Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2019 i APC

Despite the ‘PC’ in the ‘APC’ title of this magazine, we’re not focussed entirely on the home computer – especially in its stereotypical Windows format. But you know that already. Ever since issue one of APC we’ve covered not just the PC, but the things that revolve around the PC nexus. Today that includes thing like smartphones, the fabulous Raspberry Pi, and even machine learning tutorials from Darren Yates. There’s a whole lot of Linux and Mac. Yet despite this diversity we get the occasional email slamming us for covering Windows 10. Which is obviously remarkably odd and I certainly don’t need to explain why this predominantly PC magazine devotes space to the latest version of the most common OS. But the emails come, and sometimes they’re angry. Not at…

$14.4 BILLION AMOUNT OF MONEY THAT APPLE HAS PAID TO THE IRISH GOVERNMENT IN BACK TAXES AND INTEREST. Following an EU court case, The EU argued that a ‘sweetheart’ deal between the Irish government and Apple was illegal, and gave the iPhone maker an unfair competitive advantage. 16 NUMBER OF HYDROGEN-POWERED TRAINS THAT SHOULD BE RUNNING ON GERMANY’S NATIONAL RAIL NETWORK BY 2021. The first two trains, made by Alstom, are already in service on the Cuxhaven-Buxtehude line in the north of the country. An electro-hybrid train, powered by batteries, is already in service near the capital, Berlin. 80,000 NUMBER OF TONS OF PLASTIC IN THE GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH BEING TARGETED BY THE OCEAN CLEANUP PROJECT. The aim is to use a high tech, U-shaped boom, dubbed the Ocean…

SPEAK UP This larger speaker is 50 per cent louder than the previous model and uses a silicone gasket to keep the water out. DISPLAY This OLED display extends close to the edge of the glass, and the deep blacks blend right into the background. CASING The casing has been redesigned to be thinner and more accessible, so your new Watch is easier to repair if it breaks. DIGITAL CROWN This dial now clicks slightly as you turn it for improved feedback, and you touch it to use the ECG system. BATTERY The battery in the new Watch is actually smaller than the old one, but it still manages around 18 hours between charges. HEART SENSORS The back panel contains the wireless charging ring, as well as the electric ring…

LAPTOP FROM $2,799 | WWW.STORE.HP.COM Without leather it would be impossible to tell a really important book from the latest Mills and Boon, we wouldn’t have anywhere to store our money, we couldn’t hold up our trousers, we wouldn’t have chapps and if HP had its way, we wouldn’t have laptops either. So integral is the leather folio to the professional convertible that HP have chosen to literally glue beef-skin to its latest 2-in-1. And while this may mean HP’s latest device has to endure being called names like the MeatBook, gluing your folio case to the laptop isn’t always as bad as it seems. The Spectre Folio’s 13.3-inch touchscreen display has a magnetically mounted pivot point in the middle of its back that allows you to use…

COOLING $249 | WWW.ASUS.COM.AU Asus’ ROG brand might be best associated with motherboards and graphics cards, but that’s changing as the company branches out into other areas. We saw the Asus Ryuo and Ryujin CPU coolers on display at Computex and we’ve been itching to get our hands on them ever since. The key differentiating feature of the Ryuo 240 is the 1.77 inch OLED display placed atop the block. It’s fully customizable and allows you to show off your own animations or pictures, or it can show real time monitoring information. The LiveDash control software is easy to use too. There’s a splash of RGB lighting around the aluminium shrouded block. It really looks amazing and it demands to be shown off in a tempered glass case.…

CPU TBA $2700+ | WWW.INTEL.COM.AU The core wars are in full swing. AMD may be in front thanks to its recently released 24- and 32-core Threadripper models, but multi core power isn’t the be all and end all. Intel’s 9th generation Skylake-X refresh promises a good blend of multi-threaded grunt combined with aggressive turbo modes and strong clock for clock performance. We’ve got the flagship 18 core i9 -9980XE on hand, which on paper is a very powerful processor indeed. “Intel’s 9th generation Skylake-X refresh promises a good blend of multi-threaded grunt combined with aggressive turbo modes and strong clock for clock performance” With 10nm processors nowhere in sight, Intel has no choice but to continue to refine its 14nm process technology. The 9980XE appears to be right…

SSD US$3,240 | WWW.INTEL.COM Déjà vu all over again? Yup, it’s another Optane drive from Intel. It’s an intriguing contradiction that Optane has us at one and the same time wondering how on earth the company can put out yet another spin on its Optane product line so soon, and also considering whether, with this particular drive, Optane is finally going to absolutely, unambiguously deliver on its immense hypothetical promise. Enter the Intel Optane 905p. As the name suggests, it’s a refresh of the 900p premium consumer product. That makes it either a second or third-generation 3D Xpoint technology implementation, depending on how you look at it. Whatever, as the tech matures, expectations harden. A little leeway is inevitable for a radical new technology, but Optane has been…

