November 2018

Misc Pics (19 Comments) (link)  Friday, 30-November-2018  14:12:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg Perhaps I should have titled this post "Wrist Pics".. because I managed to hurt my wrist quite badly at hockey last night. I've been running around all morning getting xrays and seeing doctors and fortunately nothing is broken, but I'm going to have to wear a wrist brace for a while - and had no time to put Misc Pics together. So here's a flashback to 10 years ago, Misc Pics from November 2008. 11th November 2008: 14th November 2008: 21st November 2008: and 28th November 2008: Crucial P1 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD (18 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 29-November-2018  15:25:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg Here's a quick review of the Crucial P1, a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD using 3D QLC NAND. That's quite a mouthful, but what does it all mean, and is it any good? click for the review! Thursday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 29-November-2018  15:05:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg Video Cards: Stormforce Crystal GTX 1080Ti video cards on Vortez. XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy OC+ on HardOCP. Storage: Kingston HyperX Fury RGB 480 GB SSD on TechPowerUp. HyperX FURY RGB SSD on Vortez. Silicon Power Secure G50 USB 3.0 Flash Drive on MadShrimps. Samsung 860 QVO 1TB and 4TB SATA SSD on PCPerspective. Input Etc: Corsair K70 Mk.2 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on Modders-Inc. Razer BlackWidow Elite keyboard on Vortez. GameSir VX AimSwitch E-sports Gaming Input Adapter Combo for Consoles on FunkyKit. Corepad Skatez Mouse Feet on TechPowerUp. Cooling: Cryorig C7 Cu CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers. Enermax NEOChanger and Thermaltake Pacific W4 Plus Vlog on OCInside. Deepcool Captain 240 EX All-In-One CPU Cooler on HardOCP. Misc: HiKam A7 HD WiFi Waterproof IP Camera on OCClub. Antec VP700P PLUS 700W Power Supply on NikKTech. Realme 2 Pro smartphone on TechARP. noblechairs HERO Series Office and Gaming Chair on HardOCP. Wednesday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 28-November-2018  17:08:13 (GMT +10) - by Agg NASA's InSight lander has successfully landed on Mars. This expedition marks the first landing on the Red Planet in six years, since the Curiosity rover arrived in 2012. Now, NASA’s real work begins, with the small device sending back the first of many pictures from its new home later that morning. The mission’s deputy leader, Doctor Sue Smrekar, said that a successful landing can appear “smooth and easy — like a piece of cake”. Amazon have their big AWS re:Invent conference going on at the moment, with lots of cloud-based announcements, but the main one that caught my eye was this mention of their own in-house ARM-based CPUs. Today we are launching EC2 instances powered by Arm-based AWS Graviton Processors. Built around Arm cores and making extensive use of custom-built silicon, the A1 instances are optimized for performance and cost. They are a great fit for scale-out workloads where you can share the load across a group of smaller instances. This includes containerized microservices, web servers, development environments, and caching fleets. That's significant because while AWS dominates the cloud market, they have always done so as a customer of Intel (and more recently NVIDIA and AMD). But now they might truly be striking out on their own. Meanwhile the idea of modular CPUs using chiplet modules is taking off. “Next year you’ll be hearing a lot more about chiplets,” said Yaniv Kopelman, networking CTO and senior director at Marvell. “Chiplets are a good solution to the death of Moore’s Law. We implemented this three years ago on a switch, and we have been re-using technology across our product line internally.” Goosefeather spotted this cool story about using ionic wind to fly. In traditional aircraft, thrust is created by propellers or turbines which push fast moving air backwards, and in turn pushes the aircraft forward. Weighing just 2.45 kilograms with a wing span of 5 metres, the prototype plane uses a technology called ionic wind, an electronic gradient from positive to negative charge, to push the craft forward. Techgage looked at Intel's Core i9-9900K on Linux. As a quick primer, Intel’s Core i9-9900K is the company’s latest eight-core processor, and one that’s not locked into the enthusiast X299 platform. But eight cores for mainstream consumers isn’t all that’s interesting here. A major feature of the 9900K comes with its clock speeds, able to peak at 5GHz with one or two cores, or just a few 100MHz less when all eight cores are engaged. TechSpot show how to run Windows 10 from a USB drive. Did you know