Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2019 i TechLife

A LITTLE WHILE ago I was contacted by a reader concerned over what they perceived as a strong pro-Apple bias. I pointed out, at the time, that it can be hard not to when Apple is so very dominant in the mobile space, with its phones and tablets very much best-in-class hardware. We’re not so much biased, as merely aware of Apple’s market share among our readers. But what I also thought was... yeah, fair cop. So I put together this very Android-focused issue of TechLife. With the release of Samsung’s new S10 devices the timing couldn’t be better. A lot of our readers will soon be sporting new Galaxy phones, so there’s no better time to offer a guide to the best and most essential apps available on Android,…

US$500,000 COST OF A ONE-WAY TRIP TO MARS, ACCORDING TO SPACEX AND TESLA ENTREPRENEUR ELON MUSK. MUSK CAME UP WITH THE SUM WHILE RESPONDING TO A QUERY ON TWITTER, SUGGESTING THAT WANNABE ASTRONAUTS COULD “SELL THEIR HOME ON EARTH”. 10 million NUMBER OF PLAYERS BATTLE ROYALE SHOOTER APEX LEGENDS SIGNED UP WITHIN THREE DAYS OF LAUNCH. IT TOOK 2018 HIT FORTNITE TWO WEEKS TO HIT THE SAME GAMING MILESTONE. 47,488 TONS OF E-WASTE DONATED BY JAPANESE CITIZENS TO HELP MAKE MEDALS FOR THE 2020 OLYMPIC GAMES. So far Tokyo’s organising committee has been able to retrieve 2,700kg of bronze, almost 30.3kg of gold and is close to hitting its 4,100kg silver target. Five million smartphones were donated during the appeal. 1.2 MILLION NUMBER OF NEW SUBSCRIBERS ONLINE DATING SITE TINDER…

Researchers find personality traits could put you at risk of cyberattacks IT’S ALL DOWN TO SELF-CONTROL, SAYS SCIENCE. New research, which appeared in the journal Social Science Computer Review, claims that people who “show signs of low self-control” are more susceptible to malware attacks. The study dug into people’s reactions under different conditions, then questions participants about their computer behaviour, and found that individuals who are negligent, lack foresight, or are impatient tend to fall victim to cyberattacks. The author of the paper, Tomas Holt, professor of criminal justice at Michigan State University, says that hackers are aware that such people tend to spend a lot of time online looking for things they want (or think they want) and target exactly those sites. This understanding – of what people do…

TELL US WHAT RUNJS DOES. It’s a desktop application that acts as a scratchpad or playground for JavaScript. It evaluates code as it’s typed and displays the resulting output line-by-line. It includes Node and Browser APIs and supports modern JavaScript and TypeScript via Babel. It’s particularly useful if you want to experiment with a bit of code without the hassle of setting up a project or if you want to try out an NPM package. WHY DID YOU CREATE IT? I wanted a standalone application I could use outside the context of a project with zero setup and that could handle modern JavaScript. I also wanted something for when I just needed to play with a quick idea or see how a particular feature of a library worked. After searching…

A PORTABLE DISPLAY is a rather niche proposition, but if you are one of the few that needs a multi-screen setup that can go anywhere, or a big screen to display your smartphone, then Asus’s ZenScreen Go should be in your shortlist. The ZenScreen Go has the same honed metal chassis as its ultrabook brethren and is one of the only portable displays to really minimise the bezels. Combine this with a sleek magnetic folio case and smartphone sized charging cable and you have one of the best looking portable displays available. The 15.6-inch Full HD display features a 7800mAh Li-Po battery which will last four hours on peak brightness settings. This will stretch to almost a full working day if you can lower the brightness or live with the…

HOME AUDIO IS getting smarter. Companies like Sonos are transforming the way we listen to music in the home with multi-room speakers like the Sonos One, and home theatre companies are making their products smarter with digital assistants and intelligent audio tech like Dolby Atmos. One company that quickly adopted the smart home theatre trend is Polk Audio, with products the Polk Audio Command Bar, reviewed here. As you might be able to tell based on the soundbar’s design, the Command Bar comes with Alexa built right into it making it unquestionably smart. It’s also relatively inexpensive too, coming in at $649, and it comes with a subwoofer. But with all those features, does it compromise on sound quality? We put the Polk Audio Command Bar to the test to…