NETWORKING $799 | QNAP.COM Ten gigabit Ethernet (aka 10GbE or 10GBASE-T) has been around for a while but has been mostly relegated to the data centre due to cost. In the last few years 10GbE has trickled down to small businesses, but is still confined to the server cupboard due to expense and noise. With the new QNAP QSW-1208-8C switch, 10GbE might finally be ready for the prosumer’s home office. Let’s start off with the QSW-1208-8C’s price – $799. There’s not much on the market that comes even close. Many other network switches contain two or even four 10GbE ports, but 12 ports for under $800? Nice work QNAP! The closest competitor would be the Netgear XS708T, which retails for just under $1,000. Unlike Netgear’s XS708T however, QNAP’s…

With the new year fast approaching, building a new PC is sure to be high on a lot of people’s to-do lists – it’s a good summer project, and it’s important to refresh occasionally. Maybe you’ve already picked out your preferred graphics card, thought about a new monitor, figured out roughly how much your budget is, what specs you’ll need, and what you’re use it to run. But when building the PC of your dreams, it’s important not to overlook the case you house everything in. The ideal case won’t just comfortably hold everything you need to run the latest games – it’ll offer proper ventilation and cooling, it’ll be made from high quality materials, and it’ll look the part. You want a case that looks right at home if…

One of the biggest bottlenecks holding back any PC is the person sat right in front of it. In a perfect world we’d all use our machines as efficiently as possible, learning best-practice techniques from the get-go, while avoiding bad habits. But, we’re human, and the irony is that we make compromises in the short term to make things easier only for them to have the opposite effect in the longer term. But who wants to relearn everything from scratch? Instead, why not make one more compromise – one that will actually have benefits for you in the long as well as the short term? That compromise is to work your way through the tips in this feature – you’ll find 60 in the main copy, plus 40 additional shortcuts…

Let’s start by checking that System Restore is enabled (it’s switched off every time Windows 10 performs a major update). Type system restore into Cortana’s search box and then choose ‘Create a restore point’. Check your system drive – if it’s off, select it and click Configure… Choose ‘Turn on system protection’, then set the slider to 5GB or five percent of available space before clicking OK. Worried that Windows Update might suddenly attempt to reboot without warning while you’re using your PC? Click Settings > ‘Update & security’ and choose ‘Change active hours’ under Windows Update. Set your start and end times – and Windows Update won’t automatically restart during these hours. While you’re here, select Advanced Options > ‘Choose how updates are delivered’, then select ‘PCs on my…

One of the annoying things about upgrading Windows is when you suddenly discover that your older hardware is no longer supported. You plug it in, and either nothing happens, Windows tells you drivers aren’t available or – in the case of AMD graphics – it installs a basic display adapter that’s stuck at a low resolution. Before you throw out the baby with the bathwater, press Win-Pause/Break to open the System Control Panel and confirm your operating system type (32-bit or 64-bit). Now visit your hardware manufacturer’s website and seek out the latest version of its driver, making sure it matches your system type – Windows 8, 7 and even Vista drivers should work. If you own two or more printers, it can be a hassle switching between them. One…

Let’s start by tightening Windows 10’s privacy controls. Even if you diligently went through the setup wizard when you installed the current October 2018 Update, it can be confusing knowing which settings to pick – and even then, you’ll find that there are other privacy tweaks you should consider applying. Windows 10 thoughtfully scatters these settings far and wide throughout your PC, but by downloading the latest version of the free O&O Shutup10 tool from www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 you can view and manage them easily. Once downloaded, double-click OOSU10.exe and give it administrator access when required. If you’ve previously run the tool, it’ll detect previous settings; otherwise, you’ll see a list of switches you can click on for an explanation. Either toggle switches manually, or go with O&O Shutup10’s recommendations via the…

When a program controls a file association, it will always open when you double-click that file type. Windows 10 makes it harder for third-party programs to seize control of file associations, but it’s still possible, and every time a new Windows update is released, you can easily be tricked into handing back associations to Microsoft’s choice of app, not yours. Start fixing problems by clicking Start > Settings > Apps > ‘Default apps’. From here you can quickly switch or set defaults for email, maps, music, photos, video and web browser – just click the appropriate button and choose your desired app. Other universal changes can be made, too – start by clicking ‘Set defaults by app’ to access a list of all your programs. Click one to find out…

Not all reinstalls require a complete wipe of your hard drive. A repair or refresh installation leaves your programs, settings and files in place, and restricts itself to installing a fresh copy of your Windows files over the top of your existing copy. If your problem is linked to a corrupt file or Windows setting, the repair installation can usually fix it. All repair installs share one common characteristic: you must launch them from Windows itself. You can’t boot from your install media and repair Windows through that; you need to boot into Windows, then start the repair process from there. If you’re unable to boot into Windows, therefore, you’ll need to skip ahead and perform a full destructive recovery instead. START THE REPAIR Starting a repair install varies depending…

