To an audiophile, there’s no such thing as ‘too expensive’ if it means an upgrade to their setup could improve their listening experience. And in Japan, some acoustic connoisseurs are now installing their own utility poles , with custom transformers, to ensure all of their audio gear is getting the purest power possible. Read more…
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Obsessed Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles To Improve Sound
An anonymous reader quotes The Verge: GoldenEye: Source received its first update in more than three years this week. It’s free to download and it features 25 recreated maps, 10 different multiplayer modes, and redesigned versions of the original game’s 28 weapons. It was created using Valve’s Source engine, the same set of tools used to create Counter Strike and Half-Life games. So it’s a massive step up in both visuals and performance for one of the more drastically dated gaming masterpieces of the last 20 years… GoldenEye 007, the beloved N64 first-person shooter, has been recreated in high-definition glory by a team of dedicated fans over the course of 10 years…the attention to detail and the amount of effort that went into GoldenEye: Source make it one of the most polished HD remakes of a N64 classic. With 8 million copies sold, Wikipedia calls it the third best-selling Nintendo 64 game of all-time (although this version doesn’t recreate its single-player campaigns). Anyone have fond memories of playing Goldeneye 007? Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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‘GoldenEye: Source’ Updated: A Classic, Free Multiplayer Game
What if you could have a desktop that easily slips into a messenger bag or purse? That’s what Intel has been aiming for with its Next Unit of Computing (NUC) devices. Yes, it’s a terrible name, but Intel’s goal is admirable: to deliver powerful machines that are significantly smaller than the desktops of yore. Our first look at a NUC back in 2013 showed plenty of promise. And with the new Skull Canyon edition (starting at $609), Intel has come closer than ever to delivering a truly portable desktop replacement that can even play some games. Just be prepared to pay through the nose to actually use it. Officially called the NUC NUC6i7KYK (yes, Intel is really bad at naming things), this new device isn’t a complete computer. Instead, like all of Intel’s previous tiny desktops, it’s a kit that requires some handiwork. It packs in a 2.6GHz quad-core i7-6770HQ processor with integrated WiFi, Ethernet, Intel HD Audio and Iris Pro 580 graphics. But you’ll have to open it up and add your own SSD in one of the two M.2 slots, along with your own RAM (it supports up to 32GB of laptop-sized DDR4 memory). And of course, you’ll have to supply your own OS as well. In short, don’t expect to buy this box and have it magically start working. While previous NUCs looked like boring gray mini PCs, Intel actually infused a bit of style into the Skull Canyon model. It’s a slim and small device, at only 1.1 inches tall, 8.3 inches long and 4.57 inches wide. It feels like a small hardcover book, weighing in at around 1.5 pounds. Its plastic case is all black, with a reflective webbing pattern and large skull imprinted on the top — a not-so-subtle hint that Intel built this thing for PC gamers. Thankfully, the company also includes a plain black replacement cover in the box. Simply put, the Skull Canyon NUC feels like an exotic piece of hardware rather than a humdrum PC. Alongside the power button up front, there’s an SD card slot, headphone jack and two USB 3.0 sockets (one of which is colored yellow, as it’s a “charging port” meant to provide extra voltage for mobile devices). Around back there are ports for power, HDMI, Thunderbolt 3/ USB-C , Mini DisplayPort and gigabit Ethernet, along with two more USB 3.0 connections. In addition, there’s another 3.5mm jack for audio output, which also supports minijack to optical cables (useful for connecting the NUC to an A/V receiver). This plethora of ports is another way that the Skull Canyon NUC distinguishes itself from modern laptops. Getting started involves removing the four Philips screws on the bottom of the NUC and plugging in the RAM and M.2 SSD of your choice. Intel packed our demo model with a 512GB SSD and 16GB of memory, but I nonetheless unplugged and reinstalled those pieces of hardware to get a feel for what it’s like to work with such a tiny case. If you’ve ever installed RAM, a video card or any PCI card in a desktop, you won’t have any trouble here. But even if this is your first time dealing with naked hardware, it shouldn’t be too difficult (just remember to align the pins). With my system complete, I then installed Windows 10 from a USB stick, a process that took around 15 minutes. Once I got into Windows, I quickly realized that none of the drivers for the NUC were automatically recognized, not even its WiFi radio. I used my Windows desktop to snag those drivers, along with Intel’s Display drivers for the NUC. Once those were installed, I had the NUC run through Windows Update several times to fully upgrade the OS and grab all the other relevant drivers. It took about an hour to get the NUC fully up and running. All the while, I had flashbacks to the hours I spent mindlessly installing Windows during my IT days. With everything set up, I used