APCの October 2018 の目次

Encrypted communications targeted by new Australian anti-crime laws Big tech will be forced to assist law enforcement. Back in July 2017, the Australian Government stated its intention to introduce new legislation that would force companies to decrypt secure messages, and the details surrounding the proposed laws have finally come to light. While Australian telcos already offer a degree of assistance to the country’s law enforcement, providing user data in investigations relating to high-level crime, the government’s concern is that the same cooperation isn’t currently provided by big tech companies that offer encrypted messaging services. An exposure draft of the Assistance and Access Bill 2018 has revealed legislation that will allow certain high-ranking security officials to formally request access to encrypted communications from the providers of those services. While the companies…

Unveiled at Apple’s education-focused event in July, the 2018 iPad is less of a “hot new sequel” and more like a “revised edition paperback with improved illustrations.” While this iPad’s specs reveal two major updates — an upgraded processor, and Pencil support — has Apple quietly changed anything else? Let’s find out with a teardown! MAJOR TECH SPECS ■ Apple A10 fusion processor with embedded M10 motion coprocessor ■ 9.7-inch multi-touch Retina display with 2,048 x 1,536 resolution (264 ppi) and non-laminated display assembly ■ 32GB or 128GB of storage ■ 8-megapixel 1080p rear-facing iSight camera + 1.2-megapixel 720p front-facing FaceTime HD camera ■ 802.11a/b/g/n/ac dual-band MIMO Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.2 ■ Touch ID fingerprint sensor + three-axis gyro + accelerometer + barometer + ambient light sensor ■ Apple Pencil…

WINDOWS TABLET FROM $599; $839 AS TESTED | WWW.MICROSOFT.COM/EN-AU Microsoft’s Surface Go, its latest tablet that aims to be a smaller and more affordable Surface Pro is finally here. The Surface Go doesn’t bring about any major surprises, but perhaps that’s a good thing. What you see here is what should have been the core conceit of every small Windows tablet since the beginning: everything you love about the Surface Pro, only smaller. No half-baked operating systems — though this model does ship with Windows 10 in S Mode — and no strange app compatibility issues. It’s just a smaller Surface that works. Of course, there were some cuts to be made to create a Surface tablet of this size, namely in the power department, but your expectations…

“Wielding one of Intel’s first overclockable Core i9-8950HK CPUs, the top of the line Alienware 15 is packing an absurd amount of compute power” GAMING LAPTOP FROM $4,699 | WWW.DELL.COM Dell’s matt- black Alienware 15 flagship gaming laptop is actually pretty unimposing to look at in person. It isn’t quite as sleek as the 1.8cm thick ASUS ROG Zephyrus (see APC 445, page 24), but the extra 0.7cm thickness in the Alienware’s chassis gives it space for bigger fans and larger heat sinks. This means it can technically be fitted with Intel’s overclockable i9 CPU, but after getting our hands on a machine with that chip, we’re not quite sure this laptop is cool enough to handle such a powerful CPU. The Alienware 15 also only comes with…

AMD MOTHERBOARD $319 | WWW.ASUS.COM/AU Why, Asus? Why? We want to be kind to your products, honest we do, but with the current lack of innovation across your mid-range motherboard arsenal, it forces us into an unhappy position. What’s the problem? Well, it’s a simple one, but it comes down to what can only be described as the ROG tax. Right now, the X470-F is available for a rather high-ish $319. Aesthetically, it’s a pleasing AM4, ATX motherboard, complete with flashy RGB heatsink, swappable chipset stickers, and a fully specced out complement of connectivity for all your devices. It really ought to be —after all, it’s broken that $300 mark, and it’s not what we’d consider affordable. The problem lies with a product within Asus’s own arsenal. Namely…

“Even in bright conditions it can produce a display of around 100 inches in a modest-sized room, though this can stretch to a whopping 300 inches in larger rooms. ” DLP PROJECTOR $2,199 | WWW.BENQ.COM It was like the gods of fate had swept us up into their arms and tenderly kissed our foreheads when BenQ’s TK800 True 4K HDR projector arrived just in time for this year’s FIFA World Cup. With this fairly compact, sleek-looking unit in place and fired up, we were able to witness every drop of sweat dripped and every bit of spit gobbed in stunning ultra-HD detail. The TK800 is a recent addition to BenQ’s range of home entertainment projectors that are geared towards sports and is similar, in terms of design, to…

