Table of contents for May 2018 in APC

A proposal from the Department of Home Affairs has suggested that Australian shoppers purchasing goods from overseas pay an additional fee of $5 on every item posted. The proposed tax would be put in place to cover the growing cost of security screening, a paper obtained by Fairfax Media claims, as the number of items posted to Australia that are valued under $1,000 increase dramatically year on year. This cost will sit atop the existing 10% GST that will apply to all sales from July 1st this year, rather than on only those over $1,000 in value, and has the potential to increase certain parcel costs by more than double their initial value. While there would have been scope for this cost to be absorbed by online retailers such as…

Phones. They used to have buttons and a lanyard hole (that accessory loop you’d attach a charm or three onto). They also used to be plasticky, brick-like in design and fit into your average pocket. Now, however, thanks to many innovations over the years, they’re ‘smart’, sleek, smooth, huge, thin, packed with pixels and can pretty much do anything you want them to do, barring making you a cup of coffee or giving you your morning shave (but that’s not from want of trying). But what about those weird inventions that were left by the wayside, and what’s on the horizon? This month, we take a look at the weird designs you may have forgotten and give you a sneak peek at some rumoured next steps for our favourite devices.…

“I visit a lot of news websites and, since I’m a bit stingy, I don’t have any paid memberships for their services, meaning I get served up all sorts of ads.” COOKIE MONSTER MADNESS Privacy and personal online security is a hot topic of conversation these days, so I thought I’d follow some of your advice; namely to do with changing passwords, making them unique to all my online accounts and removing cookies, just in case my device gets stolen. However, I might have gone a bit overboard, as I got rid of, well... all of them. I visit a lot of news websites and, since I’m a bit stingy, I don’t have any paid memberships for their services, meaning I get served up all sorts of ads. Due to…

SINGLE-BOARD COMPUTER $64 | WWW.RASPBERRYPI.ORG Another Raspberry Pi! Will this be the fabled Raspberry Pi 4 offering USB 3.0, SATA, GTX 1080 GPU, octa-core CPU and 16GB of DDR4 RAM? So let’s first address the obvious questions. No, this isn’t the Raspberry Pi 4 and no, it has none of those features. Rather, the Raspberry Pi 3+ is an incremental improvement of the Pi 3 B that gives us a little more power, and much better connectivity. This is not the first B+ board — that was the original B+ released in 2014 and saw the first board design morph into what has become the de facto standard board layout, often emulated, but so far unbeaten by its competitors. INCREMENTAL UPDATE Let’s start with System on a Chip…

HYBRID STORAGE DEVICE $289 (FOR 118GB) | WWW.INTEL.COM.AU Ten times the data density, 1,000 times faster, 1,000 times better endurance. All of this and more Intel claimed three years ago for its revolutionary 3D XPoint non-volatile memory tech, now branded Optane. Those claims were made in comparison to the nonvolatile memory tech that dominates the storage industry, namely NAND flash memory. Now we have our hands on Intel’s first more-or-less mainstream SSD for PCs based on 3D XPoint, the Optane SSD 800p. But what’s this? Sequential reads of 1,450MB/s? Writes of just 640MB/s? And check out the IOPS, too. Intel rates its new Optane drive at just 250K read IOPS and 140K for writes. Far from being 1,000 times faster than a NAND SSD, all those figures are…

4K MONITOR $1,299 | WWW.LG.COM/AU We live in an age of ubiquitous technological plenty. Powerful computers in our pockets, near-enough super-computers on our desktops, always-on super-speed connectivity—it’s all available, and all quite affordable. But there are one or two areas where compromises must be made at almost any money. One of those is PC monitors. No matter how much money you throw at a screen, you can’t have it all. Take LG’s new 27UD88-W. It’s pricey, and it measures just 27 inches across, is limited to 60Hz refresh, and doesn’t support HDR. That’s partly explained by the signature feature: a UHD or 4K pixel grid. For now, the combination of 4K with high refresh, HDR and a really large panel isn’t available. In fact, the combo of just…

