line in my hosts file. It's easy enough to comment out when I want to, but it's surprising how often during blocked periods I find myself staring at the blank tab telling me it can't load the page I have tried to load out of sheer habit. Presumably there are programs out there that can block and unblock things according to certain schedules... hrm.
There's an official trailer for Halo 4 out.
Saturday Morning Reviews
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Saturday, 20-October-2012 11:09:26 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Motherboards & CPUs:
Asus P8Z77 WS on Overclockers Club.
Asus Maximus V Formula on Xbit Labs.
AMD A8-5600K Trinity Desktop APU on Legit Reviews.
Storage:
Comay Venus Pro 3 240GB SSD on TweakTown.
QNAP TS-869L NAS on techPowerUp.
Thecus N4100EVO NAS Server on NikKTech.
Cases:
BitFenix Prodigy mini ITX on Bjorn3D.
CM Storm Stryker on Techreaction.
Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 Mid-Tower on eTeknix.
Xigmatek Pure Black Asgard Pro on Pro-Clockers.
In Win H-Frame Case on Hardware Secrets.
Cougar Challenger Mid-Tower on HCW.
Power Supplies:
Super Flower Golden Green 350W PSU on SCPR.
Aerocool Strike-X 800W on Vortez.
Input etc:
Thermaltake MEKA GUNIT Mechanical Keyboard on Sinhardware.
LEETGION Hellion Mechanical Gaming Mouse on eTeknix.
SteelSeries Sensei Glossy Gaming Mouse on NikKTech.
Corsair Vengeance M60 Gaming Mouse on TechwareLabs.
Portable & Mobile:
Lenovo Y580 15.6-inch Laptop on ThinkComputers.
Sony Xperia T Android Smartphone on HardwareHeaven.
Motorola Droid RAZR HD on TechReviewSource.
Audio:
CM Storm Ceres 400 Headset on Hardware Secrets.
ASUS RoG Vulcan Pro Gaming Headset on HardwareHeaven.
Misc:
Thermaltake WATER2.0 Performer on APH Networks.
Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 3GB Vapor-X on Legit Reviews.
Thanks to Martin, byson and Philip this week!
     
     
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
Thursday Night
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Thursday, 18-October-2012 22:22:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Soooo, I just bought Rocksmith for PC in the physical box coz I needed the fancy cable.. and it came with no CD-Key. This seems to be a known issue. OMFG. I've been Rockblocked!
Kotaku have an interesting article about the history of The Gamesmen. The Gamesmen: their game is computer games and it’s a family business. Since 1982 they’ve watched gaming grow from a niche market into one of the biggest industries in all of entertainment. This is the story of how Mary Cusumano and her three sons continued one man’s legacy. Against all reasonable odds.
Google have given a glimpse inside their data centres, with a Street View version too, thanks Mazzanet. There seem to be some easter eggs in the Street View tour. GOOGLE has opened a fascinating virtual window into its secretive data centres, where a maze of computers process internet search requests, distribute Gmail and show YouTube video clips for billions of people.
A few people sent word that The Pirate Bay are moving to the cloud to become raid-proof. “Moving to the cloud lets TPB move from country to country, crossing borders seamlessly without downtime. All the servers don’t even have to be hosted with the same provider, or even on the same continent,” The Pirate Bay told TorrentFreak.
Aircraft nuts will enjoy this story from Shaun about a hoard of hidden Spitfires. David Cundall, a farmer and aviation enthusiast, struck the historical equivalent of a gold mine when he found the planes in February, almost 70 years after they were carefully greased and wrapped to preserve them, before being buried in crates. Revered for their role in the Battle of Britain in 1940, there are only 35 Spitfires still flying around the world. It is thought that those buried in Burma could be worth £1.5 million ($2.3 million) each. "We estimate that there are at least 60 Spitfires buried and they are in good condition," said Htoo Htoo Zaw, Mr Cundall's Burmese business partner.
Closer to home, motorcycles will be able to legally lane-split in some parts of Sydney soon. The three-month trial to begin on February 1 next year will test if motorbike lane filtering improves traffic flow, Roads Minister Duncan Gay said on Thursday. Lane filtering will be confined to the areas bordered by Sussex and Market Streets, St James Road, Macquarie and Alfred Streets and Hickson Road.
Back to things virtual, and NVIDIA are bringing graphics performance to virtual machines. Though virtual machines have become indispensable in the server room over the last few years, desktop virtualization has been less successful. One of the reasons has been performance, and specifically graphics performance—modern virtualization products are generally pretty good at dynamically allocating CPU power, RAM, and drive space as clients need them, but graphics performance just hasn't been as good as it is on an actual desktop.
Thursday Night Reviews
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Thursday, 18-October-2012 22:02:35 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Graphics Cards:
Inno3D iChill HerculeZ GeForce GTX 660 on Guru3D.
Sapphire HD 7950 Vapor-X on Bjorn3D.
Asus MATRIX HD 7970 Platinum on [H]ardOCP.
Storage:
ICY DOCK Ultra Slim USB 3.0 & eSATA External HDD Enclosure on Think Computers.
OCZ Vertex 4 256GB SSD on circuitREMIX.
Thecus TopTower N6850 6-Bay NAS on eTeknix.
Input etc:
AZiO Levetron Mech5 Gaming Keyboard on TweakTown.
Corsair Vengeance K90/M90 and K60/M60 keyboard/mouse combos on Neoseeker.
Cases:
Cougar Challenger ATX PC Case on The SSD Review.
Fractal Design Node 304 Mini-ITX case on eTeknix.
Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 on techPowerUp.
NZXT Phantom 820 on OCmodshop.
Power Supplies:
Enermax Platimax 600W on SCPR.
CoolerMaster Silent Pro M2 720W PSU on SCPR.
Prebuilt & Mobile:
AVADirect Mini Gaming PC Review: Ivy Bridge,GTX 680 in a Mini-ITX Package on PC Perspective.
Motorola RAZR HD on Hot Hardware.
Apple iPhone 5 on Anandtech.
Cooling:
Xigmatek Fan Round Up on Pure Overclock.
SilverStone Heligon Series HE01 CPU Cooler on Hardware Heaven.
SilverStone Heligon Series HE01 CPU Cooler on Vortez.
Swiftech MCR240-QP "Quiet Series" Dual 140mm Radiator on TweakTown.
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 2 CPU Cooler on eTeknix.
Misc:
CM Storm Ceres-400 Gaming Headset on Legit Reviews.
Gigabyte Z77X-UP5TH meets Velociraptor Duo (Thunderbolt) on Techspot.
Interesting Forum Threads
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Wednesday, 17-October-2012 20:19:51 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's a few interesting threads from the forums. Remember, OCAU has official Twitter, Facebook and Google+ pages now!
