Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2019 i APC

A hacker going by the pseudonym Gnosticplayers is keen on selling a billion user records, according to an interview he had with ZDNet. He’s already managed to get his hands on over 932 million records, releasing 65.5 million of them on the dark web. The data was obtained from hacking 44 companies, including 500px, UnderArmor, ShareThis, GfyCat and MyHeritage, and those are only the more recognisable names. So far, five batches of records have been released for sale, with the last one posted to Dream Market, the largest dark web site that sells illegal goods like guns and drugs, in April. According to ZDNet, the hacker is doing this for more than just money. While selling user information is a lucrative business, Gnosticplayers says it’s also about reputation and he…

XBOX ONE S ALL-DIGITAL EDITION Is Microsoft throwing the Blu-ray out with the bathwater? US$250 | WWW.XBOX.COM Microsoft is doing away with disks for the new Xbox One S All-Digital Edition. Permanently ejecting the disk drive will make it US$50 less expensive, according to Microsoft, but you might be losing more than you think. First, you’ll miss out on the device’s 4K HDR Blu-ray player functionality (it’s the best value UltraHD Blu-ray player on the market), but you’ll also need to convert any old Xbox discs into digital downloads and there isn’t a clear road map for sharing digital games. The Xbox Game Pass does pair nicely with it for a cost of $10.95 per month, but digital games cost a lot more outright generally. MICROSOFT HOLOLENS 2…

In the beginning, Facebook seemed like the cool alternative to the News Corporation owned MySpace. It had a simple interface, and more focus on the social aspect of social media – as opposed to being a half arsed media or entertainment portal. Mark Zuckerberg (who is totally Data from Star Trek TNG, but kinda evil) resisted corporate buyouts and focused on ‘connecting people’. For a time Facebook was a really useful tool. Millions and then billions were using it. “Facebook has its claws in me, and for that reason alone, maybe it always will.“ Something happened though. Facebook began to think of ways to monetise itself. Was the cool company turning into the evil empire? Facebook become less concerned about connecting people and more interested in making money. Algorithms tell…

While most routers on the market today use the 802.11ac wireless standard, the technology behind your Wi-Fi just got a major upgrade. The new 802.11ax standard has been in development for years but has now been finalised and brought to market. All the 802.11 language can get confusing, though, and the Wi-Fi Alliance made a move to cut through the gobbledygook with a simpler naming scheme. Instead of referring to 802.11ac and 802.11ax, router companies will use the terms Wi-Fi 5 to refer to the current crop of AC-compliant devices and Wi-Fi 6 for the new AX standard. Technically, Wi-Fi 6 brings Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) improves efficiency by divvying up the allotted radio spectrum into smaller units, and Wi-Fi 6 also adds new data channels using 1024-QAM…

IP surveillance footage is one of the fastest-growing categories of internet traffic. Originally, these cameras were security-focused and required serious technical skills to set up and configure. Baby monitors have led consumer-sector growth but the push for ease-of-use has seen performance and security take a back seat. For all markets, serious consideration of wiring and power delivery has been required. D-Link’s Omna system promises a high-quality, battery-powered, weatherproof surveillance system that supports night-vision, two-way audio and cloud storage. With all management coming via an app, can high-quality surveillance really be this simple? The cameras themselves are impressively solid. They can be placed on any surface or magnetically-mounted on the provided brackets. They don’t connect directly to your Wi-Fi network, however. Instead you’ll need to attach D-Link’s camera hub to your…

The Netgear Orbi Voice is either a brilliant idea, or a crazy one. Perhaps it’s both. It’s a satellite add-on to Netgear’s Orbi Wi-Fi mesh networking kit that not only helps extend your wireless but also has a Harman Kardon-designed speaker and Amazon Alexa support built in. It’s available as a pack that includes the Orbi Voice satellite and an Orbi router. It’s also aimed at Orbi owners who are after a smart speaker with better sound than its Amazon Echo and Google Home rivals. PRICE AND AVAILABILITY The Netgear Orbi Voice is an expensive bit of kit. The reasons for this are twofold: first, the Orbi Voice features the same networking hardware as the satellites of Netgear’s mid-range Orbi RBK44 system, with tri-band AC2200 Wi-Fi, and the ability to…

With all Google Assistant smart displays offering more or less the same experience, companies need to find something to make their product stand out. And the JBL Link View does that by offering unrivalled audio. It doesn’t look as good as the Google Home Hub or the Lenovo Smart Display, but it outdoes them both when it comes to sound quality. On either side of the LInk View’s 8-inch touchscreen is a 51mm driver, with a small subwoofer at the back. This gives the JBL smart display powerful bass that you won’t get from any other smart screen, not even the Amazon Echo Show. That HD display isn’t as sharp as Lenovo’s Full HD screen, but it’s still quite good. Text is crisp, videos are clear and the ambient brightness…

