Monday, February 8, 2016

IT News Head Lines (HardOCP) 09/02/2016





Windows 10 Subscriptions Aren't Happening
This writer is convinced that Microsoft has no plans for introducing a subscription fee. If that did actually happen, what would your reaction be?

…large enterprises, including corporate customers and government agencies, actually have been paying for Windows subscriptions for many years, thanks to a volume licensing program called Software Assurance. That annual fee gives them a slew of enterprise features and usage rights that consumers and small businesses don't need and certainly won't pay for. I'm not even sure how a Windows 10 subscription for consumers and small businesses would work. What features in the operating system would Microsoft charge extra for?


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Quad-Core 4.2GHz, 64GB, 5TB SSD RAID 10 Laptop
The Eurocom Sky X9 lays claim to being the most powerful "desktop laptop" ever made. For shits and giggles, I was able to get the configurator to go over $11,000.



...the company's released the Sky X9W complete with a quad-core, eight-thread, Intel Core i7 6700K capable of operating at 4.2GHz and nestled amidst an Intel Z170 Express (Skylake) chipset. The NVIDIA Quadro M5000M dwarfs the CPU for core count: it's got 1,536 of its own. Pack in 64GB of DDR4-2133, 2400 or 2666 RAM, if you please, then throw in up to four NVME SSDs and give them the RAID 10 treatment for data protection. There's also a 17.3 inch 4K screen at 3840 x 2160.


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The Division SweetFX Mod
YouTube member Xenthor Xi has a couple of videos showing what The Division should actually look like. I assume that any dislikes came from Ubisoft.



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Google May Release Gear VR Competitor This Year
This is great news for Nexus fans who want a VR headset that doesn't look like it was made by a homeless person.

In addition to a new plastic casing, it's said that the headset will support a far wider range of smartphones than the Gear VR. Sources also tell the paper that it will feature "better sensors" and "lenses," suggesting that it won't be wholly reliant on the equipment built into your smartphone. The report mentions that "most of its processing power" would come from the smartphone. Google Cardboard, which has been around for over a year and a half, provides two plastic lenses and just holds your smartphone in the right position to function as a VR device.


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Centriphone: An iPhone Video Experiment
Apparently, you can get over 1.5 million YouTube views just by waving an iPhone around your head.



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First Recorded Human Fatality Due To Meteorite
A meteorite has reportedly killed someone. I thought that getting hit by one was supposed to give you superpowers.

Indian officials say a meteorite struck the campus of a private engineering college on Saturday, killing one person. If scientists confirm the explosion was due to a meteorite, it would be the first recorded human fatality due to a falling space rock. According to local reports, a bus driver was killed on Saturday when a meteorite landed in the area where he was walking, damaging the window panes of nearby buses and buildings. Three other people were injured.

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Man Arrested After Drone Hits Empire State Building
I'm getting the impression that we're going to start seeing statutes specifically for drone-related incidents.

The police said that Mr. Riddle was flying his drone in Midtown Manhattan on Thursday when it crashed into the building's 40th floor. The device fell from the sky after striking the building, landing on a ledge four floors down. Mr. Riddle then entered the building to ask security guards for help. The guards agreed to help, but called the police instead. The police said they did not know if the drone was ever retrieved from the ledge.

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Is The Price Of A Video Game Really Right?
Well, is it? My answer leans toward "no," based on all of the half-assed ports and DLC-prone titles out there.

…video games have no fixed running time; what takes one player an hour to complete may take another five…The conscientious fix a price that reflects the complicated cat's cradle of costs that go into making a modern video game. Regardless, as any struggling artist will tell you, price and value don't always correlate. Hopefully, however, as pricing becomes ever more flexible, the gap between the two will close.


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Titanfall 2 Will Have Single-Player Campaign
I'll be checking the sequel out, then. There is also a TV spinoff show in the works, though I imagine the Titans will only have a limited appearance due to budgets and all.

…the first Titanfall didn't have a proper story mode, players didn't get all the answers they were looking for. "One of the shortcomings of the first game was we just did not have the mechanism to tell everyone 'Here's who you are, here's where you are and who's around you,'" Stern said. "We knew all the answers, we just could not deliver it."


