Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2018 i APC

Realising that this issue of APCwill be the last I ever edit is, frankly, a fairly bittersweet moment. APCis the mag that gave me my first full-time job out of university — I was originally employed as a features writer, but quickly worked my way into the heady word of product testing and benchmarking, and I still derive pleasure from it to this day. Although there were a few other stops on the way, finding my way back to APCand then eventually becoming its steward (a role which I’ve enjoyed for the last six-and-a-bit years) has been a huge privilege. Putting together a magazine every month is a challenge, but it’s also immensely rewarding — and, in the case of APC, it also lets you spend a lot of time…

Microsoft just revealed a 2-in-1 for those on the move—those wanting a Surface with a little less pro, and a little more go. This Surface might have a lot going for it, but there’s only one thing we care about: Can you service it on the go, or will it be stopped in its tracks by tired batteries and shattered screens? Only one way to find out—ready, set, teardown! MAJOR TECH SPECS ■ 10-inch IPS 1800x1200 (217 ppi) multi-touch display ■ Dual-core 1.6GHz Intel Pentium Gold 4415Y processor with integrated Intel HD Graphics 615 ■ 4GB RAM (8GB optional) ■ 64GB eMMC storage (128GB NVMe SSD optional), additional storage via microSDXC ■ 8MP primary camera with 1080p video; 1080p selfie camera ■ Windows 10 in S mode KEY FINDINGS ■…

AMD CPU $1,369 | WWW.AMD.COM Ah, Threadripper, where do we begin? That mad assortment of core complexes, intricately stitched together, was enough to revolutionize the high-end desktop segment last year, rattling Intel to its very bones. AMD truly was onto a winner with its Infinity Fabric, and it provided much-needed proof that multi-die packages are certainly the way forward. So here we are with second-gen Threadripper 2. 12nm transistors, architectural adjustments, memory optimizations, and — more importantly — a bigger product stack. The big question: Is it worth the upgrade? Let’s get to that. First up, there’s the platform. Given the nature of how Threadripper operates, being essentially a run-off, cut-down, consumer-grade variant of AMD’s EPYC server chips, the majority of the I/O lies directly on the processor.…

APPLE LAPTOP FROM $3,499; AS TESTED $6,499 | APPLE.COM/AU Don’t turn the page in horror at the huge price above just yet – the latest 15-inch MacBook Pro doesn’t have to cost nearly the same as an entry-level iMac Pro. That price is for the rather high-end specification that Apple provided for testing. A new feature that might be a big deal if you spend a lot of time writing documents or programming is Apple’s third-generation butterfly keyboard mechanism. It’s marketed as quieter than previous versions. Indeed, we found it less clickety-clacky, which is great if you ever work in a fairly quiet office or public space. Complementing that is True Tone, which adjusts the display’s colour temperature to be easier on the eyes, based on ambient light…

“Curiously, the DSLAC100 doesn’t include baked-in support for WTFast VPN—a special ‘Gaming Private Network’ service that promises to deliver better pings and less packet loss” DSL ROUTER $449 | WWW.ASUS.COM/AU Looking like the front of some kind of cyberpunk muscle-car, Asus’s most-recent 802.11ac router brings together a huge range of features with built-in DSL modem into one family-oriented device. Matching the excellent RT-AC88U ‘s 802.11ac Wi-Fi capabilities (with top 5GHz speeds of 2,167Mbps and 2.4GHz speeds of up to 1,000Mbps), this new unit’s compatible with FTTNbased NBN connections and has a dedicated WAN Ethernet port for hooking up external modems, making it a good choice for those who might be on ADSL now, but eventually migrate to a non-FTTN NBN connection. The real star of the show is…

CONFERENCE CAMERA $1,399 | WWW.LOGITECH.COM If you have a newish laptop or a entry level webcam you’ll successfully be able to hold one-on-one conference calls. If, however, you need to regularly connect groups of people via video feed (and throw presentations into the mix) then there’s a case to be made for hardware that makes it easy for everyone to be seen and heard. The Logitech MeetUp is a high quality camera, microphone and speaker package that is designed to create a seamless online meeting experience for small teams of up to six or eight people. Looking like a fancy consumer soundbar this all-in-one conference cam connects to a PC and a screen to facilitate high quality conferencing without too many moving parts or spaghetti junctions. The device…

GAMING KEYBOARD $159 | WWW.CORSAIR.COM Whoever came up with this grid, which squashes the left-hand functions slightly, yet stretches the main cluster about two thirds of an inch wider than any other standard keyboard, must be a little sadistic. You’ll spend at least your initial hours with the K63 fighting your muscle memory and mistyping. That’s about the only big design mishap here, though. The keys — individually illuminated with blue LEDs, and glowing over a blue base plate — are bright and attractive, with a wide, bold font making the most of the above-switch lighting. The switches themselves are stock Cherry MX Reds, which (for our money) offer one of the best combinations of bite and low noise, though their actuation point is relatively deep, and they…

GRAPHICS CARD $1,899 | WWW.NVIDIA.COM Now we come to the monster in the room. The GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. It’s the gaming card we all want to own, but the question is, at $1,899, can mortals afford it – and is it worth jumping in and getting one now, or waiting for more game support and a price drop? The GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is built around the TU102 GPU, this is the ‘big Turing’ chip and its release is something of a surprise given Nvidia’s recent strategy to delay the big chip until later in the market cycle. Spec wise, it’s a big jump over the outgoing 1080 Ti, with 4,352 Cuda Cores tied up with 68 RT Cores and 544 Tensor Cores. It’s clocked slightly lower…

