Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2020 i APC

We were already scratching our heads at 300Hz laptop displays from Acer and Asus, but now Asus is taking things to another level. Alongside Nvidia, it has announced the Asus ROG Swift 360 monitor that has an unprecedented 360Hz refresh rate. The monitor will target professional eSports gamers when it arrives later this year. An Nvidia spokesperson told us competitive players can expect a 4% improvement in flick shot aiming tests.…

SEGA MEGA DRIVE MINI $99 | MEGADRIVEMINI.SEGA.COM We like this new trend of miniaturised retro tech. Now that we’re bored with last year’s little PlayStation Classic, this comes along to sit alongside it and refresh our retro love, and it’s official from Sega. Perfect. Importantly, there’s two control pads – and they’re modelled on the originals, too. They feel kind of the same to use – as far as we can remember that far back. There’s 42 games built into it, and that’s all you’re getting, so your hundreds-strong collection of game ROMs on your PC does win in maths terms, but this is real Sega, looks and feels the part, and is a joyous thing to plug into your TV via a fancy high tech HDMI cable. RAZER ERACING…

A string of reports concerning the exposure of thousands of Ring user account names and passwords appeared online in December, followed by some sobering videos of hackers speaking to young children through the camera’s two-way talk functionality. BuzzFeed was the first to report on a 3,672 item long list of breached accounts, including both log-in emails and passwords that could give hackers access to everything from telephone information to full access to historical and current camera feeds. In a response to the publication, Ring stated that the data did not come from a breach of Ring’s systems, and that the list may be compiled from the security breaches of other companies where the users have the same log-in credentials. It is, however, a strange response given the list contained the…

We know what you’re thinking. Will you just look at those bezels? And that price. What the heck is HP doing with the ZBook X2, a $3,200 tablet that looks a decade old? But bear with us, because while this is a flawed device, it’s also pretty special. HP says the ZBook X2 is the world’s most powerful detachable PC. A punchy claim at first glance, the detachable PC segment is in reality distinctly niche. In other words, the competition is fairly limited. Devices like the latest Microsoft Surface Pro 6 spring to mind, but despite being available with precisely the same Intel Core i7-8650U quad-core CPU as the ZBook, it isn’t actually that comparable. That’s because of the ZBook’s overall feature set and functionality, which is remarkable, if not…

Back in March, TP-Link impressed the pants off us with its first Wi-Fi 6 router, the Archer AX6000. It’s been our favourite wireless router ever since thanks to its high reliability, ease of manageability, speed and range. Now here’s its suped-up, gaming-oriented big brother which almost literally dials everything up to 11; but is it killer or overkill? The extra 5000 in the Archer AX11000’s moniker derives from its extra 5GHz band: there are now two 4,804Mbps 5GHz bands plus a 1,148 2.4GHz band. This combines to provide a theoretical 10Gbps throughput but, this being Wi-Fi, how does it fare in the real world? We tested in a three-storey Sydney townhouse using our new testing methodology which sends large video files from a Synology DS1019+ NAS to a Wi-Fi-6-equipped Dell…

Back when we reviewed the reference AMD RX 5700 XT, we felt it was a competent GPU let down a little by its sub-par cooler and inflated price. The Asrock RX 5700 XT Taichi we’re reviewing here doesn’t do anything to address the latter, but it does wonders for the former. The Taichi’s big, bold and beautiful cooler does a much better job at taming the hot Navi GPU. Does it translate into better performance too? And is the rather hefty asking price worth it? The Asrock 5700 XT Taichi shares its branding and theme with the company’s Taichi line of motherboards. It really looks great with its artistic cog design and its high end feature set. While Taichi motherboards might be more mid-tier products (though up a step from…

You might be familiar with a KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switch that lets you plug two computers into one monitor, keyboard and mouse, and you use a button to switch between the two computers. At first glance the Aten US3342 might appear to be a KVM, but it is not! The Aten US3342 is a “sharing switch” that uses the huge bandwidth of USB-C Gen 2 to allow a single keyboard and mouse to operate two separate computers simultaneously. The main difference between the US3342 and a KVM is that there’s no video output. The US3342 is purely for sharing USB inputs. An easy way to conceptualise the US3342 is that it’s a USB switch. Press a button and the USB peripherals plugged in to the US3342 work on one…

Sesame Street Yourself Me perpetually want cookie. $4.49 FOR ALL PACKS | WWW.SESAMESTREET.ORG Sesame Street continues to endure and delight, and the Sesame Street Yourself app is a great way of keeping young kids distracted that won’t cost you hundreds in sneaky microtransactions. Sesame Street Yourself lets you transform your face into one of several Sesame Street characters (including Elmo at no initial charge) and sing along to songs, dress them up, and play some very simple games. As you might expect, it’s aimed very directly at small kids. Don’t expect any of the real fun, more adult-orientated parody stuff here – you’re not going to get a spot-on Sesame Street parody of Mad Men or Twin Peaks. Instead, you’ll get a decent, well-made AR app with some fun songs,…

