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November 2013 |
Friday again!
     
     
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
Friday Afternoon
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Friday, 29-November-2013 14:00:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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OCZ have been in trouble for a while, but they have finally filed for bankruptcy now. Apparently Toshiba have put in an offer for their assets. The Company has received an offer from Toshiba Corporation to acquire substantially all of the Company's assets in a bankruptcy proceeding. The parties have substantially completed negotiations on an asset purchase agreement and OCZ believes that all the material terms have been agreed to. Coverage on Slashdot and PC Authority, thanks PP and Sniper.
Ouch - a UK man has thrown out a hard drive, forgetting it had 7,500 bitcoins on it. Buried somewhere under four feet of mud and rubbish, in the Docksway landfill site near Newport, Wales, in a space about the size of a football pitch is a computer hard drive worth more than £4m. It belonged to James Howells, who threw it out when he was clearing up his desk in mid-summer and discovered the part, rescued from a defunct Dell laptop. He found it in a drawer and put it in a bin.
C|Net have listed their 2013 Tech Turkeys - it is Thanksgiving over there, after all.
Some spacey stuff from BlueRaven: Awesome photo of supernova cloud and high-emission "star factory" nebula in the same shot of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Also some cool timewasters in the form of interactive solar system and comet ISON trajectory models. Lots of options to play with. Nice music too. Links posted in the General Astronomy/Space thread.
Friday Morning Reviews
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Friday, 29-November-2013 08:28:00 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Graphics Cards:
XFX R7 240 and R7 250 vs GT 640 and GT 630 on HardwareHeaven.
Gigabyte AMD Radeon R9 270X WF OC on Madshrimps.
GeForce GTX 760 SLI vs GTX 780 on ocaholic.
Asus Radeon R9 270 DirectCU II OC on ocaholic.
Storage:
Corsair Flash Voyager Slider 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive on TweakTown.
Western Digital Red (WD40EFRX) 4 TB NAS HDD on TechARP.
OCZ Vector 150 240GB on Legion Hardware.
Western Digital WD My Cloud on Megatechnews.
Cases:
Aerocool GT-S Black Edition on techPowerUp.
NZXT Source 530 on OCC.
Cooling:
Antec KUHLER H2O 1250 on Vortez.
SilverStone Tundra TD02 AIO CPU Cooler on PureOverclock.
Thermalright AXP-100 CPU Cooler on LanOC.
Audio:
Sennheiser Presence Bluetooth HD Headset on TechnologyX.
CM Storm Pulse-R Headset on ocaholic.
Corsair Vengeance 2100 Wireless Dolby 7.1 Gaming Headset (Video Review) on HardwareHeaven.
Input etc:
Gigabyte Aivia Uranium Mouse on PureOverclock.
Max Keyboard Blackbird Tenkeyless Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on Custom PC Review.
CM Storm Reaper Mouse on Ocaholic.
Networking:
Rosewill RPLC-200PKIT Powerline Adapter Kit on Benchmark Reviews.
Netgear R6250 Dual Band Gigabit Smart WiFi Router on eTeknix.
Mobile:
Apple iPad mini Retina on Techspot.
LG G2 Smartphone on TweakTown.
Misc:
Compro TN600W IP Wifi Camera on Vortez.
ASRock Z87 Fatal1ty Killer motherboard on Guru3D.
Something that I'm looking forward to in the new year - The return of Cicada 3301. For the past two years, a mysterious online organization has been setting the world's finest code-breakers a series of seemingly unsolvable problems. But to what end?
Not sure who would wear a vibrating "Smartwig" - But Sony patented the idea just in case. The hair-raising design, released by the US Patent, is "a wearable computing device, comprising of a wig" that has sensors "GPS", "tactile feedback" and the ability to communicate wirelessly to computing devices.
And whilst we're on the topic of odd "Smart Objects", here's a tongue stud that can be used to place phone calls, play video games and drive wheelchairs. The new device, a barbell-shaped titanium ring, has a magnetic field that changes when the tongue is moved. The changes are picked up by sensors on a headset and relayed to an iPod connected to a wheelchair or computer.
Researchers at ETH Zurich, a university of science and technology, have teleported information from one end of a superconducting circuit to another. The experiment has two unusual features: 1) It is the first time quantum teleportation was conducted over a circuit without the use of a powerful laser beam; and 2) the information was relayed making use of the laws of quantum physics rather than classical physics.
The suns been awfully quiet of late, with sunspots dropping an awful lot of late. Solar storms can interrupt telecommunications and electronic networks on Earth. Sunspot activity can also have an impact on the Earth's climate.
Science has proven that gaming can actually improve your reactions, memory and social skills. An experiment at the University of California found a game called NeuroRacer resulted in "60- to 85-year-old subjects improved to the point that they outperformed 20-year-old subjects who had never played it before." This new found ability to upgrade your ability to juggle more than one task could help you become more efficient when you work, shop or are around the home. All gaming has given me is an extra few kilos and glasses.
And speaking of gaming, for anyone having issues winning the significant other over with buying a Xbox 1 - Microsoft has your back with a pre-drafted letter.
Thursday Morning
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Thursday, 28-November-2013 02:44:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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This Christmas won't be affected by a lower GST threshhold. The decision to lower the GST-threshold on imported goods worth less than $1000 has been pushed back until March next year. That means Christmas presents bought online this year from overseas will not be subject to the tax.
Newegg have lost their patent dispute - although there'll no doubt be an appeal. Newegg, an online retailer that has made a name for itself fighting the non-practicing patent holders sometimes called "patent trolls," sits on the losing end of a lawsuit tonight. An eight-person jury returned to court shortly after 7:00pm and found that the company infringed all four asserted claims of a patent owned by TQP Development, a company owned by patent enforcement expert Erich Spangenberg.
Futuremark have responded to the benchmark shenanigans reported on a few months ago, and have removed Samsung and HTC from their listings. Delisted devices are stripped of their rank and scores. In this instance, several Samsung and HTC devices are accused of breaking Futuremark's benchmarking rules. Futuremark didn't elaborate on which specific rule(s) these devices broke, but a look at the company's benchmarking policies reveals that hardware makers aren't allowed to make optimizations specific to 3DMark, nor are platforms allowed to detect the launch of the benchmark executable (unless it's needed to enable multi-GPU and/or there's a known conflict that would prevent it from running).
We linked some reviews earlier but here's Western Digital's page on their new dual SSD+HDD drive. Introducing WD Black², the world's first 2.5-inch dual drive storage solution. The WD Black² dual drive is a completely new approach in a compromised solid-state and hybrid storage market. Finally you can have the speed of an SSD that you want and the capacity of a hard drive that you need in your notebook or all-in-one PC.
Here's an incredbile bitcoin mining setup in Hong Kong. HK’s new bitcoin farm involves one meter high transparent glass tanks, copper piping, cooling machines and computer boards soaked in bubbling 3M cooling liquid. LED lights flash constantly, though the facility is cool, safe and quiet.
Wednesday Afternoon Reviews
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Wednesday, 27-November-2013 12:19:29 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Motherboards & CPUs:
ECS GANK Drone Z87H3-A3X L337 on Legit Reviews.
ASRock Fatal1ty Z87 Killer on Hardware Secrets.
Gigabyte Z87X-UD5 TH on Hardware Asylum.
Graphics Cards:
HIS R9 270X IceQ X² Turbo Boost 2 GB on techPowerUp.
EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti SC SuperClocked ACX on Guru3D.
Storage:
Adata DashDrive Elite UE700 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive on APH Networks.
Corsair Flash Voyager LS 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive on TweakTown.
Western Digital Black^2 120GB SSD + 1TB HD Dual-Drive on Anandtech.
Western Digital Black^2 120GB SSD + 1TB HD Dual-Drive on LanOC.
Western Digital Black^2 120GB SSD + 1TB HD Dual-Drive on Techware Labs.
Western Digital Black^2 120GB SSD + 1TB HD Dual-Drive on PC Perspective.
Buffalo TeraStation 5400 NAS on Computing on Demand.