Reinstalling Windows from scratch – namely, wiping your system drive to install a fresh version of Windows on to it – is the ultimate choice for anyone looking to revive a slow PC or resolve a major, non-hardware issue. Here we’ll step you through the entire process – if you’re simply looking to repair an existing Windows install, turn to our guide on the previous page. Before you begin, make sure your PC is fully backed up. A full reinstall really is destructive – nothing left on your C drive will exist once you’ve finished. If you’d like to transfer selected program settings from old installation to new, download the portable CloneApp tool (www.mirinsoft.com) to your backup drive. Once complete launch the tool by right-clicking CloneApp.exe and choosing ‘Run as…

Moore’s Law is dead and quantum computing isn’t coming to the rescue. Although, not any time soon. So, is there anything that can keep conventional computing moving forward? One promising technology is carbon nanotubes, one of those wonder technologies with seemingly infinite possible applications, from space elevators to solar cells. But how can they help computing? One of the key theoretical advantages of transistors built from carbon nanotubes could be much lower power consumption. That would allow for more powerful chips to operate within the limited energy budget of a device like a smartphone. Physically, it’s easy to fit a desktop-class CPU die inside a smartphone. Powering it is the problem, and carbon nanotubes might solve it. Optical interconnects both between and within chips are another big opportunity. Just as…

1 GET A PHOTO EDITOR Before you get started, it’s worth downloading a free photo editor so you can make simple adjustments to any pictures you want to add to your site (like cropping, rotating and adjusting colours). Adobe Photoshop Express is free from the Microsoft Store (http://bit.ly/2xWE8Mu) and is easy to use, but if you do get stuck you can find a quick tutorial here: http://bit.ly/2knXDdG. 2 GET A WIX ACCOUNT Visit www.wix.com and click ‘Start now’. You can log in using your Facebook or Google account, or create one specifically for Wix using your email address. To make a new account, click ‘Sign up’, enter your email address and create a password. Once you’re logged in, select the type of website you want to make. If you can’t…

If Google’s own stats are anything to go by, plenty of users around the world are hanging on to their older Android devices. Android’s distribution dashboard (developer.android.com/about/dashboards) showed half of all Android devices accessing the Google Play store during the week of 26 October 2018 were running Android 6.0/ Marshmallow or older. Most of us have discarded mobile devices lining draws and holding up cupboards, but you might be surprised at what these portable battery-powered multi-core marvels can still do. Here are seven of my favourite (and somewhat unusual) reasons for keeping older devices productively employed – what’s more, none of them require root-access or hacked firmware. MAKE A SOFTWARE-DEFINED RADIO (SDR) Most phones are capable of picking up FM radio stations in the 88-108MHz band using your earphones as…

Fallout 76 has triggered a number of outcries and controversies since it launched in November, ranging from the perceived poor quality of the game through to some other more serious debarcles. While the game’s low Metacritic score can mostly be blamed on its launch woes, Bethesda has copped it severely for what has been dubbed in some circles “bag-gate”. In an expensive collector’s edition of the game a canvas bag was advertised, however upon launch this bag proved to be made of nylon. Riding the momentum of the game’s critical backlash, consumers and fans picketed Bethesda so hard that the company were forced to manufacture a new set of bags as a replacement. But that’s not where the pain ended for Bethesda: those seeking a replacement for their inferior nylon…

$20 | PC | ZACHTRONICS.COM/EXAPUNKS My EXA, a digital bug-looking thing made of code, scurries out into rooms representing nodes in a factory’s network. Following the program I painstakingly wrote for it, the EXA disrupts this network with precision before running the HALT command to self-destruct. There is no trace of the fact I have hacked this factory, except that the snack bars it produces no longer contain peanuts. It’s the little victories. Exapunks is the latest game from Zachtronics, creator of tricky puzzle games such as Opus Magnum and Infinifactory that are all about moving things from one place to another, and hacking games such as TIS-100 that are all about typing made-up but believable code into computers. Exapunks connects the two, providing space for code and…

Microsoft’s products have revolutionised the way we work. Since the 1990s it was the leading tech firm, having revolutionised the PC with its Windows operating system. Not long after that Microsoft began to lose its lustre – yes, it was still profitable, but it was struggling to stay relevant. That scenario, however, has taken a dramatic turn and, at the time of writing, Microsoft has deposed Apple to become the most valuable publicly trading company in the world. The last time Microsoft was on top was way back in 2002. Apple may have become the first trillion-dollar company in the world – a position it enjoyed briefly in 2018 – but it has, in the meantime, fallen far. With Satya Nadella at Microsoft’s helm since 2014, the US company has…

“I have built more than 20 computers for personal use, running the gauntlet of pretty much every AMD chip release” RED TO THE CORE As a long time reader I felt prompted to share my PC experiences. My first AMD chip was the AMD 486 DX/66, because I wanted more than the Intel 386DX/25 could offer, and the last Intel I ever owned was a Pentium 200! Since then I have built more than 20 computers for personal use, running the gauntlet of pretty much every AMD chip release. My previous favourite was an FX6300 which ran an OC of 4.6GHz for over two years before I retired it for a Ryzen 1800X OC to 4.1GHz,16GB of 3200MHz R AM, 500GB Samsung 960 Evo, 1TB Crucial MX500 SSD, 500GB WD…