When it comes to choosing the hardware for your HTPC, unsurprisingly, like the rest of our most prestigious hobby, it’s very easy to get swept up in one of those buying frenzies, and lay down way too much cash for a machine that’s far more powerful than you really need. GTX 1080? Intel Core i7-8700K? 16GB of DDR4? Sure, you could shell out for all that, but unless your use case scenario includes some exceptionally high-end gaming on the side of your entertainment shenanigans, the reality is that it would be total overkill for your requirements. So, then, let’s break it down: What exactly do you need for a home theater PC? Well, the truth of the matter is that media players like Kodi will actually run on everything from…

1 INSTALL WINDOWS You need a full version of Windows on this rig for more compatibility later down the line, and there’s a few important steps to take into consideration. Use the Windows Media Tool [Image A] to create a bootable USB stick with Windows 10, plug it into a USB port on your HTPC machine, enter the BIOS, and direct the boot order at the USB stick. Point the Windows installer at your main SSD drive, and begin the installation process. >> There’s one important thing you need to remember during this HTPC install, and that’s to only create a local account, and one without a password. Remember: This is meant to be a home theater PC, a switch-it-on-and-go machine, as opposed to something more secure that contains potentially…

Having a home theatre PC (HTPC) is an utter delight, allowing you to store thousands of movies and games in a box the size of a DVD player. Hook it up to a bigscreen TV – or even better, a projector as I have – and you’ve suddenly got an incredible new way to view and play your content. There’s just one small problem; how on Earth do you control your box all the way back from your couch? Luckily there are plenty of options. If you’re just using your HTPC for viewing films, a simple keyboard and mouse combination will do the job. There’s two solutions to this. Firstly, a keyboard with integrated track pad, such as the Logitech keyboard reviewed later in this article. Secondly, you can use…

49 | WWW.MICROSOFT.COM At less than fifty dollars, you’ll be hard pressed to find a more affordable solution for controlling your HTPC from the couch. Obviously there are sacrifices to be made when it comes to such a cheap product, but they’re more than bearable if you just need something to control your movies. This wireless keyboard is full sized, and off to the right hand is a small trackpad. Accuracy of this isn’t amazing, but you’ll eventually get your mouse cursor where it needs to be. Obviously this isn’t a mechanical keyboard, using a slightly jankyfeeling rubber dome keyboard mechanism, with very minimal button travel. There’s no wired option, instead using a small USB dongle, but the beauty is that this is also compatible with the smart…

A seasoned hacker will use a huge number of tools to perform reconnaissance, penetration testing, exploitation and data exfiltration. They might have access to exploits for which no patch exists, or spend time coding their own custom payloads. They could have access to a huge network of compromised machines (a botnet) that they could use to DDoS a target, or as a series of proxies to hide behind. At the other end of the spectrum there are your script kiddies, who search the Internet for off-the-shelf exploits (a process that, depending on your search terms and where you click, can be pretty risky), eventually manage to get Kali Linux running, and then indiscriminately bombard machines with exploits. Don’t be a script kiddie: it’s not a good look and it might…

The Taskbar — that long menu that runs along the bottom of your screen and holds various icons, the search bar and Start menu — has been an important part of Windows since all the way back to Windows 95. There was even a very early version of it included in Windows 1.0 in 1985! It’s probably one of the most-used parts of the Windows interface, since it contains some useful features such as the notification area. But, did you know that there’s a lot more you can do with it? If you just use it for quickly jumping between apps or launching the Start menu, then you’re not using it to its full potential. In this Taskbar masterclass, we’ll show you some of the brilliant hidden things the Taskbar…

Apple Macs are very reliable and they often last for many years. In fact, some people have had their Macs for ten years! However, you do need to pay attention to maintenance tasks to keep the hardware and software running. If your Mac is slower than it should be, if adverts appear when they should not, if apps or devices do not work correctly, it could be because of a hidden problem. A health check can identify errors and help you to fix them. Use this guide to check and maintain your Mac. The tests, which range from checking fonts to getting a full diagnostic report from specialist software, are most useful to Macs that are more than a year old and well used.…

When it comes to wireless communication to and from your PC, it’s easy to overlook Bluetooth. Yet its low-power requirements make it ideal for all wireless scenarios, not least hooking up wireless input devices to your PC. Why clutter up your USB ports with wireless adapters for keyboards and mice when you can pair them with Bluetooth, for example? That’s not to say Bluetooth is perfect — far from it, particularly where Linux is concerned. Bluetooth implementation is improving and becoming easier to manage, but it can still fall over at the slightest provocation, particularly when attempting more complex tasks like streaming audio or sending files to and from mobile devices. We’ll not only show you how to get Bluetooth working, but reveal some tricks to help troubleshoot annoying problems…

1 FIRST STEPS Click the network icon button in the top right-corner of the Nicholas’s iPhone Network Gnome desktop and then click the Settings button. Select Bluetooth from the left-hand menu (if it’s not listed, open Terminal and type sudo apt-get install gnomebluetooth to add it). If everything is functioning correctly you should see it searching for devices and listed as visible. 2 PAIR DEVICE Now follow the instructions to put your target Bluetooth device in pairing mode — typically this involves finding and holding a connect button for a certain length of time until the light starts flashing or it appears in the Devices list as ‘Not Set Up’. Click the entry and wait while Ubuntu changes its status to Connected or Disconnected. Click again if it’s disconnected to…