Sick of having a PC the size of a small bar fridge? Fear not, as mini-ITX and micro-ATX PC cases are now becoming more popular than ever. Between half and a quarter of the size of a mid-tower, they’re designed to minimise their footprint and tuck snugly away out of sight. Unlike mini-ITX and micro-ATX motherboards, there’s no real specifications about the exact size of these cases. Therefore, you’re going to need to check the specs about each case to see if it will fit your chosen motherboard. It’s only thanks to the miniaturisation of other PC components that these mini-PCs are becoming more popular. However, this means you may need to buy smaller components than would fit inside a standard PC, such as an M.2 SSD rather than a…

System building is one of the central tenets of the PC enthusiast community. It’s something we should all aspire to. Here at APC, we’ve built rigs and taught others how to craft their own, both in person and across these pages, countless times. And with one very good reason: You get a real sense of pride from constructing your own machine, and an even greater one from teaching others how to do it. And with the added benefits of knowing every part that goes into your build, saving some cash, and understanding how to troubleshoot your system if it goes wrong, it’s hard to ignore the advantages that system building brings. A lot revolves around system building across the industry. From hardware development, to the custom modding scene, to the…

We’re riding your easily manipulated machismo as an excuse to look at the pros and cons of using Windows as a home server. The demise of the real Windows Home Server line in 2011 left a hole in Microsoft’s range, one that Windows Server Essentials could never quite fill with its small business remit, at a time when, annoyingly, a home server is of more use than ever. We all have so much digital ‘stuff’ that we want to keep, access, stream, share and keep safe that it’s hard to know where to put it. Sure, there are cloud solutions, but who knows where your data is going to end up being stored. Plus, access speed is always limited by your upstream/downstream speeds. So while throwing stuff up to the…

Everyone knows security issues in computing are as much a way of life as the sun coming up in the morning. Nevertheless, the advent of automatically-installed operating system (OS) updates has rendered many of these security flaws mostly harmless. However, the recent discovery of new ‘catastrophic’ security threats has unleashed corporate panic regarding the security of everything from phones to laptops and PCs, even cloud computing. So this month, we’re delving into the new Meltdown and Spectre threats to understand what they are, how they affect you, why you shouldn’t panic just yet and, importantly, what you can — and can’t — do to fix them. WHAT ARE SPECTRE AND MELTDOWN? These are three variants of a new security exploit recently found in many computer processor chips. It’s ‘three’ because…

No one wants to install a whole operating system, just to mess around with a bit of terminal-based garbage, so Microsoft did the right thing, and brought Linux inside Windows, using the Windows Subsystem for Linux. Partnering with one of the leading Linux developers, Canonical, it developed the WSL to enable you to effectively install the core of the Ubuntu Linux OS inside of Windows. No mess, no fuss, just pure, simple Windows, with added Linux on top... uh, inside. “Why?” we hear you ask. Because developers love it. It enables them to directly install and run common open-source tools, commands and server services without leaving Windows. It also enables you to monkey around with Linux from the comfort of Windows, without even needing to fire up a virtual machine.…

You might think that to get any serious typing done on an iPhone or iPad you need to use an external keyboard. While it’s true that you can do that — over Bluetooth, using a Smart Keyboard, or using Apple’s Lightning to USB adapter — if you learn the little tips and tricks Apple has baked into the on-screen keyboard, everything from a tweet to the next great novel is well within the reach of your fingertips. Let’s get typing! We’ll start with something fundamental. Most people will only really use one keyboard for typing, but you can set up several. One main use for this is for typing in different languages; adding other keyboards in Settings > General > Keyboard > Keyboards doesn’t just change the layout of the…

