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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 25 - 30 DECEMBER, 2023
Hello and Welcome,
And a "Futuristic Father Christmas" to everyone:
Merry Christmas — from the President and Committee
Welcoming Members to January 2024
Happy 2024
Our Committee hopes you are all still enjoying the festive activities, so we have decided not to hold any meetings during January. This will give members more time with family and friends and recharge their batteries, ready for another busy year.
We will be holding our club's Annual General Meeting very soon; however, it is prompting an urgent call for Committee nominations. Please consider.
— John Lucke
Meetings This Week
NO MEETINGS
Meetings Next Week
NO MEETINGS
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 January, March and May 2024.
NOTE: THERE ARE NO CLUB MEETINGS in JANUARY — [ See the Committee notice, above. ]
ASCCA News:Tech News:
Wi-Fi 7 Offers 4X Speed at 46 Gigabit
See the InfoPackets article by John Lister on December 15, 2023, at 12:12 pm EST.
The next generation of Wi-Fi will be available by spring 2024. Wi-Fi 7 should be up to four times faster than the previous generation.
The theoretical maximum speed of 46 Gbps (gigabit) is not something anyone is likely to see in their home set-up. However, it could make it more likely that users will be able to take full advantage of even the fastest home broadband connections. For those unaware, one gigabit is equal to 125 megabytes. Therefore, 46 gigabits is 5750 megabytes. Today's standard hard drives transfer speeds of around 100+ megabytes per second (not including NVMe or SSD).
Wi-Fi 5 has a maximum data rate of 3.5 Gbps (437 megabytes), while Wi-Fi 6's figure is 9.6 Gbps (1200 megabytes). (Source: flatpanelshd.com)
Cabling Obsolete?
That said, there is a massive difference between theoretical maximums and real-world results.
The numbers represent the limits of the technology itself rather than reality. To come anywhere close, you'd need to transmit between two devices with a clear line of sight in a room without wireless data use.
The increase in speed could have a significant practical effect: eliminating the need for, or benefit of, wired cabling. Even if somebody's Wi-Fi speed around their home was far from the speed of their broadband connection, a four-fold increase could bring them closer to getting the full benefit.
It also makes it very plausible that Wi-Fi 7 connections could be as fast or faster than Ethernet cabling, removing the need to choose between speed and convenience in a home set-up.
Increased Reliability
Of course, high speeds are only helpful if they are reliable — which is a major setback for wireless tech.
The technology in Wi-Fi 7 is designed specifically for a more stable connection, making streaming video more viable. There should also be a significant drop in latency, the delay between a device sending data and the transmission itself starting. That could help play games wirelessly (where response time is critical) and make wireless surround sound a more practical option.
The big drawback is that users will need new equipment to take full advantage, and it may take time before the technology becomes commonplace in new devices. Wi-Fi 7 routers are coming imminently, though only some manufacturers have confirmed pricing. At least one manufacturer has made an adaptor that can be installed on existing PCs. And some Smart TVs launching next year are expected to support the technology. (Source: xda-developers.com)
Wi-Fi 7
What's Your Opinion?
What difference would it make if your home Wi-Fi was four times faster? Would you be prepared to pay more for faster Wi-Fi devices? Are you fully wireless or still use cabling in your home set-up?
Comments
Technology to improve existing wired connections — Submitted by Dennis Faas on Fri, 15/12/2023 — 12:42.
I want to see the ability to increase speed over existing CAT5e, which has existed since 2001. It is one of the most widely used ethernet cables (especially behind walls in buildings) since the theoretical maximum speed for most home offices did not go beyond 1 gigabit until recently — even though CAT6+ has been around for almost as long.
The motherboard in my PC now does 2.5 Gigabit, but I need the hardware to take advantage of it because it's still costly.
I can't imagine how much a switch and router for Wi-Fi 7 will cost, especially if you add multiple hard-wired access points in the house (which is how I have my house configured for maximum connection speeds). If you intend to make wireless bridges instead (which is how a wireless mesh works), every bridge point or "hop" will cut your Wi-Fi speed in half due to latency.