Cases:
NZXT Source 530 Full Tower on Neoseeker.
Rosewill Galaxy-03 Mid-Tower on Legit Reviews.
Logic Supply LGX ML300 Fanless NUC on Silent PC Review.
Power Supplies:
Antec High Current Gamer 750W on eTeknix.
Corsair RM Series 650 W on techPowerUp.
Fractal Design Integra R2 750W on ocaholic.
Audio:
Tesoro Kuven Devil 7.1 Virtual Gaming Headset (Video Review) on HardwareHeaven.
Attitude One Tunguska 7.1 Virtual Surround USB Gaming Headset on NikKTech.
Arctic S113BT Portable Bluetooth Speaker on Funky Kit.
Noisehush i7 Noise Canceling Headphones on PureOverclock.
Networking:
Amped Wireless RTA15 High Power Dual Band 802.11AC Router on TweakTown.
D-Link DIR-868L Dual Band AC1750 Wireless Router on TweakTown.
Tablets:
Apple iPad Air on HotHardware.
Lenovo Yoga Android Tablet on Benchmark Reviews.
Misc:
Scythe Kaze Chrono Fan controller on Funky Kit.
Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex TV HD Media Player on PC Stats.
ADATA XPG v1.0 Black DDR3-1600 CL9 Memory Kit on OCIA.
Wednesday Morning
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Wednesday, 27-November-2013 09:12:54 (GMT +10) - by Grec
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A drone hit the Sydney Harbor bridge yesterday that was launched by British man Edward Prescott. An edited version of the video uploaded to YouTube by Mr Prescott shows that the drone's camera was rolling the entire time it flew through and then into the Harbor Bridge, landed on a railway line, was picked up by Sydney Trains crew, placed in the train and taken back to their office.
Researchers over at the New York University have developed a small flying machine that flies through the air like a Jellyfish, intended for monitoring traffic. The device has four wings arranged like flower petals, which pulsate up and down. Though it resembles the motion of the jellyfish in water, it is aerodynamically more similar to the flight of a moth. Its tiny motor is tethered to a power cord. The machine can fly and hover.
For all of the PlayStation fans out there, here's a rather clever stop motion video on the original PlayStation, comparing it to some new and old technologies.
A little while ago, a video about a homemade grenade with components you could buy AFTER having passed security in a Airport came to light - This time Evan Booth has made a blunderbuss.US computer technician Evan Booth has cobbled together an amateur arsenal in his spare time - and it is a deadly demonstration of the danger of a creative mind when applied to everyday objects. "If we're trying stop a terrorist threat at the airport," says Booth. "It's already too late."
An interesting discussion is underway in the US over whether or not to implement "Kill Switches" into mobile phones in the US. Led by a district attorney in San Francisco and attorney general in New York, law enforcement would like all smartphones to contain firmware that allows a consumer to "brick" a mobile that's lost or stolen. The largest mobile phone maker in the world, Samsung, is on board with the program, and a developer of kill-switch software has offered its program to Samsung for free.
CSIRO, the patent owners of WiFi, have some more bad news - The patents (As of the 26th of November) have expired meaning they no longer receive income from them. In 1992 a team of CSIRO scientists used radio-astronomy to solve the problem of radio waves bouncing off surfaces indoors, causing an echo that distorts the signal. The scientists built a fast chip that could transmit a signal while reducing the echo, a technology now used all over the world in WiFI.
If you've ever thought that your friends Instagram photos look good enough to eat, well now you can. Some Instagrams look good enough to eat, especially when they're glorious food photos. You could just pop them in your mouth. With a little assist from Boomf's marshmallow printing abilities, your Instagram-eating dreams could come true.
Tuesday Morning
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Tuesday, 26-November-2013 00:13:48 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Virgin Galactic are accepting accepting bitcoins as payment for space flights. In a blog post, Branson explained that one passenger, a female flight attendant from Hawaii, has already purchased a Virgin Galactic ticket using bitcoins and he expects "many more to follow in her footsteps."
Mazzanet sent in this article about a patent battle which is worth it for this quote alone: "We've heard a good bit in this courtroom about public key encryption," said Albright. "Are you familiar with that? "Yes, I am," said Diffie, in what surely qualified as the biggest understatement of the trial. "And how is it that you're familiar with public key encryption?" "I invented it."
g@z is having a flashback to the Compucolor II, which I have to admit completely passed me by back in the day - I went VIC20, Amiga, PC. Anyway: An enthusiast in the US has set out to preserve what he can of the Compucolor II. He’s uploaded hundreds of programs and disk images that can be run on a java emulator of the Compucolor OS (FCS – File Control System) at and with the disk images. Some of the programs my dad wrote are up there I believe and I’m going to dig out the old collection and see what I can contribute to the project as I ended up with the entire Compucolor Users group of Victoria disk and newsletter library. Sounds like a job for the Retro Forum!
JC sent in this wooden table mod. The desk is made out of solid old-growth red wood. Not a knot anywhere. It came from a demolished hundred-year-old water tower.
PCPerspective tried improving the storage of the new PlayStation 4. The most dramatic change was seen in the AC IV testing, where the drop from HDD to SSHD was 19% while the drop from HDD to SSD was an impressive 32%. Clearly the SSD is the best option but we saw some interesting results in the SSHD benchmarks.
PCPerspective also consider how to build a PC from console-equivalent hardware. Education and hard work will reward those who build their own PCs, but not every bit of open source software will achieve the results that the tight integration of the Xbox One will offer casual users who are not interested in getting their hands dirty. The PC might not match the price/performance of the PS4 and the expectation is that Sony will improve the platform over the years with updates to more adequately match the Xbox in terms of media serving capabilities.
This cool road-zipper machine caught my eye recently. Commuters on Interstate 15 will have some company in between rush hour commutes. Caltrans is studying the durability and performance of its Barrier-Transfer Machines, also known as "zippers."
Monday Afternoon
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Monday, 25-November-2013 15:01:01 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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It's curtains for Winamp, with the venerable media player being shut down next month. Much-loved media player Winamp will shutter on December 20, 2013, the company has announced, with the AOL-owned software planning to cease all of the related web services and yank the official download. The news, quietly announced alongside version 5.66 of the software, ends fifteen years of the app being offered, with the Winamp team warning that anybody wanting a copy before it’s pulled should download soon.
Also making an exit is John Carmack, leaving id Software. This latest move comes after Carmack took on the role of head of technology at Oculus VR, which makes the buzzed-about Rift virtual reality headset. Though Willits essentially says that Id's always-strong technology development is on a steady course, Carmack's departure certainly marks the end of an era.
Der8auer has taken an AMD CPU to over 8GHz. Today, Der8auer from Team Germany is the first to go below the 9min 30sec mark on AMD. He accomplishes this with a CPU clocked at - and we advise you to sit down for this - 8026MHz. Yes! That's right! Over 8GHz SuperPI 32M stable! That is pretty darn impressive.
LG Australia are apparently investigating the smart TV spying claims from last week. But Phillip Anderson, head of public relations at LG Australia, told Fairfax in a statement on Wednesday: "LG Australia acknowledges the issues that have been identified in the UK. We take the claims very seriously and are currently investigating the situation at a local level."
Owen sent in this Google BBS. Ahh, it takes me back.
Monday Midday Reviews
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Monday, 25-November-2013 12:14:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
ASUS R9 270 Direct CU II OC 2 GB on TechPowerUp.
2560×1600: GeForce GTX 780 Ti vs Radeon R9 290X on BenchmarkReviews.
GeForce GTX 760 SLI vs GTX Titan on OCaholic.
Cooling:
Zalman Reserator 3 Max AIO Liquid CPU Cooler on eTeknix.
Antec Kühler H2O 920 CPU cooler on OCaholic.
Enermax Aeolus Vegas Notebook Cooler on PureOC.
Corsair H80i CPU cooler on LanOC.
Input Etc:
CM Storm Aluminium Keyboard, Mouse & Headset Round-up on eTeknix.
SteelSeries Sensei Fnatic Mouse on LanOC.