the NUC for my daily workflow, which involves having dozens of browser tabs open across multiple browsers, chatting on Slack, writing on Evernote, listening to music on Spotify and occasionally editing some photos. For the most part, I was surprised by how normal everything felt. Even though it’s running a laptop-grade i7 processor, which produces less heat than its beefy desktop counterparts, the NUC managed to keep up with me every step of the way. Having 16GB of RAM also helps, especially when it comes to multitasking and handling large files. You can definitely hear the system’s fan working when things heat up, but that’s to be expected with such a small device. In practice the NUC felt almost indistinguishable from my custom-built desktop, which is particularly surprising given how small it is. This is also the first NUC with decent gaming performance: It had no problem staying at 60 frames per second in 1080p with less demanding games like Transistor and Civilization 5 . Quadrilateral Cowboy , with its blocky ’80s aesthetic, ran between 35 fps and 60 fps in 1080p. Even Overwatch was playable, reaching between 60 and 70 fps at 720p with low settings. More surprisingly, it ran at around 50 fps in 1080p with low settings. That’s a testament both to Blizzard’s scaling skills and the amount of power Intel has managed to cram into its Iris Pro 580 graphics. For some gamers, the Skull Canyon NUC’s performance will be fine for LAN parties and competitions. And if you need even more power, you can connect a full-sized graphics card over Thunderbolt 3 using an enclosure similar to Alienware’s $200 Graphics Amplifier . I didn’t have one of those to test out, unfortunately, but it’s nice to know the capability is there. PCMark 7 PCMark 8 (Creative Accelerated) 3DMark 11 3DMark (Sky Diver) ATTO (top reads/writes) Intel Skull Canyon NUC (2.6GHz Core i7-6770HQ, Intel Iris Pro 580 ) 6, 130 5, 634 E5, 105/ P3, 085/ X844 7, 797 2.5 GB/s / 1.5 GB/s Microsoft Surface Book (2.4GHz Core i5-6300U, Intel HD 520) 5, 412 3, 610 E2, 758 / P1, 578 / X429 3, 623 1.6 GB/s / 571 MB/s HP Spectre 13.3 (2.5GHz Intel Core i7-6500U, Intel HD 520) 5, 046 3, 747 E2, 790 / P1, 630 / X375 3, 810 1.61 GB/s / 307 MB/s Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Tablet (1.2 GHz Core M7-6Y75, Intel HD 515) 4, 951 3, 433 E1, 866 / P1, 112 2, 462 545 MB/s / 298 MB/s Dell XPS 13 (2.3GHz Core i5-6200U, Intel Graphics 520) 4, 954 3, 499 E2, 610 / P1, 531 3, 335 1.6GB/s / 307 MB/s Razer Blade Stealth (2.5GHz Intel Core i7-6500U, Intel HD 520) 5, 131 3, 445 E2, 788 / P1, 599 / X426 3, 442 1.5 GB/s / 307 MB/s Toshiba Radius 12 (2.5GHz Intel Core i7-6500U, Intel HD 520) 5, 458 3, 684 E2, 865 / P1, 622 3, 605 552 MB/s / 489 MB/s Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (2.4GHz Core i5-6300U, Intel HD 520) 5, 403 3, 602 E2, 697/ P1, 556/ X422 3, 614 1.6 GB/s / 529 MB/s My experience with the NUC was reflected in its benchmarks. It’s significantly faster than any laptop we’ve reviewed over the past year, especially when it comes to gaming performance. In fact, it even outdoes Microsoft’s Surface Book and its dedicated NVIDIA GPU. We don’t review many high-end gaming laptops these days, so we don’t have any beefier mobile hardware to which we can compare the NUC, unfortunately. And while I’ve been testing a slew of desktop GPUs over the past few months, comparing the NUC to one of those feels unfair. So Intel has built a mini computer that’s both portable and capable, but who actually needs it? That’s a good question. It’s much easier to carry around than previous NUCs and other tiny desktop designs, like Gigabyte’s BRIX . Intel is pitching it as something ideal for bringing to LAN parties and other gaming events. You’ll still need to bring along a monitor, keyboard and mouse to actually use it, of course. If you’re simply looking for something smaller than a typical desktop tower to use at home, there are plenty of small options out there that would likely cost less than the Skull Canyon NUC. And even if you’re not worried about the cost, you can still cram more-powerful hardware in other mini-PC cases. The big takeaway is that this isn’t a device meant for everyone. Most people would be fine with a laptop instead (which is hard for me to admit as a desktop fan). While it makes for a powerful home theater PC that can actually play some games, you’d be better off with something like Alienware’s Steam Machine . And if you’re just concerned about the media side of HTPCs, earlier NUC models are cheaper alternatives (and only slightly larger). The biggest issue with the Skull Canyon NUC? It’s too expensive for most uses. While it’s retailing for $609 now (down from around $650 originally), it would likely set you back somewhere around $1, 000 once you include the cost of a decent SSD, RAM and a Windows 10 license. It’s faster than Apple’s highest-end Mac Mini, which goes for $999 with a 2.8GHz dual-core i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, but I’d argue that’s also not the wisest purchase for most. If you want the best tiny desktop replacement, no matter the cost, then the new NUC is for you. In the end, the Skull Canyon NUC is a statement of intent for PC hardware tinkerers. Behold! A small profile desktop coupled with a surprising amount of power. It might seem impractical today, but in a few years this is what desktops will look like.