Videogames criticised for being too violent for the Olympics President of the IOC casts doubts over esports. ideogames and esports have been criticised as not being compatible V with the ethos of the Olympic games as they “[promote] violence and discrimination”, according to the head of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach. Speaking to the Associated Press, Bach said that “[s]o-called killer games [...] from our point of view, are contradictory to the Olympic values and cannot therefore be accepted.” Esports have most recently been featured at the Asian Games. Six titles — Arena of Valor, Clash Royale, Hearthstone, League of Legends, Pro Evolution Soccer 2018 and StarCraft 2 (pictured) — were played as a demonstration sport, with plans to have esports promoted to a permanent event in the future.…

PS4, iOS, MAC, PC | USD$12.99 | WWW.DONUTCOUNTY.COM Donut County is delicious. A story-based physics puzzler where you play BK; a raccoon who ostensibly works as a donut store delivery dispatcher. But instead of dispatching donuts he is dispatching holes in order to suck up objects, people and creatures because a) raccoons LOVE to collect trash and b) BK really wants to level up his game and earn a sweet quadcopter. The puzzling is light but enjoyably so. You move the hole with your cursor and if something on the ground above it is small enough it’ll fall in. The more trash you collect, the bigger the hole will get. The game-within-a-game idea works well, and it allows relatively slight gameplay to feel in keeping with the idea…

Camera work Capturing the wildlife and varied species of Hillys is a major part of the game experience. It’s thanks to the camera that you are able to expose the actions of the Alpha Sections with the help of the IRIS network and bring down the DomZ conspiracy. Fluid combat It doesn’t seem like much now, but Jade’s ability to take on multiple enemies at one time in fluid melee combat without the need to lock on to them, and the ability to break off from one to another mid-flow with a little flip or spin, was pretty impressive. Action sequences We often cite the rooftop chase as one of the greatest moments in gaming history, delivering the kind of exciting action set piece that would go on to be…

You need a secondary (not backup) drive if you want to separate data from Windows. If you don’t have one, you can partition your main drive in two to separate Windows and your apps from your documents, photos, portable apps, and any files not directly tied into Windows. It is possible to partition using the Disk Management tool (type diskmgmt. msc into the Run dialog box), but if files are situated at the end of the drive, you won’t be able to partition it to the size you want. Instead, download and install AOMEI Partition Assistant (http://bit.ly/2AXfGuV). Ascertain how you wish to split your drive in two — typically look to allocate 64GB or more of space for your Windows partition, depending on the number of apps and games you…

When you hive off your data to a separate partition or drive, you may have issues accessing your user folders after reinstalling Windows. That’s because they’re ‘owned’ by your current user account, and when you reinstall Windows, you’ll end up creating a new user account, even if it’s identical to your old one. In most cases, when you first try to access one of these folders – when you point Windows toward them, say – you’re told access is denied, but are prompted to click Continue to gain permanent access. This usually resolves the issue, adding your current user account to the list of users who have been permitted access. If this fails, you need to manually take control of the folder. Right-click it, and choose Properties, then the Security…

Back in June, Microsoft announced that it was moving away from development of any new virtual reality or mixed reality headsets for the Xbox to concentrate on PC platforms. The reason the tech giant cited at the time was that the technology wasn’t quite there yet, sparking rumours that VR was dying. In addition to that, there’s the price tag on the mainstream headsets, plus the lack of game development in the sector, and it’s hard to convince naysayers that virtual reality is here to stay. However, VR companies are doing their best to make VR more accessible to the first-time user. Facebook-owned Oculus has begun donating Rift and Go headsets to museums and schools, while developments in ‘consumer VR’, driven by the mobile sector, are making it easier for…

“When I attempted to useTor browser, the Westpac system, after presuming that the log-on was an overseas ‘hack, denied further access until I had re-set my password through the call centre and explained my actions. ” THE BEST WEB BROWSER FOR BANKING In last month’s privacy feature, Nathan Taylor recommends the Epic Privacy Browser for banking (see APC 459, page 48). My experience with Tor browser and Westpac suggests otherwise and it probably applies to Epic’s Encryptic Proxy setting too, although I have not tried it. I do like the browser, though, and have set it as default already — but not for banking with that EEP setting turned on. When I attempted to use Tor browser, the Westpac system, after presuming that the log-on was an overseas ‘hack’, denied…

MOTHERBOARD $249 | WWW.ASUS.COM/AU On the surface, the Asus TUF X470-Plus Gaming looks to be a low-end board with Asus branding slapped onto it. Fortunately, the frugal facade is misleading, as this TUF motherboard performs quite well, making it a good overall product and a great foundation for an AMDbased TUF Alliance gaming build. Asus hopes to create a combined family of brands with the TUF Gaming Alliance, which the company officially unveiled at Computex 2018. Being the focal point to the alliance (and the original home of the TUF branding), Asus is, in some ways, putting its reputation on the line with the TUF brand. The back panel of the TUF board is efficient -- to put it nicely. Asus has gone out of its way to…

APPLE LAPTOP FROM $2,699; AS TESTED, $5,599 | APPLE.COM/AU Apple’s redesign of the MacBook Pro in 2016 was divisive for several reasons. For some, nothing but Thunderbolt 3 ports and a continued lack of a discrete graphics processor is a pain in the proverbial. For others, smaller and lighter without stepping down to the less capable 12-inch MacBook or 13-inch Air is a bonus. As with the 15-inch, Apple supplied us with a fullyspecced model (Core i7, 16GB RAM, 2TB SSD) for review. So what’s changed since 2017? As on the 15-inch, the improved, quieter keyboard is here, and arguably more important at this smaller size, as it’s popular among students, writers and office types. Likewise for the True Tone display. When you need to focus on a…