$70 PER YEAR | WWW.BITDEFENDER.COM.AU In a world packed with free security software, Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2019’s annual fee may look expensive, but there’s plenty of bang for your buck. In addition to reliable and accurate virus detection, Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2019 features web filtering that blocks malicious sites, a secure browser that keeps your online banking or shopping transactions safe, and a password manager which can auto-complete credit card details in web forms. Bitdefender Antivirus pro also includes an anti-phishing module, which alerts you to malicious links in your search engine results and blocks access to dangerous sites. New for the 2019 version of Antivirus Plus is the multi-layered ransomware protection that learns the behaviour of threats to keep you safe and the added ability to scan all your…

Like a lot of creative fields, vector illustration is dominated by Adobe. Its Illustrator package is available as part of the Creative Cloud subscription, which will set you back $29.99 a month if you pay monthly. It’s less if you pay a year in advance, but there are cheaper alternatives. Or at least, there are alternatives. One of the biggest competitors to Adobe has always been Corel, which maintains its own suite of creative apps, and also has a subscription model – although you can buy the software outright, too. CorelDraw trails Illustrator by two years – having been released in 1989, compared to 1987 for Adobe’s app – but both programs benefited hugely from the integration of TrueType fonts in Windows 3.1. Corel was an early Windows champion, while…

Sure, Windows Defender is pretty good, but if you’re in the habit of visiting the dark corners of the internet, opening every email attachment you’re sent, and just can’t resist plugging in USB sticks you find in the street and clicking on whatever EXE files you find on them, some more security might be a good idea. McAfee Total Protection (www.mcafee.com) costs $54.95 a year for a version you can install across 10 PCs. You can also get AVG Ultimate (www.avg.com), which includes a PC tune-up app, too, for $139.99 a year. Norton Security (http://norton.com) starts to look like a budget option here, with a year’s subscription for one device clocking in at $79.99. We can do better…

Photoshop alternatives are common, some are even free, but while many apps like to style themselves as competitors to Adobe’s behemoth, most fall down as they don’t have the kind of tools professionals look for. If you’re not a professional, but an enthusiastic amateur, you’ll have a much better time deciding what to use. Photoshop is the bargain of the Creative Cloud suite: the Photographer’s Bundle offers raw processing and organization app Lightroom for $14.29 a month if you pay in advance, half the price of any other CC app. That may still be too much for some people, and others dislike the subscription model, so let’s look at some alternatives. Corel’s PaintShop Pro (www.paintshoppro.com), an old stalwart of the PC graphics scene, styles itself as the “affordable alternative” to…

Westwood’s alternate history spin-off is still a great RTS, and one of a number of classics in the genre available for free. Visit CNCNet and you’ll find downloads of Command & Conquer, Red Alert and Tiberian Sun, all updated to work nicely on modern systems and integrated with the CnCNet multiplayer platform for easy online play. If that isn’t enough to sate your RTS desires, the brilliant Twisted Insurrection – available from the same site – is a total conversion of Tiberian Sun, available standalone. And, for fans of Westwood’s main competitor, Battle.net lets you download StarCraft for free. cncnet.org/red-alert…

For the past few years, developer Rusty Lake has been rapidly expanding the surreal universe that shares its name. There are the Rusty Lake games – bigger puzzle titles that come with a price tag – and the shorter Cube Escape series, which hurtle the player from one strange locked room to another. They’re basically room escapes, but with a macabre sense of humor, a touch of Lynchian weirdness, and cryptic stories that have inspired much fan debate. It’s an inspired concoction, with challenging puzzles and an absorbing atmosphere. Lynchian stuff is already puzzling, so why not throw some actual puzzles in there too? cubeescape.com…

Every minute, roughly fifty billion jump-scare-laden horror games are added to itch.io and Game Jolt, but very few take you on a journey (or at least one that doesn’t begin and end in the same dim corridor). Built on the shambling bones of the Half-Life 1 engine, Cry of Fear is at times an FPS, at other times a survival horror and puzzle game, and at all times a cinematically minded experience clearly inspired by the game it’s built upon. Many of the best horrors combine genres like this, from Dead Space to FEAR, so it’s great to have another horror game that understands the value of variety. bit.ly/cryfear…

At the heart of your processor is the section that takes the data and runs the x86-64 instruction set over it – this defines the PC. This is the microarchitecture. Around this sits a host of other transistors, the caches, memory controller, I/O controller, possibly on-board graphics, and more. What was once spread out across a motherboard has migrated into the silicon. The microarchitecture defines the abilities, efficiency, and ultimately the power of your chip and system. We are not going to delve into the inner workings of the actual execution units here, so you are spared the block diagrams. And we’re going to skip over mobile, embedded, and server offerings, too, otherwise we’d need the whole magazine for this. But if you’re going to pick the right chip, you…

Once upon a time, every PC needed a graphics card; now, many processors come with a decent one ready to roll. If you haven’t used a processor’s on-board graphics for a while, you may be pleasantly surprised – they are actually perfectly usable. Not top-title-games or productivity good, but for most other things, perfectly adequate. Intel uses its UHD series in desktop chips – virtually all of them, in fact. All Coffee Lake chips, bar the Celeron version and those bizarre KF series, sport a UHD 630 engine. This runs at a base clock of 350MHz, and a slightly faster boost as you move up the pecking order, from 1.1GHz to 1.2GHz. It can handle a 4K screen, and can access a maximum of 64GB video memory (an unlikely scenario,…