New Bundaberg solar farm contract to help Telstra hit 100% renewable mark
See the iTWire article by Kenn Anthony Mendoza | Thursday, 14 December 2023, at 11:19 am.
Solar Farm
Australian internet provider Telstra announced it has signed a new power purchase agreement (PPA) with developer Global Power Generation to construct a solar farm near Bundaberg, Queensland, claiming it will enable renewable energy generation equivalent to 100% of its consumption by 2025.
The Bundaberg solar farm will begin operations in late 2025. Telstra said the project will secure up to 153 GWh per annum of renewable energy output to the grid with total investment amounting to $130 million.
The PPA project is projected to generate enough renewable energy to power around 30,000 homes, contributing to Australia's efforts to achieve 82% renewable energy by 2030.
The project will also help boost regional employment and create over 100 jobs during the 12-18 months construction phase.
Australian media reported Telstra has signed PPAs with Emerald Solar Park, MacIntyre Wind Farm, and Munna Creek Solar Farm, all in Queensland, as well as the Murra Warra Wind Farm in Victoria and Stage 3 of the Crookwell Wind Farm in New South Wales.
The PPAs signed will help support 1,300 local jobs during the construction phase of the development and 60 ongoing jobs for regional communities.
According to Telstra, the company has supported over $1.2 billion of renewable energy projects across Queensland, Victoria, and New South Wales to help decarbonise Australia's electricity grid.
Renew Economy reports that the projects will generate 1.3 TWh by 2025, which is enough to power the equivalent of 200,000 homes and avoid 750,000 tonnes of emissions each year.
"We're committed to playing our part in building a more sustainable future and providing cleaner energy for Australian homes," said Telstra CEO Vicki Brady.
"Once these projects are fully up and running, our share of their renewable energy output will be equivalent to our own electricity consumption," added Brady.
"We also have a significant focus on reducing our emissions and working with our customers, business partners and suppliers to support their emissions reduction efforts."
Renewable energy consumption will also help Telstra reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030 — a target that includes scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions.
"As of June this year, we have reduced our combined scope 1 and 2 emissions by 30% and our scope three emissions by 28%, from a FY19 baseline."
Vivaldi releases end-of-year versions for Windows, macOS and Linux
See the iTWire article by Sam Varghese | Friday, 15 December 2023 at 09:56 am.
Norwegian firm Vivaldi, which produces a browser of the same name, has released feature-packed end-of-year versions for Windows, macOS and Linux.
Vivaldi browser, new features
A new Sessions Panel, introduced on the sidebar, can manage saved sessions or one's collection of organised tabs.
Another new feature is Sync functionality, which allows viewing one's complete browsing history on all devices. All data is end-to-end encrypted.
Synced tabs can now be opened from the Address Field or Windows Panel on one's current device.
Tabs no longer need to be manually moved and organised into a desired Workplace. The new Workplace Rules does this automatically, based on rulesets.
A statement from Vivaldi said: "The Sessions Panel is a new side panel for managing your Sessions. This top-requested feature lets you quickly manage, create, and reopen your saved Sessions. You can view, rename, and edit the contents of the saved Sessions to reopen some tabs in your current Session selectively.
"You can also enable Automatic Session Backup from the bottom of the panel. Session Backups are created automatically once every hour for up to 30 days; and contain a snapshot of all your open tabs. Or you can manually save any session at your convenience."
The iOS version has the following notable features:
— Configurable Address and Tab Bars, which can be placed at the bottom or top;
— Custom Start Page Wallpapers to personalise the Start Page with custom images;
— Complete Browsing History Sync, fully encrypted; and
— Search Suggestions with different viewing options.
Fun Facts:
Fire retardant paint is a winner
See the ClimateControlNews article by Sandra Rossi | 6 November 2023.
Professor Guan Yeoh
A new fire-retardant paint, formulated by engineers at UNSW Sydney, has become the first to pass a stringent Australian standard test that simulates a bushfire attack.
The paint, now on sale at selected Bunnings stores, achieved the Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) 40 standard, which assesses the bushfire resistance of buildings and construction materials.
