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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 25 - 30 MARCH, 2024
Hello and Welcome,
SIG NEWS from Tuesday, March 19th
Last week, TWO of us attended the Tuesday Group meeting at our Pitt Street meeting place.
We learned about MINI PCs, small devices 12.8 cm x 12.8 cm (5" x 5") that can easily do the work of modern-day desktop machines (for half the price).
Memory is usually between 8 and 32 GB, although you can go as high as 64 GB.
Disk capacities vary from 250 GB to a 1 or 2 TB SSD.
And they usually come with Windows 11 Pro (or Home).
We connected the MINI PC directly to the Projector via an HDMI cable and used our own mouse and keyboard.
We'd fired up the Club's machine in case it needed to upgrade Windows.
The BAD news:
The Screen AND the Projector showed coloured streaks across the desktop — an obvious video card problem.
It has two outputs (one for the Screen and one for the Projector), so it was a high-end card for its time.
We tried moving the Desktop out of the trolley and reseating the video card but there was no improvement.
Invitation:
Can anyone with video card expertise (or spare cards) like to volunteer to work on our Desktop machine to correct the video problems?
The CLUB would be eternally grateful — Ed.
Meetings This Week
NO MEETINGS
Meeting Next Week
2024/04/02 — 18:00-20:00 — April, Tue — Main Meeting
Schedule of Current & Upcoming Meetings
First Tuesday 18:00-20:00 — Main Meeting
First Saturday 13:00-14:00 — Penrith Group
Second Tuesday 18:00-20:00 — Programming
Third Tuesday 10:00-12:00 — Tuesday Group
Third Saturday 14:00-16:00 — Web Design
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Go to the official Sydney PC Calendar for this month's meeting details.
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Penrith meetings are held every 2nd month on the 1st Saturday from 1-2 pm.
The next scheduled meetings are in May, July and September 2024.
ASCCA News:Tech News:
Web Pioneer Foresees Big Tech Breakup
See the InfoPackets article by John Lister on March 20, 2024 at 01:03 pm EDT.
Thirty-five years after conceiving the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee has shared his predictions for its future. The boldest is the possibility of a major tech company being broken up.
Berners-Lee also believes artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality could be harnessed to positively change our daily lives.
Although the Internet dates back in some ways to the US military in the late 1960s and in others to the adoption of a common inter-network communication standard in 1983, it had some significant use limitations.
That changed when Berners-Lee came up with the idea of the World Wide Web, which directly links documents regardless of the server or network they were hosted on. He started work in 1989, got the Web running in 1991 and released the technology into the public domain in 1993. (Source: mail.com)
Personal Assistants For All
Now, he has given CNBC three predictions for the next 35 years. First, AI will change how users interact with the World Wide Web. He believes one day, everyone will have an AI "personal assistant" that isn't just a glorified chatbot. (Source: cnbc.com)
Instead, it will directly take care of many of the tasks people currently do by visiting websites or using apps. That will leave people mainly going online for entertainment, such as streaming video.
Data Controls
The second prediction, which Berners-Lee has made on several previous occasions, is that users will get full ownership and control of their data. He foresees an individual "data pod" to which users can grant access to specific sites and services. He also suggests this could make it easier to seamlessly switch between different interfaces such as phones, smart TVs and even virtual reality headsets.
Finally, Berners-Lee thinks concerns about tech monopolies could become so severe, possibly in the AI industry, that the threat of fines is no longer potent. Instead, he believes that bodies like the European Union might use their theoretical powers to force a company to break up.
What's Your Opinion?
Do you think Berners-Lee is right about his predictions? Do you have any predictions of your own? Is it even realistic to imagine the World Wide Web and associated technologies in the year 2059?
Everything You Need to Know Before Modding Your First PC Game
See the How-To Geek article by SYDNEY BUTLER | PUBLISHED March 16, 2024.
Because who likes vanilla?
Ned Kelly?
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Mods come in various forms, from bug fixes to complete overhauls, offering a range of improvements or added content.
Some mods are not free, with creators sometimes selling them or publishers setting up official mod shops.
Mixing mods can be tricky due to conflicts, requiring careful curation; mods in multiplayer or online games may result in penalties.
PC gaming is often framed as being about specs and power, but there's so much more to gaming on PC than frame rates. Modding is an ancient PC tradition, one critical pillar of the experience.
There Are Many Types of Mods
When you hear the term "mod" in the context of PC games, you're probably thinking of mods that get the most traction in memes and social media. For example, the infamous Skyrim mod that replaces the dragons with terrifying Thomas the Tank Engine models. The truth, however, is that mods come in every shape and form.
Any third-party modification to a game is a "mod", so the range of things you can do ranges from minor, practical improvements to games to ridiculous or complete overhauls of the title. Some mods fix bugs in games that developers have long abandoned or have gone out of business. The excellent cult classic Vampire The Masquerade — Bloodlines was a shambles when it was released, and its developer was not long for the world. Yet despite this being a game that came out 20 years ago, as of this writing, the latest version of the unofficial community patch was August 2023.
Some mods offer subtle improvements to game balance, while others add content cut from the original release. Almost literally anything you can think of that can be done to a game exists in mod form for some games.
Not All Mods Are Free
Mods are usually created by passionate fans who happen to have the technical skills required to create new content or modify existing games in interesting ways. However, it still takes time to do this work, and time is money. In some cases, mods are not free and are sold by their creators. Sometimes this happens with the blessing of the original developers.
For example, the Half-Life remake Black Mesa started life as a volunteer project and was eventually approved for commercial sale by the original developers of Half-Life, Valve. Likewise, some publishers, such as Bethesda, have experimented with having official mod shops where user-made mods can be sold with varying degrees of success.
