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October 2016 |
Monday Afternoon
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Monday, 31-October-2016 15:23:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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We seem to be in a "mating giants" phase, with Qualcomm buying NXP, hot on the heels of the Softbank/ARM deal. Mobile technology and chip design company Qualcomm confirmed on Thursday that it planned to buy NXP Semiconductor for an enterprise value of £38 billion ($47 billion)—eclipsing SoftBank's recent mega bucks acquisition of British chip designer ARM Holdings. It told Wall Street that the combined company expected to report annual sales of £24 billion ($30 billion), with plans to bullishly elbow its way into "leadership positions across mobile, automotive, IoT, security, RF [radio frequency], and networking."
The FCC in the USA have passed new privacy rules to protect consumer data. Federal officials delivered a landmark ruling in favor of online privacy Thursday, limiting how Internet providers use and sell customer data, while asserting that customers have a right to control their personal information. Under the Federal Communications Commission’s new rules, consumers may forbid Internet providers from sharing sensitive personal information, such as app and browsing histories, mobile location data and other information generated while using the Internet.
On a related note, the Red Cross Blood Service just experienced Australia's biggest data breach. More info from the researcher involved here. Because of the coverage this incident will inevitably receive, I'm writing this piece in advance of them publicly disclosing it in order to answer as many of the inevitable questions which will arise as possible. I also want to make it abundantly clear up front that this should not discourage anyone from giving blood in the future because as important as this incident is, it pales in comparison to making a donation that could save lives. I'll come back to that later, let's just start with the facts.
Seagate have announced their last 15k enterprise HDDs, with SSDs replacing them in future. Seagate representatives indicated that the company is not working on future generations of 15K HDDs due to the proliferation of SSDs in the data center. The company will offer the Enterprise Performance 15K HDD v6 (otherwise known as the 15K.6) for an extended period of time to ensure that forward compatibility and replacements are on hand, as it does all of its data center HDDs, but it will offer SSDs as the go-to solution for high-performance workloads.
Apple revealed their new MacBook Pro recently. People seem to be focussed on its lack of escape key, and the fact it has a new little touch bar thing instead of a full touch screen. For me, I'd hope that when I'm doing everyday tasks on my MacBook, things like brightness and volume controls will just be there. Previous reports have rumored that the touch bar will present different controls and options based on the apps you've got open, which makes a ton of sense. The versatility of touchscreens was one of the things that Steve Jobs highlighted when introducing the original iPhone, remember. "Every application wants a slightly different user interface, a slightly optimized set of buttons just for it."
Today's timewaster would have to be Google's Halloween Doodle. Beat the ghosts and save the kitties!
Sunday Morning Reviews
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Sunday, 30-October-2016 07:14:23 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Graphics Cards:
Gigabyte Radeon RX470 G1 Gaming 4GB on Funky Kit.
EVGA GTX 1050 Ti Superclocked on BabelTechReviews.
ZOTAC GTX 1050 Mini on Vortez.
MSI GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X 4G on LanOC Reviews.
Storage:
Synology RackStation RS816 4-Bay NAS on techPowerUp.
ADATA Ultimate SU800 SSD on The SSD Review.
Lexar JumpDrive S45 USB 3.0 Flash Drive on Madshrimps.
Audio:
Creative MUVO 2c Bluetooth Water-Resitant Speaker on Madshrimps.
Patriot Viper V360 7.1 Surround Gaming Headset on NikKTech.
Input etc:
AZIO MK Retro Mechanical Keyboard on APH Networks.
HAVIT HV-KB378L RGB Backlit Mechanical Keyboard on NikKTech.
ROCCAT Skeltr RGB Gaming Keyboard on Legit Reviews.
AZIO MGK1 RGB Backlit Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on Techgage.
Zalman ZM-K900M RGB mechanical keyboard on Guru3D.
Mionix Naos QG on Vortez.
Misc:
Gigabyte X99-Ultra Gaming LGA2011-3 Motherboard on eTeknix.
Reeven Okeanos CPU Cooler on Modders-Inc.
AVerMedia Live Gamer HD Lite on Funky Kit.
ARCHEER QC 2.0 Car Charger USB Adapter on Benchmark Reviews.
Netgear Orbi AC3000 Mesh WiFi System on Hot Hardware.
Lenovo Ideapad Y900-17ISK Gaming Notebook on TweakTown.
Xiaomi Redmi Pro Smartphone on Techspot.
Thanks to Dan and t1mbot this week! A couple on the last line might be NSFW..
     
     
     
     
     
     
Wednesday Midday Reviews
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Wednesday, 26-October-2016 11:47:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Software:
Battlefield 1 DX12 Benchmarks – Three Resolutions Tested on Dozen Video Cards on LegitReviews.
Battlefield 1 Benchmarked: Graphics & CPU Performance on TechSpot.
Video Cards:
The GeForce GTX 1050 & 1050 Ti Performance Comparison on TechARP.
Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card reviewed on TechReport.
MSI GeForce GTX 1050 & 1050 Ti Gaming X on Guru3D.
MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB and GeForce GTX 1050 2GB on LegitReviews,.
NVIDIA GTX 1050 Roundup Featuring EVGA MSI and Zotac on HWAsylum.