ECS ModMen Competition Details in Overclocking & Hardware.
New fast and fun Android Mini-PC's - the UG802 and MK808 in Other Operating Systems.
Linux hosted mail @ Home in Other Operating Systems.
Do today's computer consume less energy? in Electronics & Electrics.
2013: Haswell in Intel x86 CPUs and chipsets.
R.I.P. Steve Jobs: 3 decades of Apple Keyboards in Apple Desktop Hardware/Software.
Is Linux dead in the Enterprise world? in Business & Enterprise Computing.
Successful implementation of Linux on the Desktop in Business & Enterprise Computing.
Legendary games dev Mike Singleton passes away at 61 in Retro & Arcade.
Decline of HTPCs? (*or* why do you HTPC?) in HTPC.
WoW Mists of Pandaria Pandathread in MMOs.
Forza: Horizon - Open World Altered Forza Physics Racer in Microsoft Consoles.
Peak Helium in Science.
Underground Dining in Geek Food.
Seemingly excessive power bills in Lifestyle.
Chronic pain & prescription painkillers leading to accidental addiction in Sport, Fitness & Health.
Catalonia spanish secession? + more in Politics & Policies.
Researching an investment property (location) in Career, Education & Finance.
How is your workplace travelling in the current economy? in Career, Education & Finance.
CCTV and Social Media - An Invasion of privacy or a return to the village in Current Events.
Would you live life differently if you knew when you would die? in The Pub.
Wednesday Evening Reviews
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Wednesday, 17-October-2012 17:00:53 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Motherboards & CPUs:
EVGA Z77 FTW on Techreaction.
Intel DH77DF Mini ITX Motherboard and Core i7-3770S on MissingRemote.
Graphics Cards:
Gigabyte GTX 650 OC on FunkyKit.
Asus HD 7970 Matrix Platinum 3 GB on techPowerUp.
Asus Radeon HD 7970 ROG MATRIX Platinum on Guru3D.
Asus Matrix HD 7970 Platinum on Overclockers Club.
Asus Matrix HD 7970 Platinum on Bjorn3D.
PowerColor Devil 13 HD 7990 on PureOverclock.
Storage:
Patriot Gauntlet 320 External Wireless Hard Drive on PC Perspective.
Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB SSD on eTeknix.
Western Digital RE 4TB Enterprise-Class HDD on Hot Hardware.
StarTech mSATA to 2.5 SATA Enclosure on TechwareLabs.
QNAP TS-869L and TS-269L Turbo NAS on Legion Hardware.
Silicon Power Diamond D05 Limited Edition 500GB USB 3.0 Portable HDD on NikKTech.
Input etc:
Logitech G710+ Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on Techgage.
Mad Catz S.T.R.I.K.E. 7 Gaming Keyboard on Benchmark Reviews.
Memory:
Kingston HyperX Predator PC3-19200 8GB Dual Channel Memory Kit on TweakTown.
Kingston HyperX T1 PC3-22400 4GB Dual Channel Memory Kit on TweakTown.
Cooling:
Reeven Kelveros (RC-1202) CPU Cooler on eTeknix.
Swiftech Apogee Drive II Integrated Pump and Waterblock on tweakTown.
Misc:
LEPA G850-MAS Power Supply on Techreaction.
Lian li PC-Q25 ITX Case on XSReviews.
Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A Ultrabook on Legit Reviews.
Netgear R6300 Wireless Router 802.11ac on Hardware Heaven.
Wednesday Midday
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Wednesday, 17-October-2012 12:48:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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UK "hacker" Gary McKinnon has won his battle to avoid being extradited to the USA. Mr McKinnon was arrested in London in 2002 for hacking into dozens of Pentagon and NASA computers, leaving 300 machines at a naval air station immobilised just after the September 11, 2001 attacks. He has never denied the hacking, claiming he was looking for classified US documents on UFOs. He could have faced up to 60 years in a US jail for the breaches, which the US says caused $800,000 worth of damage.
There's a new PC benchmark called (and featuring) Catzilla. The benchmark will be both OpenGL and directX, will run on XP, Vista, Win7 and Win8. The minimum requirement is A D3D10 compatible GPU with minimum of 512 VRAM.
We think of Photoshopping as a new phenomenon, but The Verge report it's been around nearly as long as photography. “It was probably less than ten minutes that went by from the invention of photography to the point where people realized they could lie with photographs,” said film director Errol Morris in an interview with Motherboard last year.
ExtremeTech report on the tech behind Baumgartner's jump. The Red Bull Stratos team backing Baumgartner describes their feat as a “mission to the edge of space.” Years in the planning, the team has gone through many iterations of equipment and practice jumps before finally being ready to make the record-setting attempt from Roswell, New Mexico.
Check out this cool RC ball thing. Sphero is the world's first robotic ball gaming system that you control from your smartphone or tablet. You can even use Sphero as a controller for on-screen and multi-player games.
When you cross two bored Batman fans and an enormous pile of LEGO, you get the LEGO Batcave.
Tuesday Morning Reviews
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Tuesday, 16-October-2012 10:44:30 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Motherboards & CPUs:
ASRock X79 Extreme6/GB on ThinkComputers.
Gigabyte Z77MX D3H TH on Guru3D.
Asus Maximus V Formula on Bjorn3D.
Gigabyte Z77X-UP7 on SinHardware.
Storage:
Micron RealSSD P320h PCI Express SSD on HotHardware.
Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB SSD on Futurelooks.
Micron P320h HHHL 700GB PCIe Enterprise SSD on The SSD Review.
OCZ Vertex 4 128GB SATA III 2.5" SSD on Madshrimps.
Patriot Gauntlet 320 Wireless HDD on Benchmark Reviews.
ADATA SX300 128GB mSATA SSD on Overclockers Club.
Cases:
SilverStone Temjin TJ04-E on APH Networks.
SilverStone Precision Series PS07 on Pro-Clockers.
NZXT Phantom 820 on Anandtech.
NZXT Phantom 820 on eTeknix.
Cooling:
Zalman CNPS14X Lower Noise Heatsink on Frostytech.
SilverStone HE02 CPU Cooler on Hardware Secrets.
Input etc:
Tt eSPORTS Level 10 M Mouse on Vortez.
ROCCAT Savu Gaming Mouse on PureOverclock.
Thrustmaster Ferrari PC Analogue Controller on eTeknix.
Misc:
Giada i53 Mini PC on TweakTown.
T.N.T Headphones by Subjekt on TechwareLabs.
Akasa Venom Power 850 W PSU on techPowerUp.
G.Skill TridentX DDR3 2666MHz 8GB Memory Kit on eTeknix.
