Table of contents for January 2018 in APC

Victoria and Queensland disagree on the money-for-perks system. Two Australian states have commented on the recent ‘loot box’ trend in gaming, and can’t agree if unseen and random rewards in videogames bought with real money should be considered to be a form of gambling. EA’s recent release, Star Wars: Battlefront II features loot boxes, digital treasure chests that contain rewards to be used in-game but the contents of which are only revealed once you’ve spent actual money on them. While Battlefront II isn’t the only game to include them, it’s the most (in)famous example. While speaking to Kotaku, Jarrod Wolfe of the Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation, says that “what occurs with ‘loot boxes’ does constitute gambling by the definition of the Victorian Legislation”, while Robert Grimmond of…

2-IN-1 FROM $2,199; $4,499 AS TESTED | WWW.MICROSOFTSTORE.COM Microsoft’s original Surface Book is a couple of years old now, so it’s definitely due for a refresh — that’s basically what you get with this new model. In fact, at a glance, the Surface Book 2 is nigh- indistinguishable from its predecessor — both 2-in-1s offer a main detachable 13.5-inch (3,000 x 2,000- pixel) tablet alongside a matching keyboard base, which houses a second battery and optional graphics processor. Although there’s new Intel 8th-gen Core i and Nvidia 10-series components here, from the outside, the only significant change is a slightly bigger vent behind the keyboard, as well as a marginally thicker, curvier chassis in this area to accomodate that change, but you’d hardly notice it. The weight’s still…

AMD AM4 MOTHERBOARD $319 | WWW.ASUS.COM/AU When Ryzen first launched, the gaudy little underdog pulled the rug out from under Intel’s feet with its eight-core masterpieces. But memory issues and motherboard instability caused a lot of problems early on, and the selection of high-end X370 offerings was slim at best. One form factor that was missing was ITX. And with good reason: Ryzen’s a hungry beast. The issue, as is common with ITX, is a severe shortage of space. How do you accommodate such a power-hungry chip in an already limited form factor? There have been workarounds, typically from manufacturers with big budgets, but most of the time, the ITX form factor is avoided for anything with more than four cores. Finally, though, we have ASUS’s RoG Strix…

WIRELESS GAMING MOUSE $99 | WWW.LOGITECHG.COM/EN-AU Logitech’s Lightspeed gaming mouse is the result of refinements of every component in the wireless signal chain, from antenna geometry to circuit pathways to communications protocols. All of this results in a reported 1ms response time and absurdly long 18-month battery life. Not both at the same time, though. You’ll only get that length of service from the G603’s dual AA batteries if you switch it to low response mode, via the base-mounted switch. This drops the polling rate from the full 1ms to a still-reasonable 8ms and, as you might expect, this has a noticeable effect on the mouse’s DPI. Keep it in hi-res 1ms mode, and Logitech suggests you’ll get around 500 hours of gaming out of it — still…

It’s a rare occurrence for the hype train to be not quite as overwhelming as the potency of the product it represents. And with Jim Keller masterminding the development of Team Red’s latest architecture, AMD’s Zen CPU lineup was hardly going to be a dud. However, none of us truly knew what to expect from the company that had otherwise disappointed us on the computational front for the previous six years. Ryzen was, and still is, a masterpiece. A once-in-a-decade reinvention of a product. Something that AMD so desperately needed in order to assure its own future. Its effect on consumer computing has been vast and far  reaching, pushing Intel to act, stop resting on its laurels, and raise its core counts higher, if only to retain anything like the…

It’s been a rough year for AMD’s Radeon Technologies Group. A really rough one. We didn’t expect the slightly bashful underdog of GPU technology to produce anything astounding, but after delay, after delay, after delay, we did expect more than what we ended up with. Vega feels very much like a dud, especially as far as gaming is concerned. And although it powers through crypto-mining like a V8 through gasoline, when your flagship card can’t compete with a competitor’s 14-month-old solution in the things that really matter, you know you’ve got  problems. Combine that with the departure of Raja Koduri — AMD’s Radeon Tech Group Leader — leaving for Intel, from the outside, at least, things look dire. But are they really? We doubt Raja would have left if things…

