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July 2023 |
Google and Apple are working on a solution for a unified tracking network, how very grown up of them. And while we wait for that devices like AirTags will now be 'seen' by Android phones. After you receive an alert, you can learn more about the unknown Bluetooth tracker and get tips on how to take action. When you bring the device near the back of your phone, some Bluetooth trackers may share their serial number or additional information about the owner of the device, like the last four digits of their phone number. You can also learn how to physically disable the Bluetooth tracker completely, so the device will stop the owner from receiving future location updates from the tracker.
Looking at new cars recently ? You're likely aware electric vehicles cost more than their equivalent oil burner counterparts, and that a significant percentage of that cost is the battery. The cost of lithium has increased almost tenfold since 2020. Many alternative battery technologies are being investigated, but so far, none have replaced lithium as the main ingredient of choice. Now, scientists at Arizona State University have proposed taking a different approach: Instead of replacing lithium, they’re diluting it with sodium. The team used a technique they had previously developed to test the energetic stability of lithium with 10 percent sodium mixed in and found the mixture to be stable without degrading battery performance.
Intel have their books back in the black again after hurting for a little while now. After two consecutive quarters of losses, Intel just posted an unexpected profit, helped in small part by a massive surge in its IFS revenue. The numbers paint an interesting and almost nonsensical picture. Intel's revenue for the second quarter of 2023 fell 15% year-over-over to $12.9 billion. Likewise, every individual category other than IFS posted losses for the quarter
Meta, Microsoft and Amazon are going to join forces to break the Apple-Google duopoly on maps.
The Overture Maps Foundation, which was established late last year, captured 59 million “points of interest,” such as restaurants, landmarks, streets and regional borders. The data has been cleaned and formatted so it can be used for free as the base layer for a new map application. Meta and Microsoft collected and donated the data to Overture, according to Marc Prioleau, executive director of the OMF. Data on places is often difficult to collect and license, and building map data requires lots of time and staff to gather and clean it, he told CNBC in an interview.
Maybe Meta can use those new maps to find the way to pay the Australian government $20 million. Onavo shared anonymised and aggregated data with Meta, including users’ internet and app activity, such as records of every app that they accessed and the time that they spent using those apps. The two companies admitted in joint court submissions that Onavo Protect’s listings on app stores did not mention that it collected users’ data as a ‘business intelligence tool’ or that data would be directed to support Meta’s market research activities. The VPN was promoted on platforms like Google and Apple App Store as a way to “protect personal information” and to “keep you and your data safe”. "Facebook Israel and Onavo used the app to collect an extensive variety of data about users' mobile device usage," Justice Wendy Abraham wrote in her judgement today.
Input Etc:
OnePlus Keyboard 81 Pro @ HotHardware
HyperX Pulsefire Haste 2 Wireless @ TechPowerUp
Corsair Darkstar Wireless Gaming Mouse @ weakTown
Software:
Remnant 2: DLSS vs FSR vs XeSS Comparison @ TechPowerUp
Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart Benchmark Test & Performance Analysis @ TechPowerUp
Storage:
Solidigm P41 Plus 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD @ NikKTech
TEAMGROUP MP44 1TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD @ FunkyKit
Seagate Nytro 5550H 6.4TB SSD @ weakTown
Misc:
ASUS ROG PG27AQN @ cowcotland
Yeston GeForce RTX 4070 Ti @ guru3D
FSP Hydro PTM PRO 1200W ATX 3.0 Power Supply Unit @ NikKTech
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 And Z Fold5 Hands-On @ HotHardware
Geekom Mini IT11 (i7-11390H) @ guru3D
Cooler Master MasterAir MA824 Stealth CPU Cooler @ aphNetworks
Friday again - thanks to MUTMAN this week! Also thanks again to MUTMAN for keeping the news page nice and busy this week.
     
     
     
     
TSMC might be finding out the hard way their home town work ethic and engineering prowess are not shared in the USA. TSMC disclosed that it will have to delay mass production at its Fab 21 in Arizona to 2025, as a lack of suitably skilled workers is slowing down the installation of cleanroom tools. "We are encountering certain challenges, as there is an insufficient amount of skilled workers with the specialized expertise required for equipment installation in a semiconductor-grade facility," said Mark Liu, chairman of TSMC, during the company's earnings call with financial analysts and investors. "While we are working on to improve the situation, including sending experienced technicians from Taiwan to train local skill workers for a short period of time, we expect the production schedule of N4 process technology to be pushed out to 2025."