GAMING KEYBOARD $339.95 | WWW.RAZER.COM Circuit-based actuation has been considered the gold standard in gaming keyboards for some time now, but Razer believes it has an even better key switch that could revolutionise the market. Taking the best bits of the mechanical switch and blending it with a new optical sensor, Razer’s secret weapon is a hybrid ‘opto-mechanical’ switch. While the tech’s not exclusive to Razer, the company is one of the first to market with the hybrid switches, which appear o n it’s new Huntsman Elite flagship keyboard. The headline feature of these new switches is that they’re supposedly 30% faster than traditional mechanical switches, using infrared light beams to trigger keystrokes and allowing virtually instantaneous response times, which considerably outpace the contact-based electrical circuit mechanisms in…

Have you ever bothered to go into the Google, Microsoft or Facebook account settings to download your profile, which should (in theory) contain everything the company has on you? Most people will be quite shocked if they do — the amount of data the companies collect on their users is staggering. With Google, for example, every search you’ve ever performed, every result you’ve clicked on, every time you’ve logged in (and from where), every YouTube video you’ve watched, every relationship and contact you have, the complete movements of your mobile devices and more is collected and stored forever in Google’s database, unless you explicity ask it to delete the information. And that’s just what internet services are tracking. Lots of others organisations are looking to track your online activity and…

1 UPDATE WINDOWS 10 Ghostery needs the most recent version of Windows to work. Save and close any open files and back up your data if possible. Next, click the search button at the bottom left of your desktop, then enter Windows 10 Upgrade Assistant. Click the desktop app to open. Click Yes to confirm that you wish to open the app, then ‘Update Now’ to begin upgrading your system. 2 VISIT THE GHOSTERY WEBSITE Once the update is complete, open Microsoft Edge and visit www.ghostery.org. Hover your mouse over ‘Our Solutions’ and click on ‘Ghostery Browser Extension’. A new screen will appear listing various web browsers. Scroll down until you see Microsoft Edge. Click ‘Add to Edge’ and the Microsoft Store will open. Quit Microsoft Edge, then click the…

Unless you’ve been extra careful, it’s fair to say that Google knows you just about as well as you know yourself. The internet giant hoovers up vast amounts of information on millions of users, ostensibly to deliver better ads (or, more accurately, to sell that user information to advertisers in order to better target ads). This is especially true if you have a Google account. When you’re logged into your Google account, Google will keep a permanent record of: ■ Every search term you type into Google ■ Every search result you click on ■ Every YouTube search you perform and every video you watch ■ Ads you click on ■ A complete timeline of your movements by tracking your mobile’s GPS ■ Every time you issue an ‘OK Google’…

General privacy The General section in Privacy Settings is home to options for turning off Ad ID and language sharing. More Privacy options Turn off the app and system-wide access to your camera, microphone, contacts and calendars from the left pane. Location, location This section lets you control whether apps can use your location to provide local news and weather forecasts. PC location You can turn off location-based access for your Windows system as a whole by pressing the ‘Change’ button. Single user location Alternatively, to turn off location-based data for the logged-in user only, turn off this slider. Per-app location You can also choose location settings for individual apps by scrolling down to ‘Choose apps that can use your location’. Privacy is a hot topic these days. The rise…

Windows Update provides ‘optional’ updates that include additional components such as Microsoft Silverlight. They also include Microsoft-delivered drivers for a wide range of hardware. Windows 7 and 8.1 users can review and install these via Windows Update as shown in the main text, but these updates are hidden from view in Windows 10 — installing driver updates is a hit-and-miss affair involving going into Device Manager and clicking Update Driver from the Driver tab of selected devices. To see what’s available, and install them directly, download the Windows Update MiniTool (bit.ly/2v9BwtK). Extract its contents and then run wumt_x64.exe (64-bit) or wumt_x86. exe (32-bit) depending on your Windows system type. Click the ‘Check for updates’ button under Update History after verifying ‘Include drivers’ is selected. From here you can select the…

It’s rare — but not unheard of — for updates to screw your system up so much it can no longer boot into Windows successfully. After several failed attempts, Windows should give you the option of booting into Safe mode or bring up the recovery menu. From here try Startup Repair or System Restore to roll your PC back to the Restore point taken before the update was installed. Note: this may not be an option if you’re running Windows 10 and didn’t switch System Restore back on after installing the April 2018 Update. Other options will involve recovery media — if you regularly back up using a tool like Macrium Reflect Free (www.macrium.com/reflectfree), roll back to your last backup using its boot media. Or you could boot from your…

Your Mac automatically creates a guest user account that doesn’t require a password. If you know you’ll never need it, the best option is to turn it off. Go to Users & Groups, click the Guest User and untick ‘Allow guests to log in to this computer’. This pane also lets you block guest access to shared folders. If you want to restrict guest access to certain apps, click Open Parental Controls, enter an administrator’s credentials and then choose whether you want to restrict the use of your Mac’s camera, apps, Mail and games.…