Ahh, the jilted lover of the computing world. The buzz word that was on every journalist’s lips. Was virtual reality just another gimmick? Or was it misrepresented? Ahead of its time? It’s difficult to say for sure, as sales have been reasonable, with both Oculus and HTC profiting from the VR experience, but little has come out of 2017 with regard to the new way of consuming media. There have been price drops, for sure, with both platforms being reduced by about $300–$400. And there’s plenty of content, too, from an army of indie developers, and other games being made VR-compatible (there are 266 games and experiences currently listed in Steam’s Virtual Reality category). But the headsets still have problems. The 2,160 x 1,200 (1,080 x 1,200 per eye) resolution,…

You’ve cleaned up your PC, but there’s still lots of room for improvement. If it’s still struggling on a day-to-day basis — particularly if it has 2GB of RAM or less — it’s worth exploring additional ways to free up more resources by optimizing which services (low-level processes) are running in the background. Doing this by hand is tricky and time-consuming, which is where Easy Services Optimizer (www.sordum.org/?p=8637) comes in. This makes it easy to disable a range of services safely to recover the resources you need. Once downloaded, you can quickly tweak your system one of four ways: Default (your existing setup); Safe (a good choice for most); Tweaked; and Extreme. The higher up you go, the more likely it is you’ll lose functionality, such as support for printers…

1 SHOW THE DESKTOP This very handy button no longer displays by default in the latest version of Windows. To reactivate, click on the small bar at the very bottom-right of the screen and choose ‘Show desktop’ to minimise all windows as you used to do. As the name suggests, the ‘Peek at desktop’ option enables you to quickly glance at the desktop without minimising any windows. 2 ENABLE ‘GOD MODE’ Windows contains a special Control Panel applet that gives you near omnipotent control of your system. To get started, right-click anywhere on the desktop, choose ‘New folder’ and enter the name: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} Press Enter. The folder icon will now change. Click this to access a huge range of configurable system settings 3 SNAP YOUR WINDOWS Snap Assist enables you…

1 DEFINE SERVER KEYS Open the configuration file you’ve just created using sudo nano /etc/openvpn/server.conf at the Terminal. We’re going to focus on the bare minimum settings required to get your server up and running. Start by scrolling down to the ‘# SSL/TLS root certificate...’ section and changing cert server.crt and key server.key lines to point to the files you created in step four of the previous walkthrough. 2 IMPLEMENT EXTRA ENCRYPTION Press ‘Ctrl-W’, type tls-auth and you’ll be taken to a line marked ;tls-auth ta.key 0 . Remove the ; from the beginning of this line (a process known as uncommenting) to enable it. Now add the following line underneath it as shown in the screenshot above: key-direction 0 . This ensures that the extra TLS authentication you set…

1 INSTALL PROSODY Open Terminal on your Raspberry Pi or connect via SSH and run the command sudo apt-get install prosody , then press Y to confirm you want to install the software on your device. In the next step, you’ll need to change your configuration, so run sudo nano /etc/prosody/prosody.cfg.lua . 2 MODIFY CONFIG FILE Scroll to the section Virtual Hosts and change “example.com” to your domain — like, “192.168.1.2”. Scroll to the section named Server Wide Settings and, under Admins, change admins = {“admin@yourip”} to admins = {“admin@192 .168.1.2”} , for example. Next, search for “allow_registration” and change to true . Press ‘Ctrl-X’, Y, then Return to save and exit. 3 RESTART AND ADD AN ADMINISTRATOR Run sudo /etc/init.d/prosody restart to restart Prosody. Next, add an administrator account…

When it comes to stretching your phone’s battery life, we all know the drill — turn off any feature you don’t need, basically. But what about charging the battery back up again? There are plenty of technologies involved in battery charging these days, but no matter which tech your phone uses, there are still basic laws of electronics in play, which makes some of the things you read online serious ‘head-desk’ moments. So this month, we’ll give you the good oil on everything to do with phone battery charging and why your phone is likely to be charging slower than it probably should. LEMONS WON’T WORK One of the things that prompted this topic this month was a story I read recently on an Australian mainstream media website advocating ways…