The semiconductor fab industry are making the EUV process greener with reverse fuel cells. There are enough contaminants in the system and the process that the machine needs several fine flows of hydrogen to sweep away anything that could muck up its delicate optics. These flows blow through about 600 liters of the gas per minute, with that amount likely to rise in the future. Today, the resulting contaminated hydrogen is usually burned to form water. So the supply must constantly be replenished with new hydrogen. The problem is that most hydrogen is not made using green energy—it’s made by processing natural gas with steam, releasing carbon dioxide both in the chemical process and from whatever energy source produced the steam.
While Intel look to reduce their product line-up and cut costs, they don't appear to have cut back on innovating with a novel backside semi conductor fabrication proposal. Intel executives were understandably cautious in executing a plan that next year simultaneously introduces both a new transistor—RibbonFET—and a new way of powering it—PowerVia. Making PowerVia-enabled chips requires several extra steps and leads to the unusual result that there is hardly any silicon left in the chip. Things start out pretty normal: The transistors, which in this case are FinFETs made using the Intel 4 process, are constructed at the surface of the silicon, as usual. The main difference is that a group of deep, narrow holes are also drilled and then filled in with metal. These nano-TSVs (for through-silicon vias) will be important later.
Keeping up on the innovation Intel are also expanding their take on the x86 ISA. We'll talk about APX first, because there's less to say about it. APX is what Intel is calling an extension to the x86 ISA that primarily doubles the number of general-purpose registers (GPRs) from 16 to 32. If you're not up to snuff on your hardware lingo, a "register" is a very small space within the CPU that stores the data the processor is actively working on at any given time. In a sense, this is sort of like doubling the RAM on a CPU in that it reduces accesses to slower storage—just that in this case, the "slower storage" is CPU cache.
This next news item gets a NSFW warning to go with it.
Google X's former chief of business officer Mo Gawdat thinks 'adult' robots might replace real humans in some special scenarios. The former Google employee was asked if these devices would be sentient or not, to which he replied, "Does it really matter if the Morgan Freeman talking to you on the screen is actually Morgan Freeman or an AI generated avatar, if you're convinced that it is Morgan Freeman? We get lost in those conversations of are they alive are they sentient, doesn't matter if my brain believes they are, they are." Despite these claims from the former Google staff member, studies from a team of UK doctors in 2018 indicated that adult robots wouldn't solve widespread issues of loneliness among humans or reduce the number of crimes.
Today's time waster isn't a game, just a collection of old Drive-In Movie ads from the Internet Archive. The Psychedelic Bic Lighters clip is right out there.
Wednesday Afternoon Reviews
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Wednesday, 26-July-2023 16:29:22 (GMT +10) - by MUTMAN
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Portable & Prebuilt:
HP Omen 17 @ HighPerformanceLaptops
Microsoft Surface Pro 9 @ HighPerformanceLaptops
Ears & Eyes:
AceZone A-Rise Gaming Headset @ TechPowerUp
Endgame Gear XM2we Wireless Gaming Mouse @ TweakTown
Radeon RX 7900 Golden Rabbit Edition @ TweakTown
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB @ TechPowerUp
UPERFECT Model O 4K OLED Portable Monitor @ NikKTech
NAND & DRAM:
Crucial Pro 32GB DDR5 - 5600 MHz CL46 @ guru3D
Lexar NM710 1TB @ LanOC
ADATA Legend 970 2TB SSD @ TweakTown
Corsair MP600 Core XT 2TB Solid State Drive @ aphNetworks
Misc & etc:
Remnant II Benchmark Test & Performance Analysis @ TechPowerUp
Arctic MX-4 vs MX-5 vs MX-6 Thermal Paste Roundup @ OCinside
I wish DishBrain was the name of a character in an animated TV show instead of a chip with built-in human brain tissue that is getting military funding. Then they set up a very basic-reward system, using the fact that small clusters of brain cells tend to try to minimize unpredictability in their environment. So if the paddle hit the ball, the cells would receive a nice, predictable stimulus. But if it missed, the cells would get four seconds of totally unpredictable stimulation. It was the first time lab-grown brain cells had been used this way, being given not only a way to sense the world, but to act on it, and the results were impressive. Demonstrating something like sentience, it learned to play Pong within five minutes.
Remove the Stone of Shame, Attach the Stone of Triumph! which is of course how we say goodbye to Twitter and hello to "X powered by AI". Musk recently announced the formation of a new company, called xAI, which he says will challenge ChatGPT. The official website for the new AI company states, "The goal of xAI is to understand the true nature of the universe." The announcement came after Musk had called for a pause in an "out of control" AI race, and remarked that AI could cause "civilization destruction," according to a report by CNN Business.
If you cant paint, draw or animate, maybe you can be a code monkey because computers are simple. Let’s go back to the original question: what happens when you run an executable program on your computer? First, a bunch of magic happens to get ready to run it — we’ll work through all of this later — but at the end of the process there’s machine code in a file somewhere. The operating system loads this into RAM and instructs the CPU to jump the instruction pointer to that position in RAM. The CPU continues running its fetch-execute cycle as usual, so the program begins executing!