“Out of the box, the 436M6 packs an intriguing feature set. It’s one of the first PC monitors to be granted full VESA DisplayHDR 1000 certification” HDR MONITOR $969 | WWW.PHILIPS.COM .AU Converting an HDTV into a large-scale PC monitor—which is basically what Philips has done with the 43-inch 436M6—isn’t a new idea, but nor is it necessarily a bad one. In the 1080p era, HDTV conversions had limited appeal; a 2K pixel grid stretched over 40-plus inches of LCD panel made for big, fat, ugly pixels. Today’s UHD or 4K sets, however, have plenty when it comes to pixels. TV tech of late also matches or beats the best monitors in other areas. Thanks to broad adoption of various HDR standards in the mainstream TV market, wider…

PRINTER $799.99 | EPSON.COM Epson’s SureColor SC-P600 is designed for both enthusiast and pro photographers looking for a high-end home printing solution to produce up to A3+ (329x483mm) prints. The SC-P600 uses Epson’s premium UltraChrome HD inks, and packs in nine cartridges. The Epson SureColor SC-P600 is all about print quality, and outputs at a resolution of 5,760dpi. If you want, it can rattle out a large A3+ in about two minutes and 30 seconds, although if you want to use fine-art media and want the best possible quality, you can expect that print time to double. In addition to A3 paper, a range of smaller sizes are supported. There’s also the option to print professional-quality labels directly onto inkjet-printable CDs/DVDs (if that’s still a thing), while the…

EXTERNAL STORAGE $118, 120GB; $175, 240GB; $299, 480GB | VERBATIM.COM.AU The latest external SSD to arrive at APC Towers is this slimline stick that’s pretty Mac-like, with its metal body and gentle curves. The design is attractive and the USB-C port supports USB 3.1 Gen 2 connection to PCs and Macs that are capable of that (theoretical) 10Gbps bandwidth. Verbatim quotes up to 500MB/s when reading data and 430MB/s when riting, but our testing revealed that’s an understatement. On our Late 2016 MacBook Pro, the drive hit peak read and write rates of 536.6 and 475.9MB/s. Its mean average rates of 447.4 and 390.8MB/s are also good, better than some SSDs we’ve tested, though a few (non-RAID) rivals –including CalDigit’s Tuff SSD and Samsung’s T5 – beat it…

AnyTrans Sync data between your iPhone and Mac iTunes-free. US$39.99 | IMOBIE.COM  iTunes, somewhat justifiably, gets a bad rap for trying to do too much, and Apple has only made half-hearted strides at correcting this situation since 2005, when things got complicated after video support was bolted onto version 4.8. No wonder third-party developers have carved out a niche around transfer and backup of iOS devices — without forcing you to delve into iTunes. AnyTrans is one such utility, and if you can overlook the un-Mac-like interface, there’s a lot to love about this jack of all trades. We should mention you will need a Mac to use this on your iOS device. Short of directly adding content to an existing library (you’ll still need to use iTunes…

Here we go! The biggest PC component launch of the year is upon us. The reveal of a new graphics architecture is always exciting and this one represents one of the biggest ground-up overhauls in recent memory. Nvidia’s Pascal cards have long been excellent, but gamers have been itching to get their hands on a new generation for a long time. That time is now. Nvidia’s GeForce RTX series is initially represented by the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti. New GPUs tend be chock full of new technologies, but this one is something different. Nvidia’s synonymous GTX branding goes all the way back to 2005, so the change to RTX branding is something of a seismic shift from the green team. The Turing GPUs at the heart of the…

$449.95 | WWW.LOGITECH.COM Logitech may say that this kit is easy to set up, but don’t be fooled. It’s comprised of the main universal remote, the Harmony Hub, twin mini-IR blasters, and two AC adaptors. If all of your devices are Wi-Fi compatible, then it’s not a problem, but if they need infra-red remotes, then you’ll need to place the mini-blasters in sight of their receivers. You end up with a lot of cables running all over the place. Then there’s the actual programming of the remote. For the most part it’s simple, using the online app to plug in the name of each of your devices, but every now and then it would mis-map a button. One benefit though is that the remote itself has a backlit…

$259 | WWW.RAZER.COM Yes, that price is correct. Almost $300 for a controller does seem very excessive to us, but Razer has never been coy about slapping high prices on its best products. But does a simple game control pad justify such a whopping price tag? In our opinion, not really, no matter how impressive this controller is. Compatible with both PC and PS4, the Raiju can be connected either wirelessly or via USB, depending on just how much you value extremely low latency. Razer claims a battery life of 19 hours in wireless mode. Helping to make responsiveness even crisper is the new “Hair-trigger” mode. By tapping the large square pad on the top, it makes the triggers respond with the lightest of touches. It is noticeable…

CONTROLLING YOUR HTPC WITH AN AI SMART ASSISTANT $199 | STORE.GOOGLE.COM It might cost $50 more, but Google’s Home definitely has a more mature feel to the setup software than the Echo. The voice recognition also appears to work much better than the Echo, only occasionally creeping us out by suddenly activating Spotify when I was mid-conversation with a friend. This is likely because Google has had more time to develop recognition of the Australian accent than Amazon. One huge benefit that Home has over Alexa is that it’s compatible with Google’s Chromecast solution, which is built into most modern smart TVs, or can be bought for about $40. This makes it much easier to setup to control your HTPC or TV, but again we did find it…

