Tech News
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How tweets can lead to disastrous results
Published: Monday, March 25, 2013 | By: DennisThe moral of the story? Be careful what you say online, it can come back to byte you sometime in the future, especially when reddit and rouge hacking groups get involved.
One tweet can lead to a disastrous onslaught of consequences, as Adria Richards has recently found out. While attending the PyCon Technology Conference last week, she overheard two male developers behind her talking about “big dongles” and “forking someone’s repo”. She was offended by the jokes and she stated, “I was telling myself if they made one more sexual joke, I’d say something.”
The problem is, she didn't say anything and instead took a photo of the developers, posted it to twitter and outed them for saying "sexual" jokes. After the tweet went viral one of the developers lost his job and it took an act of Anonymous to eventually get Richards fired from her job.
I can't say what the developers did is right and maybe their discussion should have been in a different setting but I'm pretty sure Richards didn't handle herself very well. But, as they say sexual harassment can happen to anyone, in any setting and as we have seen, outside work and with complete strangers who have never worked together.
My, what the world has come to.
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Windows Blue in the Wild - Still in Beta (kinda)
Published: Monday, March 25, 2013 | By: DennisArstechnica has posted a quick write up of what can be found in the leaked Windows 8 "Blue". If memory serves "blue" will evetnually be subscription based and will very likely nickel and dime you to death while also failing to run any existing applications
Over the weekend, a build of the software with a date of March 15 leaked onto the Internet, at last giving people the opportunity to see what Blue would contain.
The big news is... Windows Blue looks an awful lot like Windows 8, which is consistent with its likely position as an update to Windows 8. Those hoping that Microsoft would abandon the Metro environment will be disappointed.No suprise there, a major company like Microsoft isn't going to change the company branding and then revert back the single thing that caused the change. I'll need to eventually blog about the new Microsoft world and what the future holds for us all.
Assuming the masses continue to sheepishly gobble up everything Microsoft dishes out.
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Gearbox pushes it to 11 - New Level Cap in Borderlands 2
Published: Sunday, March 24, 2013 | By: DennisToday during a panel at PAX East the developers announced that there are some new things coming to Borderlands 2. The first is a new Vault Hunter named Krieg. Krieg is a Pycho Bandit class character that builds on the mechromancer skill tree in that you get damage bonuses for doing damage and becomes exceptionally powerful in fight for your life. Krieg will be a free download for season pass holders and cost 5 bux for everyone else.
The next announcement is around the new level cap increase that brings more skill points and 11 more levels. To make this work they are giving people who have reached level 50 a third play thru called the Ultimate Vault Hunter mode and from there you can work your way up to level 61. Along with the level cap increase they are also bringing back Pearlescent weapons and will become the new rarest weapons in the game. The level cap increase goes into effect April 2 and will be available for everyone.
They ended the panel with an announcement for the new DLC which is being fully developed in house at Gearbox and should be coming out sometime in May. There is no word on what the DLC will be about however it seems to be game based on something called Bunkers and Badasses. Rumor is this will be the largest of the DLC packages and might rival the game in story depth and mayhem.
Should be fun and might bring players back who are bored with farming. -
AMD Radeon HD 7790 Video Card Launch Day
Published: Friday, March 22, 2013 | By: DennisWith a name like 7790 you have to wonder if it will be any good. I've gotten several reviews here that, together, should lay that question to rest.
Web Reviews
- Sapphire HD 7790 1GB Graphics Card @ Bjorn3D
- Radeon HD 7790 review @ Guru3D
- AMD Radeon HD 7790 review (incl. frametimes) @ UK Hardware Info
- Sapphire HD 7790 Dual-X OC Video Card Review @ Hi Tech Legion
- AMD's Radeon HD 7790 graphics card reviewed @ TR
- Sapphire Radeon HD 7790 OC Edition Video Card Review @ ThinkComputers
- AMD Radeon HD 7790 Review: Affordable DX11 Gaming @ HotHardware
- AMD Radeon HD 7790 CrossFire @ techPowerUp
- Sapphire HD 7790 Dual-X 1 GB @ techPowerUp
- MD Radeon HD 7790 Video Card Review w/ Gigabyte & Sapphire @ Legit Reviews
- Sapphire HD 7790 Dual-X Overclocked Edition Graphics Card Review @ HardwareHeaven (home of the long ass url)
- ASUS HD 7790 Direct CU II OC 1 GB @ techPowerUp
- HEXUS Review: Sapphire AMD Radeon HD 7790
- AMD Radeon HD 7790 Review @ Hardware Canucks
- Sapphire HD7790 OC Review @ KitguruNow we just sit back and see what nVidia has planned, if anything.
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PAX East Starts Tomorrow - March 22 - 24 2013
Published: Thursday, March 21, 2013 | By: DennisIn another failed attempt to attend a legit PAX event I am relinquished to watch from afar as Boston residents flock to the convention center to attend, what might be, the best PAX ever.