Gigabyte GTX 1050 Ti G1 Gaming 4GB on HWAsylum.
MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X 4G on Tweaktown.
Sub-$150 Pascal: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 & GTX 1050 Ti on Techgage.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 & 1050 Ti Review: Low Power, Low Price Pascal on HotHardware.
MSI GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti on LanOC.
MSI GTX 1050 Gaming X 2G on OCClub.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 & 1050 Ti on TechSpot.
MSI GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X 4 GB on TechPowerUp.
MSI GTX 1050 Gaming X 2 GB on TechPowerUp.
MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8G on OCClub.
Motherboard & CPU:
GIGABYTE Z170X-UD3 Ultra Motherboard on Tweaktown.
ASUS TUF SABERTOOTH 990FX R3.0 on Vortez.
Audio Visual:
Testing AMD's $650 VR-Ready system with HTC Vive on NeoSeeker.
ASUS ROG Strix Wireless Gaming Headset on FunkyKit.
Cooler Master Masterpulse Pro USB Gaming Headset on MadShrimps.
Cases:
Riotoro CR1080 on NeoSeeker.
Phanteks Enthoo Luxe Tempered Glass Edition on ThinkComputers.
Input Etc:
HyperX Alloy FPS keyboard on Vortez.
G.Skill Ripjaws KM780 RGB Keyboard on TechPowerUp.
HyperX ALLOY FPS Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on Tweaktown.
GAMDIAS Hermes E1 Gaming Keyboard and Mouse Combo on FunkyKit.
Power Supply:
EVGA SuperNOVA 750W G2L Power Supply on PCPerspective.
InWin Classic Series C 900W on OCAholic.
Misc:
The Solar Centre Albany Solar Premium Spotlight on NikKTech.
Logitech Pop Home Switch: Perfect Solution for Smart Homes on HWSecrets.
M.2 & PCIe SSD Charts: 7 SSDs - Intel SSD 600p M.2 NVMe 256GB on OCAholic.
Tuesday Afternoon
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Tuesday, 25-October-2016 17:26:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I was saddened to learn of the passing of Leslie Nassar, an Australian social media innovator and satirist. Leslie Nassar, the Australian tech guru behind Q&A’s onscreen Twitter stream, has been killed in an apparent hit-and-run car crash in the US. Nassar also pioneered ABC Radio National’s podcasting empire. ... In 2009 Nassar revealed that he was the person behind the Fake Stephen Conroy account on Twitter, which satirised the then communications minister’s proposed internet filter.
I was hoping to post positive news about the Alan Turing law, named for the pioneering computer scientist and mathematician, but it has failed in the UK Parliament. A bill that would have wiped clean the criminal records of thousands of gay men has fallen at its first parliamentary hurdle. The private member's bill would have pardoned all men living with UK convictions for same-sex offences committed before the law was changed. There were emotional scenes with one MP fighting back tears during his speech. The government, which has its own plans for posthumous pardons, "talked out" the bill, which will not now go ahead.
There's another serious Linux exploit in the wild. "It's probably the most serious Linux local privilege escalation ever," Dan Rosenberg, a senior researcher at Azimuth Security, told Ars. "The nature of the vulnerability lends itself to extremely reliable exploitation. This vulnerability has been present for nine years, which is an extremely long period of time." It seems to affect Android phones as well.
HotHardware have been playing with some rugged PCs from Dell. Building a fully rugged PC requires a ton of testing time, qualification, and numerous redesigns. Dell performs the bulk of the work at a facility in Austin, Texas, where a combination of robotic and human-controlled tests beat-on and violate the machines in a number of ways. From dropping them at different heights and angles, to working the hinges thousands of times, spraying them with water, and subjecting them to various environmental elements and dust, Dell puts devices through their paces and then some.
People have been concerned about EVGA's GTX 1080 cards overheating. TechPowerUp report on EVGA's response, which includes providing people with thermal pads. The thermal pads will be provided to anyone with a GTX 1080 or GTX 1070 with an ACX cooler and a backplate, with other graphics card models from EVGA's models also being considered for the offer. While EVGA is surely going about the problem in the correct manner, it still leaves to customers the responsibility of dismantling their EVGA cards and applying the thermal pads on their own.
Tesla have announced that all their cars will come with self-driving hardware now. The basic news is that all vehicles exiting the factory have the hardware for Level 5 autonomy — the cameras, the compute power. On the order of 2000 cars a week have hardware capable of full self-driving autonomy. It’ll take us some time in the future to complete validation of the software and get the required regulatory approval, but the important thing is that the foundation is laid for the cars to have the full autonomy of a safety level that we believe to be twice the safety of a person or better.
Monday Morning Reviews
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Monday, 24-October-2016 11:30:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cases:
AeroCool P7-C1 Tempered Glass Mid Tower on NikKTech.
Phanteks Enthoo EVOLV ATX Tempered Glass Edition on APHNetworks.
Silverstone Primera PM01 on HWAsylum.
Audio Visual:
GIGABYTE Force H5 on Vortez.
Acer Predator Z850 UltraWide 24:9 Gaming Projector on PCPerspective.
Seek Thermal CompactPro Android Thermal Imager on BigBruin.