IF SHARING IS caring, then iOS must care a lot. This is because there are lots of ways to share your stuff with other people and your various other Apple devices. It all starts with the Share sheet, which pops up whenever you tap the Share icon, or the word Share on selected devices. The sheet is context-sensitive, which means the available options change depending on what app you’re using, and it’s full of useful tools. For example, in Safari it doesn’t just enable you to share web pages, but also enables you to save a page as a PDF or request the desktop version of a mobile site. As you’ll discover, you can share by email, messaging apps, wirelessly to another Apple device, and further afield using popular cloud…

BACK WHEN WI-FI was introduced in 1998, nobody really predicted that it would be as ubiquitous as it is today. Now, nearly every household in Australia has its own Wi-Fi network, and most have finally learned to get at least the basics of security right. There are still common vulnerabilities and flaws in people’s setups, but even those are set to be fixed up in the next few years as new implementations of Wi-Fi security are introduced. So with WPA3 right around the corner, we thought we’d take a look at Wi-Fi security in the past, today, and what’s coming up to better protect our networks. THE OLDEN DAYS: WEP Back when Wi-Fi was first introduced, we had WEP (Wired-Equivalent Privacy) for security. WEP was ugly: it used weak 40-bit…

TRADITIONAL PAPER COLLAGES are so fun to make, especially when it comes to creating the resources and getting hands-on with ripping and tearing paper. The first stage in this technique is to create some rough torn edges of paper that give the artwork an authentic handmade look. Combining this traditional paper craft with the convenience of digital editing means that, unlike with a real paper collage, your digital artwork remains fully editable. If you decide you don’t quite like the shape of one of the pieces, or you want to change their order within the layout, then you have the freedom to shift things around as much as you want. There is also the option to alter the colour of your photos and textures, which isn’t possible with a traditional…

The TechLife team finds the best budget, value and performance products, and the latest releases in the top technology categories. If you believe there are other products that deserve the title in any of the tech categories, let us know and give us your reasons why in 50 words or less. Equally, if there’s a hot new product that’s worthy of attention, we want to know. Send your email to techlife@futurenet.com. PROUDLY BROUGHT TO YOU BY…

Blanking out Good afternoon – could you please point me in the direction of a program to completely wipe my computer prior to disposing of it? I think you’ve covered it in an earlier edition of TechLife but for the life of me I can’t find it nor could I find anything on your website. My other question relates to password managers like 1password. Do I have to go through the whole process on each of my devices or can one program be linked to PC/laptop/tablet/mobile? I’m hopelessly confused. JEAN EARL David Hollingworth replies: One of the handier programs to make sure you drives really are blank is Diskwipe. And not just because it’s freeware! It can work on whatever partition of your PC you point it at, and USB…

IT LOOKS LIKE Microsoft has quietly added a new feature to Windows 10 that will allow the operating system to automatically remove any broken Windows Updates that are causing issues. This is good news, as Windows 10 has had a number of problematic updates recently, some of which have prevented the operating system from loading entirely. According to a new support document recently published by Microsoft, if Windows 10 downloads an update and runs into issues — perhaps due to driver incompatibilities — after trying a number of automatic troubleshooting processes, Windows 10 will remove the latest update if it can’t be remedied. When this happens, a notification will pop up explaining that Windows 10 has removed some ‘recently installed updates to recover your device from a startup failure’. The…

BENEATH YOUR SKIN are millions and millions of nerve endings – branched arrangements of white-coloured cells that send signals to your brain. They’re telling your brain that the label of your jumper is digging into your back and that the paper between your fingertips feels smooth. When these nerves are touched lightly they stimulate two regions of the brain: the somatosensory cortex, which analyses the sensation, and the anterior cingulated cortex, which processes pleasant feelings. If someone brushes a feather against your skin, both of these areas of the brain burst into action and you experience the feeling of tickling. This experience makes us laugh, but not because we find it funny. It appears that what we’re actually doing is showing that we are not a threat to the aggressor…

Google just made a seriously dramatic entrance into the gaming industry, finally revealing the Google Stadia streaming service at GDC in San Francisco last month. It will launch in 2019 in the US, Canada, UK and “most of Europe.” It means massive blockbuster games that you can stream in 4K, 60fps on any device, even your phone, but is it going to replace your PS4 or Xbox One? What we saw during the demo was impressive. An Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey clip, but with a Play Now video. Once that was pressed, the game was running on the same device in less than five seconds. Googler ‘Khaled’ then swapped from phone to laptop to PC to TV with no interruption — the same game just kept going smooth as a buttered…

