APC的October 2019目录

HarmonyOS, Huawei’s new cross-device operating system, has been announced by its CEO, Richard Yu at HDC 2019, the company’s Developer Conference in Dongguan, China. Clearly a thinly-veiled response to political events over the last year, the message is clear – if Huawei needs to ditch Android down the line, it can. He clarified that the switch would be “quick and easy”, putting forward fighting words while clearly safeguarding his company’s partnership with Google.…

Intel revealed fine-grained details about its much-anticipated Spring Crest Deep Learning Accelerators at Hot Chips 31. The Nervana Neural Network Processor for Training (NNP-T) comes with 24 processing cores and a new take on data movement that’s powered by 32GB of HBM2 memory. The spacious 27 billion transistors are spread across a 688mm2 die. Oddly enough, the NNP-T also incorporates leading-edge technology from Intel-rival TSMC.…

Whenever a new processor family is released, enthusiasts, overclockers and early adopters share their experiences all across the internet. Sometimes, expectations and pre conceptions override facts, and we have a classic case of this occurring following the release of AMD’s 3rd generation Ryzen series. The issue relates to what on face value appears to be higher than expected idle voltages and temperatures. Some users rightly expressed concern that their CPUs were reaching as high as 1.5v, leading to spikes in temperature. At face value this is ridiculously high for a 7nm processor, but actually this is perfectly normal behaviour and is exactly the way AMD designed it. Matisse processors are designed to react very quickly to changes in load. The processor responds to what it thinks requires a boost state…

22 ND THE WORLD RANKING OF NVIDIA’S NEW SUPERCOMPUTER, THE DGX SUPERPOD, WHICH IS TRAINING AI TO DRIVE CARS. 3.6GB/S THE TOP DATA TRANSMISSION SPEED RECORDED BY ERICSSON DURING A 5G MOBILE PHONE TEST. Even better is that the data was received in a car travelling at up to 170Kph. 56.8% OF THE WORLD POPULATION IS NOW USING THE INTERNET, ACCORDING TO FIGURES FROM INTERNET WORLD STATS. Half of those people are in Asia. 725 KMS THE RANGE OF LIGHTYEAR ONE, A PROTOTYPE ELECTRIC VEHICLE COVERED IN SOLAR PANELS THAT WILL TOP THIS UP AT A RATE OF 12 KILOMETRES PER HOUR. 4 TIMES MORE POWERFUL THAN THE CURRENT XBOX ONE X IS THE CLAIM FOR MICROSOFT’S PROJECT SCARLETT, ITS NEXT-GEN XBOX CONSOLE. 60+ SECONDS IS THE SHUTDOWN TIME FOR…

MSI’s GT range has always been ludicrous. Starting at $5,899 a pop these devices really aren’t going to appeal to many consumers, especially when you consider they basically weigh as much as a gaming tower, without offering identical performance. MSI however continues to make the GT76, we presume, to show off just how much power it can fit into a ‘portable’ device. The GT76 Titan is built around the 9th generation, overclockable, octa-core Core i9-9900K CPU from Intel that adds two cores to the hexa-core i9-8950HK processor that was in the GT75 Titan. This means that the GT76 Titan has four fans, 11 heat pipes and a lot of thermal mass to dissipate the considerable amount of heat this component is capable of generating. When you combine this with the…

AMD has had a lot of time in the limelight with the recent release of its Ryzen 3 series processors. It’s easy to forget though that the company made a name for itself with its so-called APUs (Accelerated Processing Units), which come with integrated graphics. Here for review we have the latest generation Ryzen 3 3200G and Ryzen 5 3400G processors. These don’t make use of the latest Zen 2 architecture or 7nm like their big brothers, instead making use of the older 12nm process and the Zen+ architecture. Moving to Zen + and 12nm means these processors can be considered evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Second generation APUs already had competitive value and performance along with class-leading integrated graphics. The 3200G and 3400G are all about offering a balanced computing…

Externally, the RTX 2080 Super Founder’s Edition looks almost identical to its non-super sibling. The exception is the addition of a classy mirror finish on the face of the card. It retains the impressive build quality, design and overall aesthetic that we like from all the other RTX Founders Edition cards. It comes with a 1,815 MHz boost clock, which as usual is quite conservative. You can expect clocks well above this if thermal and power conditions allow. We have received word that the Founders Edition card won’t be on sale in Australia, though it will be available in many OEM systems. The RTX 2080 Super FE uses the same PCB as the non-Super 2080. An 8+2-phase DrMOS VRM system is adequate, but won’t match the likes of the Asus…

“The main benefit of a NAS specific drive is that they’re designed with 24/7 operation in mind. ” Good news data hoarders, there’s now a 16TB variant of Seagate’s popular Ironwolf and Ironwolf Pro HDDs tuned for NAS use. That’s right, sixteen whole terabytes in a single 3.5-inch rectangular slab of metal. Place four of these monsters in a RAID-5 NAS and you’ve got over 43TB of usable storage once the array is formatted. If you’re familiar with the Ironwolf family of HDDs, there’s not a lot new here except the big stonking 16TB of capacity. But for those new to the NAS HDD game, let’s dig in to what makes these drives suitable for a NAS over other HDDs. The main benefit of a NAS specific drive is that…

The Echo Dot is the cheapest Alexa device that doesn’t need any other equipment to work – it’s got speakers, microphone and wireless connectivity all in one small puck. The full power of Alexa is here, so you can ask your Echo Dot to control loads of the other devices you’ll find in this guide, as well as being able to tell it to play music from a host of streaming services, asking it questions, and adding more using Alexa ‘Skills’ that you can install. It has four far-field microphones that should be able to pick up your voice from way across the room, and filter out ambient noise. The sound quality from such a small device obviously isn’t amazing, but it can be connected to bigger speakers by cable…