One of the most beautiful things about Linux, besides its inherent freeness, is that people are able to package it up with all kinds of also-free software, and send the whole thing out in one big bundle. Given that it’s (usually) possible to run a Linux installation in Live form (that is, without installing it and making a mess of your precious internal drives), this can be a good way to keep those rarely used utility packages at hand, or get your hands on a whole bunch of software all at once. So, pick up some USB sticks, get these apps installed, and be ready for anything. #1 FOR PRIVACY TAILS http://tails.boum.org When you’re getting all clandestine, turn to Tails. It automatically routes everything through the Tor network, keeping your…

When it comes to media, your PC has everything covered, right? There’s Kodi, Plex, or Emby for starters, managing your music, movies, and TV with aplomb. Except there’s something missing… Everyone loves a good story, and audiobooks (along with radio-style dramatisations) provide an easy way to devour books when focused on other tasks, whether driving long distances or tweaking your PC’s hardware. The obvious place to go for an audiobook fix is Audible, but it ties you into a proprietary ecosystem that requires you to purchase your books outright via one-off fees or a recurring subscription. Furthermore, you’re indebted to Audible’s own apps and servers for accessing your books. That’s fine if you’re a fan of paying for streaming services, but the likes of Plex, along with audio-only services such…

To start configuring Booksonic, visit “Settings > Media folders” to specify where your audiobooks are stored. This is where you can take advantage of Booksonic’s support for multiple users, dividing up your library into subfolders, then creating separate libraries for each. Click “Save” to enable your changes, and “Scan media folders now” to start populating Booksonic with your books. Once done, switch to the “Users” tab to create individual profiles for other people in your household (or further afield if you’re opening access to the Internet). Configure individual levels of access – including which libraries they can use – and set a bit rate if you’re worried about bandwidth. Finally, click “Save.” Users can then log into Booksonic with their own account, and configure things via the “Personal,” “Players,” and…

That low disk space warning we flagged in the introduction is unlikely to be the first indication you get that you’re running out of disk space. It’s not designed to appear until you have 200MB or less free disk space – a mere drop in the ocean these days. Instead, Windows’ first warning will likely appear when you open File Explorer to the ‘This PC’ view to see your drive’s usage is represented by a red bar rather than the regular blue one. This appears when your drive has less than 10% free space left, although the seriousness of the warning does depend on the size of the drive. For example, a 64GB drive with under 6GB left is more worrying than a 2TB drive with around 180GB free space…

Freeing up space on your PC has never been easier thanks to Windows 10’s new Storage Sense feature, which is designed to render third-party apps like CCleaner redundant. Your first job, therefore, is to employ its services to free up additional space on your drive. Navigate to Settings > System > Storage and click the ‘Configure Storage Sense or run it now’ link. Flick the Storage Sense switch on and choose when to run the disk-cleaning tool: by default, it’ll run when you run low on disk space, but if you want to take a more pre-emptive approach you can run it monthly, weekly or even daily. Scroll down to configure more options – for example, removing temporary files, emptying files from the Recycle Bin after a set period and…

The march of technology inevitably leads to increased demands on your system, particularly if you’ve discovered a new space-hungry hobby such as gaming or 4K video editing. If you’re simply looking to expand available storage for your files, you have two basic options. The first, of course, is to invest in additional storage. Desktop users can investigate whether their PC case has the room for a second internal hard drive – with 4TB drives shipping for under $200, you can solve all but the most demanding needs with a single purchase. Before splashing out, power down your PC, open the case and verify there’s a spare drive bay to fit it in. Also check your power supply has a spare SATA power socket (see photo – if not, Google ‘molex…

Why not turn your problem of storage space – or lack of it – into an opportunity? If you’ve not done so already, now is the perfect time to investigate one of the most effective upgrades money can buy: a fast solid-state hard drive to run Windows and your programs on. Switching from a clunky old hard drive to a SSD is like leaving the Stone Age. Windows loads in under a minute, apps open in a matter of seconds and your computing life is no longer held up by clicking and waiting for files to load. With SSD prices tumbling to put even relatively large amounts of storage space in your hands for a modest sum, there’s never been a better time to make the move. The upside? Your…

PLE Adrenaline $1,749 – TINYURL.COM/APC477PLE Keeping it simple to win. This system isn’t the most expensive in this issue, however, it will easily dominate any gaming performance metrics thanks to its RX 5700, which puts it up into RTX class performance territory – well above the GTX cards of the other systems this issue. To cater for this more expensive but worthwhile card, PLE has taken a sensible approach to cutting corners in other places. The non-X Ryzen 5 3600 is still a perfect pairing, the motherboard is a little barebones but enough to cover the basics. Memory capacity is great but at 2666MHz is a tad slow for Ryzen’s megahertz-loving memory controller. As an out of the box experience, PLE has done well to maximise gaming performance with only…

WINDOWS STOP SHARING A WINDOWS ACCOUNT My wife and I share a Google account, email and so on, but I use Windows 10 on a PC in my study and she uses the same on a laptop in the lounge. She has recently upgraded to a new laptop which I set up for her, but whereas her previous laptop had her name on the welcome screen, it now has mine, as it appears on my own PC welcome screen. Is there any way we can change the welcome screen name on my wife’s laptop? Martin Gulliver This occurs because you’re sharing the same Microsoft Account to log into both PCs. The logical step is to set your wife up with her own Microsoft Account. If you go down this route,…