Mad Catz S.T.R.I.K.E. 3 Gaming Keyboard on NikKTech.
Audio Visual:
Avermedia Game Capture HD 2 on RBMods.
Creative Sound Blaster ZxR Sound Card on MadShrimps.
Creative Sound Blaster EVO ZxR on Vortez.
CM Storm Pitch In-ear Gaming Headset on TechPowerUp.
Acoustic Research ARS60 Speakers on PureOC.
Motherboard & CPU:
Intel Core i7-4770K vs 3770K vs 2600K Gaming-Performance on OCaholic.
Storage:
Thecus N2560 NAS on Vortez.
Thecus N4560 Four-Bay Consumer NAS on Tweaktown.
WD My Cloud Personal Cloud Server on HotHardware.
OCZ Deneva 2 R 200 GB eMLC SSD on OCaholic.
Corsair Flash Voyager GS 256GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive on Tweaktown.
Lexar JumpDrive M10 Secure 64GB Flash Drive on eTeknix.
OCZ Vertex 450 128GB SSD on NeoSeeker.
SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB RAID 0 SSD on Tweaktown.
Cases:
Enermax Fulmo ST Midi Tower on NikKTech.
BitFenix Phenom Micro-ATX on eTeknix.
Tranquil PC D33217GKE NUC Case on TechPowerUp.
Cooler Master Cosmos SE on TechPowerUp.
Fractal Design Arc XL High Airflow Full Tower on LegitReviews.
Power Supply:
NZXT Hale82 V2 550W White PSU on LegitReviews.
OCZ Fatal1ty 750W on Guru3D.
Be Quiet! Power Supply Cable Accessories on Tweaktown.
Portable & Prebuilt:
MSI All-in-One Gaming PC (AG2712) on HWHeaven.
EUROCOM Panther 5D High Performance Laptop on HWHeaven.
Sony Smartwatch 2 SW2 for Android Smartphones on MegaTechNews.
Thanks to Axeman and Matthew today!
     
     
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
Thursday Morning
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Thursday, 21-November-2013 01:34:50 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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If you're tired of negative Bitcoin headlines, here's some good news - the US Government has declared it a legal means of exchange. While not an official seal of approval, the hearing has given some legitimacy to a payment mechanism that has been associated with illegal activities even as it gains acceptance by the general public and investment community.
Oxford's word of 2013 is selfie, beating twerk - and as Australians we've only ourselves to blame. Oxford Dictionaries has named "selfie" - which had its humble beginnings in a post on ABC Online more than a decade ago - as its word of the year.
However, our copyright laws could use some work. DO you know that sharing a meme in this country makes you a criminal? That's right. Condescending Wonka, Li'll Bub and Ryan Gosling's hey girl are all crimes under Australian copyright law. In fact by sharing a YouTube video you could face five years in jail and a fine of $93,500.
AMD has a new supercomputer graphics card. With full support for PCI Express® 3.0 and optimized for use with the OpenCL™ compute programming language, the AMD FirePro S10000 12GB Edition GPU features ECC memory plus DirectGMA support allowing developers working with large models and assemblies to take advantage of the massively parallel processing capabilities of AMD GPUs based on the latest AMD Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture. AMD FirePro S10000 12GB Edition GPU is slated for availability in Spring 2014.
Bill Gates has written a lengthy piece on Wired about how you can help improve the world. But if you take the long view, by almost any measure of progress we are living in history’s greatest era. Wars are becoming less frequent. Life expectancy has more than doubled in the past century. More children than ever are going to primary school. The world is better than it has ever been. But it is still not as good as we wish.
DDsD sent in this interesting development after the recent Adobe breach Facebook and other companies are using the leaked data to compare against their own password hashes and warn their own customers if their password was leaked by the other services. As I proffered in a follow-up comment on this story, Facebook and any other company can take any of the Adobe passwords that have already been guessed or figured out and simply hash those passwords with whatever one-way hashing mechanism(s) they use internally. After that, it’s just a matter of finding any overlapping email addresses that use the same password.
The surviving members of Monty Python are set to reunite in a new stage show. The group, whose work has been living on in the musical Spamalot (penned by Idle), was set to announce their comeback Thursday. But news was already circulating, with Idle tweeting Monday that fans should look out for a "big forthcoming news event." And The Sun newspaper splashed the news Tuesday with a front-page headline proclaiming "Monty Python Flies Again."
Callan noticed this LG TV which reports back to home base even when you ask it not to. How very 1984! It was at this point, I made an even more disturbing find within the packet data dumps. I noticed filenames were being posted to LG's servers and that these filenames were ones stored on my external USB hard drive. To demonstrate this, I created a mock avi file and copied it to a USB stick.
Wednesday Night Reviews
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Wednesday, 20-November-2013 22:40:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cases:
Phanteks Enthoo Primo on BenchmarkReviews.
Lian Li PC-A79 Aluminum Chassis on eTeknix.
Video Cards:
Powercolor Radeon R9-270X Devil on Bjorn3D.
AMD Radeon R9 290 Review On Linux on Phoronix.
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 760 4GB on LegitReviews.
Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X OC Edition on ThinkComputers.
PowerColor Devil R9 270X 2GB on CustomPCReview.
ASUS GeForce GTX 760 MARS on Guru3D.
HIS Radeon R9-290X on Guru3D.
ASUS ROG MARS 760 on OCaholic.
Input Etc:
ROCCAT Raivo Gaming Mousepad on NeoSeeker.
Mionix Avior 8200 Gaming Mouse on PureOC.
Logitech G510s Gaming Keyboard on OCClub.
Cooling:
Cooler Master V8 GTS CPU cooler on Vortez.
Cooler Master Nepton 280L CPU cooler on OCClub.
Motherboard & CPU:
BIOSTAR NM70I-1037U on MadShrimps.
Cooler Master Nepton 140XL cooler on Modders-Inc.
ASRock Z87 Extreme6 on eTeknix.
Storage:
Icy Dock FatCage MB155SP-B Drive Cage on Tweaktown.
LSI MegaRAID SAS 9271-8i 6Gb/s 8-Port SATA+SAS ROC RAID Controller on NikKTech.
The Western Digital My Cloud EX4 on TechARP.
Seagate 600 Series 240GB RAID 0 SSD on Tweaktown.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Google Nexus 5 smartphone on TechSpot.
Apple iPad Air on TechSpot.
Google Nexus 5 on HotHardware.
Gigabyte Brix i5-4200 Haswell mini-PC on SOTechDesign.
Misc:
Microsoft Xbox One game console on HotHardware.
Hands-on with the BeagleBone Black, a 32-bit Micro Computer on Tweaktown.
Want free talk, text and data on your mobile phone? Sprints now offering just that, for a year - Catch is, you need to be a student... and in the USA. Once you're verified, your account will be credited for one year of unlimited talk and text, plus 1GB per month of data if you buy a smartphone, which Sprint says is a $70 per month value. If 1GB of data isn't enough for your studying -- or let's be real, social media -- needs, you can pay $10 per month for unlimited data.
So, there's an ad in the form of Jean-Claude Van Damme doing the splits with his legs resting on two trucks driving backwards. And another ad of cute kid in a Darth Vader outfit using "special powers" to unlock car doors. Don't forget that group of adorable babies dancing with adult versions of themselves - And somehow, these are some of the most effective advertisements. In the case of the new Van Damme ad, which has nearly 7.7 million YouTube views, the publicity will not only aid the overarching Volvo brand, but it could also sell more trucks, says Mediapost.com advertising columnist Barbara Lippert.
Bad news for Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones lovers - Or, at least, those who download it off the internet. Hundreds of thousands of Australians who illegally download the latest seasons of their favourite TV show would be engaging in a criminal act under the US proposal, critics said. The proposal was for an international trade deal called the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Stargazers and doomsayers alike, rejoice! Comet ISON was discovered by amateur astronomers in Russia and Belarus in September last year. It will pass just 1.2 million km from the sun on November 29, and will pass even closer to earth on the 26th of the month. That's next Tuesday. 3. In the third scenario, which scientists really don't want because it would spoil all their fun, the comet is pulled into the sun. This is called a sun grazer, and pretty much means a harmless death for the comet. But the news is not all dull, because that would result in one seriously large explosion. Indeed, this could be the largest explosion ever observed by mankind, Astro Dave says.