When a machine becomes compromised, it’s often through the front door. Either someone’s password was obtained or that machine was misconfigured to enable guests to do much more than they should. Passwords can be pilfered through keyloggers, social engineering or because they were re-used from a compromised site (so-called password dumps are easy to find if you know where to look). Typical misconfiguration errors include leaving default accounts open and setting overly permissive permissions on files and services. If these were the only kind of hacks then life would be a little simpler, but of course they’re not. Often a program or service running on the machine is tricked into doing something it’s not supposed to do, or breaking in a particular way, which can enable the attacker to access…

By now most people are aware of the run-of-the-mill, tech-support phone scams where marks are tricked into giving remote access to a caller, who can then install keyloggers and harvest bank details, passwords or address books to use in further attacks. However, other forms of attack are possible. For example, in the attack on Reddit’s servers reported at the beginning of August 2018, attackers were able to defeat SMS-based two-factor authentication (2FA) on admin’s accounts, partly by known weaknesses in the cellular network, and partly through Verification Code Forwarding Attacks (VCFA). By sending a legitimate-looking message that asks the user to resend the 2FA token sent by the provider, the attackers get access. Social attacks are much more efficacious the more is known about the victim. Criminals will often spend…

We’re short on space and don’t like spoiling surprises, so we’ll leave most of the vulnerability discovery and exploitation to you. However, to whet your appetites, let’s have a look at that IRC daemon that’s running on port 6697. If you have a nosey around the Metasploitable VM (in the /opt/unrealircd/ directory), you’ll find that we’re running a version of the Unreal IRC daemon from the 3.2 series. That’s a little bit like cheating, but if you want to be proper about this connect to the virtual machine with any old IRC client and you’ll find we’re running 3.2.8.1. It so happens that this particular version of this shipped with a backdoor (CVE-02010-2075), and it so happens that Metasploit has a module for exploiting said backdoor. To launch it and…

1 PIN YOUR FAVOURITE APPS When you open an application, you’ll see its icon appear on the Taskbar. Clicking the logo brings the application to the forefront of your desktop so you can swap between your open applications. You can also ‘pin’ the applications you use the most to your Taskbar. This keeps their icons on the Taskbar, even when the apps are closed. Right-click an icon and select ‘Pin to taskbar’. 2 SEARCH STRAIGHT FROM THE TASKBAR One of the new additions to the Taskbar in Windows 10 is the search box on the left side, next to the Start menu. Click in the search box and start typing what you want to look for. This could be a file or folder on your PC, an app you want…

“NagiosPi is available as a full image ready to be written to SD card, with the real configuration taking place once it’s up and running. ” Is your PC offline? Has your Linux box stopped serving Minecraft or Counter-Strike? If you’re out of the house, or even the country, there is no real way of knowing without trying to log in — something you probably won’t be able to do without being on the premises (unless you’re using remote desktop software, but we’re not here to talk about that, today). A far better way would be to simply receive notifications when your network devices are knocked offline, and this is why we turn to NagiosPi, a Raspberry Pi-built version of the popular open source network monitoring tool. NagiosPi is available…

Our new Digital Audio Player project we introduced last month is based on the unusual combination of microSD card reader, the excellent Texas Instruments’ PCM5102A digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and the popular ESP8266 Wi-Fi microcontroller unit (MCU). We make use of the ESP8266’s inter-integrated sound (I2S) interface to create a player with near-CD quality (92dB SNR, 0.003% THD). This month, we’ve re-engineered the project source code to crank up the audio quality into ‘hi-res’ class, supporting 16-bit stereo WAV files with up to 192kHz sample rate and long-file names. ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS Our project makes use of a range of different code libraries but two are crucial for our version 2.0 of this project – ‘SdFat’ by Bill Greiman and ‘ESP8266Audio’ by Earle Philhower III. The SdFat library gives…

“A richly-populated world offers countless things to do” PS4 | $94.95 | PLAYSTATION.COM While there’s been no shortage of games starring everyone’s favorite web-slinging spider-guy over the last decade and a half, very few have come close to matching the vertigo-inducing heights of 2002’s Spider-Man 2 — the first game to absolutely nail the sensation of swinging through an open-world New York setting. In the trusted hands of Ratchet and Clank-developer Insomniac Games, Spider-Man has finally received a game that’s as polished and cinematic as the beloved character deserves. When we meet up with Peter Parker in Spider-Man, he’s no longer the green teenager we’ve come to expect from traditional portrayals of the character. Aside from holding down a real job as a scientist (you might be surprised…

PC, PS4, XO, SWITCH | $79 | BANNERSAGA.COM We should all take a second to sit back and appreciate how solid an achievement it is for the dev to complete The Banner Saga 3, rounding off the tale of Vikings, the Darkness, witches and wonder as it does. This doesn’t really happen too often in video games. If you’re returning to the series, you will be able to import your old saves and carry on with all decisions intact, but if you’ve decided to jump in at the third game, you are able to choose a hero and go through all of the major decisions from the previous two games, picking your options as you go. The story is told from multiple viewpoints just like last time, although…