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Intel’s Skull Canyon NUC is the future of tiny desktops
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, writing for Motherboard: One day, your thermostat will get hacked by some cybercriminal hundreds of miles away who will lock it with malware and demand a ransom to get it back to normal, leaving you literally in the cold until you pay up a few hundred dollars. This has been a scenario that security experts have touted as one of the theoretical dangers of the rise of the Internet of Things, internet-connected devices that are often insecure. On Saturday, what sounds like a Mr. Robot plot line came one step closer to being reality, when two white hat hackers showed off the first-ever ransomware that works against a “smart” device, in this case, a thermostat. Luckily, Andrew Tierney and Ken Munro, the two security researchers who created the ransomware, actually have no ill intention. They just wanted to make a point: some Internet of Things devices fail to take simple security precautions, leaving users in danger. “We don’t have any control over our devices, and don’t really know what they’re doing and how they’re doing it, ” Tierney told Motherboard. “And if they start doing something you don’t understand, you don’t really have a way of dealing with it.” Tierney and Munro, who both work UK-based security firm Pen Test Partners, demonstrated their thermostat ransomware proof-of-concept at the hacking conference Def Con on Saturday, fulfilling the pessimistic predictions of some people in security world. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Hackers Make the First-Ever Ransomware For Smart Thermostats
iOS: As the saying goes, not all who wander are lost, and if you’re journey is more complicated than point A to point B, you can finally add more than one destination in Google Maps for iOS when you’re trying to get directions. Read more…
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Google Maps for iOS Can Now Navigate to Multiple Destinations
Intel’s Core m3 Compute Stick. Andrew Cunningham Back in January at CES , Intel showed us a full range of mini desktop PCs that it has been releasing steadily over the course of the year. The first was a new, inexpensive version of its Compute Stick , followed by a new, mainstream Skylake NUC , and finally a quad-core NUC box that wasn’t quite like anything the company had done before. Now Intel has sent us the last device we learned about at the beginning of the year: a Core m3-powered version of the Compute Stick that sits somewhere between the Atom version and the Skylake NUC on the price and performance spectrum. It looks more or less like the Atom version we’ve already seen, but it introduces a few neat ideas (and enough performance) that it’s actually plausible as a general-use desktop computer. The bad news is the price tag, which at $380 (with Windows, $300 without, and XXX with Windows and a Core m5) is pretty far outside the sub-$150 impulse-buy zone that the other Compute Sticks exist inside. So how well does it work? What compromises do you make when you shrink a decent laptop’s worth of power into a stick? And how big is the niche for a relatively powerful, relatively expensive stick-sized desktop, anyway? Read 19 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Intel’s Core M Compute Stick is an actually usable computer with caveats
Part 1 of Ben Heck’s SNES-CD restoration project (part 2 at the bottom of this post). Since a prototype of the fabled, unreleased SNES-CD (aka the “Nintendo PlayStation”) was first found and disassembled last year, we’ve learned enough about this one-of-a-kind piece of hardware to actually emulate homebrew games as if they were running on its CD-ROM drive. The prototype console itself, though, has never been fully functional—it couldn’t generate sound, the CD-ROM drive wouldn’t spin up, and, after a recent trip to Hong Kong, it actually stopped generating a picture. That’s when the prototype’s owners, Terry and Dan Diebold, went to famed gaming hardware hacker Ben Heck . They want this piece of gaming history up and running again. Heck documented his efforts in a fascinating two-part YouTube series that reveals a lot about the system and what makes it tick. Terry Diebold starts off talking about how he first discovered the prototype SNES while boxing up an estate sale, where it was sold in a lot alongside CDs, cups, saucers, and other knickknacks. After paying $75 for the entire lot, Diebold recalls, “if you break it down to everything I did buy, I probably paid a nickel for it.” Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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The quest to get a unique SNES CD-ROM prototype working again
