Wednesday, May 13, 2015

IT News Head Lines (Overclockers Club) 5/14/2015

Overclockers Club



Google Cars Have Been in 11 Accidents, At Fault in None
The director of Google's self-driving car program, Chris Urmson, has revealed some information about the progress of the program, in response to an article that noted the cars had been in four accidents in California. The cars have been on the road for six years and have accumulated a total distance of 1.7 million miles driven. The mileage is split between autonomous and manual driving modes, with the car driving itself for more than one million of those miles. In that time a total of 11 minor accidents, or those with minor damage and no injuries, were reported. The most significant aspect of this information is that the self-driving car was not at fault in any of the 11 accidents. Google is making the best of the situation and uses data collected from accidents to help improve the self-driving algorithms that power the cars.
Source: Backchannel via Popular Science


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G.SKILL Announces New Fastest Ripjaws Memory Kit
G.SKILL has announced that its latest Ripjaws 4 DDR4 memory kit has reached a frequency of 3666MHz, the fastest speed for Ripjaws. The 16GB set contains four 4GB modules built using 4Gb IC chips from Samsung. The frequency was validated on a Gigabyte X99 SOC Champion motherboard with a memory voltage of just 1.35V. The memory includes Intel XMP 2.0 memory profiles, providing users with a "trouble-free overclocking experience to boost their systems for extreme levels of performance, while retaining system stability."
Source: Press Release


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Fixing Graphene's Problems for Filtration
There are some materials that are surprisingly prolific, thanks to their various special properties. Many believe graphene will come to be such a material, once some challenges it has are overcome. One area it may be used in is water purification, and researchers at MIT have made that more possible than ever now, by finding ways to fix the defects in graphene membranes.
Graphene is an atom-thick sheet of carbon with a variety of useful properties, including high strength and conductivity. Membranes of the material could significantly improve water purification systems, because of how much thinner the membranes would be, at one atom thick versus 200 nm thick. The problem is that the graphene membranes must first be made on a substrate like copper, which is not porous, so the graphene must be removed. This causes tears in the membrane, in addition to intrinsic defects the membrane will have. For these defects the researchers found that they could be fixed by placing the graphene in a vacuum chamber with hafnium oxide. Normally the material would not interact with graphene, but is attracted to these small defects. The larger tears can be plugged by using interfacial polymerization, which submerges the membrane between two solutions that will react together to form nylon. After the repairs are made, the researchers etch small holes into the membrane, to let water through.
With the defects and tears dealt with, and the pores etched in, the researchers found the graphene membrane could block up to 90% of larger molecules, even though it still let salt though. Additional work is needed, but graphene could become a realistic alternative to current filtration membranes, providing clean water to more places, amongst other applications.
Source: MIT


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Experience Victorian London in Assassin's Creed Syndicate
A new Assassin's Creed game is on the way, one that brings us closer to modern day. Assassin's Creed Syndicate takes us to London during the Industrial Revolution, when the city is chock full of corruption and greed and needs a little cleaning up. Assassin Jacob Frye is "born and bred" to do just that, as he must take over the city's criminal underworld to help free the city's working class. Jacob is the leader of one of the city's street gangs, and rival street gangs will need to be taken out in order to help the city. Those rival gangs may be composed of Templars, who once again figure to play a prominent role in Syndicate.
Jacob Frye isn't alone in the fight against the other gangs/Templars, as his twin sister Evie can join in. Players will be able to switch between both Jacob and Evie as they see fit while exploring the game's open world, which is composed of six different boroughs that make up London in 1868. Jacob is the hot headed, rebellious member of the family, while Evie is the stealthy assassin. Story missions are tied to a specific character, so Jacob may see the bulk of those, but the rest of the time you can play as one or the other.
Along the way, the Fryes will meet up with Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, and other prominent Victorian London citizens to help in the fight. These allies should prove invaluable in freeing London from the Templars' grip, although the exact help is not yet known. Like I said, there are six boroughs to journey through in the game: the City of London, Lambeth, Southwark, the Strand, Westminster, and White Chapel. There's a seventh borough, too, Crawley, where the twins grow up as assassins, although it may not be a playable area beyond a tutorial segment.
Assassin's Creed Syndicate is a single player-only game, as Ubisoft Quebec wanted to focus on that to give players the biggest open-world city in the franchise yet. The map is about 30% larger than the one in Assassin's Creed Unity, and is filled with rival gang strongholds to clear, driveable vehicles, and a stronger combat focus that past games. Jacob Frye is skilled with a kukri and brass knuckles, with the assassin's gauntlet containing not only the hidden blade, but a rope launcher to easily clamber up buildings, and a hallucinogenic dart launcher to turn enemies against each other. He also has a six-shooter and throwing knives, with the knives also being able to cut down objects on ropes to drop on top of enemies. Evie's weapons are not yet known, but given her higher stealth focus, I wager she has weapons built for quiet takedowns.
Assassin's Creed Syndicate arrives on October 23 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, with the PC version arriving later in the fall.
Source:  Ubisoft, IGN, GameSpot [1] & [2], and Reddit