Ikea’s smart lights are almost comedically cheap, but really useful in their flexibility. You’ll need the gateway, which connects to your router and controls the bulbs, but that’s just $39. Then you can choose whatever bulbs you need, starting from $19 – there are options for small and larger fittings, as well as spotlights (though, this being Ikea, there are no bayonet-ended bulbs). Even cooler, there are larger light panels available, so you can turn your wardrobe door into a big smart light if you feel like it. When you’ve got the bulbs and gateway, you can set the brightness of the lights, play with their colour tone, choose their schedule, use voice controls to activate them, and group them so it’s easy to set a mood or turn everything…

Smart thermostats are one of the best buys you can make, because they’re convenient, they save you money, and they help you go greener. The ability to control your heating schedule more finely saves you money on its own, but the added smarts of the Auto-Adapt feature mean it comes on earlier on really cold days, so you reach the temperature you want at the right time. Equally, it takes your insulation into account so the house doesn’t overheat. It works with Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple HomeKit, so you can tell any major assistant what you want the heating to do, or you can use the app. It’s a looker, designed by Philippe Starck, and you can expand its clever control by adding smart radiator valves. You can find…

The smartest robo vac around adds a host of extra app-based options to the kind of stuff offered by the Eufy. It uses lasers to map your house as it goes around cleaning, which not only helps it find its way precisely, but also means you can see an accurate map of where it has cleaned, and where any obstacles were. You can also use this map to set ‘no-go’ zones, to avoid areas where it might get stuck, or around delicate objects. $2,500, neatorobotics.com…

Off-the-shelf is good as far as it goes, but there comes a time when you want to put your personal stamp on something, and with Windows, you’ll be surprised by just how much control you can wield over its look and feel. We’ve dug out no fewer than 60 tips to help you customise it to your personal satisfaction. There’s a reminder of some familiar tips, but we’ve dug deeper to reveal buried settings and little-known techniques that can do more than simply change the background picture or apply a color scheme. Indeed, we open this feature by introducing two free tools that, between them, open up a wide array of customisable options that normally require you to be a maestro at Registry editing. You’ll tackle the desktop and its…

16 MAKE USE OF THE TASKBAR The Taskbar is the best location for any, and all, shortcuts that you need. Right-click your existing desktop or Start menu shortcuts, and choose “Pin to Taskbar” to add them. You can then drag and drop icons within the bar to order them logically. 17 MINIMISE THE SEARCH BOX Does the new search bar take up too much room on your Taskbar? Right-click an empty part of the Taskbar, and choose “Cortana > Show Cortana Icon” to replace it with a clickable icon; or choose “Cortana > Hidden” if you never use it. 18 RESIZE THE TASKBAR Running out of space for shortcut icons? Make them smaller by right-clicking the Taskbar, choosing “Taskbar Settings,” and flicking the “Use Small Taskbar Buttons” switch to “On.”…

A CHOOSE WHERE TO SEARCH Download Icons Extractor as a ZIP file from www.nirsoft.net/utils/ iconsext.html, then extract its contents, and double-click “iconsext.exe” to launch the program. You have the option of choosing to search a specific file, all the files inside a folder, or a running process for icons. B SEARCH AND BROWSE Click “Search For Icons” and wait while the folder is searched – doing so can take some time, and a counter indicates how many matches have been found. You can click “Stop” at any time to halt the search and view the matches found so far. Double-click a match to view the available icons. C BROWSE AND EXTRACT If a suitably large (128x128 or preferably 256x256 pixels) icon exists, you can either select it and click “Copy…

For perhaps too long, Intel dominated the CPU market for Windows laptops and PCs. If you were buying or building a new computer, you’d almost certainly be slotting an Intel chip into the motherboard. But one company having such dominance isn’t a good thing. It restricts choice for consumers, and the market leader can get complacent. Things are changing, however. A resurgent AMD is bringing the heat back to Intel with its Ryzen and Threadripper CPUs, and we’re also seeing the rise of non-x86 ARM processors. Usually found in mobile and embedded devices, a new generation of ARM processors is now powering laptops, lead by Qualcomm. With the likes of Microsoft and Lenovo supporting this new breed of laptop, it looks like the way we use those devices could change…

JW Computers GMR Archer 1650 $1,339 TINYURL.COM/APC472JWC This cheap and cheerful system is surprisingly powerful given that it’s tickling the bottom end of entry level gaming systems. The CPU is quite adequate for any game currently available, however pairing it with the GTX 1650 would be the bottleneck here. Especially with the 4GB of VRAM you’d only be looking at 1080p gameplay. As a side note, Nvidia in its wisdom didn’t upgrade the NVENC engine on the 1650 compared to the faster 1660 and higher cards, so streaming/recording quality won’t be as good if you’re hoping to do that. The rest of the system is quite reasonable given the super low price, though the installed DDR4 2400 is below the CPU’s stock 2666MHz specifications. KEY SPECS: CPU: Intel Core i5…

SECURITY & PRIVACY CLEAN UP AFTER GOOGLE Like many others, I am unnerved by the amount of data that Google appears to hold on its users. How do I reclaim some kind of control over this? I don’t want Google holding on to my data forever. Stan Turner “I am unnerved by the amount of data that Google appears to hold on its users. How do I reclaim some kind of control over this?” If you want to give up Google, then you can start transitioning to other products and services using https:// nomoregoogle.com/ as a starting point. That’s not necessarily practical, but thankfully you can control just how much data – and for how long – Google can hold about your online habits. Log into https:// myaccount.google.com/ and click…

The updates to Pages, Numbers and Keynote for iOS that were announced at the end of March added the ability to save templates, plus more related features. You still can’t create the text placeholders that you find in Apple’s own templates – which can be tapped once to type over – but you can now set images as placeholders. You can already tap any image, tap the brush icon in the toolbar at the top right, go to the Image tab and tap Replace to place a new image file within the same box. When you set an image as a Placeholder, it just means it gets a little + icon in the bottom right corner that does the same, but faster. You can now switch Pages word processor documents…

