Biostar Hi-Fi Z97WE Review
Testing and Overclocking Biostars Hi-Fi Z97WE motherboard
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Raidmax Scorpio V Review
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Patriot STELLAR 64GB USB/microUSB 3.0 OTG Flash Drive Review
Patriot STELLAR 64GB USB/microUSB 3.0 OTG Flash Drive Review
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Seagate Enterprise Capacity 6TB 3.5 HDD v4 Review
Seagate Enterprise Capacity 6TB 3.5 HDD v4 Review
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PAPAGO! Dashcam P2PRO 1080p Review
PAPAGO! Dashcam P2PRO 1080p Review
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AMD FX-9590 & FX-9370 Review
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be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 3 Review
be_quiet_dark_rock_pro_3
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OCZ RevoDrive 350 480 GB Review
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NZXT H440 Review
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be quiet! Dark Rock 3 Review
be_quiet_dark_rock_3
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PowerColor Devil 13 Dual Core R9 290X 8GB Review
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Thermaltake Massive Notebook Coolers (V20, SP, TM) Review
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Intel Fourth Generation Core i7 4790K Review
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Walmart Launches Redesigned Website
Walmart has just launched a redesigned version of its online storefront thanks to Walmart Labs, its research and development team located in Silicon Valley. The new design incorporates many improvements that were based on input received directly from Walmart customers. These improvements include a mobile-based layout, an improved personalized search engine that utilizes past purchases and search history, and more in-depth product pages. Additionally, larger buttons and a larger search box are now featured on the Walmart website. Overall, the new design is tailored towards making Walmart more competitive against other online retailers such as Amazon.
According to Walmart, the new personalization feature is currently available to roughly half of all its customers, though plans are in place for it to be rolled out to all of its customers by the end of this month.
Source: CNET
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China Bans Kaspersky Lab and Symantec Corporation Products
In an effort to limit its use of foreign technology, China has excluded anti-virus vendors Kaspersky Lab and Symantec Corporation from its approved vendor list. At this time, only five anti-virus brands are approved for use, all of which are developed within China. The announcement from the state-controlled People's Daily shows that Beijing is intent on using domestic information technology products, which is no doubt related to documents that were released by Edward Snowden last year that unveiled United States surveillance programs. Although Symantec officials were not available for contact, Kaspersky spokesman Alejandro Arango noted that the company is working closely with Chinese authorities about the exclusion of its software.
Kaspersky Lab and Symantec are not alone in this challenge to be listed as an approved vendor, as companies like Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft have all reportedly faced challenges with China since the release of documents pertaining to United States surveillance programs. China has even banned governmental use of Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows 8, for personal computers.
Source: Reuters
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Tt eSports Announces Battle Dragon Power Bank
The Battle Dragon Edition Power Bank is the latest accessory from the Tt eSports line from Thermaltake. It carries up to 8,800 mAh of charge and can power multiple mobile devices on a single charge. A high efficiency design provides for up to 90% power conversion to provide the fastest charging times. Four LEDs indicate the amount of charge remaining on the device and a pair of USB ports provide for normal charging or fast charging through a 2.1A port. The Battle Dragon Edition Power Bank will retail for $39.99 and is available now.
Source: Press Release
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Ultralight Foam Made from Atom-Thick Sheets
Two-dimensional materials have been of great interest since their discovery, as they can possess many interesting mechanical and electrical properties. Sometimes those properties will not translate to 3D forms of the material, but other times they will. Researchers at Rice University have recently devised a way to grow foam made of graphene oxide and white graphene that could find possible use as electrodes and structural components.
Graphene is an atom-thick sheet of carbon, with graphene oxide (GO) being a close relative that is actually easier to produce. White graphene is not related to either material though, except by having the same flat, hexagonal structure, as it consists of boron nitride. Because both GO and hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) have the same structure, they can form seamless connections, creating a hybrid material many researchers are investigating. Those at Rice discovered that they could combine the two with certain catalysts and then freeze-dry the mixture to create a foam of the 2D materials. The structure resembles an office building with multiple floors and walls supporting them.
When stress tested, the researchers found the foam stood up very well to compression and stretching. How well it survived depended on the ratio of GO and h-BN, which the researchers intend to optimize through additional experiments, while also testing how large a sample they can grow.
Source: Rice University
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ECS Announces White LIVA Mini PC
ECS first announced the LIVA Mini PC early last month and the small form factor system has "received all the positive feedback from users as well as many awards from media globally." ECS has decided to expand the line with a white version of the system with a 64GB eMMC storage capability. The eMMC storage option represents an upgrade over the previous model and was intended "to fulfill the high storage requirement and to enjoy the quick Read/Write Speed."
