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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 02 - 07 OCTOBER, 2023
Hello and Welcome,
Daylight Saving begins tomorrow, Sunday, 1 October, 2023.
Daylight saving begins at 2 am Eastern Standard Time on Sunday, 1 October 2023.
Sunday, 1 October 2023, 2:00:00 am clocks are turned forward 1 hour to
Sunday, 1 October 2023, 3:00:00 am local daylight time instead.
Sunrise and sunset will be about 1 hour later on 1 October 2023 than the day before. There will be more light in the evening.
Daylight saving ends at 3 am Eastern Daylight Saving Time on Sunday, 7 April 2024.
Sunday, 7 April 2024, 3:00:00 am clocks are turned backward 1 hour to
Sunday, 7 April 2024, 2:00:00 am local standard time instead.
Sunrise and sunset will be about 1 hour earlier on 7 April 2024 than the day before. There will be more light in the morning.
Labour Day long weekend is on this weekend.
Labour Day in NSW is a public holiday celebrated on the first Monday in October.
In 2023, Labour Day will be celebrated on Monday 2nd October. This annual public holiday
celebrates the arrival of the eight-hour working day, a victory for workers in the 1850s.
This holiday occurs during the height of Spring.
— Ed.
Meeting This Week
2023/10/03 — 18:00-20:00 — October, Tue — Main Meeting
Meeting Next Week
2023/10/10 — 18:00-20:00 — October, Tue — Programming
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 following meeting is in November 2023.
ASCCA News:Tech News:
GoPro or go home; the new Hero 12 cam brings big resolution and a big battery
See the iTWire article by David M Williams | Friday, 22 September 2023 at 2:54 pm.
GoPro Taking Sea Shots
GoPro released a new edition of its top-selling ultra-portable action camera this month, the GoPro Hero 12 Black. It builds on what people love about the GoPro range, adding higher resolutions and longer runtimes in all modes.
If you're not familiar with the GoPro, imagine a small but powerful camera that fits easily in the palm of your hand while sporting a vast range of accessories that let you strap the camera to your chest or helmet, clip it to your bike or car, clamp it here or there. You can take photos and videos with the GoPro, but its capability to capture your most fantastic action-packed adventures is where it shines. Whether you're diving, snowboarding, skiing, motorcycling, horse riding, or living life large in any form at all, GoPro can capture it all.
It's no wonder the GoPro range has been hugely popular, and here at iTWire, we've captured many a bicycle and horse ride (including a tumble). Well, the GoPro Hero 12 Black is now out, hitting stores earlier this month, and we've been testing it out.
A lot has been packed into it, making it an incredible GoPro for first-time owners and a worthy upgrade for those using previous models. This includes night effects with still images, video stabilisation with horizon lock, wireless audio support, up to 2x longer runtimes, unmatched wide-angle perspectives, and much more.
First, the GoPro Hero 12 Black is designed to thrive in the most rugged environments — after all, it'd be a sorry action camera that couldn't stand up to your favourite sports. The Hero 12 is a tough nut, with dust and water resistance, twice the scratch resistance of its predecessor, and a new hydrophobic lens that repels water. It can be submerged to a depth of 10m.
No matter how tough it is, it's no good if the image quality is awful, but that's not a concern here. GoPro has imbued the new Hero 12 with incredible new HDR image quality, enhanced HyperSmooth video stabilisation, and a wealth of other imaging improvements.
The unit uses the same GP2 processor as the Hero 11 but with a 27MP camera that records at 5.3K60 + 4K120 resolution and 2.7K240. It offers superphoto and raw photos, night effects in 8:7, duration capture, HDR video and photo, timecode sync, 8x slo-mo, 10-bit colour, vertical capture mode, scheduled capture, hyperview, Timewarp 3.0 up to 5.3K at 8:7, and 1080p live streaming.
It's now bundled with the longer-lasting Enduro battery in the box, which was a paid extra for prior GoPros. With the Enduro battery, even using all the new features, you get up to 2x longer runtimes.