Campark 4K Action Camera on FunkyKit.
Software:
Battlefield 1 Multiplayer Gameplay Thoughts on Tweaktown.
Civilization VI: Performance Analysis on TechPowerUp.
Battlefield 1 PC graphics card benchmark on Guru3D.
Input Etc:
CHERRY Stream 3.0 Low-Profile Keyboard on MadShrimps.
SteelSeries Rival 500 MOBA/MMO Gaming Mouse on LegitReviews.
Storage:
Patriot Memory LX 200GB microSD Memory Card on Tweaktown.
QNAP TS-451+ on LanOC.
PNY CS 1311 240GB SSD on OCClub.
Video Cards:
XFX Radeon RX 470 RS Black Edition on TechARP.
RX 480 dominates GTX 1060 at DX12 in Battlefield 1 on Tweaktown.
Misc:
Fritz!Box 7490 router on OCAholic.
Antec KUHLER H2O H600 Pro AIO Liquid CPU Cooler on NikKTech.
Moto Z Play Review: 8-Cores And Insane Battery Life smartphone on HotHardware.
2016 Phillip Island MotoGP
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Sunday, 23-October-2016 15:12:13 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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The MotoGP circus is at Phillip Island, Victoria, this weekend. The main race coverage starts in under half an hour, at 3:30pm ADST. It should be an interesting one, because several of the big hitters are at the back of the grid due to qualifying shenanigans. Also, Australia's Jack Miller has qualified well on his home circuit. You can see it live on ONEHD and keep track of things in this thread in our Motorsport forum.
Thanks to mpot, danstoejam and Sugaris this week!
     
     
     
     
     
Friday Morning Reviews
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Friday, 21-October-2016 05:23:05 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Graphics Cards:
Gigabyte GTX 1070 Xtreme Gaming 8 GB on techPowerUp.
MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X 3GB on ThinkComputers.
Storage:
Samsung 960 PRO M.2 1TB NVMe SSD on Guru3D.
Samsung 960 PRO RAID on Vortez.
Samsung 960 Pro M.2 SSD on Ars Technica.
Samsung 960 Pro M.2 NVMe SSD on The SSD Review.
Cases:
EVGA DG-87 Full-Tower on TweakTown.
Lian Li PC-Q37 Mini-ITX Chassis on eTeknix.
Rosewill Cullinan Gaming Case on LanOC Reviews.
Cooling:
be quiet! Shadow Rock LP on OCC.
XSPC RayStorm Pro CPU Waterblock on Funky Kit.
Reeven Polariz Fan Controller on Modders-Inc.
MSI Core Frozr L on techPowerUp.
Deepcool Captain Genome Cooling System on NikKTech.
Corsair HD Series & SP Series RGB LED fans on Vortez.
Input etc:
SteelSeries Rival 500 Gaming Mouse on ThinkComputers.
Tt eSPORTS Ventus R Gaming Mouse on Benchmark Reviews.
Corsair M65 Pro RGB Mouse and MM800 RGB Polaris Mouse Pad on Madshrimps.
Notebooks & Mobiles:
GIGABYTE P55W v6 Gaming Notebook on TweakTown.
Asus ROG G752 on Hot Hardware.
ASUS Zenfone 3 Max on ocaholic.
Misc:
Dream Color PC Case RGB LED Strip on Funky Kit.
Kingston HyperX Predator 16GB DDR4-3333 Memory Kit on Funky Kit.
PlayStation VR on PC Review UK.
Forum Projects
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Thursday, 20-October-2016 17:39:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's a few projects and reviews from the forums:
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 20-October-2016 16:37:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Tweaktown look at the PC port of Gears of War 4. They also have some benchmark testing of it. After I was finished benchmarking Gears of War 4 at 8K, I moved down to the normal resolutions like 1920x1080, 2560x1440, and 3840x2160 and benchmarked more cards. The game is absolutely gorgeous, so I kept everything on the highest preset and ran the game again at 1080p, 1440p and 4K. Techspot join the benchmark party as well.
I missed this quote earlier, but Pauline Hanson is now part of the NBN Committee, and has the woes of gamers in mind. After the video was posted, Hanson took to Twitter saying speeds in non-metropolitan parts of Australia are terrible, and that those speeds are impacting on the gameplay of regional minors. "Kids from the bush tell me because their speeds are so bad they keep getting beaten by gamers from overseas -- unacceptable," Hanson said.
This is surprising: Laptop and peripheral company Razer has acquired THX, the iconic movie sound company. Founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas in 1983 to ensure Return of the Jedi had the best possible sound when it hit the cinemas, THX will now operate as an “independent startup,” with Razer as its parent company. “Razer has a vision for innovation at every level of entertainment, a vision which THX has championed since its inception more than 30 years ago,” says Razer Co-Founder and CEO Min-Liang Tan. “This acquisition will allow us to reinforce Razer’s leadership in gaming and extend the brand into broader areas of entertainment, while at the same time empowering THX to develop into a global powerhouse, independently.”
A recent study shows that people will probably treat autonomous cars badly when driving near them. Self-driving cars will be programmed to avoid accidents, just as they should be. So given the choice between driving timidly or causing an accident just to prove a point, the self-driving car will slam on the brakes every time. The more aggressive drivers in this survey said that they’d treat self-driving cars like “learner drivers” and “mug them right off”, which is a roundabout British way to describe driving like a jerk.