Forum Projects
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Monday, 15-October-2012 20:16:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's some more projects and reviews from people in the forums:
Monday Afternoon
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Monday, 15-October-2012 17:16:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Felix Baumgartner's supersonic skydive was a success last night, with him hitting Mach 1.24 during the descent. Mr Utley said preliminary figures indicate Baumgartner broke a total of three established world records: the highest altitude skydive (39,045m), longest freefall without a parachute (36,529m) and fastest fall achieved during a skydive. Discussion here.
Google Maps has had a hefty Street View update. Today we’re making our Street View coverage more comprehensive than ever before by launching our biggest ever update--doubling our number of special collections and updating over 250,000 miles of roads around the world. We’re increasing Street View coverage in Macau, Singapore, Sweden, the U.S., Thailand, Taiwan, Italy, Great Britain, Denmark, Norway and Canada. And we’re launching special collections in South Africa, Japan, Spain, France, Brazil and Mexico, among others.
FOTW sent in this video of a superfast Rubik's cube solver. The World's Fastest 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube solving robot, Built using 4 x LEGO Mindstorms NXT kits (with some additional LEGO pieces) and a Samsung Galaxy SII smartphone.
I get sent a lot of Kickstarter projects and can't link them all, but this supercomputer for everyone idea sounds interesting, thanks Paul. Inspired by great hardware communities like Raspberry Pi and Arduino, we see a critical need for a truly open, high-performance computing platform that will close the knowledge gap in parallel programing. The goal of the Parallella project is to democratize access to parallel computing.
HardCoreWare looked at AMD's Trinity. We compare the AMD A10 5800K APU to the Core i3 3220, which is priced identically. We compare them in terms of gaming with and without a GPU, including some 'lightweight' games like Torchlight 2 and Bastion. We also see what kind of tricks we can do with overclocking AND undervolting.
McSpidey sent in today's timewaster, ANTIBODY (browser plugin or win/mac download required). Discussion in this thread.
Red Bull Stratos
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Sunday, 14-October-2012 19:51:58 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Assuming the weather continues to be good (and I don't jinx it by posting this message) the Red Bull Stratos jump is going to kick off in about three hours from now. Best of luck to Felix Baumgartner and the rest of the team! Discussion continues here.
Saturday Midday Reviews
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Saturday, 13-October-2012 11:29:37 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Motherboards & CPUs:
ASRock Z77 OC Formula on Xbit Labs.
MSI FM2-A85XA-GD65 on Hardware Secrets.
MSI Z77 MPOWER on PureOverclock.
ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 on Hardware Secrets.
Gigabyte GA-A75-D3H FM1 on Legit Reviews.
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP5-TH on Futurelooks.
Graphics Cards:
ASUS GTX 650 Ti DirectCU II TOP on Bjorn3D.
Inno3D GTX 680 and GTX 660 Ti iChill Graphics Cards on Hardware Heaven.
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 650 Ti AMP! Edition 2 GB on techPowerUp.
HIS 7970 IceQ X2 3GB GHz Edition on HardwareLOOK.
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 650 Ti OC 2GB on Bjorn3D.
Storage:
Corsair Neutron and Corsair Neutron GTX SSDs on Xbit Labs.
Corsair Neutron and Corsair Neutron GTX SSDs on The Tech Report.
Corsair Neutron 240GB SSD on eTeknix.
SanDisk Extreme 240Gb SSD on PCSTATS.
Patriot EP Pro SDHC 32GB on APH Networks.
Western Digital RE RAID Edition 4TB SATA Enterprise Drive on PC Perspective.
Synology DS412+ NAS on TweakTown.
Cases:
In-Win GRone Full Tower Chassis on Legit Reviews.
Nanoxia Deep Silence One on Guru3D.
CM Storm Scout 2 on Overclockers Club.
Cooling:
Xigmatek Dark Knight SD1283 Night Hawk CPU Cooler on Frostytech.
Zalman CNPS9900DF CPU Heatsink on Frostytech.
Cooler Master Hyper 412 Slim CPU Cooler on eTeknix.
Phanteks PH-TC14CS CPU Cooler on PureOverclock.
Misc:
ZOTAC ZBOX nano AD12 PLUS All in one on Vortez.
Cooler Master Skorpion Mouse Bungee on OCmodshop.
KRK Systems Rokit 5 Active Speakers on techPowerUp.
PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III 1200-Watt 80 PLUS Platinum on TweakTown.
Thanks to Oliver and Timbot 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
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Friday, 12-October-2012 14:07:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Apparently Australians are the richest in the world, thanks Taceo_Corp. Australia’s median wealth per adult is US$194,000, compared to Switzerland of US$87,000 and Norway of US$79,000. Yes, you read that right, the average is more than double the next wealthiest country.
Also feeling fairly rich is a teenage hacker who scored a $60,000 prize for spotting a a security issue in Google Chrome - for the second time this year! Google has set aside $2 million in prize money for hackers who find security vulnerabilities in its Chrome web browser, with $60,000 being reserved for those who find “full Chrome exploits.” $50,000 which is offered for partial exploits, and $40,000 for non-Chrome exploits – that is, other bugs found in Flash, Windows, or a driver that are not necessarily specific to Chrome, but could cause issues for users.
MadShrimps report from the Firstlook 2012 event. Don't expect much text on this one. Me and Oldscarface were invited by ASUS to do some demo LN2 OCs at their booth. The Firstlook 2012 venue was at the Jaarbeurs complex at Utrecht. How could we resist? Games, Hardware, Booth babes and LN2 all in one room!
XbitLabs compared GeForce GTX 660 Ti cards from Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, Inno3D, KFA2, MSI, Palit and Zotac. Today we are going to talk about eight graphics accelerators with proprietary designs that we managed to get in for review. All of them are based on the recently launched Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti GPU.
Adam sent word of a free online computing course starting on Monday: Discover the world of computing, learn software design and development while solving puzzles with world renowned lecturer Richard Buckland. UNSW Computing 1 is presented by OpenLearning with original content derived from UNSW COMPUTING's first year computing course. Take the course for online for free, starting on October 15th 2012.
Here's some yummy threads from our Geek Recipes forum:
Thursday Evening
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Thursday, 11-October-2012 18:37:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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If you don't like door-to-door salesmen, put up a sign, because it's now legally enforceable. It’s your house and you can slam the door in their faces whenever you like, but remember the legal requirements too: no calls before 9am or after 6pm on weekdays, before 9am or after 5pm on Saturdays, or at any time on Sundays or public holidays. Better yet, get a sign and remind anyone who ignores it of the $50,000 fine.