Pornhub introduces closed captions [Erotic moaning intensifies] Audio descriptions mean everyone can ‘have what she’s having’. While not everyone will appreciate Pornhub’s introduction of closed captioning for audio that is generally manifest, the company stated that it wanted to offer an inclusive environment for the many hearing impaired intending to use its service. Pornhub said the captioning was undertaken by humans to help those unable to hear the original audio: determine who is talking, highlight important sounds and detect any change in emotion [Naughty voice]. Whilst the company isn’t one to hold back form potential PR exposure, it’s an outcome that can’t hurt for the many millions of people worldwide suffering from various forms of hearing loss. Security unstuck: how stickers are a serious security threat WELL THIS IS A…

If you want full control, then it’s possible to create the ultimate customised install media. But be warned: It’s for technically-proficient PC users only. Download and install the free version of NTLite from www.ntlite.com. Once set up, launch the app. The simplest way to use it is in conjunction with a previously created installation USB flash drive — with that plugged in, click Add to select the drive containing your Windows install files. The OS should appear in the list — click it to mount it. Once the source has been added, several options appear down the left-hand side of the NTLite window. Start with Components — read the warning — it’s a good idea to test your customised Windows install in a virtual environment, such as VirtualBox, as advised…

ACCC warns Aussie telcos not to mislead customers with “unlimited” data plans The sky is not the limit; 1.5Mbps is. The latest trend among Australian telcos has been to offer “unlimited” data mobile plans, but it’s a move that’s now led Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) chairman Rod Sims to officially warn the companies not to mislead customers with the terminology. The issue that the Commission found with plans from Optus, Vodafone and Telstra is that their respective “unlimited” plans did, indeed, pose some limits on customers. The plan from Optus restricted speeds to 1.5Mbps when tethering, streaming and downloading (in other words, pretty much everything except for light browsing), while Telstra and Vodafone both imposed the same throttled 1.5Mbps download rate once the user had surpassed a data…

MAVIC 2 PRO AND MAVIC 2 ZOOM Two bird’s-eye views, one drone. PRO $2,299, ZOOM $1,999 | STORE.DJI.COM DJI flew in under the radar with a pair of high-end consumer drones this year, to give loyal air cinematographers a choice of unique capabilities. The Mavic 2 Pro features a Hasselblad camera with adjustable aperture (f/2.8-f/11) that gives it unparalleled depth of field and a 20-megapixel sensor for 10-bit HDR colour support and superior lighting. Its wingman on the other hand, the Mavic 2 Zoom, is the first foldable drone to offer optical zoom, alongside a speedy autofocus, and 12-megapixel photos that can be automatically stitched together to create a detailed 48-megapixel image. Both naturally shoot in 4K (at 100Mbps) and feature new 360º obstacle avoidance. JB FITBIT CHARGE…

For better or for worse, memes are part of the fabric of the internet. No matter what form they take, whether as a video, image or just as a concept, younger generations might have difficulty imagining a time when every event or phenomenon wasn’t parsed by the logic of internet pop culture references. Memes tend to rely heavily on pre-existing media: for example, a short looping video of Homer Simpson retreating into a hedge (with a panicked look in his eyes) is frequently used to express shock over a given topic. Footage from an Old El Paso commercial featuring a young girl suggesting her family give up choosing and have both (best known as “Why not both? girl”), is often used to humorously suggest combining two options. And so on.…

“There’s a dearth of ports on the Swift 7. To be fair, there just isn’t much room for them. ” ULTRABOOK $1,439 | WWW.ACER.COM Acer says its Swift 7 is one of the thinnest laptop in the world, and the design is incredibly impressive and almost impossibly sleek, it gets long long battery life and offers 4G LTE capability, but there are myriad trade-offs to consider. For one, it’s so thin that you can’t click on the touchpad -- it feels like an awkward dead slab of glass that takes getting used to. The keyboard is missing the function row, and actions are mapped to keys you wouldn’t expect. The 13.3-inch, 1080p display on the Swift 7 is surrounded by a noticeable but inoffensive bezel. But the webcam…

“A single large fan at the bottom of the unit ensures the GPU runs cool under load but doesn’t sound like a jet engine” GRAPHICS CARD $1,149 | WWW.BLACKMAGICDESIGN.COM Thanks to the immense computing power of modern graphics cards, using them to accelerate tasks in professional creative applications is becoming a popular way to increase workflow performance. Unfortunately, the simultaneous trend of thin and light laptops that simply can’t pack a beefy GPU inside without spontaneously combusting mean those popular devices miss out on the magic of GPU acceleration. Blackmagic’s new eGPU bridges that gap — allowing any Mac with a Thunderbolt 3 port to enjoy the processing power a full-blown GPU brings. The eGPU is what it says it is — an external GPU. Blackmagic chose an…

EXTERNAL STORAGE 50GB, $629; 1TB, $1,099; 2TB, $2,199 WWW.SAMSUNG.COM/AU With portable SATA SSDs now almost at commodity level, the next step up to dramatically increase speed is to move to the NVMe protocol. In essence this is a Samsung 970 Evo feeding through one of Intel’s Alpine Ridge Thunderbolt 3 controllers to connect directly to the PCIe bus. It comes pre-formatted using exFAT to maintain compatibility between Mac and Windows machines. It is not waterproof or resistant, it does, however use magnesium for its case which is strong yet light. Inside, most of the weight is taken up by the SSD’s heatsink, which, along with adaptive throttling Samsung call Dynamic Thermal Guard, keep the case temperature below 45°. In our testing the drive maintained sequential write speeds of…