It's hard to tell if this will affect anything in the wild, but researchers say they've found a security flaw in Intel CPUs. A flaw in Intel's processors could allow attackers to bypass security mechanisms and inject malware into code, security researchers have warned. The technique works on almost every operating system and enables more effective software exploits.
Aftahours spotted this Gameboy Color extreme overclocking video from 2009. Costis is screwing around with the clock on a GBC and I just couldn't keep myself from trying it out. He quoted some pretty insane max clock speed and I wanted to see whether it would really go that high. Turns out it goes pretty high: ~24Mhz (~3x) for GBC games, and ~48Mhz (~6x) (!) for GB games. Normal speed is 8.338Mhz input, though GB games internally run at half speed (~4Mhz), which is why they can run much faster.
NVIDIA GeForge GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti
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Thursday, 20-October-2016 16:15:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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NVIDIA have unveiled the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and GTX 1050. To quote Anandtech's coverage: Following their near-perfect top-down launch schedule that started with GeForce GTX 1080 in May, being announced today and formally launching next week is the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and GeForce GTX 1050. Aimed at the entry level discrete video card market, these products will round-out the GeForce 10-series desktop lineup.
More coverage on The Verge, TechARP (with partner boards here) and Tech Report.
Discussion continues in the NVIDIA Pascal thread in our Video Cards forum.
Wednesday Morning Reviews
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Wednesday, 19-October-2016 05:12:21 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Storage:
Samsung 960 PRO 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD on PC Perspective.
Samsung 960 PRO 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD on Legit Reviews.
Samsung 960 PRO 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD on Anandtech.
Samsung 960 PRO 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD on Tech Report.
Samsung 960 PRO 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD on TweakTown.
Samsung 960 PRO 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD on Hot Hardware.
Samsung 960 PRO 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD on Techspot.
Cases:
BitFenix Aurora Mid-Tower Tempered Glass Chassis on eTeknix.
Phanteks Enthoo Luxe Tempered Glass on ocaholic.
Input etc:
Tesoro Gram Spectrum on LanOC Reviews.
ASUS ROG Claymore Core RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on Funky Kit.
Zalman ZM-K900M Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on ThinkComputers.
Cougar Revenger gaming mouse on Vortez.
Cooling:
ID-Cooling FrostFlow 240L on OCC.
Corsair SP120 RGB LED High Performance 120mm Fans on Funky Kit.
Smartphones:
Google Pixel XL on PCWorld.
Google Pixel XL on Techspot.
Misc:
SilverStone SX700-LPT 700W w/ PP08 PSU on APH Networks.
HyperX CloudX Pro Gaming Headset on Bigbruin.
Interesting Forum Threads
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Monday, 17-October-2016 18:13:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I haven't done this in a while - here's a snapshot of some interesting threads from the Forums. Remember that OCAU has official Twitter, Facebook and Google+ pages - if you can follow or like us on those, it helps us keep you up to date.
Best value physics machine? in Overclocking & Hardware.
DIY Portable PC in Overclocking & Hardware.
how do I watch tv on my computer in Newbie Lounge.
Why you should not use motherboard sound in PC Audio.
Outdoor radiators in Extreme Cooling.
This is going to blow your mind in Extreme Cooling.
Pokemon Go for IOS/Android in Mobile Phones & Devices.
Google Pixel 5" & Pixel XL 5.5" Phones 2016 - Oct 4th Release in Google Android.
Fixing WUDO / Windows 10 Updates w/o WSUS in Business & Enterprise Computing.
Sega Lets Modders Get Freaky With Its Classic Games in Retro & Arcade.
WWMG (What Would MacGyver Do) in Electronics & Electrics.
Look what I made :D in Electronics & Electrics.
My first time Linux user experience journal in Other Operating Systems.
Full English Breakfast in Sydney in Geek Food.
What BBQ smoker for a noob? in Geek Food.
The Smoker's thread in Geek Food.
Accidental Yum in Geek Food.
Mini CO2 Jet? in Other Toys/Hobbies.
Should i tell my employer my project can easily be 90% automated? in Career, Education & Finance.
Online petition to put Steve Irwin on AU currency garners international attention in The Pub.
Almost got done by an ATM skimmer in The Pub.
Monday Afternoon
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Monday, 17-October-2016 15:24:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Seagate have a new big small drive. Seagate recently brought back its BarraCuda line with new 10TB 3.5" models, and now it has added beefy 5TB 2.5" models that are the first 2.5" HDDs to break the 5TB barrier. Seagate also increased the density of its FireCuda 2.5" SSHDs up to 2TB.
Drones are to be used to deliver blood to remote clinics in Rwanda. The 13-kilogram drones can make a 150km round trip, he said, as a small drone buzzed a crowd of bystanders on Thursday before dropping a packet of blood to a waiting nurse in a demonstration.
Some tech giants have formed a new consortium to speed up servers tenfold for data-heavy applications. The OpenCAPI specification outlines the architecture for a new interface that would allow server CPUs to swap data with hardware accelerators, such as Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) -- as well as memory, network and storage -- more rapidly than is possible today. OpenCAPI has been released by a consortium led by AMD, Dell EMC, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Mellanox Technologies, Micron, NVIDIA and Xilinx.
