Indholdsfortegnelse for October 2019 i TechLife

THE FIRST FEW PCs I owned were store-bought boxes. I had a very well-worn beige-box machine back in the day, and I remember a somewhat more stylish Dell machine that I managed to keep alive for nearly a decade with some judicious upgrades. They were good machines, but not great, and they didn’t do much to teach me how they really ticked. But when I eventually built my first PC it was like a quantum leap of knowledge. When it’s your hands seating the RAM, applying the thermal paste, and troubleshooting the installation of an OS or tweaking the BIOS for that extra bit of performance, that’s when you really start to get an understanding of PC hardware. When you set out to learn how a PC is put together,…

APEX LEGENDS MAKES EA A FORTUNE, WHILE THE SIMS 4 CONTINUES TO PRINT MONEY EA’S BATTLE ROYALE IS A MONEY-SPINNER ON THE LEVEL OF FIFA. Apex Legends is one of the major drivers of EA’s current success, with up to 10 million people playing the battle royale on a weekly basis, the company hopes it carry on for the next 10 years at least. Also, veteran title The Sims 4 is still raking in cash despite being released five years ago, helping the company earn a net revenue of US$1.21 billion (about $1.8 billion). [HD] FACEBOOK’S FUTURISTIC MIND-READING WEARABLE IS ONE STEP CLOSER TO REALITY FROM IDEA TO REALITY. It looks like a mind-reading interface could be one step closer to reality, with Facebook releasing the first significant update on…

DESPITE MAKING A hefty profit Down Under, thanks to its 11 million Aussie subscribers, streaming service Netflix has only poured a small amount of that cash back into the local film and television industry. Since its 2015 launch, Netflix has produced just one original series – Tidelands. However, a report on the practices of digital platforms from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) could see more local productions on international streaming services. Following the release of the report, communications minister Paul Fletcher told ABC’s Insiders program that platforms like Netflix, Google and Facebook must be held to the same laws and regulations that other media companies are forced to abide by. “As this report analyses,” Fletcher said, “There’s a set of obligations on one set of businesses, serving Australians…

Contact lenses that can zoom in and out at a blink of an eye WELL, TWO BLINKS ACTUALLY. It might seem like a vision of the future, but researchers have developed a set of contact lenses that can adjust between two different prescriptions when users blink twice rapidly. And there’s a reason why you’ll need to blink twice to zoom in or out – we blink involuntarily but it’s usually just the once every few seconds. So two consecutive rapid blinks is not a bad trigger for the lenses to readjust. For those with visual impairments, this kind of medical technology could be a game changer, especially for those using bifocal spectacles or two pairs of glasses – one for regular distance wear, the other for reading. This tech currently…

FOR PEOPLE WHO suffer from misophonia, it can. Misophonia is a mysterious condition characterised by the experience of strong negative emotions, often anger and anxiety, in response to some everyday sounds other people make – humming, chewing, typing and even breathing. Although at first glance it may sound like an unfortunate but trivial annoyance, studies so far paint a more serious picture. “Some people doubt whether it’s really a disorder,” said Damiaan Denys, professor of psychiatry at the University of Amsterdam. “[But] these patients really suffer. We have seen divorces, we’ve seen people quitting their jobs.” Lack of awareness about the condition has even led to children with misophonia being diagnosed with more severe disorders like attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or autism. Misophonia has been scarcely researched and is not yet…

OTHER DEVICES. In addition to watching via your browser or smartphone, some TVs have Prime Video built-in – just check your TV’s app store. If not, Prime Video can also be accessed using an Apple TV or game console such as the Xbox One. CHROMECAST. One of the key drawbacks of Prime Video is its inability to stream shows via a Google Chromecast – something offered by many other video platforms. That was until July this year when Amazon announced support for Google Chromecast. Now you can beam shows onto your TV wirelessly in just a few taps.…

