WMGroomAK

I think I'm safe in saying that microtransactions are seriously becoming a cancer in the gaming community, however, Activision appears to have found a way to one up this in a recent patent it was granted. The patent in question details the use of matchmaking and social engineering to encourage players to make more purchases, also titled as "System and method for driving microtransactions in multiplayer video games". HardOCP Link (Originally saw this here): https://www.hardocp.com/news/2017/10/17/activision_uses_matchmaking_tricks_to_sell_ingame_items https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/news/how-activision-uses-matchmaking-tricks-to-sell-in-game-items-w509288 This just seems really horrible to me and kind of leaves me at a loss for words... Seriously, with each new microtransaction story, it's like the game companies are trying to emulate drug dealers to try and get gamers hooked on a games microtransaction system to reap higher profits. Patent: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN/9789406 Update: So on the good news front, if Bungie and Activision are to be believed, this is currently not being implemented in any of their titles... Again, this is if the companies that are implementing this are to be believed. Personally, I still hold my doubts as if it was well implemented, then you may not be able to tell whether or not this is influencing your game or gameplay.

Any idea on whether they are going to ship the Monoblock with the board? Honestly, about the only good thing on this is that if they are making this only for the Sky-Lake X chips, there should be plenty of PCIe lanes to run all the M.2 and the PCIe slot directly through the CPU... Doubt that you will be able to get much, if any, overclock on this board though as it only appears to have a single 8-pin CPU power and the VRM does not look robust enough, but maybe the Monoblock (and a delid) will make a difference.

I have a feeling that those should be coming fairly soon as I've seen an article or two floating around about AMD AGESA 1.0.0.7 is currently in the works and includes a major revision as well as preparing to support for Raven Ridge APUs. http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd-preps-agesa-1-7-firmware-to-support-raven-ridge-apus.html OT: It'll be nice to see some AMD laptops supporting integrated graphics as a potential option to help decrease laptop prices, especially if they perform as well as some of the leaks say, but will have to wait until after release to see how good they are and how the thermals work out...

Huawei released the specifications for it's soon to be released Mate 10 series of smartphones. While Huawei is maintaining it's partnership with Leica and still using a Kirin processor, they are upgrading the bits and pieces to make a fairly interesting product. Specs: Processor: Kirin 970 CPU: 4 Cortex A53 at 1.84 GHz & 4 Cortex A73 at 2.36 GHz; GPU: ARM Mali-G72 MP12; Dedicated Neural-network Processor at 1.92 TFLOPs 16-bit on 10nm Display: Mate 10 at 2560 x 1440 RGBW LED (5.9-inch 16:9 aspect) & Mate 10 Pro at 2160 x 1080 AMOLED (6.0-inch 18:9 aspect) both supporting HDR10 RAM: Mate 10 at 4 GB of LPDDR4X-1833, Mate 10 Pro at 4 or 6 GB of LPDDR4X-1833 NAND: Mate 10 at 64 GB, Mate 10 Pro at 64 or 128 GB. Mate 10 Porsche at 256 GB (all support MicroSD storage up to 256 GB) Battery: 4000 mAH (All Models) Camera: Dual Rear Leica Cameras (Color at 12 MP f/1.6, Monochrome at 20 MP f/1.6) with OIS, HDR, dual-tone LED flash, 4-way focus (PDAF, Laser AF, Contrast AF, Depth) Front Camera 8 MP f/2.0 Additionally both phones will sport USB 2.0 Type-C connectors, however the Mate 10 Pro will be ditching out the 3.5 mm headphone jack in order to achieve an IP67 rating. Pricing is anticipated to start at around 699 Euros for the base Mate 10 and the full Mate 10 Pro (6/128) should be around 799 Euro with the Mate 10 'Porsche' costing smooth 1349 Euros. https://www.anandtech.com/show/11935/huawei-mate-10-pro-hands-on-with-kirin-970 If you're interested in the NPU that Huawei is employing in the Mate 10, I would encourage reading the Anandtech Article as they have a good breakdown on how it is being implemented and what the limitations are... The immediate implementation of it though is being used as a sort of on the fly photo processor where it will integrate with the camera to detect the scene being photographed and try to adjust with 14 presets to get the 'best image'. The other application is a tie-in with Microsoft Translate to allow for offline language translation. Of note on the NPU/AI front is that Huawei is not limiting the development of apps to their Kirin API, but is also allowing for apps to use the Tensorflow or Caffe 2 API for development of apps to use the NPU. Depending on how it performs, it may be an interesting alternative to the Samsung/Apple/Pixel offerings that are currently out there, especially if applications are developed that utilize the NPU. Ars Tech Article: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/10/huawei-bets-big-on-ai-features-in-new-mate-10-and-mate-10-pro-smartphones/

I think that would depend on the time between changing out CPUs as well as what has changed in architecture and my personal needs are... I mean, if the 7800X lasts me for three to four years and there is not a major change on architecture, but I feel like I need more cores/RAM/PCI-e lane availability, I could probably buy a 7900X or higher SKU used for a decent price or I could also recycle that X299 machine into a separate use case, such as a dedicated video editor/streaming/server box and upgrade my platform.

