Monday, February 2, 2015

IT News Head Lines (TweakTown) 2/3/2015

TweakTown



UPDATE: CS:GO player GMX claims ScreaM didn't throw the match
We recently published an article stating that former-Epsilon CS:GO team member Robin "GMX" Stahmer dug up some dirt on his ex-team mates - claiming that they threw a match on purpose in order to win in-game items in a bet against themselves on CSGOLounge.

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Stahmer has taken to Facebook, explaining how he believes that his former teammate Adil "ScreaM" Benrlitom wasn't involved in the scandal - stating "I did this under anger, and in this act, I forgot to say that my former team mate ScreaM, didn't know about this throw. I've talked a bit with Adil [ScreaM], and in my anger, I forgot he didn't know about it. I don't know yet if they told him about it or not, but I didn't."

Stahmer went on to express his sympathy and regret, stating "I want to apologize toward the community, and toward ScreaM who doesn't deserve all this hate."

Valve has explained their harsh stance on match-fixing and betting scandals, joining almost-all major tournament providers across the globe in banning a bunch of American and Canadian CS:GO players for throwing a match and benefiting around $10,000 worth of in-game skins through the process.

Benrlitom is an extremely high-profile player and often regarded as one of the best in the world. If found guilty he (and his teammates) are likely to suffer the same life-long ban as per their American and Canadian friends. Their sponsor, Epsilon, has officially suspended all players involved until the allegations by Stahmer are settled.

Meanwhile, Benrlitom took to Twitter in order to reassure his fans that there is nothing to be worried about.

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The PlayStation Network is currently down, again
As shared on their official Twitter page 3 hours ago, PSN is down again - however no word has been made of how, why, or who may be responsible.

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Obviously many on social media are instantly blaming the infamous Lizard Squad, who were responsible for taking down PSN and XBOX Live late in 2014 - however there is no telling until someone comes forward with an answer.


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Eiffel 65 would be proud - this CM Silencio case is a blue overload!
We're seeing a massive trend here - yet another Cooler Master modified case jam-packed with Bitspower rigid tubing watercooling goodies.

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H²OC Project has just shared their Silencio 652S Edge Mod - now with newly added blue dye in the watercooling and more strips of LED lights.

Supported by Cooler Master, Bitspower and Avexir Memory, this case features four sticks of RAM coupled with a single GTX 780, rigid tubing throughout and custom sleeves on all cables. As you can easily tell by the pictures, blue is the common theme here - with all watercooling and LEDs being blue in color, accentuating all parts of the case whether metal or acrylic.

Although not as clean or minimalistic as other builds that we've been covering recently, it's still impressive.

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The British army has employed a whole batallion of Facebook Warriors
This brings the term "keyboard warrior" to a whole new level. The front lines are most commonly publicized, however what's going on behind closed curtains? Here's an insight - The British Army have just implemented a whole battalion of soldiers described as "Facebook Warriors."

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Named as the 77th battalion, this number has some historical background. Claimed by the Financial Times as a "guerrilla unit led by the swashbuckling British commander Major General Orde Wingate, one of the pioneers of modern unconventional warfare. They operated deep behind Japanese lines in Burma between 1942 and 1945 and their missions were often of questionable success."

This new battalion will be responsible for implementing "'reflexive control', an old Soviet tactic of spreading specifically curated information in order to get your opponent to react in the exact way you want them to," as described by Gizmodo.

Standing at 1,500 people strong, the 77th is one of many global forces targeting social media - with the Israeli Defense Force reportedly using 30 social media websites spread across multiple languages during their Operation, Cast Lead. This campaign was made in an effort to "engage with an audience we otherwise wouldn't reach" as explained by an IDF spokesperson.

The 77th will now be responsible for spreading war facts and disinformation alongside collecting various bits of intelligence all though social media means.

Set to begin operation in April - we eagerly await the 77th's plans.


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The US Army takes down racist-interpreted Tweet
After tweeting about challenge posed thanks to "Chinks in special ops' digital and physical armor", the US Army has decided to withdraw this announcement due to it possibly implying "Chinks" as those of Asian decent.