1 CONFIGURE YOUR MAC APPS In Apple > System Preferences > iCloud, click Options next to iCloud Drive in the list on the right. You’ll see a list of apps that store files and other data in iCloud Drive. Clear the box next to apps you don’t want data stored for. 2 CONFIGURE YOUR IOS APPS On iOS, go to Settings > [your name] > iCloud. Scroll down to the list of installed apps; toggle off any apps you don’t want data stored for in iCloud Drive. Note though that this might hinder some apps’ functionality. 3 PUT YOUR DESKTOP ONLINE You can have the same Desktop and Documents folders across compatible Macs, and access them from iOS devices and the web too. Click Options next to iCloud Drive, then…

Most Android devices only come with a single connection port that has to do everything from charging the internal battery to connecting to your PC. But if that port is a USB On The Go port, it can open up a world of peripheral devices, everything from storage to microscopes. However, USB-OTG has a few tricks of its own that not only can make it confusing to use, there’s no guarantee your Android device will even support it. This month, we’re doing a deep-dive into the murky depths of USB-OTG with a primer to help you understand how to use it, what it can do, what it can’t and how to find out if your device actually supports it. WHAT IS IT OTG EXACTLY? No doubt you’re used to USB…

In some ways, if you’re worried about machine learning taking over the world, you can shut the gate – it’s already happening. It already helps choose the videos you stream, the stuff you buy, even who you’ll date. Over the last year, we’ve looked at different ways you can execute machine learning algorithms, from coding with R and Python, to not coding and using a GUI-based tool like Weka instead. In the end, however, it doesn’t matter what your preferred option is if you don’t have data - and its society’s insatiable desire for data that now drives industry, governments and research forward. NO SILVER BULLET Although we talk freely about ‘artificial intelligence’ and machine learning these days, they’re still often seen as black boxes that perform the sort of…

$99.95 | PC, PS4, XB1, SWITCH | THESINKING CITY.COM The Sinking City is a third-person detective adventure set in a fictional version of 1920s New England, inspired by the works of influential (and, yes, controversial) horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. Divers uncover an ancient cavern hidden beneath Oakmont filled with otherworldly statues of cosmic demons, and are driven mad by the discovery – a madness that begins to spread through the city and awakens strange, violent creatures the locals call wylebeasts. The game is divided between solving crimes and shooting monsters, although the gulf in quality between each flavour of play is pretty wide. As you explore a crime scene you collect clues that, while useless on their own, can be connected in the Mind Palace to open up new lines…

FREE | PC, LINUX, MAC | BIT.LY/MISSMESS You’re sat at your computer, trying to write. You probably shouldn’t respond to the instant message that’s just popped up. That’s the premise of Missed Messages – a gorgeous and affecting visual novel. You have plenty of choices to make, however, curiosity’s lure will surely make that first one for you – getting to know the mysterious stranger who is suddenly chatting you up. As you playfully yammer, first on your computer and then on an actual date, something terrible is happening back at your apartment. When you return, you find a cryptic note. While you were out having fun, she has taken her own life. If only there was something you could have done. No one decision feels particularly momentous here. Instead,…

FREE | PC | DECONSTRUCTEAM.ITCH.IO Dear Substance of Kin imagines a world where our destinies are etched onto our backs, in invisible fate lines that only a wandering mystic can see. By getting a load of blood and scribbling out these destiny lines, a coppersmith may rewrite a person’s fate. You are a coppersmith offering your services to an assortment of miserable peasants. First you visit a hovel, then you engage its owners in conversation, seeking out the element of reality they would like to change. It might be a desire for food, or violence, or the power of flight. It’s up to you to figure out how to achieve this, based on what they’ve said. Using sacrificial blood, you’ll scrub out one or more fate lines, before leaving to…

ISSUE 472, OCTOBER 2019 Please note that these exclusive downloads will only be available for a limited time, from 09/09/2019 to 27/10/2019 KEEP YOUR PERFORMANCE STEADY AND SECURE MAINTAIN A HEALTHY PC WITH ASHAMPOO WINOPTIMIZER 2019. FULL VERSION WORTH $30 Ashampoo WinOptimizer 2019 boosts, cleans and optimises the performance of your Windows system far beyond what built-in tools can deliver. Multiple included modules help analyse, customise and tweak Windows to your needs. One-click optimisation, a user favourite, removes clutter, fixes invalid shortcuts and cleans your browsers off redundant data like browsing history entries and cookies. PC maintenance tools remove junk files and browsing traces and also clean the Registry database. Powerful process and service management tools along with boot optimisation help improve Windows startup times. Ashampoo WinOptimizer 2019 also features…

Intel has lifted the lid on the processors for both its Ice Lake-U and Ice Lake-Y mobile processors. These processors are now being produced in sufficient volume to supply key launch partners with hardware in order to enable laptop and mobile designs to hit the shelves by the end of the year. Intel is not currently discussing any desktop or server processor equivalents at this time: the base Ice Lake design is currently a quad-core processor with HyperThreading, and beefy integrated graphics. Intel’s Ice Lake platform is the company’s second attempt at producing a 10nm chip for the mass market, and follows on from the Cannon Lake platform. Using ‘the same but different’ 10nm process, Ice Lake features a new 10th Gen Core microarchitecture called Sunny Cove, Gen11 graphics, and…

While we’ve seen some big format gaming monitors before, Alienware has come up with one that features some truly impressive specs for its size. Typically, you’d have to compromise either size, panel type, or refresh rate, but this beast is a whopping 55 inches and has an OLED display with an impressive 120Hz refresh rate and AMD FreeSync support. No word on local availability, but US$4,000 translates to some serious Australian dollars.…