The maximum frequency response range of the human ear is 20Hz–20KHz, but that optimistic bracket decreases as we get older, spend our weekends standing next to speakers, and our cells give up trying to renew themselves. So, if we can only hear 15KHz, and the digital conversion process of a given MP3 file chops off a lot of the higher frequencies as it’s compressed into a narrower waveform, we won’t hear the loss in quality as well as someone with that nigh-superhuman 20Hz–20KHz hearing range. People who profess to be able to tell the difference between MP3s of various bitrates and lossless WAV files often talk about hearing “the space between the instruments” and other nebulous sonic details that our written language is too blunt an instrument to capture. What…

GPU prices are forever in flux, and trying to upgrade on a relatively low budget can be a real challenge. The new GTX 1660 is exactly what we needed, though – specs-wise, it might only be a modest upgrade from the GTX 1060, but on average, you’re looking at a 20 percent improvement. We went with Gigabyte’s version of the card, although Zotac, Asus, and MSI all offer comparable models – be sure to shop around if you’re looking for a 1660. The Gigabyte card is a two-fan affair, but still very compact, easily fitting into smaller cases. With 6GB of GDDR5, and overclocking very much on the table, it’s hard not to recommend the 1660 for budget builds.…

Using the web, we have – mostly – got used to the idea of our online behaviour being tracked in various ways. There are simple things such as the recording of our browsing history, but also things like personalised advertisements based on what we have been doing online. We might not like it, but most people have come to see it as part and parcel of using the web. But how would you feel if Windows was monitoring how you use your PC, tracking the apps you use and so on? With Windows 10, this is precisely what’s happening. It’s something that’s referred to by Microsoft as ‘telemetry’, and many people see it as an invasion of privacy. While many of the settings relating to telemetry exist to help personalise…

Ever sat guffawing at Terry Gilliam’s bizarre subversion of Victorian-era greetings cards in Monty Python’s Flying Circus, or egging on unlikely heroes Wallace and Gromit? Then chances are you’ve spent a few moments thinking about how those animations are made. There was a time when stop-motion photography was beyond the reach of most people. Overhead cameras mounted on rostrums were expensive, and unless your school or college had one, your best bet was to take some photos and make a flick-book instead. As with everything, time and technology has revolutionised the production of stop-motion photography, and now making a film with a digital camera or mobile device is child’s play. The Raspberry Pi Camera Module offers a superb low-cost digital option. While time-lapse photography is popular, it’s easy to overlook…

Last month, we took our first baby steps into the world of machine-learning in Python by combining our source code with the Iris dataset, bundled into the ‘scikit-learn’ machine-learning library. We also introduced the ‘decision tree’ classifier and looked at how it worked. This month, we come back to the Python code and dissect it line-by-line to understand what it takes to get Python to execute machine-learning. BRIEF RECAP If you missed last month, a dataset is generally just a big spreadsheet of data, where the rows represent individual items or events called ‘records’ and the columns represent features or ‘attributes’ of those records. In our example, one of those attributes contains information about which group each record belongs to, called the ‘class’ attribute. Here’s a simple analogy – imagine…

$89 | PC, XO, PS4 | WWW.SEKIROTHEGAME.COM Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is the latest from Dark Souls developers From Software. It’s set in a fantasy vision of Sengoku Japan, in the middle of a conflict between the Ashina and Hirata clans. You play a rogue shinobi called Sekiro – the one-armed wolf – charged with protecting a young lord who has the coveted power to defy death. It’s more of an action game than an RPG. You pick up new prosthetic arms and learn new combat techniques, and even put skill points into a few upgrade trees. Don’t expect to be fiddling with armour stats: this is a game about brief, deadly battles in an age of kunai and katanas. Sekiro’s combat system is beautiful. Instead of chipping down health…

After the iPhone’s sudden foray into Roman numerals, we half expected Samsung to give us a Galaxy SX. But here we are, with the all-too-predictably-named S10 and S10e. Are they really as plain as their names suggest? Only one way to find out – time for a teardown! MAJOR TECH SPECS ■ Super AMOLED Infinity-O displays: 5.8-inch (2280×1080) on the S10e; 6.1-inch (3040×1440) on the S10. ■ Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor. ■ 10-megapixel selfie camera and a rear-facing camera, with one dual-aperture 12MP wide-angle module, and one 16MP ultra-wide module. ■ A conventional fingerprint sensor in the S10e’s side button versus the new ultrasonic fingerprint sensor hidden under the S10’s display. ■ Headphone jack, USB-C port, and microSD card slot. ■ IP68 water/dust-resistance rating. KEY FINDINGS ■ These phones’ monolithic…

Battle royale games are becoming something of a plague in gaming right now. We mean that in a good way; there are loads to choose from, and some of them are an absolute blast. Everything from shooters to MOBAs to Tetris has taken a shot at the battle royale crown, but there is only a handful that makes it to the big league. With that in mind, this month we’re weighing up the three heaviest hitters in the genre: originator PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, free-to-play titan Fortnite, and plucky newcomer Apex Legends. Round 1 GAMEPLAY This is a hard one to judge – how enjoyable each game is will always be a subjective and divisive topic, and each has its merits. PUBG was the first to popularise the genre, and offers both…