J. Stuart Blackton created the earliest known animated film, The Enchanted Drawing. The industry has changed a lot in the following 123 years. Evans and Sutherland, wanted to expand on the use of such tools by finding a way for computers to simulate objects and environments. In 1968 they founded Evans and Sutherland, locating the E&S headquarters in the university’s research park. Many of today’s computer graphics luminaries—including Pixar cofounder Edwin Catmull, Adobe cofounder John Warnock, and Netscape founder Jim Clark, who also founded Silicon Graphics—got their start in the industry as E&S employees or as doctoral students working on research at the company’s facilities.
Have you ever found yourself wishing your video card had built-in M.2 slots ? Wondering when someone will build and sell one ? Agg sends word your long wait is over. In addition to Nvidia's AD102 GPU with 4352 CUDA cores and 8GB of GDDR6 memory, the prototype Asus GeForce RTX 4060 Ti graphics card has two M.2-2280 slots with a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface for SSDs, one on the front and one of the back side of the PCB. The card has a simplistic PCIe switch, so the GPU and drives get all the bandwidth they need to operate at their maximum throughput.
Someone at Amazon thought to themselves, paywave is too hard. In the announcement, Whole Foods Market Chief technology officer Leandro Balbinot said that “we are always looking for new ways to delight our customers and improve the shopping experience." Customers and vendors like Whole Foods Market are recognizing the benefits of using palm recognition as a form of identification and payment. It's faster and, perhaps more crucially, more secure.
New tech usually turns into old tech fairly quickly, and along the way drops in value even quicker. Well, almost everything. The original 4GB model is considered a 'Holy Grail' amongst iPhone collectors. Its extreme scarcity is directly related to its limited production. Debuting on June 29th, 2007, alongside the 8GB model, the 4GB model was hampered by slow sales. Buyers chose to pay the $100 upcharge in exchange for double the storage space. The lagging sales resulted in Apple making the decision to discontinue the 4GB model just over two months after it was first released.
There's a lot of discussion on news and tech sites about how we'll ensure AI is only used for "good". For those less interested in using AI for good, is money. It looks like the hacker first introduced the chatbot in March before launching it last month. In contrast with ChatGPT or Google's Bard, WormGPT doesn't have any guardrails to stop it from responding to malicious requests. “This project aims to provide an alternative to ChatGPT, one that lets you do all sorts of illegal stuff and easily sell it online in the future,” the program’s developer wrote. “Everything blackhat related that you can think of can be done with WormGPT, allowing anyone access to malicious activity without ever leaving the comfort of their home.”
Luckily for humanity all this AI stuff takes years to train and refine .... Their paper describes a new approach to the growing area of machine learning (ML) research known as Lifelong Learning (LL), in which AI agents continually learn as they encounter new tasks while maintaining knowledge of previous tasks. “It’s like each robot is teaching a class on its specialty, and all the other robots are attentive students,” said Ge. “They’re sharing knowledge through a digital network that connects them all, sort of like their own private internet.”
If you remember when the internet was good then chances are you remember GeoCities. Back in 1999 GeoCities was the 3rd most visited site of the WWW. All those pages ran from the Exodus data centre in San Francisco. This is what the inside of the cage looks like. Nearly all of the machines in the cage are Sun Ultra 2s. Attached to nearly all of these boxes are dual sets of MTI JBODs. The newer JBODs make up the majority of the storage arrays in the cage. Nearly all of the isles in the cage look identical to this; There are nine shelves per rack -- Each rack holds three U2/dual JBOD clusers. As you can see, there all raised floors throughout the entire data center. At the far end of this isle, you can see the chain-link fence which separates our cage from Exodus's other customer cage(s). Thanks to The Sizzle for the link.