LAPTOP FROM $1,899 | CONSUMER.HUAWEI.COM In many ways the MateBook X Pro is a pastiche of great ideas pioneered by other ultrabook manufacturers. Initially it looks a lot like a Macbook Air with its slim rounded chassis, rubber dome feet and cutaway edge tabs for ventilation. It’s also borrowed elements form the Macbook Pro’s style guide including keyboard-surround speaker grills, a generous 16 x 9 style trackpad and a simple black and white key-colouring scheme. It’s even taken inspiration from Microsoft using the Surface’s 3:2 aspect ratio, with the MateBook X Pro’s 13.9-inch 3000x2000 touchscreen display. In this instance it really does seem like Huawei has taken the best bits from existing laptop design and stitched them all together. There’s also enough custom Huawei tech in the device…

PHONE $1,599 | WWW.HUAWEI.COM The Huawei Mate 20 Pro is the supercharged version of the ‘standard’ Huawei Mate 20, and while its specs are similar to its less expensive counterpart, with both handsets boasting Huawei’s latest Kirin 980 7nm processor, 128GB of onboard storage and 6GB of RAM, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro is able to justify its higher cost with several impressive additional high-end inclusions. Sporting a number of futuristic features (including one world-first) and a more premium price point than we’re used to seeing from the Chinese manufacturer, the Mate 20 Pro is clearly Huawei’s play for the ‘best smartphone in the world’ crown – and for once, the company is very much within reach, offering a handset we think belongs in the same league as…

GPU $429 | WWW.XFXFORCE.COM With all the attention that high end cards have been receiving in recent months, it’s sometimes easy to forget that they’re very expensive parts, well outside the budgets of ‘normal’ consumers. The vast majority of gamers running 1080p screens look for more worldly options including the GTX 1060, RX 580 and now RX 590. We patiently await genuinely new mid-range entrants, but while we do that, let’s take a look at the RX 590, the third iteration of the venerable Polaris architecture. The RX 590 is essentially a faster version of the capable RX 580, which is itself a refresh of the RX 480. The RX 590’s main change is the switch from a 14nm GPU to one manufactured with a 12nm process. This…

MESH WI-FI $220 | SYNOLOGY.COM Taiwanese NASmaker Synology has slowly been building itself a respectable reputation in the router market, releasing three models in as many years, with this tri-band, Qualcommpowered MR2200ac, the latest addition to the family. Like its forbears, the RT1900ac and RT2600ac, this is another highly-capable and feature-packed unit where the real star is theOS. Simply named ‘Synology Router Manager’ (or SRM), the latter takes its cues from the company’s NAS operating system, combining a very easy-to-use desktop-like interface (which you access via web browser) with features that are frequently more advanced than you get from long-established router manufacturers. The MR2200ac differs from its predecessors in that it’s geared for mesh networking. Although it can work fine on its own as a standard modem-less broadband…

NAS $1,200 | WWW.SYNOLOGY.COM Aimed at those who need large but fast storage capacity at an affordable price (think video or picture editing), the Synology DS118+ offers a lot of functionality for the $1,200 price tag. At its core is the efficient 14nm Intel Atom C3538 CPU that offers four cores that can boost up to 2.1GHz, plus 4GB of DDR4 RAM. It’s dual channel, too, for extra performance, can be upgraded to 32GB or swapped out for ECC memory instead. Round the back the NAS has four Gigabit LAN ports, which support both link aggregation and failover support. You also get three USB 3.0 ports (one of which is on the front) and two eSATA connection for adding external drives, or even a Wi-Fi adaptor. Using the…

The RGB synch function built into the case means that it’s compatible with Thermaltake’s other RGB products, such as the Riing Plus 12 LED RGB Radiator Fan TT Premium Edition, which can be outfitted in several locations within the case. Thermaltake offers a huge range of compatible RGB products, such as the All-in-One Water 3.0 Ring RGB 240, which you can slot into the front or side of the Level 20 MT RGB Mid Tower. This is an option if you want AIO Liquid Cooling, or there’s room to side mount a radiator cooler on the motherboard tray side if you’re putting together a PC that’s really going to run hot. The RGB products inside your case can be synched up to music, customised to match your gaming exploits, or…

$50 | WWW.ASHAMPOO.COM Uninstalling software can be a nuisance if you’re relying on the Windows 10 ‘Add or remove programs’ feature or a program’s in-built uninstaller. Sure they’ll do the job, but you’re only able to uninstall one program at a time and the residual files, empty directories and old entries in the Windows Registry, leave a mess behind. These remnants might not take up much space by themselves, but over time that clutter accumulates and it can cause errors if you want to install a new version of the same software. Ashampoo Uninstaller 8 is a software cleanup application that features several prominent upgrades. Most noticeable of these is a new overview screen, which now contains fewer statistics, letting you focus on the numbers that matter (say,…