that a full copy of Windows can be installed and run from a USB drive? Microsoft introduced "Windows To Go" with Windows 8 Enterprise and has continued supporting the feature in Windows 10, which can be kept on a pen drive in your pocket as a portable operating system. Samsung have a new 1TB SSD, the 860 QVO. As Tech-Report say in their review: Samsung's EVO drives have ruled the SATA roost for the last several years. Today, Samsung is introducing high-capacity, lower-cost 860 QVO drives with four-bit-per-cell QLC NAND inside. Can they live up to the high expectations Samsung has set with its past products? More reviews on Tweaktown, Guru3D and LegitReviews. Tuesday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 27-November-2018  12:56:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg Video Cards: Palit GeForce RTX 2070 Super JetStream 8G on Guru3D. Gigabyte Windforce RTX 2070 on LanOC. Zotac GeForce RTX 2080 AMP Extreme 8 GB on TechPowerUp. Motherboard & CPU: Battlefield V Multiplayer CPU Benchmark: Ryzen 7 2700X vs. Core i9-9900K on TechSpot. GIGABYTE Z390 AORUS XTREME on Vortez. Team Group T-Force Night Hawk Legend RGB DDR4-3200 CL14 on TechPowerUp. Storage: MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro SSD Benchmarked With Firmware v12.1 on LegitReviews. HP Portable SSD P600 on Tweaktown. EAMGROUP T-FORCE DELTA R Rainbow RGB 250GB SSD on NikKTech, OCAU review here. Seagate Fast SSD Review - Light, Portable, and Quick on Tweaktown. Portable & Prebuilt: Corsair Vengeance 5180 Gaming PC (RTX 2080) on TechPowerUp. Benchmarking The $25 Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ Performance on Phoronix. 3X Camera Xiaomi Mi A2 Smartphone In-Depth Review on TechARP. Cooling: Reeven Kiran Cooling Fan on APHNetworks. Enermax T.B. RGB fan on OCInside. Input Etc: Tesoro Gram Spectrum TKL Keyboard on ThinkComputers. SteelSeries Rival 650 Wireless Gaming Mouse on MadShrumps. ROCCAT Kone AIMO Optical Mouse on APHNetworks. Mistel MD650L Barocco Keyboard on TechPowerUp. ROCCAT Vulcan 120 AIMO keyboard on Vortez. Cooler Master Masteraccessory MP750 mousepad on Vortez. RIOTORO Ghostwriter Prism Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on NikKTech. Software: Darksiders III game on TechPowerUp. GeForce 416.94 Driver Performance Analysis, RTX 2070 FE and EVGA GTX 1060/6 SC on BabelTechReviews. Hitman 2 game on OCClub. Battlefield V PC Game & Performance in BabelTechReviews. Fallout 76 impressions on Tweaktown. Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus game on TechPowerUp. Misc: Anda Seat Dark Knight Premium Gaming Chair on NeoSeeker. noblechairs Hero Gaming Chair on TechPowerUp. Asus Strix Fusion 700 RGB headset on Guru3D. Patriot Viper RGB DDR4 3000MHz Memory on Modders-Inc. AVM FRITZ!Box 7530 AC1300 VDSL/ADSL Modem Router on NikKTech. Misc Pics (18 Comments) (link)  Friday, 23-November-2018  14:47:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg Thanks to mpot and Archie this week! Team Group T-Force Delta R RGB SSD (2 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 22-November-2018  18:20:48 (GMT +10) - by Agg Today I've taken a look at the T-Force Delta R RGB SSD from Team Group. This is a 256GB SATA SSD which wants to be the centre of attention: click for the review! Thursday Evening (7 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 22-November-2018  18:17:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg Amazon seem to have changed their stance and will now allow Australian shoppers on their main USA-based site. Australian consumers will again have access to products on Amazon's international sites after the online shopping giant backflipped on its decision to block local customers over laws that forced it to collect GST. Amazon stopped delivering goods bought from Amazon.com and other sites to Australian addresses in July, restricting its local customers to its Amazon Australia site, which stocked about one-tenth of the products. Discussion in this thread and if you'd like to support OCAU via Amazon's affiliate program, shop via this link. :) The International Space Station has a 3D Printer and Recycler onboard now. Refabricator recycles waste plastic materials into high quality 3D-printer filament, providing the potential for sustainable fabrication, repair, and recycling capabilities on long-duration space missions. This hardware represents a key component of NASA's In-Space Manufacturing (ISM) technology development roadmap. Which by coincidence reminds me of one of my favourite books, set in a society where (among other things) nanotechnology allows the creation and recycling of any item from home replicators. Another thing that sounds like a dystopian sci-fi is this plan to judge Beijing's residents on their behaviour by 2020. The capital city will pool data from several departments to reward