Table of contents for July 2015 in PC & Tech Authority

There’s a chance that you haven’t heard of a firm called NCR. There’s no reason why you should have, apart from the fact that it’s a worldwide organisation, with an Australian presence – and one that you’ve more than likely interacted with this week. Or, to be more precise, you’ve interacted with one of the 100,000 self-service kiosk terminals that it has so far installed around the world. The company estimates that those terminals are responsible for processing around 14 million transactions a day – transactions that used to be processed by human beings. NCR boasts self-service kiosks in supermarkets, cinemas, petrol stations, stadiums and airports. “Don’t add cashiers when you have peak levels of traffic,” it urges. “Self-service kiosks can fully replace cashiers, saving thousands of pounds every year.”…

Compact Windows PCs such as Intel’s NUC have been steadily becoming a more common sight across the industry in recent times, and we’ve seen none cuter than Acer’s compact Revo One RL85. The model sent in for review runs Windows 8.1 64-bit with Bing, and crams a fourth-generation Intel Core i3-4005U CPU, 4GB of RAM and a 2TB hard disk into a case that’s little bigger than a coffee caddy. It’s a pretty little thing. From the front, its soft curves and glossy white finish make it look more like a swanky Bluetooth speaker or an extrovert air freshener. Fortunately, it’s a bit more useful than both. Look around the rear of the Revo and you’ll see a stack of PC-style ports arranged in a narrow strip. At the top…

The T300 exudes the kind of highend charm that we’d expect from a device a good deal more expensive than its price. The 12.5in tablet and keyboard dock are a handsome couple: hewn from chunks of aerospace-grade aluminium and finished in a deep metallic blue, with the brushed metal framed by bevelled edges skirting neatly around the sides. Meanwhile, Asus’ choice of Intel’s lowpower Core M processor has enabled it to pare down the size and weight. The tablet is 1.2mm thinner than the Surface Pro 3, at 7.9mm, and 80g lighter at 720g. In fact, the only physical disappointment is that the T300 is rather weighty once you factor in the keyboard dock. Still, there are plenty of plus points. The weight in the base counterbalances the tablet to…

One of the common frustrations with the fitness-tracking facilities in most smartwatches is that they simply don’t do enough. That’s not a problem for the Microsoft Band, which crams in almost every sensor that a fitness fanatic, or a keen beginner, could possibly ask for. You get an optical heart-rate sensor, capable of continuously tracking your heart rate 24 hours a day; a built-in GPS receiver; a three-axis accelerometer; a gyrometer; and an array of sensors that measure ambient light, skin temperature, UV light and galvanic skin response. There’s also a capacitive sensor, so the Band knows when you’re wearing it. The data pulled in by all these sensors allows the Microsoft Band to track every facet of your daily activities: how many steps you take, how many calories you…

If it’s spring, that must mean a new release of Ubuntu. This latest one is codenamed the “Vivid Vervet”, but – as has become common for Ubuntu releases – you’ll have to squint to spot the difference between this and last autumn’s “Utopic Unicorn”. In fact, Ubuntu 15.04 raises the bar when it comes to inconspicuous updates. From a user perspective, the only noticeable change is to application menus, which now appear in their respective windows rather than at the top of the screen. Such behaviour has been optional since 14.04 – and indeed was the default in Ubuntu 10.10 and before – so as user-experience updates go, this isn’t exactly a brave new world. There are bigger changes to be found beneath the surface of Ubuntu 15.04. Internally, Canonical’s…

On paper the Dell XPS 13 is a very similar critter to the Asus ZenBook. It’s a very similar size, adopting the 13.3 inch ultraportable format to go head to head with Apple’s new MacBook. Packing what appears to be comparable hardware to the ZenBook, it’s only $100 more expensive. However, after spending quality time with the XPS 13, we have to say that it’s definitely the better of the two. For starters, the XPS 13 has more of a premium feel and finish to it, bringing it more in line with the superb build quality of the MacBook. The fact that the display stretches all the way to the edges makes a huge aesthetic difference, foregoing the unattractive border found on the ZenBook. The polished aluminium also feels a…