There are several backup utilities available for the Linux desktop user and your distribution will have one installed by default. Ubuntu, for example, ships with Déja Dup that you can also install on other distributions such as Fedora, OpenSUSE and Linux Mint. Almost every backup application will ask you to point it to the location where you want to house your backups. Depending on the tool you’re using, this can be a local hard disk, a remote location accessible via SSH or FTP, or a web-based storage service, such as Amazon S3. You’ll also have to mark files and directories that you want to include in the backup. Some tools will also help you set up a backup schedule to automate the process. Tools such as Déja Dup will also…

Green The circuit can get the difference between the two data signals rather than between a single wire and ground. It’s a more effective transmission Black This is the other wire associated with the power — the ground wire, which is the counterpart to the 5V wire Yellow USB mini/micro cables will also have an additional wire that isn’t required for our particular project Red The red wire is one of two handling power. This one is a 5V power line that provides voltage to the circuit White This wire is one of two used for differential data signals. This white wire is the positive component and the green wire is the negative one…

There’s no doubt the Raspberry Pi has been a force for good, renewing global interest in DIY electronics and generally making your own stuff. However, it’s important to remember the Pi isn’t the only tool in your maker’s toolkit. For instance, why spend $60 or so on a Raspberry Pi board to make your own music player, when you can do the same thing with a $5 microcontroller board instead? This month, we’re doing exactly that — building a simple digital audio player, but with audio quality that’ll give most phones plenty to think about. And in an unusual twist, it uses the ESP8266 Wi-Fi chip, plus the same basic audio tech you’ll find in smartphones and PC motherboards. WI-FI CHIP PLAYING AUDIO? The ESP8266 revolutionised the Internet of Things…

SWITCH | $89.95 | WWW.NINTENDO.COM.AU Nearly 50 years since Pong, games have evolved at a startling rate. And yet here we are, in 2018, with a high-profile Nintendo exclusive that feels more like something from the 1990s than most other games that reference that era. Octopath Traveler is a staunchly old-school JRPG: its gorgeous 2.5D pixel-art aesthetic is the only factor separating it from a ye olde 16-bit Final Fantasy game. Mixing 2D character sprites and 3D, almost pop-up-book-like environments, Octopath Traveler is quite unlike any other ostensibly retro-styled game on the market. The way its sands shimmer and its waterways glisten, catching the sun’s rays just so, is beautiful. Its snow fields appear so crisp you’ll swear you could reach into your Switch and touch them. But…

PC, PS3, PS4 | $79.95 | WWW.YAKUZA.SEGA.COM Kazuma Kiryu’s trademark back dragon tattoo has been re-inked with the vibrant shades of Yakuza 6’s Dragon engine in this complete remake.. The story has its roots in the massacre of the Korean Jingweon mob in the 1980s, dealing with ramifications from the perspectives of the police and Tokyo’s Tojo family. This interferes with a proposed alliance between the Tojo and Osaka’s reigning Omi family. Kiryu is obliged to help broker the alliance himself, only to butt heads with the Omi’s very own dragon-tattooed badass, Ryuji Goda, son of the Omi’s patriarch. After things hit the fan, Kiryu is forced to team up with Kansai policewoman Kaoru Sayama, known as the “yakuza huntress”. Hounded at every turn as they try to…

Yes, Microsoft Office Championship is a thing Student to represent Australia in Florida. Microsoft Office is a set of complex content creation tools with dozens of menus that we personally never use for fear of getting lost in a labyrinth of unwanted columns, uneven paragraph spacing and default styles. However, there is a rare breed of human out there that knows how to use the software in its entirety so well that one of these individuals has won the Australia National Championship for Microsoft Word. Yes, Aidan Smith — of All Saints College, Perth — won the trip of a lifetime and recently travelled to Orlando, Florida, to participate in the Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) World Championship along with 151 other finalists from around the world. Aidan managed to clinch…

$ billion 2.39 AMD HAS HAD ITS BEST FINANCIAL QUARTER SINCE 2011, COURTESY OF RYZEN AND EPYC Q2 of 2018 was a very exciting time for AMD, as the microprocessor manufacturer celebrated its strongest financial quarter since 2011. Thanks in no small part to the continuing success of Ryzen and Epyc CPUs, which saw a 64% ‘ryze’ (ahem) in revenue from Q2 2017. Overall company revenue was up 53% from $1.56 billion to $2.39 billion year-on-year, bringing the net income back into the black after last year’s $57 million loss. 1 in 5 PORTION OF AUSSIES THAT THINK THEIR SMARTPHONES ARE SPYING ON THEM Ever thought that the targeted advertisements you were seeing were a little... too targeted? Finder.com.au asked thousands of Australians and found that nearly 20% of them…