XO, PS4, PC | $99.95 | WWW.CALLOFDUTY.COM Over the course of its last few iterations, the Call of Duty franchise had slipped further and further into the realm of science-fiction — much to the chagrin of its eternally ungrateful fan base. Though the additions of gravity-defying mech suits, double jumping and wall running kept the gameplay fast and furious, last year’s space-bound entry, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, seriously underperformed in terms of sales (by the series’ standards, at least). The people had spoken, both with their wallets and in angry comments on forums, and what they’d asked for was a return to the era that kicked the series off in the first place: World War II. Developer Sledgehammer Games (with help from Raven Software) has gone and…

ISSUE 450, JANUARY 2018 Please note that these exclusive APC & TechLife magazine downloads will only be available for a limited time, from 04/01/2018 to 21/02/2018 TAKE CONTROL OF A POWERFUL COMMUNICATION TOOL Capture, edit and arrange with Ashampoo Snap 8. FULL VERSION REQUIRES ONLINE REGISTRATION. Ashampoo Snap 8 enables users to capture, edit and share screen content either as single images or videos. The application comes with powerful image editing capabilities. Use Ashampoo Snap 8 to create images and videos that precisely demonstrate what you are meaning to tell! DOWNLOAD LINK: www.ashampoo.com/lpa/apc RECLAIM YOUR PRIVACY Find peace of mind with Abelssoft AntiBrowserSpy. FULL VERSION WORTH $47. Many tracking features of common web browsers cannot be easily disabled by PC users, but AntiBrowserSpy makes it easy to control…

Despite providing assurances that they value your privacy, the uncomfortable truth about telecommunications companies is that they can pretty much trace your every move and chart your every communication. There’s not much you can do about it, and Australia’s data retention laws mean they’re definitely collecting your metadata, though most likely not perusing it. For most, that metadata sitting in a vault somewhere won’t ever come back to bite, but it’s still a huge amount of trust that we place in the hands of these gargantuan companies and, by extension, our (often technologically inept) governments. On a macro-scale, the data retention laws require telecommunications companies to hold onto phone and computer metadata for 24 months. Whether you want to take a principled stance against this surveillance or whether you’re operating…

2-IN-1 $1,499 | STORE.ACER.COM.AU Whether it’s the metal unibody tablet design, the thin folio keyboard case or the 12-inch screen in a 3:2 aspect ratio, the Switch 5 is as similar to the Microsoft Surface Pro as (presumably) patent legislation will allow. But while Acer gets no points for originality, the Surface Pro is a design worth emulating and the Taiwanese PC-maker has done a stellar job making sure this 2-in-1 doppelganger has all the features of its spiritual sibling. The spec sheets of the 256GB Intel Core i5 version of the Surface Pro up and the Switch 5 are almost identical. At this midrange point, both are built with a 7th-gen Intel Core i5 CPUs, Intel HD Graphics 620, 8GB of RAM and each sports a speedy…

GRAPHICS CARD $699 | WWW.NVIDIA.COM Unless you’re deep into cryptocurrency mining, this generation’s GPU war is over. Nvidia has won. Vega, while powerful, can’t compete from a price perspective, and thanks to its horrendous power draw and delayed launch, it’s not an attractive proposition for gamers. Vega 56 was the most intriguing offering, slotting between the GTX 1070 and the GTX 1080. And that, presumably, is why Nvidia has brought this GeForce GTX 1070 Ti card to market. However, the problem is that, in its eagerness to secure every corner of the GPU market, Nvidia has cut off its nose to spite its face. Wait, what? The GTX 1070 touts 1,920 CUDA cores, 120 texture units, and 8GB of GDDR5; the GTX 1080, on the other hand, features…

NAS BOX 16TB, $1,149 | WDC.COM WD My Cloud Home combines high-capacity, cloud-connected storage in an easy-to-use package. No more paying monthly fees to upload gigabytes of content over poky internet connections — storage is located inside your home or office, available from anywhere just by plugging the included Gigabit Ethernet cable into your router. Unlike single-drive models, My Cloud Home Duo houses a pair of hard drives in a handsome, relatively compact package, with capacities ranging from 4TB to a huge 16TB. Duos are configured RAID1 by default, which cuts storage space in half but offers data protection when one drive fails. You can also reformat and trade security for maximum storage capacity. The unit gets a bit noisy during read and write activity, though, so you’ll…