Laptop:
Asus Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED @ HighPerformanceLaptops
ASUS ZenBook S 13 OLED Laptop @ HotHardware
Storage:
Crucial P3 Plus 4TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 SSD @ Madshrimps
Corsair MP600 CORE XT NVMe M.2 SSD @ Neoseeker
MSI Spatium M480 Pro 2 TB @ TechPowerUp
Netac NV7000-t 1TB SSD @ TweakTown
PSU & Cooling:
GIGABYTE GP-UD850GM PG5 850w Rev 2 ATX 3.0 Gold PSU @ TweakTown
SilverStone Hela 1300R Platinum ATX 3.0 PSU @ TweakTown
Phanteks Glacier C370I CPU Water Block @ TechPowerUp
Lian Li Galahad II Trinity Performance 360 AIO @ TechPowerUp
Lian Li Galahad II Trinity SL-INF Liquid CPU Cooler @ ThinkComputers
Lian Li Galahad II Trinity Coolers @ LanOC
DeepCool AK620 Digital CPU Cooler @ ThinkComputers
Fingers, Eyes, Ears:
Maono Maonocaster AME2 and PD200X Microphone @ Neoseeker
Ducky One 3 Aura Keyboard @ TweakTown
Roccat Vulcan II Max: you have beautiful eyes, you know... @ cowcotland
AOC CQ27G3Z Curved Gaming Monitor @ LanOC
Corsair K65 RGB Pro Mini keyboard @ guru3D
CIDOO V65 Wireless Mechanical Keyboard @ TechPowerUp
Gustard A26 DAC and Network Streamer @ TechPowerUp
GPU, CPU, RAM:
Team Group T-Force DELTA ? RGB DDR5-6000 CL38 (AMD) 2x 16 GB @ TechPowerUp
Crucial Pro DDR5-5600 2x16GB DDR5 RAM @ aphNetworks
AMD Bergamo And Genoa-X Performance @ HotHardware
PowerColor Hellhound RX 7900 XTX @ LanOC
Colorful iGame GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Ultra W Duo OC @ TechPowerUp
GALAX GeForce RTX 4060 EX White @ guru3D
Barge:
ADEPT HOLO Alpine Esports Edition Gaming Chair @ NikKTech
It's been a while, and this week got away from me somewhat, so here's Retro Misc Pics from August 2010:
6th Aug 2010:
     
     
     
     
13th Aug 2010:
     
     
     
     
20th Aug 2010:
     
     
     
     
27th Aug 2010:
     
     
     
     
Also here's something cool I saw on that page of the archives - a PlayStation controller coffee table.
The Next Unit of Compute is looking like it might be the at the end of the road. Intel's NUC systems have garnered considerable popularity over the years, going toe-to-toe with similar offerings from established PC brands. While small form factor existed before the NUC (and will exist after), Intel's efforts to invigorate the space with its NUC designs were by and large successful, and a lot of the public experimentation we've seen done in the space over the last several years has come from Intel. Nevertheless, Intel's more recent enthusiast NUCs have struggled to differentiate themselves from the competition.
I've heard of companies bringing new models to Australia to test there suitability for use in harsh environments and now we can add NASA to that list. NASA explains in its blog post that with the data Woodside Energy will be able to provide, engineers will be able to progress development on remotely operated robots that will eventually be on the lunar and Martian surface. These robots would enable constant progress to be achieved on both extraterrestrial surfaces from the safety of Earth. Valkyrie runs on two Intel Core i7 processors and a 1.9kWg battery, and will be working as an oil rig attendant.
The banned Twitter account that tracked Elon Musk's jet has popped up on Threads, the Meta owned alternative to Twitter. Jack Sweeney, the creator of what was the Twitter bot account called ElonJet, has brought the bot back from the dead on Meta's newly launched Threads app. The app created quite a stir when it was available on Twitter, gaining hundreds of thousands of followers and the attention of Elon Musk, who offered Sweeney $5,000 to delete the account. Sweeney declined the offer, and when Musk bought Twitter, he banned the account.
It appears to me Twitter might be a little concerned about their new rival too, they have started to pay some of their blue tick creators. SK, who has about 230,000 followers, claims to have earned $2,236 from Twitter, while political commentator Benny Johnson, who has 1.7 million followers, says Twitter has paid him nearly $10,000. How does Twitter determine how much an account should be paid? According to reports, Twitter determines the total amount payable by tweet impressions.
If you use Evernote it might be time to make some backup plans. Evernote, the app that has sought for two decades to find a large paying audience for its "external brain," is moving its operations to Italy, home of its parent company Bending Spoons. It's yet another big shift for a company that's been useful, but not quite profitable, since at least 2004. Bending Spoons, which acquired Evernote in November 2022, had laid off 129 workers in February 2023, stating that Evernote had been "unprofitable for years" and "unsustainable in the long term."
In what appears to be first, Iran has showcased a quantum computer no bigger than a typical ITX motherboard. Essentially, a newly-designed quantum computing board that is apparently already being used by the Iranian Military to "counter navigation deception in detecting surface vessels using the quantum algorithms." And with the hardware showcased as part of a photo-op, it didn't take long for someone to notice that the hardware being shown is an off-the-shelf ARM-based FPGA SoC development board (ZedBoard) built by the US-based Digilent.
Telstra and OneWeb are set to form a partnership, and I'd bet Optus will be happy for them. They're to roll-out the satellite provider's Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite backhaul for a commercial mobile network. Telstra will also use OneWeb LEO services for future sites where satellite backhaul is the preferred or only viable option. This agreement will see up to 25 gigabit per second of capacity over LEO being delivered to Telstra’s most remote mobile sites across Australia, improving the use of real-time applications such as voice and video calling. This follows the memorandum of understanding signed in March last year, for the telco to use OneWeb’s LEO satellites to improve cover across APAC.