It’s been less than six months since Huawei first launched its Matebook X Pro in Australia, but the company already has another laptop to add to the lineup; the Matebook 13. The new Matebook 13 drops the X and Pro nomenclature of Huawei’s flagship ultrabook, in exchange for a considerable price cut. The Matebook 13 will land at $1,799 for the i5 version and $2,199 for the i7 variant, which is $100 and $400 cheaper than the respective Matebook X Pro models. For this you will have to be willing to take a hit on the screen resolution which drops from 3000 x 2000 pixels to 2160 x 1440 pixels. We didn’t get the chance to sit them side by side, but theoretically this shouldn’t make a massive difference on…

It seems like every other day brings a new Nvidia graphics card launch! As we saw with the recent GTX 1660 models, there are no Founders Edition cards for this launch. For this review, Gigabyte kindly provided its GTX 1650 Gaming OC model. The GTX 1650 is powered by the TU117 GPU. So far it’s the smallest GPU in the Turing range. It packs 4.7 billion transistors into a 200 mm² die. Like all the other GTX 16xx and RTX class cards, it’s manufactured using TSMC’s 12nm FinFET process. There are no Tensor or RT cores present in the TU117 GPU. You get 4GB of GDDR5 memory which is generally enough for 1080p gaming, though some game engines can make use of more if you turn up the eye candy.…

Lenovo’s stand alone Mirage Solo headset was first announced back at CES in 2018 and has been available locally since September last year – but unlike Oculus’ or HTC’s VR devices, there’s a good chance you still haven’t heard of it. Part of this is because it doesn’t really fit into the traditional realms of VR, but it’s also something that will only appeal to a tiny slice of an already tiny consumer VR market. Unlike both smartphone and PC-powered VR the Mirage Solo has everything it needs onboard to work on its own out-of-the-box. This means the device comes with its own 2560 x 1440p 5.5-inch 75Hz display, a dedicated Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 VR processor, and 4GB of RAM, all running Google’s Daydream 2.0 operating system. This combination of…

Logitech’s dominated the media keyboard for the last five years, and now Corsair’s decided there’s room for a more premium offering. The K83 is a robust board that ticks all the basics (decently-sized trackpad, rechargeable lithium-polymer battery, Bluetooth or dedicated 2.4GHz wireless connection via USB dongle) and adds to that a tough aluminium baseplate alongside a unique, 360º analog thumbstick, which is perfect for navigating ’10 foot’ style TV interfaces. Despite Corsair having coloured the K83’s WASD keys differently to the rest, this isn’t really intended as a gaming keyboard – it’s aimed at lounge room PCs, smart TVs and streaming media players, like the Nvidia Shield TV – and, like the Logitech K600, has Android shortcut keys; here, they’re mapped as Fn-F1 to Fn-F4. For typing, its scissor-switch keys…

Adobe’s Premiere Pro is a Creative Cloud app and therefore only available via subscription, but the movie editing scene is a really interesting one, in which pro-quality apps can be obtained for little outlay. Premiere Elements 2019 (http://adobe.com/products/ elements-family.html) is Adobe’s cheaper entry into the market. It’s a competent video-editing app that comes with enough tutorial support to teach you the secrets of slicing up and reassembling movie files. This beginner-friendly approach means that for anyone not already trained in the subtle art of editing, it’s hard to recommend anything else, because many apps aren’t intuitive for beginners. Elements 2019 is $145.19, or $219.99 if you get the bundle with Photoshop Elements. There are discounts if you upgrade from earlier versions, too. For $129, you can also get Cyberlink’s PowerDirector…

Adobe InDesign has a stranglehold on the world of publishing. Its subscription model almost puts it in the realm of home use – you only pay for it when you want to use it – but it’s not for a beginner, and it’s rather too much for most home uses. Adobe’s great rival in the page layout space, Quark, wants US$849 for a full license of QuarkXPress 2018 (there is a cheaper license, but to qualify, you have to prove you’re a non-profit organisation, and that doesn’t mean freelancers barely making their rent). There are alternatives, however. We were astonished to discover that Microsoft Publisher (http://products. office.com/publisher) still exists, having not used it since Office 2000, but it lives on as part of an Office 365 subscription. It’s included in…

It seems appropriate in a feature aimed at helping you save money that we include apps designed to help you save money. Some would say that Microsoft Excel is the best budgeting app, enabling you to set up a spreadsheet to track income and expenditure. Free office apps are, of course, available as an alternative, but for those not steeped in the lore of office management, they can be a bit austere and unfriendly. Enter the personal finance app, designed to streamline the process of paying your bills, doing your taxes, and maybe managing some savings, too. They’re also useful for small business administration, and some are tailored to precisely this. Microsoft used to have more skin in this game in the form of Microsoft Money, which no longer exists...…

Who knows where Undertale follow-up Deltaruneis heading for its second chapter, but this multi-hour RPG already feels like a complete game, taking the player from their school, to a troubled fantasy land and back again. There are subtle improvements over Undertale, including more detailed pixel art and the addition of battle companions, but the core experience will be familiar if you’ve already saved or slaughtered the world of the original game. Thankfully that core is fantastic with the heroes and villains of Deltarunegoing on surprising journeys in this hilarious, at times moving RPG. deltarune.com…