Rather than going through several apps, the Apple TV app on iOS, iPadOS, macOS and tvOS gives you a single place to discover and watch films and TV shows. The Apple TV app syncs across your devices, so you can start watching on one device and pick up where you left off on another. Rather than open multiple apps, Apple TV lets you access content from a range of content providers. The Apple TV app also enables you to preview shows before deciding whether you want to pay for a particular subscription channel. And, of course, you can view iTunes material. You can download shows for offline viewing and watch trailers, and access related show info too. The app will also soon be home to the Apple TV+ service. Find…

There’s a pretty solid temptation to consider any PC or laptop that struggles to run the latest Windows operating system as having passed its use-by-date. However, that would needlessly remove the opportunity of putting to work one of the many Linux distros – and there are dozens of them now to choose from. While this usually means everything from Elementary OS to Debian or a lightweight homebrew based on an LXDE desktop, there’s another Linux distro you can now add to the list – Android. We’ve been keeping tabs on the Android-x86 effort since the early days of Ice Cream Sandwich/4.0. Now the first ‘release candidate’ of Android 9.0/ Pie has arrived, we’ll show you how to install it on an older system and give your old kit a new…

It’s a pretty exciting time to get involved in machine-learning. While there’s certainly way too much hype surrounding it for my liking, there are many practical applications where it’s making a real difference. Health and agriculture, bushfire management and prediction, even protecting wildlife and endangered species are all seeing machine-learning applied in real value ways. It’s even finished Beethoven’s Tenth Symphony. This boom in application has come from a rapid increase in open-source machine-learning tools and cloud computing. All the big tech brands now have ML tools, many are even open-source. One of the major players is Google’s TensorFlow. This month, we’ll take a brief tour of what TensorFlow is and does, and how to use it on your PC. WHAT’S A TENSOR? ML is predominantly about mathematics, but don’t’…

$40 | PC, PS4, SWITCH | DRAGONQUEST.SQUARE-ENIX-GAMES.COM Dragon Quest Builders 2 is as weird as it is delightful – and a very different beast to the main series. The world needs saving and there are goofy Slimes to bash, but here you’re more Bob the Builder than dashing swordsman. This quirky offshoot sees you go from building basic bedrooms and kitchens to help people survive in dire times, to constructing elaborate castles and giant magical trees, all in the name of defeating the evil Children of Hargon. After inheriting a deserted island from a hairy mole-thing with a hammer and befriending a chap that likes hitting things a little too much you start about your task of creating your own kingdom. But you’ll need more people and resources to do…

FREE | PC | SPOLAND.ITCH. IO/THE-LAST-RESISTANCE Wilderness and robots make for an evocative combination. Playing out like a very, very small-scale Far Cry, you’re dropped into a refreshingly Nordic open space that offers maybe ten minutes of exploration as you increase your arsenal enough to eliminate a robot threat. You start the game with no weapons, but pretty soon you’ll find an axe and then a shotgun, tools that make the smaller enemies at least rather trivial to deal with. The AI of those little spider bots is decidedly simplistic: they won’t stop chasing you, ever, until you’re dead. Or, more likely, until they’re dead, as they’re far slower and weaker than you are. The massive, War of the Worlds-style tripod enemies pose a deadlier threat, and remain an ominous…

Intel’s Technical Marketing Performance Engineer Frank Ober recently posted to Twitter the unannounced information that the Alder Stream next-gen Optane SSDs would support the PCIe Gen 4.0 interface. There’s only one problem: Intel doesn’t have any PCIe 4.0-capable CPUs available on the market for its customers to plug the drives into. However, it does provide some insight into Intel’s future consumer Optane plans.…

At CES AMD showed off its strategy for the new 7nm 4000-series of Ryzen APUs (AMD’s term for a CPU with integrated graphics) for the first time in the mobile space. There’s a tonne of options on the table, both at 15W and 45W, offering some really impressive core counts, frequencies, and most importantly, design wins. For the new Ryzen 4000 series, codenamed Renoir, it’s a fully integrated monolithic piece of 7nm silicon, containing eight Zen 2 cores and up to eight compute units of enhanced Vega graphics. That’s twice the core count of the previous generation Ryzen Mobile, but three fewer compute units – however AMD has reasons for that decrease and emphasised that due to the process node it can get eight CUs to perform better than 11…

Revolutionary is a word that often gets overused. I’ve been guilty of it myself. But if there’s one thing in the world of computing that deserves being described as such, it’s a fully functional quantum computer. What is a quantum computer? The functions of a classical computer are based around the use of bits, or binary digits which are 1s or 0s. A quantum bit, or a qubit as it’s known, can exist as a 1 or 0, or both at the same time. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer can potentially make use of thousands or more qubits to perform calculations that are simply impossible on any classical computer, no matter how powerful it is. The physics challenges are being ticked off at an increasing rate, and we are moving…

The 15-inch laptop has long been the form factor of choice for professionals that need as much power as possible from a portable ultrabook, but Apple is looking to change this up with the new MacBook Pro 16 by adding an inch to this tried and tested form factor. In reality, Apple is not actually making the footprint of the unit notably bigger – it’s less than 2% larger in each direction – so you probably wouldn’t see a difference unless you were really looking for it. What it has done, however, is reduce the bezels and expand the screen for a greater screen-to-body ratio and overall screen size. Considering the MacBook Pro 15 is pitched at creatives that want as much power as possible, it’s only natural that those…