Toshiba’s Satellite P50W is aimed at those who want a full-sized, 15.6 inch laptop, but who don’t want to pay a full-sized price for the privilege. At just $1599 it’s substantially cheaper than many competing laptops in this size range, but Toshiba has had to make several compromises to get the price down so low, mostly regarding the internal components. On the flipside, it’s also included one major goodie missing from other laptops at this price range – a reversible touch screen. Thanks to the twin rotating hinges, it’s possible to convert the P50W into tent or tablet mode. In the latter, it’s one of the biggest tablets we’ve seen, thanks to the large 15.6 inch display, and thankfully all of the keys are disabled when in this mode. Unfortunately…

For a long time, Box’s Achilles heel was its lack of synchronisation. It was a great place to store and share files across a business, but ensuring that you had the most up-to-date data across all of your PCs took work. Box’s Sync client has fixed this, however, while new features such as the integrated text/notes editor Box Notes make it an even stronger choice for business use. Synchronisation is now well handled, with a simple, Dropbox-style dragand-drop approach. There are also selective sync options, where you can turn sync on and off for individual folders – good for devices with limited capacity – and informative notifications from the system-tray applet. Box has also tightened up the practicalities, with improved support for long filenames, seamless synchronisation of open documents, and…

Google Drive keeps getting better. The service that once struggled with a lack of key features and an ugly, unintuitive interface has improved dramatically in recent years, with a slicker, more informative desktop client, a better browser experience and stronger apps. Google has taken a leaf out of Dropbox’s book on the desktop. Syncing files has always been as easy as dragging them into the Google Drive folder set up on your desktop, and now status updates keep you abreast of every upload and download. The browser-based interface can look messy, particularly if you don’t tend to organise your documents in folders, but Google’s usual focus on search ensures that nothing is hard to find. Google’s document-preview features are excellent, too, with photo and music-streaming features that aren’t far behind.…

SugarSync has long been one of the stronger challengers to Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive and Box, offering online backup, cloud storage and file sync at a time when the other major services didn’t offer the full set. Last year brought a slick new look, new features and some price reductions, so it should be even better equipped to compete. There’s plenty to like about SugarSync. The revamped desktop client is clear, colourful and easy to use, and the sync features offer more control than rivals, making it simple to select which files and folders you want to keep in sync and across which linked PCs. It doesn’t even matter if they’re outside the Dropboxlike My SugarSync folder; all items can be synced in place. Files are easily accessible online, complete…

Nobody really expected Wolfenstein: The New Order to be the sleeper hit of 2014. What was initially expected to be little more than a generic Nazi filled shooter cashing in on a nostalgic name not only turned out to be one of the best straight up old-school first person shooters in years, it also proved to have well developed characters and a surprisingly deep and affecting story. Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, a five or so hour standalone prequel to The New Order is more akin to the early expectations of The New Order in that it rides more on fond memories of the earlier game than it does on its own merits. There are still some truly great moments to be had with some fun character interactions and combat set-pieces,…

If your connection is crawling along, the first question to ask is whether it’s really the network that’s to blame. The true culprit could be a specific program or device clogging up your network – perhaps a backup job beaming terabytes of data to your NAS box, or an infected device that’s been subsumed into a botnet, and is now, without your knowledge, flooding out malicious datagrams to destinations all around the world. With free software such as Wireshark (wireshark.org), you can inspect all the data packets on your network as they fly through the air, and easily discover whether one device is taking up more than its fair share of bandwidth. Your router’s web-based administration interface may also offer reports and logs: the way you access these will differ…

Digital industry groups and academics have challenged the secrecy surrounding treaty negotiations by Australian officials, arguing the public should see more than unofficially leaked chapters of text. Kimberlee Weatherall, an associate professor in law and renowned IP expert, gave evidence in a private capacity to a Senate inquiry last week. She argued that closed-door negotiations on proposed treaties – such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which has chapters on intellectual property and copyright – created distrust and provided no assurances that Australia was getting a good deal. As treaties increasingly changed the domestic law, they should be subjected to the same public and parliamentary scrutiny as proposed law changes through the regular parliamentary channels, she said. “The nub of the issue now is that IP chapters look like legislation, and…

The Sound Torch While there’s a whole heap of super flashy, aesthetically pleasing and ultimately overpriced Bluetooth-enabled portable already speakers on the market, The Sound Torch looks set to be the red hot ostentatious choice for consumers when it heads to Kickstarter soon, with only 100 available for the early bird backers. Why red hot, you say? Well, because it’s topped with an inbuilt gaspowered pyro board that visualises your music as it’s playing with a real open flame, that’s why. What could possibly go wrong, am I right? MOST WANTED: The obligatory sessions spent huddled in dark rooms mesmerised by the dancing pyrotechnic display as the speaker pumps out various songs with fire or flame in the title. NOT WANTED: When you get so sick of hearing ‘We Didn’t…