After months of teasing their arrival, Intel has finally unleashed its 10th Gen Core processors on the world. This generation, Intel has made the leap to a new architecture and manufacturing process, bringing the usual performance and battery life improvements you’d expect from a generational leap. But there are also some extra features tagging along for AI and graphically intense workloads. For now, the 10th Gen Intel Core chips are only available for laptops, but this is just the start. Whether you’re looking to pick up a new laptop, or waiting to get your hands on a desktop part, here’s everything you need to know. WHAT’S NEW Intel’s 10th Gen Core processors represent a more significant update to the company’s lineup than recent generations. That’s because Intel has made the…

Plenty of Facebook users are newly privacy conscious thanks to the 2017 Cambridge Analytica debacle, and yet, many remain unaware of just how closely the social media platform tracks them. With the announcement of a new Facebook feature which allows users to “clear” their “Off-Facebook Activity”, it’s now possible to see just how far-reaching the site’s tentacles extend. The new feature, which rolled out in select territories in August (sadly, Australia isn’t one of them), allows users to see a list of all the sites that send their behavior data to Facebook. Often this tracking is something we opt-in to without knowing the ramifications: if you’ve ever used your Facebook account to create a new account on any website, that website will appear in the list. But that’s not the…

The Pixel 3a breaks all the rules – a polycarbonate back panel, no wireless charging, visible bezels, a headphone jack, and a top-notch camera in a budget phone. Is there a method to Google’s madness? Let’s find out. MAJOR TECH SPECS ■ 5.6-inch OLED display with FHD+ 2,220x1,080 resolution (441 ppi) and Dragontrail Glass ■ Octa-core 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 670 processor (2.0GHz + 1.7GHz) with 4GB LPDDR4x RAM ■ 12.2MP f/1.8 OIS main camera with dual-pixel phase detection autofocus; 8MP selfie camera ■ 64GB built-in storage ■ USB-C and a mysterious 3.5mm “headphone jack” ■ Android 9.0 Pie KEY FINDINGS ■ The polycarbonate build should be more durable than a glass back, but it’s likely no match for the rigidity of the metal construction of yore. Meanwhile, this Pixel’s party…

There’s nothing stopping you buying Dell’s Latitude 5400 as a regular consumer, but Dell do pitch this device directly to businesses and there’s good reason for that. Starting at an eye-watering $2,734 is the entry level Latitude 5400, equipped with a middling Intel Core i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM and a small 256GB NVMe SSD. All this comes wrapped in a bulky formed plastic case that isn’t flimsy but is about the most function over form solution you could possibly imagine. To put this in perspective, you can currently buy the refined Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED ultrabook with a 4K display, a 9th generation Intel Core i7 CPU, 8GB of R AM, a 256GB PCIe SSD and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660Ti for less. There is also an abundance of…

We were full of praise for AMDs new 3rd generation Ryzen processors. While the higher-end eight and 12 core CPUs occupy the performance segment, the hex core Ryzen 5 3600 and Ryzen 5 3600X fill the popular $300 to $400 price void nicely. They both have all the 3rd generation tech, features and performance under the hood. Now AMD can add mainstream affordability too. Are these CPUs the new price/ performance champions? The 3600X comes with a 200MHz increase on base and boost speeds when compared to Ryzen 5 2600X. The L3 cache is doubled and DDR4-3200 is officially supported. Add in all the cumulative architectural benefits of Zen 2 and its clear we’re dealing with a much faster CPU. TDP remains at 95W. The 3600 is in our opinion…

If the RTX 2080 Super is an improvement over the standard 2080, then the Asus ROG Strix 2080 Super is on another level again. It’s faster, cooler, quieter, has a better build and arguably a better look. It’s no surprise that it comes with a higher price too. GPU spec-wise, the Asus and FE cards are essentially identical, though the Asus boost clock is higher and it drops one of the Display Ports in favor of an additional HDMI 2.0b port. The Asus comes with a host of additional extras though including RGB lighting, dual BIOS, voltage read points, and of course that delightfully over the top cooler and massively over-engineered power delivery system that can provide the GPU with more juice than Nvidia would ever be comfortable with. It’s…

US$127.99 (UPGRADES FROM US$9.99) | MICROMAT.COM | NEEDS OS X 10.10 OR LATER TechTool Pro has really been the only comprehensive toolkit for diagnosing hardware problems over the last 30 years. And the latest version (we’ve tested 11.0.3 here) keeps pace with recent features like T2 chips, Apple’s new file system, and Mojave’s privacy protection. It’s even notarised for compatibility with macOS 10.15. When you first open it, you’ll be prompted to give it Full Disk Access in your Security & Privacy pane. This adds the four necessary items, provided you follow its instructions. Before running any tests, even its Check Computer, study its 35,000-word manual and set a configuration which you won’t regret later. By default, it will test volume structures on an internal boot SSD, which makes your Mac…

$2.99 | KEVAID.COM DoodleLens is a great idea – it’s an AR app that lets you copy doodles you’ve drawn into the ‘real world’, then make videos of your creation existing in whatever space you insert it into. In practice, it’s not quite as cool as it looks in the video that plays when you start the app up, which makes it seem as though just about anything is possible. It’s pretty finicky with what it picks up, and I found that often it would read my pictures as a giant black space that took up most of the screen. I got my best results from doodling onto Microsoft Paint, with hand-drawn doodles often not copying across properly, and the app really struggles with anything more complex than a very…

“Would you really want to pay for these layouts when you can get them for free elsewhere? ” FREE | HTTPS://ZORINOS.COM We’ve seen the likes of Zorin OS before, in Pinguy OS and elementary OS. These are distros with tweaked desktops that take advantage of their Ubuntu base to ease new users into the Linux desktop. Zorin does the exact same thing, but the way it goes about it is what sets it apart from others. The newest v15 release is based on the latest update of the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS release. The distro’s goal is to package the goodness offered by Ubuntu into a system that’s made accessible thanks to its “familiar interface”. For this the developers have mutated the Gnome 3 desktop to sport a single panel along…