AX WI-FI HAS arrived and it aims to enhance wireless network performance by boosting speed and responsiveness while reducing network congestion. There are many technical improvements but they vary in complexity. We’ve seen MU-MIMO before but it’s been less-than-thrilling as a bolted-on addition to earlier technology: we’ve higher hopes for it now that it’s integrated into the standard. The key improvement is called orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) which supposedly “Increases average throughput by a factor of four in high-density scenarios.” In basic, technical terms it ups the number of independently-modulated and simultaneous sub-carriers in a single 20MHz channel from 52 (AC wireless) to 234. There’s also band steering to automatically ensure that less-crowded bands are used. Unfortunately, compatible AX computer adapters won’t become available until the second half of…

THE MOTO G7 Plus is the most premium offering in Motorola’s new, affordable G7 quartet, offering up more power, better cameras and faster charging tech than its cheaper siblings. The budget end of the mobile market continues to go from strength to strength, which means there’s some serious competition for the Moto G7 Plus and family – and that’s great for you, the consumer, as it means there’s a range of great low cost handsets available. The G7 Plus has a strong set of features, including a large 6.2-inch display, 4GB of RAM and dual rear facing cameras, but there are a couple of spots where it cuts corners to keep the cost down. THE G7 PLUS HAS A STRONG SET OF FEATURES, INCLUDING A LARGE 6.2-INCH DISPLAY, 4GB OF…

WHEN YOU’RE BROWSING the internet on your Android phone, it’s easy to opt for either your phone manufacturer’s default browser or Chrome (if they aren’t one and the same). It can certainly be convenient, tying everything together neatly with your Google account, but there’s a wealth of other Android browsers out there, including some that may be a better fit for you. Several of the browsers we’ve looked at here are specially designed to be as lightweight as possible (something Chrome isn’t particularly well known for), making browsing faster and easier on less powerful phones. Other browsers are privacy-focused, making sure you leave no trace once you finish a browsing session, and blocking any tracking cookies that may otherwise allow advertisers to follow you around the web. Tempted? All these…

BUT WHAT IF you could do more with your lights? What if you could change the light’s colours based on your mood or activity? Or have them turn on and off automatically based on the time of day or when you arrive and leave? And what if you could control the lights with your voice, and have them turn on or off when you activate a specific routine? All of these things are possible with smart lights, which are next-gen LED lights that connect to your Wi-Fi network and are controlled through a mobile app. There are multiple form factors available, and features differ depending on the model and platform, but most enable you to pick from 16 million colours (provided it’s a colour bulb), activate colour themes, adjust the…

HAVE YOU EVER tried to watch a DVD or Blu-ray movie on your PC? Then you’ll know that Windows 10 no longer comes with a built-in optical disc player. Instead, you can play MP3 files via Windows’ own Groove Music app, but it doesn’t support podcasts or Internet radio. Likewise, the default Film & TV app can play some kinds of video files, but struggles with more exotic formats. Enter VLC Media Player. It’s a free and open source app, which can serve as a one-stop media centre. VLC not only supports DVD and Blu-ray playback but also a wealth of other codecs, meaning it can play virtually any media file. You can also use it to subscribe to podcasts and listen to Internet Radio. In this guide, you’ll discover…

Collaborate with others in the iWork apps. The iWork apps for iOS can share documents for easy collaboration. After you create a document in Pages, Numbers, or Keynote, tap the ellipsis and choose Collaborate With Others to share a link with people – they’ll need an Apple ID. The link takes them to the doc in iCloud.com, where they can edit or comment on it. Any changes they make are applied to your original copy, which means that everybody has the most up–to–date version of the document. You can also specify who can do what to your file, and whether or not it’s shared publicly.…

ONLY A FEW years ago wireless functionality in digital cameras was seen as somewhat of a gimmick, albeit one that added cost to higher-end compacts and bridge models. The ability to directly access the files stored on a card or internal drive does make practical sense however, especially for photographers on the move. Today the technology has found its way into professional CSC and DSLR cameras and can be used for control in both directions. The mobile apps available for download can be employed to move images between the camera and the mobile device, instead of using a USB cable to transfer files. They can also be used to control camera functions remotely from the device, in place of a physical shutter release cable or a further investment in an…

Nubia Alpha wearable phone THE FIRST FLEXIBLE SMARTPHONE WEARABLE. $TBC | www.nubia.com The top tech companies are still trying to get smartwatches into the mass market, but one precocious tech company called Nubia are ready to replace the smartphone with a wearable one. The 4-inch curved OLED display of the Nubia Alpha takes the shape of an elongated fitness tracker but it’s been packaged in a gold plated bezel and link bracelet that makes it look more like the wrist module of C3PO than something that can use to make a call. While it’s expected to launch sometime this year we’re still not clear on the price or its exact feature set just yet, but Nubia intends for it to do ‘everything a smartphone can’ when it does arrive. The…