“If you’re on a tight budget and you want a big, beautiful 4K screen, for instance, an HDTV is not only a great solution, it may be your only option” In days of yore, hooking up a PC to a TV via a low-res analog interface was fun, but it was also blurry, borky, and sub-optimal. Today, everything is crisp, clean, and digital. TVs offer high-res 4K panels that match or exceed most PC monitors for pixel count, and in the case of TVs with HDR support, colour depth and contrast, too. Even projectors now support proper PC-size pixel grids. So, what makes for the best big-screen PC experience? Round 1 PRICE In this age of dirt-cheap HDTVs, you might think there can be only one winner. After all, how…

“As mesh networks start to become the norm, there’s less focus on the wireless performance of one router. ” VPN SETUP GUIDE Can I suggest an article on buying/ setting up a VPN router on your home network so you can use a service like ExpressVPN to protect all the devices on your wireless network? I currently have a Technicolor TG-1 NBN modem using VDSL on a FTTN connection. I don’t use the wireless functionality on that device. It’s connected to two Apple Airport Extremes via a Ethernet backbone supplying a seamless roaming wireless network across my fairly large home. I want to introduce a VPN router between the NBN modem/router and the Airport Expresses. I see that ExpressVPN recommends purchasing a pre-configured router from Flashrouters to make life easy,…

DESKTOP PC FROM $1,599; $3,099 AS TESTED | AU.MSI.COM Remember when buying a PC used to mean going to an actual store, walking around a long display of fascinating beige boxes adorned with functional jewelry, such as printers and desktop microphones, speaking to an overbearing man in a short-sleeved shirt, then waiting several days for a different man, this one less overbearing, to arrive, and put it together in your home? Modern system builders like MSI can’t hope to replace the hand-drenching thrill of that 1990s experience, but they do bring a few bonuses of modernity to the table. This Infinite X doesn’t have an ounce of bloat on its spec sheet. Our test unit came with a GTX 1080 Ti, Core i7-8700K, and 16GB of RAM —…

GAMING LAPTOP FROM $2,899 | WWW.RAZER.COM Just over five years ago, Razer introduced the original Blade laptop. Compared to its contemporaries, it was minuscule, but gaming laptops have slimmed down since, culminating in the Max-Q design seen in the best laptops of the last year or so. With the Blade 15, Razer has caught up with the competition in terms of what makes a great gaming laptop. Solid build, slim body, elegant design, long battery life, thin bezels, 144Hz screen, and internals powerful enough to play the latest games. That means an Intel Core i7-8750H paired with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q . What sets the Blade 15 apart is the details. Its aluminium body is the most solid and flex-resistant of all the laptops we’ve tested…

“The MPG27CQ arrives slap bang into the sweet spot in PC gaming monitors” 27-INCH GAMING MONITOR $699 | AU.MSI.COM Picture a PC monitor. with high refresh rates, low response times, snazzy styling, and RGB mood lighting. Looks a lot like a new ROG gaming monitor from ASUS, right? Indeed it does, but it also describes MSI’s new Optix MPG27CQ. The MPG27CQ arrives slap bang into the sweet spot in PC gaming monitors. It’s a 27-inch panel with 1440p pixel grid. That makes for a very nice compromise between visual detail and smooth gaming. 4K gaming, after all, is a nice idea, but even the very latest and greatest graphics cards can’t drive all those pixels at the triple-digit frame rates required for seriously slick and smooth gameplay. Meanwhile,…

TV & GAME STREAMING DEVICE REMOTE ONLY, $250; REMOTE AND GAMEPAD, $330 | WWW.NVIDIA.COM Nvidia’s Android TV-powered Shield TV box may initially seem more suited as a device for those with older tellies with app deficiencies, although with 4K video output and built-in Google Cast capabilities, it can act like a supercharged Chromecast Ultra too — with a ton of extra features. Powered by Nvidia’s own Tegra X1 processor — the same one used in the Nintendo Switch — it’s also got lots of grunt for both media and game streaming, and powering Android-native games and apps, too. The Shield TV comes in two options in Australia — a media-minded kit with just the box and a TV remote, or one pitched at gamers, that adds an Nvidia-built…

PC CASE $219 | WWW.THERMALTAKE.COM.AU Where some manufacturers focus on premium materials or ever-smaller form factors for their latest cases, Thermaltake has decided to pursue a different course. Boasting a windowed, gull-wing side panel that curves around to cover the top of the case, this is a chassis that’s brilliant at showing off the internals of your pride and joy. The gull-wing side panel is the main selling point of this case, and its design requires some careful considerations, because you’re essentially losing the side brace from the top to make way for the perspex panel. Strip the case down, and there’s obvious flexing due to the shift in structural integrity. It isn’t as noticeable with the side panels present, but it’s there, and has forced Thermaltake to…