SiliconAngel notes that Windows Server 2016 launched recently. Microsoft is making available the release-to-manufacturing bits of Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016 today, Oct. 12. Microsoft officials said at the company's recent Ignite conference that customers should be able to get the final Windows Server 2016 bits by mid-October.
Scootre spotted this article about USB DACs from back in May. I've been testing two of the most endearingly compact USB audio enhancers on the market: the Cambridge Audio DacMagic XS and the AudioQuest DragonFly. What do they do? Well, both serve as a digital-to-analog converter, turning the 1s and 0s of digital music into the electrical signal headphones need to play music. Both are also surprisingly powerful headphone amps, upgrading the quantity of your laptop or desktop's sound as well as its quality.
If you want to try VR, the upcoming PAX Australia in Melbourne might be your thing. In an announcement that was embargoed for this morning, PAX Australia announced they would have a dedicated VR freeplay section for the first time. It’d include areas for the HTC Vive, the Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, as well as green-screen VR setups.
Storage:
Seagate BarraCuda Pro 10TB SATA III HDD on NikKTech
Seagate Innov8 Bus-Powered 8TB Desktop HDD on TweakTown
Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro 2TB Wireless Hard Drive on APH Networks
Inateck FD2102 USB 3.0 Docking Station on Legit Reviews
Games:
Gears of War 4 Xbox One on TweakTown
Gears of War 4 benchmarked in DX12 at 8K resolution on TweakTown
Videocard:
Radeon RX 480 Crossfire on Funkykit
PowerColor’s Devil Box on BabelTech
Gigabyte GTX 1060 Xtreme Gaming 6GB Video Card on Hardware Asylum
Case:
Aerocool P7C1 Project 7 Tempered Glass Mid-Tower Chassis on eTeknix
Raijintek Styx Case on Modders-Inc
Audio:
Noontec Zoro II Wireless on Ocaholic
Tt eSports Cronos GO Gaming Headset on Vortez
Misc:
Energen 5-Port USB Charging Station on ThinkComputers.org
noblechairs EPIC Series Chair on eTeknix
Core i5-6400 CPU on Hardware Secrets
Tesoro Gram Spectrum RGB Keyboard on LanOC
G.Skill TridentZ 3200 MHz 32GB Quad Channel DDR4 RAM on Guru3D
Thermaltake Toughpower SFX 600W Power Supply Unit on NikKTech
TP-Link Archer C5400 802.11ac Wireless Router on TweakTown
Portable:
Gigabyte P57X v6 GTX 1070 Gaming Laptop on eTeknix
Moto G4 Play Android Smartphone on Hot Hardware
Friday again! The last couple might be NSFW..
     
     
     
     
     
Case:
X2 RINDJA ATX Chassis on FunkyKit
Aerocool P7C1 Project 7 Tempered Glass Mid-Tower Chassis on eTeknix
Aerocool XPredator II on OCInside
Corsair Carbide Series AIR 740 Cube Case on HardOCP
Network:
D-Link DCS-2530L HD 180-Degree Wi-Fi Camera on Big Bruin
D-Link P701AV Powerline AV2 2000 Kit on TweakTown
Storage:
Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB Solid State Drive on ThinkComputers.org
WD Blue 1TB SSD on Legit Reviews
Synology DS416slim Four-Bay 2.5" NAS on TweakTown
Crucial MX300 M.2 525GB SSD on eTeknix
WD Blue SSD Review (1TB) on The SSD Review
Gaming:
AK Racing Premium V2 Gaming Chair on NikKTech
Arozzi Vernazza Gaming Chair on Neoseeker
Gears of War 4 on Hot Hardware
Portable & Prebuilt:
Asus ZenBook 3 on Hot Hardware
Apple iPhone 7 and 7 Plus on PC Perspective
Apple iPhone 7 Plus on Techspot
Fierce PC Dragon Shield on Vortez
Videocard:
SAPPHIRE Nitro+ Radeon RX 480 8GB on TweakTown
ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Strix Graphics Card on Techgage
MSI GeForce GTX 1070 GAMING X 8G Video Card on HardOCP
Misc:
Kworld S25 Earphones on Benchmark Reviews
G.SKILL Trident Z 3200MHz DDR4 32GB on OCC
Thursday Morning
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Thursday, 13-October-2016 01:26:00 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Gartner reckon the PC industry is in its longest decline, two years and counting. PC makers are feeling the pressure. HP, Dell, and Asus each had low single-digit growth, but Acer, Apple, and Lenovo all experienced declines, with Apple and Lenovo each suffering double-digit drops. Meanwhile, the rest of the PC market, which collectively ships more units per quarter than any of the big-name brands, is down more than 16 percent.
Meanwhile in Australia, land-line use is also declining, to nobody's surprise. Also revealed by the Galaxy Research commissioned by comparison website iSelect, is that more than half of millennials — 52% — say they never use a landline or have one connected and, as iSelect observes, “this data suggests Australians are favouring mobile phones or Internet-based communication such as email or social media to contact each other”.