If I had to choose between those two, I would probably go with the 7800X as that would put me on the X299 platform where I could change out for a higher core count/more PCI-e connection CPU later down the lane to keep it relevant if I needed to...

Back in college, I had a Dell DV7 at 17.3" and while I had backpack to carry it with, it was a bit large. Still made for a good college laptop.

Steve Wozniak feels that the current tech sector and education system is too intimidating to properly educate and train students to enter the Tech field so he has decided to help by creating a new online learning platform called Woz U. The curriculum will start off focusing on computer support and software development with additional courses on data science, mobile applications and cybersecurity to eventually be added. https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/13/steve-wozniak-announces-tech-education-platform-woz-u/ Woz U will offer an app to help people understand which field of tech they’re best suited for, so they can set up their curriculum accordingly. As of yet, there’s no word on pricing. It should be interesting to see how industry feels about these education programs and whether they begin to show a hiring preference from people who have taken these courses. I would actually prefer that they focused on security a bit earlier, but it is good to see that it would be added. Maybe, I'll have to look at this and see if I can learn a new trick or two.

An App for Android would definitely be helpful, but do you think there may be a way to build something like a Plex channel as well?

Good news is that this has apparently, finally gotten the IRS to look more seriously at that $7.2 million contract that they awarded... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/after-second-bungle-irs-suspends-equifaxs-taxpayer-identity-contract/ I doubt that much really will happen, but who knows, maybe the US Government will finally take a good hard look at these agencies prior to giving them money...

Had not seen this posted yet, but Clevo/Eurocom have announced that they will be launching i7-8700k based laptops by November 15, 2017. As far as specs go, since they are upgrading to the Z370 chipset, they gain support for Optane SSDs, a new Killer 2500 GbE controller and support up to DDR4-3000 memory speeds. Anandtech Specs for the Eurocom Laptops: Eurocom: https://www.anandtech.com/show/11926/eurocom-launches-sky-x4c-x7c-and-x9c-laptops-with-core-i78700k-cpus Clevo: https://www.anandtech.com/show/11916/clevo-announces-p870tm-laptop-coffee-lake-dtr While it is really neat to see them cramming this much hardware (especially with these kind of specs) into a laptop form factor, I doubt I would really want one myself, even if I could afford it, as they look heavy, bulky and probably will throttle something fierce... Would be interesting to know if they have delidded and replaced the TIM in these CPUs as that is supposed to be helping a bit with thermals on the newer Intel CPUs or if you could get a bit better performance out of these by doing that...

Epic Games, publisher of Fortnite, is suing two associates of Addicted Cheats for Copyright Infringement saying that they would have had to reverse engineer and modify the source code for Fortnite to create their aimbots. https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/news/fortnite-publisher-epic-is-suing-two-alleged-cheaters-w508644 Honestly, I wish them the best of luck with this case as it should prove to be interesting on whether people who use aimbots in competitive titles can be not only banned, but sued for using Copyright infringing material... Doubt that it will prevent these kinds of activities from happening, but it should hopefully get some people to think twice about it if there are some stiff economic penalties involved. First saw this on HardOCP: https://www.hardocp.com/news/2017/10/12/fortnite_publisher_epic_suing_two_alleged_cheaters

This will definitely make the pricing of these cards key to any sales if it is true... Would be interesting to see if there is a technical reason for them locking it (if it is locked) or if it was decided just to prevent these cards from eating too much into 1080 sales.

If I'm reading that graph correctly, then it shows HAMR+ as reaching 4 TB/in2 by late 2020 or 2021, not 2018 or 2019. The Y-Axis is logarithmic on it... By 2018-2019, it would appear to be between 1.8 and 3 Tb/in2. It's really not that great of a graph as the arrows are well to wide to be meaningful.

You can sell hardware?!?!? (/s) Typically when my hardware gets to old, I'll upgrade it for something new and repurpose the old bits and pieces into other sub systems (like my NAS/Plex Server that is made from my old gaming machine.) Once it gets too old to even be supported, I'll either murder it through disassembly, stash it if I think it has some sort of future value or send it off to e-recycle.