Queenslanders will have access to a new state government website soon. It will see government-held information posted on the internet, including emergency hospital and crime statistics, how much electricity schools use, and the location of buses, trains, ferries, and speed cameras. "We're going to ask the Queensland police to regularly post where they're putting the speed cameras," Mr Newman told a budget estimates hearing at parliament.
Facebook celebrated their 1 billionth user with their first advertisement. Chairs, doorbells, bridges, airplanes. These are things that people use to get together and connect. Facebook is also something that over a billion people around the world use to connect with one another. It's a fairly odd ad, and Taceo_Corp spotted this parody.
Animal rights group PETA have their eyes on Pokemon. No, really. Animal rights group PETA has condemned the Pokémon media franchise and video game series, saying it “paints a rosy picture of what amounts to thinly veiled animal abuse.”
Asher noticed that Canonical are letting people choose Ubuntu's price and development priority. There's nothing wrong with that—this is the open source world, after all, and many people contribute to Ubuntu with code rather than money. But starting this week, Canonical is presenting desktop OS downloaders with an optional donation form.
Forbes report on an aerosol caffeine boost. Dr. David Edwards, Harvard professor, invented Aeroshot – a small shotgun shell like capsule that delivers a blast of caffeine through a patented device. AeroShot’s key advantages are: it provides that quick boost without any calories whatsoever and starts working right away – anytime, anyplace.
Backblaze have an interesting blog about how their business resorted to hard drive farming when the Thai floods spiked prices. To survive this crisis without raising prices or compromising service, Backblaze deployed every last employee, as well as friends and family, to acquire drives in what became known internally as “drive farming”. What follows is how we did it.
Today's timewaster is This is Sand from Davo1111.
Thursday Midday Reviews
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Thursday, 11-October-2012 12:09:18 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Motherboards & CPUs:
ASRock Z77 OC Formula Intel LGA 1155 on techPowerUp.
Asus F2A55-M (A55) on eTeknix.
Graphics Cards:
ASUS GeForce GTX 650 Ti DirectCU II Top on Motherboards.org.
Nvidia GTX 650 Ti on Futurelooks
MSI GTX 650 Power Edition OC on Overclockers Club.
MSI GeForce GTX 650 Ti Power Edition 1GB on Bjorn3D.
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 650 Ti on Hardware Secrets.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti (Reference Card) on Bjorn3D.
Storage:
ADATA 16GB UV100 and 32GB S107 Flash Drives on Funky Kit.
SMART Storage Systems Optimus 400GB SAS SSD on The SSD Review.
Verbatim 2.5" SATA-II SSD 128GB on Rbmods.
Crucial m4 mSATA 256GB SSD on TechwareLabs.
Synology DiskStation DS413 4-bay NAS Server on Madshrimps.
Memory:
GeIL EVO VELOCE 16GB Dual Channel 2133MHz C10 on Madshrimps.
Crucial Ballistix Tactical Tracer DDR3-1866 16GB Quad Channel on Think Computers.
Corsair Dominator Platinum PC3-17066 16GB on TweakTown.
Cases:
BitFenix Prodigy Mini-ITX on The SSD Review.
Enermax Ostrog Mid-Tower on eTeknix.
Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 on Hardware Secrets.
CM Storm Scout 2 on Techreaction.
Power Supplies:
Seasonic X-Series 1250W Gold Power Supply on PC Perspective.
Rosewill Capstone 750W on Legit Reviews.
Lepa G1000-MA 1000-Watt 80 PLUS Gold on TweakTown.
Misc:
Motorola DROID RAZR M Smartphone on HotHardware.
TRENDnet TPL-406E 500Mbps Compact Powerline AV Adapter on NikKTech.
4Gamers Interactive Gaming Chair on t-break.
Pulse-Eight Internal HDMI CEC Adapter on MissingRemote.
Thinksound MS01 8mm In-Ear Monitor Earphones on NikKTech.
Wednesday Night
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Wednesday, 10-October-2012 22:34:29 (GMT +10) - by booj
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The venerable Light Emitting Diode (LED) has turned 50! Nick Holonyak was sure the LED would replace the incandescent light bulb when he presented it to GE executives 50 years ago. While the incandescent is still king in homes across the nation, the LED has transformed lighting in more ways than Holonyak could have imagined. From those first dim red diodes to powerful streetlights in major cities, the LED has made its mark on the world. Thanks Jason H!
AMD has launched its new Z-60 APU, codenamed Hondo, which is designed with support for upcoming Windows 8 tablets and ultra portable applications. It will compete with ARM SoC's and Intel's Atom. The APU is a dual-core design based on the Bobcat CPU core running at 1GHz with 1MB of L2 cache onboard. It is paired with AMD Radeon HD 6250 with 80 Radeon Cores though AMD did not announce any clockspeed but we would assume it is clocked at the same speed as the Z-01 (276MHz). Compare to the Z-01 AMD is able to shed off 1.4W of power where the new APU has a 4.5W TDP compare to the 5.9W on the Z-01. More here, here and here.
Gunna let us know about a patent held by Apple that would allow the ability to disable certain features of your phone such as cameras and calls. Here is a youtube clip that explains it further.
Be aware of a worm spreading on Skype. The issue, which was first brought to light Friday by GFI, tricks users into downloading a ZIP file by displaying the socially-engineered message, "lol is this your new profile pic?" along with a link that also spreads the message to other Skype users. The ZIP filed contains an executable file that installs a variant of the Dorkbot worm and creating a backdoor via "Blackhole," an exploit kit used by criminals to infect computers through security holes.
Gaming Nexus has an article covering monitor and HDTV refresh rates, one of the tech jargon specs that may not be immediately understood by some users. There are so many factors that one should consider when it comes purchasing that new HDTV, it’s almost impossible to list them all without having to spend a lot of time thinking about it. Over the past couple of years, the list has dwindled a bit thanks to the innovations of the industry. While most people argue over the types of televisions that deliver the best picture (stay tuned for an article on that), one of the most important aspects that a gamer has to take into consideration is refresh rate.
Facebook are preparing to reveal a 'want' button. Why else but to make money and data mine? Have you ever commented "Want!" anywhere on the web? Perhaps because "liking" is not enough for Facebook, and shares in its stock are still down, the company is pushing ahead with a 'Collections' feature. Collecting massive amounts of desired-based data about users would be like hitting the mother lode for advertisers. The difference between "liking" and "wanting" would be like discovering the holy grail of datamining.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer must be thinking about selling off that spare Ferrari after taking home a measly $620k bonus this year. (Although to be fair, it seems his salary is not too ridiculous compared to some CEOs.) Ballmer, who took over as CEO from co-founder Bill Gates in 2000, earned a bonus of $620,000 for Microsoft's 2012 fiscal year, which ended in June, down 9 percent from the year before, according to documents filed Tuesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
It would seem that the iPhone 5 is hard to get in Hong Kong. So hard, they are being allocated via a lottery system. “At Apple’s retail store, the iPhone 5 can be ordered online and a lottery process determines who is eligible for pickup at the store the next day,” White told AllThingsD after a visit to Hong Kong. “Based on our conversations, you might have a better shot at winning [an actual] lottery than getting the iPhone 5 the next day.”