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Intel Skylake Non-K Overclock Dropped By ASRock
This is the first evidence of Intel pushing motherboard vendors to remove the overclocking of non-K Skylake processor capabilities from their feature lists.

…ASRock has updated its Intel Z170 motherboards with two tweaks; 1. Update CPU microcode to 0x76, and 2. Remove SKY OC function. There is no explanation of either tweak in a BIOS read-me file or similar, or any blog or social media post. An earlier BIOS update from ASRock, just a fortnight ago, included a microcode to fix the Skylake complex workloads bug. Older BIOS versions remain on the ASRock website.


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Nvidia Wins Trial Brought By Samsung Over Memory-Chip Patent
It appears that Nvidia can now continue using Samsung memory chips in its GPUs.

Samsung filed the complaint in November 2014 in retaliation for patent-infringement claims lodged by Nvidia. While this trial was over memory chips, the dispute began after two years of licensing talks failed over graphics processors needed to play games and watch movies on smartphones and tablet devices, Nvidia has said. Nvidia is trying open up new revenue streams by forcing rivals to pay for what that company says are unique products its researchers invented and designed. Samsung is countering by arguing that Nvidia is using its inventions in memory chips without permission.


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World's Internet Traffic To Surpass One Zettabyte This Year
That's one billion terabytes. Or one trillion gigabytes. Or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000000 bytes.

Global internet traffic will pass one zettabyte for the first time this year, after increasing fivefold in the last five years. Cisco, the networking company that supplies much of the world's internet infrastructure, says that the total amount of traffic will reach around 1,060 exabytes, or just over one zettabyte.

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Google Wants Its Driverless Cars To Be Wireless
Filings reveal that Google has been testing two wireless charging systems for its driverless cars.

What's the point of having a self-driving car if you still have to get out to plug it in? That's a good question, says Alphabet, Google's parent company. With that in mind, it is testing wireless charging systems for its electric self-driving cars. Documents filed at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) suggest that Google is working toward cutting its robocars' charger cables and beaming power to them instead.

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Doom's Box Art Is Terrible
There seems to be a unanimous hatred toward the cover art for the Doom reboot. I have not been following the game's development and am surprised at how the main character is a Master Chief reject.



That art is painfully boring and dull. You have a generic-looking robot soldier in front of what appears to be fire. It looks like something you'd find in the portfolio of a talented artist who was trying to show they could do a particular style without trying to use the imagery of any specific game. It's lifeless and dull.

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Morocco Unveils Massive Solar Power Plant In The Sahara
Even if you don't know a thing about solar technologies, you can probably appreciate the level of symmetry that went into this.



The Noor I power plant is located near the town of Ouarzazate, on the edge of the Sahara. It's capable of generating up to 160 megawatts of power and covers thousands of acres of desert, making the first stage alone one of the world's biggest solar thermal power plants. When the next two phases, Noor II and Noor III, are finished, the plant will be the single largest solar power production facility in the world.


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MSI Z170I Gaming Pro AC mITX Motherboard Review
The Z170I GAMING PRO AC motherboard is poised to be a tiny powerhouse for SFF builds or for those of you looking to focus on "less is more." If you are looking to make the jump to an Small Form Factor build, or you want to update an existing build you won't want to miss this feature rich Mini-ITX motherboard.

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Fallout 4 Patch 1.3 New Image Quality Features
A new patch, version 1.3.47 is out for Fallout 4 and with it brings a couple of big image quality improvements. HBAO+ Ambient Occlusion is added as well as hardware driven Particle Weapon Debris. We will compare these new image quality features and see how they help improve the gameplay experience of Fallout 4.

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Modding Fallout 4 for Image Quality & Immersive Gameplay
Fallout 4 has been out for several months and it is possible that you might find the image quality lacking overall. We take some of the most popular and highly downloaded image quality mods and find out how we can improve the environment in Fallout 4. We modify for visual improvements to give you more immersive gameplay.

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Available Tags:Windows , SSD , Google , iPhone , Intel , ASRock , Nvidia , Samsung , Wireless , MSI , Gaming

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