The storage wars have been waging for quite some time now. Samsung’s 960 series PCIe SSDs have comfortably sat top and centre of the non-volatile hill for the last 12 months. And with little challenge to the Korean giant, there’s been no need for the company to reveal any new devices designed to push the boundaries of solid-state storage further. Even Intel and Micron have struggled to put up any resistance to the dominance of Samsung’s 3D MLC V-NAND tech and its controller — at least, not until recently. And then there are the connection standards, or perhaps it’s more apt to just say M.2 at this point. Because that’s the only connection standard still worth its salt in the PCIe board game. Intel’s U.2, like many — if not…

Does your PC struggle to keep up with the demands you place upon it? Do you think that it might be time to bite the bullet and buy a new one? If your PC is under five years old, there’s a good chance you can extend its life without having to incur the cost of a total replacement. In this guide, we’ll show you all the tips and tricks you need to speed up your PC — and many of the techniques we reveal won’t cost you a dime. There’s the inevitable clean-up, of course — most speed problems can be traced to the increasing load on your computer over time, so we’ll start things off by stripping things back there. This is often compounded by the fact that Windows…

Over time, you’ll notice how much longer it takes Windows to start up. Optimising your startup times isn’t simply about getting your PC to boot faster, though — it also has a beneficial effect on your machine’s general performance. That’s because, as you install programs on your computer, some of them configure themselves to load at startup. The process of loading these startup apps naturally lengthens boot times, but the apps also consume additional resources, producing a drag on your computer’s overall performance, too. Some startup processes — such as your security software — are essential and shouldn’t be touched. Others, such as your cloud sync app, are best left running, too, but you’ll find many apps and programs aren’t used often enough to justify allowing them to gobble up…

If Windows fails to boot, or you’re otherwise locked out of your system, what can you do? Built-in recovery tools are certainly helpful, but they’re not the most user-friendly. Microsoft developed a special ‘pre-installation environment’, called Windows PE, which gives you access to a cut-down version of Windows that can be started from a bootable DVD or USB flash drive. It’s basic, but it contains a familiar, user-friendly graphical interface that gives you access to your system even when it won’t boot. Creating this recovery media by hand can be tricky, but AOMEI PE Builder 2.0 doesn’t just simplify this process, it makes it possible for you to build your own customised recovery disc, complete with the tools you know and trust for recovering data, restoring a previous backup, researching…

HARDWARE LAPTOP WIPING WORRY I’m about to remove my laptop hard drive, connect it to my desktop and wipe the drive before returning it to the laptop for a brand-new Windows install. But I’ve realised that, when I put back the drive, there will be no OEM partition on the drive containing laptop drivers to recognise the optical drive or USB ports, and there’s no laptop drivers disc. How would I install these drivers to ensure they would recognise the Windows install disc when I boot? Gerald Gibson Your laptop’s ability to boot from a DVD or USB drive is not linked to the currently installed OS system. It’s handled by your PC’s BIOS or UEFI. You can test this now with your Windows bootable USB flash drive. Restart your…

While the Mac desktop is fairly  intuitive, minimising and  reopening multiple windows can be a real chore, especially if you’re working with multiple apps at once. Magnet is a handy window manager that’s often near or at the top of the Mac App Store’s paid-for apps chart. It offers a  simple way to arrange windows on your desktop. At time of writing, it was selling at just $1.49. You can use Magnet to automatically resize windows to a quarter, half or  third of your desktop, and you can stack  multiple apps neatly with just a swish  of  your mouse or by using Magnet’s intuitive keyboard shortcuts. MULTIPLE OPTIONS The app offers a broad range of  options for  ‘tiling’ your windows beyond the  simple zoom and minimise options offered  by macOS.…

As Alfred notes in The Dark Knight, some men just want to watch the world burn. This is especially true for impressionable ‘script kiddies’ who first discover hacking tools. Filled with youthful exuberance and high-energy drinks, they eagerly download and run the first tools and programs they find. This would be easy to laugh off as the follies of youth, if not for the fact that, in so doing, they can cause considerable damage. In this guide, we’ll be exploring a rather nightmarish Python script for the Raspberry Pi named wifijammer which makes use of the scapy packet manipulation module to perform deauthentication attacks on access points (AP) and clients in the immediate area. Any clients are forced to attempt to reconnect, performing a virtual ‘handshake’ with the access point.…