This is a complete Google Assistant device in a teeny, tiny package – it’s the Google equivalent to the Echo Dot, put simply, so it’s microphones and speakers all in one box, and it’s easy to tuck away in a corner. It comes in funkier colours than the Dot, and has a nice dome shape with a fabric finish Google Assistant has lots of smart home control capabilities built-in, and is unbeatably good if you want to ask knowledge questions – not just about facts, but also to translate something into another language, or to get personalised news and other information useful for your day, such as weather, traffic and finance. There are built in games that families can play, too. It supports lots of music services, though again its…

Made to be a multi-camera security system that covers your whole house, these units are totally wireless, meaning no cable for their video footage, and no power cords. They have rechargeable batteries built in that last three or four weeks, and a magnetic mounting makes them easy to pop on and off when you need to charge. You can buy as many as you need to cover all your house’s danger spots (inside and out, thanks to weatherproofing), and view them all from a single app, which will notify you when it spots something you need to know. They have heat and motion sensing built in, as well as night vision. They stream footage to the cloud over Wi-Fi, but you can also add a microSD card to each unit,…

The best range of connected lights on the market due to sheer variety (and that they’re excellent quality). You’ll need a Hue Bridge to control the bulbs (available in good-value starter packs from $139 online), and then you can add any kind of bulb you need – they’re a little more expensive than Ikea’s, but there are bayonet options, LED light strips, outdoor lights of various kinds, and loads more. There are also multi-colour bulbs, so you can really set a mood for those special evenings. $139 (Starter Kit), meethue.com…

Smart plugs are perhaps the perfect place to start building a smart home, since they can turn anything into a connected gadget. Make your lamp activate on a timer without a smart bulb; turn your fan heater on remotely to warm up a room before you go in; activate your slow cooker at a set time… if it plugs in, you can control it. It’s easy to set up all that in this plug using its app – you can trigger things on and off at will, set schedules, or use geolocation to make things happen automatically when you’re away from the house, such as turning switches off to save power. There’s also voice control via Google Assistant and Alexa, so you can just ask for things to come on…

One of the best smart thermostats overall, this has an even sleeker design, and boasts tons of smarts, including the ability to learn the layout of your home and its heat capacity, along with geofencing so it knows when it needs to come on for you. Like the Netatmo, there are optional smart radiator valve add-ons, which let you control how the heating affects each room individually. You should be able to find its starter kit for around $150 online. $199, tado.com/au…

A quick Google search for “failed game streaming services” rather damningly places OnLive at the top of the results list. It wasn’t the only one to fall in the face of traditional downloads and physical copies, though. Gaikai’s tech might have gone on to form a powerful baseline for PlayStation Now, but its original service failed to gain much momentum. Elsewhere, Square Enix’s ill-fated effort Shinra lasted less than two years before it admitted defeat and shut it down, resulting in a loss of more than $16 million. Others simply vanished into the ether. If you’ve heard of InstantAction or GameFly, congratulations – you’ve been paying more attention than most. GeForce Now, Nvidia’s attempt at a cloud gaming platform, has been in an open beta state for months now. It…

01 TOOLS OF THE TRADE Many of the tips in this feature can be applied with the help of two powerful tweaking tools, so start by downloading both Ultimate Windows Tweaker (https://bit.ly/ uwt-10 – you’ll find links to Windows 7 and 8.1 versions here, too) and Winaero Tweaker (https://winaero.com/ download.php?view.1796). Once downloaded, extract the contents of the ZIP files – Ultimate Windows Tweaker runs as a portable app, and Winaero Tweaker gives you the option of installing it in portable form, too. 02 QUICKLY ACCESS WINDOWS’ PERSONALISATION SETTINGS To start customising, right-click the desktop and choose “Personalise” to jump straight to “Settings > Personalisation > Background.” From here, you can change your background to a picture, a solid color, or a slideshow of photos within a single folder on your…

A GETTING STARTED Download Launchy from www. launchy.net – you can either install it or run it on demand as a portable app. Once Launchy has, er, launched, it sits unobtrusively in the Taskbar notification area. To bring it into focus, press Alt-Spacebar, then start typing the name of what you’re looking for. B SEARCH AND SELECT An icon representing a program pops up – if it’s the correct one, press Enter. Wait a few seconds, and more matching results – including web links – appear via a drop-down menu. Click one or use the arrow keys to scroll through the list, pressing Enter when you find your match. C WIDEN LAUNCHY’S SEARCH REMIT Right-click the Launchy notification area icon and choose the “Options > Catalog” tab. Click “+” under…

46 TAKE PRECAUTIONS We’re now entering potential risk territory with some of these tips. Therefore, make sure you have some kind of system backup in place – either a rollback option such as System Restore or Rollback Rx (https://horizondatasys.com/ download), or an up-to-date drive image using Macrium Reflect Free (www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx).Done that? Good, let’s move on…. 47 CUSTOMISE LOCK SCREEN Can’t tweak the lock screen to your satisfaction using the options found under “Settings > Personalisation > Lock Screen”? Then take a look at the “Boot and Logon” section of Winaero Tweaker for more possibilities, such as not automatically selecting the last logged-on user by default, or adding a limit to how long the slideshow feature plays for. 48 GRAB LOCK SCREEN IMAGES If you’re using the Windows Spotlight feature to…

“The thought of no longer seeing a benefit from overclocking makes me both happy and sad at the same time” When the reviews of the new Ryzen 3000 series CPUs started coming out, one of the more exciting things I was looking forward to reading about was the overclocking potential. A newer, smaller process technology usually allows for not only higher stock clocks but also higher peak overclocking potential. With Ryzen 3000 we definitely saw higher stock and boost clocks over Ryzen 2000, to the tune of 200 - 300MHz which – combined with the 15% higher IPC – was the perfect one-two punch AMD needed to stand toe-to-toe with Intel’s product stack and severely pour the pressure on. However, the initial overclocking results showed something remarkable that I’d never…