and punish some 22 million citizens based on their actions and reputations by the end of 2020, according to a plan posted on the Beijing municipal government’s website on Monday. Those with better so-called social credit will get “green channel” benefits while those who violate laws will find life more difficult. HardOCP (and other sites) experienced RTX 2080 Ti failures, and have some info from NVIDIA about what's going on - it seems to only affect some specific cards. As alluded to by NVIDIA, something was missed along the way and the bad components made it through quality control and into the final product. So, from our understanding of what a "test escape" is, it would seem that NVIDIA is actually owning up to putting bad RTX 2000 series cards into the market. Google have expressed concerns about the Government's site blocking expansion. “Google is concerned the bill is being rushed forward despite no substantive evidence that the current legislation is deficient,” Google LLC’s public policy and government relations manager Derek Slater said. “Google is also concerned that there has not been a thorough, comprehensive and independent review of the extent of the alleged problems that the bill is seeking to address and the likely effectiveness of the proposed changes in addressing them.” If you want to get really retro, check out this core memory shield for Arduino. Core Memory was the most heavily used type of RAM from the mid-1950s, all the way up until the early-1970s. Which is before even my time, if only just. So I’m not quite old enough to remember magnetic core memory in the wild. But, like a lot of other people who grew up closer to the ‘golden age’ of computing than the age the black rectangle of glass and brushed aluminium that lives in all of our pockets today, I have a soft spot for retro-computing. Wednesday Night Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 21-November-2018  22:25:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg Motherboard & CPU: Gigabyte Z390 AORUS Pro on Guru3D. Gigabyte Z390 AORUS Pro WiFi: Is Midrange AORUS Right For Your Next Build? on Bjorn3D. Audio Visual: Onikuma K5 Gaming Headset on TechPowerUp. 1MORE Dual Driver In-ears on TechPowerUp. JBL JR300BT Bluetooth Headphones For Kids on LegitReviews. Portable & Prebuilt: Emerson EM756-8 Android 7? 8GB Tablet on LegitReviews. HP Envy X2 Review: A Satisfying Intel Powered Always Connected PC on HotHardware. Input Etc: HyperX Pulsefire Surge mouse on TechPowerUp. CORSAIR K70 RGB MK.2 Low Profile Gaming Keyboard on MadShrimps. HyperX Fury S Pro Gaming Mouse Pad on ThinkComputers. Razer Raiju Ultimate gaming controller on Vortez. Cherry MX Board 6 Video Review keyboard on Modders-Inc. HyperX Alloy FPS RGB keyboard on Vortez. Storage: Mushkin SOURCE 250GB SSD on NikKTech. Silicon Power Bolt B80 Portable SSD on Tweaktown. Crucial P1 1TB Solid State Drive on ThinkComputers. Toshiba N300 8TB NAS Hard Drive on MadShrimps. Crucial P1 500GB NVMe SSD on Tweaktown. Software: Bomber Crew game on Bjorn3D. Hitman 2 Benchmark Performance Analysis on TechPowerUp. HellSign (Early Access) game on TechPowerUp. Battlefield V DXR Real-Time Ray Tracing Performance Tested on TechSpot. Netgear Insight Business Storage and Networking Management on Tweaktown. Battlefield V with GeForce RTX DirectX Raytracing on TechPowerUp. Assassin's Creed Odyssey game on OCClub. Testing Turing content-adaptive shading with Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus on TechReport. Examining the performance of Nvidia RTX effects in Battlefield V on TechReport. 20-Way AMD / NVIDIA Linux Gaming Benchmarks For The 2018 Holidays on Phoronix. Spectre/Meltdown Performance Impact On Linux 4.20, Decimating Benchmarks on Phoronix. Misc: NeueChair Review: Redefining The Modern Office Chair on Tweaktown. ADATA XPG Spectrix D41 DDR4-3000 16GB Memory Kit on ThinkComputers. Reeven Brontes CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers. Neo Mini mITX case on Modders-Inc. be quiet! Pure Power 11 600 Watt PSU on Guru3D. Defyant by Defyant (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 20-November-2018  13:54:57 (GMT +10) - by Agg Defyant's latest project is this custom acrylic PC, with a focus on air-cooling and a great RGB lighting setup: Click for the worklog thread! AMD Radeon RX 590 (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 20-November-2018  12:26:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg AMD unveiled the Radeon RX 590 recently, refreshing the existing RX 580 line by moving to 12nm and boosting the clock speeds. This is a mid-range card that is competing with NVIDIA's GTX 1060. To see how it fares, check out these reviews from around the web: AMD Radeon RX 590 1440p, 1080p & Ultrawide Gaming Performance on Techgage. PowerColor Red Devil RX 590 takes on the EVGA GTX 1060 SC