As gaming laptops go, we have to admit that we like the design of this M17. The screen bezel is thin and black, and beneath it the speakers and fans sit below a hexagonal honeycomb mesh. It’s surprisingly lightweight, too, and has quite a small profile when closed, as the screen hinge is mounted an inch or so into the base of the chassis from the rear edge, as opposed to on that edge. The external hardware is hard to fault; the full-size keyboard is comfortable and responsive, with addressable RGB lighting for each key. The trackpad is perfectly fine, although plugging in a mouse makes more sense. It’s all about what’s hidden inside that chassis, though. Four copper heat pipes and cooling fin stacks serve a 9th-generation Intel i7…

In a world where it is increasingly important for businesses (as well as many home users) to be online at all times, and in all locations, the Vigor2620Ln gives much appreciated connectivity options. It can connected directly to an external internet source (such as an NBN modem) via WAN, but also has a VDSL2 and ADSL2+ modem built in. In other words, it will connect to existing wired broadband options without a hassle. But the Vigor2620Ln really stands out from the crowd with the addition of a 3G/4G modem, allowing the use of mobile broadband. It’s rated for up to 150Mbps, and handles the major frequencies (2100MHz, 1800MHz, 2600MHz, 900MHz, 800MHz) except 700MHz. The router supports two SIM cards for use with multiple providers. In theory you could have it…

It’s a very rare review that mentions a marketing stunt, but with Amazon’s Echo Studio, it’s warranted. The scene: the latest incarnation of Sydney’s famous The Basement venue. The stage was literally a foot high with some instruments at the back and a table with a tablecloth covering something – not very impressive, frankly. The lights dim, a room full of seasoned, cynical tech journos prepare for the opening talk while music fills the auditorium. The keynote speaker comes to the table, removes the cloth to reveal that the room-filling music was coming from the Echo Studio all along. The room full of cynical tech journos, many of whom were at a very high-end Technics speaker launch the night before, almost all gasped at what the diminutive speaker had achieved.…

“Powering the Arduino Nano Every is an ATMega4809 processor running at 20MHz. This may not sound like a lot of power, but for most projects this is plenty. ” Arduino offers the gold standard for microcontrollers, and with the latest batch of boards we see a refresh of the design and microcontroller. Let’s start with the design. Rather than use the de-facto Arduino Uno layout, we see a 44mm by 18mm board, similar to the original Arduino Nano board, designed to be inserted into a breadboard. The Nano Every can be bought with or without soldered header pins, but both offer the same features. The unsoldered version, reviewed here, has spaces for the header pins to be soldered into, but there are also spaces to solder the board directly to…

FROM £5.83/PER MONTH | PARALLELS.COM | NEEDS MACOS 10.12.6 OR LATER There are now even more good reasons for running a different operating system within a virtualisation environment like Parallels Desktop. You may need access to Windows apps, want to play games unavailable on macOS, or access old apps which can’t run in Catalina. Parallels 15 is now fully compatible with macOS 10.15 Catalina, both as host and running in a VM. Parallels is providing an update with final tweaks to ensure it works fully with Sidecar and Sign in with Apple in the release version of Catalina. You can use Sidecar with an Apple Pencil to interact with Windows 10 in its tablet mode. It’s hard to find an operating system which Parallels 15 doesn’t support in a virtual machine.…

Fill your PC with software or take advantage of online tools? It’s a tough one. In certain circumstances, this isn’t an option – we don’t know, for example, of an online tool that can help repartition your hard drive – but moving your work online does have a long list of advantages. Your files will theoretically always be where you left them. There’s no need to manually update a piece of online software to keep it in line with the latest developments. And your local machine stays uncluttered and unslowed by the overheads of installed software. We might have presented a list of 50 programs, but we don’t expect you to be mad enough to install them all. There’s an ever-growing string of online tools turning up. For the office,…

To add your Audible collection to your new DRM-free audiobook collection, you need OpenAudible, a tool for managing and downloading Audible books you own to your PC. Head over to https:// openaudible.org to download the setup file. Launch it, clicking “More info > Run anyway” when the SmartScreen filter pops up. Once installed, launch OpenAudible, and press Ctrl-k to connect to your Audible account using OpenAudible’s built-in browser. Close the window and, if necessary, press Ctrl-k to connect again, then choose “Controls > Full Library Sync” to view all your previous purchases in the main OpenAudible window. By default, all downloaded audiobooks are converted to MP3 (verify this via “Edit > Preferences”). To download a single audiobook, right-click it in the lower pane, and choose “Download.” Keep an eye on…

If you’re looking for a slightly different approach to viewing your drive’s makeup, try SpaceSniffer (www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/) instead. It has a more modern user interface, but more importantly provides a visual view that helps you identify which folders contain the most files. Again, be sure to run it as an administrator. Unlike WinDirStat you must focus a view on one drive at a time, but thanks to its labelling system it’s easier to spot which folders contain the most data as they’re clearly named, and their file size listed. Simply double-click one to zoom in to view its contents or double-click its parent folder (displayed above it) to zoom back out. If you know which files are likely to take up most space on your drive, use the Filter box to…