Changes across the board were minimal for the budget build this month, so it’s unlikely you’ll see much difference in performance. The key alteration was the switch from the conventional Ryzen 5 2600 to the 2600X version, with its expanded overclocking potential. The 2600X was inexplicably cheaper this month, even though neither item was on sale with any of the big online retailers. The max boost frequency is 0.3GHz higher, and the overall performance should be slightly superior to last month’s setup. The 2600X also comes with a beefier cooling solution; the AMD Wraith Stealth is replaced by the taller Wraith Spire. We’ve also shifted from Gigabyte to EVGA on the GPU front; we’re down from two fans to one, and the boost clock is a little less impressive, but…

1 MAKE A BLANK DOCUMENT In Pages’ template chooser, tap Create Document and choose Blank. Tap More (…) > Document Setup > Document Setup icon (top right). To use page layout mode, turn off Document Body. Turn off Header and Footer. 2 SET YOUR MARGINS Setting page margins here should help make a neat layout. Oddly, in page layout mode, Pages ignores them. We’ll work around that. Tap the + icon, pick a square from the shapes tab and resize it to fit the margins. 3 POSITION A TEXT BOX It snaps to the margins (if not, turn on all in More > Guides). Tap the brush icon and, on the Style tab, set no fill or border. Click Done. On your page, try adding a text box. You can…

Linux users have a really easy way to achieve nirvana: finding a distribution that best fits all their needs. It only takes time, a lot of effort, and perhaps compromising on what you might consider an ideal fit, or maybe even your definition of nirvana. But it’s doable, no doubt. The obvious upside to finding a distribution that fits your needs is that you no longer have to hop distributions. Even better, if you decide on a rolling-release distribution, your next reinstallation will be a long time coming. The downside to having such a fixed abode is that the number of files on your system will grow exponentially. Unless you’re a master at organising and take pains to carefully name and sort all your files, you’re unlikely to be able…

Network security is vital to the integrity of your data and hardware. Using a router with a firewall and computer security tools is wise, but to get a better idea of what’s happening on your network, you’ll need a monitoring tool. It might seem like the stuff of low-budget cyber thrillers, but a network monitoring tool can be effortlessly set up and put to work pinging the hardware on your network and scanning for intruders. This essentially means that you can learn right away when your devices on your network go offline (perhaps IoT or smart-home applications), and discover unauthorised connections to your router or other networked hardware. All you need is a Raspberry Pi and the Nagios software. Two versions of Nagios are available. There’s the Nagios XI series…

Call of Duty fans, you can finally rest easy: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will have dedicated servers and support crossplay at launch. According to a Game Informer cover story (via Charlie Intel), Infinity Ward and Activision are confirming that alongside full crossplay support for PC, PS4, and Xbox One, Modern Warfare will feature dedicated servers to ideally help ensure stability at launch and beyond. Dedicated servers aren’t anything new to Call of Duty, but with the introduction of crossplay support to the franchise with the upcoming Modern Warfare, it’s even more crucial to ensure stable server performance by forking out for dedicated servers. With the pervasive issue of server instability in online competitive gaming, it’s a big relief to hear it’s quickly becoming commonplace for AAA developers to address…

The CPUs and GPUs (and other chips) we use are cut from a large wafer that produces hundreds or even thousands of individual chips, but Californian company Cerebras Systems has managed to create a single processor from an entire wafer. Measuring 22cm on each side, the Wafer-Scale Engine is intended for use in Artificial Intelligence applications. Producing a single chip from a single wafer has long been a Holy Grail of the computer industry, but it was thought this was still many years away. Cerebras’ product is built this way to substantially reduce the latency incurred when data is travelling between cores in a more orthodox design. According to the company, neural networks work best when thousands of operations are executed at the exact same time, with data being shared…

KEYSTONE Switch to a more advanced keyboard design. US$179 | INPUT.CLUB The Input Club is a startup hoping to change the current status quo in keyboard design with a new magnetic silo switch that uses old keyboard technology to make a more advanced keyboard. Each key in the silo switch will contain a magnet that induces a current in nearby conductive metals when moved. This mechanism means that instead of having one single on/off actuation point like current switches, the magnetic silo switch can detect both the rate and depth of any keypress. When combined with AI software on the company’s Keystone keyboard Kickstarter, this additional information gives each key additional functionality like single key capitalisation. ROG PHONE II The ROG Phone is making a comeback. $TBC | ASUS.COM/PHONE/ROG-PHONE/ While…

Many new technologies generally offer the promise of a more convenient lifestyle; but when the science behind them isn’t readily available, or it’s intentionally convoluted, new technologies can quickly feel like a frightening and potentially harmful leap of faith. Recently we’ve seen a pushback highlighting the alleged dangers of the new 5G telecom network on community Facebook group message boards and in Google search results. From what we can garner, the argument is that 5G reduces the wavelength of radio waves, which could be more harmful to human health. Additionally, there are concerns that because 5G transfers information faster than previous technologies it increases the intensity of radio waves and, therefore, its potential to be harmful. What is interesting about these concerns, and what makes them surprisingly convincing, is that…

Being the leader in any way in the competitive ultrabook space is a big deal, and all of the companies making them go to great lengths to make their devices the thinnest and lightest available. Acer’s new Swift 7 is the thinnest ultrabook right now. This is an impressive feat when considered in isolation, but once you weigh up all the things the Swift has to sacrifice to get there, those defining few millimetres of thickness won’t seem worth it for many. It takes a lot to get a device that is under a centimetre thick, especially when the best professional ultrabooks in the world are only just under 1.6cm. The Swift manages this by using a dual-core Intel Y series chip that has been designed to not need active…