Nathalie Lawhead’s games are like nothing else out there: Wiry, multimedia experiences where cuteness and harshness, and comedy and darkness are not considered mutually exclusive terms. These are games that tackle big topics like love and death with rawness and honesty, but where hyperactive rabbits stand in for humans, and annoying cyberpets are sometimes unleashed on your desktop. Everything is Going to be OK is an ‘interactive zine’ – a collection of minigames, where a bevy of cute creatures struggle with the bad things that existence doles out now and again. bit.ly/okfreepc…

There is a practical limit on how much heat a chip can handle before going pop, and keeping cool is a fundamental part of processor design. The goal is more performance per watt. Thankfully, chips don’t go pop anymore, either; there are sensors and systems that throttle back or close down a chip if it gets too hot. Overclocking used to be potentially a rather expensive practice…. A figure attached to every processor is its Thermal Design Power, or TDP. This is supposedly the most heat it can generate, for which you have to allow cooling, measured in watts. Only it isn’t. Under heavy loads, and with boost engaged, it will sail past this figure, by 150 percent or more. Actually, you can make it do this all the time…

When we’re rolling off our system specs in forum signatures, water cooler conversations, wedding speeches, and the like, we generally don’t tend to go into much detail about the audio componentry. After all, how many of us actually know the capabilities of our onboard sound chips? And who can tell the difference between 16-bit and 32-bit audio anyway? “Enough mini-jacks to connect a 5.1 speaker system” just doesn’t roll off the tongue as readily as “four RTX Titans,” and while we’re able to measure the difference between video components almost too easily – hands up who plays every game with an FPS counter in the top corner – the same simply isn’t true when it comes to sound. That makes it tricky when we ask: Should we get a soundcard?…

If you’re serious about music production, you’re in the market for an entirely different kind of soundcard. There’s a world of professional audio external soundcards out there, but key to figuring out which one to go for is working out the number of inputs you need. If you plan to record several instruments at once – perhaps via mic’ed up amplifiers in addition to direct input – the more the better. Having a couple of XLR and stereo jack inputs would prove particularly handy if you’re recording in this way, and the same goes for capturing vocals on a microphone at the same time as an instrument via DI or MIDI. However, if you simply want to capture one performance at a time, a small and affordable soundcard, such as…

Settling into my desk at the Future Publishing office, my first task was, of course, to build a new PC. An exciting prospect for me, a former broke freelance journo – with an actual budget to play with, I was able to focus on what I really wanted, rather than merely what I could afford. In spite of this, I’ve opted for a relatively sensible build, ending up with a final price just shy of $2,200. “The 601 is a beautiful piece of straightforward design, both sound-proofed side panels easily lifting off with push-pin releases at the rear. ” The name of the game here was silence. Using a Be Quiet! Silent Base 601 case (available with black, silver, or orange trim – used here) and a Zotac GeForce RTX…

1 TURN OFF ADVERTISING ID AND PERSONALISATION Many of the apps you install can display adverts, and information gathered about you and your PC usage can be used to tailor those ads so they’re more relevant to you. To stop this, and to see more generic ads, go to Settings > Privacy > General. Flick the first switch to the Off position to disable your ID, then switch off the other three to disable other personalised options. 2 LIMIT DIAGNOSTIC DATA Windows 10 can collect data about problems you have with your PC to not only suggest solutions for you to try, but to gather information that can help others. To prevent this, go to Privacy > ‘Diagnostics & feedback’ and make sure the Basic option is selected. It’s not…

Big audio suites are great, but they can be intimidating to say the least – sometimes you just want something that works without having to think too much about it. Enter Audacity, from: www.audacityteam.org. Audacity has become popular on all desktop platforms, and has started popping up on YouTube tutorials quite a bit. Known for its ease of use and intuitive interface, Audacity is perhaps the audio equivalent of Microsoft Paint – it can’t do deeply complicated tasks, but then it was never intended to do so. It’s designed around simple controls that most people can guess their way around… though that doesn’t mean you can’t achieve some great results! Although technically Audacity can record multi-channel digital audio, the interface really isn’t designed for it – it’s meant for simple…

A rather intriguing file has been dropped on Pastebin, which claims to be from a European game developer working on a PS5 launch game, and was created back in December. It lays out when PS5 could be announced and when it might arrive, some potential specs for the hardware (including a PS VR followup), and a few games that could come out in its early launch period. According to the Pastebin, PS5 will get a “small reveal” sometime from April to June this year – though not at E3 itself, because Sony is skipping E3 2019. The console will then arrive in March or November of 2020 for US$499, which would be US$100 more than PS4’s launch price. It will arrive with backwards compatibility and a 7nm Ryzen 8 core,…