BAL-40 indicates that a building or material has been tested and approved to withstand higher levels of radiant heat (up to 40kW/m2) and ember attack during a bushfire providing increased protection against bushfires in areas prone to extreme fire conditions.
The new paint, commercially branded as FSA FIRECOAT, was developed at UNSW in partnership with Flame Security International. It was partially funded via a $3 million Cooperative Research Centres Projects (CRC-P) grant from the Australian government.
Professor Guan Yeoh from UNSW's School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering led the team that spent nearly five years perfecting the formula to ensure the paint incorporates the best fire-retardant properties.
The resulting product is intumescent paint, designed to expand due to heat exposure.
The specific chemicals in the paint also produce a thick layer of char, which offers an insulating barrier and effectively deflects the heat from the fire away.
"The special additives we include in the paint mix formula promote the growth of the char, which is the important insulating element. The char helps the substrate, your house or your building, stay protected from the fire," Yeoh said.
"In the rigorous tests, you can see this char being created, but at the end, you can just wipe it away, and the wood underneath has virtually no damage."
One major challenge for the research team was to ensure the all-important char, once produced, would not simply fall off vertical surfaces such as external walls.
The char needed to remain firmly in place to continue to work as a fire barrier.
"Forming a char on a horizontal surface is fine, but for this application, we needed to include additives into the paint formula to ensure the char would also hold very well on vertical surfaces. Which is a challenge," Yeoh said.
"If it just falls off, that defeats the whole purpose. The char — basically pockets of air and carbon — can be more than 50mm thick, so retaining it in place can be tricky.
"But it's so important because it provides the insulation and prevents heat penetration."
One of the significant advantages of the new paint is that it does not need any special equipment to apply it, meaning it can be brushed or sprayed onto a variety of surfaces — including existing render, timber, aluminium, steel, concrete, plasterboard and brick — in the same way as ordinary paint.
The carbon ingredient means the FSA FIRECOAT product is only available in grey, but any standard coloured topcoat can be applied without affecting the fire-retardant properties.
Yeoh said the new fire-retardant paint could help prevent bushfires from spreading over a wider area, given that it protects buildings from burning down.
"If a building is not protected in any way and it starts to burn, then it can become a source of heat for the fire to continue, like a chain reaction," he said.
"So this paint assists in limiting the spread of bushfires because it prevents a building from igniting and, therefore, compounding the original fire.
"We wanted to push the boundary with this paint, so we tested probably 200 different formulas in the first couple of years of research before we arrived at the best one.
"That was using very high-grade materials, which would have made the paint too expensive to produce, so we tested again with more commercially available ingredients to ensure we got the same performance in a final product that people can afford."
Tony Overstead, CEO of Flame Security International, who secured an initial order from Bunnings to supply 80,000 litres of FSA FIRECOAT paint, said the paint will protect buildings and other assets from direct exposure to flames and extreme radiant heat.
"This will make a significant difference not only to the cost of building in affected areas but also the potential risks to life and property," Overstead said.
Was Windows Vista Really That Bad — or Just Misunderstood?
See the How-To Geek article by AROL WRIGHT | PUBLISHED MAY 8, 2023.
Revisiting what's probably Microsoft's biggest disaster in the 2000s.
Windows Vista
While enthusiasts love some Windows versions for years to come, others are sorted into the "hall of shame." This was true of Windows ME in 2000 and Windows 8/8.1 in 2012. One of the more notable entries on people's lists of worst Windows versions is Windows Vista, released in 2007. Was it that bad?
Why Was Windows Vista Considered Bad?
Before we dive into why Windows Vista was such an unsuccessful release, we need to understand the context of the PC ecosystem back in the day.
It was the year 2007. The previous version of Windows, Windows XP, was released in 2001 and was a huge success. It helped improve Windows's image after the ME release just over a year before, and it became a legendary release. But by 2006, it was already approaching five years old — it was due for an upgrade. Windows Vista was the long-awaited successor, announced in 2006 and released to users by 2007.