THE CONCEPT These builds have been an interesting exercise in budgeting, that’s for sure. We often work at the crazy end of the system-building spectrum here in the labs, and as we’ve mentioned in the past, it’s far easier to get expensive components in than more affordable gear. Which, although truly hysteria-inducing at times, makes working on a project like this far more satisfying. That said, this isn’t the first time we’ve looked at such affordable rigs. Back at the start of 2017, you could just about build an Intel rig on a $600 budget with 8GB of DDR3 and a 256GB SSD... and a terrible, terrible, terrible processor. No, seriously, just how far things have come in processing performance in the last year is staggering. But more on that…

The clever and popular WS2812B RGB LED contains tiny red, green and blue LEDs in each module. It’s popular and clever because you can string up to 300 of them together and control each individually with just one wire. We introduced the 12-bit RGB ring in our January issue (APC 450, page 104). This time, we’re feeding audio into the Arduino Nano’s analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to turn the RGB ring into an audio-controlled light show. PEAK-POSITION METER We’re building what’s called a ‘peak position meter’. We use the ADC to capture audio, we analyse it, looking for the peak amplitude over 255 consecutive audio samples. The 12-bit ring is divided into two vertical halves, starting at the bottom, with LEDs on each side lighting up sequentially in proportion to the…

PC, XO | $99.95 | WWW.SEAOFTHIEVES.COM We’ve been running up and down two flights of creaky stairs on this pirate galley for the last 10 minutes. There’s a storm raging overhead and if somebody doesn’t drain the hold, one small bucket at a time, then she’ll sink. We’re anchored at a small island after following vague directions scratched onto a treasure map. Voice chat crackles: our mate is repeating something about “looking for three skulls facing east” and then “five paces southwest”, while another scans the horizon for sails from the crow’s nest. “Shit, I’ve just been struck by lightning,” he squawks a few seconds later. But we no longer care, as we continue to heave into our dizzying, soul-destroying bucket-work. We don’t know if we’re having fun.…

Facebook is facing international investigations into the illicit harvesting of users’ personal data. The information was collected by Cambridge Analytica (CA), a political consulting firm that was used by President Trump’s 2016 election campaign and is linked with the Brexit ‘Vote Leave’ campaign. According to a whistleblower, CA gathered data from 50 million users (an initial estimate), then developed a software program that profiled these citizens to predict voting patterns — and, through micro-targeted ads, influence voting decisions. The data was obtained via a third-party app in 2013, ‘thisisyourdigitallife’, that participants willingly signed up for and thus gave up permissions. But it then pulled the personal data of these users’ Facebook friends without their consent, vastly increasing the data pool from the initial 200,000 users. Facebook altered its platform the…

“Well, if automation means there’re no checkouts at Coles to man or trucks to drive, how’s an arts degree sound?” The rise of AI and machine learning shows no sign of slowing down, but the gravity of its development seems lost on most. But the industry and field of study continues to grow apace, with Silicon Valley seemingly determined to eliminate the jobs of millions via automation — and without stopping to wonder how all those people will survive. Well, if automation means there’re no checkouts at Coles to man or trucks to drive, how’s an arts degree sound? In 2018, pursuing a ‘career’ in arts — or indeed, any form of work that isn’t profit-for-profit’s-sake — seems like a ticket to poverty and bitterness. But according to Eric Berridge,…

PROFESSIONAL LAPTOP FROM $2,899 | WWW.GIGABYTE.COM.AU Gigabyte’s Aero range of laptops has attempted to bring premium gaming components to the ultrabook form factor, and this newly-refreshed Aero is no different. Combining a 15.6-inch Pantone colour-calibrated screen, full-sized keyboard, dedicated Nvidia GTX 1060 GPU and a generous 94Wh Li-Ion battery within a slim 35.6 x 25 x 1.9cm chassis is an impressive feat. Combine this with one of Intel’s new high-end 8th-gen mobile CPUs, 16GB of DDR4 RAM and a 512GB SSD and you have a cutting edge gaming PC that slyly takes the shape of a professional ultrabook. This has invariably lead to some design choices that will be divisive — like dropping the web cam to the bottom of the screen, and giving the keyboard a fractionally…