US$34.99 | PC, XO, PS4 | GENERATIONZERO.COM The year is 1989 and killer robots have invaded the Swedish countryside. This is the undeniably unique premise of Generation Zero, an open world shooter from Just Cause developer Avalanche. But this is a smaller production than we’re used to from the studio. The map is massive, because Avalanche maps always are, but the game itself is a surprisingly lean affair. You play as one of several silly 1980s archetypes: punk, jock, nerd, and so on. You have a few loose goals including finding out why everyone is missing, locating survivors, and uncovering the truth behind the invasion. But you’re never really steered down one particular path. You can make your own goals and explore at your own pace, either alone or with…

US$49.99 | WWW.KALYPSOMEDIA.COM | PS4, XO, PC Tropico 6 is a great game for people watching. It’s a satirical city builder in which every one of the citizens of your banana republic is simulated. You place a mine. You watch as a construction crew makes its way over to the building site. You watch as the newly constructed mine’s employees start digging for gold or coal or uranium or whatever. And you watch as teamsters come to take the raw materials to a factory for processing. When it’s all going well, there’s a calming rhythm to the bustle of your island. When it’s not, you find yourself scouring around the map, trying to diagnose problems. Why hasn’t the mine been built? Why are the workers off-site? Why haven’t the goods been…

US$29.99 | PORTIA.PATHEA.NET | PC My Time at Portia has swallowed me whole. Now that it’s out on PS4, Xbox One, and Switch (can I get a hallelujah?) when I’m not running around taking commissions from the local commerce guild I’m checking how well my little workshop ranks against Portia’s accomplished builders, or fighting and puzzling my way through ruins to get some sweet, sweet loot that’ll let me craft more machines, which I’ll use to craft more objects, to craft more machines… and so on and so forth. Yes, there’s a lot to keep track of in My Time at Portia, but it never feels overwhelming at all thanks to a friendly mission management system, a core storyline, and lively NPCs who make Portia into much more than a building/mining/…

“Facebook recently released its results for the first quarter of 2019, with a bleak prediction for shareholders.“ It might’ve seemed like Facebook got away lightly in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, however, the company expects it will soon have to pay the price for its lapses: a sum between $4 billion and US$7 billion. Facebook recently released its results for the first quarter of 2019, with a bleak prediction for shareholders. “In the first quarter of 2019, we reasonably estimated a probable loss and recorded an accrual of [US]$3.0 billion in connection with the inquiry of the [Federal Trade Commission] into our platform and user data practices,” the company said. “We estimate that the range of loss in this matter is [US]$3.0 billion to [US]$5.0 billion. The matter…

New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo called them the “frightful five” and warned that, collectively, they’re more powerful than any government. Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook are the most valuable companies on the American stock market and, together, Manjoo says, have the power to influence the global economy. Most of us are quite dependent on the ‘Big Five’ on a day-to-day basis, be it using their devices or spending too much time on their social media platforms – and let’s not forget that Google Chrome has been the most popular web browser for years now. And no matter what scandal engulfs the companies – be it privacy issues, data breaches, or the ability to influence politics – we can’t get enough of them. To understand their power, we need…

Two of the largest social media platforms in the world are likely to change dramatically in 2019. Both Facebook and Twitter have turned into powerful phenomenons the likes of which mere Silicon Valley entrepreneurs (let alone governments) should not be trusted alone to manage, and the honeymoon is emphatically over for both of them. During a presentation in April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed an update to the platform’s mobile app which would foreground Groups and Events, rather than the News Feed, which has served as Facebook’s “front page” for so long. The logic goes that the News Feed’s anything-goes mentality, which resulted in the appearance of links and messages from people and organisations unknown to the user, was one of the exacerbating factors in the blossom of dangerous extremist…

Asus is normally the go-to brand for sweet gaming monitors with high refresh rates, loads of customisable LED bling and a cool dragon motif on the back to impress your mates. It’s not as well known that Asus also has the ProArt range of monitors, that are typically high-end displays with superb colour accuracy and its new PA34VC is no exception. At its core, the Asus PA34VC is a 34.1-inch monitor with an IPS panel sporting a decent 1900R curvature – slightly more pronounced than 1600R or 1800R monitors. While it’s not advertised as a gaming monitor, it does support a maximum 100Hz refresh rate and supports AMD’s dynamic framerate technology, FreeSync. The PA34VC’s UWQHD (3440 x 1440) panel is on the high end when it comes to colour accuracy.…

Since their introduction, NVMe SSD’s have primarily been touted for their performance capabilities leaving SATA SSD’s to be considered mostly value devices. The lines are blurring though, thanks to the release of value-oriented NVMe drives such as Crucial’s P1 and the slightly older Intel 660P. Western Digital is now joining the party with its SN500 Blue drive. We’re reviewing the 500GB version and it’s got some interesting characteristics that are all aimed at keeping production costs down, while giving users performance that leaves SATA in the rear view mirror. The SN500 is a standard form factor M.2 2280 (80mm length) NVMe drive that makes use of a PCIe 3.0 x2 interface. Note that most performance drives come with x4 lanes. The use of x2 reduces the complexity of the drive…