Unlike Windows XP, Vista was a more controversial and criticized release, with most people having mixed opposing opinions. It was also primarily considered to be one of the reasons why Windows XP enjoyed such an unusually long lifespan, with extended support ending by 2014 — a year before the release of Windows 10. Some versions even lasted up to 2019.
A big part of it was its technical requirements. Windows Vista required unusually high specs, especially comparing them to the requirements of Windows XP. You needed at least 1 GB of RAM, an x86 or x86-64 processor with a clock speed of 1 GHz, and a video card with at least 64MB of VRAM.
That's a little these days; computers met those requirements when the OS came out. But Windows XP needed just 64MB of RAM, a processor running at 233 MHz, and 1.5 GB of storage space to run. It was a massive jump from what was supposed to be its immediate predecessor.
This was also worsened by Microsoft's marketing. In 2005, Microsoft promised that "nearly all PCs on the market today" could run Vista. Microsoft also got in trouble with stickers it added on computers shipping with Windows XP, saying that they were "Windows Vista-capable" despite them not being truly capable of running Windows Vista's core features. This even earned the company a lawsuit.
There were also other problems plaguing the operating system. The OS was criticized for its support of additional forms of DRM, in addition to an annoying "User Account Control" framework that prevented apps from gaining admin privileges from behind your back but resulted in several pop-ups being shoved in the user's face to authorize, or deny, every single little thing.
User Account Control
So, it wasn't the brightest Windows release. But did it deserve the hate it got? Or was it the right OS at the wrong time? The answer is unclear enough to fit into those two descriptions.
How Bad Was Windows Vista?
To know whether Windows Vista was that bad, 16 years later, I fired up a virtual machine to install Windows Vista on my computer and try it out by myself.
What I found is that it's... Similar to Windows 7. It has, for the most part, a very similar aesthetic and very similar features. Some features are more "legacy-looking" than those in Windows 7, but the redesigned Control Panel and the then-new Network & Sharing Centre are there.
Because, for better or worse, Windows 7 just built upon what Windows Vista had already done, and Vista is, in a way, the foundation for all Windows versions that came afterwards — even Windows 10 and Windows 11 to some degree.
If your PC couldn't run Windows Vista in 2007, it sure couldn't run Windows 7 when it came out just two years later in 2009. Vista was a rough but necessary step that made people adapt so that they would receive Windows 7 with open arms, learning from what it did wrong while building on what it did right.
That's not to say that Vista was an older Windows 7 — or even a good operating system. Even if you had a PC that met the minimum requirements, it did have some rough edges, like the User Account Control feature. This was, in theory, meant to supercharge OS security, but in practice, it just annoyed people with pop-ups every time they tried to open something. And unsurprisingly, I came across it repeatedly in Windows Vista, and it quickly got tiring.
Ultimately it's okay if you remember your way around Windows 7. Many things look and function the way they do in 7; it has many of the same features and bundled software, and even the UI seems close. If anything, you can think of it as a precursor to Windows 7 rather than a successor to Windows XP.
Of course, using Windows Vista in the 2020s differs from using it in 2007. The operating system is, as of today, deprecated by Microsoft. You can't install any modern software on it. But if you had a good PC back in the day, you might have even been able to enjoy Windows Vista.
We Have a Lot to Thank Windows Vista For
Unlike Windows ME, which was a nuclear disaster in comparison, and Windows 8, whose most significant changes were undone by the release of Windows 10 in 2015, Windows Vista wasn't inherently wrong.
It wasn't a broken mess, and it only introduced a lot of massive changes that were rejected by users. But it also wasn't an excellent operating system, and it had several rough edges that made people willingly stick to XP — or go straight up to 7 — back in the day.
But to be completely frank, many aspects and features of the Windows versions we use today started on Vista. Its failure made Windows 7 a legendary release and helped Windows mature even further in subsequent releases.
Meeting Location & Disclaimer
Bob Backstrom
~ Newsletter Editor ~
Information for Members and Visitors:
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All Meetings, unless explicitly stated above, are held on the
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