GAMING MOUSE $80 | WWW.STEELSERIES.COM Balance, as we all know, is vitally important. Without it, we wouldn’t have Segway polo, giant Jenga, or standing up. Does the world of mousing really need a big emphasis on balance, though? Does it need 256 possible levels of side-to-side balance adjustment? Science has not advanced far enough to tell, but that’s what SteelSeries is offering with the Rival 600: a series of eight 4g weights, with eight possible positions to place them, four on each lateral edge of the mouse. Pull them all out, and the mouse is light and skippy; stuff them all below the detachable side panels, and it’s, predictably, 32g heavier, with a weightier glide. We preferred the Rival 600 fully loaded, because it’s not only made for…

ASRock Z370M-ITX/ac Why pay more for less? $199 | WWW.ASROCK.COM This mini-ITX board from ASRock departs from the company’s usual policy of aiming for the more affordable end of the market, with a price tag of $200 or so. That’s rather pricey for mini-ITX board, let alone a micro-ATX board, so what makes ASRock think they can justify hitting our bank accounts a little harder than expected? As a mini-ITX board, there isn’t a whole lot of PCB space to include features, yet ASRock has managed to pack it with components. It’s not often we see a mini-ITX board with a full six SATA 3 ports, but this is offset by the fact that there’s only a single PCIe lane, in the form of a PCIe 3.0 x16…

Shuttle is probably the most well-known brand that makes these PCs, and they’re rather different to your average PC. For starters, they generally use custom-sized motherboards that aren’t micro-ATX or mini-ITX, often being even smaller than mini-ITX. Secondly, they also usually come with their own specialised power supply that is even smaller than the SFX PSU form factor. The result is that many can only pump out around 450W of power, but that’s still enough for today’s power sipping components, even if you’re building a gaming box. What they don’t come with is memory, a CPU, discrete graphics card or storage, which you’ll have to buy after purchase. As they come with specialised motherboards and PSUs, they’re more expensive than building your own mini-PC, with prices starting from $350 all…

TIP 1 Right fan for the right job If you’re looking at maximising your cooling efficiency, selecting the right fan for the right job is critical. There are two types of fan design: static pressure fans (with fat, thick blades) designed for high-pressure environments where they need to push air through radiators or heatsink fins efficiently; and airflow fans (with multiple skinny blades) which are designed to move as much air through a system as quickly as possible, but without the same amount of force as their static pressure cousins. At the very high end, you’ll find some static pressure fans that can shift as much air as an airflow fan, but that comes at a cost. Noise is also a factor. The bigger the fan, the slower the RPM…

TIP 1 It’s probably memory The number of times we’ve fixed a boot issue due to memory is staggering. A good way to diagnose these conundrums is via the on-board motherboard debug code display. It typically displays a number, depending on the running state of your motherboard. If nothing appears on your screen, and everything’s plugged in correctly, check the BIOS debug code for your first hint; 90 percent of the time, it will say it can’t detect the memory. Your best bet? Reseat the memory. If that doesn’t work, reseat the processor. And if that doesn’t work, try moving your memory to the additional memory slots. If you’re still not having any luck, it’s time to work out whether your memory is DOA. To do this, you’ll want to…

INTERNET BROWSER ADD-ON HIJACK I was looking for a browser extension to capture a screenshot of an entire web page and settled on Fireshot, but after a recent update I’ve found it’s now somehow installed itself to my Taskbar Notification area. How do I now get rid of this? Tim Ellis This is rather sneaky behaviour, as Fireshot has added a desktop instance of itself, which basically runs whenever your browser is open. You can close this manually without closing your browser via its Taskbar Notification area icon, but you can’t remove it permanently. If this is a dealbreaker — it was for Tim as the program hijacked key shortcuts from other programs — then you’ll need to remove Fireshot completely. Tim was using Firefox, so we instructed him to…

