ASUS Incorporates Skylake in Its Republic of Gamers G752 Laptop
ASUS has released the successor to its popular G751 laptop, the Republic of Gamers G752 laptop. The G752 from ASUS includes Skylake processors across its lineup, Thunderbolt 3.0 support over USB-C, and independent cooling for the CPU and GPU in what the company is calling the "Mobile 3D Vapor Chamber" cooling system. The base version of the Republic of Gamers G752 laptop, which costs $1,500, includes an Intel Core i7-6700HQ, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965m, a 1TB hard drive, and a 1920x1080 IPS panel with G-sync. Consumers can upgrade the included graphics card to a GeForce GTX 970m for $100 more, and the $1,800 version of the G752 laptop includes the upgraded graphics alongside a 128GB M.2 SSD. The Republic of Gamers G752 laptop tops out at $2,000, which provides gamers with a GeForce GTX 980m.
Source: PCWorld
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Hulu Virtual Reality Application Launching Soon
Tim Connolly, the Head of Distribution at Hulu, has announced that the company’s virtual reality application is expected to launch next month alongside the release of the Gear VR headset that Samsung is making available for just $99. The application will allow Hulu viewers to experience content in an entirely new way through the use of a reasonably inexpensive device. Hulu is planning to be one of the major companies that supports virtual reality, with the online streaming service even considering the commission of original series that are available only in virtual reality. Hulu is also thinking about the possibility of offering immersive environments relating to its 2D video, allowing viewers to view content within and inside of various scenes. Connolly noted that "We think this is a smart bet that helps position us as an innovator and helps us learn earlier on what could be a substantive storytelling environment."
Source: CNET
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TRENDnet Begins Shipping TV-IP322WI Outdoor Network Camera
TRENDnet, a global provider of award-winning networking and surveillance solutions to small and medium-sized business and home users, has announced that its latest network camera, the TV-IP322WI, is now available to purchase. The TV-IP322WI is a 1.3 megapixel Wi-Fi network camera that is capable of being connected through an 802.11n network or a PoE network. The camera captures video at 960p, is capable of seeing items in the dark up to 100 feet away, and features an operating temperature range of -22 degrees Fahrenheit to 140 degree Fahrenheit. TRENDnet has equipped the TV-IP322WI with Dynamic IR and Digital Wide Dynamic Range, and the camera also comes with an IP66 outdoor weather rating along with a microSD card slot for storage of up to 64GB.
Interested consumers can purchase the TRENDnet TV-IP322WI, which features an MSRP of $154.99, from major retailers and other authorized TRENDnet partners around the world.
Source: Press Release
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New Tools Developed for Protecting Privacy in Large Datasets
Big data is revolutionizing many areas of science, but before researchers can collect and use this information, they must first determine if and how they are going to protect the privacy of the individuals in the set. Before researchers would just remove names, but then it was shown to be possible to re-identify people by comparing information within an anonymized dataset with public information. Now researchers supported by the NSF have developed a new tool that should be able to protect a person's privacy without compromising the data.
This tool utilizing differential privacy, which was first described in the mid-2000s. Using this tool, identities are protected by adding noise to any queries of a dataset. If researchers requested information from a dataset, the answer would be approximately accurate: accurate enough for the study but not informative enough to identify anyone. There is enough randomization present in the data that one will not be able to distinguish between the real world and one in which an individual's data is not present in the dataset. If applied too simply, multiple queries could eventually reveal someone's identity, but by intelligently increasing the noise and correlating it across queries, this can be avoided.
Not all dataset could have this differential privacy system applied, because there are times you want specific information, like when searching for a matching organ donor. For those studies that do not require such specific information though, this could enable a number of currently private datasets to be publicly accessed.
Source: National Science Foundation
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Hardware Roundup: Friday, October 9, 2015, Edition
The end of the week has arrived, with a few things for you to check out. There is an explanation of the different SD card speed classes, grades, bus modes, and file systems, so if you've ever had a question on what SD card to purchase, this guide should have you covered. A new case mod is highlighted that probably shouldn't be called a case, as the entire system is wall mounted. It has a ton of hardware and water cooling, and is just something to behold. Our final item for the day is a podcast covering the latest news and reviews from the past week.