Source: Press Release
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The Sims 4 is a Very Emotional Game
If you're like me, you only really care about the Create A Sim and Build Mode tools, but for those of you that actually want to "play the game," The Sims 4 is chock full of emotions. I'm not talking about the sadness you feel when your favorite sim dies or the satisfaction you get when you trap a sim in a burning building (I won't judge...). No no, I'm talking about the sims themselves, as displayed in this "New Emotions Official Gameplay Trailer":
Source: Official Site
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Catching Changing Electrical Behavior in Graphene
Graphene is an unusual material with its amazing electrical, optical, and mechanical properties. This makes it of particular interest to many people for use in electronics and sensors, but we are still learning new things about it. Researchers at MIT have recently found that the way graphene interacts with light depends on it electron concentration, which serves to explain contradictions in some previous studies.
When a short, bright pulse of laser light strikes a semiconductor, the pulse increases its conductivity, while the same pulse will decrease the conductivity of a metal. Graphene, an atom-thick sheet of carbon, has been observed to both increase and decrease conductivity under laser pulses, despite the fact that it is typically a metal-like conductor. The MIT researchers discovered that the behavior depends on the electron concentration of the graphene, with a low concentration causing its photoresponse to be like a semiconductor and a high concentration causing it to behave like a metal. To find this result, the researchers placed the graphene on top of an insulator with an electrode beneath it, and then used one laser to provide the pulse and another to measure the conductivity. This all-optical, non-contact approach allowed for the electrical response to be measured within a trillionth of a second.
Now armed with this information, researchers can develop and improve advanced, highly sensitive light detectors made of graphene. These detectors could have ultrafast response times and respond to a broad spectrum of frequencies.
Source: MIT
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Tennis Meets Street Fighter in Facepunch Studios' Second Unveiled Prototype, Deuce
Last week, despite Rust still being in Early Access, developer Facepunch Studios unveiled a new project codenamed Riftlight. In a follow-up post, Facepunch founder Garry Newman explained that the studio actually had "three other prototypes being worked on." In a new blog entry posted by Facepunch's Ian James, we now know one of those additional prototypes: "an arcade style tennis game with a focus on unique characters and courts."
Referred to as Deuce and described as tennis meets Street Fighter, it appears like any other isometric tennis game on the surface, but with special moves. Four such special moves that currently work in the prototype build "to some degree" include: Ice, which freezes the opponent on returning the ball; Tornado, which sends the ball flying in a random direction; Teleport, which switches the ball position mid flight; and Fireball, which isn't described but appears to be a fast, powerful shot. Balance is a large concern for James though, as the current iteration of Tornado "is almost impossible to return." He's also iterating on ideas about how and when to trigger the special moves and how "in position" a player has to be to be able to return the ball. He's even coded his own physics system instead of simply using Unity's built-in physics engine, allowing for backspin, topspin, or curving along a spline for some of the special moves.
As with Riftlight, there is no release window provided for Deuce, but the core game is already functional, as is both local and online multiplayer. James plans on providing weekly updates to keep us informed.
Source: Deuce Devblog
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New Electrode for Grid-Scale Batteries
On the small, personal scale, batteries have enabled many technologies, and on the large scale, they could do the same. One of the outstanding issues of solar and wind panel is their variability throughout the day, which massive batteries could address, but such batteries are expensive, dangerous, and do not always survive long. Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory however, have found a way to ease these problems for one class of battery.
Sodium-beta batteries are massive batteries the size of cargo containers that use pure sodium as the negative electrode, with a solid, ceramic membrane made of beta alumina separating the electrodes. Ideally the sodium will completely coat the beta alumina, but molten sodium resists the ceramic if temperatures are below 400 ºC, so the batteries operate at 350 ºC. While this is necessary for operation, it also shortens the lifespan of the batteries, and poses a fire risk. The PNNL researchers found a solution by changing the electrode from pure sodium to a sodium-cesium alloy that will wet the ceramic at lower temperatures.
The new battery has an operating temperature of just 150 ºC and keeps the 420 milliampere-hours per gram capacity of traditional sodium-beta batteries. That capacity last longer in the new battery as well, as one hundred cycles only brought it down to 97%, while pure-sodium batteries are at 70% after sixty cycles. Also the reduction in temperature would allow cheaper materials to be used for the battery, as steel could be replaced by polymers.
Source: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
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Hardware Roundup: Monday Edition
It's the start of a new week, and that means some new items for you to check out today. There is a review on the AMD A10-7800 Kaveri APU, a new model meant to fill in some of the gaps in AMD's Kaveri line. It is similar to the A10-7850K, just it has nearly half the power usage to make it a prime candidate for an HTPC build. Our other item for today is a giveaway, as you can enter for a chance to win a Phanteks Enthoo Pro case and PH-TC14CS CPU cooler.
CPUs
AMD A10-7800 Kaveri @ LanOC Reviews
Miscellany
Win a Phanteks Enthoo Pro Case & PH-TC14CS CPU Cooler @ ThinkComputers
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