THE OCULUS QUEST still seems to be dominating the VR arena, selling headsets as fast as Facebook can make them and showing ‘console-like sales results’ on the Oculus Quest app store. This is generating innovation and continues to drive mass market applications to the new headset. There’s a few innovations for the true techies this month, with an AR circuit board debugging smartphone app and an autocomplete AI software for coding languages offering up free beta services. Machine learning is seemingly getting into the hospitality game with a new robot bartender called Barsys 2.0 that’s shaking up the cocktail world and an IBM Watson spinoff that hopes to brew the world’s most popular beer. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Barsys 2.0 THE ROBOTIC BARTENDER GETS SOME AI SMARTS. US$1,500 | barsys.io Barsys is…

TELL US WHAT LETTER DOES. Letter is a dynamic email tool that redefines the workflow of making a newsletter. It integrates with popular design tools. Start by designing in Adobe XD, Figma or Sketch and then export your artboards straight into Letter as HTML code. Within Letter, there’s a drag-and-drop builder that populates your designs with content at the click of a button. Finally you can send the email using your favourite services. WHY DID YOU CREATE IT? I don’t believe humans should be doing mundane, robotic tasks. Creating email newsletters happens to have lots of those. It used to take me up to four hours (or six with a hangover) to create the newsletter for my online design publication, Prototypr.io. Manually inputting content was slow and it was also…

In a recent Q&A (translated on the Square Enix forums), game director Naoki Yoshida - aka Yoshi-P – explained that “we’re working on adjusting the A Realm Reborn main scenario to be more compact, and are aiming [to release these changes in] patch 5.3.” He didn’t explain how exactly the story will be condensed, but it’s easy to see how it could - and, some might say, should. Without wishing to spoil, Final Fantasy 14’s base story boils down to fighting elemental Primals, collecting magic crystals, and uniting leaders. Oh, and vanquishing an evil dude in a mask. It’s simple, but it works. It’s got some funny lines, a few gut-punch moments, and some great boss fights. The problem is that the main scenario quests that make up the story…

Nintendo Switch | www.nintendo.com/ THE FIRE EMBLEM series is all about relationships. Human tales of loss and redemption are hidden in the grit of beautifully designed grid-based combat have made Fire Emblem different from other games with similar mechanics. Every character, even the weakest farm boys who would go on to be powerful knights, feels important with their own backstory, relationships, and specialties. Losing a soldier was never an option. Fire Emblem: Three Houses takes this idea and puts it center stage, realising a direction the series has been taking in a way that has never been done before. It priorities stories like these over combat – a poor girl living in poverty turned songstress or a shut-in archer with a childhood of abuse – with a Persona- like relationship…

LARGE 17-INCH GAMING laptops are not the cumbersome unwieldy devices they once were, and the Razer Blade Pro 17 is perhaps the perfect example of this. Weighing in at 2.75kg and occupying only a few centimeters more on either side than a 15-inch gaming ultrabook, Razer’s latest 17-incher isn’t much of a burden to carry around at all. The last Razer Blade Pro launched back in 2017 so this year’s update is a big step forward. The new Blade Pro 17 jumps form a 7th generation Intel Core i7 CPU to a 9th generation i7-9750H, which boosts the computer’s raw CPU performance by between 18 and 24%. This translates to a slightly more concervative improvement of between 5 and 18% in general home and work tasks, bit it’s still enough…

IN THE MARKET for a 27-inch 4K 144Hz gaming monitor? Then things just got interesting. Such screens normally come with hefty four-figure price tags. But the new Acer Nitro XV3 is shaking things up. It’s just one of three 27-inch 4K 144Hz models Acer now offers. And it’s by far the cheapest, coming in well under $1,500. Granted, it’s still expensive enough to be out of reach for many gamers. But when you consider that Acer’s own Predator X27 is nearly double the money, the Asus ROG Swift PG27UQ actually is double the money, and the Acer Predator XB3 will cost you several hundred more, suddenly the new Nitro XV3 seems like a bit of a bargain. At first glance, the new Acer Nitro XV3 looks like a dead ringer…