Nitschke sent in this youtube video of an amazing and well choreographed tribute to video gaming performed by the Ohio State University Marching Band. The performance took place at a recent American Football game between Ohio State and Nebraska. For the record, Ohio State beat Nebraska in a blowout 63-38 - remaining undefeated for the 6th week in a row.
Finally, Crytek have posted a short overview of the multiplayer part of Crysis 3. (youtube login required)
Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti Reviews
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Wednesday, 10-October-2012 01:41:11 (GMT +10) - by booj
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The Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti launched late last night. It is probably the last major launch we will see from Nvidia for the rest of 2012.
Anandtech (Reference, EVGA, Gigabyte & Zotac)
Benchmark Reviews: MSI & Reference
Guru3D: Reference & MSI
Hardware Heaven (EVGA, Gigabyte & Zotac)
Hexus (Reference)
Hot Hardware (Reference, EVGA, Zotac & Gigabyte)
Legion Hardware (Gigabyte)
Legit Reviews (Reference, MSI & EVGA)
Ninjalane (Reference, Gigabyte & MSI)
Overclockers Club: Asus & Reference
PC Perspective (Reference)
Pure Overclock: Reference, Gigabyte & Asus
t-break (Reference & Zotac)
techPowerUp: Asus & MSI
Tech Report (Zotac)
Techspot (Gigabyte)
Vortez (Gigabyte)
Discussion continues in the GeForce 600-series thread.
Red Bull Stratos
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Tuesday, 9-October-2012 22:56:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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In about half an hour or so, Felix Baumgartner will attempt to break several world records by jumping out of a balloon at 120,000 ft / 36,576 m, well above the existing record. See this youtube video, this official web page and this live feed/countdown page. Discussion in this thread!
Update: Delayed due to weather. This always happens when I post things like this on the news page!
Praneetn7's Mini Desktop CNC
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Tuesday, 9-October-2012 21:55:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Praneetn7 has built his own mini desktop CNC machine - not bad for a 16yo highschool student!
Click for the build thread!
Tuesday Morning Reviews
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Tuesday, 9-October-2012 11:14:32 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Motherboards & CPUs:
Gigabyte GA-F2A85X UP4 motherboard on Guru3D.
AMD’s Virgo Platform and Trinity APU on Futurelooks.
Storage:
Silicon Power Marvel M60 32GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive on NikKTech.
Shuttle OMNINAS K20 NAS Server on Madshrimps.
PNY Prevail Elite 240Gb SATA 3 SSD on The SSD Review.
Transcend SSD720 256GB SSD on TweakTown.
Audio:
Tritton 720+ 7.1 Surround Multi Platform Headset on eTeknix.
CM Storm Ceres-400 Headset on Overclockers Club.
Cases:
Nanoxia Deep Silence DS1 Mid-Tower Chassis on TweakTown.
Cooler Master Elite 120 M-ITX on techPowerUp.
Input etc:
Roccat Savu Gaming Mouse on NikKTech.
Cyborg S.T.R.I.K.E. 7 Gaming Keyboard on ThinkComputers.
CM Storm Recon Gaming Mouse on eTeknix.
Steelseries Kana White Mouse on XSReviews.
Portable & Mobile:
Razer Blade Gaming Notebook on t-break.
Alienware M18x R2 Notebook on TechReviewSource.
Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 Tablet on The SSD Review.
Nokia Asha 311 Phone on t-break.
Memory:
Kingston HyperX Predator 2666MHz 8GB Memory on Bjorn3D.
ADATA XPG Xtreme Series PC3-17000 8GB Memory Kit on TweakTown.
Corsair Dominator Platinum 2133Mhz Quad Channel Memory on Ninjalane.
Misc:
ARCTIC i30 Heatsink and Fan on Funky Kit.
Tuesday Morning
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Tuesday, 9-October-2012 02:28:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I've been fascinated by John Horton Conway's game of Life since my dad showed me an article on it in a magazine when I was a kid. I've played it on grid paper and written versions of it in a couple of programming languages. Anyway, Asher spotted that there's a Google Easter Egg of it now, with more info in this article.
The US Congress have declared Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE to be security threats after a year-long investigation. The committee said both companies failed to provide adequate answers to lawmakers' questions about their relationship with the Chinese government. "China has the means, opportunity and motive to use telecommunications companies for malicious purposes," said the report, due to be published on the committee's website. More info here.
Julian Assange is apparently considering suing the Prime Minister for defamation. But Mr Assange says it has led to credit card companies barring customers from donating to WikiLeaks. "Mastercard Australia in justifying why it has made a blockade that prevents any Australian Mastercard holder from donating to WikiLeaks, used that statement by Julia Gillard this year as justification," he said. "So the effects of this statement are ongoing and they directly affect the financial viability of WikiLeaks."
The first commercial mission to the Space Station has successfully launched. It’s the first of 12 supply missions under a contract with NASA worth $1.6 Billion, and it marks a return to regular flights from US soil to the space station, after the end of the shuttle program. NASA administrator Charlie Bolden, who made a brief statement to reporters after the launch, described it as a critical moment for NASA and the US.
AMD's Trinity has been overclocked to 7.3GHz using liquid nitrogen. According to PCGamesHardware.de, the overclockers disabled two of the A10-5800K's cores, allowing the APU to exceed speeds of 7.3GHz.
Sunday Afternoon
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Sunday, 7-October-2012 17:30:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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If you missed out on OCAU shirts earlier, now's your last chance, probably. :) Clearing out the last couple of boxes at discount prices.
It'd be interesting to find out what's under the hood, but anyway, asher spotted this genome sequencing machine showing where computational power can have an easily-quantified benefit to people. Currently, gene testing in neonatal intensive care units can take a month or more, time in which the parents are anxiously awaiting results and doctors are trying to decide how aggressively to treat a child who may have no future. Now it takes under two days.
Mpot spotted a free mobile phone in a magazine, printed flat so you assemble it yourself. When the hardware is pulled out of the pages there’s some interesting tinkering to be done. Shorting the contacts on the keyboard overlay (about 8 minutes into the video) brings up an Asian-language menu which is pretty obviously Android.
It's nice to see aerial drones not blowing people up for a change, but instead finding lost bushwalkers. An unmanned aerial drone was able to find a dummy of a missing bushwalker with no human intervention in what CSIRO believes is a world-first for a non-military drone.