Many useful settings are hidden away in the Registry, but if you download and run the free Ultimate Windows Tweaker 4 tool from www.thewindowsclub.com/ultimate-windows-tweaker-4-windows-10 – a mere 495KB – you’ll find over 200 tweaks to wrest back control of Windows. Highlights include shortcuts to several Windows tools on the main screen, while the Customisation section contains no less than four tabs packed with settings, such as restoring the classic battery and volume control pop-ups in the Taskbar notification area. Look under the ‘This PC’ tab to restore classic system tools hidden away in Windows 10. Another favourite of ours: switch to the Additional section and then click Enable Windows Photo Viewer to bring back the classic Windows 7 photo-viewing tool. You then navigate to Settings > Apps > ‘Default apps’…

Make sure your hard drives are in tip-top condition. You can check their physical health using tools such as Speccy (www.piriform.com/speccy),which uses a drive’s S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) status to alert you to early signs of potential disk problems. Also periodically run the Disk Check tool outside of Windows to pick up errors the Windows-based tool seems to miss. To do that, right-click the Start button and choose ‘Command Prompt (admin)’, then type the following line: $ chkdisk c: /f /r Press Y when prompted, then reboot your PC to run the disk check, which will attempt to fix any errors it finds. If the disk check keeps appearing on startup, click Start > Settings > ‘Update & security’ > Recovery and click ‘Restart now’ under ‘Advanced start-up’.…

There’s no foolproof way to completely stop yourself from receiving spam – if your email address falls into the hands of a spammer, all you can do is find effective ways of filtering it out. Consider installing a third-party tool such as Mailwasher (www.mailwasher.net) that you can use to screen your emails. Once installed, take the time to ‘train’ the app so it recognises the kind of spam emails you receive and then configure it so it deletes them automatically before they reach your inbox. You can also minimise spam by switching to plain text view by default and never opening a spam message – it’ll almost certainly contain some form of tracking device to alert the spammer to the fact your address is active and in use. If you…

Want to play DVD-Videos in Windows 10? Both Kodi (www.kodi.tv) and VLC Media Player (www.videolan.org/vlc) offer free support (including menu access) – VLC should work with non-region 2 discs, too. Simply pop the disc in and it should play like normal. Blu-ray discs are trickier – the following free add-ons should enable you to play most older AACS-encrypted discs along with a handful of BD+ discs. Point your browser at https://vlc-bluray.whoknowsmy.name/, then download the Keys database and place it in C:\ProgramData\aacs. Next download the relevant AACS dynamic library for your PC (either 32-bit or 64-bit), then place the downloaded DLL file inside your VLC program folder.on your PC. Launch VLC (a portable version is also available from https://portableapps.com/apps/music_video/vlc_portable) and pop your Blu-ray into a compatible drive. In the VLC app,…

Start by stress-testing your desktop to verify that everything works as it should – sometimes the repair can introduce more problems than it solves, in which case if you’re running Windows 8.1 or 10 you can undo the changes. Go to Start > Settings > ‘Update & recovery’ > Recovery and look for an option to go back to your previous version – click ‘Get started’ and then follow the prompts. If the repair doesn’t appear to fix your underlying problem, Windows 8.1 and 10 users can take one more intermediate step – the reset or repair. It will see you waving goodbye to all those desktop programs you’ve installed (including MS Office and your third-party security software), but it will preserve your Microsoft Store apps, files and Windows settings.…

Once Windows is reinstalled, open Windows Update to bring Windows fully up to date – don’t be surprised if there are hundreds of updates still to apply in the case of Windows 7 and 8.1. Once it’s fully up to date, consider reinstalling Macrium Reflect Free and taking your first drive image – a vanilla backup you can restore in future instead of reinstalling Windows itself. Next, it’s a case of reinstalling your core apps. Once in place, open CloneApp from your data drive. If you click the Restore button, every single program setting you backed up will be restored – if there are any backup settings you don’t want to restore, select Options to locate the backup folder, then open it and move any program folders you want to…

1 PARTITION HARD DRIVE You’ll need to partition your drive to free up space on which to store your copy of Windows. The best tool for the job is AOMEI Partition Assistant (www.aomeitech.com/aomei-partitionassistant.html). Start by clicking Make Bootable Media under Wizards to create rescue media. 2 SHRINK MAIN PARTITION Select your Windows drive (typically C:) and click Resize/Move Partition under Partition Operations. Use the slider to free up at least 30GB space to the right of the Windows partition. If your drive is an SSD, click ‘Advanced>>’ and tick ‘Allow partition alignment…’ Click ‘OK’. 3 ADD NEW WINDOWS PARTITION Now select the newly created Unallocated space to the right of drive C and click ‘Create Partition’ under Partition Operations. Verify NTFS is the file system and click ‘Advanced<<’ to give…