Optus and Starlink are set to form a partnership, and I'd bet Telstra will be happy for them. Optus, in collaboration with SpaceX, today announced an agreement to deliver mobile connectivity using SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation. Together, Optus and SpaceX plan to cover 100% of Australia. Australia’s vastness and terrain can make it difficult for any operator to provide mobile coverage everywhere it is needed – especially in remote or hard-to-reach locations. “Our work with SpaceX aims to bring the coverage capabilities of satellites direct to compatible mobile handsets without the need for customers to buy additional equipment.
Some news on AI; sorry this post was not brought to you by AI. Unless I'm in the matrix that is. Hollywood actors are on strike for fear of being replaced by AI-generated digital likenesses of themselves, ultimately replacing them altogether in the future. The SAG-AFTRA strike began on Thursday of this week, joining the ongoing strike by the Writers Guild of America. The result is Hollywood essentially screeching to a halt on all film and television production. The standoff is the largest in more than 60 years. Both unions are also seeking an improved payment structure, as the industry shifts toward streaming, causing a negative impact on actor's and writer's residual income.
Li-Fi is a light based communications system to sit along side Wi-Fi. What if you could achieve a faster and more stable connection anywhere your device can see light? That's the promise of Li-Fi, a new standard that pulses regular old LED lights at rates and frequencies invisible to the human eye to enable high-speed data transfer. The group promoting the technology promises transfer rates as high as 224 GB/second using the new method, and says that it's not susceptible to interference like radio signals. Of course, it's not aiming to replace Wi-Fi, but rather be another standard that will live alongside the radio form.
Steve Jobs liked VW's Beetle, so what's the connection? The Univers typeface was replaced on Apple's keyboards by VAG Rounded, which was used from 2007 until 2015. I remember this era very well, and I remember being excited by both of these designs. Both the re-born Mac and re-born Beetle felt modern and high-tech but also approachable and friendly; they were all curves and bright colors and toy-like, real things that retained the delight of youth. Both the car and computer were playing in the same general pool of design, and these very different companies seemed to share the same general vision, aesthetically.
A rather impressive new LED display is on show in Las Vegas. The extraordinary experiences we can create are only limited by imagination, and we're thrilled to finally share with the world the spectacular potential of the Exosphere. The Exosphere is more than a screen or a billboard - it is living architecture, and unlike anything that exists anywhere in the world. Last night's show provided a glimpse of the Exosphere's captivating power, and the possibilities for artists, partners, and brands to create compelling and impactful stories to connect with audiences in new ways. said Guy Barnett.
Semiconductor lasers are now at steel-slicing levels. The sharks are circling. Semiconductor lasers, unlike bulky gas lasers and fiber lasers, are tiny, energy efficient, and highly controllable. A group of researchers at Kyoto University, in Japan, has taken a big step in overcoming the limitations of semiconductor laser brightness by changing the structure of photonic-crystal surface-emitting lasers (PCSELs). A photonic crystal is composed of a semiconductor sheet punched through with regular, nanometer-scale air-filled holes. Photonic crystal lasers are attractive candidates for high-brightness lasers, but until now engineers haven’t been able to scale them up to deliver beams bright enough for practical metal cutting and processing.
Intel is all set to build new fabs in Germany and Israel. The current fab expansion appears to be trending up. Intel's site near Magdeburg, Germany, is expected to encompass at least two fabs that will cost over €30 billion, though the total investment in the campus is yet to be determined. The initial fabs will be used to build chips "at a more advanced technology than originally planned," a statement by Intel reads. Meanwhile the company does not disclose which node it is talking about, though it notes that that the technology will belong to the Angstrom era, which means 18A, 20A or other sophisticated processes.
I do not know what this is, but it sounds cool. A backscattering-based nanotattoo sensor (BNTS) made of zinc and graphene. Researchers have created nanotattoos capable of passive wireless communications with nearby devices, without the need for external power sources such as batteries. The advance could lead to numerous biosensing technologies that have, up until now, been stymied by relying on a bulky external power source or wired communications. While it has biosensor potential, the ink could be sprayed on almost anything. If you paint your chair with our sensor, you can constantly get information about your sitting position. You can predict if a part might be broken because it starts to give you a weird signal.”
Bill Gates says the risk of AI are real but manageable. Gates took to his blog on Tuesday to pen a new post titled "The risk of AI are real but manageable", where he details the upcoming dangers of artificial intelligence and how society will need to manage it. Gates discusses the "Age of AI" and compares the technology to the creation of the first automobile. The Microsoft founder wrote that not too long after the first automobile, there was the first crash, and as a society, we didn't ban the use of cars, we instead implemented road rules and regulations. The same will have to happen for AI.