Here's a surprising one, Gunna noticed Lenovo opening a US manufacturing plant. Lenovo will open the factory early next year in Whitsett, North Carolina, where it said it will create about 115 manufacturing jobs. It will be Lenovo's first factory in the U.S., supplementing plants in Mexico, Brazil and its home base of China.
The case over Kim Dotcom of MegaUpload fame continues, and it seems his gaming ping may cast light on the legality of the investigation. The focus of the early investigation is the dedicated internet connection from Mr Dotcom's mansion in Coatesville to the Sky Tower in Auckland. It was intended to give him the fastest possible internet connection - a factor which would have been critical in his quest to be the best in the online Modern Warfare 3 game. Mr Dotcom became the "number one" ranked player of the game before his arrest. During the record-setting effort, Gen-I staff began an investigation into the amount of time it took for an internet signal from Mr Dotcom's home to reach an offshore Xbox computer server.
Anandtech take a closer look at Intel's Haswell architecture, and to keep things fair, they also checked out AMD's new Trinity APUs. Although selling APUs in notebooks is pretty easy, convincing desktop users to forgo the discrete GPU option (and ignore Intel) has been a tough battle for AMD.
A new Australian radiotelescope is the world's most powerful, thanks Gunna. Scientists will be on the lookout for intelligent life in the outer regions of the universe when they embark on studies into the origin of life on Earth using the world's most powerful telescope system. The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, comprising 36 dishes in remote Murchison, 315 kilometres north-east of Geraldton, Western Australia, was officially opened today.
Speaking of which, NASA have a new game (some kind of browser plugin required). As a new Network Manager, your job will be to build and upgrade a complex communications network in order to support scientific missions.
Daylight Savings Tonight
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Saturday, 6-October-2012 14:31:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Daylight Savings kicks off in SA, NSW, ACT, VIC and TAS early tomorrow morning. At 2am you should set your clock forward to 3am. Your PC will probably adjust itself automatically, but if you find the forum clock isn't correct anymore, adjust the Date & Time Options in the forum options page. Mine's set to GMT+10 for Sydney and Automatic DST, which seems to work fine.
Saturday Morning Reviews
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Saturday, 6-October-2012 11:05:45 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Motherboards & CPUs:
MSI Z77A-G43 Socket 1155 on Madshrimps.
Asus P8Z77-V LX Socket 1155 on Xbit Labs.
Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe LGA 1155 on PC Perspective.
A10-5800K vs Core i3-3220 on Hardware Secrets.
AMD Trinity for Desktops. Part 2: Socket FM2 Platform and AMD A10-5800K on Xbit Labs.
Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 (A85X) on eTeknix.
Power Supplies:
Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 1500W on ThinkComputers.
Enermax MAXREVO 1500 W on techPowerUp.
Storage:
Toshiba MK01GRRB/R 2.5-inch 6Gb/s SAS 15,000 RPM Enterprise HDD on TweakTown.
Samsung 840 Series 250GB SSD on PC Perspective.
Synology DS212 NAS on Xbit Labs.
ADATA Premier Pro SP900 256GB SSD on TechwareLabs.
Memory:
Patriot “Intel Extreme Masters” Edition 2133Mhz on Bjorn3D.
Kingston Hyper X Predator Dual Channel 8GB 2400C11 Kit on Madshrimps.
Avexir Core Series DDR3 2400MHz 16GB Memory Kit on eTeknix.
Cooling:
SilverStone Heligon Series HE01 Twin Tower CPU Cooler on TweakTown.
Deepcool Neptwin CPU Cooler on Hardware Secrets.
Noctua NH-D14 SE2011 CPU Cooler on Vortez.
Prolimatech MK-26 Video Card Cooler on TweakTown.
Input etc:
SteelSeries World of Warcraft Wireless MMO Mouse on HardwareHeaven.
ROCCAT Savu Gaming Mouse on ThinkComputers.
Misc:
Rosewill RHTS-11004 Supra-aural Headphones on techPowerUp.
Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 3GB Vapor-X Video Card on Legit Reviews.
ASUS RT-N66U Dual-Band Wireless-N900 Gigabit Router on Legit Reviews.
Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced M-ITX PC Chassis on eTeknix.
Lenovo IdeaTab A2109 on TechReviewSource.
Better late than never :)
     
     
     
     
and here's Nurple doing Oktoberfest OCAU style!
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
Friday Afternoon
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Friday, 5-October-2012 13:59:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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An international operation has seen the shutdown of those I am calling you from Windows tech-support scammers - or so it's claimed. Australia was the first country to be hit by the Microsoft tech support scam in a fraud operation that spanned the globe. In 2009, the phone rang at the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). It was someone calling to complain. Not a new thing for the ACMA, but this was the start of something big.
I'm a little dubious because I got called by one of them only a couple of days ago. ArsTechnica did too, and had a bit of a play with the guy for a while. When the call came yesterday morning, I assumed at first I was being trolled - it was just too perfect to be true. My phone showed only "Private Caller" and, when I answered out of curiosity, I was connected to "John," a young man with a clear Indian accent who said he was calling from "Windows Technical Support."
Overclockers.com have a report on EVGA removing voltage control from their GTX680 at NVIDIA's request. From this quote, it’s obvious that NVIDIA does not want their partners to supply any means of voltage control with the GK100 series of GPUs. This is a slap in the face to many of the enthusiasts and everyday overclockers who enjoy pushing hardware for that extra performance. That leaves the extreme, warranty-voiding modders that hardmod their GPUs with the ability to increase voltage for the Kepler cards and have a stress-free overclocking experience.
Gunna spotted this iPhone-controlled door lock. Lockitron is an attachment you can place on the back of any deadbolt lock in your house that allows you to lock and unlock it remotely via your smartphone. Better than that, if you have your iPhone 5 in your pocket when you approach a Lockitron deadbolt, you don’t have to even have to use your iPhone because it will detect you via Bluetooth 4.0 and unlock automatically.
Carl sent in a Tech Report article about Intel's pricing stagnating while AMD struggles. Competition is the cornerstone of a free market. Without healthy competition, unchallenged incumbents grow complacent, the pace of innovation slows, and prices either stagnate or rise. Those ill effects can be witnessed across a number of industries, but over the past few years, they've become increasingly apparent in the x86 processor market.
Check out this cool automated warehouse setup. If I had a billion dollars I'd get one of those systems and put everything I own in it, so I wouldn't spend half my life looking for my shoes, my phone or my flippin' car keys. Reliable! AutoStore has a high degree of redundancy. Space Efficient! AutoStore makes better use of available area and volume than any other system (by up to 60%).