Maintaining your privacy and security online is not really that hard, but it’s a task far too many people fail it. So here are our top ten tips to get you started. 1 USE A VPN ON YOUR PHONE AND PC When it comes to personal privacy, VPNs are good for what ails ya. They have the effect of both protecting your identity from the sites that you visit and preventing anyone in between from reading the contents of your data or knowing who you’re communicating with. It stops snooping from governments, ISPs, network providers and websites. The only party that knows what you’re doing online when you’re connected to a VPN is the VPN provider, and most of those deliberately don’t keep logs. It’s not just for your PC…

“VPNs also give you a new digital identity in the shape of an IP address from another country.This makes it harder for websites or anyone else to track you” Some companies now offer a basic service that won’t cost you a thing. Are the free VPNs as good as their paid-for counterparts then? Not so fast. As you’d expect, there are catches, and they typically start with a data cap. Avira Phantom VPN’s free plan limits you to 500MB a month, PrivateTunnel offers 2GB, whereas ZPN has a generous 10GB allowance — not bad at all. Free products also typically have usage restrictions. Most companies don’t want you to soak up all their bandwidth on torrents, so ZPN is typical in blocking P2P. Hide.me’s 2GB free plan also has some…

1 AD PERSONALISATION Personalised ads are a form of targeted marketing that companies use online. When you visit a website for the first time, a ‘cookie’ is downloaded to your PC — a small text file of viewing data that the site uses if you ever return, so that it can tailor the ads you see. Happily, Windows 10 makes advertising personalisation optional by integrating it into its privacy settings. 2 DISABLE ADS IN WINDOWS Disabling personalised ads in Windows 10 is a two-step process. First, go to Settings then navigate to the Privacy > General panel via the left-hand column and slide off the button next to the option ‘Allow apps to use Advertising ID to make ads more interesting to you based on your app usage (turning this…

Offload apps Apps that should be offloaded are those that you haven’t used for a good while but which contain documents or data that you still want to retain for potential future use. Reinstalling offloaded apps: Offloading apps does not come without its pitfalls. A previously offloaded app may be removed from the App Store, in which case, you won’t be able to reinstall it. It’s a good idea to manually offload apps rather than let them be automatically removed, so you can weigh up the chances of them being pulled in the future. iPhone Storage This screen shows the last time you used an installed app on your iOS device. You can reach it by going to ‘Settings > General > Phone Storage’ and scrolling down. Select an app…

Running Linux just because you think it’s safer than Windows? Think again. Security in Linux is a built-in feature and extends right from the kernel to the desktop, but it still leaves enough room to let someone muck about with your /home folder. Sure, Linux is impervious to viruses and worms written for Windows, but attackers have several other tricks up their sleeves to illegally access your precious bits and bytes that make up everything from your personal emails to your credit card details. Locking your data behind a username and password shouldn’t be your only line of defence, and isn’t enough to hold off a determined attacker. As the number, nature and variety of computer attacks escalate every day, you too should go out of the way and take…

THE CONCEPT This month’s PC build differs from most of our usual projects: it’s devised with a single person in mind, as opposed to trying to hit a specific price point, use case... or just pushing everything to the max, like we do with our most aspirational builds. This machine is designed around the whims of our crackpot editor. ITX builds are a passion, and pushing as much power as possible into as small a form factor as possible is incredibly enticing. In fact, it’s arguably what this industry has been all about for the last 60 years — enabling more and more performance out of less and less space. That said, this build project didn’t actually start out with ITX in mind. There have been numerous revisions, countless spec…

Right, so you’ve managed to get your Pi safely ensconced in a controller and all wired up; all you need now are some videogames to play. For this section of the tutorial we’re going to be using the RetroPie emulator. By the end of this tutorial, you’ll be able to play a number of games directly from your Raspberry Pi, provided that you legally own the ROM files, of course. The whole process is as easy as installing the software onto your SD card and then copying across any games that you want to play. If you’ve already got Raspian installed on your Pi, you can install RetroPie alongside it, or you can dedicate the whole disk to the software if you’d rather. 1 INSTALL RETROPIE INSIDE RASPBIAN If you’ve…