Atweet in the morning to share a link. A few photos on Facebook after a holiday. A snap on Instagram to show off a particularly tasty lunch. We broadcast the little details of our lives online without a second thought – but should we really be so cavalier? Sharing information online can carry numerous risks. Mention the fact that it’s your 40th birthday and the whole world now knows your date of birth – and that could be enough to enable a hacker to impersonate you online. A holiday snap could reveal to burglars that you’re away from home, and a poorly worded status update could cost you your job. Such dire consequences may seem unlikely, but they’ve all happened to real people. In this feature, we’ll show you how…

At $2400 this is an expensive notebook PC, at least by today’s standards. But how quickly we forget those branded “laptop” displays in boutique stores back in, say, 2002 where gloriously plastic and chunky machines boasted of their 256MB RAM as halogen spotlights gleamed off their $5500 price tags. Yes, the world has moved on, and today $2400 gets you a hell of a lot of computer. Apparently HP designed the Spectre x360 in close consultation with Microsoft, despite the existence of the Surface and the, uh, Xbox 360. The result, as everyone who I showed it to noted, is a notably clean Windows install. Very little bloatware, just a smattering of pointless HP user assistance rubbish and an inevitable trial installation of McAfee to mess up your initial attempts…

It was a long journey for Microsoft to get to this product. You could look at it as the next-gen successor to the Surface RT, and indeed it is. The smaller form factor of previous RT machines was appealing, and sat well with the idea of a transformable tablet/laptop, but Windows RT, for better or worse, never caught on enough to warrant Microsoft sticking with that platform. RT Surface machines were also hobbled with an ARM-based Tegra processor, which made running full Windows an unhackable technical impossibility. This new device is what the loudest voices have been begging for over the years. But it’s not so much the Windows RT lineage that really drives what this is – it’s more the success of the big brother Surface 3 Pro and…

On a desk, this monitor is beautifully imposing. With a 34” diagonal size and 21:9 display ratio, it’s like having two monitors glued into a single display – stunning. There aren’t as many pixels on this panel (3440x1440) as a 4K UHD panel (3840x2160), but it’s still a monstrous amount of screen real estate, so ensure your computer can cope. HDMI won’t handle it at 60Hz, you need a graphics card with DisplayPort output. At the rear, there are two Thunderbolt 2 ports for the Mac users (one input, one daisy chain output), two HDMI 1.4 ports and a DisplayPort input. There are the usual built in speakers embedded into the monitor, even given a dubious marketing moniker of MaxxAudio (that’s Maxx, not Max, remember that), but they’re not good…

Last year, Huawei’s Ascend P7 smartphone impressed us with its slimline good looks and topquality camera – but it was undermined by sluggish performance and an overfussy UI. This year, the company aims to improve on that with its new flagship. First impressions are positive. The P8 is super-slim, measuring a mere 6.9mm from front to back; it weighs only 144g, and it looks great. The curved edges contrast pleasingly with the flat front and matte-finish rear, and the bevelled edges give it an expensive look that’s redolent of the Samsung Galaxy S6 – even though the P8 is considerably cheaper. In a couple of areas, the P8 even trumps the S6. Although there’s no removable battery, the P8 has a microSD slot for storage expansion. It’s waterand dust-resistant too,…

These days, any update to Office must inevitably seem quite minor – after all, the major features have been fully formed for years. So it is with Office 2016, now available as an “IT Pro and Developer Preview” for Office 365 subscribers. But incremental improvements are no bad thing: if Microsoft had rested on its laurels after Office 97, we’d have no ribbon interface, no Backstage view or OneDrive integration – and we’d still have Clippy. One key addition to Office 2016 could change the way you use the suite: desktop applications have now inherited the “Tell me what you want to do…” search box from the Office online applications. Once you start using this simple feature, you’ll be wondering why Microsoft didn’t build it in years ago. The ability…