Sponsor Specials
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Friday, 5-October-2012 13:34:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Remember to keep an eye on our Sponsor Specials Forum when you're shopping around. In there our various advertisers have threads with info and deals on MicroServers, fitness supplements, water cooling, ISP deals, video cards, modding gear, office chairs, speakers and iPod docks, arcade machine bits, soldering systems, CCTV gear and more. Worth a look!
Forum Projects
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Thursday, 4-October-2012 21:22:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's some more projects and reviews from people in the forums:
Thursday Evening Reviews
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Thursday, 4-October-2012 18:15:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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CPU & Motherboard:
AMD A8 5600K APU on Guru3D.
AMD's A10-5800K and A8-5600K 'Trinity' APUs reviewed on TechReport.
AMD A8-5600K APU Trinity Desktop Processor on BenchmarkReviews.
AMD A8-5600k APU Processor on eTeknix.
AMD A10-5800K Trinity Desktop Processor on BenchmarkReviews.
AMD A10-5800K Trinity APU on TechSpot.
AMD Trinity A-10 5800K APU on PureOC.
AMD 2nd Generation A10 5800 & A8 5600 Desktop APU on OCClub.
ECS Z77H2-A2X Motherboard on AkumasDen.
MSI FM2-A85XA-G65 (A85X) Motherboard on eTeknix.
AMD A10-5800K "Trinity" APU On Linux on Phoronix.
Audio Visual:
SteelSeries Siberia V2 Frost Blue USB Headset on NikKTech.
Arctic Cooling Z2 Monitor Arm on RBMods.
Pivos XIOS DS Media Player on MissingRemote.
Xtreamer Prodigy Black 3D Media Player & Streamer on NikKTech.
Cases:
Cooler Master Storm Scout 2 Mid-Tower on Tweaktown.
Lian Li PC-B12 Mid-Tower on eTeknix.
Memory:
Corsair Dominator Platinum 2133Mhz 16GB on OCClub.
Corsair Dominator Platinum PC3-21300 16GB Memory Kit on Tweaktown.
Video Cards:
ASUS AMD HD 7970 DirectCU II on Futurelooks.
XFX Radeon HD 7850 1GB Core Edition on LegitReviews.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Samsung Galaxy Note 2 Android Tablet on HWHeaven.
Acer Iconia Tab A700 with HD 1080p Display on HotHardware.
Hands-on video with Windows Phone 8 powered HTC 8X on TBreak.
MSI GT70 0NE notebook on Vortez.
Asrock VisionX 321B HTPC on LegionHW.
Apple iPhone 5 Smartphone on Tweaktown.
Misc:
Samsung 830 256GB Solid State Drive on CircuitRemix.
Cooler Master NotePal I300 cooler on Pro-Clockers.
FSP Raider 750-Watt 80 PLUS Bronze PSU on Tweaktown.
Photography Gallery
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Wednesday, 3-October-2012 21:19:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's a quick snapshot of what people are up to in our Photography Gallery forum.
Wednesday Morning
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Wednesday, 3-October-2012 02:29:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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A recent Microsoft promo event didn't quite go to plan, when they hired a rapper to perform. All Hip Hop reports that the rapper stomped on "at least five computers" before cops were called and Microsoft Store staff cut the music and microphone.
Some iPhone 5 users are unimpressed with the camera, but mpot found this page comparing it to previous ones. Would be interesting to also compare the SGS2 and SGS3 (and some other phones) too, but the iPhone 5 looks pretty amazing for an "always on you" camera - provided you don't mind the occasional purple sky.
A more serious issue seems to involve the iPhone 5 using mobile data instead of wireless, causing surprising bills, thanks Gunna. Apple hasn't publicly commented on how widespread the bug is, but the company confirmed its existence on Sunday when it pushed out a software update aimed at fixing it for customers on Verizon's network. The software update "resolves an issue in which, under certain circumstances, iPhone 5 may use Verizon cellular data while the phone is connected to a Wi-Fi network," Apple wrote in a posting on its support website.
XSRevies have a guide to building a Mini-ITX gaming HTPC. What’s good about a gaming rig is that it usually functions as a HTPC pretty much perfectly. The downside is the size, heat production and possibly noise issues of a gaming rig in comparison to an HTPC; so I set out on a journey to bring the best of both worlds together!
At the other end of the scale, Wired reckon we need a supercomputer on the Moon. It would be a mammoth technical undertaking, but a University of Southern California graduate student thinks there’s a very good reason for doing this: It would help alleviate a coming deep-space network traffic jam that’s had NASA scientists worried for several years now.
Tech Report aren't happy with how AMD handled their recent product launch, and have an editorial explaining why. We've been reviewing tech products for 13 years. During that time, the basic agreement between the reviewer and the company whose product is up for review hasn't fundamentally changed--until today. AMD is attempting to re-write the rules in a way that grants it a measure of editorial control over reviews.
AP spotted a new fibre data speed record. Japan's incumbent telecommunications carrier, NTT, is claiming a telecommunications speed record, demonstrating a fibre technology able to carry 1 Petabit-per-second - a million gigabits - over a distance of 50 kilometers, using a single fibre.
EvilGenius meanwhile sent in an ant-based network. As reported by Standford University, two researchers, Deborah Gordon, a biology professor told Balaji Prabhakar, a computer science professor, about how harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex barbatus) worked out how to send out ants to collect food. Prabhakar soon realized, to his surprise, that the ants were using almost the exact same TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) algorithm that we use on the Internet.
Gunna also noticed this new copyright law in Japan. A few hours ago Japan introduced new anti-piracy legislation designed to clamp down on illegal file-sharing. The regime is one of the most draconian in the world. In most countries users are only targeted when they upload copyright-infringing material to other Internet users, but the new law’s wording means that simply downloading unauthorized material could result in a jail sentence.
On a related note, the Philippines has a new Cybercrime Law which has some people concerned. But while all that's good, certain provisions of the law have millions of Filipinos up in arms - foremost of which is online libel. "If you click 'like,' you can be sued, and if you share, you can also be sued," said Sen. Teofisto Guingona III, one of the lawmakers who voted against the passage of the law.
HotHardware report from Maker Faire, where 3D printers are all the rage. The Economist look at impact of 3D printing, particularly the inevitable intellectual property concerns. Tinkerers with machines that turn binary digits into molecules are pioneering a whole new way of making things—one that could well rewrite the rules of manufacturing in much the same way as the PC trashed the traditional world of computing.
Today's timewaster is GangstaGangsta - be warned, quite loud music when it loads.
Wednesday Morning Reviews
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Wednesday, 3-October-2012 01:26:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
Jabra SOLEMATE Bluetooth Portable Speaker on TBreak.
