NEWS
Samsung unveils the Galaxy Note7 Samsung showed off their latest flagship smartphone overnight - the Galaxy Note7. It's basically the 5.7" version of the Galaxy S7, but, it has the S-Pen, a USB-C charging port and an iris scanner. It'll have 64GB of storage (no other options, but there's a microSD card slot if you need more) and a slightly curved screen, no "flat" screen option either. It looks like a really, really nice phone to be honest. Sure Samsung ruins it with TouchWiz, but from a hardware perspective, this thing is very cool. It'll have an RRP of $1349 in Australia, come in three different colours (the blue one looks cute, but isn't gonna be available in AU, wahh) and be available on the 19th of August. There was also a new Gear VR headset, if you're into that sort of thing. Discuss
Instagram Stories is Instagram trying to be Snapchat Instagram has probably noticed all those people uploading pictures to their service, plastered with Snapchat filters and stickers, and decided to do their own thing. Instagram Stories is pretty much Snapchat, inside Instagram. The snaps you take are deleted in 24 hours and don't go into your normal Instagram feed. You can also scribble all over the pics, just like Snapchat. Cool, nice, yes, ok. Discuss
Quite a large Bitcoin exchange heist Someone pilfered 120,000 Bitcoin from the Bitfinex exchange. At around AU$800 a pop, that's almost $100m of virtual currency. We still don't know much about how the hack actually happened, but the price of Bitcoin has dropped 20% since this news came out. People shouldn't have been keeping their Bitcoin in an exchange's wallet, but still - not nice to have it stolen like this. Discuss
Windows 10 Anniversary Update is out The much hyped Windows 10 Anniversary Update is now hitting people's computers around the world. This is the first big update to Windows 10 since its launch a year ago. The new update brings big updates to Edge (the replacement for Internet Explorer), giving it extensions (at last), a dark mode for the UI, Windows Ink (a one stop shop for all stylus related apps), a bash shell so you can use your Linux scripts in Windows, changes to tablet mode and Sykpe - amongst dozens of other refinements. Discuss
Edge/IE bug exposes your Microsoft Live credentials to websites Speaking of Windows 10, there's a shitty stupid (and old) bug in it (and Windows 8) that can leak your Microsoft Live account details. If you use Outlook, Edge or IE to visit a website designed to take advantage of this bug and you've logged in to Windows using your Microsoft Live credentials (not a local user account), the website can harvest your username and NTLMv2 hash of your password - which is pretty easy to get plaintext of using hashcat and some fast GPUs. Discuss
COOL SHIT
Is it that hard to make a cheap laptop not be shit? I've used dozens of Chromebooks and cheap low end laptops in my day, in a vain quest to find something under $500 that isn't absolute ratshit. Looks like the Wirecutter team is also frustrated with the oh so close, yet so far, attempts by OEMs and have posted a wishlist for making a good, cheap laptop. I agree pretty much wholeheartedly, particularly with the 1920x1080 IPS screen comments. TN screens are awful. Discuss
Nvidia Titan X benchmarks are out Check out the first benchmarks of new Nvidia's Titan X flagship GPU. It is a fucking beast, costing US$1299 and performs about 30-40% better than a GTX1080. One of these manages to play GTA5 in 4K at an average of just over 40fps, with all settings on max. Here's a quick review of two them in SLI mode - which is kinda disappointing actually, as there's not much performance difference between two GTX1080's in SLI and two Titan X's in SLI. Discuss
Logitech's Smart Connector keyboard for the 9.7" iPad Pro There's finally a second option for people with a 9.7" iPad Pro who want a keybaord that uses the Smart Connector (those three dots on the side of the iPad Pro). Logitech have announced the Create keyboard, which is $199.95, has a spot for your Apple Pencil and even backlights the keys for ya. The nice thing about Smart Connector keyboards is that there's no need to pair it over Bluetooth so it's ready to type with as soon as you open the case, and no need for its own battery as it grabs juice from the iPad's battery. Discuss
Here endeth the sizzle (until tomorrow!) --Anthony
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