Unless you’re very, very organised, you’re unlikely to be able to accurately describe the amount of time you spend on any given task performed over any given period. Keeping careful track of the amount of time spent on a task becomes a priority if you plan to bill clients on an hourly basis. A time-tracking app can be used to help make sense of how you spend the hours at work. This data can help you identify areas where you need to increase your productivity. You might realise you’re taking rather long lunches or spending too much time on research, and not enough responding to emails (although, of course, we all know that some emails can be safely ignored [Careful now... — Ed] or better still, deleted immediately). Watson is…

“Not only are we going to turn a Raspberry Pi ZeroWinto a USB device capable of running Ducky scripts, we’re also going to gain remote access to the target machine.” RubberDucky USB devices are great penetration-testing tools. This device is plugged into a target computer, and the USB drive tricks the computer into thinking it’s an HID keyboard device in order to gain privileged access. Keyboards naturally provide a user with unrestricted access to the computer, in ways that a USB stick wouldn’t normally be able to. Pre-configured ‘Ducky’ scripts are then run on the target machine to prank the user or provide unauthorised remote access. Not only are we going to turn a Raspberry Pi Zero W into a USB device capable of running Ducky scripts, we’re also going…

PS4 | $99.95 | YAKUZA.SEGA.COM Kiryu is certainly knocking on a bit. Early on, fresh out of a prison sentence imposed for his misadventures in Yakuza 5, he certainly seems to be feeling his age: he’s unable to sprint for much more than 100 yards before stopping, bent double. A few upgrades later, he’s back at his best, the only reminder of his advancing years being his wrinkles, the dark rings around his eyes, and the constant references to his age, the developers missing no opportunity to remind you this is Kazuma Kiryu’s swan song. Those unflattering features are powered by a new engine, meaning accessible buildings can now be entered without a loading pause. New fabric and skin shaders, combined with much improved lighting and animation, make…

$3.23 BILLION AUSTRALIANS SPENT UP BIG ON VIDEO GAMES IN 2017 Australia’s Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (IGEA) has released figures showing an overall increase in the purchase of video games in 2017 over that of 2016. A total of $3.23 billion was spent on the interactive entertainment option throughout the year, which represents a 9% increase over 2016’s sales. Despite the increasing prevalence and availability of digital copies of games, both digital and physical releases shared a similar increase in their sales. 1 in 2 LESS THAN HALF OF RANSOMWARE VICTIMS THAT PAY UP GET THEIR RANSOMED FILES RETURNED Funnily enough, it turns out that the people responsible for ransomware attacks are also fairly untrustworthy. American cyber security company CyberEdge has found that, of those that paid the ransom…

INTEL NUC $1,399 | WWW.INTEL.COM.AU Intel’s ‘Next Unit of Computing’ hardware platform has always showcased some of the chipmaker’s most interesting silicon concepts. This year, the Hades Canyon NUC represents a partnership between Intel and AMD we would have never expected — or even fathomed. It’s easily the smallest VR-capable PC that marries together an Intel quad-core processor with integrated, ‘discrete-class’ AMD Radeon RX Vega graphics into a single chip. With all that power under its belt, this gaming PC easily smashes through Full HD gaming with most modern titles and performs like a productivity champ. Despite all the caveats of that comes with a barebones computer such as this, the Intel Hades Canyon NUC earns top marks for packing so much performance into a small package. It’s…

TABLET FROM $469 (32GB) | WWW.APPLE.COM/AU The new iPad for 2018 is designed to achieve one thing: deliver the best of Apple’s tablet efforts at a more affordable price. The cost is still higher than many other tablets out there but the new upgrades bridging the gap between a ‘standard’ slate and the more impressive iPad Pros. The new iPad comes with a range of storage and connectivity options, with prices starting at $469 for the 32GB Wi-Fi model, and the equivalent cellular version at $200 more. In the looks department, the metal back, the well-machined buttons, the home button at the base of the tablet with TouchID are all present and correct. The thickness of 7.5mm is actually 1.1mm thicker than the iPad Air 2s that emerged…