CM Storm Sonuz Gaming Headset on eTeknix.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 3G on TechReviewSource.
Acer Aspire S5 Ultrabook on TechSpot.
Apple's MacBook Air 13-inch (Ivy Bridge) Review, The Air Versus Ultrabooks on HotHardware.
Acer Iconia Tab A210 on XSReviews.
HTC Desire X smartphone on TBreak.
MCE OptiBay for Unibody Kit on MadShrimps.
HTC Windows Phone 8X & 8S quick look on TBreak.
GIGABYTE P2542G Gaming Laptop on Tweaktown.
ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity (TF700T) Tablet on Tweaktown.
Motherboard & CPU:
AMD A10-5800K Trinity APU on TechWareLabs.
AMD A10-5800K and A8-5600K APUs for Socket FM2 on TechPowerUp.
ASRock Z77 OC Formula Motherboard on ThinkComputers.
AMD A8-5600K on Vortez.
Software:
Borderlands 2 Review (PC) on Vortez.
F1 2012 PC on eTeknix.
Video Cards:
Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 Flex Edition 1GB on Tweaktown.
Borderlands 2 PhysX Performance - GTX 680 and HD 7970 on PC Perspective.
Misc:
Patriot Viper 3 Intel Extreme Masters Memory LE PC3-15000 16GB Kit on Tweaktown.
Thecus N5550 – The Perfect NAS? on ComputingOnDemand.
Gigabyte Krypton game mouse on Guru3D.
Tuesday Evening Reviews
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Tuesday, 2-October-2012 18:11:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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CPU & Motherboard:
AMD Trinity Review: The A10 5800K and A8 5600K Break Cover on PC Perspective.
AMD A10-5800K APU Performance Review on HWHeaven.
AMD A10 5800K APU processor review and MSI FM-2 A85XA-G65 on Guru3D.
AMD A10 and A8 Trinity APU: Virgo CPU Performance Review on HotHardware.
AMD A10-5800K Trinity Desktop APU on LegitReviews.
AMD “Virgo” Platform: 2nd Generation APU on Bjorn3D.
Cases:
CM Storm Scout 2 on BenchmarkReviews.
XSPC H1 “Hive” Cube+ on PureOC.
Fractal Design Define R4 ATX on MissingRemote.
Corsair Vengeance C70 on ThinkComputers.
Cooling:
DeepCool Gamer Storm Assassin CPUI cooler on PureOC.
Thermaltake WATER2.0 Pro Closed Loop Water Cooler on APHNetworks.
Prolimatech MK-26 VGA Cooler on HWSecrets.
NZXT Cryo E40 Notebook Cooler on eTeknix.
Power Supply:
Satechi 10000 mAH Portable Energy Station on TechReaction.
Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 1500W PSU on LegitReviews.
Seasonic G Series 550W on TechPowerUp.
Storage:
KingFast F3 Plus 240GB 7mm SSD on Tweaktown.
Samsung 840 Series 250GB SSD on TheSSDReview.
Corsair Neutron 240GB SSD on eTeknix.
OWC Mercury Helios PCIe Thunderbolt Expansion Chassis on TheSSDReview.
Interesting Forum Threads
(2 Comments)
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Monday, 1-October-2012 21:06:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's a few interesting threads from the forums. Remember, OCAU has official Twitter, Facebook and Google+ pages now!
OCAU's FNQ Hwbot team meet thread in Overclocking & Hardware.
Microsoft, HP Accused of ''Skirting'' U.S. Taxes in Overclocking & Hardware.
Joysticks - anyone still use them? in Overclocking & Hardware.
Small thermal compound comparison in Overclocking & Hardware.
HWBOT CPU POPULARITY CHART in Overclocking & Hardware.
Borderlands 2 in PC Games.
How to make your games look better and run faster using SweetFX in PC Games.
New programming language. Anyone done it before? in Programming & Software Development.
Firmware 4.25 is live in Sony Consoles.
Lifehacker HTPC article in HTPC.
Using the internet (from home) anonymously and secure from tracking in Networking.
Download whole bleedingly bad web page/get useful info out of crud in General Software.
Toshiba 3.5" Drives hit the market (formerly Hitachi 3.5" Drives) in Storage & Backup.
Sophos Detects Virus Shh/Updater-B in Business & Enterprise.
Home 3D Printers - what to consider? in Other Toys.
Rocksmith - be a guitar hero with YOUR guitar in Musicians.
My new Caique! in Pets & Animals.
Piracy to blame for Channel 10 ratings slump (apparently) in Entertainment.
A movie a week in Entertainment.
NRL - Rugby League 2012 Discussion in Major Sporting Events.
Monday Morning
(7 Comments)
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Monday, 1-October-2012 03:14:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Senator Conroy has threatened to build a link to the USA to drive prices down. Communications minister Stephen Conroy has threatened to fund a new submarine link between Australia and the US out of the National Broadband Network budget if international pricing does not fall to reasonable levels. In a speech boasting about his "unfettered legal power" over Australian telco regulation, Senator Conroy told a conference this week that he could order a Government-funded subsea cable if existing operators "do not start responding to market pressure".
HDD volumes are apparently back to pre-Thai-flood levels, but prices aren't. HDD shipments in 2012 for the overall computer market, including PCs, are forecast to reach 524 million drives, up 4.3% percent from 502.5 million units last year, according to an IHS report. Hard drive prices, however, will remain high, and prices are not expected to fall to pre-flood levels until 2014, IHS stated in a report earlier this year.
Gunna spotted a partnership between AMD and Android. Got an AMD CPU in your Windows PC? Then you just gained access to more than half a million Google Android apps thanks to an AMD partnership with Bluestacks. A virtualization app and website filled with Android titles can help bridge your mobile and desktop world.
Meanwhile Intel have released some Clover Trail Atom details, with coverage on PC Perspective and HotHardware. The Z2760 is a dual-core Atom-based chip with a 1.8GHz clock frequency and support for Intel Hyperthreading technology which allows two cores to process four threads to enhance performance in multithreaded workloads. Clover Trail is manufactured using Intel's 32nm process node and is targeted at ultra-mobile computing applications like tablets and adjacent convertible devices. Imagination Technologies' PowerVR SGX545 graphics core has been coupled with the Atom architecture on the Z2760 for what Intel claims will be the best, low-power Windows 8 tablet experience available when they begin to ship from a number of top name manufacturers in the coming months.
There's an independent online sci-fi/thriller series called CONTINUUM.. and you can now watch all of season 1 for free here on YouTube. "Continuum" is a serialized story about a young woman who awakens aboard an adrift space ship with no memory of who she is or how she got there and at the mercy of the ship's mysterious computer.
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