The BoM were apparently hacked by foreign spies. The 2016 Australian Cyber Security Centre Threat report, to be released today, provides new details on last year's attack on the bureau, which also breached sensitive systems across the Federal Government.
Microsoft will be enforcing more consistent patching, which isn't necessarily a good thing. Starting this month, home and business Windows users will no longer be able to pick and choose which updates to install and which to leave for another time. For example, I’ve often advised home users to hold off on installing .NET updates until all other patches for the month are applied — reasoning that .NET updates are very large and in my experience have frequently been found to be the source of problems when applying huge numbers of patches simultaneously.
Your future wearable computer may be made by silkworms, thanks Adam. It doesn’t sound like the ideal meal, but silkworms are loving the taste of carbon nanotubes and graphene and the resulting silk could bring enormous benefits to science and wearables.
Here's a bizarre example of unnecessary technology: an English guy spending 11 hours trying to make a cup of tea with his internet-enabled kettle. Three hours later the kettle was still having problems. The main issue seemed to be that the base station was not able to communicate with the kettle itself.
Also tricky: doing the eyes for video game characters. Jimmy Butler has the ripe figure of a greek god and the dead, lost eyes of a zombie—as does every other player, announcer, and personality in NBA2K17, as well as just about every other video game on the market today.
Aftahours spotted this article which gives a nice summary of the whole Samsung Galaxy Note 7 drama, from the first fire reports to the eventual abandonment of the product. A Samsung spokeswoman referred to an earlier statement from the company: “For the benefit of consumers’ safety, we stopped sales and exchanges of the Galaxy Note 7 and have consequently decided to stop production.”
Finally some positive news, from Chris - a Japanese spacecraft has some awesome HD photos of the Moon. Beginning in October, 2007, Japan's Kaguya spacecraft spent the better part of two years in a polar orbit around the Moon, including passes from as close as 100km. As part of its payload, the spacecraft carried two 2.2 megapixel CCD HDTV color cameras, one a telephoto and one a wide-angle. These cameras returned the first high-definition video of the Moon back to Earth.
Tuesday Night
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Tuesday, 11-October-2016 18:44:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Samsung's woes with the Note 7 continue, with the replacement phones also exploding into flames. They have now told all Note 7 users to turn the phones off and not use them at all. “Consumers with either an original Galaxy Note7 or replacement Galaxy Note7 device should power down and stop using the device and take advantage of the remedies available,” the statement said. They've even sent special fireproof boxes to people to return the phones in. The full recall notice is here, thanks boneburner.
Speaking of failures, Backblaze have an article about SMART stats and HDDs. SMART stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology and is a monitoring system included in hard drives that reports on various attributes of the state of a given drive. While we’ve looked at SMART stats before, this time we’ll dig into the SMART stats we use in determining drive failure and we’ll also look at a few other stats we find interesting.
German lawmakers have voted to ban internal combusion engines. Germany’s Spiegel Magazin reported this morning that the country’s top legislative body was able to reach a bi-partisan agreement that hopes to allow only zero-emission vehicles on EU roads in 14 years. For the resolution to be instituted across Europe, it will have to be approved by the EU. But according to Forbes, “German regulations traditionally have shaped EU and UNECE regulations.”
Tuesday Morning Reviews
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Tuesday, 11-October-2016 10:37:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Software:
Gears of War 4 DX12 PC VGA graphics performance review on Guru3D.
Gears of War 4 Campaign Review & PC Performance/IQ Analysis on BabelTechReviews.
Mafia III - PC graphics performance review on Guru3D.
Gears of War 4 PC Performance Benchmarks on LegitReviews.
Cooling:
Cryorig H5 Universal CPU Air Cooler on eTeknix.
DeepCool Captain 120EX White Edition CPU Cooler on eTeknix.
Scythe Kabuto 3 CPU Cooler on OCInside.
Storage:
Drobo 5C 5-bay USB Type-C DAS on PCPerspective.
ICY DOCK Black Vortex Quad-Bay USB 3.0 & eSATA External 3.5" SATA HDD Enclosure on NikKTech.
Motherboard & CPU:
ASUS Z170 Pro Gaming Aura on OCAholic.
BIOSTAR A68N-5200 Motherboard on eTeknix.
GIGABYTE GA-X99-Ultra Gaming on Vortez.
Cases:
Rosewill Cullinan Mid-Tower on Tweaktown.
Thermaltake Core X31 Mid Tower on eTeknix.
In-Win 303 PC Chassis on Guru3D.
Input Etc:
Tt eSPORTS Level 10M Advanced Gaming Mouse on ThinkComputers.
SteelSeries APEX M500 Mechanical Keyboard on Tweaktown.
SteelSeries Rival 700 Gaming Mouse on MadShrimps.
Portable & Prebuilt:
MSI Vortex G65VR 6RE GTX 1070 SLI Gaming PC on eTeknix.
Lenovo Yoga Book on TechSpot.
A look at Dell rugged products in the lab and wild on Tweaktown.
LG V20 Review: Android Nougat-Infused And Feature-Rich on HotHardware.
Cyberpower Hyper Liquid 100 GTX 1080 Gaming PC on eTeknix.