Storage/Hard Drives
SD Card Speed Classes, Grades, Bus Modes, and File Systems Explained @ PC Perspective
Miscellany
Case Mod Friday: MAXXPlanck v2 @ ThinkComputers
Podcast #370 @ PC Perspective
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Liquid Cooling Built Into a Chip
We all know that proper cooling our components is critical for achieving and maintaining the best possible performance, which is why some of us turn to liquid cooling solutions. As impressive as some of our setups may be though, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have likely topped anything we have. The researchers delidded an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) device and etched cooling passages directly into the silicon to bring the cooling water to within a few hundred micros of the transistors.
To continue increasing the performance of various computer chips, transistors and other components are being made smaller and are being packed more tightly together. Along with the increase in performance, improvements in heatsinks must come as well, which can be problematic as these better heatsinks would likely need more power and be larger in size. This is why the researchers decided to try bringing the heatsink closer to the components. After removing the stock heatsink and heat-spreader, the researchers etched passages into the silicon for water to flow through and added silicon cylinders, to further improve heat transfer. A layer of silicon was then placed over the passages and ports were attached for the water tubes.
When tested, this cooling system kept the device at 24 ºC using 20 ºC inlet water, while an air-cooled device came in at 60 ºC. The FPGA device the researchers used was made by Altera Corp. and while they only worked with this device, this work can be applied to other computers, including CPUs, GPUs, and more.
Source: Georgia Institute of Technology
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Sony Cuts PlayStation 4 Price Ahead of Holiday Shopping Season
Sony has announced a $50 price cut for the PlayStation 4, dropping the price from $399.99 to $349.99. The new price goes into effect in the United States tomorrow, with Canadian shoppers seeing a price drop from $449.99 CAD to $429.99 CAD. A number of new bundles will accompany the price drop for the holiday shopping season including game bundles with Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, and Star Wars Battlefront.
Source: PC Mag
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NVIDIA Plans to Discontinue GeForce GTX 960 2GB Model
NVIDIA currently offers the GeForce GTX 960 with 2GB or 4GB of RAM, but Chinese site HWBattle is reporting that the 2GB version will be discontinued. The company believes that limiting the GTX 960 to 4GB will "make it more attractive to buyers." There is speculation that the move is in response to the 960 under performing the comparably priced AMD R9 380. The original competitor for the GTX 960 was the lower performing R9 280, but the release of the lower priced R9 380 turned this price point in favor of AMD.
Source: WCCF Tech
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Graphene Pores Found to Vary in Behavior
Graphene is a very interesting material for a number of reasons, with a lot of focus is given to its electrical properties. It also has some curious physical properties, such as the ability to block many materials, even when the graphene is just a film. Now researchers at MIT have investigated how nanoscale pores in graphene behave and may have found ways to control this behavior.
Graphene is an atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms, and ideally the sheet looks like chicken wire, but it often possesses defects. The researchers actually wanted these defects to make them the desired nanometer-sized holes. To isolate the pores the researchers used an ion beam to puncture a layer of silicon nitride, which the graphene sheet was then placed on top of. For an ion to pass through both layers, the researchers reasoned they would have to pass through the graphene pores. Next the researchers measured the flows of different salt ions through the setup by measuring changes in the current and voltage from pore to pore and ion to ion. They discovered that some pores were stable while others demonstrated a conductance that swung back and forth. The varying conductance indicates the pores were allowing many kinds of ions through, while the stable conductance suggests those pores were only allowing specific ions through.
When the researchers got to work modeling the pore behavior to interpret the measurements they found that a pore's size, electrical charge, and position of the charge all affect its behavior. This suggests that it could be possible to control these pores to selectively allow through only specific ions. Potentially this could be used for sensors, trace metal mining, and water purification systems.
Source: MIT
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Fallout 4 System Specifications and Release Information Revealed
Fallout 4 is just over a month away, with many people planning how much time they'll take off from work to explore the Commonwealth or figure out their SPECIAL stats, among others. In addition to that, people were wondering just what kind of computer they would need to run it. Well, wonder no more as Bethesda has revealed the system specifications for Fallout 4, as well as a whole bunch of other release information. For starters, Fallout 4 requires Steam in order to play on PC, which was expected considering Bethesda's recent titles do, too. It also supports Steam Achievements to track your progress and compare it with your friends. Xbox One and Xbox 360 controller support on the PC is supported with no extra adjustments; other controllers are supported, but may need a little extra tweaking. There are some other bits and pieces to know, but those can wait until the systems specifications.