WINDOWS QUICKLY RESET FOLDER PERMISSIONS I’ve messed up user permissions on a personal folder. What’s the easiest way to fix this, please? Carl Oswald We’ve found a handy graphical tool that makes the process easy, without you having to delve into the command prompt. Download the tool from http://lallouslab.net/downloads/ResetPermission.zip, then follow the step-by-step guide here to use it. Right-click ResetPermission.zip and choose ‘Extract All…’. When prompted, enter the password ‘lallouslab’. If your security software blocks the tool, restore it from the quarantine. It’s safe to run. Double-click resetpermission. exe to get started. Click ‘Choose folder:’ to browse to the folder you wish to perform the reset on. Be sure to avoid root directories and system folders (use the Windows Repair Tool – www.bleepingcomputer.com – to fix system permissions issues). File…

Linux has made great strides in the area of software compatibility. Or, more accurately, software is available more consistently across the various distributions and their native package formats. Yet this still requires the hard work of packagers. They need to take an application and tweak it to fit the specific needs of different distros, and even different releases of the same one. However, a few new universal package formats have emerged, bringing the promise of “package once, run anywhere” (on Linux, anyway). Flatpak (https://flatpak.org) is among the contenders and it’s got a lot going for it. In this article we’ll examine Flatpak, explore how to use it, and take a look at two important developments. MODE OF OPERATION Flatpak is both a package format, and a tool to install and…

Stuck on what to watch this evening with the family? Fear not – with this project we can have our Raspberry Pi randomly choose a video for us to watch. So let’s start building and coding our own random video player! All of the code, and a detailed high-res circuit diagram can be downloaded from tinyurl.com/ydctn9kh. Building the circuit for this project is simple. We only require three buttons, connected to the GPIO at pins two, three and four, and each of these buttons also needs to be connected to GND. For this we can use a single GND pin on the Pi, and a female-to-male jumper wire. Connected to the – rail of a breadboard means that we have multiple GND connections that can be connected via the two…

Any way you think about it, driverless cars are pretty clever tech. Even just the ability of a car’s on-board computer to recognise obstacles in real-time and direct the vehicle to safely avoid them is clever stuff. However, it’s only one application of this tech broadly known as ‘computer vision’ that’s making waves. Facial recognition is fast becoming a hot-button issue, but putting the ethics, security and privacy issues aside for the moment, how does it actually work? It’s a huge, complex research area globally, so this month, we’re looking at the basics of computer vision and our first peak into another broad buzzword area in tech at the moment – ‘deep learning’. DEEP LEARNING 101 If there’s one part of the human body we’re still far from figuring out,…

$69 | PC, PS4, XBOX ONE | FALLOUT.BETHESDA.NET The irony of Fallout 76’s narrative can’t possibly pass you by as you take the first tentative steps into its considerable world map. This is a game about disaster and desolation told, quite inadvertently, by disastrous design and a desolate core gameplay loop. Irradiated hounds with rusted bicycles glitched through their bodies as if skewered by the force of the bomb blast; building after deserted building with nothing beyond audio tape logs or computer terminals to interact with; exchanging emotes with passing strangers before returning to the lonely business of running between quest markers. It’s a multiplayer experiment whose own developers never seemed totally confident in at its conference showings, and which reveals itself to be fundamentally flawed after just…

NORTH FOCALS AR glasses that don’t make you look like a glasshole. US$999 | SHOP.BYNORTH.COM AR smart glasses have been an important piece of emerging tech since Microsoft introduced the Hololens, but the computing power and bulky technological constraints have meant that they never made it into the mainstream tech market. The recently released Focals by North (formerly Thalmic Labs) might just be sleek enough to change this. These chic spectacles will give you the time, weather, text messages, calendar events, third party notifications and turn-by-turn directions by connecting, via Bluetooth, to your phone. The device hasn’t integrated any eye tracking controls so you’ll have to wear the Loop ring wearable ring controller to interact with digital content, but you can also talk to it using Alexa. DJI…

Last month, Australia became the first country in the world to legislate the requirement for tech companies to provide backdoor access to encrypted messages. More specifically, the law will allow police and intelligence agencies to selectively target users – presumably suspects of crime – via encryption backdoors. Police have long called upon technology companies trading in encrypted communication to help with access, but now, in Australia, they must. As an example: if Australian police or intelligence wants to access Joe Blogs’ messaging history on Facebook, Facebook will be required, under Australian law, to either help the police access these messages, or else, hinder the encryption in order for the police to more readily access what they need. Despite months and years of lip service, Bill Shorten’s Labor party allowed the…

COOLING $399 | WWW.ASUS.COM.AU The Ryuo is already a seriously high-end piece of kit, but the Ryujin 360 takes it up another notch. It’s got more cooling capacity, improved fans and a bolder pump/head design that packs in an additional fan. The Ryujin comes with the same 1.77 inch OLED screen found on the Ryuo, but it also comes with a plastic shroud that covers the entire head and mounting assembly. Inside there’s an additional fan that’s designed to cool the motherboard VRM, RAM modules or an adjacent M.2 drive. You get addressable RGB lighting too. The Ryujin 360 includes three Noctua NF-F12 series fans. These fans are contenders for the best PC fans on the market. They are renowned for their excellent performance, airflow characteristics and low…