MSI GS43VR Phantom Pro Gaming Laptop on TechSpot.
Memory:
Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200MHz 32GB DDR4 on OCClub.
Video Cards:
Zotac GeForce GTX 1060 AMP Edition (6GB GDDR5) on FunkyKit.
MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X 6GB on FunkyKit.
Thanks to mpot and Dale this week!
     
     
     
     
     
     
Friday Afternoon
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Friday, 7-October-2016 13:27:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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The NBN's second satellite, Sky Muster II, has successfully launched into orbit. NBN said the satellite would undergo final technical testing over the coming months and would soon provide additional data capacity to the original Sky Muster. "Our satellites will ensure that no Australian gets left behind by providing access to fast broadband for those who need it the most," NBN chief executive Bill Morrow said.
Techgage built a mini gaming powerhouse. Pro gaming on a budget. With help from AMD and FNATIC, a compact LAN party PC was put together, capable of 1080p gaming for just $500. With eSports taking off in a big way, you don’t always need ultra settings to pull off a 360-no-scope. We take this FNATIC sponsored system for a test drive and find out just how much gaming you can pack into a tiny PC with the help of AMD’s APU.
Reuters are reporting that Yahoo scanned customer emails for the U.S. intelligence services. Some surveillance experts said this represents the first case to surface of a U.S. Internet company agreeing to an intelligence agency's request by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time. It is not known what information intelligence officials were looking for, only that they wanted Yahoo to search for a set of characters. That could mean a phrase in an email or an attachment, said the sources, who did not want to be identified. Other tech giants have rushed to explain that they have not done the same thing.
Melbourne has a new cyber security mega-hub. The CSIRO's digital research unit Data61 has opened the doors to its new national cyber security centre in Melbourne, situated alongside IT security experts from Oxford University and the state government. Data61 agreed to move its national cyber security centre to the Docklands Goods Shed earlier this year, after Oxford University picked the spot as the location for its own global cyber security capacity centre (GCSCC) last December.
The Moral Machine is an interesting exercise. A platform for gathering a human perspective on moral decisions made by machine intelligence, such as self-driving cars. We show you moral dilemmas, where a driverless car must choose the lesser of two evils, such as killing two passengers or five pedestrians. As an outside observer you judge which outcome you think is more acceptable. You can then see how your responses compare with those of other people.
Friday Midday Reviews
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Friday, 7-October-2016 12:30:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Portable & Prebuilt:
Kensington SD4600P USB-C Docking Station on Tweaktown.
Hands-On With The ASUS ZenBook 3 And ZenWatch 3 And More on HotHardware.
Power Supply:
Cougar GX-S 550 W on TechPowerUp.
Xtorm AL450 Power Bank Essential 12.000mAh on NikKTech.
Motherboard & CPU:
ASRock Fatal1ty X99X Killer 3.1 Motherboard (LGA 2011v3) on FunkyKit.
MSI Z170A Gaming M9 ACK Motherboard on HotHardware.
ASUS X99 Strix on OCAholic.
Storage:
Toshiba OCZ VX500 SSD on BenchmarkReviews.
Intel SSD 600p Series 512GB on TechSpot.
SilverStone TS11-C USB 3.1 HDD Docking Station on Tweaktown.
Cooling:
Cooler Master MasterFan 120mm Triple Fan Roundup on HWAsylum.
Cryorig A40 and A40 Ultimate AIO Hybrid Coolers on LegitReviews.
Misc:
EpicGear Defiant Keyboard and Assassin Case Bundle on ThinkComputers.
DJI Osmo Mobile Gimbal Stabilizer on FunkyKit.
Tenda AC9 AC1200 Dual-Band Gigabit Wifi Router on BigBruin.
HyperX 3333MHz 16GB DDR4 Kit on BabelTechReviews.
ROCCAT Ryos MK FX Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on Tweaktown.
RX 480 Crossfire video cards on LanOC.
NVIDIA Shield - Android TV Box on PCReview.
Wednesday Morning
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Wednesday, 5-October-2016 10:52:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Melbourne is on track to have the largest free public Wi-Fi network in Australia. The first access points have been activated at all train stations within the Melbourne CBD, and at Bourke Street Mall, Queen Victoria Market, and South Wharf Promenade at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. All access points for VicFreeWiFi, which was labelled "unparalleled" by the state government, will be activated as of the end of the year. Once it is fully operational, the wireless network will provide coverage to an area of 600,000 square metres, making it the largest free public Wi-Fi network in the country.
Soon the UN will take over the running of the internet. The US government is set to cut the final thread of its oversight of the internet, yielding a largely symbolic but nevertheless significant role over the online address system. Barring any last-minute glitches, the transition will occur at midnight Friday (0400 GMT Saturday), when the US contract expires for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which manages the internet's so-called "root zone."
Fans of William Gibson novels might get a kick out of this project to build a cyberdeck. It was one of the first novels in the genre that came to be called “cyberpunk”, and it described a gritty future full of cybernetics, mega corporations, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. The protagonist of this tale was a hacker named Case who used a portable computer called a “cyberdeck” to connect his brain directly to the internet and experience it as virtual reality.