Photographer Romain Veillon recently travelled to the deserts of Namibia, where he photographed the abandoned village of Kolmanskop - especially the parts that are slowly being consumed by waves of sand. Check out the photos here.
Looks like Apple may be dabbling in the 3D market, after having paid US$345 million for PrimeSense's 3D sensing technology. PrimeSense is perhaps best known as the company behind the technology that enabled Microsoft's Xbox Kinect. The sensing technology allows the game console to view a scene in three dimensions, so players can control a game using their body and physical movements.
Tuesday Afternoon Reviews
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Tuesday, 19-November-2013 16:22:01 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Motherboards & CPUs:
Gigabyte G1.Killer Sniper 5 (Z87) on Legit Reviews.
X79 Charts: 18 Boards - ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition on ocaholic.
Intel Core i5-4670K vs 3570K vs 2500K Gaming-Performance on ocaholic.
Supermicro X10SAT Workstation Haswell Xeon Motherboard on TweakTown.
Graphics Cards:
HIS R9 270X IceQ x2 Turbo on Vortez.
MSI R9 270X Gaming on LanOC.
Storage:
SuperTalent Pico 32GB USB 3.0 Thumbdrive on Madshrimps.
Adata DashDrive Elite SE720 128GB External SSD on The SSD Review.
QNAP TS-470 4-Bay SMB NAS on TweakTown.
QNAP TS-670 6-bay SMB NAS on Madshrimps.
Western Digital Black 4TB 3.5" Consumer HDD (WD4003FZEX) on TweakTown.
Cooling:
Cooler Master Nepton 140XL Liquid CPU Cooler on TechnologyX.
Scythe Mugen 4 on techPowerUp.
Cases:
NZXT Source 530 Full Tower on Legit Reviews.
NZXT Source 530 Full Tower on TweakTown.
NZXT Source 530 Full Tower on Pure Overclock.
Silverstone ML05 mini-ITX HTPC case on Silent PC Review.
SilverStone Raven RV04 Computer Case on APH Networks.
Xigmatek Aquila Micro ATX on TechnologyX.
Power Supplies:
Be Quiet! Pure Power L8 500-Watt 80 PLUS Bronze on TweakTown.
be quiet! Pure Power L8 730W CM on ocaholic.
Fractal Design NEWTON R3 800w on techPowerUp.
Lepa MaxBron B800-MB on Hardware Asylum.
Networking:
Asus RT-AC56U Gigabit Router on LanOC.
Netgear R6250 Wireless AC Router on HardwareHeaven.
Buffalo AirStation Wireless AC866 USB Adapter (WI-U2-866D) on HardwareHeaven.
Audio:
TDK TREK A26 Ultra-Portable Wireless Speaker on NikKTech.
Tt eSPORTS CRONOS Gaming Headset on Neoseeker.
The Playstation 4 launched yesterday, with some users ( .4% of shipped consoles according to Sony) complaining of broken HDMI cords, units in unusable condition, and various versions of the Red Light of Death. "Be assured we are investigating reported PS4 issues," the President of Worldwide Studios tweeted this morning. "The number is very small compared to shipped, we believe they are isolated incidents."
As the meme goes, no longer want to live on this planet anymore? Turns out, there could be a truckload of habitable planets out there. According to engadget's "Alt Week" as many as one in five sun-like stars have planets in the Goldilocks zone. About one in five sunlike stars observed by NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft has an Earth-size planet in the so-called habitable zone, where liquid water — and, potentially life — could exist, according to the new study. If these results apply elsewhere in the galaxy, the nearest such planet could be just 12 light-years away.
So, there's an interesting new motorcycle helmet with Google Glass-style heads-up display, rear-view camera, and Bluetooth implemented into the actual helmet for increasing rider safety on the road - Arguably both a good thing, and a bad thing. How can you pay attention to cars zipping about you, sometimes within inches of killing you, while flipping your eyes around to focus on a clear plastic box at the bottom of your field of vision? That's what I was considering on Thursday in the bright noontime sun as I slid on the Skully P1 and gently wiggled my glasses back into the helmet, one of three prototypes in existence.
Whilst we're on the subject of cameras in headgear, check out the new Google Glass 3D Printed Sunshade - Something you can make using your own 3d printer.One aspect of the Sunshade is that it obscures the light that tells you Google Glass is in use. You are now free as a bird to shoot whatever you like, whenever you like, and from whatever angle you can get your head around. Accused of encouraging sneakiness, Barrett repeated that his only motivation had been poor visibility during sunny days.
Something I've daydreamed about before but now seems to have become reality, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with a device that can render digital 3D content physically using a projector, an Xbox Kinect sensor, 900 pins, linkages and actuators, and a computer. Dubbed a "dynamic shape display", the device, unlike a hologram, can render 3D content physically, so that users can interact with digital information in a tangible way. It can also interact with the physical world around it by, for example, moving objects, such as a ball, on its table’s surface. Remote participants in a video conference can also be displayed physically, allowing for what the MIT researchers call "a strong sense of presence" and the ability to interact physically at a distance.
The worlds fastest spy plane has been planned out to hopefully hit the sky by 2030. And by the worlds fastest, I mean six times the speed of sound – about 6760 km/h, or 113 kilometers a minute - That's Sydney to Melbourne in less than ten minutes. To reach such speeds, Lockheed Martin and Aerojet Rocketdyne, the companies said to be actively developing the plane, will have to create a new type of engine. Engines found in big commercial airliners can hit speeds up to two-and-a-half times the speed of sound before they're no longer efficient. Other engines keep their efficiency up to four times that speed, but getting to mach six will require a hybrid engine, one that uses a turbine when it's not going too fast, and a supersonic combustion ramjet when it's ready to move
You've probably all heard of Batkid by now - the alter-ego of five-year-old Miles, a super kid fighting leukemia. Make-A-Wish foundation pulled out all the stops for him when he said he wanted to be Batman for the day. A donated Lamborghini, one Riddler, Penguin, Police Commissioner, Batman and what looked like most of San Francisco all turned up to help him out.
Photography Gallery
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Monday, 18-November-2013 21:04:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's a quick snapshot of what people are up to in our Photography Gallery forum.
Sunday Night Reviews
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Sunday, 17-November-2013 23:43:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
NuForce S3-BT High-Fidelity Bluetooth Speakers on NikKTech.
CM Storm Pulse R Headset on RBMods.
Grace Digital GDI-BTSP201 Bluetooth Bookshelf Speakers on MissingRemote.
Power Supply:
be quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 850W on OCaholic.
OCZ Fatal1ty 750W Gaming on FunkyKit.
Enermax Revolution X't 630W on TechPowerUp.
Anker Astro2 9000mAh Portable USB External Battery Charger on Tweaktown.
SilverStone ST65SF-G 650-Watt 80 PLUS Gold on Tweaktown.
Video Cards:
EVGA GTX 780 Ti SuperClocked w/ ACX Cooler 3GB on TechPowerUp.
HIS R7 260X iPower IceQ X2 and R9 270X iCooler IceQ X2 Turbo on PureOC.
Sapphire Dual-X R9 270 on HWHeaven.
AMD's Radeon R9 270 on TechReport.
ASUS Radeon R9 270 Direct CU II on HotHardware.
AMD Radeon R9 270 on Guru3D.
MSI Radeon R9 270 Gaming OC and Sapphire Dual-X R9 270 OC on LegitReviews.
MSI R9 270 Gaming 2GB on CustomPCReview.
ASUS AMD Radeon R9 270 Direct CU II OC 2GB on eTeknix.
PowerColor Devil R9 270X on OCClub.
Input Etc:
Gigabyte Force M7 Thor Laser Gaming Mouse on BenchmarkReviews.