WIRELESS GAMING MOUSE $249 | LOGITECH.COM We have reviewed, praised and criticised countless wireless gaming mice over the years, and our current favourite is the excellent Logitech G703 (see APC 446, page 33). Friends, we have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that the king is basically dead: the G703 is no longer our ultimate favourite. The good news? The crown has been passed to the new G Pro Wireless Gaming Mouse. This stripped-back mouse takes everything we loved about the G703 and basically dumps anything you don’t need (like on-the-fly DPI switching and options to use smoothing or acceleration), keeps the top-notch Lightspeed wireless tech and Hero sensor combo, and chucks it all into a simple-but-svelte body that’s suitable for both lefties…

GRAPHICS CARD $1,199 | WWW.NVIDIA.COM Now that we’ve gone over some of the key highlights of the RTX series, it’s time to take a look at the cards themselves, starting with the RTX 2080. The GeForce RTX 2080 is based around the Turing TU104 GPU. It packs in 2,944 CUDA Cores, 46 RT Cores, and 368 Tensor Cores. The Founders Edition comes with a 1,800MHz boost clock, which Nvidia claims is a 90MHz overclock over the base GPU specification. In reality we’d expect these clocks to be the real world base specification. There’s also 8GB of 14Gbps GDDR6 memory, which combined with its 256-bit bus width, means it has 448GB/s of available memory bandwidth. This is big jump from the 320GB/s of the 1080. The PCB itself sees…

Take your mind back for a moment. The year is 2007, Steve Jobs has just announced the iPhone, the Sydney Harbour Bridge celebrates its 75th birthday, the PlayStation 3 is brand new, and Windows Vista has now been out for two whole months. Microsoft’s operating system brought with it a hefty installation size, a ton of unnecessary resource-consuming processes, and — more importantly for us — access to the Windows Media Center across all of the various editions of the flagship OS. For the first time (outside of the Windows XP Media Center Edition OS, of course), there was an intuitively designed, integrated user interface developed specifically for simpler input methods, such as a remote control, and baked directly into the operating system itself. This is arguably the one thing…

$99.95 | WWW.LOGITECH.COM In case the name hasn’t given it away, Logitech’s latest multimedia keyboard is specifically designed to also work with SmartTVs, so you don’t even need a HTPC. There’s a huge list of compatible TVs on the official site (www.logitech.com/en-us/promo/k600-tv/smart-tv-compatibilitychecker.html) , but basically all of the models from the bigger companies that are less than two years old will work with this keyboard. There’s a heap of macro keys on the left of the keyboard for common TV and PC features, as well as full volume controls. But what we love most are the two disks on the right hand side. The larger of the two acts as a touch pad, and it’s super accurate. It includes gesture controls, so you can slide through web pages…

$89.95 | STORE.STEAMPOWERED.COM Don’t get me wrong, but getting used to the Steam controllers unique touchpads does take some work. Rather than use analogue sticks to control the onscreen action, it has two huge circular touchpads. It’s designed first and foremost for gaming, but the unique touch pads means it can also control a mouse cursor. Each of the control pads has haptic feedback so you can feel exactly where you’re touching it. As well as the usual plethora of buttons, there are two large buttons on the back, and the extremely versatile software allows you to map any of the buttons to whatever you want. In fact, most games have unique profiles for this controller, tuned by the community or developer to get the most accurate result.…

$145 | WWW.AMAZON.COM.AU This is basically Amazon’s answer to the Google Home speaker. Like its competitor, it’s a standalone Wi-Fi speaker with a built-in microphone. As such you’ll need to connect it to a Wi-Fi network, as the voice recognition is done over the cloud, and not internally on the device. There’s one caveat to this device though; unless your TV directly supports it, and the list of these isn’t huge, you’ll need another TV controlling device such as Logitech’s Harmony Hub to actually control your Home Theatre. And even then, it’s not the greatest experience. While it can fire up apps like Netflix, actually navigating through these apps using your voice is rather painful. It’s not just that the Echo’s voice recognition is a little iffy; you…

We think having vulnerabilities and proof-of-concept exploits out in the open is, despite various straw man arguments to the contrary, A Good Thing. However, if you’re a pentester (or dream of being one) and want to test a target machine for several vulnerabilities, then unfortunately you’re in for a bit of a rough ride. Proof of Concept (PoC) code will probably require some customisation and dependencies to be installed before it works. For memory-related vulnerabilities, code will need to be compiled, too. In addition, there’s all the rigmarole of trawling through mailing lists to get the code in the first place. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone had some sort of library of exploits and some sort of framework for uniformly launching them? Well, dear reader, such a thing exists,…

Ever since people began connecting their PHP applications to SQL databases, there have been SQL injection attacks. These exploit unchecked — sanitise everything — user inputs, typically in web forms, to make it possible for the attacker to run arbitrary SQL queries. The classic example is to input something like ‘; DROP TABLE users; into the username field form. If the PHP code behind that form generated an SQL query in a manner such as: then if the $user variable is substituted with our poisoned input we end up with two SQL queries for the price of one: And then our “users” table disappears in a puff of unsanitised input. The reason this works (in reality it should not work in any places because PHP no longer allows SQL statements…

WINDOWS QUICK ASSIST ALTERNATIVE I read with interest your guide to Quick Assist in the February issue (OWV). My parents have Windows 8.1, so Quick Assist isn’t an option. What else can I try instead? Tommy Elphick Try Remote Assistance instead — both you and your parents should press Win-Pause/Break to bring up the System Control Panel, then click ‘Remote settings’ and verify ‘Allow Remote Assistance connections to this computer’. Now type ‘remote assistance’ into the search box or charm — press Win-Q in Windows 8.1 to bring this up — and follow the prompts to either give or receive remote assistance, using the Easy Connect option when prompted. Another option — which would enable you to access their PC without them having to ask for assistance — is TeamViewer…