on BabelTechReviews. Sapphire Radeon RX 590 Nitro+ Special Edition 8 GB on TechPowerUp. XFX RX 590 Fatboy on OCClub. XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy OC+ on HardOCP. AMD RX590 Crossfire Testing on LanOC. XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy 8G on Guru3D. Red Devil RX 590 vs. the EVGA GTX 1060 SC 6GB Overclocking Showdown on BabelTechReviews. Sapphire Radeon RX 590 Nitro+ Special Edition 8 GB on TechPowerUp. XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy on LegitReviews. AMD's Radeon RX 590 graphics card reviewed on TechReport. PowerColor Red Devil Radeon RX 590 8G on Guru3D. AMD Radeon RX 590 Review: Benchmarks And Overclocking 12nm Polaris on HotHardware. AMD Radeon RX 590 Review: The Refresh Of A Refresh Is Here on Tweaktown. Radeon RX 590 vs. RX 580 vs. GeForce GTX 1060 on TechSpot. XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy 8 GB on TechPowerUp. Discussion in this thread. MSI PS42 14” Thin & Light Laptop Review (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 19-November-2018  20:55:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg Windwithme has reviewed the MSI PS42, a thin and lightweight 14" laptop that doesn't skimp on performance or features. click for the thread! Monday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 19-November-2018  17:54:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg Motherboard & CPU: Intel Core i9-9980XE vs AMD Ryzen Threadripper on HardOCP. EVGA Z390 FTW Motherboard on HWAsylum. Asus ROG Strix Z390-I Gaming on LanOC. Audio Visual: Razer Hammerhead USB-C ANC earphones on Vortez. Elgato Stream Deck on FunkyKit. Cases: SilverStone Lucid LD01 mATX on APHNetworks. Antec DF500 RGB on OCInside. Enermax SABERAY Tower on FunkyKit. Cooling: Cooler Master MasterAir G100M CPU Cooler on OCClub. Deepcool CASTLE 240RGB AIO Liquid CPU Cooler on NikKTech. Scythe Ninja 5 CPU cooler on TechPowerUp. Enermax NEOChanger reservoir/pump on OCInside. Prebuilt & Portable: PC Specialist Fusion II prebuilt PC on Vortez. HUAWEI Mate 20 with Triple Leica Cameras on TechARP. ASRock DeskMini 310 SFF PC on Tweaktown. Storage: HyperX Fury RGB 480GB SSD on HWAsylum. HyperX Gaming microSD 128GB on Tweaktown. Western Digital Black NVMe SSD 1TB Solid State Drive on APHNetworks. G-Technology Mobile SSD R Series 1TB on Tweaktown. Toshiba Exceria Pro N502 64GB & 128GB SDXC UHS-II Cards on NikKTech. Video Cards: Battlefield V Ray Tracing Performance on GeForce RTX 2080 Ti on LegitReviews. XFX RX580 Fatboy on LanOC. AORUS RTX 2080 XTREME on Vortez. ASUS ROG GeForce RTX 2070 STRIX on Guru3D. Misc: Sumo Lounge Sumo Gamer Microsuede Bean Bag on NikKTech. Xtorm XB203 Infinity 27.000mAh Power Bank on NikKTech. Misc Pics (18 Comments) (link)  Friday, 16-November-2018  14:59:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg Friday again! Wednesday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 14-November-2018  13:57:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg If you want to opt out of My Health Record, you have until tomorrow night to do so. An amendment was passed by the Senate today to extend the deadline to January 31st of next year, but I'm not sure when that actually becomes effective. Anyway, if you're wondering why you might want to opt out of receiving an automatic My Health Record account, read this article and this article, and consider the example of Singapore's equivalent being hacked earlier this year. You may have connectivity issues as there's a bit of a rush to opt out at the moment. Discussion continues in this thread. Stan Lee, creator of many iconic superhero characters, has died aged 95. It's difficult to overstate Stan Lee's impact on popular culture. In the space of a few years, the comic author created a series of characters — Spiderman, Hulk, and the X-Men, among others — whose adventures were followed by generations of fans. More than 50 years later these creations, via the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), are driving hordes of people to movie theatres around the world. Discussion here. TechSpot wondered about the recent Core i9-9900K reviews, particularly in regards to power ratings. So the problem we have here is motherboard makers for the most part aren’t abiding by either of these power limits, instead they are targeting the clock multiplier table. You could say motherboard makers are cheating but we don’t think that is it... we still feel Intel is cheating their own spec. There is simply no way all board makers did this on their own, what a mighty big coincidence that would be and surely Asus, MSI, Asrock and Gigabyte all work alongside Intel engineers to create their Z390 motherboards. Long story short, they have now re-reviewed it while adhering to the Intel spec. Meanwhile the i9-9980XE has arrived, with reviews on