Last month, we introduced you to Kaggle, the Australian-created website for data scientists and machine-learning enthusiasts alike to learn, play and solve global problems with data via the site’s many competitions. We launched into the ‘Titanic: Machine Learning from Disaster’ competition as a great way to take baby steps into the world of machine-learning. The task is to try and predict from their various attributes, which of a group of passengers survived the ill-fated ship’s maiden voyage. Our initial run-through last time got us started with Kaggle and, in particular, using its online ‘notebook’ machine-learning code editor. We built our first model and submitted our results to the Titanic competition, achieving a score of 0.69856 (out of 1.0), which placed us in 9,772nd position out of 10,449 entries. This month,…

PC, PS4, XO, SWITCH | FROM $30.95 | DEAD-CELLS.COM You might think, not unreasonably, that a game which begins with your character already dead — decapitated, a condemned prisoner way past the point of appeal — might be extraordinarily short. Yet each death, including the first, is a new beginning. You must complete the entire adventure in one sitting, with no extra lives or continues. It’s a familiar concept, one that’s never been executed so well. A self-described roguelite, each stage’s layout is randomly generated every time you play. The phrase ‘no two runs are ever the same’ may feel tired in 2018, but it’s worth repeating here. Every stage is significantly different every time. The reason this is impressive in Dead Cells is that the template of…

“One of the greatest magic tricks game developers ever pulled off was making it feel as if you ever were free inside of their worlds” RELEASED: IRRATIONAL GAMES | PUBLISHER: 2K GAMES | DEVELOPER: 21 AUGUST 2007 SYSTEM: XBOX 360 “Would you kindly?” On the surface, it was always a simple quandary to wrestle with. We answered the call dutifully, locking ourselves into a wicked sense of forward momentum at the whim of an omnipotent narrator, pushing ourselves ever deeper into a submerged metropolis steadily taking on more and more water. But, as BioShock players would soon discover in the autumn of 2007, the question itself was loaded. A smoke-and-mirrors tactic that has come to define a certain era of first-person shooters — particularly in the hearts and hands of…

It’s all well and good to crow about the latest in-depth sports features included in your smartwatch or the extra two minutes of battery life that the manufacturer has managed to squeeze into its latest flagship, but what technology could actually make the biggest difference to the way people live their lives? While smartwatches are indeed making big strides towards non-invasive health monitoring, it’s the dedicated devices that still have the edge on keeping track of your wellbeing. From malaria to asthma, diabetes to broken bones, there are numerous inventions out there to monitor your health, alert you of any abnormalities or even physically act to keep you safe. Here are five such devices that we’ve recently found. ActiveProtective smart belt Hip protection for the elderly If only clothes were…

Google Translate is a magical thing. Drag and drop any language into it, and it’ll deliver a fairly accurate translation in the language of your choice. Except when it doesn’t. A case in point: internet sleuths discovered in July of this year that typing ‘dog’ into the panel 22 times and then translating it to west African language Yoruba provided the following result: “Doomsday Clock is three minutes at twelve. We are experiencing characters and dramatic developments in the world, which indicate that we are increasingly approaching the end times and Jesus’ return.” That’s not the right translation, of course, and while it’s tempting and fun to speculate that demons are responsible, it’s more than likely a hiccup in Google’s “neural machine translation” technology. That’s according to a Harvard professor…

“ASUS claims that the ZenBook Flip S is the world’s thinnest convertible, and it certainly feels it” 2-IN-1 LAPTOP $1,999 | WWW.ASUS.COM/AU The ZenBook Flip S UX370 is a 2-in-1 with a good deal of performance, while keeping the base running speed low until it’s needed. Beyond the hardware, the externals are pretty much the same — which is no bad thing, since the ZenBook Flip S is a joy to use. This latest ZenBook Flip S isn’t for the light of pocket. You’re looking at roughly $1,999 for the model available in Australia: i5-8250U processor, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD. For this review, we tested a higher-specced version with an i7-8550U, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. The UX370UA may be a tad more expensive than the cheapest…

CHROMEBOOK $559 | WWW.ACER.COM Chromebooks have generally been regarded as lower-end cheap laptops, fit for education and casual web-browsing. However, in a post-Pixelbook world, do they still fill the same role? Well, the Acer Chromebook Spin 11 proves, they can. It’s designed to appeal to parents with young children needing a laptop for schoolwork, but it’s also suitable for someone who wants to install Linux. It’s durable, has decent enough performance, comes with an included stylus and carrying case, and it’s inexpensive. Only one configuration’s available — an Intel Celeron Quad Core N3450 CPU with 4GB RAM and a 32GB SSD — selling for $559. The Spin 11 features an all-plastic build, but don’t let that deceive you as this Chromebook is one of the sturdiest laptops we’ve…