Minimum
Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit OS required)
Intel Core i5-2300 2.8 GHz/AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.0 GHz or equivalent
8 GB RAM
30 GB free HDD space
NVIDIA GTX 550 Ti 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB or equivalent
Recommended
Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit OS required)
Intel Core i7 4790 3.6 GHz/AMD FX-9590 4.7 GHz or equivalent
8 GB RAM
30 GB free HDD space
NVIDIA GTX 780 3GB/AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB or equivalent
Nothing there is too crazy and many should be able to play it no problem without any extra hardware purchases. The 30GB hard drive size is a touch high, but not excessively so when compared to recent games (consoles need between 28 and 35GB of free space). The 64-bit Windows OS is a nice requirement to see, as is the 8GB of RAM. If you're sitll rocking 4GB, this is definitely the time to upgrade. Video cards should be easily covered by most people, although I can see some purchases in the near future for some. All in all, most people should be able to run Fallout 4 no problem when it arrives on November 10.
The launch date is November 10, but it unlocks at 12:01am EST in the U.S. So that means if you live out on the west coast, you can start playing Fallout 4 at 9:01pm on November 9. In other markets, Fallout 4 unlocks at 12:01am local time on November 10, except in most of Asia where it's 12am on November 11 and December 17 at 12am in Japan. Language support is wide, with North America receiving English and French voice/text; South America has English voice/text and pt-BR and Latin American Spanish text; UK, Australia, and New Zealand are English voice/text; most of Europe gets English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish voice/text; Russia and Poland get English voice/text and Polish and Russian text; most of Asia is English voice/text and English voice/Traditional Chinese text; and Japan is Japanese voice/text.
That should cover just about all there is on Fallout 4 at the present time. We have the system specifications for PC, the console storage size, the release time, Steam support, and Pip-Boy app and Pip-Boy Edition information. Mod support and launch info was previously covered here, where mods will arrive early next year through Bethesda.net. We'll see you in the Commonwealth beginning on November 10 (or a bit before if you're not on the east coast of the U.S.).
Source: Bethesda.net
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Hardware Roundup: Thursday, October 8, 2015, Edition
The first full week of October is drawing to a close, but not before we have some reviews for you to check out. There is another review on the AMD FX-8320E CPU to see what this low power product brings to the table. We also have the SilverStone ML06-E Mini-ITX HTPC case, a sleek yet compact case that can still hold plenty of components while taking up just a little bit of room. The Lexar JumpDrive P20 USB 3.0 flash drive gets tested to show how quickly you can read and write files to it. Finishing things off today is the Apple iPhone 6s Plus review, where the company's new flagship goes up against the competition in order to show its true colors.
CPUs
AMD FX-8320E @ Neoseeker
Cases
SilverStone ML06-E @ Benchmark Reviews
Storage/Hard Drives
Lexar JumpDrive P20 USB 3.0 Flash Drive @ Madshrimps
Mobile
Apple iPhone 6s Plus @ TechSpot
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Improved 3D Pixel Display Prototype Developed
Back in January a news item went up about a new prototype 3D display that used 3D pixels or Trixels. That original prototype was monochromatic but now the researchers at the Vienna University of Technology and TriLite Technologies have built a new, full color version.
Instead of using traditional pixels with specific polarizations and special glasses to display a 3D image, these display use an advanced laser system. Each Trixel consists of three lasers (red, green, and blue) that are aimed at a moveable mirror. This mirror rotates to pass the laser beams across the field of vision, but while the mirror rotates the beams are modulated. This allows the brightness, and now the color too of the image to change in the time it takes to pass from one eye to the other. A display built of these would directly send different images to our eyes, instead of requiring some device to filter what our eyes see.
The new module is 12x9 Trixels, and by combining modules a large outdoor display can be built. The software to drive such displays has already been developed and is even compatible with current 3D movies. Now the researchers and TriLite are looking for partners to mass produce the technology.
Source: Vienna University of Technology
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Available Tags:ASUS , Gamers , Hulu , Hardware , Sony , NVIDIA , GeForce , GTX , 3D ,
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