ACCORDING TO RIGOROUS new tests undertaken by AV-Comparatives, two-thirds of the antivirus apps available for Android devices offer no protection whatsoever. In its ongoing mission to offer systemic testing of security software, the independent organisation put 250 Android antivirus apps through their paces, finding that all but 80 of them failed to meet even the site’s minimum requirements for basic security. The tests showed that less than a third of the apps managed to detect at least 30% of 2018’s malicious apps with zero false alarms — many of the apps that failed to meet the site’s standards regularly found popular genuine (clean) apps to be harmful, and malicious ones to be safe. That ineffectiveness, in large part, stems from the apps not scanning code. Many were found to be…

WE’VE ALWAYS BEEN devilishly impressed with LG’s OLED TVs but their history has been something of a roller coaster. The initial models were little more than expensive curiosities with major limitations. But LG got its act together quickly and changed the market to the point where it now supplies OLED panels to all its rivals. However, some years’ releases don’t always represent a big step forward. While the screens have always been great, we’ve sometimes seen cheap, flimsy fascias replace sharp lines, bulky glass backing adding enormous, unnecessary weight and built-in soundbars that weren’t always welcome (or very good). So, we’re glad to see that LG has dispensed with the unnecessary flourishes and stuck to what’s important with its 2019 models. As before there are three ranges: all offer the…

IF YOU WANT to make the most of your digital music collection, it makes sense to invest in a decent DAC (Digital Analogue Converter). While DACs are commonplace – you’ll find them in any digital audio device with an analogue output – AlexiusSawall most aren’t up to the challenge of procuring the best audio. The majority sound perfectly adequate, but there can be big sonic gains to be had when using a standalone DAC to restore digital music to something akin to its original analogue waveform. UK outfit Chord Electronics is renowned for its innovative DACs. This is because the company doesn’t buy off-the-shelf solutions; it designs its own from the ground up. The Qutest can be found at the higher end of the DAC market, and as part of…

NoClip Website EXPLORE SOME CLASSIC VIDEOGAME WORLDS IN YOUR BROWSER. noclip.website For the nostalgic gamer, there’s nothing quite like revisiting the worlds that captivated us in the past, but for some, the portals into these universes (i.e. our ancient consoles) are no longer up to the task. The NoClip website is a project largely run by coder @JasperRLZ and offers a glimpse into some of these worlds by way of rendering them in your browser. When visiting the site, you can choose a platform (predominantly Nintendo consoles at this point) and a game title, and boot up one of its many areas to explore in your web browser. Whether this is one of the open world maps from Super Mario Sunshine or a dungeon or boss room from The Legend…

On the heels of BioWare community manager Jesse Anderson’s lengthy message to Anthem’s frustrated community, BioWare general manager Casey Hudson recently published a blog post addressing Anthem’s disappointing launch and unclear future. Hudson acknowledged that “there is skepticism out there,” but assured players that “there’s a lot more work that we intend to do.” “On the one hand it’s been a rougher launch than expected,” Hudson wrote. “But then as I think back we also knew that big new online games tend to hit some kind of problem once they go live, so as much as we tested and prepared to make sure everything was ready, we were also ready for the possibility that unexpected issues might arise at launch … We launched a game that so many of you…

$79 | PC, PS4, Xbox One | tomclancy-thedivision.ubisoft.com ON THE SURFACE, The Division 2 is more of what came before. It’s a solid third-person shooter, focused around co-op shootouts with three different factions (and later, a fourth) and developing skills, abilities, and a loadout that compliments your play style. But it’s the fact that you constantly feel like you’re progressing rather than just ticking things off a list that makes Ubisoft’s latest open-world such a delight to explore and fight through. The world reacts to your action and develops accordingly; everything you collect has a purpose; the loot cycle is rewarding and even offers silly apparel options and dyes. There’s so much to do here that you’ll be playing for hundreds of hours before you’ve done it all. And by…