They’ve been around since the early 1960s, but light-emitting diodes or LEDs are now taking over the world. They provide indicators in almost every electronic gadget, drive display technologies in phones and TVs, not to mention neighbourhood Christmas light displays. However, more recently, LEDs have gone ‘smart’ with built-in microcontroller chips, enabling an Arduino board to control hundreds of them with a single data wire. WS2812B RGB LED PC case modders have stacked out their gaming rigs with LED strips for years, initially single-colour, but more recently with RGB strips, connected to a control box. Using an Arduino instead, you can have ultimate control over each LED and colour sequence. The WS2812B is a four-pin RGB ‘intelligent control’ LED — two pins for power (5VDC and 0VDC), a pin for…

PC, PS4, XO | $99.95 | WWW.WOLFENSTEIN.COM The second part in a proposed trilogy, The New Colossus is — yet again —  about long time series protagonist BJ Blazkowicz kicking Nazi arse... with guns. Set in the aftermath of the first game, which saw the Nazis regrettably win World War II, The New Colossus spends the bulk of its time traversing a Nazi-occupied United States. Think Philip K Dick’s Man in the High Castle, except starring a cast of underground revolutionaries hell bent on toppling the sadistic fascists... with guns. As you’d expect, the bulk of your time spent in The New Colossus is shooting at baddies, and that’s fine, because MachineGames’ weapons are explosive, packing a punch that few other modern FPS games can. But much like…

PC, PS4, XO, SWITCH | $ | WWW.EASPORTS.COM/AU/FIFA If you’ve any interest in football whatsoever, FIFA’s returning campaign mode The Journey will enthral you. After his breakthrough season, teenage star Alex Hunter’s time at a topflight British club is up when a bungled transfer sends him somewhere that was never in his plans. Once again, you’ll live the turbulent life of an elite footballer, fulfilling manager targets in matches, improving your technique in training, and making ‘cool’ or ‘fiery’ remarks, both in amped-up press conferences and tender domestic scenes. It’s the insider’s perspective that makes The Journey special: the emotional trauma of a career-threatening injury, the ramifications of handing in a transfer request, the heart-to-heart with a failed player-turned coach filled with regret. This offers tantalising insight into…

Chrome extension brings new meaning to Trump tweets So great you won’t even believe it. Oh, internet, how we love you. Sometimes, someone out there creates something so beautiful that it makes you proud to be human. The Make Trump Tweets Eight Again Chrome extension is one of these things. US President Donald Trump himself said to his biographer that he is the same now as he was in first grade, and this extension perfectly illustrates that fact by changing Trump’s tweets into a childish scrawl using different coloured crayons. True to the creator’s claim, when you visit Trump’s official Twitter feed and read through his tweets after installing the extension, it instantly gives his posts an added element of character (and truth). Give it a go yourselves by visiting:…

$18,000 AMOUNT OF MONEY A 19-YEAR-OLD GAMER HAS SPENT ON MICROTRANSACTIONS As the conversation surrounding video-game microtransactions reaches fever pitch, Reddit user Kensgold has presented an open letter on the issue titled, “I am 19 and addicted to gambling”. The letter is addressed to EA (the publishers behind the controversial Star Wars: Battlefront II title) as well as other developers in the industry and, despite not blaming the companies directly, is a plea to raise awareness of the dangers of microtransactions. Kensgold claims to have spent over US$13,500 (close to AU$18,000) on in-game purchases in recent years. 5th OUR WORLD RANKING FOR MOBILE INTERNET SPEEDS A new report released by Ookla — the company behind SpeedTest.net — has revealed that Australia ranks an impressive fifth globally in terms of mean…