SteelSeries Apex Gaming Keyboard on OCaholic.
SteelSeries Apex Keyboard on APHNetworks.
ROCCAT Kone Pure Optical mouse on Vortez.
Tt eSPORTS Theron Infrared Gaming Mouse on ThinkComputers.
Corsair Raptor K30 Gaming Keyboard on HWHeaven.
Tt eSPORTS VOLOS MMORPG Gaming Mouse on NikKTech.
FAVI Entertainment Smart Stick/Keyboard on PureOC.
Logitech G602 Wireless Gaming Mouse on LanOC.
Memory:
Patriot Viper 3 Black Mamba 8GB PV38G240C0K on PureOC.
Patriot Viper 3 Black Mamba PC3-19200 16GB on NeoSeeker.
Friday again!
     
     
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
Sponsor Specials
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Friday, 15-November-2013 14:19:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Remember to keep an eye on our Sponsor Specials forum. In there our various sponsors have info and deals on headphones, media players, office chairs, video cards, arcade game parts, technical training, fitness supplements, hard drives and more. Check 'em out!
Friday Afternoon
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Friday, 15-November-2013 14:14:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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There's growing concern about the "Trans-Pacific Partnership" or TPP and how the negotiations are being conducted in secrecy - although parts of it have been leaked. Choice have stated their position. But because the text of the agreement won’t be public until the treaty is signed, consumer groups and the public are being shut out of the process. Sign our petition calling on the government to bring consumers to the table and release the text before the meeting in December. Don’t let Australia trade consumer rights away. Discussion here.
AMD have a new API called Mantle, with coverage on Tech Report and HotHardware. One of the major planks of AMD's APU13 developer conference has been an in-depth discussion of its next-generation API, Mantle. Mantle, which first debuted at the company's Hawaii unveil in late September, has been billed as a high-performance alternative to DirectX 11. Prior to today, AMD has mostly discussed Mantle in broad terms, without giving much detail on the nuts and bolts of what it offers.
AMD also released their mobile APU roadmap, with coverage on Tech Report and PC Perspective. AMD’s APU13 is all about APUs and their programming, but the hardware we have seen so far has been dominated by the upcoming Kaveri products for FM2+. It seems that AMD has more up their sleeves for release this next year, and it has somewhat caught me off guard. The Beema and Mullins based products are being announced today, but we do not have exact details on these products.
Microsoft have a new cybercrime centre. “We wanted to protect our customers,” says Richard Boscovich, assistant general counsel for Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU). “As a result, we’re hopefully identifying or producing evidence that we can provide to national and international law enforcement so they can not only identify these criminals but apprehend them.”
There's a LAN in Canberra tomorrow. The only BYOC LAN Based in Canberra, ACT. Australia's Capital Territory – Capital LAN (CLAN) is targeted at all the awesome gamers who live in Australia's Capital City! This event is targeted more towards the traditionalist, hardcore gaming crowd – although there's a lot of gaming experimentation so aside from the usual popular games like Call of Duty, Team Fortress, Trackmania and more, you'll find the gamers at CLAN also trying out things like indie games, the latest releases and upcoming games.
Friday Afternoon Reviews
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Friday, 15-November-2013 13:58:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Portable & Prebuilt:
NVIDIA Shield gaming handheld on NeoSeeker.
Microsoft Surface 2 Windows RT 8.1 Tablet on HotHardware.
CyberPower Zeus EVO Lightning 3000 SE AMD-powered Gaming PC on Tweaktown.
iPad Air on Bjorn3D.
iconBIT NetTAB MERCURY Q7 (NT-3602M) Smartphone on MadShrimps.
Sony Xperia Z1 smartphone on TechSpot.
Cases:
SilverStone Raven RV04 on OCIA.
Phanteks Enthoo Primo giant tower on SilentPCReview.
SilverStone Kublai KL04 Mid-Tower on BenchmarkReviews.
Enermax iVektor on HWAsylum.
Antec GX700 on ComputingOnDemand.
NZXT H230 on TechPowerUp.
Cooler Master Cosmos SE on Tweaktown.
BitFenix Prodigy M Micro-ATX on eTeknix.
In Win H-Frame Mini mITX on eTeknix.
Cooling:
Antec Kuhler H2O 650 AIO CPU Water Cooler on eTeknix.
Raijintek AIDOS CPU cooler on OCaholic.
Cooler Master CM Storm SF-17 Gaming Notebook Cooler on MadShrimps.
Noctua NH-U12S Cooler & NF-F12 Fan on FunkyKit.
Storage:
Serial Cables 8-Port 12Gbps SAS Direct Attached JBOD on TheSSDReview.
WD My Cloud EX4 8TB Personal Cloud Storage NAS on LegitReviews.
Western Digital My Cloud EX4 on PCPerspective.
ASUSTOR AS-304T NAS Server on NikKTech.
OCZ Vector 150 240 Gigabyte on OCAholic.
Western Digital My Cloud EX4 Personal Cloud Storage System on TechWareLabs.
Geek Food
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Wednesday, 13-November-2013 20:37:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's some yummy threads from our Geek Recipes forum:
Wednesday Afternoon
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Wednesday, 13-November-2013 16:41:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Internode founder Simon Hackett has been appointed to the NBN board. Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull today announced that he had appointed three senior executives, including Simon Hackett, Internode founder and doyen of Australia’s broadband industry, to be non-executive directors sitting on the board of the National Broadband Network Company. NBN discussion continues in this thread.
An Australian bitcoin website has been robbed of $1.1M by hackers, apparently. A bitcoin user who calls himself TradeFortress says more than 4,100 bitcoins worth about $1.1 million have been robbed from his website. The stolen bitcoins are owned by the users of his website, who had trusted their bitcoins to him. More here, and in the meantime, a Chinese bitcoin site has vanished, taking $4.1M with it.
Owen spotted this article by Backblaze about how long HDDs last. For the past four years, we’ve had enough drives to provide good statistics, but 74% of the drives we buy are living longer than four years. So while 26% of drives fail in their first four years, and we have detailed information about the failure rates of drives in their first four years, we don’t yet know what will happen beyond that. So how long do drives last?
Phoronix have a Linux AMD GPU comparison. For your viewing pleasure today is a 13-way AMD Radeon graphics card comparison when testing out the open-source Radeon Gallium3D drivers on the wide spectrum of ATI/AMD GPUs while looking at the performance for Valve's Source Engine with Counter-Strike: Source and Team Fortress 2. Given the imminent arrival of Steam Machines and SteamOS to push Linux gaming into its long-awaited spotlight, is AMD's open-source Linux graphics driver capable of delivering a reasonable level of performance?
Renegade notes that Chrome extensions will be more locked down in future. According to Google, the leading cause of complaints from Chrome users on Windows is a malicious extension the user installed. To make things harder for the authors of these malicious programs, Google will, starting in January, require that all extensions installed in the stable or beta channel products come from the Chrome Web Store.
ACMA report that almost half of Australians use false identities online. Australians have admitted to providing false personal details online in order to protect themselves, according to the results of an Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) survey. The report, Digital Footprints and Identities, was conducted by Taverner Research on behalf of ACMA with 2509 Australians in March 2013. The research was carried out to find how willing Australians were to disclose personal information about themselves online. Yes, and that's not the only risk!
Wednesday Morning Reviews
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Wednesday, 13-November-2013 01:47:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cooling:
Fractal Design Adjust 108 Fan Controller on TechWareLabs.
Raijintek Ereboss CPU Cooler on eTeknix.
Thermaltake Massive SP Notebook Cooler on FunkyKit.
GamerStorm Lucifer CPU cooler on Vortez.
Input Etc:
Mionix Avior 8200 Laser Gaming Mouse on Tweaktown.
Roccat Ryos MK Glow keyboard on PureOC.
ROCCAT Ryos MK keyboard on Vortez.
Power Supply:
OCZ Technology Fatal1ty 750-Watt 80 PLUS Bronze on Tweaktown.
Thermaltake Toughpower DPS 850 W on TechPowerUp.