THE KINDLE OASIS has been Amazon’s most luxurious – and expensive – ebook reader since it’s 2016 debut, but a small refresh to this new third-generation Oasis has cemented its place as the best Kindle money can buy, and a more formidable competitor to Kobo’s equivalent, the Forma. The 2019 edition of the Kindle Oasis is almost physically identical to the previous model; the only spots it differs is in the addition of a warmer yellow-orange adjustable front light and an improved battery life. That warmer colouring makes all the difference to the reading experience, especially at night, as blue light has been found to be disruptive to sleep. If you prefer the older blue-coloured backlight, you can still opt for this via a hue slider. You can even schedule…

OFF-THE-SHELF NAS UNITS are easy to come by, but they’re often underpowered, overpriced, or otherwise disappointing. Many of them run some kind of Linux (usually on quite modestly powered ARM hardware), and it’s pretty straightforward to build a Linux box, and cram it with as many hard drives as geometry permits. You may even have enough spare parts lying around to get most of the way there (we did). You don’t need anything special hardware-wise (4GB of RAM and a CPU sometime from the last decade is fine), but several large hard drives help. Many consumer-level NAS devices come in attractive small form factors, and thanks to their low power consumption, don’t require noisy cooling. So, we thought we’d try our hand at mimicking this. If the prospect of using…

The endeavour of human flight has kept inventors occupied for centuries, especially since the Wright brothers successfully flew the world’s first aeroplane. Planes may now be commonplace, but the challenge of getting humans off the ground without a giant metal tube and some in-flight complimentary peanuts is just getting started. Richard Browning is at the forefront of this incredible movement with Gravity Industries (gravity.co), the company he founded to develop the Jet Suit, a $600,000 jet-engine powered machine that enables him to fly. On his own. No need for a plane here, folks. We recently visited the Gravity HQ and lab in Wiltshire to meet Richard and some of his team, and to get the inside track on how a seemingly unattainable dream, a flight of fantasy, if you will,…

[SOFTWARE] Unable to transcribe audio recording I recently interviewed a family member for my genealogical research, but when I came to write up the transcription using Express Scribe (www.nch.com.au/scribe/) it says I need a pro licence because the audio files have been recorded in M4A format. Can I avoid this unnecessary expense? ANNA YOUNG What you need to do is find a tool that can convert the M4A file into one supported by the free version of the program, such as MP3. We recommend Pazera Free Audio Extractor (www.pazera-software.com/products/ audio-extractor/), which not only supports a wide range of audio files, but can also be used to extract audio from video too. Download and run the portable version, then simply open the folder containing your audio files in File Explorer and…

SIMILAR TO WRITING a document, recording your ideas is just part of the job – editing them into a form you want to present is more challenging. With a podcast, getting that right is critical to your show making a good impression and keeping listeners coming back. We recommend that you first create a rough edit of your whole episode. Listen to that all the way through, while you’re doing something else that doesn’t demand a lot of attention. You’ll most likely pick up on moments in your recording that you’ll want to tweak, or even where you want to add a jingle or interstitial audio. Note down the timecode wherever you can. Apple’s Notes app is a great place for this. After you’ve edited your first episode, send it…

KEEP YOUR PERFORMANCE STEADY AND SECURE MAINTAIN A HEALTHY PC WITH ASHAMPOO WINOPTIMIZER 2019. FULL VERSION WORTH $30 Ashampoo WinOptimizer 2019 boosts, cleans and optimises the performance of your Windows system far beyond what built-in tools can deliver. Multiple included modules help analyse, customise and tweak Windows to your needs. One-click optimisation, a user favorite, removes clutter, fixes invalid shortcuts and cleans your browsers off redundant data like browsing history entries and cookies. PC maintenance tools remove junk files and browsing traces and also clean the Registry database. Powerful process and service management tools along with boot optimisation help improve Windows startup times. Ashampoo WinOptimizer 2019 also features powerful system analysis for detailed information on installed software and hardware. Download link: www.ashampoo.com/techlife SPARE YOURSELF FROM INTERNET VILLAINS ELIMINATE AGGRESSIVE VIRUSES…