Mixing Mods Can Be Difficult
The mods are so good that it's hard to have just one. However, since the people working on these mods aren't all part of one big team, one mod might conflict. This is usually where things get complicated as the community experiments with which mods play well with others. Sometimes, you'll find mod packs all applied together to overhaul how a game looks and plays, with the curators carefully testing the different mods to ensure they all hang together.
If you're trying to run multiple mods simultaneously, you may spend countless hours getting it all to work. I spent about as much time trying to get mods loaded in the correct order in Skyrim as I spent playing the game and a lot of Skyrim.
Mods and Multiplayer Don't Always Mix
Cheating, modding, and doing as you please are all good in a single-player game. As long as you're having fun, who cares? However, as soon as we're talking about online games or the online component of a single-player game, be careful.
Anti-cheat systems can offer harsh penalties for any modifications to the game, even if they're something seemingly innocuous, such as an interface mod or adding a graphical feature such as DLSS upscaling. So, if you have any intention of going online, even when a mod claims it's safe for that purpose, it's best not to take the chance.
Mods Can Include Malware
Any software or files you download from the internet have a non-zero chance of containing malware. As long as you have an excellent anti-malware solution on your computer and practise basic online hygiene, you should be OK for the most part. However, it's easy to forget that game mods can have hidden malware.
As our friends over at Gamerant reported, hackers infected the popular Slay the Spire mod Downfall to spread malware to computers and then steal information like passwords from those systems.
While there's no 100% effective way to protect yourself other than avoiding mods entirely, it helps to ensure you only download mods from trusted sources. Dedicated mod sites such as Nexus Mods do an excellent job of ensuring mods aren't intentionally malicious. I say "intentionally" since sometimes a buggy mod might wreak as much havoc on your computer as malware, but that's what user reviews are for!
Modding Is a Community
The last and most important thing I'd want you to know before getting into PC game mods is that mods are not just anonymous software you download to spice up a game. Regular people make them and community feedback often guides their development trajectory. Nothing stops you from contributing to mods, and some games even have dedicated modding tools to make it as easy as possible for anyone to get into modding.
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Whether you're looking to enjoy mods, make mods, or just talk to other people about mods, numerous vibrant groups are dedicated to keeping games alive and building something new on top of what developers have released. It's one of the many reasons PC gaming is awesome.
Singtel clarifies it will not sell Optus for $16B
See the iTWire article by Kenn Anthony Mendoza | Friday, 15 March 2024 at 10:00.
Telecommunications conglomerate Singtel will not sell its Australian subsidiary Optus after media reported there were talks to "offload" the embattled telco to private equity Brookfield for $16 billion.
The Australian Financial Review (AFR) [ This AFR article is for subscribers only — Ed. ] reported "advanced discussions" to sell Optus.
The Australian media reported that the intention to sell Optus spiked Singtel's share price from $2.41 to $2.48 before the company entered a trading halt to address the report.
In an ASX filing, Singtel clarified the AFR's report, saying, "Optus remains an integral and strategic part of the Singtel Group, and we are committed to Australia for the long term."
"Shareholders of Singtel and potential investors are advised to exercise caution in their review of any media reports relating to Optus ahead of any definitive announcements when dealing with the shares of the company," Singel advised.
Singtel said its current focus is improving its network resilience and conducting a CEO search.
"That said, we regularly conduct strategic reviews of our portfolio to optimise the value of our assets and businesses and will explore all options to maximise shareholder value."
2023 was a rough year for Optus after a network outage in November 2023. This led to the resignation of then-CEO Kelly Bayer-Rosmarin. Recently, Optus's managing director for networks Lambo Kanagaratnam, followed suit after nine years with the company.
LG's stylish and tiny 4K portable projector gets an official price — and you can pre-order it now
See the TechRadar article by Carrie Marshall | published March 18, 2024.
LG's NEW 4K Portable Projector
LG's 4K Portable Projector
Will you be first in the queue for the new LG Q?
Back in January, we got quite excited about LG's new 4K projector, the LG CineBeam Qube HU710PB — now called the CineBeam Q — but one crucial bit of information was missing: the price. "If LG can get the price right," we said, "we could be looking at the new king of portables." And now we know what the price will be, is it time for a coronation?
The short answer is "maybe." At $1,299.99 / £1,299.99 / AU$2,499, the LG 4K CineBeam Q Portable Projector costs a lot more than our top pick for portability out of the best 4K projectors, Samsung's $799 / £649 / AU$1,299 The Freestyle 2nd Gen. But in some key areas it has a better specification.
The first and most obvious difference in specs is that the Samsung's The Freestyle projectors (both the first and second generations) are full HD, while LG's CineBeam Q is 4K. The latter is also capable of projecting a bigger display. Where The Freestyle has a recommended maximum of 100 inches, the LG CineBeam Q beats that by 20 inches to take the maximum up to a whopping 120 inches.
That's not all. The LG has higher contrast — 450,000:1 compared to 100,000:1 — although it has a similar light output at around 500 ANSI lumens. LG reckons that the increased contrast means you'll get better results in darker scenes.
Some of the other differences are much smaller but no less important. While The Freestyle and CineBeam Q both have HDMI ARC, Samsung's version has a micro-HDMI port whereas the LG has a standard-sized one, so there's one less kind of cable or adapter to worry about.
Fun Facts:
AI Cartoon
How-To Geek Cartoon, March 16 2024
Meeting Location & Disclaimer
Bob Backstrom
~ Newsletter Editor ~
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