Of course, expectations must be managed; generally, you can expect longer runtimes in the Hero 12 than other GoPro models in all modes — that's true. However, the extra quantum of runtime will vary based on the power requirements of that mode. Before you hit thermal limits, you will find 15 to 20% longer run times in modes like 4K60 and up to 2x longer run times in high-powered modes like 5.3K60 and 4K120. As always, and in any aspect of computing, power generates heat. It was the enemy of the Death Star, and it's the bane of high-end gaming PCs that require expensive cooling options. Spend several hours in video conferences on your smartphone on a hot day, and it'll shut down. Given the tiny size of the GoPro, it's pretty evident that heat will prevent you from recording endless ultra-high-definition videos. Thus, consider the trade-off between video quality and recording time and the relative hot or coldness of your environment before pressing "record".
Specifically, with testing, the Hero 12 Black will record 70 minutes of continuous footage with HyperSmooth 6.0 on at 5.3K60. This is double the Hero 11's 35 minutes before thermal shutdown. It will record 58 minutes of continuous footage with HyperSmooth 6.0 on at 4K120, over 90 minutes at 5.3K30, and over 155 minutes at 1080p30.
Canada site attacked after Ottawa claim of Indian role in assassination
See the iTWire article by Sam Varghese | Monday, 25 September 2023 at 09:26 am.
A group of attackers, calling itself Indian Cyber Force and claiming to be supporters of India, has broken into a website owned by a Canadian dental practice, and left evidence of its break-in with pro-India messages.
Hacked By Indian Cyber Force
The incident comes in the wake of allegations levelled recently by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that India killed a Canadian activist, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, for campaigning in support of setting up an autonomous state for Sikhs in India named Khalistan.
Canada expelled an Indian diplomat after Trudeau made the allegations in parliament and India responded by promptly expelling a Canadian diplomat.
The site that was broken into is that of the Bristol Dental Clinic which is based in Mississauga, Ontario. It is not in any way affiliated with any Canadian political entity.
Nijjar was killed in Surrey, British Columbia, in June. Canada is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence network, which includes Australia.
Prior to the website intrusion, the group warned on its X [earlier Twitter] account on 21 September: "Cyber alert for Canada. Get ready to feel the power of IndianCyberForce attacks will be launching [sic] on Canada cyber space in coming 3 days it's for the mess your [sic] started."
The Khalistan movement goes back to the 1930s and had, as its aim, the creation of an ethno-religious state for Sikhs in Punjab. The movement has been largely quiescent after the Indian army entered the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest Sikh shrine, in June 1984, and flushed out activists of the movement who had taken refuge there. The leader of the movement at the time, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, was among the dead.
The blowback came on 31 October the same year, when two Sikh guards of the late Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi shot her dead in cold blood. The act led to a great deal of bloodletting and India's capital was shut down for days, with trains full of dead bodies periodically arriving there.
Contacted for comment, senior threat researcher Brett Callow said: "Whether this is a serious threat or not, the fact is that current geopolitical tensions mean that organisations are at an increased risk of cyber attacks from both hactivists and state-supported actors — which can be hard to tell apart."
Callow, who works for the New Zealand-headquartered threat firm Emsisoft, added: "And, of course, for-profit cyber criminals remain as much of a problem as ever. If an organisation has plans to bolster its security, it should seriously consider accelerating them."
Windows 11 Update Gets Poor Response
See the InfoPackets article by John Lister on September 25, 2023, at 12:09 pm EDT.
The latest Windows 11 update has led to complaints of many problems. That's particularly troubling as it's a mandatory security update.
The update in question has the codename KB503219 [ Should be KB5030219 — Ed. ]. It's a cumulative update, meaning it brings together several previously optional updates, though they will have been downloaded automatically for most people with Windows 11 on the default settings.
It's not unusual to get reports of glitches, but both tech site readers and message board users have reported an extensive range of significant problems. The most serious include users reporting the dreaded Blue Screen of Death or computers failing to boot up. (Source: windowslatest.com)
Others have reported problems, including losing Internet access and being unable to use the Start menu. Reports include slowdowns for essential Windows functions and disappearing tabs in File Explorer.
Gamers Get Angry
Arguably, the most vocal complaints have come from players of the recently released and hugely popular online game Starfield. Users have reported both crashes and increased lag. That's the delay between clicking a button or pressing a key and the resulting action happening in a game. A significant disparity in lag between players can make online gaming effectively unplayable.
