The Computer Thread

@entropy: I'm kind of at the high end of the price range (probably close to $1000 including the OS and monitor) already, so I'd really prefer not to drop $350 on a 970 when I could get the 280x for $160. If the 960 ends up dropping to around $200 (or maybe below) after Christmas (or maybe by my birthday in March), I might go for that. Thank you.

I would, Radeon has always given me software issues...

Actually for my gaming rig, which was.... about the same price-range ¥80,000 back in 2010 when that was 1000usd or so.

I drooped half my budget on my graphics card, if your building a gaming rig I can flat out tell you it is the most important part of your build, the CPU is not used near as much as the GPU and all modern CPU should be able to do the job just grab an I5 or something, no need to drop on the I7.

Source : Ran Crysis on ultra-max settings on a 1.2ghz triple core, dont have the laptop any more to test stuff like watch dogs, but my I5 is doing just fin pushing any thing out at max, including star citizen.

OK, get a 960 or 970, got it.

Magic tricks created using artificial intelligence for the first time: "Researchers working on artificial intelligence have taught a computer to create magic tricks. The researchers gave a computer program the outline of how a magic jigsaw puzzle and a mind reading card trick work, as well the results of experiments into how humans understand magic tricks, and the system created completely new variants on those tricks which can be delivered by a magician."

A Man Can Hear Wi-Fi, And This Is What It Sounds Like: "If you ever hooked up to the Internet before the 2000s, you’ll probably remember that ear-piercing screech emitted by the dial-up modem. These days, the only noise you’ll hear will be the tapping of keys as you punch in the passcode. But not for Frank Swain, the man who can hear Wi-Fi wherever he goes. No, he doesn’t have a rare genetic mutation, but he does have souped-up hearing aids and some very clever software.

Swain has been losing his hearing since his 20s and was fitted with hearing aids two years ago. But his interest did not lie in recreating the soundscape that was gradually fading; he wanted to be able to listen to something that we can’t hear: wireless communication.

To achieve this, science writer Swain buddied up with sound artist Daniel Jones. Using a grant from a UK innovation charity, the duo eventually built Phantom Terrains, a tool that makes Wi-Fi audible. The software, which runs on a hacked iPhone, works by tuning into wireless communication fields. Using the inbuilt Wi-Fi sensor, the software is able to pick up details such as router name, encryption modes and distance from the device."

Facebook preparing new website for office use: "Facebook is preparing a new office version of its social networking site to compete with other sites like LinkedIn, the Financial Times reported on Monday.

;Facebook is secretly working on a new website called 'Facebook at Work'" that would allow users to "chat with colleagues, connect with professional contacts and collaborate over documents', it said."

edited 17th Nov '14 4:21:40 PM by rmctagg09

I'm having a new sort of problem with my PC, where my AMD GPU software stopped scaling old games properly and trying to revert to an earlier version has resulted in a series of crashes and related unfortunate things. Even at this point I don't know how stable it is. The problems are described in detail here. Any advice?

EDIT: Used a registry trick to fix the GPU scaling. So now that works, but I still don't know what might have been fucked up by the system restore.

edited 19th Nov '14 3:18:24 PM by Meklar

I'm planning on getting a full ATX motherboard with a GTX 970 graphics card (or GTX 960 if it's reasonably priced when it comes out), with a 212 Evo heatsink and no water cooling. Should I spring for a full tower case or just get a mid tower?

No point in a full tower unless you have the money, you want the space, or by some reason the full tower is cheaper than a mid tower.

The space is a null issue with an ATX though.

I don't know what you mean by that.

Errr, never mind, I got ATX and Micro ATX mixed up for a moment.

OK, thank you.

So Windows forced me to upgrade to 8.1 again and I don't have the patience to downgrade a second time. I do have a problem though. My File Explorer is confusing to navigate.◊ You can't see it but there are also shortcuts to the Downloads, Pictures, Music, and Videos folders. How do I separate the My Computer stuff into their own section as well as get rid of those Desktop and Downloads shortcuts or is that not possible? I hate that my File Explorer is more cluttered than it was before the upgrade.

