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Misc Pics (12 Comments) (link)  Friday, 22-November-2019  13:53:50 (GMT +10) - by Agg Thanks to Axe this week - and congratulations to my nephew Jared and his fiancee Lauren who are getting married today! This Misc Pics post was put together as we drove to Wodonga for the wedding. :) Friday Morning (2 Comments) (link)  Friday, 22-November-2019  11:16:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg There's some changes coming to how YouTube handles kid-focused content, which I hadn't paid much attention to, but I noticed that The Curiosity Show (FB link) have some concerns. This change will likely mean that the Curiosity Show YouTube channel will not have certain features like comments, end slides to direct watchers to other clips and worst a likely reduction in revenues to 10% of what we presently receive. I loved that show when I was a kid and still enjoy their YouTube channel. Anyway, there's an online petition if you want to get involved. There's a new 16" MacBook Pro. The new 16-inch MacBook Pro features a larger 16-inch Retina display, slimmer bezels, an updated keyboard with a scissor mechanism instead of a butterfly mechanism, up to 64GB RAM, up to 8TB of storage, and AMD Radeon Pro 5000M Series graphics cards. iFixit took one apart to see how user-serviceable it is. Once again, the keyboard assembly is riveted down. Though the switches are likely less vulnerable to crumbly assailants, the keyboard itself isn't any more repairable than the Butterfly boards. AMD have been focussed on their high-end CPUs lately, but they haven't forgotten the budget users, with a new Athlon CPU. The latest entry into the family is the Athlon 3000G, which is AMD's first unlocked Athlon processor based on first-generation Zen microarchitecture. That means that this is a 14nm design, and it has a rated TDP of 35 watts. For those that like to overclock on an extreme budget, the Athlon 3000G comes from the factory with a base frequency of 3.5GHz. However, you should be able to easily boost frequencies given the maturity of AMD's original Zen architecture. South Australia's big battery is about to get even bigger. Neon are one of the world’s leading and fastest growing independent producers of exclusively renewable energy, and today have confirmed a 50% expansion of its Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia. More interesting is this plan to supply Singapore with power generated from a massive solar farm in the Northern Territory. If successful, the development would include a 10-gigawatt-capacity array of panels spread across 15,000 hectares near Tennant Creek, backed by about 22 gigawatt-hours in battery storage. Meanwhile in NZ, widespread 10Gbps will be available soon. Chorus has trialled the XGS-PON, a 10 Gbps passive optical networking standard with a small set of customers this year, and will offer the product to retail service providers starting February next year. The network builder claims this makes NZ one of only 10 countries in the world to offer XGS-PON service, and the first in the Southern Hemisphere. John Carmack is turning his hand to AI. I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence (AGI). I think it is possible, enormously valuable, and that I have a non-negligible chance of making a difference there, so by a Pascal’s Mugging sort of logic, I should be working on it. For the time being at least, I am going to be going about it “Victorian Gentleman Scientist” style, pursuing my inquiries from home, and drafting my son into the work. A mashup of DooM and Deep Blue - what could possibly go wrong? :) Tuesday Night Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 19-November-2019  22:52:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg Motherboard & CPU: A Linux Performance Look At AMD’s 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X on TechGage. ASUS PRIME X570 Pro on Guru3D. Intel Core i9-9900KS on TechPowerUp. Cooling: Silverstone Permafrost PF240 liquid cooler on Guru3D. EK-Meltemi 120ER Fan on TechPowerUp. Thermalright True Spirit 120M Rev.B CPU Cooler on NikKTech. Power Supply: Fractal Design ION+ Platinum 660 and 860W PSU on Guru3D. 1st Player Steampunk PS-750SP 750 W on TechPowerUp. Input Etc: SteelSeries Apex Pro Mechanical Keyboard on MadShrimps. Cougar Surpassion RX Wireless Optical Gaming Mouse on FunkyKit. SteelSeries Apex Pro Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on NikKTech. Software: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Benchmark Test & Performance Analysis on TechPowerUp. Kingdom Under Fire II impressions: Burning bright on Tweaktown. Memory: V-Color PRISM II RGB DDR4-3600 MHz CL18 2x8 GB on TechPowerUp. Patriot Viper 4 Blackout DDR4-3600 2x8GB DDR4 RAM on APHNetworks. Cases: Cooler Master MasterCase H100 on OCInside. Antec Dark Avenger DA601 on TechPowerUp. Lian Li Lancool II Mid-Tower Chassis on Tweaktown. Thermaltake S500 TG Chassis on FunkyKit. Storage: WD Black D10 Game Drive for Xbox 12TB on Tweaktown. TerraMaster F2-210 NAS on Vortez. Furniture: Secretlab 2020 Series: The Gold Standard of Gaming Chairs on Tweaktown. EwinRacing Flash XL Gaming Chair on BigBruin. Misc: Corsair iCUE LS100 Monitor Back Lighting Kit on APHNetworks. Nano Torch Twist Magnetic Swivel LED Flashlight on BigBruin. XFX RX 5700 XT THICC III Ultra video card on OCClub. Creative T100 Compact Hi-Fi 2.0 Desktop Speakers on MadShrimps. TeamGroup Contest! (1 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 19-November-2019  00:18:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg TeamGroup and OCAU are giving away some memory and an SSD! Up for grabs is Team Group's Delta RGB DDR4 2666 8Gx2 (Black) memory kit and their Delta RGB (5V) 250GB SSD. click for the thread! All you have to do is reply to this thread stating which of the prizes would be your preference, as well as letting us know which TeamGroup product is your favourite, with a link to its page on their website. Some extra info explaining why that one is your favourite would be great too. Then I'll pick my favourite answers. The contest will run until midnight on Friday the 6th of December, with the winners announced shortly thereafter. Only one entry per person please. Good luck!

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