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NVIDIA GRID Now Streams at 1080p60
Many people expect streaming to play a major part in the future of gaming, either by streaming the games from a local machine or from a remote data center. An example of the latter is NVIDIA's GRID service which today, along with adding Bionic Commando to the available games, will stream some of the available titles at 1080p60. When the service first launched, it only streamed at 1280x720, but now it is the first service to offer Full HD resolution at 60 FPS for games.
As you can expect, such a high resolution and framerate stream requires a very good connection. The company says a download speed of 30 Mbps is a minimum but recommends a 50 Mbps for the best experience. GRID's built-in network test will make sure your network can support the FHD stream. Currently some 35 games available on GRID support streaming up to 1080p60, including Batman: Arkham Origins, GRID 2, and Ultra Street Fighter 4. The full list of games can be seen at the service's website: NVIDIA Shield – GRID. For better performance, NVIDIA has also brought online another data center in the southwestern US with one in Central Europe coming online later this month.
Source: NVIDIA Blogs


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Hardware Roundup: Tuesday, May 12, 2015, Edition
The week keeps moving along, with plenty of items available for you to check out today. We have the ASUS Sabertooth Z97 Mark S Limited Edition motherboard, which has a white PCB and white TUF Thermal Armor for a truly unique appearance. There is a review on the SilverStone Tundra TD02-E CPU cooler that has a 240mm radiator to help with the extreme cooling needs of some people. For something a little different, we have the Intel NUC5i7RYH SFF system, which has a Broadwell chip and Iris 6100 graphics. Fourteen different SSDs get compared against each other in an ultimate showdown, so if you're in the market for one, don't miss this. Wrapping up today's item is the Synology DiskStation DS415+ NAS for those wanting a home server.
Motherboards

ASUS Sabertooth Z97 Mark S Limited Edition @ ThinkComputers
CPU Cooling

SilverStone Tundra TD02-E @ Benchmark Reviews
Storage/Hard Drives

Ultimate SSD Showdown: 14 Consumer-Grade Drives Compared @ TechSpot

Synology DiskStation DS415+ NAS @ Madshrimps
Small Form Factor

Intel NUC5i7RYH SFF @ PC Perspective


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Microbattery Developed That Could Go On Chips
Batteries are necessary for a great many systems, including micro-devices, but because of the large sizes of the energy storage devices, they must be kept off of the chips used. This could change thanks to the work of researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign though, as they have developed a powerful microbattery that can be easily integrated onto chips. The manufacturing processes involved can even allow for large-scale production.
To create the new battery, the researchers use 3D holographic lithography and 2D photolithography. Holographic lithography utilizes multiple light beams that interfere within a photoresist, creating the desired, interior structure. Recent work has made this process simpler to the point of making it highly scalable. The 2D photolithography is used to create the shape of the electrodes that connect to the battery, which the researchers found is particularly important. Structural parameters including size, shape, surface area, porosity, and tortuosity all impact the microbattery's performance.
As the methods used to create the microbattery are compatible with those used to create chips, the expectation is that they can be integrated directly onto chips. The fact that the miniature battery is also high-power, comparable to supercapacitors in that regard, make it very desirable for various applications from wireless sensors and transmitters and medical devices, to monitors and actuators.
Source: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign


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Verizon Acquiring AOL for $4.4 Billion
According to both Verizon and AOL, the former will be purchasing the latter in an acquisition deal that is valued at $4.4 billion. The move to purchase AOL comes at a time when Verizon is looking to expand its offerings surrounding the Internet of Things. Verizon will likely benefit from the digital and video experience that AOL has, as the company has successfully generated millions in digital advertising revenue while also supporting large and exciting media brands such as Engadget, TechCrunch, and The Huffington Post. Lowell McAdam, the Chairman and CEO of Verizon, noted that "AOL has once again become a digital trailblazer, and we are excited at the prospect of charting a new course together in the digitally connected world."
Source: TweakTown


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BIOSTAR Updates Three Motherboards to Support Godavari APUs
BIOSTAR, a manufacturer dedicated to the production of motherboards, graphics cards, and industrial computing systems, has announced that it has updated three of its motherboard offerings in order to support the recently launched AMD Godavari APUs. BIOSTAR has updated its Hi-Fi A88W 3D, Hi-Fi A70U3P, and Hi-Fi A68U3P motherboards to fully support the Godavari lineup, which ensures that the company’s customer base can now experience what Godavari brings to the table. These boards all offer industry standard features, such as onboard LAN, PCI Express 3.0 x16, SATA 6Gb/s, and USB 3.0. BIOSTAR has noted that along with supporting the Godavari APUs, the updated motherboards continue to feature backwards support for previous generation FM2+ / FM2 APUs.
Source: Press Release


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Available Tags:Google , NVIDIA , Hardware , AOL , Motherboards

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