GAMING LAPTOP $1,998 | WWW.DELL.COM/AU On paper, Dell’s latest Inspiron 15 is the ideal configuration for those interested in a well-rounded gaming laptop that doesn’t cost too much. With a 15.6-inch Full HD screen, Core i7-7700HQ CPU, GTX 1060 GPU, 16GB of RAM, a smaller 256GB NVMe SSD and a roomy 1TB HDD, a lot of the necessary boxes have been ticked, but without going overboard. If we then consider that all this is packaged in a 38.9 x 27.5 x 2.5cm form factor that offers ample room for the device’s mobile components and covers off any space-related thermal pressures, you have a recipe for a gaming laptop that can be highly competitive on price. This configuration’s RRP is $2,299 and while it isn’t available at a wide…

 If you’re building a miniature PC, there’s a good chance that it’s going to be living in your family room or home theatre. As such, you expect it to be a well-behaved little box, just like your Blu-ray player, gaming console or set-top box. Unfortunately, there’s one issue with mini-PCs that can be annoying if not addressed — fan noise. “Due to their smaller dimensions, the amount of cooling air within the case is much more limited than a standard PC.” Due to their smaller dimensions, the amount of cooling air within the case is much more limited than a standard PC. This means there’s less air around for your motherboard, video card and CPU’s heatsink to disperse heat into, which can lead these components to running hotter than usual.…

Magnetic bowl You can pick up this handy Park Tool magnetic bowl for about $10 from Amazon. Amazingly useful for storing all your bolts and screws, you can attach it to anything metallic, at any angle, without the worry of losing any of the stuff inside. Plus, rub your screwdriver up against the bowl, and voila — magnetic screwdriver. That’s science, folks. Thermal paste We stick to just one brand: Noctua’s NT-H1 Thermal Compound. It’s a non-conductive thermal paste with a satisfying consistency. You won’t see revolutionary changes in temperature with a higher quality paste, but you’ll see some. Just make sure you don’t use conductive paste. Cable ties Amazon will happily sell you 300 of these for about $10, and they are, by far, the most useful PC building…

“Installing a fresh copy ofWindows 10 is fairly simple nowadays, especially if you’ve kept your digital key, or yourWindows 10 licence is linked to your Microsoft account.” TIP 1 Update the BIOS BIOS updates used to be a daunting, leading to bricked motherboards and dead CPUs. Now, it’s really beneficial, and we recommend you update your BIOS whenever a new one launches. Go to your motherboard manufacturer’s website, find the page for your model and head to the support section. Go to ‘driver downloads’ and search for the BIOS subsection. Download the latest version. Extract this file on to a 4GB USB stick that’s been formatted to the FAT32 filesystem, then plug it into the back of your motherboard, head into the BIOS and find the update BIOS tool in…

Hi. If you’re reading this, then you’ve never installed an OS before. Don’t worry — there’s nothing to be embarrassed or nervous about, we were all OS install virgins once. Installing an OS seems like something of a dying art; millennials and their damn embedded ‘smart’ devices — tsk. An OS is software like anything else, it just happens that part of its job is to load the OS kernel and generally boot the system to a usable state, the clever scamp, which means that installing it requires you to boot the system off an install media — a DVD or USB drive, in other words. At the start of the walkthrough (back over the page), we direct you to download an ISO file of OMV. An ISO file is…

Your Windows PC is a powerful communications tool, but over time your contacts can get spread around across various apps and services. Wouldn’t it be convenient if they were all in one place on your PC? That’s what Microsoft is trying with the People app, which arrived in Windows 10 along with the Fall Creators Update – although it was supposed to come with the previous Creators Update, earlier in 2017. The People app is a simple enough idea; merge your contacts from multiple accounts, then make them more accessible to you. The People app also has an organisational use, enabling you to combine duplicate contacts from disparate services, meaning you can link someone’s email address with their Skype alias if they’re separate, making it easier to ferret out the…