An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCWorld: A smaller version of the popular Raspberry Pi 3 will go on sale in a few months. Raspberry Pi is developing a new version of its Compute Module, a single-board computer that plugs into specific on-board memory slots. The new Pi will be more like a mini-computer inside a computer, and it won’t come with a power supply. The Compute Module will have similar circuitry to that of Raspberry Pi 3, a wildly successful computer that can be a PC replacement. But it will be smaller, with the memory, CPU, and storage embedded tightly on a board. While the Compute Module will have a 64-bit ARM processor like the Pi 3, it won’t have Wi-Fi, Eben Upton, founder of Raspberry Pi, said in an interview with IDG News Service. The Compute Module could ship as soon as this quarter, Upton said. It will be priced similar to its predecessor, the 2-year-old Compute Module, available from reseller RS Components for about $24. The older Compute Module is based on the original Raspberry Pi. Like Raspberry Pi 3, the new Compute Module will work with Linux and Microsoft’s Windows 10 IoT Core, Upton said. A Compute Module Development Kit, in which the Compute Module can be slotted for testing, may also be sold. The Development Kit could have multiple connectivity and port options, much like the Raspberry Pi 3. Last month, the biggest manufacturer of the Raspberry Pi, Premier Farnell, was acquired by Swiss industrial component supplier Daetwyler Holding AG for roughly $871 million. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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A Smaller Version of Raspberry Pi 3 Is Coming Soon
To help business owners connect with their fans and soothe angry patrons, Twitter is launching yet another stand-alone app with a specific audience in mind. Twitter Dashboard is the social network’s attempt to streamline engagement for business accounts, whose users probably have better things to do than babysitting their mentions or constantly searching their own name. Dashboard lives both in a web and iOS version , and includes features that have popped up in other Twitter products in the past. In both versions, Twitter guides you through a quick process to create a custom “About You” feed tailored to show tweets about your company or business (or personal brand, as the case may be). The feed takes into account what type of business you’re running (say a restaurant or an art gallery), then combines @-mentions and keyword searches to find people talking about your brand, even if they don’t tag your handle directly. In addition to a tweet scheduling feature and a reconfigured analytics page, Dashboard also offers tips so business owners who might be new to Twitter can get the most engagement out of their tweets. At this point, Twitter’s app ecosystem is starting to look a little fractured with the standard Twitter app, Tweetdeck for the power users and Engage for the celebrities . But, more than anything, the app lineup speaks to the range of different ways in which people actually use the social network.
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Twitter launches Dashboard app for small business accounts
The computer and gadget industries have boosted the power of components by shrinking them to near-microscopic scale. One radical field, molecular electronics, takes this to its logical extreme: constructing circuits and devices from single molecules. Researchers at the Peking University of Beijing have just created a switch that can be dependably flipped on and off when hit with one photon, clearing the way for infinitesimally small applications in systems that use light instead of electricity. Researchers are diving into the field of optical electronics for obvious reasons: light moves faster than electricity, which means faster computations. Shrinking those components results in even faster speeds, which could be useful in systems like solar panels, light sensors or biomedical applications, suggests Scientific American . Previous attempts to create this single-molecule component were finicky , resulted in switches that got stuck in the “on” position or couldn’t be activated by different types of light. The Peking University researchers used different materials that allowed the switch to stabilize in either binary position yet still be activated by light. This switch could last for up to a year, which is a vast improvement on the shelf lives of earlier attempts. “In many cases, molecular junctions have lives of minutes, hours, or in fortunate cases days, ” Ioan Bâldea of the University of Heidelberg, Germany told Scientific American . While we’re still years from seeing these switches deployed in commercial products, it’s an important step to building stable components at a microscopic scale. Source: Scientific American
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Single-molecule switch gets us closer to light-powered computers