Google revolutionises the smartphone market with the Pixel 2 XL, offering new squeezability. We’re hoping a teardown will reveal just how huggable it is. MAJOR TECH SPECS: 6-inch plastic-OLED (POLED) display with QHD+ 1,440 x 2,880 (538ppi) res and 3D Gorilla Glass 5 Octa-core, 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor (2.35GHz + 1.9GHz) with 4GB LPDDR4x RAM 12.2MP, f/1.8 main camera, with dual-pixel phase detection autofocus and laser detection autofocus; 8MP selfie camera 64GB or 128GB built-in storage Pixel Imprint back-mounted fingerprint sensor IP67 water and dust resistant Android 8.0 Oreo KEY FINDINGS The Pixel 2 XL is a waterproof phone, which means all the ingress points must be sealed. We find our first evidence of Google’s efforts in a gasket on the SIM tray. We leave the iOpener behind, as…

It’s a subjective tussle as old as time (OK, not quite that old). What should you be running? What will make your computing life easy, and what will make it a living hell of crashes and bugs? We’ve pulled in the three big operating systems: Windows, macOS and (presented in catch-all broad strokes) the entire Linux ecosystem. We have repeatedly banged our heads against all three over the past couple of decades, not just as desktop operating systems, but as servers, single-task machines and so on. So we’ve chosen to pitch them in battle over five categories that really make a difference. Let’s fight! Round 1 HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY Windows’ advantage as the largest operating system means the vast majority of devices offer 100% compatibility with it, generally straight out of…

GRAPHICS CARD $1,349 | AU.MSI.COM We go through a simple process of elimination when choosing which GPUs to review. Typically, we review a reference card on launch, then, if it’s interesting enough, one or two aftermarket variants, and generally, that’s it. It has to be exceptional to cover more than that. MSI’s Trio is one such card. Admittedly, this isn’t the first tri-cooler we’ve seen from MSI. So what’s so interesting here? Think of this as MSI’s equivalent of ASUS’s DCIII. Or a Tri Frozr cooling solution, instead of its usual Twin Frozr. Now, the Twin Frozr is still a solid and dependable cooling choice, capable of keeping even the GTX 1080 below 70°C under load in some of the most airflow-restricted cases out there — so why…

MONITOR $999 | WWW.PHILIPS.COM.AU PC technology is pretty mature these days, particularly monitors. Usually, even a cursory perusal of the spec list gives you a good idea of what to expect. So it’s not all that often a screen comes along and blows apart your expectations, but that’s exactly what the new Philips BDM4037UW pulls off. Unfortunately, it does so for all the wrong reasons. On paper, it looks similar to the BDM4065UC. Its sibling has been knocking around for a few years, but offers the same 40-inch 3,840 x 2,160 UHD native resolution. Both panels also leverage VA technology, and Philips claims similar specs for everything from contrast to pixel response. Indeed, the only really significant difference is the BDM4037UW’s curvature. The curve is an acquired taste,…

GAMING HEADSET $400 | WWW.BEYERDYNAMIC.COM.AU Originally designed for the aviation industry, the second-gen MMX 300 set is a masterclass in rugged design and uncompromising quality. Uncharacteristic of gaming headsets, the entirety of these cans is a sedate matte black — everything from the rubberised plastic outer shell to the microfibre coating on the earcuppadding is deliberately inconspicuous. Many aspects of the tank-like construction are similarly utilitarian, such as the detachable and durable cabling, and the replaceable earcup and headband cushions. The audio from the microphone is clear and, although we’d usually appreciate the ability to detach our mics, this unit’s fixed design is very easily stowed away. The earcups are massive, providing an impressive sense of space when gaming, and thanks to the snug fit and firm foam…

PC CASE $85 | WWW.PHANTEKS.COM There’s an expectation when shopping for a case on a budget that you’re going to end up with a bum deal. If you’re looking around the $80–$90 mark, the likelihood of finding one with anything resembling modern-day features is slim. Want cable management, a PSU cover, extensive radiator support, fan mounts and tempered glass for less than $150? Get outta here! The notion has always been that, cases being the least important part of any budget build, you should forsake the fancy features, and just get whatever’s available with the funds you have left after buying everything else. After all, cases are all pretty much the same at this price point. That’s why the P300 is one of the most exciting cases we’ve…