CANON FANS HAVE waited a long time for the EOS R, and now that it’s finally here, the camera is set to woo back photographers who moved away from full-frame DSLRs to go mirrorless. And it doesn’t disappoint – the EOS R takes beautiful pictures with the vivid colours you get from its best DSLRs. Yet there are some little things about the camera that certainly do disappoint. Let’s start at the basics, though. The EOS R features a 30.3MP sensor which is low compared to the Sony A7 III’s 42MP capabilities and the Nikon Z7’s 45MP images. The resolution, though, isn’t a deal breaker. The new camera launched alongside three new lenses for the new RF mount, and the combination is superb. Images are sharp, with plenty of details…

ASUS’S NEW RT-AX88U is from the alien attack fighter school of router design, so its angular-black chassis, four large antennae and gold detailing will look awesome or awful, depending on personal taste. The theoretical speeds offered by AX6000 routers are (roughly) 6,000Mbps: 1,148Mbps on the 2.4GHz channel and 4,804Mbps on 5GHz. We’d love to have tested maximum speeds but, unfortunately, AX Wi-Fi adapters won’t be available until around Q3 2019. While we had an AX-compatible Samsung Galaxy S10+ phone on hand, this could not beat older AC Wi-Fi speeds using the Asus, even when used as a tethered, USB Wi-Fi dongle. We also tried to transfer files from a directly-attached, fast, USB SSD but, try as we might, we could not convince the router to enable transfers. This left us…

HERE’S A DOCK for your Mac or PC that does it all, and then some. While pricy at $569, the set of ports it offers is impressively comprehensive. It connects to your machine via a single Thunderbolt 3 cable, which also allows charging at an impressive 85w. The front of the aluminium case has a pair of USB 3.1 type A ports (so, easy for quick USB drive access, or mouse and keyboard connecting), combo headphone and mic jack and seperate SD + microSD card slots, and around the back there is a headphone jack, Gigabit Ethernet, DisplayPort 1.2, a pair of USB 3.1 type C ports, a pair of Thunderbolt 3 ports (thoughtfully labelled distinctly to differentiate them from the USB type C ports) – one of which is…

IN 2008, WHEN pinch-to-zoom was a right reserved for iPhones and BlackBerrys were still the business, a new kind of smartphone hit the scene: the Android smartphone. Starting at version 1.5 for public consumption, Android was launched on the HTC Dream, a QWERTY keyboard-packing slider phone. Based on a modified version of Linux, Android offered something very different to the iPhone: freedom. Unlike iOS’s heavily policed, locked-down operating system, Android arrived with the promise of open source everything. Google made access to the Android Market (now the Google Play Store) freely available, and users could even customise their home screens with widgets, offering in-app functionality from said home screen, no app opening needed. With Android 1.5, codenamed Cupcake, a new way was born. ANDROID 1.6: DONUT Is it an albatross?…

[ MAC ] Stuck when shutting down My High Sierra install has been going fine, but the only snag is that when I shut down, sometimes the pointer is left on a black screen and my Mac gets stuck. When I then force shutdown, I get a warning when next starting up that macOS didn’t shut down correctly. How can I fix this? DAVID SIMPSON Howard Oakley replies: This is a shutdown panic or freeze, and should never occur. It happens when macOS is trying to shut everything down, but something brings it to a grinding halt. Your problem is identifying what that something is. Test whether it affects another account on your Mac: if it doesn’t, then it’s likely to be old or broken software in your Home folder,…

LISTENING TO DIGITAL music is easy. Organizing a digital music library and making sure it stays that way, not so much. The same artists often get tagged differently – REM and R.E.M. for example, or Matchbox 20 and Matchbox Twenty – especially if you get music from multiple sources, and some tracks get tagged with totally wrong information. Album tracks get separated, guest stars are tagged as the main event. And the longer you leave the tidying up process, the more time it eventually takes to fix. Thank goodness, then, for iTunes add-ons such as Doug’s AppleScripts. AppleScripts are little computer programs that can bring new features to an app, and there are nearly 500 of them at dougscripts.com. They’re free to try and you’re encouraged to make a little…

HOME HUBS AND OTHER GADGETS We love gadgets, and intelligent speakers or home hubs are very popular this year. The Google Home speaker gives you an audio system with Google Assistant built in, while Google Home Hub takes that one better by including a touch screen. And it’s not just Google popping its Assistant into new gadgets: the Amazon Echo and Show ranges fill similar niches, and the Lenovo Smart Display has 8-and 10inch screen versions that are highly regarded. In this article we will use the generic term: “home hub” for all such devices. CHECK YOUR OLD TECHNOLOGY DRAWER But… do we really need another gadget, will it be used, and which one to spend the dollars on? There is an alternative: use a discarded device or two and…