Video Cards:
NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 On Linux on Phoronix.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti on Anandtech.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti on MaximumPC.
Nvidia GTX 780 Ti on LanOC.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti on Vortez.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB on PCPerspective.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti on HotHardware.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti on OCClub.
NVIDIA GTX 780 Ti on HWAsylum.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB on LegitReviews.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti on FutureLooks.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB on Tweaktown.
Nvidia GTX 780 Ti 3GB on eTeknix.
GeForce GTX 780 Ti on TechReport.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti on Bjorn3D.
Gigabyte GTX 780 GHz Edition 3GB on eTeknix.
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 GHz Edition on OCaholic.
HIS R9 280X IceQX2 Turbo on Bjorn3D.
XFX R9 280X Double Dissipation Black Edition OC 3GB on eTeknix.
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 GHz Edition on OCaholic.
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 GHz Edition on LegionHW.
GIGABYTE R9 270X Windforce 3X on Vortez.
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 Ti WindForce 3X OC on Guru3D.
HIS R7 260X iPower IceQ X2 2GB GDDR5 on MadShrimps.
Gigabyte GTX 780 Ti OC & Gigabyte GTX 780 GHz Edition on TechSpot.
Sapphire AMD Radeon R9 280X Toxic Edition 3GB on eTeknix.
Storage:
OCZ Vector 150 240 GB on TechPowerUp.
OCZ Vector 150 (240GB) SSD on HWHeaven.
OCZ Vector 150 Series Solid State Drives Tested on HotHardware.
OCZ Technology Vector 150 240GB SSD on Tweaktown.
OCZ Vector 150 240GB and 120GB on PCPerspective.
OCZ Vector 150 240 GB on OCaholic.
OCZ Vector SSD 150 on Guru3D.
OCZ Vector 150 SSD on TechSpot.
OCZ Vector 150 240GB on PureOC.
OCZ Technology Vector 150 120GB SSD on Tweaktown.
OCZ Vector 150 SSD on TechnologyX.
OCZ Vector 150 240GB SSD on LegitReviews.
OCZ Vector 150 SSD on BenchmarkReviews.
Seagate Turbo SSHD Enterprise SSHD on Tweaktown.
Mushkin Ventura Ultra 240GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive on Tweaktown.
Synology DS214Se ‘Special Edition’ 2-bay NAS on eTeknix.
WD My Cloud EX4 Personal Cloud Storage NAS on Techgage.
Teratrend (SilverStone) TS432U 4 Bay USB3.0 RAID Enclosure on eTeknix.
Portable & Prebuilt:
ASUS Nexus 7 Gen 2 Android Tablet on TechwareLabs.
Asrock M8 Mini-ITX Gaming PC on TechSpot.
Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 on HotHardware.
EVGA NVIDIA Tegra Note 7 on PCPerspective.
MSI GT60 20D 3K Resolution Gaming Laptop on HWHeaven.
MSI GE40 2OC-009US Gaming Notebook on PCPerspective.
ASUS Transformer Book T100 Windows 8.1 Hybrid on HotHardware.
Memory:
G.Skill RipjawsZ 16GB DDR3-2133 CL9 Memory Kit on FunkyKit.
Crucial Ballistix Sport XT 16GB DDR3 1866 MHz on HardCoreWare.
Caps Exchange Tutorial
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Monday, 11-November-2013 15:41:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Check out this detailed guide from trodas, showing how to replace broken or poor-quality capacitors and other components:
click for the guide!
Monday Afternoon
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Monday, 11-November-2013 14:30:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Today is Rememberance Day. Remembrance Day (also known as Poppy Day or Armistice Day) is a memorial day observed in Commonwealth countries since the end of World War I to remember the members of their armed forces who have died in the line of duty.
Perth now has free blanket WiFi. City of Perth Lord Mayor Lisa Scaffidi officially launched the free internet service this afternoon, which covers St Georges Terrace, the Murray and Hay Street malls, Forrest Place, Barrack Square, Stirling Gardens, and adjoining streets.
Cloud computing is all well and good, but not when there's an actual cloud. "I got a call, 'Jay, there's a cloud in the data center'," Parikh says. "'What do you mean, outside?'. 'No, inside'." There was panic. "It was raining in the datacenter," he explains.
If you're annoyed by bundled third-party offers when you download and install software (and those dodgy "DOWNLOAD" banner ads), GIMP agree with you. SourceForge, once a useful and trustworthy place to develop and host FLOSS applications, has faced a problem with the ads they allow on their sites - the green "Download here" buttons that appear on many, many adds leading to all kinds of unwanted utilities have been spotted there as well. The tipping point was the introduction of their own SourceForge Installer software, which bundles third-party offers with Free Software packages. We do not want to support this kind of behavior, and have thus decided to abandon SourceForge.
Techdirt report on a strange meeting about TPP. In other words, the Australian government refuses to release information about TPP freely, because it says that too few articles have been written about it. And then it bans journalists from attending public meetings, thus making it harder for them to write articles on the subject.
Microsoft Australia have expressed concern about the NBN. "Ultimately, if you don't get fibre to the home, the biggest impact really is the upload speeds," she told AAP at a Committee for Economic Development of Australia event. She also said Microsoft is lobbying Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull and other government members.
Renegade sent in this article with more info about the helium-filled HDDs from WD/HGST. At one-seventh the density of air, helium produces less drag on the moving components of a drive - the spinning disk platters and actuator arms -- which translates into less friction and lower operating temperatures. The helium-drives run at four to five degrees cooler than today's 7200rpm drives, HGST stated.
HotHardware have been doing some Ivy Bridge-E overclocking. EVGA recently took the wraps off a new high-end X79 motherboard dubbed the X79 Dark and its black PCB with red accents, as it turned out, matched quite nicely with Corsair's Vengeance Pro series memory and H90 water cooler. But we needed stable clean power too, so we enlisted an EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 G2 power supply to offer up the juice. All told, with an OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPs SSD for storage, we ended up with quite a test platform to explore the out limits of clock speed with Intel's Core i7-4960X Ivy Bridge-E six-core processor.
Here's a cool F1 car made from HDD bits. The race card drivers head is a four disk motor populated with disk spacers. The V-12 engine hood scoops above the drivers head are the full anti-disks from four disk drives and were trimmed to fit. Rob Ryan used 12 matching WD Scorpio notebook drive actuators to make the motor. The brass tube that holds the motor together with torx screws was cut, tapped and flattened for it to work.
Monday Afternoon Reviews #2
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Monday, 11-November-2013 13:30:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cases:
BitFenix Ronin on TechPowerUp.
Raidmax Vampire on OCClub.
Lian Li PC-10N on Vortez.
Enermax Ostrog Limited Edition Mid-Tower Chassis on eTeknix.
Cooling:
Thermalright HR-22 CPU Heatsink on SilentPCReview.
XSPC RayStorm D5 Photon AX360 WaterCooling Kit on TechnologyX.
GamerStorm Lucifer CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Power Supply:
Be Quiet! Power Zone 1000W on NikKTech.
Cougar PowerX 550W on TechARP.
Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 550W CM Semi-Modular on eTeknix.
EVGA SuperNOVA P2 1000W on TechPowerUp.
Software:
Batman: Arkham Origins PC on Tweaktown.
Call of Duty Ghosts VGA graphics performance on Tweaktown.
Motherboard & CPU:
Intel Core i5-3570K vs Core i5-2500K Gaming-Performance on OCaholic.
ECS GANK DRONE Z87H3-A3X LGA 1150 Motherboard on MadShrimps.
ASUS MAXIMUS VI IMPACT Motherboard on HWSecrets.
Monday Afternoon Reviews
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Monday, 11-November-2013 13:09:45 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
RHA SA950i Headphones on ThinkComputers.
Noontec Zoro Wireless Bluetooth Headphone on eTeknix.
Logitech G430 Surround Sound Gaming Headset on NikKTech.
Noontec Rio In-Ear Headphones on eTeknix.
Portable & Prebuilt:
The Ultimate Gaming Portable: NVIDIA SHIELD on Techgage.