APPLE IS IMPLEMENTING A CHANGE IN IOS 13 THAT WILL RESTRICT BACKGROUND ACCESS OF THE CALLING FUNCTIONALITY FROM ALL MESSAGING APPS, INCLUDING FACEBOOK’S MESSENGER AND WHATSAPP. As reported by The Information, Apple is implementing a change in iOS 13 that will restrict background access of the calling functionality from all messaging apps, including Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp. Clamping down on the apps that can run on a device in the background should help improve its battery life by reducing processing demand, which should also nudge up its overall performance. Another, and more pressing issue, is related to what else these apps can do while they’re still silently running after the user thinks they have been closed. In 2015, Facebook was found to be abusing its VoIP capabilities in its main…

THE BAND 4 ALSO OFFERS SLEEP TRACKING, AND THANKS TO THE SLIM AND LIGHT WEIGHT DESIGN WE DIDN’T NOTICE WE WERE STILL WEARING THE TRACKER IN BED.IT MEASURED A BIT LESS DEEP SLEEP THAN THE SAMSUNG GALAXY WATCH, BUT OVERALL SLEEP TIMES WERE COMPARABLE. THE XIAOMI MI Band 3 was good, but the Xiaomi Mi Band 4 is vying for greatness. For less than the price of two movie tickets, a couple of tubs of popcorn and two supersized drinks, you could be getting active with a color display, heart rate monitor and a connected GPS. The band even packs swim tracking, and unlike its predecessor, its screen is easy to see indoors, and out. DESIGN The Xiaomi Mi Band 4’s design is clean, simple and looks nothing short of…

BLUETOOTH AUDIO STREAMING is pretty standard these days but – the way most folks use it – it’s often a one-to-one connection. You pair something, like a phone or tablet, and playback audio to headphones, speakers or a sound system. The Fiio BTR3 follows this premise, but as a Bluetooth-enabled DAC/amp, it can make any wired pair of headphones act like a wireless pair of headphones thanks to its built-in Bluetooth support, while also amping up your audio. For devices in its class, it looks to be the one to beat right now. DESIGN Bluetooth dongles have been done before, but this one’s different. It’s built to be robust and adaptable, doing more behind the scenes to optimise audio quality. It’s a small rectangular piece, about three-quarters the height of…

As consoles become more and more like PCs – that is, increasingly powerful and with multiple versions available – once PC-only optimisation settings are becoming more common. As Gearbox online and social producer owner Scott Velasquez explained in a new PlayStation Blog post, Borderlands 3 is the latest game to offer PC-like graphics options – at least on PS4 Pro. “The PS4 is an amazing console, but the PS4 Pro takes things to another level and allows us to push the game further by running at higher resolutions and higher framerates,” Velasquez said, adding that Borderlands 3 will support 4K and HDR output on PS4 Pro as well.…

Dragon Project F2P MONSTER SLAYIN’ Free with IAP WITH THE RECENT overwhelming success of Monster Hunter World, a monster battling action RPG that allows you to hunt and take down a wide range of various beasties, enterprising developers have started replicating versions of this once niche game genre into the mainstream. The series had begun its life on Nintendo handhelds, so it wasn’t going to be long before smashing giant hammers into dinosaur-esque behemoths hit mobile screens. Dragon Project is effectively a shrunk down version of MHW, albeit without much of its flair and content, but it still manages to look and feel just like its full sized brother. Much of the gameplay involves grinding out lower level quests in order to gain access to areas and “summons” that host…

ACER’S SPIN LINEUP of laptops spans across multiple categories and operating systems, with the Spin 5 claiming the mid-range Windows 10 laptop slot. With a total of four different screen orientations, the Spin 5 doubles as a tablet or a movie streaming screen just by rotating the display. The Spin 5’s exterior isn’t something that’s going to attract a lot of attention, but it sure is svelte. The brushed metal on the lid and the silver bezels around the housing look sleek. Overall, the Spin 5 measures 15.9 x 32.4 x 22.6 cm and weighs 1.6kg. It’s small enough to toss in a backpack or messenger bag and not weigh you down. There’s a decent amount of ports on the Spin 5, going from HDMI, USB-C, and two USB 3.0…