In this case, it appears unclear whether the problem is due to the Windows 11 update, a recent update to drivers for the Nvidia graphics card, or an unfortunate interaction between the two.
No Problems Acknowledged
All these problems make it somewhat surprising that, at the time of writing, Microsoft's listing for the update read, "Microsoft is not currently aware of any issues with this update." (Source: microsoft.com)
To be fair to Microsoft, some users will inevitably experience problems with any update. That's partly the sheer numbers game of tens of millions of users, each with a different combination of components, applications and drivers on their system. There'll also always be cases where a problem caused by something else arises simultaneously as a Windows update.
However, the number of reports of problems and the wide range of reported issues suggest something has indeed gone particularly wrong with this latest update.
What's Your Opinion?
Have you had any problems with the latest update? Does Microsoft do a good enough job of ensuring updates don't bring in new situations? Is avoiding such issues with a system where third-party hardware and applications are so widely used viable?
User Comments:
Submitted by leeroy on Mon, 25/09/2023 — 3:07 pm.
BTW the correct update # is KB5030219... No issues since 12/09/2023 install.. Not a gamer though.
Submitted by crail1440_16919 on Mon, 25/09/2023 — 4:44 pm.
After the Windows 11 last upgrade, I had no internet, no start bar, McAfee would not work, along with other programs. Talked to LG tech tried all kinds of things that they had me do and nothing worked. After an hour with them, they said that I needed to restore the laptop back to factory settings. The PC would not let me do this after trying for an hour. I then tried a restore from a backup but still had problems. I finally did a clean install with Windows 10 and everything is now working.
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Click to select an Emoji, then click the Copy button and Paste it (Ctrl + V) directly into your documents or HTML code. Have Fun.
— John Lucke
Fun Facts:
THORIUM: World's CHEAPEST Energy! [Science Unveiled]
See the 17m31s YouTube video by Copenhagen Atomics
Lifetime of Energy in Thorium
Join us as our Co-founder takes to the Tech-stage at TechBBQ in Copenhagen, Denmark to deliver a keynote speech.
In this video, Thomas will give a brief introduction on a "popular science" level to our thorium molten salt reactor, the Copenhagen Waste Burner and in some technical detail, explain how we are able to achieve such a cheap price point on delivering an abundance of affordable and green energy from thorium and nuclear waste.
Chapters:
00:00 — Introduction
01:09 — Why We Are Doing It
01:58 — The Goal: Mass-Manufacture Molten Salt Reactors
02:32 — The Nuclear Power Plants
03:35 — The History of Energy
04:50 — Classical Nuclear
06:15 — Radiation
07:00 — The Physics of Nuclear Energy
07:46 — The Thorium Fuel Cycle
08:40 — Uranium vs. Thorium
09:52 — Nuclear Waste
11:53 — Our Reactor Core: The Onion Core®
13:37 — Corrosion
15:02 — The Three Key Takeaways
16:27 — Conclusion
User Comments:
@robfer5370 — OH YEAH BABY!!! LETS GO!!! Thorium and advanced molten salt reactors are the future to help save the planet and give everyone in the world a better life! Gj Copenhagen Atomics keep up the amazing work!!
@nzoomed — This is awesome news, I didn't think anyone was working on these types of reactors!
@trueman2542 — Thorium, often overlooked, now emerges as a potential global game-changer. This unassuming element, abundant yet hidden, holds immense promise as a clean energy source. Nations reliant on oil and gas face a seismic shift as Thorium's rise challenges their fortunes. But amidst uncertainty, Thorium offers hope for a planet grappling with climate change. This paradigm shift towards Thorium, if proven true, will drive humanity to uncharted territories of innovation, sustainability, and global cooperation. The quest for its potential may redefine the destiny of our civilization...
@MrArtist7777 — Nuclear needs to be a part of the clean energy transition, along with solar, wind and hydro + battery storage. Getting the price down to compete, will be the challenge.
@nilsdock — Love the video, clear and concise explanation. What I am missing is the time line, or at least A roadmap of the steps that need to be taken, before a working assembly line is built. Will it be done any decade now? Or will it be done within 3 years?
Meeting Location & Disclaimer
Bob Backstrom
~ Newsletter Editor ~
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