Another way to save space is to move folders and files on to a secondary storage drive, such as a USB drive. If you don’t have this luxury, then save space by zipping up these rarely used files and folders instead. Right-click the item(s) in question and choose ‘Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder’, then wait for it to be combined into a single zip file. Right-click this and choose Properties, then compare its size to the original file. If there’s a significant saving, delete the original file or folder, then repeat to keep freeing up more space.…

Another storage location you can make use of is your cloud provider. We’ve already seen how you can use OneDrive to free up space on your computer, and other providers offer similar features within their paid-for plans – Dropbox (www. dropbox.com) calls its equivalent Smart Sync, for example. Here you need to navigate to a folder inside your Dropbox folder, right-click it and choose ‘Smart Sync > Online-only’, or browse to ‘Preferences > Sync’, select your account and choose ‘Online-only’ to make it the universal default. If you’d like to access Google Drive or Dropbox folders in this way without a paid account, then for a one-off fee (USD$39) you can use a brilliant tool called Mountain Duck 3 (download a free trial from https://mountainduck.io/). This can create a series…

1 PARTITION OLD DRIVE Desktop users planning to migrate Windows and apps to a SSD drive while leaving their data behind should first use MiniTool Partition Wizard Free (www.partitionwizard.com): choose ‘Split Partition’ and drag the slider as far left as it can go. Click OK followed by Apply. Reboot when prompted. 2 MOVE DATA TO NEW PARTITION Once complete, follow the guide on the previous spread on moving data to your new drive, using your newly created partition as the target. Next, download and install Macrium Reflect Free from www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx if you’ve not already done so. 3 SELECT PARTITIONS TO CLONE Launch Macrium. Select your Windows drive and click ‘Clone this disk…’ Make sure only those partitions you need will be copied across: System Reserved, your actual Windows partition and…

We’ve spent a long time trying to find the perfect note-taking service, and we’ve finally struck gold in the form of Joplin. It’s free and open source, plus works across all major desktop and mobile platforms – including Android and iOS – so you can access and update your notes from anywhere. When it comes to syncing notes, you’re fully in control: you choose which cloud platform to use and can optionally encrypt your notes to provide an extra layer of protection. You can also add note-clipping capabilities to your Firefox or Chrome web browser. Last, but not least, Joplin is perfect whether you want to record quick text-based notes or emulate the rich features found in Evernote, from fully styled text to support for images and file attachments. Joplin…

The Raspberry Pi has seen great increases in CPU speed since 2012. From a single-core 700MHz CPU to the latest Pi 4 and a 1.5GHz quad-core CPU is quite a difference, and with this increase in power there is an inevitable increase in heat. The Raspberry Pi 4 has a rather warm CPU: a stock Pi can idle at 39°C, and under extended heavy load it can reach up to 80°C! There are now many companies offering their version of a cooling system to help prolong the life of the Pi 4 and stop our fingers getting burnt. But which is the most effective? Which is the cheapest? And do we need passive or active cooling? PASSIVE VS ACTIVE COOLING Passive cooling is when a CPU is cooled using a…

Telegram is an encrypted, private messaging service with an open API that is really easy to use. In this tutorial we shall build a Telegram Bot, code that reacts to commands issued by the user from inside Telegram. Our bot will give us the latest CPU temperature, CPU usage and current available R AM for a Raspberry Pi. SOFTWARE SETUP Before any code can be written, we first need to sign up for a Telegram account. There are many clients for Windows, Linux and mobile devices. For this tutorial it would be prudent to install the desktop client, but if you are completing the tutorial on a Pi, you can use the web version. With the account created and Telegram installed we can now start to create a bot that…

A Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order sequel could be happening, new job listings suggest Respawn is already hiring for its next project set in the Star Wars universe. A sequel to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order could already be in the works at Respawn Entertainment, with three new job listings on the developer’s website confirming that the Apex Legends studio is creating a new game set in a universe far, far away... Three postings for a Senior Character Artist, Level Designer, and Senior Software Engineer reveal that Respawn’s “Star Wars team” is working on a “third person action/adventure game”, a description which fits the same genre that Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order comfortably sits in. While the vacancies don’t outright confirm that this new project is a direct sequel to…

FREE | PC | GHOSTHUM. ITCH.IO/GRIMMS-HOLLOW Finally, an Undertale- style RPG where you can really make the most of the combat system – without feeling awful about every enemy you kill. It begins with a girl named Lavender waking up in the afterlife. It turns out there’s a purgatory, and it’s full of violent ghosts, but also reapers to dispatch them to the Great Beyond. Upon death, Lavender is designated as a reaper, while her similarly deceased little brother becomes a ghost. Borrowing the best bits from classic JRPGs, there’s a Final Fantasy-style ATB system (turn-based meets real-time combat), partnered with the quick-time flourishes from the forgotten Shadow Hearts. After every melee attack, you’ll be asked to hit the down key on a Golf-style swing-o-meter. Do it right, and you’ll…

Mosaic’s sales pitch: forget the straightforward thrills of action and/or adventure, here’s a game that simulates the tedious grind of everyday life. Using point-and-click controls, you drag your character – an anonymous office worker with a wonky tie, a smartphone and not much else in the way of a discernible personality – through this loop five times, a full working week of low-level misery. Which raises the question: why exactly would you want a second life that’s just as rubbish as the first?If Mosaic was able to answer for itself, I suspect it’d be a mumble about art and mirrors and reflecting reality. There are some sharply observed moments here, like the daily elevator ride you share with two strangers. Seemingly the only control you have over your character is…

