How Computer Geeks Aim to Put a Stop to Fake Online Reviews

When researching a product to buy one of the major things to check for are the reviews from both professions and users.  Businesses have taken notice of the reviews posted on websites and add fake reviews in order to promote themselves.  This deception has not gone unnoticed and we are seeing groups of researchers and websites start to track fake reviews.

Just how prevalent are fake online reviews? One indication is how overtly some businesses pay for them. Fake Review Writer is one of the categories of gigs listed at Freelancer.com. The Web page doesn’t beat around the bush, boldly encouraging businesses to “Outsource fake review writer projects!” Nobody’s getting rich writing fake reviews; the pay might be as little as $1 for 500 words. But online ratings and reviews affect consumer perceptions as well as how high a business appears in online search results, both of which can translate into big money.

While these efforts might not stop all the fake reviews, the less I have to wonder the truth in a glowing 5 star review in a sea of 1 and 2 star reviews for the same product.

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Engineers boost AMD CPU performance by 20% without overclocking

Using a new technique, engineers have been able to take the strengths of the CPU and GPU and improve performance by up to 20%.

To achieve the 20% boost, the researchers reduce the CPU to a fetch/decode unit, and the GPU becomes the primary computation unit. This works out well because CPUs are generally very strong at fetching data from memory, and GPUs are essentially just monstrous floating point units. In practice, this means the CPU is focused on working out what data the GPU needs (pre-fetching), the GPU’s pipes stay full, and a 20% performance boost arises.

This will be interesting to watch out for as AMD is already going down a similar road.

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The TR Podcast 105: Eye candy and SSD scaling

Another episode of the Tech Report Podcast.

We've got a short and sweet episode of tech reporting this week, featuring Scott's scratchy Bluetooth headset, Jordan's favorite podcasts, and Geoff's sexy SSD roundup. We also answer some listener mail, pore over Scott's review of the Radeon HD 7950, and hear Cyril's critique of the two leading stereo 3D solutions from AMD and Nvidia.

Pretty good episode, its a bit long but worth a listen.

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5 free operating systems that aren't Linux

When you think of PC OSes, there are normally three that just about anyone can name: Windows, Mac, Linux.  Tech 2 found 5 free OSes that you might never heard of before.

The war of operating systems started decades ago, and the first mainstream desktop OS war took place between the Macintosh and Windows operating system. Operating systems are the first bit of software that go into our computer. As PCs dominated the market, Windows became the most used and most popular operating systems ever. It’s stayed that way for close to two decades.

While may they may not be a daily driver, it might be nice to have to change pace from everyday Windows/Mac use.  Personally, with most able to be installed in a virtual environment, I am temped to see what ReactOS has to offer.

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Wolfram, a Search Engine, Finds Answers Within Itself @ NYT

"Step 2" of the Wolfram Alpha search engine being released this Wednesday, Feburary 9th 2012, offers more than just mathematical computation.

The new version handles data and images. In a recent demonstration, Dr. Wolfram, using his computer mouse, dragged in a table of the gross domestic product figures for France for 1961 to 2010, and Wolfram Alpha produced on the Web page a color-coded bar chart, which could be downloaded in different document formats. He put in a table of campaign contributions to politicians over several years, and Wolfram Alpha generated a chart and brief summary, saying that House members received less on average than senators.

I have only used Wolfram Aplha a handful of times but was always impressed with the information it provides and how it is provided.  Wolfram seems to be going the route of research engine.

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Switching between Android 4.0 ICS and iPhone 4S

Slashgear has provided a article to help you understand the differences between some of the features found in Android's Ice Cream Sandwich OS and iPhone's iOS.

When you switch from an Android phone over to the iPhone or vice versa, there are a few adjustments you’ll have to make. The difference between the two, no matter which versions of the software you’re dealing with, are much smaller than the difference between either and any other software. Windows Phone, Symbian, any number of lesser cell phones are much more difficult to switch to or from when the alternative is switching to Android or iPhone from the other. This article is but one of several in a series written by your humble narrator called “I’m switching to iPhone 4S for a week,” this series having the alternate title “iPhone 4S Up Close and Personal.”

In addtion to reading this article, I would go find a friend or coworker with the phone you want to switch to and ask to play around with it.  Hands on experience can be key when picking a device that you will use everyday and store demos rarely give you what you want.

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Taiwan man dies playing video games at internet cafe

News like this as been steadly increasing over the years, especially in Taiwan and Korea.  A man was found dead in gaming cafe after a long session of gaming.

The waitress last saw him talking on the phone around noon on Wednesday and his body had apparently been sitting there for up to nine hours without any of the 30 other people in the cafe noticing.

Things like this remind us that any obsession, even video games, can be deadly when taken to exteremes.

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Stanford professor resigns, launches Udacity: Free, online, university-level computer science courses

Looking to build your own search engine?  A new educational startup, UDacity, joins the growing trend of free online college level educational sites.