Bose has a long history of producing high-quality wireless speakers and with the launch of its latest, the Bose Home Speaker 500, the company shows no signs of slowing down. The Bose Home Speaker 500 costs the princely sum of $599), making it more expensive than its Google Home and Sonos One rivals. The main thing that sets the Bose Home Speaker 500 apart from its competitors is its use of Bose’s pioneering audio technology, which should make it attractive to audiophiles. While Google and Amazon’s speakers are smart, the vast majority of their smart speaker catalogue leaves something to be desired in the audio performance category. This Bose speaker, however, does not. Whether you feel this is good value for money really depends on how much you’re willing to…

We don’t often review office furniture in APC, but standing desks have become a much-talked-about item in the modern workplace, with the pitch being that standing is better for your health than sitting – something that’s largely backed up by science. For example, studies have shown that sit-stand furniture improves blood circulation, thus lowering cholesterol, blood sugar levels and blood pressure. Headquartered in Texas, VariDesk has been making sit-stand furniture and accessories since 2013, and has since become one of the world’s leading manufacturers. We were sent a VariDesk ProPlus 36 standing desk converter for this review and, subjectively, we can honestly say it didn’t take long for us to reap the benefits of being able to sit and stand as desired. Within days, the pressure on this writer’s lower…

FREE | BIT.LY/TYPIST3 | NEEDS OS X 10.9 OR LATER Typist has been around since the 90s, but version 3.0 now adds support for features such as Dark Mode in macOS Mojave.The app is free to download and it focuses on traditional touch-typing skills, starting with the correct placement of your fingers on the main ‘home keys’ on the middle row of the keyboard. There are three main options, with Quick, Standard and Long courses providing exercises with different levels of complexity. There’s also a set of exercises that focus on improving typing speed, as well as exercises designed for people who use Dvorak ergonomic keyboards. There are even drills for speeding up data entry using the numeric keypad. Each set of exercises provides stats to show your level of accuracy,…

We’ve all been there. You finish your PC build, it POSTs first time, you install Windows, then what? You use Edge to download Chrome, install some drivers and RGB lighting apps, but you can’t do much without software, and apps can be expensive. There is free software, of course, and some of it is excellent, but there’s also a thriving ecosystem of budget apps that are supported on more than a whim, and can be relied on for updates, bug fixes, and extra features. Even the paid-for versions of free apps are worth checking out, as they often offer premium features. Being budget, they may not have all the bells, whistles, and advanced doodads of the big-name apps, but less expensive software has its advantages. First, you don’t feel like…

There are a lot of tools that come with Windows, but sometimes you need something more powerful, or a feature Microsoft hasn’t supplied. The venerable Norton Utilities (http:// norton.com) has moved to a subscription model, wanting $34.99 a year. That allows you to use it across 10 PCs, so it may make sense if you’ve got a lot of computers and it’s critical they’re all working at their best. In the world of backups, Acronis True Image 2019 can be bought for $69, but also has a subscription model for its Advanced and Premium tiers that will set you back US$50 and US$100 a year respectively. There are other choices, including AVG TuneUp, a performance optimizer that needs to be subscribed to for $139.99 a year, but can be installed…

Playing the latest games requires a powerful computer, so it’s not really what you’d call a budget-friendly hobby. If you’re just curious, or not bothered about 4K and 60fps, however, you can get a surprising amount of performance out of a modest PC. Games charging $90 on launch, however, can put some people off. But there are ways to get amazing gaming experiences for a lot less cash. The Humble Bundle (www.humblebundle.com) offers a regular bundle of games at a discount, with some of your money also going to a good cause. It’s a pay-what-you-want arrangement, with a minimum amount. Paying more often unlocks more games, and it’s a good way of building up a library of titles without spending a fortune. There’s a subscription that gets you every bundle…

If, like me, you long for a break from the battle passes and season ladders that make up today’s online shooters, Xonotic offers a welcome respite. Its server browser promises a wealth of ways to engage in frenetic battle thanks to a vast mix of modes, maps, and mutators. Whichever server you pick, Xonotic offers rock solid gunplay and a quick pace that harks back to the speed and style of Quake III Arena. It’s fast, fun, and incredibly easy to pick up and play. If you’re looking for a purer, more competitive arena shooter, check out Warsow, which is also available for free. xonotic.org…

“Years ago we defeated the Nachrehzer and his ban on condiments that devastated the world, but life only got worse,” deadpans Dog of Dracula 2’s intro. This is a bleak dystopia of dogs, groomers and cyberbahn addicts. You play as Cid, a “homicidal otaku weapon”, trying to drown out the pain of life by overindulging in durststep and sauce. Full of references to anime and 90s consumerism, Dog of Dracula 2 combines cyberpunk absurdism and noir fiction to great effect, resulting in memorably weird lines. “She owns that onesie in a way that spells trouble in capital keypresses.” bit.ly/draculapc…

In the summer of 2017, two security vulnerabilities were discovered, which went public in January 2018, and caused something of a panic. Meltdown and Spectre, as they were dubbed, did something really nasty. The loopholes were in the very fabric of the microarchitecture, built right into whole families of processors, including every Intel one since 1995 (mostly). A nightmare for the chip makers. Both vulnerabilities exploit speculative execution, including branch prediction, which is as it sounds, where the processor works on data it hasn’t been asked to yet, in the anticipation that it will. Meltdown works because, as part of the speculative execution, prefetch cache data is not checked for permissions. This opens the door to malicious code getting executed, leading to cache data being open to be read –…