FREE | PC | PAPERCOOKIES.ITCH.IO/ NO-PLAYERS-ONLINE There’s something eerie about a public space that is devoid of people, a fact that this first-person horror utilises to its advantage. It’s set in an online FPS, but one where you’re the only player. Without revealing too much, the abandoned server you’re playing on isn’t quite as empty as the game initially suggests. A presence that makes itself known as you play a (seemingly futile) game of Capture the Flag. It’s this steadily growing anticipation that makes No Players Online so wonderfully tense to play – you just know something will happen as you run from capture point to capture point. But what will that be, exactly? As NPO comes to a close, and its cards are laid out on the table, it…

According to a report from the Financial Times, the Chinese government has ordered a total ban on all foreign PC hardware and operating systems in government computers. That includes graphics cards and processors from companies like Nvidia, AMD, and Intel, and operating systems from Microsoft and Apple, among many other US and European-based PC hardware and software manufactures. Supposedly, the plan is to replace 30 percent of PCs and software by the end of 2020, 80 percent in 2021, and then 100 percent by 2022. This extreme move comes on the heels of the US banning Chinese company Huawei, as well as the US taking steps to deny China access to US technology. Chinese companies have been preparing for what seems like an inevitability for years, but its hardware and…

AMD’s own brand of anti-stutter and anti-tear monitor tech has been rebranded into three tiers – FreeSync, FreeSync Premium, and FreeSync Premium Pro. While the base tier remains the same, Premium promises at least a 120Hz refresh rate (at a minimum of Full HD resolution) with low frame rate compensation (LFC), while the Pro tier also includes HDR support on top of all this.…

The China Times reports that TSMC’s upcoming 5nm process has already hit yields of 50%, meaning 50% of all processors yielded on a 5nm wafer are fully functional. The report also specifies that AMD’s Zen 4 architecture will be fabbed on the 5nm process. Although the yield rates have reportedly reached 50%, the other 50% of these dies are not totally broken but can be salvaged as processors with fewer cores enabled, for example. TSMC’s 5nm is also entering risk production, which includes the very first wave of products that are expected to help iron out any kinks so TSMC can bring all of its 5nm capacity fully online. The new 5nm node reportedly brings a 1.8x greater density over 7nm and 15% higher clock speeds at the same power,…

Given how often we hear reports about Google and Facebook’s efforts to finetune its moderation algorithms, it’s easy to forget that there’s a growing global workforce of actual people tasked with rifling social media for objectionable material. The nature of this content varies dramatically, ranging from the fairly benign (copyright claims) through to the despair-inducing (violence and abuse). The Verge issued a number of reports throughout 2019 tackling the subject. One former employee at Google reports having suffered post-traumatic stress disorder after being tasked with vetting material flagged as containing child abuse. Whether employed by Google (or Facebook) directly, or working under a contractor (companies like Accenture and Cognizant), the cumulative impression is that people are being employed for work that is probably better left to, say, the police, or…

Less than a month after dropping the Surface Pro 7, Microsoft is back with the Surface Pro X – a fresh design with hints of improved repairability. Since ripping into the Surface Laptop 3, we’re cautiously optimistic. Bring on the era of repairable tablets, Microsoft – we’re ready. MAJOR TECH SPECS ■ 13-inch PixelSense 2880x1920 display (267ppi) ■ Microsoft SQ1 3.0GHz ARM CPU (based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx), with a Microsoft SQ1 Adreno 685 GPU ■ 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM (16GB optional) ■ Removable 128GB SSD (256GB or 512GB optional) ■ 5MP and Windows Hello front-facing cameras, and 10MP rear-facing camera ■ 2x USB-C ports and one Surface Connect port ■ Wi-Fi 5 802.11ac, Bluetooth 5.0, Gigabit LTE KEY FINDINGS ■ Unlike the Surface Pro 7, the Pro X is…

Maybe it’s the emergence of dual-screen smartphones or a realisation that lots of people use dual-screen workstations, but either way Asus’ laptop division seems fixated on inserting a second screen wherever it can on its latest devices. We tested out a Zenbook Duo recently and were pleasantly surprised by the usefulness of the oversized touchbar/second touchscreen, so we were actually looking forward to testing out the ZenBook 14 UX434FL with the trackpad-touchscreen combo interface. After a bit of use we learned that excitement was the incorrect emotion to have for this configuration – the correct one would’ve been dread. On the Duo the second screen is the same width and the same horizontal resolution as the main display and it directly abuts the bottom edge of the primary screen, which…

Too many tech companies are slaves to fashion. HP certainly isn’t guilty of that crime with its DreamColor Z31x Studio Display, a glorious 31-inch panel, with what HP describes as full “cinema style” 4K resolution. To say that the Z31x defenestrates the vogue for slim screen bezels would be the understatement of the eon. This thing is big. It is also, however, designed for serious professional productivity and content-creation work. So, quality, accuracy, and functionality are what matter, rather than superficial aesthetics. The Z31x has all of that in spades. For starters, those bezels are a function of its ability to fully calibrate itself. Top and center, HP has located a sensor that swings down on a motorised arm, allowing for full calibration. What’s more, the calibration tool can be…