Mouse, Keyboard, Input, etc:
CHERRY XTRFY M42 RGB Retro Gaming Mouse @ Madshrimps
Asetek SimSports Forte Brake & Throttle Pedals @ NikKTech
Corsair Nightsabre Wireless Mouse @ guru3D
HyperX Pulsefire Haste 2 @ TechPowerUp
Drop Expression Series Togekey Mechanical Keyboard @ ThinkComputers
Cooling:
Lian Li Uni Fan P28 @ LanOC
Scythe Kotetsu Mark 3 CPU Cooler @ ThinkComputers
DeepCool Assassin IV @ guru3D
Storage:
Addlink S91 2TB @ TechPowerUp
Crucial T700 1TB and T700 2TB @ OCinside
Synology DS423+ NAS @ Technoyard
Sabrent Rocket 4TB M.2 2280 NVMe PCIe 3.0 SSD @ Madshrimps
Motherboard, CPU:
ASUS ROG Strix Z790-E Gaming Wi-Fi @ TweakTown
ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero @ TweakTown
Gigabyte Z790 AORUS MASTER @ cowcotland
The top 5 best AMD and Intel processors for your PC @ cowcotland
GIGABYTE AORUS Z790 Xtreme @ TweakTown
ASRock Z790 PG Sonic @ TweakTown
NZXT Z790 @ cowcotland
Case, PSU:
DeepCool PX1000G 1000W Power Supply @ aphNetworks
Thermaltake CTE C750TG ARGB Case @ Hardware Asylum
NZXT H9 Elite chassis @ guru3D
XPG CYBERCORE II 1300w ATX 3.0 80 PLUS Platinum PSU @ TweakTown
Audio, Visual:
Campfire Audio Solaris Stellar Horizon In-Ear Monitors @ TechPowerUp
Sivga Luan Open-Back, Over-Ear Headphones @ TechPowerUp
Portable, Prebuilt:
Nothing Phone 2 @ HotHardware
Dell Latitude 9440 @ HotHardware
ASUS Geekom AS6 PN53 Mini PC @ guru3D
Misc:
eufy Mach V1 Ultra @ LanOC
EcoFlow River 2 Pro Powerstation @ FunkyKit
Zotac GeForce RTX 4070 AMP Airo @ TechPowerUp
Friday again!
     
     
     
     
Thursday Evening
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Thursday, 13-July-2023 17:42:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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If you're thinking "Paying $3500 USD for a VR headset - you'd need your head read" - you may be right. To determine the right light seal — the component that keeps light out of a wearer’s field of view — Apple is developing an iPhone app that will scan a person’s head as well as a physical machine.
Meanwhile the Sun is probably not going to cause an "Internet Apocalypse" in the next couple of years. What needs to be pointed out about the recent headlines is that NASA has never issued any type of warning using the term 'internet apocalypse'. Also, while the Sun is expected to reach the peak of its current activity cycle sometime in 2024-2025, and scientists do expect major solar storms to occur after reaching its peak, there is currently no evidence that it will generate a strong enough superstorm to cause an internet outage.
HighPerformanceLaptops have updated their Best Laptop Group Test for Australia in July. Our laptop reviews mathematically compare every new laptop against everything that’s come before it to produce our scores. However, price, availability and performance changes over time and, consequently, so does the value proposition and overall rank. That’s why we regularly overhaul this monthly Best Laptop group test to produce a definitive, updated buying guide to laptops in Australia.
Apparently there is a new connector on the way to replace the controversial 12VHPWR connector. Whether you think that the spate of melted 12VHPWR connectors was the fault of users (for not plugging it in all the way) or the fault of the connector's design, it's clear that it was a fairly unique situation to that connector. In that case, the connector probably needs revision, as having people fry components due to what is honestly a fairly-easy-to-make mistake is not a great look in any event.
TechPowerUp have an AMD interview. In this exclusive interview, we talk to the AMD Vice President who's responsible for AMD processors, both on desktop and mobile. Of course we had to ask about AI, but we also learned more about AM5 APUs, core counts, chiplets, Hybrid Architectures, Zen 5 and Intel's x86s proposal.
Monday Night Reviews
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Monday, 10-July-2023 22:33:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 Wireless Headset on Guru3D.
Quick Look: TOPPING EHA5 Electrostatic Headphone Amplifier on TechPowerUp.
Hollyland Lark M1 Wireless Microphone System on ThinkComputers.
Motherboard & CPU:
GIGABYTE A620M Gaming X Motherboard on Tweaktown.
ASRock A620M Pro RS Wi-Fi Motherboard on Tweaktown.