HotHardware, Tweaktown, Tech Report and LegitReviews. Last month, Intel announced the "Basin Falls Refresh" for their Core X-Series HEDT processors. Seven new parts were announced with the flagship of the series being the Intel Core i9-9980XE 18-core, 36-thread processor that is the successor to the Intel Core i9-7980XE 18-core, 36-thread processor launched just last year. Architecturally, the Core i9-9980XE is very similar to its Core i9-7980XE predecessor, but is made on the latest 14nm++ manufacturing process. The improvements on this node along with the switch to solder thermal interface material (STIM) have allowed Intel to increase base/boost clock speeds. Tuesday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 13-November-2018  17:56:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg Motherboard & CPU: ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac on FunkyKit. ASUS Maximus XI Extreme: Z390 with all the things on Bjorn3D. Supermicro C9Z390-PGW (Intel Z390) on Tweaktown. Raptor Talos II POWER9 Benchmarks Against AMD Threadripper & Intel Core i9 on Phoronix. MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Plus on LanOC. Video Cards: ZOTAC GeForce RTX 2070 AMP Extreme 8 GB on TechPowerUp. RTX 2080 vs. the GTX 1080 Ti in VR on BabelTechReviews. Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Founders Edition on Bjorn3D. EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FTW3 Ultra 11 GB on TechPowerUp. Input Etc: Corsair K70 RGB MK.2 Low Profile Rapidfire on Guru3D. Corsair's K70 MK.2 Low Profile Rapidfire gaming keyboard on TechReport. ROCCAT Horde AIMO Keyboard on APHNetworks. Glorious 3XL Extended Mouse Pad on TechPowerUp. 1St Player MK6 Bullet Hunter Keyboard on Modders-Inc. Dream Machines DM1 FPS mouse on TechPowerUp. Portable & Prebuilt: The Dell G7 15 (7588) Gaming Laptop In-Depth Review on TechARP. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Review: A Workhorse That's Got Game on HotHardware. Realme 2 Pro Smartphone In-Depth Review on TechARP. Razer Blade 15 (Kaby Lake-R) Laptop on Tweaktown. Audio Visual: ViewSonic PX706HD Gaming Projector on GamingNexus. Razer Nari Wired/Wireless Gaming Headset on MadShrimps. Cases: Silverstone Lucid LD01 on TechPoweUp. AeroCool Quartz Pro Full Tower on NikKTech. Storage: Asustor AS6302T 2-Bay Consumer NAS on Tweaktown. Kingston A1000 480GB M.2 NVMe SSD on NikKTech. iStorage diskAshur DT2 12TB Desktop Hard Drive on NikKTech. Crucial P1 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD on FunkyKit. Software: Party Hard 2 game on TechPowerUp. Battlefield V PC Graphics Benchmark on TechSpot. Battlefield V: PC graphics performance benchmarks on Guru3D. Battlefield V Benchmark Performance Analysis on TechPowerUp. Misc: Sneak Energy Drink on ThinkComputers. Apacer Panther Rage DDR4 RGB (2x8 GB) 3200 MHz DDR4 on Guru3D. NZXT HUE 2 RGB Lighting Kit on Vortez. Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition CPU cooler on Vortez. Monday Night (3 Comments) (link)  Monday, 12-November-2018  23:32:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg Yesterday was Rememberance Day, of course. This year it was especially significant, as it marked 100 years since the end of World War I. An estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilians died as a direct result of the war, and it also contributed to later genocides and the 1918 influenza pandemic, which caused between 50 and 100 million deaths worldwide. Military losses were exacerbated by new technological and industrial developments and the tactical stalemate caused by gruelling trench warfare. It was one of the deadliest conflicts in history and precipitated major political changes, including the Revolutions of 1917–1923, in many of the nations involved. The simple phrase Lest We Forget serves to remind us firstly not to forget the sacrifices of those who went before us, but also, to never again fall into such brutal and senseless conflict. We can only hope those in power are heeding the warning. Douglas Rain, the actor who gave us the voice of HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey has died, aged 90. The Stratford Festival, which Rain, who was a dedicated Shakespearean actor, co-founded in 1952, said that Rain had died of natural causes in Stratford, Ontario, in Canada. I had no idea that Anand Lal Shimpi from Anandtech was working for Apple, but here he is talking to ArsTechnica about the iPad Pro's A12X system-on-a-chip. After the hardware announcements last week, Ars sat down with Anand Shimpi from Hardware Technologies at Apple and Apple’s Senior VP of Marketing Phil Schiller to ask. We wanted to hear exactly what Apple is trying to accomplish by making its own chips and how the A12X is architected. It turns out that the iPad Pro's striking, console-level graphics performance and many of the other