The world of budget gaming GPUs mightn’t be headline-grabbing like it is at the high end, but that doesn’t mean that this isn’t a battleground. On the contrary. These are the cards that AMD and Nvidia sell in huge numbers to PC gamers around the world. If you’re a gamer who laughs at the idea of spending $1,500 on a GPU or someone who loves a bit of Fortnite or PUBG, then these are the cards for you. Nvidia’s GTX 1650 has been refreshed with a Super version, and it’s now joined by AMD’s RX 5500 XT. Which is the best card in this cut throat price segment right now? Let’s see. Fight! THE RX 5500 XT: AMD’S LONG AWAITED BUDGET NAVI CARD Let’s start with the Radeon RX 5500…

“The Shield TV has one feature that most Android TV systems lack: Nvidia Games. ” The Nvidia Shield TV has always been something of an odd duck in the streaming-player crowd. The first-gen model had a clever idea – half game console, half streaming box – but a cumbersome design. The second-gen model corrected a lot of the lingering issues, but still cost an awful lot of money (up to $300) in a market where 4K HDR streamers usually go for $50. With the new Nvidia Shield TV (US$150, with no official Australian price announced yet), the company is trying something a little different. Not only can you stream top-notch PC games from your own collection; you can also enjoy fast-loading 4K HDR content and ambitious AI upscaling for 1080p…

“To ensure that your project is not part of a botnet, the onboard crypto chip is configured to connect securely and via encryption to the IoT Cloud. ” In the past, getting an Arduino connected to the internet was a bit of a faff. We either used an ethernet shield or connected to an ESP device via a jumble of wires. But with the Nano 33 IOT we have full Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity on a board measuring only 48mm by 18mm – the same size as the Arduino Nano Every. So with this board, can we finally make IoT (Internet of Things) projects? Yes! This board is best paired with Arduino’s new IoT Cloud, where it can be programmed as a ‘thing’ that can perform a task and report…

Hear us out as we use this box in an article about free apps to tell you not to use them: Sometimes it pays to pay. Sometimes a free package can’t do the exact thing you want – if you’re interacting with a business with very precise standards, a document that, say, LibreOffice produces might have subtle differences that make it look terrible on that company’s Microsoft Office-packing machines. An open-source package comes with no guarantees, no support, no comeback if everything goes wrong. It might have a forum full of enthusiastic amateurs and some official-looking documentation, but it doesn’t have any guarantee of professionalism. If it’s mission critical, don’t rely on free software. Often, free apps either lack critical features (many exist simply to tease a paid upgrade) or…

Having brought all your audiobooks together, now all you need to do is play them. If you only plan to listen to them on your PC, both iTunes and MusicBee (https://getmusicbee.com) offer dedicated audiobook views, enabling you to not just split your audiobooks from your music files, but also take advantage of specific audiobook features, such as the ability to pick up from where you left off during playback. If you plan to go down the iTunes route, we recommend moving the Audiobooks folder back inside the default iTunes Media\Music folder. After being added to your iTunes library, you’ll find them automatically classified as music. You can move them across by right-clicking a title (or titles) and choosing “Get Info > Options tab.” From here, change its “Kind” to “Audiobook.”…

“You have run out of disk space”. There it is, unequivocal. It wasn’t that long ago that Windows started popping up “You are running out of disk space” messages, swiftly followed by “You are running very low on disk space”. No matter, the day has finally arrived. Your hard drive has finally run out of space and now you’ve got to do something about it. The question is: what? These days, running out of disk space should be impossible. With terabytes of storage available to you, how do you manage to fill it all up? One reason might be that you don’t actually have terabytes to start with: perhaps you’re running on a laptop that only came with 128GB to start with, or a 2-in-1 tablet whose 32GB is barely…

1 VIEW A SUMMARY You can choose to monitor all drives or focus on a specific drive. Make your choice and click OK. Wait for WinDirStat to finish its analysis and you’ll see a three-paned window. The bottom provides a colour-coded ‘map’ of your hard drive according to how it’s being used. 2 INVESTIGATE IN DETAIL Click an item on the map and its filename and path will be revealed in the top left pane, which shows a traditional folder view. Right-click and choose ‘Zoom in’ to view a map of the next level down: either a specific drive or the folder containing your target file. 3 REMOVE LARGE FILES When you’ve identified a file you think is safe to remove, select it and open the Clean Up menu. You…

1 SELECT HARD DRIVE Open AntiTwin. Click ‘Select folder’ next to ‘Basic folder’ to select the root of your drive if you’re looking to clear up space on one drive only. Tick ‘2nd folder’ to select another folder path or drive if you’re looking to clear space across two hard drives by weeding out duplicates. 2 FOCUS SEARCH Leave ‘Include subfolders’ ticked and click the File filter… button. You can exclude smaller files from the search (and speed it up) by setting a minimum file size. Click the dropdown as shown to focus on specific file types, and tick ‘Compare images (pixels)’ if you’re looking for visually similar images. 3 PICK YOUR COMPARISON METHOD By default, files are compared according to their content only, but you can also compare by…