2-IN-1 $1,349 | WWW.MICROSOFT.COM Before Microsoft introduced the Surface Pro (2017) last year, the company explicitly said that there was no such thing as a ‘Surface Pro 5.’ Why? Essentially, a future Surface Pro would get a number again when it brought “an experiential change that makes a huge difference in product line.” Now, Microsoft has leapfrogged the ‘5’ moniker entirely in launching the Surface Pro 6. By that logic, you wouldn’t be out of line to expect a massive sea change – or at least one or two of the changes that have been requested for years. While the Surface Pro 6 is inarguably the most powerful and longest-lasting (when it comes to battery life) Surface tablet yet, we have a hard time accepting that it’s worthy…

CASE $119 | WWW.THERMALTAKE.COM.AU When you see Thermaltake’s new case in action, full of slick PC hardware and lit up like some frame-rate spewing Xmas tree, you’d think you’re looking at a very high-end case that only the most dedicated enthusiast could afford to build into. It’s got a lot of higher-end bells and whistles, but is paired back where it counts, meaning this striking ATX chassis brings the looks, while still only costing $119. The most striking thing about the case at first glance is its impressive cooling. Out of the box the Level 20 MT ARGB boasts three 120mm intake fans and a 120mm exhaust. The front fans are about as blinged as you can get, featuring addressable RGB lighting that’s designed to work with lighting…

NAS $1,199 | QNAP.COM QNAP’s TVS-951X NAS is best described as the “kitchen sink” of NAS units. There isn’t a feature that one could reasonably desire that isn’t included by default on the TVS-951X. That doesn’t necessarily mean the TVS-951X is perfect, but QNAP has shoved heaps of goodies in this box. Kicking things off is an Intel Celeron 3865U CPU. Due to packing an Intel-based CPU, this means there’s an enormous suite of applications available, if there’s a particular service or app you want to run on your NAS, the Celeron 3865U will take it. An added bonus of the Celeron 3865U CPU is QuickSync video encoding and decoding support, so Plex will transcode videos without breaking a sweat. Out of the box QNAP equips the TVS-951X…

PSU $549 | WWW.ASUS.COM.AU Along with a pair of new ROG AIO CPU coolers we’re reviewing from Asus, there’s now a power supply unit in the company’s stable. The Thor 1200W is the first Asus ROG power supply and like all ROG products, it has some interesting innovations that differentiate it from its competitors. Asus is clearly looking to leverage the prestige of its ROG brand by expanding into components beyond its traditional motherboard and graphics card portfolios. Making a PSU from scratch is not an easy undertaking though, so Asus partnered with Seasonic to provide the platform for the Thor. The Thor is a 1200w rated power supply, though there’s also an 850W version too. The 12v rail can supply up to 100A, which is enough for…

Welcome to 2018, and the age of the modern digital video connection, where HDMI and DisplayPort rule, the latter in the form of both dedicated DisplayPort sockets and courtesy of an alternate mode via the neat little USB-C connector. But how do these cutting-edge video interfaces compare? Does it matter whether you’re gaming or hammering through spreadsheets? Let battle commence. Round 1 BANDWIDTH In this age of ever higher resolutions, color depths, dynamic ranges, and refresh rates, the most important metric for any digital display interface is bandwidth. Intriguingly, it’s a moving target. Today, 2K displays with 144Hz refresh are becoming more popular. Tomorrow, it will be 4K, then in a few years, 8K and plenty of Hz. This also applies to the interfaces. HDMI first appeared in 2002, and…

Problems with your CD or DVD drive? There’s no longer a dedicated troubleshooter for this problem, so you’ll need to search for a solution at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060 – here you’ll find a handy step-by-step guide that covers most of the steps you’ll need to follow to resolve the issue, such as making sure the drive is visible in Windows, and that third-party burning software – particularly if it was installed prior to you upgrading to Windows 10 isn’t responsible for the problem. If you’re struggling to burn DVDs or CDs, eliminate all software problems before assuming the drive itself is faulty (remember, some drives use different lasers for CD and DVD, so the drive may appear to work when in fact it needs replacing if you’re able to burn or read…

Microsoft is incredibly keen for you to use Office 365, which is why Windows 10 will regularly prompt you to download and install it. But if you get fed up with its nagging, click Start and locate the ‘Get Office’ shortcut. Right-click this and choose Uninstall to remove it. If you’re an Office 365 user you may be frustrated by the way it works with OneDrive, saving directly to the cloud rather than to your local OneDrive folder. To stop this behaviour, you need to open each Office app in turn, then choose Options from the File tab on the Ribbon. Select ‘Save’ and tick ‘Save to Computer by default’. You’re not done yet – next, click ‘^’ in the Taskbar notification area, right-click the OneDrive cloud icon and then…