Google Nexus 5 Super Fast Android Phone Challenges iPhone 5s In Benchmarks on HotHardware.
Input Etc:
GAMDIAS ZEUS GMS1100 Laser Gaming Mouse on BenchmarkReviews.
GAMDIAS Hermes Ultimate keyboard on Vortez.
Logitech G400s, G500s & G700s mouse roundup on PCGamers.
Tt eSPORTS THERON Infrared Gaming Mouse on NeoSeeker.
Video Cards:
Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X on LegionHW.
ASUS Radeon R9 280X Matrix Platinum on OCaholic.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti on BenchmarkReviews.
GeForce GTX 780 Ti on Guru3D.
GeForce GTX 780 Ti SLI on Guru3D.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB on TechPowerUp.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti on HWHeaven.
Storage:
Infortrend Deduplication - Creating more NAS storage on Tweaktown.
OCZ Vector 150 SSD Review (240GB) on TheSSDReview.
OCZ's Vector 150 solid-state drive on TechReport.
Thanks to Owen and Dan this week!
     
     
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
Interesting Forum Threads
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Wednesday, 6-November-2013 15:40:45 (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. If you can add us via the various services it's much appreciated and helps us get the word out, and keep you up to date. :)
Cable management in Overclocking & Hardware.
Computer illiterate mum; PC or Mac? in Overclocking & Hardware.
Super mini Vantec HX4 review in Overclocking & Hardware.
Modding a R61 with an Advanced Docking Station in Modding.
Warning for Asus Xonar users & Windows 8.1 in PC Audio.
7990 Prices after 290x release in Video Cards & Monitors.
BitCoin Mining Rigs? in Video Cards & Monitors.
LSI CacheCade 2.0 Experiences in Storage & Backup.
What to do with 50 years worth of electronic components in Electronics & Electrics.
Space Engineers in PC Games.
Attention Small Business owners in General Software.
Meet Frank. The first bionic human. in Science.
This mind-bending machine completes one turn every 2.3 trillion years in Science.
Favourite Cookbooks in Geek Food.
How to cook fish in Geek Food.
Cutting out soft drinks in Sport, Fitness & Health.
So, I had a heart attack in Sport, Fitness & Health.
Norway broadcaster NRK to show 12 hours of knitting, sheep-shearing in Entertainment.
Reminder: Mobile phone laws change November 25. in Motoring.
China: Nuclear submarines capable of widespread attack on U.S. in Current Events.
Wednesday Afternoon
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Wednesday, 6-November-2013 15:18:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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You might want to avoid TIFF files for a while, with Microsoft warning of a new vulnerability, thanks mpot. Microsoft is investigating private reports of a vulnerability in the Microsoft Graphics component that affects Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, and Microsoft Lync. Microsoft is aware of targeted attacks that attempt to exploit this vulnerability in Microsoft Office products. The vulnerability is a remote code execution vulnerability that exists in the way affected components handle specially crafted TIFF images.
Engadget played with the new Steam Machine prototype from Valve. As far as speed and usability goes, the Valve Steam Machine prototype we tried is literally a gaming PC with an Intel i7 and a high-end NVIDIA GPU. Though we aren't clear on the RAM, it's safe to say that the prototype we used operated without a hitch (at least while navigating the SteamOS and playing World of Goo).
Some handy news from IntelInside: The growing adoption of 3D printing is enabling people to develop affordable prosthetic hands. "At $500, a Robohand is significantly cheaper than the typical $10,000 to $15,000 cost for a conventional below-the-elbow prosthesis". What's cool is ... It's an open-source project! There are some related pictures and a video here. Here's a related story about a father who printed a 3D prosthetic Robohand for his son for $10 after seeing the plans online, and here's a CBS video on the story.
Owen spotted Lenovo hiring Steve Jobs to work as a product engineer.. well, the next best thing, kiiiinda. Engineers are at a premium, yet Lenovo landed a new product engineer and celebrity pitchman when it inked a partnership with Ashton Kutcher on Tuesday night. "It's somewhat of a dual role," Kutcher told USA TODAY in a phone interview hours before a live-streaming broadcast to announce his appointment and the introduction of the PC maker's Yoga Tablet.
A few people pointed out that the US Navy's new futuristic ship the USS Zumwalt will be skippered by Captain James Kirk. Kirk, a native of Bethesda, Md., was commissioned at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1990 and has served in a variety posts as a “surface warfare officer,” according to his online bio. “Ashore, Captain Kirk has served as Executive Assistant to the Navy’s Chief of Legislative Affairs and as an Action Officer on the Joint Staff.”
SilentPCReview are doing some CPU lapping. These images are reproduced because they show how and why the profile of the heatsink base can have a dramatic effect on CPU cooling performance. The left photo shows that the contact between the DP2 base and the CPU surface was actually tightest along the perimeter of the CPU rather than at the center, where there was an obvious gap and no metal-to-metal contact. Since the center is where the CPU die resides, this is where it is hottest, and where the bond between heatsink and IHS is critical. Ahh, it takes me back.
I can't remember if I've mentioned these before, but for today's timewasters, here's a couple that have been distracting a few of us in the IRC channel lately: Cookie Clicker and Dr Meth. Eroda sent in another similar one, Clicking Bad.
Wednesday Afternoon Reviews
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Wednesday, 6-November-2013 14:30:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Storage:
SilverStone EP02 SATA to USB 3.0 Adapter on Tweaktown.
Samsung 840 EVO 750GB on PureOC.
iStarUSA BPN-2535DE-SA and BPU-124DE-SS HDD Docks on Pro-Clockers.
Toshiba HG5D Series Client 2.5? SSD Review (512GB) on TechnologyX.
SilverStone EP01 Four Port Round USB 3.0 Hub on Tweaktown.
Video Cards:
AMD Radeon R9 290 4 GB on TechPowerUp.
AMD's Radeon R9 290 on TechReport.
AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB on PCPerspective.
AMD Radeon R9 290 on TechSpot.
AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB on LegitReviews.
AMD Radeon R9 290 on LegionHW.
AMD Radeon R9-290 and 290 Crossfire on Guru3D.
AMD Radeon R9 290 on HotHardware.
Powercolor R9 290X OC on OCClub.
AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB Reference on Tweaktown.
AMD R9 290 4GB on eTeknix.
Audio Visual:
Steelseries Siberia V2 Heat Orange Headset on FunkyKit.
Turtle Beach Ear Force Z SEVEN Gaming Headset on Tweaktown.
Cooling:
Lamptron FC-10 fan controller on DVHardware.
Evercool AIOLUS Notebook Cooler on OCClub.
Tuesday Afternoon
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Tuesday, 5-November-2013 14:10:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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The Melbourne Cup is on in under an hour from now - you can keep up to date with info in this thread.
Long-term friend of OCAU John Selby has featured in a story about the right to be forgotten. New legislation in America and Europe are making it easier for young people to remove outdated material from websites. Should we adopt similar laws here, and what are the issues?
The US Government have siezed millions in bitcoins related to The Silk Road. The Silk Road made a small fortune during its two and a half years as the web’s biggest anonymous black market for illegal drugs. As of Friday, at least one $28.5 million chunk of that fortune now belongs to the FBI.
Meanwhile a Norwegian man bought $27 worth of bitcoin in 2009 and forgot about them, until realising recently they're worth $886k. Koch exchanged one fifth of his 5,000 bitcoins, generating enough kroner to buy an apartment in Toyen, one of the Norwegian capital’s wealthier areas. I remember people mining bitcoins on OCAU a few years ago - have you got a small fortune lying around on a USB stick somewhere? :)
Andypoo made me nostalgic with this link about Funway Kits which were a great way of teaching Australian kids about electronics. The Funway book was very popular (and still is with some schools, Scout groups and so on), so Dick published volume two from 1980. Finally some “real” projects – twenty kits that required soldering and could be of some real use in the world. Items such as a shortwave radio, intercom, timing devices, digital counters, and a mosquito repeller of dubiuos success. However they sold very well, and in 1984 the final volume of the Funway trilogy was published – another ten projects – “each with an integrated circuit!”