In a discussion of the report on Bits, a New York Times Technology blog, it was observed that, "The real promise of online education is providing learning experiences that are more tailored to individual students than is possible in classrooms. That enables more 'learning by doing,' which many students find more engaging and useful."

As prices of eductions continue to increase, will we be seeing more sites like this offering core classes such as math and science?

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DARPA Invests In Megapixel Augmented-Reality Contact Lenses

Contacts lenses that display images?  A company claims they have done just that and has caught the attention of DARPA.  

Simply put, the technology opens the door to augmented reality systems that don’t require some kind of bulky, virtual-reality-headset-from-the-‘90s peripheral visor or helmet. Instead, Innovega’s tech relies on images protected on a normal-looking set of specs and a pair of nanotechnology-infused contact lenses that provide megapixel clarity of that up-close imagery while still allowing the eye to focus on the world beyond.

Imagine the ability for your contact lenses to sync up with google and have your contacts display google maps!  Makes you wonder if the next thing on the list is a hearing aid cell phone.

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Dating Site Says Android Users Are More Likely To Give It Up On The First Date

Here are some interesting results that match.com published after some really extensive testing using an online poll.  Of course online means anonymous and with 1,068 results you have to wonder, did they see the "sex on the first date" first or the word "Android" as their queue to answer the questions.

The Toronto Star says the survey was conducted by online polling and survey site Zoomerang, and used 1,068 single Canadians as its pool. They found that 62% of Android users said they've had sex on the first date, whereas 57% of iPhone users said the same, and only 48% of those with a BlackBerry.

Makes you wonder what kind of apps they have on their phone too.

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Use a 64-Bit PC? Instead of Firefox, Try Waterfox 9.0

It is no mystery that I support the Firefox browser, I develop websites for it and use it on a daily basis.  It isn't because I dislike IE or that I think Chrome is rubbish but rather that I like the project and generally agree with everything they do.

Waterfox is a 64-bit version of Firefox and promises to offer speed improvements over the 32-bit Firefox browser.  Time will tell if it really takes off or simply falls out of popularity.

“In benchmarks, the 64-bit variant of Firefox outperforms the 32-bit variant,” according to the Waterfox website. “Also because this variant is being built specifically for Windows, there might be further performance increases.”

I'll give it a try, maybe you should too.

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Alienware's X51 SFF Gaming System Lands at HH, Autopsy and Benchmarks Ensue

Aww now isn't this creative

On the test track, Alienware notebooks have racked up some of the best performance numbers we've seen and the company's desktops rank right up there as well.  One shape the Aliens have never assumed previously, however, is the small form-factor desktop.  And let's be honest, systems in this weight class generally aren't known for their gaming prowess but usually serve as home theater or mainstream PCs.  The folks at Alienware have a different sort of vision for their next alien life form and if you weren't paying attention, you'd almost mistake it for a game console rather than a PC. But you're here at HH, so you're obviously paying attention. And so are we.

You could say the Alienware X51 gaming PC system got our attention when it hacked into our news channel not long ago.  So we decided to send a peaceful return transmission and allow it to touch down on a test pod in our lab. 

I never did like OEM style gaming PC reviews but this one caught my attention, maybe because it is a SFF tower chassis design.

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Hacker's tiny $50 spy computer hides in offices, drops from drones

Just in case you wanted to spy on someone or pretend to be James Bond for cheap, a security researcher is developing an easy to build spy computer to gather intel.  

Despite its name, O’Connor says the F-BOMB is designed to be a platform for all sorts of applications on its Linux operating system. Outfit it with temperature or humidity sensors, for instance, and it can be used for meteorological research or other innocent data-collecting.  But install some Wifi-cracking software or add a $15 GPS module, and it can snoop on data networks or track a target’s location, O’Connor adds. As is often the case with these kinds of hacker projects, he says the devices are only intended for penetration testing–finding security flaws in clients’ networks in order to fix them —and wouldn’t comment on what DARPA might do with the technology. 

As much as I dislike the government needing to use acronyms for naming everything, I have to admit, there is a lot of potential with this one.  

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Nano quadrotors demonstrate complex swarm behavior

We are getting closer to judgment day, or at least how it was depicted in the early Terminator films.

The General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab, located at the University of Pennsylvania, is already well known for its work with quadrotors. In the past the quadrotor research team has managed to get a quadrotor flying aggressively, meaning it could land on angled surfaces and maneuver through small windows at high speed. Then the quadrotors were taught to work together to build a tower structure.

Check out the video, it's pretty efin cool!

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Gigabyte X79-UD5 @ PureOverclock

Having seen a few X79 boards up close you begin to realize some of the methodology behind what the product designers are after.  Of the mfgs I have looked at I have to admit that Gigabyte is by far one of the most diverse in terms of offering different features to different segments.