Tired sent in this alarming tale of a computer argument gone wrong in Sydney. Liverpool Police Detective Chief Inspector Ken Hardie said police would allege the argument was about a computer at the house, which the family had disagreements about in the past. "I believe the son uses the internet quite regularly and when he is asked to come to the dinner table he continues on," Detective Chief Inspector Hardie.
Professional space nerd Neil Degrasse Tyson is building a computer game, thanks zero_velocity. Murphy said the gameplay mirrors our universe, which is growing every day, inch by inch, minute by minute. The game allows players to build and grow solar systems – even galaxies. Players can also explore galaxies created by other players, including prominent scientists and fictional world-builders like Tyson, Bill Nye, George R.R. Martin, Neil Gaiman, and Peter Beagle.
On a related note, Wired have an interview with "The Martian" author Andy Weir about Elon Musk's plans for Mars. o who better to discuss the differences between science and science fiction than an actual science fiction author—one who studied up for years on the problems of surviving on Mars before crafting a cracking good story about how exactly it might work? And as it happens, we know the perfect such person: author Andy Weir, whose best-selling novel The Martian (and the subsequent Ridley Scott movie) covers much of the same ground Musk wants to cover—though Musk is dreaming on a much larger scale.
Tuesday Night Reviews
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Tuesday, 4-October-2016 21:20:10 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Graphics Cards:
KFA2 GeForce GTX 1060 OC 6GB on Madshrimps.
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1060 Xtreme Gaming on TweakTown.
Inout etc:
Fnatic Gear Rush Keyboard on techPowerUp.
Tt eSPORTS Ventus R and Ventus Z on Vortez.
CHERRY MW 2310 Wireless Mouse on Madshrimps.
Audio:
66 Audio BTS Sport Bluetooth Headphones on NikKTech.
HyperX Cloud Stinger Gaming Headset on Neoseeker.
HyperX Cloud Stinger Gaming Headset on Vortez.
HyperX Cloud Stinger on Modders-Inc.
HyperX Cloud Stinger Gaming Headset on Legit Reviews.
Kingston HyperX Cloud Stinger Gaming Headset on ThinkComputers.
HyperX Cloud Revolver Gaming Headset on Custom PC Review.
HyperX Cloud Stinger Gaming Headset on OCC.
Creative Muvo 2 Wireless Bluetooth Speaker on eTeknix.
Cooling:
Deepcool Captain 240 EX AIO CPU Water Cooler on Funky Kit.
Scythe Fuma CPU Cooler on APH Networks.
Cryorig C7 Low-Profile CPU Cooler on eTeknix.
Thermaltake Pacific RL240 D5 Hard Tube Water Cooling Kit on Funky Kit.
Mobile:
ASUS ZenFone 3 Ultra (ZU680KL) Phablet on TechARP.
OPPO F1s Selfie Expert Smartphone on TechARP.
Misc:
SkyStudio Lily-G Mini Drone with 720p camera on Funky Kit.
Kingston Action Camera microSD Card on Benchmark Reviews.
Sunday Night Reviews
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Sunday, 2-October-2016 21:58:49 (GMT +10) - by booj
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Motherboards:
ASRock X99 Taichi on OCinside.
ASUS X99-Deluxe II on TweakTown.
EVGA Z170 Classified K on Legit Reviews.
Graphics Cards:
MSI RX 470 Gaming X 8GB on LanOC Reviews.
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 AMP! on Custom PC Review.
Palit GeForce GTX 1070 GameRock Premium Edition on TweakTown.
Memory:
ADATA XPG Dazzle DDR4-2400 16GB kit on Funky Kit.
ADATA XPG Dazzle 2800MHz CL17 2x8GB DDR4 on Modders Inc.
Storage:
Crucial MX300 2TB 2.5-Inch SSD on eTeknix.
LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive 2TB USB 3.0 on NikKTech.
Cooling:
REEVEN JUSTICE Tower Air CPU Cooler on PC Perspective.
EKWB EK-XLC Predator 280 on techPowerUp.
EK-XLC Predator 280 AIO CPU and MSI GTX 1080 Liquid Cooling on Guru3D.
be quiet! Silent Loop 280mm AIO CPU Cooler on eTeknix.
Input etc:
Cooler Master Masterkeys Pro L RGB Mechanical Keyboard on Madshrimps.
Roccat Skeltr Multi-Format RGB Gaming Keyboard on eTeknix.
ROCCAT Skeltr Keyboard on Vortez.
AZIO MGK L80 RGB Backlit Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Roundup on Hardware Asylum.
COUGAR Revenger Optical Gaming Mouse on Funky Kit.
Cases:
Thermaltake Core X71 Full Tower on NikKTech.
Cooler Master's MasterBox 5 and Zalman's Z9 Neo on The Tech Report.
Phanteks Eclipse P400S on ocaholic.
AZZA Taurus 5000 Full Tower on ThinkComputers.
SilverStone Primera Series PM01 on PC Perspective.
Audio:
Creative Sound Blaster X7 and E-MU XM7 Speaker on Hardware Asylum.
FIIL Wireless Headset on Madshrimps.
Notebooks:
Acer Chromebook R11 on TweakTown.
Lenovo ThinkPad X260 on Hot Hardware.
MSI GE62VR 6RF Apache Pro on Hot Hardware.
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