1 SET UP NEW FOLDERS You can choose to monitor all drives or focus on a specific drive. Make your choice and click OK. Wait for WinDirStat to finish its analysis and you’ll see a three-paned window. The bottom provides a colour-coded ‘map’ of your hard drive according to how it’s being used. 2 MOVE USER FOLDERS Browse back to This PC. Right-click Documents and choose Properties > Location tab. Click Move… to browse to and select the Documents folder you just created. Click ‘Select Folder’ followed by Apply. When prompted, click Yes to move your files and folders to your new drive. 3 RINSE, REPEAT Now repeat the process for all the other folders listed – be prepared for a long wait if you have large folders to move…

For almost five years now, the variable refresh rate (VRR) wars have been waged. G-Sync versus FreeSync. Nvidia versus AMD (and the rest of the industry). Open standard versus closed proprietary. The initial four years of VRR technology had Nvidia’s G-Sync technology pitted against VESA’s open standard Adaptive-Sync, which AMD branded ‘FreeSync’. The result was a whole bunch of vendor lock-in and confusion for early adopters, as both technologies did the same thing and used the same connectors, but were completely incompatible with each other. G-Sync technology is certainly superior – or at least more stringent – in terms of monitor panel performance metrics required before a G-Sync sticker can be officially bestowed. Not only this, but G-Sync does do some extra processing, giving it features that the more passive…

500GB Seagate FireCuda 520 M.2 PCIe SSD $TBA, HTTP://SEAGATE.COM Slowly but surely, more and more manufacturers are putting out PCIe 4.0 M.2 drives. First came Corsair and Gigabyte, swiftly followed by Patriot, Team Group, and XPG. The latest, though, comes from drive production giant Seagate Technology, in the form of the gaming-oriented FireCuda 520 SSD. While on the cusp of release here in Australia, the 500GB model is, at the time of writing, is one of the cheapest PCIe 4.0 drives currently on the market overseas, so if you want crazy transfer speeds without having to spend a ridiculous amount of money, this is expected to be the way to go.…

You can upgrade to macOS Catalina even when you still need to run apps which are 32-bit or incompatible with 10.15. If you don’t need to run both versions of macOS at the same time, you can install Catalina into a separate volume or partition, and then switch between them using the Startup Disk pane. Installing an older version of macOS in a Virtual Machine (VM) is often a better solution, as you can copy and paste between older apps and Catalina, and share documents easily. For this, use either of the major virtualisation apps, VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop; here we’ll show the latter, as version 15 is already fully compatible with Catalina. The trickiest task is obtaining a full installer of macOS 10.14.6 or earlier. Apple sometimes hides…

The 486 and early Pentium chips ushered in cooling, and the heat generated from a CPU needed to be removed as quickly as possible. Thermally conductive materials were required, and with this the thermal pad was factory-applied. We remember attaching the cooling to our first 1GHz AMD Athlon CPU and playing a game… but we forgot the thermal pad, and the CPU quickly cooked itself to death. Thermal pads enabled anyone to simply place the cooling unit on the CPU and get on with building the PC. But if you need to pull more heat from a CPU, we can use a thermally conductive liquid: a paste. Thermal paste is available in many different combinations and various cooling claims, but typically it’s cheap and offers better conductivity than a pad.…

“This is a game as slow and meandering as the old man strolling through Bailu’s marketplace deciding which kind of steamed bun to have for lunch. ” $69 | PC, PS4 | SHENMUE.LINK Nestled in the mist-shrouded mountains of rural China, Bailu Village is a settlement frozen in time. People live slow lives here among rice paddies, ornate Buddhist temples, quaint cottages, and fields of colourful wildflowers. There are some clues that Shenmue 3 is set in the 1980s, but otherwise life here has changed very little in the past hundred years. It’s an ideal setting for a Shenmue game, a series famous (or perhaps infamous) for its languid, aggressively deliberate pacing. This is a game as slow and meandering as the old man strolling through Bailu’s marketplace deciding which…

Life is Strange 2 begins in suburban Seattle, where a fatal misunderstanding forces Sean and Daniel to flee their home. In his panic, Sean takes his brother on the run, aiming for his father’s family home in Puerto Lobos, Mexico, and the pair take the first steps on their year-long journey to the border. His decision provides an impressive backdrop to their adventure – but also forces Life is Strange 2 to immediately undermine its road-tripping raison d’etre. Rather than directly portray a 2,500km journey, developer Dontnod sticks to its series’ classic tropes. Exploration, dialogue, and character development are its strengths, but those are difficult to achieve within the confines of a Greyhound bus. Instead, the story moves from vignette to vignette, with each chapter set months after the one…

Facebook’s new chatbot will defend employees from haters Liam bot will take the heat from friends over the holidays. Whether it’s the ongoing effects of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the failed attempt to convince everyone that Libra was a good idea, or its widely unpopular stance on allowing lies in political advertising, Facebook is not in the public’s good books right now. But instead of giving its employees a show of good faith with some assuring 2020 resolutions, Facebook instead made a chatbot, called the Liam Bot, to help employees manage difficult questions over the Christmas break. While our first thought was that Mark Zuckerberg may have just uploaded his consciousness to Liam Bot’s servers, the chatbot seems far too human-like for this to be the case. Liam Bot is…