I don't have Windows 8, but (at the risk of sounding like the "did you plug it in" IT guy) in Seven you can just right click those and hit remove.

I need help linking a bunch of files so that they compile together in C++. I have a header file; and I call it in every file using #include "header.h". I think the problem I'm having is with how the main file(s) work, or maybe the function prototypes in the class defined in the header

Are you getting compile errors or linker errors? There's two parts to building a C++ program, compilation and linking. You can tell them apart because compile errors give you a nice file and line number, whereas linker errors just tell you that a symbol is missing with a weird address.

x3

Yeah that doesn't work for anything other than the Anime, Fourze and Drive folders.

How do people do those fan-made remixes of existing songs and music tracks that I occasionally see on Youtube? Are there any freeware programs that can do this, or are they all proprietary?

For specifically making YT videos, I think most non-professionals use Windows Movie Maker (free with Windows; depending on your version, it's either already on your computer or can be installed as part of the "essentials" package).

As far as audio goes, I think Audacity's the most popular, but there's probably other free applications.

edited 1st Dec '14 1:07:43 PM by Bisected8

WMM is really poorly featured; it can't do overlays, for one thing. It's good for very, very casual editing.

Hackers begone: Measurement-device-independent QKD increases clock rate and transmission distance while reducing failure: "In the ongoing effort to make communications secure, Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) theoretically provides a solution – but to the delight of increasingly sophisticated hackers, falls short in real-world systems due to implementation deviating from mathematical models. A number of QKD variants – including Device-Independent Quantum Key Distribution (DIQKD) and the more recently introduced Measurement-Device-Independent Quantum Key Distribution (MDIQKD) – attempt to close the gap between theory and practice with varying degrees of success. These two variants differ in several ways, the most important being that DIQKD requires but unlike MDIQKD cannot easily achieve very high detection efficiency and low channel loss to yield secure keys, while MDIQKD, unlike DIQKD, does not rely on any ideal devices and can close the most vulnerable QKD security hole by removing all side-channels from the measurement unit. Nevertheless, previous MDIQKD systems have had limitations as well, such as limited distance and a low key rate of less than 0.1 bit/s.

Recently, however, scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China devised a de novo MDIQKD protocol and have developed a 75 M Hz clock rate, fully automatic and highly stable system and superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors with detection efficiencies of more than 40%. By so doing, they have extended MDIQKD secure transmission distance to 200 km, and achieving a secure key rate three orders of magnitude higher – and an failure probability six orders of magnitude lower – than those of previous MDIQKD attempts. The researchers state that their results pave the way towards a quantum network with measurement-device-independent security, and in fact have already demonstrate the feasibility of MDIQKD in an unstable environment by performing a field test in which their system was inserted into an installed fiber network."

edited 1st Dec '14 3:59:51 PM by rmctagg09

Almost all recent DRAM chips are vulnerable to hacking

Interesting stuff. Definitely fairly easy to do denial-of-service errors through that. I wonder if virtualization would make it possible to affect other V Ms on the same host or whether e.g. Xen, VM Ware use large enough pages to protect against cross-VM effects?

Can you do any thing practical with it though?

I mean from the hackers standpoint, it looks a bit too crude to do much other then DOS, I may be wrong though.

edited 2nd Dec '14 7:58:59 PM by Imca

The biggest issue is the x86 CLFLUSH instruction, which is unprivileged and allows flushing caches. Without the ability to flush caches, it's much harder, if not impossible, to pull off.

Can you do any thing practical with it though? I mean from the hackers standpoint, it looks a bit too crude to do much other then DOS, I may be wrong though.

Tons of things. Flipping a bit may not sound like much, but it's sometimes all that's standing between you and armegeddon. For example, what if that bit is the bit that controls whether you're an admin or not?

edited 2nd Dec '14 8:04:18 PM by storyyeller