headlining features in new Apple devices (like FaceID and various augmented-reality applications) may not be possible any other way. China has a new news-reader who never gets a break, because he's an AI. Xinhua said its newest recruits "can work 24 hours a day", allowing it to cut down on production costs. Rounding out a two-minute bulletin, the English-speaking virtual newsreader said it would improve with experience. Discussion here. Here's a cool idea, a solar-powered website. In contrast, this website runs on an off-the-grid solar power system with its own energy storage, and will go off-line during longer periods of cloudy weather. Less than 100% reliability is essential for the sustainability of an off-the-grid solar system, because above a certain threshold the fossil fuel energy used for producing and replacing the batteries is higher than the fossil fuel energy saved by the solar panels. Lifehacker have a roundup of the biggest NBN dramas of 2018.. so far. Unsurprisingly, this year has been filled with as much NBN-related drama as the last few, from congestion issues to dodgy advertisers to runaway cars taking out whole connection nodes. And, as always, a good number of the population still don't know when they're getting it. Misc Pics (22 Comments) (link)  Friday, 9-November-2018  15:07:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg Keiran sent word that Microsoft are having some issues with activation at the moment, so if your Windows 10 PC is saying it has the wrong licence, maybe wait a few days then try running the troubleshooter. More info here and here. But in the meantime, here's Misc Pics: ASIGN_Baz's Full-Size MK II Colonial Viper (4 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 7-November-2018  23:39:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg I haven't posted about this in a little while, but in case you're wondering what ASIGN_Baz, of Iron Man in steel fame, has been up to lately.. well, he's building a freakin' full-size space-ship in his shed: click for the worklog! Wednesday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 7-November-2018  14:25:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg One fairly predictable consequence of SmugMug having recently bought Flickr is that they are limiting their free service. If you have a free Flickr account with more than 1000 photos on it, you need to read this: Free members with more than 1,000 photos or videos uploaded to Flickr have until Tuesday, January 8, 2019, to upgrade to Pro or download content over the limit. After January 8, 2019, members over the limit will no longer be able to upload new photos to Flickr. After February 5, 2019, free accounts that contain over 1,000 photos or videos will have content actively deleted -- starting from oldest to newest date uploaded -- to meet the new limit. Discussion here. Intel have given a sneak peak of some upcoming Xeon Scalable CPUs. As Anandtech explain in their review: Intel is still keeping a lot of details for Cascade-AP under wraps for now, but what we do know is some high level specifications: Cascade-AP processors will be up to 48 cores, possibly with hyperthreading, and is aimed at dual socket servers, for a total of 96 cores in a 2S system. As a result, a single Cascade-AP is essentially a 2S Xeon setup on a single chip. More coverage on ServeTheHome, TomsHardware, TheNextPlatform, ArsTechnica, HotHardware and Top500. Discussion in this thread. Meanwhile AMD have revealed EPYC 2 CPUs, also for datacentre use, at their "Next Horizon" event overnight. Interestingly Amazon already have AWS EC2 instances available with the new CPUs. Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:AMZN), announced new general purpose (M5 and T3) and memory-optimized (R5) instance types with AMD EPYC processors that are 10% less expensive than the current M5, T3, and R5 instances. The AMD-based instances provide additional options for customers who are looking to achieve cost savings on their Amazon EC2 compute environment for a variety of workloads, such as microservices, low-latency interactive applications, small and medium databases, virtual desktops, development and test environments, code repositories, and business applications. Researchers have found a flaw in some SSD encryption. Researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands have discovered that widely used data storage devices with self-encrypting drives do not provide the expected level of data protection. A malicious expert with direct physical access to widely sold storage devices can bypass existing protection mechanisms and access the data without knowing the user-chosen password. Samsung have responded with a firmware patch for certain drives. There's a New Mac Mini with increased specs and pricetag. Now with quad- and 6-core processors, up to 