Step one to speeding up your PC is giving it a clear-out. If your last spring clean wasn’t long ago, you might be tempted to skip this, but you’ll be surprised by how quickly detritus can accumulate, so these tips are still worth following. First, we need to ensure there’s sufficient free space on your system drive — aim to leave at least 5GB (preferably much more) spare. Open File Explorer, right-click your drive, and choose Properties. Click ‘Disk Clean-up’, wait for the scan, then click ‘Clean up system files’ to find more files to clear out. You may need to scroll through and check further items to clean up; select each one to read more about it, as some — such as ESD files — are best left in…

You place a treasured CD-ROM into the disc tray, wistful about the good old days, and excited to see the familiar pixels of an old favourite game. Your PC reacts like a dog watching a magic trick. Autorun doesn’t work. Setup.exe doesn’t work. InstallShield is looking for a long-forgotten Windows 98 library file in perpetuity. In a very real and upsetting way, your childhood is no longer compatible with the modern world, and you know that the only way to rekindle it involves hours of compatibility box-checking, Googling and fiddling. A traumatic moment. But it doesn’t have to be. Getting software that was designed for much older operating systems and hardware to run on modern machines offers its own intrinsic satisfaction. It’s like breaking the rules, somehow, raising dead software…

Have you recently switched to Windows 10 and miss some of the features from previous versions? If you upgraded some time ago, are there tweaks you’d like to make to your system? If either of the above true, you have come to the right place! In this guide, we’ll so you how to perform some of the actions you may remember fondly, such as showing the desktop, tiling windows and customising your Start menu. We’ll also look at new features specific to Windows 10 such as printing files to PDF. Business users in particular may enjoy juggling open windows by arranging them across multiple desktops. You don’t need any great skill to make these changes, nor should they cause any harm to your system. However, as always, we recommend that…

1 CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY First, you need to copy the easy-rsa template directory to your home directory so your custom certificates aren’t overwritten when the package is updated. Open the Terminal and type the following: 3 BUILD A CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY At the Terminal, verify you’re still in the openvpn-ca directory, then type source vars and hit Enter. You should see a note appear (see screenshot). Now type ./clean-all and hit Enter, followed by ./build-ca . After pressing Enter, you’ll be taken through the root certificate authority key and certificate. Just hit Enter when prompted to confirm each edit you made in the previous step. 2 EDIT VARS FILE Scroll down to the group of lines beginning export KEY_ COUNTRY and fill them in with your own personal information – see the…

With Facebook Chat, Google Hangouts, Yahoo Messenger and ICQ to name but a few, there’s certainly no shortage of chat services today. The downside of all these services is that they’re closed-source, meaning the code used to design them isn’t released to the public. This makes it harder to detect security vulnerabilities, as well as the fact that you have to trust that big companies are keeping your private conversations safe. Federation is also definitely not supported by most proprietary chat software — for instance, someone using the official Google Hangouts app has no way of speaking directly to someone using AOL Messenger — which has just closed. The solution to all of the above is XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol). In essence, XMPP is a communications protocol for…

Writing your own apps will always score you plenty of kudos points, whether you’re building machine-learning algorithms or writing ‘choose your own adventure’ games. But if there’s one thing that makes your apps come alive, it’s sound. Could you imagine Mario Bros reaching the same heights of popularity without that iconic soundtrack? Computers have made sounds for decades — in fact, Australia owns bragging rights for the first music generated by computer, played on Australia’s own first-gen CSIRAC computer as far back as April 1951. We’ve come a long way since then, and today, Python not only plays computer-generated tones, but standard audio file formats, turns text into speech and even turns its hand to speech recognition. THE ‘WINSOUND’ MODULE For simplicity and space this month, we’re assuming you’re rocking…

PC, PS4, XO | $88 | FRACTUREDBUTWHOLE.COM While 2014’s magnificent The Stick of Truth skewered high fantasy, The Fractured But Whole is an anarchic send-up of superheroes — from comic book cliches to endless money-spinning movie franchises. You play as the mute New Kid, whose heroic deeds in the previous game are forgotten because, well, the kids are playing a different game now. Tutored by the Coon (alter ego of Eric Cartman), you begin your adventure as a lowly sidekick and must earn the right to establish your own superhero brand and potential Netflix series. Yet no matter how hard you work, he’ll still always refer to you simply as ‘Buttlord’. The Fractured But Whole is an accessible RPG with a wonderfully fun turn-based combat system. The fighting…