FOR THOSE FAMILIAR with Sony’s industry-leading WH-1000XM3 noise-cancelling over-ear headphones, there’s a good reason that the Japanese tech giant has opted to give such a similar name to these true wireless earbuds. The WF-1000XM3 successfully captures everything that makes its over-ear counterpart special and transmutes it into a super compact alternative, with only a few minor caveats. First and foremost, the noise-cancelling is just as exceptional as its bigger sibling, meaning that it’s the best on the consumer market right now. Sporting an updated version of Sony’s dedicated processor (the QN1e chip), each bud utilises two microphones to intelligently identify environmental noises and aggressively block them out. The results are spectacular – particularly for typical use cases such as commuting, busy streets or chatty offices – and further customisation within…

IT’S EASY FOR us to forget sometimes that people use computers for more than just gaming, benchmarking, and editing magazines. And that, sometimes, people might even plug their computers into a screen other than a monitor. So, when we got our hands on Fractal Design’s Node 202 case, we knew what we had to do: Build a sleek, powerful, but inexpensive media center, designed to sit snugly beneath the television. The brief for this project was a little tricky, though – it needed to be a PC that didn’t look like a PC. We needed a Mini-ITX motherboard, HDMI port, and a processor with onboard graphics. Oh, and keep the price as low as possible, thank you very much. Media center PCs are nothing new, but the components that can…

SOME GAMES ARE better with a PC controller. As is apparently the case with Rage 2, certain games have garbage default key bindings. Others, like most third-person action games, aren’t cut out for a mouse and keyboard setup. And can you imagine playing Mortal Kombat 11 on a keyboard? We can, because we’ve tried. It sucks. Likewise, you won’t persuade us that open world games such as Grand Theft Auto or Far Cry aren’t enhanced by switching to a controller after climbing into a vehicle. While you can clutter your gaming space with a plethora of peripherals designed to support a specific genre – fight sticks, flight sticks, or steering wheels – the controller is the great generalist of PC gaming. It’s an easy, often cheap solution for when you…

HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE (or HDR) is enjoying something of a renaissance, thanks to a growing number of HDR-compatible displays that can display a wider range of brightness levels and colours than standard screens. Mobile phones have been creating HDR images for years, with varying degrees of success, often looking like the first few seconds after a nuclear blast with hugely oversaturated colours and lighting that’s just too bright. To make something more realistic – that captures both the brightness of the sky and the lushness of the grass without losing either in highlights or shadows – you can merge three images in an image editing app. Or, you can cheat and do it with a single image as we are here. We’re using Serif’s brilliant Affinity Photo for this tutorial,…

IN RECENT ARTICLES we have detailed how to set up Google Pay (previously Android Pay), and have touched on other uses of Near Field Communication, so let’s have a closer look. NFC is a way for your phone to interact with other NFC-enabled devices in close proximity. It operates over a distance of just a few centimetres and provides a connection between the devices using induction rather than Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. This is the same technology as wireless charging, and the limited range makes it extra secure. It also means that one device can be passive with no power source of its own, such as smart cards or security and access tags. Among other things, NFC lets your smartphone double as a contactless credit or debit card, a transport card,…

LAST MONTH WE looked at how you can use simple tools like routines on your home assistant to automate devices around your home. If you want to up your automation game, however, you can use something more advanced – like IFTTT. IFTTT is short for If This Then That, and it’s a tool that allows you to connect your services and devices with each other. IFTTT works with both hardware devices and software services. It will work with your voice assistant, your garage door opener, your smart lights and other smart appliances, but it will also talk to Facebook and Instagram, or send notifications to your phone, or work with your chosen music app, or draw information from your fitness app. For example, you could program IFTTT to make an…

Positioning and arranging so many individual drawings all on separate layers may be a daunting prospect, but it can be a quick and seamless process with the help of a few keyboard shortcuts. With the Move Tool active (press V), hold Cmd/Ctrl and click an image on the canvas to make it the active layer, enabling you to quickly switch between which layer you are editing without needing to scroll through the Layers palette trying to find the one you want! If you have a group of drawings nicely arranged but want to relocate them on the canvas or resize them as a batch, hold Shift and Cmd/Ctrl while clicking each of them on the canvas to select multiple layers. They can now be moved all together, and by hitting…