64GB of faster memory and blazing fast all-flash storage, the new Mac mini delivers an insane five times faster performance, making it the most powerful Mac mini ever made.1 And with Thunderbolt 3 ports, the Apple T2 Security Chip and a 10Gb Ethernet option, the new Mac mini is a faster and more capable desktop that can do so much more. Discussion here. The "Retro Let's Play" game for early November is Bionic Commando for the NES, from back in 1988. You take the role of Nathan "Lad" (Japanese) / "Rad" (English) Spencer, a commando who has had his original left arm replaced with a bionic arm, complete with grappling hook. Instead of the usual jump button common to most 8-bit titles, the character now exclusively uses the grapple arm to hook on to ledges, pull himself up to higher levels, swing across chasms, or grab enemies and power ups. Wednesday Midday Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 7-November-2018  12:22:51 (GMT +10) - by Agg Cooling: Corsair H100i RGB Platinum All-In-One CPU cooler on Vortez. Corsair H115i RGB Platinum CPU AIO watercooler on Vortez. Corsair Hydro H100i RGB Platinum CPU Cooler on LegitReviews. Corsair's H100i RGB Platinum closed-loop liquid cooler on TechReport. CORSAIR Hydro H100i Platinum RGB Extreme Performance AIO Liquid CPU Cooler on NikKTech. Corsair Hydro Series H115i Platinum on TechPowerUp. Corsair H115i Platinum 280mm liquid cooler on Guru3D. Corsair H115i RGB Platinum Liquid CPU Cooler on Tweaktown. Corsair H115i RGB Platinum All-In-One CPU Cooler on HardOCP. Motherboard & CPU: ASUS ROG STRIX Z390-E Gaming on Guru3D. ASRock Z390 Taichi on FunkyKit. ASUS ROG STRIX B450-I on HardOCP. Audio Visual: Cooler Master MH752 Gaming Headset on Modders-Inc. HP Omen Mindframe Headset Review: Totally Cool Cans For Gamers on HotHardware. Cooler Master MH752 Gaming Headset on APHNetworks. Cooler Master MH752 on Vortez. Storage: Toshiba XG6 1TB NVMe SSD on LegitReviews. Promise Atlas S8+ Thunderbolt 3 on Tweaktown. Corsair Force MP510 NVMe SSD Review - Corsair's Fastest on Tweaktown. Crucial MX500 1 TB M.2 SSD on OCInside. Input Etc: FNATIC Streak Gaming Keyboard on ThinkComputers. Thermaltake TT Premium X1 RGB keyboard on Vortez. Pwnage Altier Gaming Mouse on ThinkComputers. Cases: EVGA DG-77 Alpine White Midtower on Modders-Inc. be quiet! Dark Base Pro 900 Rev.2 XL-ATX Tower on NikKTech. Portable & Prebuilt: Realme 2 Pro In-Depth Review - Max Power, Max Style smartphone on TechARP. HUAWEI TalkBand B5 2-in-1 Smartwatch Preview on TechARP. Misc: Cougar Fortress Gaming Backpack on TechPowerUp. Ballistix Tactical Tracer RGB DDR4-2666 2x8GB Kit on MadShrimps. NZXT E850 850W Power Supply on APHNetworks. EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti XC Ultra 11 GB video card on TechPowerUp. Monday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 5-November-2018  13:45:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg Motherboard & CPU: Entry Level Gaming CPU: Athlon 200GE vs. Pentium G5400 vs. Ryzen 3 2200G on TechSpot. ASUS ROG STRIX B450-I Gaming Motherboard on HardOCP. AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2970WX and 2920X CPUs on Hexus, OCAU review here. Audio Visual: Tribit XFree Tune Bluetooth Headphones on FunkyKit. HyperX Cloud MIX Bluetooth Headset on GamingNexus. PlayStation Gold Wireless Headset (2018) on PCReview. Turtle Beach Recon 200 headset on GamingNexus. Philips Momentum 43 4K HDR Monitor on TechSpot. Audeze Mobius Gaming Headset on HardOCP. Storage: Seagate IronWolf and Pro 14TB NAS HDD on Tweaktown. Elgato Mini Dock Thunderbolt 3 on Tweaktown. Gigabyte M.2 PCIe SSD 256GB Solid State Drive on APHNetworks. ADATA GAMMIX S10 512GB SSD Review: Affordable M.2 NVMe Performance on TechGage. Video Cards: MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Gaming Z 8G on Guru3D. MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Gaming Z 8 GB on TechPowerUp. AMD's Affordable Workstation Vega: Radeon Pro WX 8200 on TechGage. ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 2080 Ti on HardOCP. Input Etc: DREVO BladeMaster TE Tenkeyless Mechanical Keyboard on NikKTech. Das Keyboard 5Q on TechPowerUp. AZIO ATOM mouse on TechPowerUp. Portable & Prebuilt: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga (Kaby Lake-R) Laptop on Tweaktown. The 4X Camera Samsung Galaxy A7 2018 (SM-A750) Review on TechARP. Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 Review: An Android Tablet For Mobile Professionals on HotHardware. Misc: Phanteks Eclipse P300 Tempered Glass Midtower on Modders-Inc. Misc Pics (20 Comments) (link)  Friday, 2-November-2018  14:28:48 (GMT +10) - by Agg Thanks to gasman and metamorphosis this week! Interesting Forum Threads (2 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 1-November-2018  13:27:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg You can keep on top of things in the forums via the recent activity feed or the new posts page. To see activity in threads you subscribe to, check out your latest alerts. Also, the alert system is a little different in our new xenForo platform than earlier on vBulletin. So, it's worth checking your watched threads list from time to time in case you missed an alert. Meanwhile, here's a snapshot of what people are discussing in the forums: Interesting article on SSD lifespans in Storage & Backup. Supermicro Spy Chips in Business & Enterprise Computing. OLED's OLED's OLED's! in Audio Visual. Help me choose a small high quality stereo system in Audio Visual. Broadlink RM Mini 3 Black Bean Smart Home Wifi in Audio Visual. What do you use as your HTPC/ Media Player in Audio Visual. User-friendly FTA recording plus Netflix in Audio Visual. Apple locks third party repairers out in Apple Desktop Hardware/Software. Ring of Elsyium PUBG Clone that is Better than PUBG in PC Games. World War 3 (The Farm 51) in PC Games. Red Dead Redemption 2 in Game Consoles. Why does a phone need to have USB-C connection? in Google Android. [Comparo] Small Premium Cars - <$40K in Motoring. Holden halts production of Commodore and Equinox in Motoring. Australian population hit 24 million 17 years earlier than expected in Current Events. My Body Improvement in Sport Fitness & Health: Journals. [Movie] First Man (2018) [Gosling, Foy, Clarke] in Entertainment. [Music] Anyone else still listen to albums? in Entertainment. IT Certification Online Training CBT Providers in Career, Education & Finance. Resigning to Work for a Competitor in Career, Education & Finance. Today I learned that an awful lot of "physical security" measures are bogus in The Pub. Thursday Midday (1 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 1-November-2018  12:02:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg We're naturally all concerned about The Singularity and humanity being exterminated by an army of super AI equipped parkour robots, but it seems they will be replacing lawyers first. In a landmark study, 20 experienced US-trained lawyers were pitted against the LawGeex Artificial Intelligence algorithm. The 40-page study details how AI has overtaken top lawyers for the first time in accurately spotting risks in everyday business contracts. Maybe one way we can slow the inevitable enslavement of humanity is by using helium to jam electronics, as per this interesting story on iFixit. A failing oscillator would match Erik’s symptoms, which he reproduced in an experiment. “I placed an iPhone 8 Plus in a sealed bag and filled it with helium. This wasn’t incredibly realistic, as the original iPhones would have been exposed to a much lower concentration, but it still supports the idea that helium can disable the device. In the video I leave the display on and running a stopwatch for the duration of the test. Around 8 minutes and 20 seconds in the phone locks up. Nothing crazy really happens. The clock just stops, and nothing else. The display did stay on though.” Tech Report take us through the best gaming CPUs of late 2018. Choosing a CPU for a gaming PC can be a daunting task, but it doesn't have to be. We walk you through the types of gaming experiences where CPUs matter and where they don't, and we pick chips for every budget that make the most of today's powerful graphics cards. OCClub meanwhile tell us their best AMD motherboard picks at the moment. One current debate about the NBN is over whether it will be superceded by 5G mobile data. The ACCC has warned the government not to protect the NBN from this possibility. Whatever the costs of the NBN are... the worst outcome for consumers would be any attempt to protect the NBN from whatever competition is going to come from mobile technologies,” Sims said. The ACCC is “very strongly in favour NBN facing competition,” the ACCC chair said. “From our point of view there should not be any thought of trying to protect the value of NBN – this is all about the consumers.” We don't generally associate Apple products with DIY upgrades, but Tweaktown have an article about upgrading an iMac. They swap out the HDD, memory and even the CPU. I opted to take the upgrade process further than the two OWC upgrade kits. In this case, im removing the stock Core i5 7400 and replacing it with the Core i7 7700. For this we must remove the tape blocking the screws on the backplate, followed by the screws. The UN's privacy watchdog has described the Government's encryption bill as fatally flawed. The bill “is equally likely to endanger security as not,” Cannataci wrote — a criticism that has also been made by representatives of the technology and telecommunications sectors. Local human rights groups have also attacked the government's proposals.

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