1 FASTER STARTUP Unneeded apps loading on login will stretch out startup and slow your Mac. Open ‘System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items’, click any app you don’t need every time, and click the minus button to stop it loading on login. 2 LIMIT iCLOUD Especially if you have a poor internet connection, backing up to iCloud will slow everything down. If signing out is too extreme, consider opening ‘System Preferences > iCloud > iCloud Drive’ and turning off ‘Desktop and Documents’ syncing. 3 DISABLE ENCRYPTION It’s less of an issue on Macs with SSDs, but with a conventional hard disk, there can be a lag as FileVault encrypts or decrypts your files. If you don’t need its data security, you can disable it in ‘System Preferences…

THE CONCEPT The idea behind our budget builds is simple enough — construct the most affordable machine possible for the smallest pile of cash. We’re not utter masochists, though, so while it is possible to build a machine even cheaper than we have here, there are some quality-of-life choices that we see as a bare minimum. We won’t, for instance, touch non-brand hardware, because we’ve been down that road before, and in our experience, such corner-cutting never ends well, especially when it comes to cases and power supplies. But it does mean that even before we start, there are potentially further savings to be made. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here; let’s get back to the concept. What makes this budget build possible is AMD’s new Raven Ridge APUs,…

It may not yet have an official name, but the Android Developer Preview Show has rolled back into town, with Google unveiling the first preview of Android P, the follow-up to Android 8.x/Oreo released last August. With Oreo presenting so many architectural changes under the bonnet compared with its Nougat/7.0 predecessor, Android P looks set for more visible modifications, from its new rounded-corner design to its heavy overhaul of notifications, support for new centre cutouts, even a new home for the clock. We dive into Android P Developer Preview 1, round up the new big-ticket items and some of the less-well-known changes coming to the next version of Android. INDOOR LOCATION TO WITHIN ONE METRE GPS (global positioning system) can sort out your location outdoors quite comfortably, however, walk through…

PC, PS4, XO | $99.95 | FAR-CRY.UBISOFT.COM On a bridge over a river in Montana, we are in a fierce battle with a roadblock set up by doomsday cultists. Civilians are running scared, their cars blazoned with the word ‘SINNER’. The cult are extremely well-armed and organised, led by the enigmatic John Seed, a self-proclaimed prophet who’s brainwashed his flock through fear and a potent drug. He’s in hiding, having resisted arrest for taking people against their will, and his three lieutenants are now leading on his behalf. It’s a tense scene, but this being Far Cry, it’s also not completely steeped in seriousness and tragedy. We’re mopping two uteloads of goons when a third comes skittling onto the scene, along with a bear that had been chasing…

PC, PS4 | $50 | WWW.FINALFANTASYXII.COM Dalmasca has been invaded by the forces of Archadia and it’s up to a couple of street urchins, a resistance leader, a knight, a sky pirate and a rabbit lady to save the realm. There’s an airship and Chocobos — so far, so Final Fantasy — but look past the iconography and you’ll find the boldest, most inventive game of the series, powered by a weighty squad-based RPG system and remastered to run at high resolutions on PC. After a brief scene-setting prologue, you start the game in control of Vaan, a charmless teen from the streets of Dalmasca. He’s hitting rats in a sewer alone and seems determined to give you the worst possible introduction to FFXII’s world and systems. As…

Cortana inadvertently opens the door to hackers “I’m sorry, Chief.” Microsoft’s voice assistant, Cortana, reportedly has a security vulnerability that allows hackers to completely bypass the Windows 10 login screen. A team of Israeli researchers discovered that Cortana is always on (to be ready to respond to voice commands), even when the computer is locked, meaning she — and by extension, the computer — can be interacted with. Theoretically, this gives a hacker the opportunity to physically connect a device (a USB, for instance) with a network adaptor into the PC, then give Cortana the order to launch the browser and head to a certain unencrypted website. Cortana will apparently comply. “We can attach the computer to a network we control, and we use voice to force the locked machine…