Social media is a great way to share your interests with close friends, but if you’re serious about a particular topic – whether it’s photography, cooking, writing, travel or any other pastime – having your own website will make it easier to share them with the world. Creating your own site means you have total control over what’s published and how it looks. Want to start a blog? You can do that. Want to show off high-quality photos in a gallery? No problem. Want to start an online shop? There’s nothing stopping you. We’ve tried all the most popular site-building tools, and in our opinion Wix is easily the best. It has a huge set of stunning templates, a simple drag-and-drop interface for moving items around, and an ‘ADI’ (Artificial…

Installing a Flatpak will create a file structure for the program and its runtimes, as well as some metadata. The basic structure of this consists of four top-level directories in either $HOME/.local/share/flatpak or /var/lib/flatpak, depending on whether it was a system or user install. The first of these is repo, which contains information about installed applications, remotes, and other metadata. The app directory is where the applications themselves live. Each program has a sub-directory named with its three-part identifier (for example, org.gnome.GEdit). There are further sub-directories that are set aside for architecture (such as x86_64), version numbers, and their associated checksums. Runtimes are managed in the same way, but are kept separately in the runtime directory. This is because they can be shared across more than one application. The final…

Nier: Automata , Platinum Games’ action-packed robot drama, is getting a Game of the Year edition, according to the ESRB. Nier: Automata Game of the Yorha Edition recently appeared in the organisation’s official ratings board, which is sound evidence of an impending release, though Platinum Games has not officially announced anything at the time of this writing. Nier: Automata originally released in February 2017, and it received a Game of the Year-esque revamp on Xbox One earlier this year with the release of its Become As Gods Edition. This special edition came with the game’s only major DLC — confusingly titled 3C3C1D119440927 — which includes new arena challenges that award extra outfits for protagonists 2B, 9S, and A2. The challenges themselves are difficult and delightfully silly, with some featuring boss…

$69 | PC, PS4, XBOX ONE | ORIGIN.COM Battlefield V as it stands is a game of absences, for better and worse. There are the reassuringly perilous open spaces of its eight multiplayer maps, which reach across WW2 Europe from Norwegian slopes to the shimmering plateaus of North Africa, and which rank among the best DICE has ever created. The radiant Hamada map, in particular, is almost offputtingly uncluttered, its northernmost Conquest flags separated from the others by a gorge which gives snipers the drop on any would-be Montgomery fool enough to rush the bridge. Battlefield has never been celebrated for its singleplayer, and the fifth game’s War Stories do little to improve its standing. They’re essentially a thinly narrativised introduction to multiplayer gadgets and mode rulesets, spiced…

$15 | PC | BADNORTH.COM It’s a simple strategy game, almost closer to being a puzzler. You have to defend a little island, or more specifically the cottages dotted around it. You have up to four units to hold off waves of Viking invaders. Bad North is about shuffling units around to make sure someone is on the beach ready to greet approaching enemies. Complications arise with more frequent waves and various enemy types requiring different units to counter. The key to each battle is teasing out the choke points on the islands – placing your troops where they can make the most difference without wasting time marching them from one end of the island to the other. Your units are groups of eight or so little dudes…

DEVELOPER: UBISOFT MONTREAL PUBLISHER: UBISOFT RELEASED: 13 NOVEMBER 2007 SYSTEM: XBOX 360, PS3 The biggest franchises often have the humblest of beginnings. For Ubisoft, the road to establishing a billion-dollar brand began in 2003. Production had wrapped on Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time and a team of aspiring developers, engineers and programmers were immediately tasked with taking the beloved action-platformer to the next level, envisioning a sequel that was bold, expressive and innovative. It didn’t go as planned and they may have accidentally killed the series entirely. But what arose from the ashes was far greater and more potent in the marketplace, with the power to entice audiences outside of videogames, its allure seeping out into everything from cinema and comics, to toys and anime. Assassin’s Creed was born…

Looking at it today, the Animus seems like the perfect MacGuffin; a device that lets Ubisoft take us to anywhere in the world, to any period of known history. The science fiction and real-world elements may have become tempered in recent years, but back in 2007 it was integral to Assassin’s Creed. The machine let Desmond experience the memories of his assassin ancestor Altaïr, working to explain away many of the idiosyncrasies of the experience. Repetitious dialogue and strange accents? A result of the Animus attempting to translate everything into English for Desmond. Game bugs and boring mission design? You are simply seeing streamlined fragments of Altaïr’s memories. Cumbersome movement options? That’s because Desmond is merely controlling Altaïr – each input on your controller corresponding to limbs rather than action…

Huawei CFO facing extradition to US for breaking trade sanctions Tech company executive at the centre of political hotcake. Huawei’s chief financial officer and daughter of Ren Zengfei, the company’s founder, Meng Wanzhou is at the centre of political escalations between the US and China after being detained in Vancouver, Canada on December 1st. Wanzhou was awaiting proceedings for an extradition hearing after being accused by the US of attempting to conceal Huawei’s alleged trade dealings with Iran in 2013 from US banks, which caused them to break US and UN trade sanctions. The Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yuchenghas threatened Canada with “grave consequences” if it didn’t release Meng immediately. The political conflict comes only months after the US banned Huawei and ZTE devices from the US. China bans…