The latest version of Apple’s insanely popular MacBook range has finally landed, and it’s bound to divide opinions. It’s expensive, has limited connectivity options and one of the most interesting keyboards we’ve seen on a laptop, which some will love, and others will hate. But it’s also beautiful, and light, and a sign of things to come. Whether or not it’s the right laptop for you will very much be determined by whether you’re happy to handle its many limitations in exchange for such an iconic product. At just 920 grams, this is one of the lightest mainstream laptops on offer. In fact, it’s even lighter than the MacBook Air, which is supposed to be Apple’s ultra-portable range. It’s incredibly thin, measuring a mere 13mm at its deepest point, and…

Portability be damned; sometimes you want a laptop that includes a big, beautiful display, along with a full keyboard. Not everybody needs a laptop designed for hauling around all day, and the Lenovo ThinkPad T550 is one such laptop that will happily reside on your desk for the better part of its life. However, it faces stiff competition from both MSI and Toshiba in the 15.6 inch format, so let’s see if the T550 has what it takes to come out on top. As mentioned, this isn’t an ultraportable laptop built with slim lines or a low weight in mind; it’s a full-sized bruiser. Weighing 2.13kg, it’s actually the lightest of the 15.6 inch laptops that we reviewed, but only by a relatively small margin. Despite its relatively large dimensions,…

The term “cloud storage” is becoming less and less appropriate: today, the popular services all offer much more than just storage. Of course, they still provide capacity in the cloud where you can keep your most important files, photos, documents and data, and give you the tools to access them from anywhere. More than this, though, cloud-storage services have become the glue that holds our post-PC world together. While there are doubtless people who still rely on one desktop or laptop computer, more and more of us now spread our work across multiple devices, including PCs, tablets and smartphones. To do this effectively we need a centralised way of accessing, viewing, editing and saving our files. Cloud-storage services not only let us read and write files from any device and…

For obvious reasons, OneDrive has a clear advantage over other services on Windows PCs. Not only is it baked into Windows 8.1, where signing in with your Microsoft account also signs you in to OneDrive, but it’s also treated as the default file location for Office 2013. Opt for a Windows Phone 8 smartphone and/or a Windows 8.1 tablet, and using OneDrive becomes so easy and seamless that it’s practically a no-brainer. The only surprise might be that, beyond this, there are also plenty of other good reasons to use Microsoft’s cloud-storage solution. For a start, it works intelligently. Rather than copy every file into every synced folder on every machine, OneDrive syncs only those that you have used recently or regularly, then downloads others on demand. This can be…

Bitcasa Drive does things differently to other cloud-storage services; instead of syncing folders between PCs and online with a folder in the cloud, all files are broken down into chunks and encrypted before they’re uploaded and stored on a Bitcasa “hard drive” in the cloud. From there you can access them from any system via an app, a browser or a desktop client. When you need them, files are streamed from the online drive and cached, making it faster to get hold of them next time. This makes Bitcasa more effective for those moving between a conventional desktop or laptop and a tablet with limited storage. You can’t sync files as such, but you can mirror files from one linked PC to the Bitcasa Drive, then access those files on…

Livedrive gives you a choice between a basic online backup service, a 2TB sync service, and a service that bundles both together, covering five PCs with 5TB of storage. You can select which files and folders to back up, and can drag files and folders to be synced into your Briefcase folder, which operates like a Dropbox folder. Livedrive’s desktop client looks dated, and its Android and iOS apps are even worse. As features go, though, the software isn’t bad. Selecting files and folders for backup is easy, with the setup making sensible suggestions, and you can select whether individual files or folders sync on specific systems within the desktop client. There’s also a useful option to have synced PCs or laptops exchange data peer-to-peer over a local network. You…

One of the constant refrains we hear from readers is the way manufacturers and local retailers and distributors jack up local prices on items for, seemingly, no good reason. We’ve had a few letters on this, so, rather than address each one separately; we thought we’d tackle them collectively. In a globalised economy, you’d expect pricing to be reasonably even across different jurisdictions once you allow for exchange rates. For example, based on current rates, you’d expect something that costs US$100 to cost about AU$125. However, that is not always the case. Some of this has been brought to sharp attention with the recent federal budget and the so-called “Netflix Tax”. This new enforcement of the GST rules will mean that goods and services sold in Australia to Australian consumers…