CHECK THE POST Open System Information in Utilities and then select Diagnostics on the left. It shows the result of POST (Power On Self Test) and it should say ‘Passed’. Investigate if it does not. REMOVE BAD FONTS Use Font Book to check the health of the fonts installed in macOS because there are sometimes bad ones that are corrupted. Verify all fonts, select the ones with errors and then remove them. SCAN FOR MALWARE Viruses are rare but the Mac can get adware and other irritations. Scan the Mac using Intego VirusBarrier Scanner once a month just to check that everything is okay. Delete any bad apps. ACTIVITY MONITOR Is your Mac hot? Is it unresponsive? Open Activity Monitor and select the CPU, Memory and Disk tabs to see…

But if you want full control of your Bluetooth setup and devices, install bluemanmanager $ sudo apt-get install blueman This provides more of everything, but requires a bit more work with certain features. That said, you get more detail about each connected device including signal strength and transmit level, plus a wider range of options such as being able to mark devices as trusted or untrusted, making it easier or harder for them to connect as required. Choose View > Local Services > Transfer and you can tweak the settings for receiving files from Bluetooth devices. This includes changing the folder that files are saved to by default, and automatically accepting files from trusted devices. Switch to the Network tab and you can set up your PC as a Network…

“If you choose to connect throughTor, your connection is encrypted and passed through a number of proxies through a process known as ‘onion routing. ” In this age of ubiquitous surveillance it’s harder than ever to stop hackers, advertisers and shadowy government organisations from snooping on your browsing habits. However if you choose to connect through Tor, your connection is encrypted and passed through a number of proxies through a process known as ‘onion routing’. While this does slow down your connection, it also increases your privacy, making it extremely difficult to trace your actual current location. Follow the steps in this tutorial to turn your Pi into a wireless AP (Access Point) named Onion_Pi. Any devices connecting to Onion_Pi will do so over the Tor network. When you’re done,…

Ask any 10 machine-learning engineers or data scientists their favourite language for doing machine-learning and you’ll likely get half-a-dozen answers. You’ll get votes for Google’s TensorFlow, votes for Java, even Excel has its fans. But the two languages that always seem to float to the top of any poll are Python and R. Just prior to our new machine-learning masterclass, we recently wrapped up a couple of years looking at Python programming in our ‘Learn to code Python’ masterclass. But while Python is an excellent general-purpose language that covers many bases, R is much more focussed towards statistics and machine-learning. It’s fast, it has some very clever features and if you’re seriously interested in machine-learning, at least understanding the basics of the language must feature somewhere on your bucket list.…

PC, PS4, XO | FROM $79 | WWW.CODEMASTERS.COM/GAME/F1-2018 Working to an annual deadline, it’s testament to the developer’s talents that the series has maintained, by and large, a high standard worthy of the licence. But that licence is a double-edged sword: over in the real sport, Lewis Hamilton has been a blur of Petronas logos for what feels like ages, drivers are openly bemoaning the tedium of racing, and the most discernable change of the 2018 season is the reviled ‘halo’ protector. What F1 2018 does in response to this bag of lemons, knowing that its fundamental handling was stellar in F1 2017 and in need of very little revision, is focus on its career mode. Press interviews return, having debuted in F1 2010, this time bringing RPG-like…

DEVELOPER: UBISOFT | PUBLISHER: UBISOFT | RELEASED: 11 NOV 2003 SYSTEM: PS2, PC, XBOX, GAMECUBE “Not all game-changers are major successes. Alas, sometimes even time doesn’t necessarily prove their final quality, but somehow, against the odds and their own nature they help to shape the future of games, and become a must-play experience for the impact they ultimately had on all that follows. Beyond Good & Evil is one such game. “With so much of the world and style of Beyond Good & Evilbeing so outlandish, it is Jade who grounds the experience” Michel Ancel’s ambitious adventure had its issues and it would be fair to say that time has not been kind in some respects, but the ripples its release sent out through the industry cannot be denied. Ancel…

Long bootup times and sluggish performance are just two of the tell-tale signs that your Windows installation is in need of a complete do-over — especially if you haven’t done so for a couple of years. That was certainly the case with one of the desktop PCs in the APC office — despite having 16GB of RAM, a fast SSD boot drive and a quad-core processor on board, Windows took what seemed like an age to get going and its overall performance simply wasn’t what it was. Unsurprising, really: Since we last wiped the drive, we’d installed three major Windows 10 updates — the Anniversary Edition, the Creators Update and the Fall Creators Update and Windows had ballooned to an immodest 90GB of drive space. It was obviously time for…

Creating a fresh install of Windows is often seen as the ultimate solution to any problem — whether it’s hardware, software or Windows install-related. However, completely reinstalling Windows may be overkill if the problem is simply with Windows itself. If your PC is functioning perfectly other than in specific instances — such as Microsoft Edge no longer working after the Fall Creators Update, for example — a repair install may be a better option. Repair installs simply overwrite the Windows files on your machine — leaving your apps, programs (including settings), and any data on your system drive untouched, at least in theory. Performing a repair install varies between each version of Windows, but each procedure shares one common characteristic: You have to be able to boot into Windows to…