You’ve seen it on audio equipment boxes and mentioned in headset reviews. You know higher is better. But what is a signal-to-noise ratio? Expressed in decibels, it’s a measurement of how much useful, clean information passes along the signal, in relation to the amount of noise, or unwanted data. So, if a soundcard promises a 100dB signal-to-noise ratio, you can expect a 100dB difference in volume between sounds you want to hear and those you don’t. To put that into context, we perceive total silence at 10dB. Conversation usually occurs at around 60dB (although, let’s face it, we’ve all got that one friend...), and 100dB is the limit of most home and car stereos. A Formula One car revving its engine gives off about 147dB, human eardrums rupture at 195dB,…

Winter has figuratively set in for Intel. It bolstered its defences as much as it could early on by hastily rushing out the 9th Gen Core series CPUs with the i9-9900K leading the pack. This was done to counter AMD’s strong Ryzen products offering higher core and thread counts. Intel had to react, and soon after release, it was clear it was rushed, with niggling BIOS issues and only high-end motherboard chipsets being available. The trouble is that Intel can only make so many CPUs, as 10nm mass production is still eluding Intel’s fabs; it has had to cherry pick what to push through its fully utilised 14nm++ pipeline. This has led to shortages and price rises on Intel’s CPUs, forcing it to focus on making higher margin parts (like…

Budget power supplies were a rare commodity this month, forcing us to trade out our EVGA model for Corsair’s 450W offering – prices seem to have jumped up among the lower-wattage PSUs. We also opted to upgrade the graphics card, taking us out of 3GB territory and toward 6GB (check out “Upgrade of the Month”). Gigabyte’s new GTX 1660 and another upgrade to the Asrock B450M motherboard (compared to last month’s AB350M) give this build a little more punch for 1080p gaming. Despite this, we’ve only raised the overall price by $97, thanks to minor savings across the board. These add up: a few dollars from the CPU’s price drop, a few from the change of motherboard. On the memory front, despite it being such a volatile market, here in…

STORAGE CLONING HARD DRIVE QUERY I’m in the process of replacing my hard drive with a faster SSD model. I’ve created a disk image of the OS partition and copied it to the SSD, but how do I make it bootable? Steve Tuff The best way to clone a hard drive to an SSD is using a program called Macrium Reflect Free (www.macrium.com/ reflectfree), which enables you to copy across the required boot partitions along with the main Windows partition. Basically you should choose the ‘Clone this disk’ option and select System Reserved, your Windows partition and – if they exist – any small hidden partitions at the end of the drive. From here you’ll be able to clone those partitions across to the new SSD. Steve confirmed that once…

It has always amazed us that library services don’t do more to publicise the fact that you can go online and borrow ebooks and audiobooks from your local library completely free of charge. Admittedly, the process hasn’t always been easy; the app you needed to use – originally called OverDrive – was a bit tricky to install and set up. However, the company behind OverDrive recently launched a new iOS app, called Libby, that is much easier to use. Your local library will only have a limited stock of ebooks and audiobooks, and you might have to join a waiting list to borrow the latest titles or a popular blockbuster. However, all the titles available through Libby are completely free, which makes this a real hidden gem of an app…

1 WHAT’S OPEN? The large area shows windows in this space. Drag one to another at the top to organise your work. 2 MANAGE YOUR WORKSPACES Put the pointer over the top bar to see your spaces. Drag the thumbnails to rearrange them. 3 LET AN APP TAKE OVER Drag a window to an empty spot in the bar (even between spaces) to put it in full-screen mode. 4 SHARE A SPACE Put the pointer over a space and an icon appears; click it to close the space – but not the windows that are in it.…

1 MAIN TOOLBAR Where your primary tools are kept, such as Selection, Time Shift, Zoom and Envelope. 2 TRACK CONTROLS Tools for muting, soloing tracks and changing the gain and the pan. This is where you really shape your soundscape. 3 TRACK MENU Provides a bundle of more advanced controls, such as mono-stereo conversion, as well as renaming and moving tracks. 4 COLLAPSE BUTTON Squishes up any track into a kind of sliver which can be expanded later. 5 ZOOM CONTROLS Dedicated buttons for specific zoom functions, including zooming into a selected portion of a wave, or zooming out 100%. 6 RECORDING OPTIONS Choose which audio system you want to use, which device to record from, mono or stereo, and change the playback device.…

Minecraft will celebrate its 10 year anniversary next month, with an event taking place on May 17. Developed by studio Mojang, Microsoft purchased the company in 2015, prompting the departure of the game’s creator Markus “Notch” Persson. Now, four years later, Microsoft has confirmed Persson will not take part in the anniversary celebrations. At a glance it’s an odd decision, but Persson has been the subject of ongoing controversy ever since his departure from Mojang, largely due to his conduct on social media. He’s been accused of verbally abusing a female game developer, as well as various other forms of abusive behavior. It prompted Mojang to scrub evidence of Persson from in-game credits as of a March update. As for his no-show at the anniversary, a Microsoft spokesperson told Variety…