You won’t nd better reviews anywhere in Australia! I don’t know anyone who didn’t raise a smirked eyebrow when ‘The Cloud’ first entered our sphere of attention. Mostly, it seemed, because it didn’t make sense. Why would we want to ‘store it on the internet?’ Local storage was fine, and sensible, and cheap. People would ask me what this cloud thing is all about? They would have actually understood it was simply server-side storage, but understandably became confused by all the marketing rhetoric at the time, which painted a vague picture of many solutions to a problem that didn’t exist, and all described in painfully non-specific terms. Marketing at its worst. Informing very few, muddying the picture as rival companies battled for differentiation, with the almost complete absence of a…

Intel’s Next Unit of Computing, or NUC, was a revelation in space-saving computing. Forget the Small Form Factor PCs from the likes of Shuttle; Intel’s original NUC delivered desktop performance in a chassis only slightly larger than a pack of cards. It’s received several refreshes since first launching in 2012, and the latest version now comes packing Intel’s Core i5-5300U vPro processor, along with a selection of improvements across the board. It’s still carrying a rather hefty price tag though, which doesn’t include any RAM or hard drive, so let’s see if it can justify the $600+ it’ll cost to save you a chunk of desk space. For the price, you get a PC that measures just four inches square. Inside resides the new Intel CPU, and unlike other NUCs…

There’s no two ways about it: the ViewSonic VP2780-4K is something of a bargain by the standards of professional monitors. It still isn’t cheap, but this 27in monitor packs in everything you could reasonably expect for the cash. Take a 3,840 x 2,160 IPS panel, add in a decent selection of features and inputs, throw in a zeropixel-defect guarantee, and for around $1200 and you have a recipe for success. As a member of ViewSonic’s professional VP range, the VP2780-4K comes perched atop a fully adjustable stand that provides tilt, swivel and 150mm of height adjustment, and flips around into portrait mode. It isn’t as solidfeeling as pricier models, but it works well: the huge claw-like base keeps the monitor rooted to the spot, yet still allows for easy one-handed…

Home automation used to be the domain of rich home owners willing to spend thousands of dollars to have their blinds automatically open at certain times of the day, or a plethora of lights controllable via a touch screen. They’d need to enlist the services of a home automation specialist who knows the ins and outs of esoteric protocols like X10 and C-Bus and can find the obscure products to interface with them. But in 2015, thanks to buzzwords like the Internet of Things and the prevalence of smartphones and tablets, what was once niche and expensive is now widespread and (relatively) cheap. Belkin’s WeMo range of home automation products are more accessible and easy to use devices currently on the market. You’d think setting this sort of thing up…

Apple’s sexy new MacBook has a couple of competitors in Windows land, and the first is the ZenBook UX305 from Asus. It offers much of what makes the MacBook so special – ultra-thin, ultra-light, and a rather sexy design – without the limitations faced by prospective MacBook owners. Yet it’s also lacking that special something, the secret ingredient, which makes Macs so different from most Windows laptops. At just 12.3mm thick at its deepest point, the ZenBook is even thinner than the new MacBook. However, it’s around 20% heavier, tipping the scales at 1.2kg, likely as a result of the additional componentry found throughout. The chassis appears to be built from aluminium throughout, though it’s not a single piece like Apple’s. The 13.3 inch screen also has a thick border…

As the most expensive laptop in our roundup, MSI’s new PE60 has a lot to prove. Can this 15.6 inch heavyweight deliver enough goodies to make the high price tag justified, especially when it’s facing such stiff competition from the likes of Lenovo? In a word, yes, and it all comes down to the hardware MSI has stuffed inside. When it comes to hardware specifications, the PE60 is hard to beat, including many more features than every other laptop in the roundup. Let’s begin with the CPU, an Intel Core i5-4210H. This is a twin-core, HyperThreaded chip that has a base speed of 2.9GHz, which boosts all the way up to 3.5GHz in Turbo mode. This makes it easily the most powerful processor of all those included in our roundup.…

For many people, the biggest concerns over cloud-based services have little to do with features, connectivity or capacity, and everything to do with security and privacy. While the truth is somewhat more complex, it seems intuitive that data stored on a local PC or NAS drive should be secure, while data stored remotely in some nebulous cloud is vulnerable to attack from hackers, fraudsters and numerous sinister agencies. As a result, we look for reassurance from cloud services that our data will be secure and our privacy respected. Following the Snowden revelations and last year’s celebrity security breaches, that need has only grown. Businesses have particular concerns. Not only do they have their own business-sensitive data to safeguard, but they have a duty of care over any customer or employee…