We've seen Gigabyte make great strides in their latest X79 lineup, including the new BIOS and auto features designed with the enthusiast in mind. So let's take a closer look to see if the X79-UD5 board can continue that successful trend.

The UD5 is very similar to the X79-UD3 that we recently reviewed and both are worth checking out.

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AMD HD 7950 Launch Day

Finally the "cheap" version of the HD 7970 has been released and well, it looks good, really good!.

AMD Radeon HD 7950 Reviews
- AMD's Radeon HD 7950 graphics processor @ TR
- Sapphire 7950 Overclocked Edition Video Card Review @ TechwareLabs
- Sapphire HD 7950 OC Graphics Card at Modders-Inc
- AMD Radeon HD 7950 & XFX R7950 Black Edition Video Card Review @ Legit Reviews
- Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 OC @ PureOverclock
- XFX HD 7950 Black Edition Double Dissipation Review @ Hardware Canucks
- Sapphire HD 7950 Dual Fan OC Review @ Hardware Canucks
- AMD Radeon HD 7950 Tahiti Pro DirectX 11 GPU Review @ HotHardware
- AMD Radeon HD 7950 Launch Articles @ HardwareHeaven
- XFX R7950 DD Black Edition Overclocked @ LanOC Reviews
- PowerColor HD 7950 PCS+ 3 GB @ techPowerUp
- AMD Radeon HD 7950 CrossFire @ techPowerUp
- AMD Radeon HD 7950 3 GB @ techPowerUp

MSI annoucned their own mid-range HD 7950 complete with overclocking controls for both GPU and Memory, go MSI!

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Guru3D Rig of the Month - January 2012

Mods like this are kinda fun, the guy didn't go all crazy and the resulting mod is still quite usable as a daily driver PC.

Each month here at Guru3D.com we feature one of you guys, your PC, your DIY project. It is quite honestly amazing how much detail and dedication you put into an PC, and every now and then it really shows. This months entry shines in an stylish design, once you lay your eyes on it, it will make an impression.

The Rig of the Month January 2012 oozes with style and design, the detail is just intense. Kerekes János who transformed one PC into a very stylish and clean build completely blew us away. What a perfect job. You'll know what i mean when you take a look at it.

The thing that amazes me the most is how he used hardline for the watercooling system and likely had to make each length by hand.

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NL: Review Block - Cases and Coolers

Here is another list of cases and cooler reviews.  Some good stuff in there.

Cases
- NZXT Source 220 Computer Case Review @ APH Networks
- Bitfenix Raider Mid Tower Review
- Corsair Carbide 500R Arctic White Edition Review @ Madshrimps
- Lian Li PC-90 HPTX Chassis Review @MissingRemote
- GELID Solutions Darkforce PC Case Review @ Legit Reviews
- NZXT Switch 810 Case Review @ HotHardware
- Enermax Fulmo GT Full PC Tower  @ Pro-Clockers
- Fractal Design Define XL Case Review @ Hardware Canucks
- Fractal Design - Define R3 Computer Case Review @ HCW
- SilverStone PS07 Case Review on Technic3D

Cooler
- Funky Kit Review: ARCTIC Alpine 11 Plus CPU cooler
- Swiftech Apogee HD Water Block Review @ OCIA
- Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler Review @ Tweaknews
- Funky Kit Review: Thermaltake Bigwater 760 Plus
- Corsair Hydro Series H100 @ Hardwareoverclock
- Arctic Accelero XTREME Plus II VGA cooler Review  @ XtremeComputing
- Enermax ETS-T40-VD Tower Cooler @ ocaholic

Stay tuned, we'll have our first waterblock review in several years posted later this week.

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The Internet Stratification: Tales of an Unequal Web @ Techgage

A very interesting read.

Think that the Web is equal for all? Not quite. While countries with great access to the Internet move towards creating content-heavy websites and services that require ever faster connections, there exists even more countries that would simply like a stable and reliable Internet connection to begin with. Read on to explore this digital divide.

I can relate to the stable internet issue, about a year ago I had to switch from ADSL to cable because the DSL company oversold my area.  How did I know? Well every day at around 5pm until 9pm the internet connection was so congested I couldn't even pull up a website.

I blame netflicks.

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Intel Core i7-3930K vs Core i7-3820 vs FX-8150 vs 990X vs 2700K Review @ HardwareHeaven

Here is a pretty good article that goes over the differences between some of the top end processors on the market today.

The Core i7-3820 will be released soon and already available to buy is the i7-3930K. We will be taking a look at both to determine where they sit in comparison to the older i7-990X, AMD FX-8150 and Intel i7-2700k in a selection of real world and synthetic tests.

I'm currently running the Core i7 3960X and love it to death, sadly for the money I should have downgraded but, hindsight and all.

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