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The US Army has been applauded for taking down the possibly racial-insensitive tweet, but also received a lot of criticism from the pubic for there being no current apology issued.

It's obvious that the tweet shouldn't have happened in the first place, it's also sad to think that some social media manager has likely lost their job or are currently being severely reprimanded over this mistake. Justified or not, you decide.


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Epsilon suspends its CS:GO team over match-fixing allegation
Recently there was a massive match-fixing and betting ring scandal that rocked the whole North American and Canadian Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) scene, seeing numerous players and a manager be banned for life from all Valve major events, ESEA tournaments and more.

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In recent news, French-based eSports organization Epsilon has suspended their whole CS:GO division pending a current match-fixing investigation.

Their world-class CS:GO squad has been unearthed by former teammate Robin "GMX" Stahmer, with him stating that his old team purposefully lost a match on the ESEA platform against rivals OverGaming in order to profit from weapon skins. These skins were achieved through bets made against themselves on the popular website, CSGOLounge.

As stated by Valve and backed up by all major tournament providers across the globe, match-fixing is a very serious offense and carries long-term or life-long bans for all players, managers and supporters involved. As a precaution, Epsilon has officially suspended their CS:GO team pending the outcome of the investigation, not only to keep their reputation in line, but also likely as a precaution due to their large-name sponsorships like that of the clothing brand Nike.

Epsilon's official statement reads:

It became apparent yesterday that a statement from our ex player, GMX, had surfaced accusing his ex team-mates of throwing a game some months ago. We at Epsilon had absolutely no prior information about this situation and were as shocked to read this as everyone else.
Since this information came to be known, we have been working behind the scenes to gain as much data ourselves and also liaising with other bodies within the CS:GO scene such as Valve.

Firstly, we at Epsilon would like to make it clear that we absolutely do not condone cheating and exploiting systems in any way. We have now decided to suspend the whole CS:GO team pending the results of ongoing investigations by both Valve and ESEA. We will of course provide any more information, both when we have it, and when it is relevant to do so.
This is extremely upsetting news, especially considering the alleged involvement of Adil "ScreaM" Benrlitom, regarded as one of the best players in the world.

Epsilon's currently-suspended CS:GO line-up stands as:

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Did you know there's a school that offers eSports scholarships?
With League of Legends as their game of choice, Robert Morris University (RMU) proudly state that they are "the first college to offer scholarships and create an eSports varsity team."

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First announced on Friday June the 20th, 2014 - RMU are offering scholarships covering 50% of tuition and 50% of room and board costing, asking people to email in for applications.

Sponsored by DX Racer, Pwnt Wear, ASUS, Cooler Master and CM Storm, it's exciting to see this kind of advancement being made in the competitive scene. Coming from an eSports background myself, a vast majority of the competitive community is made up of university students, meaning it only makes sense to market to this target audience by sponsors and game manufacturers.

There are many programs around supporting university clubs and events, but this is the first scholarship offering from the university directly.


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Raptr hacked, members should change their passwords ASAP
Raptr confirmed that it was hacked, and the company is now recommending users change their passwords sooner rather than later. Some user data may have been compromised in the breach, but Raptr didn't say what type of data may have been stolen.

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Raptr Reward Points earned by its members are protected with two-factor authentication and should be protected from any outside tampering.

"Although the potential risk to Raptr users is pretty minimal, we urge you to access any accounts on other sites and services in which you use the same login and password associated with your Raptr account and change the related password(s) immediately," Raptr said in an official statement.


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SilverStone TS431S Four Bay miniSAS Storage Enclosure Review
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In the past, we have looked at quite a few enclosures from a number of vendors including SilverStone. However, most of these solutions utilized either eSATA or USB 3.0, not that either of those are a bad thing, but they don't quite offer the same level of functionality as SAS.