Given Amazon’s background with its high-end AWS cloud services, you’d expect something special from its consumer-level cloud-storage service. Sadly, you’d be disappointed. Amazon’s customers can’t grumble about getting 5GB of free space, while Fire Phone owners and Amazon Prime subscribers get unlimited photo storage, but this is still a surprisingly basic effort. For a start, Cloud Drive no longer offers sync capabilities. The Sync desktop client that was available last year has been pulled in favour of a client that offers little more than basic uploads and downloads. The Android and iOS apps support photo uploads, but nothing else. If you’re looking for document-sharing or media-streaming features, you’ll have to look elsewhere. The desktop client is lean and functional, with a simple drag-and-drop interface for uploading files and folders. However,…

For many, Dropbox is synonymous with cloud storage, sync and file sharing. It’s the service that all other services are inevitably compared to, and there’s good reason for that. For one thing, Dropbox is incredibly easy to use. All files dragged into a Dropbox on one PC are replicated in the Dropbox folder on all PCs, and no other service makes sharing files and folders quite so simple. The revamped system-tray applet does a great job of notifying you when there are updates, or staying out of your way when you just want to get on. It’s virtually hassle-free, and the LAN-sync features are great for keeping several computers in sync across the local network. Dropbox also offers a great range of features. In the browser you can upload, download,…

Mozy made its name as an online backup service, but now offers sync services on top. The most basic service still only covers one PC for US$5.99 per month, but $US9.99 per month buys you 125GB of backup space for three computers, including sync from a dedicated MozySync folder. In practice, the implementation is a little clunky in comparison to SugarSync or Livedrive. Where these provide both backup and sync from one desktop client, Mozy installs two: one to cover backup, and another for sync. Both clients are easy to use, with clear status updates and access to preferences, but also rather basic – a statement that covers Mozy as a cloud-storage service in general. While apps are available for Android and iOS, they’re rather spartan-looking and limited in terms…

Project CARS is the newest kid on the block of racing simulators. Developed by the same UK-based team which once headed the legendary GTR series on PC in the mid-2000’s, Slightly Mad has in recent times been focusing on racing titles more geared towards providing fun for everyone with the Need for Speed Shift series. Project CARS, however, is earmarked as a return to the roots of what made this studio so wellknown; a sim designed to be as realistic as possible and mix it with the best of the industry on both PC and console. For the most part, Project CARS achieves this. Each of the 60+ cars available to drive in the game feel uniquely challenging to drive while also providing a selection of assists to use for…

For the first time in a few issues we’ve no changes to the hardware part of A-List. Next issue will see us spend a mighty week at the annual Computex show, and we have a few key areas of interest that may well see some seismic shifts on this page, and the next. However we do see a new version of Adobe Lightroom come into the List, and what’s more it’s a higher scorer than its predecessor with a perfect 5 out of 5. PC DESKTOP ALL-IN-ONE Apple iMac 27in PRICE $2,199 SUPPLIER www.apple.com/au If you can afford it, the 27in iMac is the finest piece of all-in-one engineering on the market. A truly powerful beast with performance to match its looks.. SPECIFICATIONS 3.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i5; 8GB DDR3…

Walk into any office, factory or boardroom, and you’re likely to find more tablets and smartphones being used than PCs. Business is now often conducted on whichever device is closest to hand, and that means you need business-class apps. Such tools can help with all sorts of tasks, from team communication and note-taking to project management. Many powerful tools are cross-platform, and the ones we look at here have all been tested in live business environments. Here’s our selection of six great apps for business, along with our advice on how to get the best out of them. 1 KEEP YOUR TEAM IN TOUCH WITH SLACK Android, iOS, OS X, Windows, Windows Phone When it comes to working as a team, email is a poor way to communicate. It’s time-consuming,…

Two years ago, former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden leaked documents revealing the full extent of communication surveillance by the US spying agency. He now lives in Russia, to avoid US charges, but has popped up at various conferences via Google Hangout, including Nesta’s FutureFest held in London in March. This is an edited transcript of some of Snowden’s responses to questions asked at the London event. You can the watch the full interview at tinyurl.com/ndgmeyl. Many of the things you’ve said are in some ways relatively timeless principles about the rule of law, the trade-offs of security and freedom and surveillance. But how different will these questions look in a few years’ time, with perhaps easier access to strong cryptography, with the internet of things meaning we’ll all…