HAMR drives are projected to launch in 2018, although the drives that WD is talking about now use MAMR so they can operate with less heat. I think Seagate is planning to launch HAMR in 2018 and WD is talking about MAMR in 2019 with projections of reaching the 4 Tb/in2 mark by 2025. Going by the chart, the MAMR drives may only be a couple of years behind schedule of the HAMR drives... Long term, I do think that these will only be used in Archival storage, especially if Solid State memory can increase it's storage density on a similar scale.

Western Digital is trying to one up itself with news today of plans to begin production of MAMR (Microwave-Assisted Magnetic Recording) HDDs to ship in 2019 for Big Data Centers. Long term, they are looking at being able to scale these to at least 40 TB drives by 2025 and offer over 4 Tb per a square inch. http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171011005969/en/Western-Digital-Unveils-Next-Generation-Technology-Preserve-Access So, while you still will be limited on read write speeds, this will probably help to keep spinning rust around for another decade or so as it'll drastically increase the storage density for large data centers... Should be interesting to see how well Solid State storage also scales going forward and look at how cost per TB begins to work out... Hot Hardware: https://hothardware.com/news/western-digital-mamr-hard-drive-density-to-scale-north-of-40tb EDIT: Here is the PC Per article, which has a really good breakdown on the advantages and differences of HAMR vs MAMR technology... https://www.pcper.com/news/Storage/Western-Digital-MAMR-Tech-Pushes-Future-HDDs-Beyond-40TB The Anandtech Article is fairly decent as well... Especially in the presentation of the advancement of HDD technology over the last 15 to 20 years. https://www.anandtech.com/show/11925/western-digital-stuns-storage-industry-with-mamr-breakthrough-for-nextgen-hdds

Tell them to stop and work with your ISP to block any packets being sent from that site? Maybe also look into legal action considering they are impacting your Internet access and are probably also increasing your data usage. Can you honestly say that someone who is doing this is a friend, especially if you ask them to stop?

An article published on Bleeping Computers outlines that some of the upcoming Google Home Mini (to be released on October 18th) had a hardware bug that caused them to be constantly recording and transmitting back to Google. The bug is associated with the Long Press activation feature and would basically make the device think that that long presses were being conducted and trigger the recording of sound. In order to mitigate this, Google has rolled out a firmware that basically disables Long Press activation. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-home-mini-caught-recording-audio-due-to-hardware-issue/ While the Home Mini is typically activated by a user saying "OK, Google" or "Hey, Google", you can also activate the Mini press performing a long press on the device's panel. It appears that there was a bug in some of the Minis that caused it to think that long presses were being conducted and thus triggering the recording of sound. According to Google, a new firmware with version number 1.28.100122 has already been rolled out to all Google Minis that disables this long press feature in order to prevent it from triggering unwanted recordings. My sarcastic side would think that the government intelligence community is probably having a sad day as another new listening device is pre-emptively disabled... At the same time, this is yet another good reminder to anyone that has one of these home digital assistance that you may want to watch what you say in front of them.

This is my personal opinion, but it seems like Intel moved up their planned release of Coffee Lake in order to get reviews out and hit the holiday seasons as well as to counter the AMD releases this year and in doing so, they did not have the chance to produce and stockpile the number of chips to support their sales.

Gonna have to agree that this is the way of business... You don't stay in business long by paying more than you have to. Unfortunately, to change this requires electing politicians that will be accountable to reverse tax loopholes and anger corporate lobbyists which runs it's own risk. As soon as corporations end up paying more taxes in one area, they are more likely to move their headquarters to a more tax-friendly environment.

Send out community requests to local businesses, schools and local government with details about your project and requesting them to donate any surplus machines or machines that will soon go into surplus.

Thanks! I just had this horrible flashback to picking up the phone to hear one of these blasted things! I wonder if there is any chance someone could record that tone and just set up a bot to auto-dial the FCC and play it... On Topic: I'm really not liking any of the current direction the FCC is going and hope (although it's fleeting) that someone sues the FCC for corruption of the public process or at least finds evidence of what appears to be bribery (although they'll probably just get away with calling it Lobbying). As it stands, where I'm at, I only have a single option for hardline internet and cellular service is spotty and can not get anywhere near the hardline speeds or data usage...

One thing that I would note is that I would probably never consider the 1800X since the 1700 can get fairly close to the same performance with an easy OC... So I would actually have a harder decision between a 1700 and 8700k, but would probably go with the 1700 myself...

Done, Thanks for catching that... Sometimes feels like have dyslexic fingers.