GAMING MONITOR $3,499 | WWW.ASUS.COM/AU ASUS definitely isn’t a company that’s afraid to slap extremely high prices on premium gaming products, and the new ASUS ROG Swift PG27UQ is a prime example of this approach. But can the company justify the whopping price tag of $3,499 for a monitor that is only 27 inches across? Apparently they think they can, but we think that’s a bit of a stretch, even considering the impressive features included. There are two primary reasons for this high price. Firstly, it’s a High Dynamic Range (HDR) display, which displays a much wider colour gamut than a standard monitor. There are multiple variants of HDR standards on the market, and the PG27UQ uses the most common, HDR10. This uses the Rec. 2020 colour space…

MOUSE $55 | WWW.MICROSOFT.COM One of the most well-loved devices made by Microsoft during the late 1990s and early 2000s was the IntelliMouse, and now the company has revisited the iconic brand with the Classic IntelliMouse, which — according to Microsoft — is inspired by the IntelliMouse 3.0. As our devices become ever more complex and convoluted (as well as delicate), there is a lot to be said about older hardware that’s solidly built and does the job without fuss. Chunky and ‘retro’ designs can also help. It’s this nostalgia and goodwill that Microsoft appears to be targeting with the Classic IntelliMouse. You can clearly see the inspiration, with a similar ergonomic shape and black-and-grey design. For many people, this will be a case of ‘if it’s not…

PC CASE $159 | WWW.CORSAIR.COM RGB lighting has conquered its final frontier. After invading the territory below your keyboard, the sides of your headset, and the radiators, this unstoppable scourge — er, trend — finally makes it to the front panel of your case. We’re quite fond of the colorful flourish on the front, a swooping line of illumination, as though the case has suffered a war wound and is now bleeding pure Las Vegas Strip. And it’s totally programmable and customisable, via a smartly affixed lighting controller at the rear. Three buttons control the speed, color, and mode, of which there are seven. While the RGB functionality is well implemented — and it should be noted that there’s a non-RGB model available, too, if illumination’s not your…

WHO WANTS YOUR PRIVATE DATA? Nathan Taylor reveals the critical whos and whys around internet data harvesting. STOP WEB TRACKERS Nate Drake discovers how to use the Ghostery browser extension and protect your privacy when surfing online. ESSENTIAL DIGITAL PRIVACY SKILLS Up your personal security game with Nathan Taylor’s guide to the 10 key digital privacy skills you need to know in 2018. INCREASE YOUR FACEBOOK SECURITY Ian Evenden tells you how to keep your social life safe online. APPS & SERVICES FOR KEEPING YOUR DIGITAL LIFE PRIVATE Confused about which products actually protect your privacy? Nathan Taylor has rolled up his sleeves and is ready to talk tools. GIVE YOURSELF A GOOGLE PRIVACY CHECK Nathan Taylor’s guide on how to stop the search engine from tracking your online activity.…

Block All This stops cookies from tracking you and is enabled by default. Do this and Ghostery will update its tracker database. Purple Box Open Ghostery’s box at any time by clicking the ellipsis (…) in Microsoft Edge and then on Ghostery App. Restrict Site Blocks all trackers and is enabled by default. Only use this if you’ve previously trusted the site or paused blocking. Pause Ghostery Click to temporarily disable blocking of tracking cookies across all websites. Use only if pages are loading incorrectly. Map These Trackers Requires a Ghostery account. Click to see exactly who is trying to track you and where they are. Trust Site Click this button to allow all trackers on a particular website. You should only do this if a site isn’t loading correctly.…

There’s a lot of concern about online privacy nowadays, particularly on Facebook in the light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which personally identifiable data on over 87 million Facebook users was collected without their consent — if it’s not your friends guessing your password and posting hilarious jokes under your name, it’s the more sinister abuse of your personal information. There are steps you can take against these intrusions, both on Facebook and on the wider web. The latter boils down to making sure your passwords can’t be guessed, worked out through social engineering, or put together from multiple sources. They need to be long, too, so a brute force attack — which tries multiple passwords extremely quickly — takes much longer to work through the permutations. No using…

WINDOWS FILE EXPLORER SLUGGISH When I right-click inside a File Explorer window, it takes around 20-30 seconds to react. Sometimes File Explorer will even crash and then restart. What’s causing this slowdown? Dorothy Anders The likely culprit is a third-party program that’s installed features to the File Explorer context menu. The simplest way to view and manage these is with Nirsoft’s ShellExView (www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html).Download, install and launch the program. Choose Options > Hide All Microsoft Extensions to filter out everything except third-party extensions. Start by pressing Ctrl-A to select them all, then press F7 to disable them. Right-click the Taskbar and choose Task Manager. Highlight File Explorer and click Restart. If — as Dorothy discovered — things immediately improve, you’ll know one of these items is to blame. Re-enable them in…