Some of my friends in the hardware industry will be on hand showing demos of their latest gaming gadgets including Gigabyte, Cooler Master, MSI, NVidia and Asus. If you are attending PAX East be sure to stop by their booths and tell them "Ninjalane Sent Me".
I cannot promise you'll get a prize but it doesn't hurt to ask.
For those of us who cannot attend you can watch the event live over Twitch.tv
PAX East 2013 Official Stream
Tune into Twitch this weekend to catch all the excitement from one of the largest consumer gaming conventions in North America, PAX East 2013. Starting this Friday, March 22 - 24, the official PAX channel on Twitch will be bringing you some of the best content from the main stages, including rare and thought proviking presentations from industry luminaries, live concerts and of course, the infamous Omegathon tournament.
WHERE: http://twitch.tv/paxThere will be more news as it unfolds. Be sure to check out the schedule for when things will happen, the fun starts tomorrow (3/22/2013) @ 10am EST.
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The Future is Annealed Pyrolytic Graphite @ Frostytech
Published: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 | By: DennisI have no idea what this stuff is but, it sounds amazing.
When the thermal conductivity of copper and aluminum heat spreaders just won't cut it, the future revolves around a material called Annealed Pyrolytic Graphite. Let's consider the numbers: where a solid aluminum heat spreader has a thermal conductivity of 126W/mK, the same heatspreader with an Annealed Pyrolytic Graphite core would see thermal
conductivity on the order of 1092 W/mK. That's not a typo.Check out the Frostytech summary, No word on how much this stuff costs but it does seem to be the next step in thermal transfer.
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NL: Review Block: Coolers for Everyone
Published: Monday, March 18, 2013 | By: DennisEveryone needs a cooler now and again.
Web Reviews
- Prolimatech MK-26 GPU Cooler Review @ Pro-Clockers
- Prolimatech Megahalems Red Series CPU Cooler Review @ Hardware Secrets
- Corsair H90 - 1 x 140 Millimeter Watercooler Review @ Ocaholic
- Noctua NH-L12 @ techPowerUpJust a short list, Its good to see that Prolimatech has been hitting the sites again.
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Bench/Test Tables Listing @ Ocaholic
Published: Tuesday, March 12, 2013 | By: DennisI designed a test bench a couple years back. It was a simple bench design that took a modular approach to bench design so that you could move the important parts from one benching location to another. The design was based on one that I had helped a forum member with and I think it turned out pretty good. Since then I have refined my design to the point where it "could" be mass produced, if anything on a small scale.
My design still has a long way to go before it would be a commercially viable product (mostly due to my cost cutting measures) but, with the right manufacturing partner I'm sure those stop gaps could be filled rather quickly.
Well, despite my money strapped product design adventures there are test benches out there and some of them actually look pretty good.
Here we made a list of all - hopefully - Bench/Test tables around the world sorted by manufacturer with pics, specs and prices. If you think or see some that are missing or if you spot mistakes, please leave a comment and we will add/fix it as soon as possible.
The list/article is pretty simple and related to something you would find in an internet forum read: mfg product photo and spec sheet, both of which are copied from the respective websites
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CeBIT 2013 Coverage with more than 100 pictures on 10 pages @ Ocinside
Published: Monday, March 18, 2013 | By: DennisNever been to CeBIT, might be fun to attend one of these years but for the money I'd prolly rather hit up Computex.
The CeBIT 2013 computer fair in Hanover showed also in this year a lot of new products. On the following 10 pages of our CeBIT 2013 report you will see approx. 150 pictures with new IT products. This ocinside.de CeBIT 2013 report is hardware related and contains new Haswell and Mini-ITX motherboards, chassis, cooler, PSUs, SSDs, memory modules, NAS and wireless storage solutions. It is only available in German language, but it is worth watching the pictures or use a translation tool to discover the latest trends.
I guess there is aways next year.
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North Korea's Internet returns after 36-hour outage
Published: Monday, March 18, 2013 | By: DennisFun little story, You often read about outages in the middle east related to some fisherman draggin' anchor and cutting a fiber-optic line. I guess there is only one cause when that line goes down so does the entire region.
You'd think they would protect that better.
.North Korea doesn't have much in the way of Internet connectivity and there is little redundancy in its connection. Its main connection runs via China Unicom in neighboring China, and there is also a back-up satellite Internet connection via Intelsat. The country has just 1,024 IP (Internet protocol) addresses, making its national network more like that of a medium-sized company than an entire country.
Only a few thousand people are estimated to have direct Internet access -- mainly high-ranking government officials and scientists -- and the country has only a handful of public websites. Most of them carry propaganda from the state-run news media. The vast majority of the country has access to a nationwide intranet, which runs on the same technologies as the global Internet but has no connectivity outside of the country.Pretty sure this is the result of some political hacker type in China trying to punish an entire country but, who knows maybe someone from Japan was draggin' anchor somewhere.