Also from the past, some MS-DOS Viruses in action on Wired. Back in 2004, a computer worm called Sasser swept across the web, infecting an estimated quarter million PCs. One of them belonged to Daniel White, then 16 years old. In the course of figuring out how to purge the worm from his system, the teenager came across the website of anti-virus company F-Secure, which hosted a vast field guide of malware dating back to the 1980s, complete with explanations, technical write-ups, and even screenshots for scores of antiquated viruses. He found it intoxicating. “I just read all I could,” he says, “and when I’d read all of that I found more sources to read.” He’d caught the computer virus bug.
Google and Yahoo are apparently outraged about NSA snooping. "We do not provide any government, including the US government, with access to our systems. We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks, and it underscores the need for urgent reform."
You will probably be able to stay connected for the whole flight in future. That was fast -- mere hours after the FAA said it would allow the use of personal electronics during takeoff and landing, airlines have begun flying under the relaxed rules. Passengers on both Delta and JetBlue aircraft are now free to use their mobile gadgets at nearly every stage of flight. Other major US carriers have yet to officially embrace the lightened regulations, although American Airlines tells Bloomberg that it's already applying for clearance.
Windows 8.1 might upset your mouse, warns Microsoft. There are three issues Microsoft says its working to fix. They include mouse jittering as you move it through a game, mouse movement not being to scale even after acceleration is turned off, and measured mouse polling rate having a lower reporting frequency than expected. Microsoft seems to have found the culprit for the jitter issue, which "occurs in some games because Windows 8.1 handles the games' checks for the mouse status different."
Tuesday Midday Reviews
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Tuesday, 5-November-2013 12:16:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
Gigabyte Z87 Haswell Motherboard Round-Up on HotHardware.
GIGABYTE Z87X-UD5H on PCPerspective.
ASUS X79 Deluxe on Vortez.
MSI Z87M Gaming Motherboard on PureOC.
ASUS ROG Maximus VI Formula on MadShrimps.
Intel Core i7-4770K vs AMD A10-6800K Gaming-Performance on OCaholic.
Power Supply:
be quiet! Pure Power L8 600W on ThinkComputers.
bequiet! Pure Power L8 500W on HWAsylum.
OCZ Fatal1ty 550W on TechPowerUp.
Video Cards:
Sapphire Radeon R9 270X Vapor-X on TechWareLabs.
HIS R7 260X iPower IceQ X² 2 GB on TechPowerUp.
GTX 680 vs GTX 780 - Should I upgrade? on OCaholic.
AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB on eTeknix.
HIS R9 270X IceQ X² Turbo Boost Clock 2GB GDDR5 on MadShrimps.
ASUS Radeon R9 280X Matrix Platinum on OCaholic.
Gigabyte Radeon R9 270X OC on OCaholic.
Gigabyte GTX 780 WindForce OC on eTeknix.
HIS Radeon R9 290X 4GB in CrossFire on Tweaktown.
AMD Radeon R9 290X Hawaii - The Configurable GPU? on PCPerspective.
PowerColor R9 290X OC 4GB on TechPowerUp.
Software:
Battlefield 4 Benchmarked: Graphics & CPU Performance on TechSpot.
Battlefield 4 VGA graphics performance benchmark on Guru3D.
Cooling:
Thermaltake Frio Extreme CPU Cooler on NikKTech.
Thermaltake Massive 14² Notebook Cooler on FunkyKit.
CoolerMaster Glacier 240L all-in-one watercooler on LanOC.
Noctua NH-L9i Low Profile Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Misc:
TRENDnet AC1750 Dual Band Wireless Router on NikKTech.
VidaBox OpenSqueeze Solo - A Logitech SqueezeBox Replacement on MadShrimps.
Tuesday Morning Reviews
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Tuesday, 5-November-2013 11:17:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cases:
Cooler Master HAF Stacker 935 on BenchmarkReviews.
Aerocool DS Dead Silence Cube on eTeknix.
Lian Li PC-Q30 Aluminium Mini ITX Tower on eTeknix.
Phanteks Enthoo Primo Full Tower on ThinkComputers.
BitFenix Ronin Mid-Tower on LegitReviews.
Fractal Design DEFINE XL R2 on MissingRemote.
Audio Visual:
Tt eSPORTS Dracco Captain Pro Gaming Headset on HWHeaven.
Philips 242G5 144Hz LCD Gaming Monitor on eTeknix.
Microlab MD212 Bluetooth Portable Speaker on BenchmarkReviews.
CM Storm Ceres 500 headset on eTeknix.
Motorola S10-HD Bluetooth Headset on TechnologyX.
Thermaltake eSPORTS CRONOS Gaming Headset on OCClub.
ASUS Xonar U7 sound card on Vortez.
Storage:
Seagate 600 480GB SSD on CustomPCReview.
Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 240GB RAID 0 SSD on Tweaktown.
Thecus N2650 2-Bay NAS on eTeknix.
Western Digital My Passport Slim (WDBGMT0010BAL) 1TB Portable HDD on TechARP.
Kingston SSDNow E50 Enterprise SSD 240GB on TheSSDReview.
Western Digital 2.5? Red 1TB NAS HDD on eTeknix.
Input Etc:
Zowie Celeritas Cherry MX Brown Mechanical Pro Gaming Keyboard on eTeknix.
Roccat Kone Pure Optical Mouse on eTeknix.
ROCCAT Raivo Stealth Black Mousepad on OCClub.
Mad Catz S.T.R.I.K.E. 3 Gaming Keyboard for PC on MadShrimps.
Gigabyte Force K7 Keyboard on APHNetworks.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Apple 27-Inch iMac (Late 2013) on HotHardware.
LG G2 Android Smartphone on MegaTechNews.
Lenovo Yoga Tablet Hands-On Preview With Video on HotHardware.
Overclockers UK ‘Ultima 460i Scimitar’ Watercooled Gaming System on eTeknix.
Saturday Afternoon Reviews
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Saturday, 2-November-2013 12:47:11 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Storage:
PNY XLR8 Pro 240GB SSD on Custom PC Review.
LaCie Porsche Design P'9223 USB 3.0 Slim SSD Enclosure on TweakTown.
Mach Xtreme MX Express SSD on Guru3D.
Scythe Kama USB 3.0 Card Reader on Funky Kit.
SilverStone EC05 Two Port SATA III PCI Express RAID Card on TweakTown.
Toshiba Q Series Pro SSD Review (256GB) on The SSD Review.
Cases:
Thermaltake Urban T21 Mid-Tower on TweakTown.
SilverStone Fortress FT04 on Vortez.
In Win GRone on techPowerUp.
Corsair Graphite Series 230T on TweakTown.
NZXT H230 Silent Mid-Tower on PureOverclock.
Cooler Master Cosmos SE on Guru3D.
Deepcool Gamer Storm Assassin on techPowerUp.
Cooling:
Gelid Solutions The Black Edition CPU Cooler on LanOC.
SilverStone Tundra TD02 All-in-one (AiO) CPU Cooler on Pro-Clockers.
Antec Kuhler H2O 650 Liquid CPU Cooler on NikKTech.
SilverStone Tundra SST-TD02 All-In-One Liquid CPU Cooler on Benchmark Reviews.
Corsair H100i Self-Contained Liquid CPU Cooler on Techgage.
Phanteks PH-TC12DX CPU Cooler on Legit Reviews.
Be Quiet! Shadow Rock TopFlow CPU Cooler on LanOC.
Noctua NH-U14S CPU Cooler on HCW.
Input etc:
Genius GX Manticore Gaming Keyboard on Modders-Inc.
Tt eSPORTS Volos Laser Gaming Mouse on TweakTown.
Celluon Epic Keyboard on Legion Hardware.
Roccat Kone Pure Optical Gaming Mouse on OCC.
Genius Wireless Energy Mouse on Funky Kit.
Logitech G602 Wireless Gaming Mouse on Techgage.
Thanks to Dinuc, Stax 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.
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