Cooling:
be quiet! Light Wings White PWM High Speed 120mm and 140mm Cooling Fans on APHNetworks.
Be Quiet! Light Wings White fans on LanOC.
Alphacool Core 1 CPU Water Block on TechPowerUp.
Corsair H100i ELITE CAPELLIX XT AIO cooler on LanOC.
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Halo White CPU Air Cooler on Tweaktown.
Cooler Master MasterLiquid 360L Core ARGB White Liquid CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers.
Noctua NA-FH1 Fan Hub on APHNetworks.
Arctic Summair and Summair Plus USB fans on OCInside.
Portable & Prebuilt:
MSI Raider GE68 HX 13V on HighPerformanceLaptops.
Asus Expertbook B5 on HighPerformanceLaptops.
Acer Swift Go 14 on HighPerformanceLaptops.
Cases:
Cubeor Kanto Wood mATX chassis on Guru3D.
SSUPD Meshroom-S SFF PC Case on FunkyKit.
Memory:
XPG Lancer RGB DDR5-7200 2x16GB DDR5 RAM on APHNetworks.
Neo Forza Trinity DDR5 6400 CL40 2x16 GB on Guru3D.
Kingston FURY Renegade RGB 32GB DDR5 7200MHz CL38 Dual-Channel Kit on NikKTech.
Patriot Viper Venom RGB 32GB (2X16GB) 6000MHz Memory Kit on MadShrimps.
Networking:
MSI RadiX AXE6600 Gaming Router Review: Speedy Wi-Fi 6E Networking on HotHardware.
EnGenius ESG510 Security Gateway on LanOC.
Input Etc:
i-Rocks M36 Pure Optical Gaming Mouse on MadShrimps.
James Donkey RS2 3.0 Gasket Mount Wireless Keyboard on TechPowerUp.
SteelSeries Aerox 5 Wireless & Aerox 9 Wireless mouses.. mice.. meeces.. on Vortez.
Cooler Master MK721 30th Anniversary Edition keyboard on LanOC.
Power Supply:
Jackery Explorer 2000 Pro Portable Power Station on TechPowerUp.
Montech Titan Gold 1200W - 1200W ATX 3.0 PSU on Guru3D.
Video Cards:
ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 4060 Twin Edge OC White Edition on Tweaktown.
INNO3D GeForce RTX 4060 TWIN X2 on Tweaktown.
This month "Retro Racing" game is a 1998 PlayStation classic, Road Rash 3D. Road Rash 3D is an installment of the motorcycle racing game where players use violent tactics to win. The gameplay is pretty similar to that of the previous games. One must avoid oncoming cars and obstacles on the road, beating opponents with metal pipes, crowbars, and other assorted items. The player wins money/points upon the completion of the race and then can buy better and more powerful bikes. The game featured licensed music from bands such as Soundgarden, Sugar Ray, Kid Rock, CIV, The Mermen, Full on the Mouth, and The Tea Party. Sugar Ray contributed three songs, "Speed Home California", "Tap, Twist, Snap" and "Mean Machine", as well as short track "The Club". The into video is pretty cool as well, so check it out. Thanks to JSmithDTV for the suggestion and write-up.
click for the thread!
Friday again!
     
     
     
     
Filed away under the usless but funny anyone banner; someone made a version of ChatGPT for windows 3.1 called WinGPT. Ask WinGPT what's the easiest way to share photos with friends, for example, and the 'chatbot' will happily inform you that the best course of action is to give them the (physical) photos, or post them (on a floppy disk), or put the pics in a scrapbook. What's the best computer? WinGPT recommends an IBM-compatible PC, or alternatively an Apple Mac or Commodore Amiga.
Staying on a Windows theme, it sounds like MicroSoft are thinking of cloud versions of Windows. Is Windows 365 the least original name they could of come up with? Windows 365 is a service that streams a full version of Windows to devices. So far, it’s been limited to just commercial customers, but Microsoft has been deeply integrating it into Windows 11 already. A future update will include Windows 365 Boot, which will enable Windows 11 devices to log directly in to a Cloud PC instance at boot instead of the local version of Windows. Windows 365 Switch is also built into Windows 11 to integrate Cloud PCs into the Task View feature.
Maybe Windows wont be as popular as a pay as you go service in the future, especially with Linux being open and freely available to everyone. Free said IBM ? Shorter, pithier versions of the GPL-minded community's reaction to Red Hat's news are exemplified by Jeff Geerling's blog post called "Dear Red Hat: Are you dumb?," or his YouTube Video "Huge Open Source Drama." Geerling, who says he's dropping RHEL support from his Ansible and other software projects, says that Red Hat's moves are intended to "destroy" Rocky, Alma, and other RHEL derivatives and that after the "knife in the back" of abandoning full CentOS Linux, the recent moves "took that knife and twisted it, hard."