Updating Windows is an incredibly important part of your day-to-day maintenance, but many people put off the updating experience if they can. This isn’t laziness — Microsoft has quite the reputation for releasing patches before they’re ready for general consumption, and there are horror stories of Windows installations falling over. Despite this, in most circumstances it pays to ensure you’re at least up to date with the latest security hotfixes, so opting out of updates altogether — even where possible — isn’t practical. Let’s see what you can do about ensuring the Windows Update process works with you and not against you. TAKE BACK CONTROL When Microsoft released Windows 10, it took control away from the end user running Windows 10 Home, and now forces updates to be installed as…

Ideally, Windows Update should be virtually invisible, other than alerting you when updates are ready to be installed, and while they’re being configured on startup. We all know better of course. Some Windows updates might require two or three attempts before finally installing, while others may stubbornly refuse to install, full stop. Windows Update might even stop functioning completely, or your PC may suddenly refuse to reboot after you’ve installed the latest updates. So what’s the solution? GENERAL TROUBLESHOOTING If Windows Update refuses to work correctly — for example, it throws up errors when you attempt to install an update or scan for updates, or you’re struggling to install a specific update — start by running the Windows Update troubleshooter to see what it finds: if you use Windows 10…

Securing your Mac’s user account doesn’t have to be an arduous process. There are a few quick and easy tweaks you can do that will make a big difference. If you get locked out of your account, you can reset your password in macOS Recovery. But if you can do that, someone else can too. It’s therefore a good idea to restrict access to Recovery by using a firmware password. To enable that, restart your Mac and hold command-R until you enter macOS Recovery. Click Utilities in the menu bar, then choose Boot Security Utility (sometimes called Firmware Password Utility). Click Turn On Firmware Password, enter a strong password, click Set Password, then restart your Mac. There are plenty of other options at your disposal. For example, it’s a good…

“If you can’t find one, you can use newer USB game pads that are designed to look like controllers for classic systems like the SNES and Mega Drive” The Raspberry Pi Zero is tiny, ridiculously tiny. It’s also small enough to be hidden in a variety of household objects to enhance their capabilities. Whatever you can find to fit it in, you can turn into some kind of smart machine. Take old game controllers. If you’re anything like us you’ve probably got a couple of boxes full of old computer equipment you just can’t bear to throw away — an Atari Jaguar that hasn’t been touched since the ‘90s, a Sega Dreamcast which you’re sure you’ll plug in again one day, an old Xbox that lies languishing since you picked…

Microsoft rumoured to be working on two new consoles Projects Scarlett and Scarlett Cloud are the company’s newest gaming endeavours. While we’re sure Scarlet and Scarlett Cloud won’t be the names plastered across the boxes when they appear on shelves, those are said to be the dev titles for Microsoft’s next Xbox hardware devices. Despite the fact that the Xbox One X (previously known as Scorpio) is still fairly new, it appears that Microsoft is already making plans for its future, although no official announcements have been made yet. Project Scarlett is reportedly the codename for the next major console. In fact, at this year’s E3, Xbox Chief Phil Spencer hinted that the company was working on more than one, stating that “Our hardware team is deep into developing the…

PC, PS4, XO | $99.95 | WWW.JURASSICWORLDEVOLUTION.COM Jeff Goldblum appears in the top-right of the screen and mutters some twaddle about chaos. Chaos? Ha! There’s no chaos here. Our park is running like clockwork, visitor numbers are up, there are six dinosaurs on display, there’s a fast-food joint and a clothes shop boosting our rating and… Oh dear, what’s that thumping sound? Ten minutes later the last transport helicopter lands and we finally close the emergency shelters, having seen our profits plunge and our guests drop like flies. Frontier’s game takes the thrills of management and adds the very real possibility of your exhibits getting loose and killing people. And they’ll get free: the game makes sure of it, despite all your planning and fence-building. Your parks are…

Splicers Adam may have once represented a bright future for Rapture, but it quickly led to disarray after armies of plasmid-infused splicers began to form. Smart, agile and tough in packs, the splicers, once overdosing citizens, are formidable terrors throughout the entirety of BioShock. Big Daddies The Big Daddies were humans surgically grafted into giant diving suits, psychologically compelled to protect the Little Sisters at all costs. Affectionately named “Mr Bubbles” by their wards, if you saw one of these charging at you, you just knew you were in for a tough battle. The world Enclosed in a bathysphere, the world of Rapture was a nightmare in its own right. Rich in detail, the city was used as a vehicle to tell the stories of the citizens long after they…