The SilverStone TS431S is a four bay enclosure allowing users to install either four SATA or SAS enabled hard drives. Drive capacities upwards of 6TB are supported allowing the total enclosure a capacity ceiling of 24TB. Even with all of that said, the TS431S does offer a rather unique feature in that it uses a MiniSAS interface so consumers can use their favourite HBA or RAID card to setup and enable RAID arrays if they so choose.

Additional features of this enclosure include tool-less drive installation with SECC steel and aluminium construction. To aide in cooling your drives, the TS431S includes dual 60mm fans and a built-in power supply, so you don't have excessive cables running from the unit.

Operating system compatibility for the TS431S includes support for Windows XP, Vista and 7, along with OS X10.1+ and Linux kernel 2.6.3+.

MSRP of the SilverStone TS431S is listed at $199.99 with a one-year warranty.

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Packaging for the TS431S is shared between several models. With that said, the model number for this solution is carved out in bold lettering to the left with features listed above.

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The front of the enclosure hides away all the drive bays with a solid aluminium door the bottom right carries a SilverStone logo.

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Opening the door, you will find each of the four drive bays, of course with these being tool-less, they have just a hook on the right side of the bay. Down below is the power button centered on the enclosure.

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The back of the enclosure houses the power input with an on/off switch. The right side of the enclosure houses both of the 60mm cooling fans, while the SFF-8088 miniSAS port is located below.

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Scope of delivery for the SilverStone TS431S includes the power cord and manual on disc.

To test the performance of the SilverStone TS431S, we connected the enclosure to our Adaptec 78165 6Gb/s RAID controller utilizing four Seagate 600 Pro 200GB SSDs.

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Random read performance with RAID 0 started out at 4300 IOPS at QD1 reaching a peak of 118K IOPS at QD32. Moving over to RAID 5, the array managed a pretty steady 5500 IOPS across the entire range of queue depths. RAID 10 picked things back up with QD1 coming in at 4300 IOPS peaking out at the same 118K IOPS we found with RAID 0.

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Switching to write performance, we found RAID 0 random write results to top 51K IOPS at QD32 with RAID 10 and RAID 5 coming in at 26K IOPS and 4700 IOPS at QD32.

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Throughout sequential read testing, the TS431S did quite well - we were able to achieve results a touch over 2000 MB/s with RAID 0, while RAD 10 produced 1219 MB/s at QD32. RAIDS 5, having the most overhead, produced single drive speeds of 450 MB/s.

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Write performance in sequential testing came in at 1734 MB/s within RAID 0 with both RAID 10 and RAID 5 reaching 873 MB/s and 599 MB/s respectively.

Storage enclosures have been around for quite some time, they are an integral part of allowing us to store large amounts of data in a compact form factor. Of course, there are many different types of enclosures ranging anywhere from single bay solutions all the way up to full racks housing 16 drives and more. With all of these types of enclosures, the limiting factors that determine the amount of performance you can achieve is often the interface that controls the uplink to the data.

Over the past few months, we have seen a plentiful amount of enclosures of which many focused on the consumer market and the USB 3.0 interface. Today, with the TS431S, we had the opportunity to expand past those limitations and see what the MiniSAS interface was capable of. As with most SilverStone products, the TS431S enjoys a great amount of build quality, the blend of SECC and aluminium construction allows for a very heavy enclosure while at the same time durability to protect your drives.

During testing, we enjoyed a great amount of performance from each of our RAID arrays and the Adaptec 78165 we used for the review. Our RAID 0 array was able to top 2000 MB/s and 118K random read IOPS, of course results will certainly vary depending on the drives and SAS controller used in tandem with the TS431S.

PRICING: You can find the Silverstone Tek 4-Bay Storage Tower for 3.5-Inch SATA/SAS HDD with miniSAS Interface (TS431S) for sale below. The prices listed are valid at the time of writing but can change at any time. Click the link to see the very latest pricing for the best deal.

United States: The Silverstone Tek 4-Bay Storage Tower for 3.5-Inch SATA/SAS HDD with miniSAS Interface (TS431S) retails for $184.99 at Amazon.
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