I've used DuckDuckGo's search engine a few times in the past, but mostly found google gave me the answers I was looking for. But if having google preemptively know what you are looking for doesn't sit well with you then maybe DuckDuckGo's new browser will. The analogy we might use here is that DuckDuckGo didn’t take a cake (browser) and frost (re-skin) it to make it their own; they baked a whole new cake but used the same sugar and salt (API and rendering engine) because those are effectively universal. What’s more is that with the use of WebView2, the DuckDuckGo team spent time addressing privacy concerns, such as “ensuring that crash reports are not sent to Microsoft.”
Todays timewaster might ring a bell for anyone working day to day in front of a corparate PC. Rule 10 is a real 'CAPTCHA' moment.
Portable & Prebuilt:
LG launches new Ultra PC @ HighPerformanceLaptops
EoFY Laptop Sales @ HighPerformanceLaptops
Google Pixel 7a Android Phone @ HotHardware
Apple MacBook Pro 16 With M2 Max @ HotHardware
Cases & Cooling:
Lian Li UNI FAN P28 120 mm Fan @ TechPowerUp
Fractal Design Terra mITX SFF Case @ TweakTown
SilverStone FARA 512Z @ TechPowerUp
Corsair iCUE LINK @ guru3D
NM-DD1 direct die kit for delidded AMD AM5 @ Noctua-News
Alphacool Core 1 White and Aurora Black CPU Water Blocks @ FunkyKit
HYTE Y40 PC Case @ ThinkComputers
PSU:
Thermaltake Toughpower GF3 850W Power Supply @ aphNetworks
be quiet! Straight Power 12 ATX 3.0 Gen 5.0 @ cowcotland
Motherboard, Memory & CPU:
Corsair Vengeance DDR5-5600 CL40 2x 24 GB @ TechPowerUp
Intel Xeon Max 9480/9468 With HBM2e @ Phoronix
Neo Forza Trinity (JetBlack) DDR5 6000 CL40 2x32 GB @ guru3D
Video Card:
ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4070 OC @ TweakTown
SAPPHIRE NITRO+ AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X 24GB @ NikKTech
Storage:
Crucial T700 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 5.0 @ FunkyKit
Western Digital WD Blue SN580 1TB SSD @ TweakTown
Kingston Workflow Station and Readers @ ThinkComputers
Seagate FireCuda 540 2TB SSD @ TweakTown
Audio Visual:
AQIRYS SIRIUS White Wired Gaming Headset @ Madshrimps
WEMAX Dice Mini Projector @ NikKTech
I heard on youTube that the 4060 isnt much better than the 3060. Maybe these reviews will steer me clear ?
GeForce RTX 4060 8GB @ guru3D
GeForce RTX 4060 @ HotHardware
ASUS GeForce RTX 4060 Dual OC @ TechPowerUp
ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4060 OC @ guru3D
ASUS GeForce RTX 4060 Strix OC @ TechPowerUp
ASUS GeForce RTX 4060 Dual OC @ cowcotland
Asus Dual RTX 4060 8GB @ LanOC
Gainward GeForce RTX 4060 GHOST @ guru3D
Galax GeForce RTX 4060 EX @ TechPowerUp
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4060 WindForce OC @ TechPowerUp
GIGABYTE RTX 4060 Gaming OC @ cowcotland
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming OC @ TechPowerUp
INNO 3D GEFORCE RTX 4060 Twin X2 @ cowcotland
MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming X @ HotHardware
MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming X @ guru3D
MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming X @ TweakTown
MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Gaming X Trio @ TweakTown
MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ventus 2X OC @ TechPowerUp
MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming X @ TechPowerUp
MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ventus 2X Black OC @ cowcotland
MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ventus 2X Black 8G OC @ TweakTown
PNY GeForce RTX 4060 XLR8 @ TechPowerUp
ZOTAC GAMING RTX 4060 Twin Edge OC @ LanOC
ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 4060 Twin Edge OC @ ThinkComputers
Zotac GeForce RTX 4060 Spider-Man OC @ TechPowerUp
ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 4060 Spider-Man OC @ cowcotland
This month's "Retro Let's Play" for July is Transport Tycoon from 1994. The game involves building transport services with road vehicles, trains, aircraft and ships. You can build passenger and mail services between cities, or build supply chains by connecting industries such as farms and mines to a sawmill or factory, which will produce finished goods that you can transport to a city for a tidy profit. All the while, you have to deal with competitors and less-than-cooperative city authorities, while balancing the books against the rising costs of construction, vehicle maintenance and fleet replacement. This is all happening in a dynamic world ! Check out the thread for the herculean write up that DonutKing has provided:
click for the thread!
"Retro Racing" is in pit lane and will return after a quick tyre change.
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