Ticking off just about every monitor spec a modern PC gamer could dream of, this 35-inch LED-backlit VA screen from Acer has been a long time coming. First revealed back in August 2017, the X35 has taken nearly two years to come to market, and it’s joined by near-identical competitors from Asus and AOC, with all three employing the same ultrawide panel from AU Optronics (AUO). We’ve seen similar 35-inch, 21:9 gaming screens before, with an earlier generation of AUO screens from 2017 still widely available, offering more sedate specs (a 100Hz max refresh rate with FreeSync) at a still-pricey $1,000 to $1,500 in Australia. At an eye-watering $3,999, this Acer model is in another league entirely, putting it out of reach of all but the most well-heeled of gamers.…

The DrayTek Vigor2133 series comes in a range of options to suit different needs without blowing out the budget. We tested the top spec Vigor2133Vac which features AC1200 spec Wi-Fi (867Mbps + 300Mbps) and dual VoIP ports for $370. The slighter cheaper 2133ac leaves out the VoIP, bringing the price down to $340. The Vigor2133n has no VoIP and 802.11n Wi-Fi for just $250, while the plain Vigor2133 has no WiFi or VoIP and will set you back $210. The rest of the specs are the same, which makes the Vigor2133 series an extremely flexible option that allows the purchase of only the features needed. The Vigor2133 series is NBN ready with a GbE WAN port, as well as four GbE LAN connections. You also get dual USB 2.0 ports,…

No home today is complete without a smattering of technology. Where once that might have meant a record player you weren’t allowed to touch because the stylus was delicate, or a television built into a cabinet that took a team of horses to transport, these days home tech is small, convenient, and connected. It’s the connectivity that makes modern home gadgets stand out. Now that we fill our houses with Wi-Fi, anything can connect from anywhere without having to install cabling, which means devices such as the Amazon Echo can talk to Philips Hue lightbulbs, turning them on and off at a command. Your doorbell can get in on the act too, plugging into your network to provide HD video of whoever’s outside, and functioning as a motion detector too,…

This robot vacuum cleaner is one of the cheapest connected models around, but packs in plenty of smarts and strong cleaning capability. The built-in Wi-Fi connection means that it works with both an app and Alexa voice control. The app enables you to take manual control of cleaning, or to set schedules for it to run automatically, and it will send you notifications when you need to know something. It also comes with a physical remote, in case you need one. The unit itself uses infrared technology to avoid collisions, and has drop sensors to avoid tumbles down the stairs. Maybe the most useful part is the BoostIQ tech, which increases suction on surfaces that require it, such as carpets. With roughly a 100-minute runtime (depending on suction strength), it…

Console gaming numbers have always fluctuated up and down, but home consoles do seem to be steadily trending downward as the costs associated with them increase. The peak of console gaming occurred around the turn of the millennium, with Sony’s PlayStation 2 smashing every record to sell a whopping 150 million units. By comparison, the PlayStation 4 has only sold around 95 million units in the five-plus years since its release, while the Xbox One barely managed a measly 39 million. Nintendo dominated the handheld console market, with the Nintendo DS managing to match PS2-tier sales figures, and the Game Boy and Game Boy Color before it both topping 100 million units sold. The rise of gaming-ready smartphones has hammered the handheld console market, though. The strange home-handheld hybrid Nintendo…

Much like PlayStation’s Remote Play, there are other ways to stream games yourself, without the aid of a hulking data center. Kids hogging the TV? Xbox One enables you to stream games to any Window 10 PC connected on the same network, using the computer’s monitor as a second screen, and connecting a standard Xbox controller. Because the game is effectively played in situ on the console, players can return directly to the big screen once the living room has been vacated. Steam users have this option, too, albeit in reverse; in November 2015, Valve launched Steam Link, which enabled anyone to stream their Steam library from their gaming PC to their smart TV or mobile device, over a local connection. Initially, Valve sold a piece of hardware that supported…

A INSTALL ICONS Download and install Vi-Pad (http://lee-soft.com/vipad) – if the SmartScreen filter appears, click “More” and unblock the program. During installation, click “Yes” when prompted to copy all existing desktop icons to the Vi-Pad window, which will happen in real time as you watch. B ORGANISE ICONS All shortcut in a apps appear single tab – “New Tab” – spread over multiple pages. Right-click “New Tab” to rename it, or use the “+” button to create additional tabs, so that you can organise your apps into more categories. Once that’s done, right-click an app icon to move it to that tab. C ADD NEW ICONS You can drag new shortcuts into any tab from the desktop or from File Explorer. Right-click the program’s Taskbar notification area, and choose “Settings.”…

31 CUSTOMISE FOLDER BEHAVIOR Windows can be instructed to treat folders in a specific way depending on the contents inside. Right-click a folder and choose “Properties > Customise,” where you can optimise it for a specific file type, such as pictures or documents. 32 CHANGE THE FOLDER ICON You’ll also see an option to change the folder icon – useful if you want a more visual prompt as to the folder’s contents. Click “Change Icon” to browse files for any icons they contain (“shell32.dll” is selected by default, with lots of options). You can also select previously created or downloaded icon (ICO) files – see the step-by-step guide on the page opposite for a way to extract icons from other files. Alternatively, click “Choose File” to choose a picture to…

A DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL Download the trial version of WindowBlinds from www.stardock. com/products/windowblinds – after the program has installed, choose the 30-day trial, and enter your email address. Once activated, pick a style from the “Style” section of the program to preview it. B MODIFY SKIN Click “Modify Style” to make changes – work through the “Colors,” “Transparency,” “Textures,” and “Fonts” sections to customise it exactly the way you want it to look. Aching to recreate the old Windows 7 glass-like style? Select “Diamond” and choose “One click blur” under “Transparency.” C APPLY NEW SKIN Once you’ve finished making your changes in WindowBlinds, click “Stop modifying” followed by “Apply style to desktop.” After a short pause, you’ll see the Windows desktop update. Continue making tweaks – increase transparency using the…

Last month we ran a simple tutorial on creating your own NAS, and in this issue we’re diving in deep with a full build, because we know how popular NAS devices are and this is a project we really want to get stuck into. Off-the-shelf NAS units are easy to come by, but they’re often underpowered, overpriced, or otherwise disappointing. Many of them run some kind of Linux (usually on quite modestly powered ARM hardware), and it’s pretty straightforward to build a Linux box, and cram it with as many hard drives as geometry permits. You may even have enough spare parts lying around to get most of the way there (we did). You don’t need anything special hardware-wise (4GB of RAM and a CPU sometime from the last decade…

1 SIGN UP FOR AN ACCOUNT Pay a visit to the Google Drive website at https://drive. google and click the Go to Google Drive button. If you already have a Google account, you can sign into it and start using Google Drive, but if not you can click the ‘Create account’ link to get started. You’ll be guided through the process of choosing a Gmail email address and securing it with a password. 2 DOWNLOAD BACKUP AND SYNC When you are signed into Google Drive, look to the lower left of the page and click the button labelled Get Backup and Sync for Windows. You will be taken to the download page, and you need to click the Download button in the Personal section. Save the file, and then run…

iCloud Drive is the file storage part of Apple’s iCloud services. It’s a super-easy and convenient way to access your files from any of your devices, and operates very similarly to Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive, if you’ve used those. It shows up as a folder in Finder and you can drag files and folders to and from it like any other. By default, a copy of everything in your iCloud Drive is stored locally on your Mac. Files you place in iCloud Drive are synced to Apple’s server and made available on all the Mac and iOS devices signed in to your iCloud account. (Make sure yours are signed in: go to Apple > System Preferences > iCloud on a Mac, and Settings > [your name] > iCloud…

You can find a number of tips and tricks, a to-do list for future releases, a detailed explanation of unique concepts such as fingerprinting, database repairing, virtual filesystem and on at the project’s wiki, hosted on its GitHub page https://github. com/oniony/TMSU. For offline use, you will find sufficient instructions on the man page, coupled with some examples. Even better, you can invoke the tmsu help <command> command to access instructions for a specific command. The command tmsu help dupes , for instance, gives you all the pertinent information you would need to use the fingerprinting feature to identify all the duplicate files in the current database. Wherever possible, the project provides helpful examples to enable users to make sense of the command options and what they do:…

The battle royale game that promised to let 1,000 players fight to be the last one standing across an ever-evolving world didn’t stick the landing. Automaton, the developer of Mavericks: Proving Grounds, announced in an update to the bottom of its website that the studio has entered insolvency (bankruptcy in US legal parlance). “Please be advised that due to insufficient funding, the development of the Mavericks: Proving Grounds game has now ceased,” the website states. “The joint administrators are in the process of licensing the Deceit game so there will be no change in the live operation and provision of this game.” Deceit is an online shooter that combines multiplayer action with elements of social deduction games like Mafia/Werewolf. It was the only game to be fully released by developer…

$99.95 | PC, PS4, XB1 | CODEMASTERS.COM The best way for an annualised, licensed motorsport game to stay fresh every summer when the latest iteration trots out onto the Steam Store is, clearly, to chuck in an entirely different racing series as well. With the inclusion of the 2018 F2 championship, F1 2019 feels for the first time in the series like a wider world of motorsport, offering that irresistible rags-to-riches journey in career mode and a handling model all of its own to master. But it needed to add something more than a few handling tweaks, and it did just that by placing a tier of racing below F1 and thus making a contract with the big boys feel like more of a big break. The way it’s brandished…

$69.95 | PC, PS4, XB1, SWITCH Miriam is a science experiment in the shape of a dolled-up anime girl. Together with her friend, a man named Gebel, she was part of an experiment that transplanted the essence of demons into her body. This demonic power comes in the form of shards, thus she’s called a Shardbinder. The more shards you absorb the more you let go of your humanity, a fate that befell Gebel. Combat is the main focus, and on normal difficulty most enemies don’t pose much of a threat. Early on a nice rhythm between exploration and combat builds, and feels very genre-specific in the way you anticipate the respawning enemies and find increasingly fun, increasingly quick ways to deal with them. The various shards you collect by…

FREE | PC | TYKENN.ITCH.IO Where Cirkoban³ differs from the majority of Sokoban-likes is its incorporation of the third dimension. Rather than a single, flat game board, there can be up to six in play here, as you hop from side to side of a 3D cube. Every side has its own blue, player block, which will spring into action when the player focuses on it, by swivelling the mouse. Pushable green blocks, meanwhile, are not just glued to power lines but to chunks of scaffolding, which curve around the edges of the cube. As green blocks are often linked to one another, you may find that pushing one horizontally causes another to move vertically on an adjacent side. It’s an inspired if awkward evolution of the block-pushing concept. Despite…

$32.99 | PC, PS4, PS3 | WWW.QUANTICDREAM.COM Heavy Rain is an adventure game of sorts, with a heavy focus on Shenmue-style QTEs. That means a lot of button-tapping and stick-waggling, whether it’s one character shaking a carton of orange juice before taking a swig or another swinging a fist in a punch-up. Occasionally you can wander around freely, and the environments are beautifully detailed. But most of the time you’re watching cutscenes, deciding how they play out via a series of timed, reaction-based button prompts. What makes Heavy Rain worth playing despite its amateurish, hole-ridden plot, inhuman dialogue, and inconsistent tone. It’s actually one of the most twisting, structurally complex, and reactive interactive stories on PC. While a Telltale game will let you carve your own path to a single…