PANASONIC TOOK ITS time announcing its first full-frame mirrorless cameras. That time, though, has been well spent in making sure nearly everything about the Lumix S series snappers is perfect. Both the S1 and the S1R are rugged, well designed, easy to use and produce some stupendous results with excellent colour rendition. The choice between the two comes down to whether you’re a videographer or a stills photographer, and how much spare change you have lying around. Both S series cameras are identical externally, and come with specs sheets that are similar but with some key differences. To cut a long story short, the more expensive S1R, with its 47MP sensor is focused on stills while the more affordable 24MP S1 was built for the videographer. However, it doesn’t matter…

THE BATTLE FOR viewers continues in what is becoming an increasingly competitive industry. Subscriptions to video streaming platforms continue to grow at a rapid rate, with services working hard to regularly provide new content able to be watched instantly from any device. As one of the biggest tech companies in the world, it may not be surprising then to learn that Amazon has a video streaming platform of its own. Prime Video launched in the United States in 2011, but it wasn’t until December 2016 that the service expanded to over 200 countries including Australia. Now two years later Prime Video has reached 600,000 Australian subscribers and continues to rise. While that number may be less than the likes of Stan or Netflix, it’s Amazon’s collection of original shows that…

cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec Lost a file? Got a bad disc? The completely free PhotoRec can help. We’ll be the first to admit that it’s not very pretty, and it’s certainly not the most user-friendly app given its text-based interface. But when you’re at your wits’ end, it’s the most useful program there is. Basically it works by breaking all the rules: it ignores the traditional structure of drives and skims through them bit-by-bit, enabling it to both find files (and not just photos) which Windows can’t. It can ignore those sections of discs (like tired CD-Rs) which are no longer readable. Don’t worry about damaging anything, as it only runs in read-only mode, meaning it can’t overwrite files; you can even use it to pull data from old mechanical hard drives, though…

RedditTube REDDIT VIDEOS WITHOUT THE REDDIT. reddittube.netlify.com Sometimes, some of the most potent utilities come from a simple concept executed in a simple way. RedditTube is one of these. The middle ground between the ubiquitous video streaming platform and the ‘front page of the internet’, RedditTube allows you to navigate to any subreddit of your choosing and simply watch any YouTube clips that have been posted there. This is especially useful for certain subreddits – ones where videos are the primary focus (such as /r/videos) for example, or when you’re looking to quickly wade through the swathes of non-video content on some of the more niche ones. The interface is simple, with a navigation bar at the top to get to your desired subreddit, an embedded YouTube player filling much…

The battle royale game that promised to let 1,000 players fight to be the last one standing across an ever-evolving world didn’t stick the landing. Automaton, the developer of Mavericks: Proving Grounds, announced in an update to the bottom of its website that the studio has entered insolvency (bankruptcy in US legal parlance). “Please be advised that due to insufficient funding, the development of the Mavericks: Proving Grounds game has now ceased,” the website states. “The joint administrators are in the process of licensing the Deceit game so there will be no change in the live operation and provision of this game.” MAVERICKS’ GOAL OF THOUSAND-PLAYER MATCHES WAS AMBITIOUS BY ITSELF, AND THE GAME WAS ALSO MEANT TO INCLUDE DENSE ENVIRONMENTS THAT WERE MASSIVELY DESTRUCTIBLE, ALLOWING PLAYERS TO RESHAPE THE…

WHILE THE MACBOOK Pro 15-inch (2019) doesn’t look like it will radically change the game compared to its predecessor, it does bring some welcome updates, including an improved keyboard and some of the latest and most powerful processors from Intel. This gradual improving of the MacBook Pro is in many ways understandable. It’s very unlikely that you’ll be upgrading your laptop every year, so that fact that on the surface the MacBook Pro 15-inch (2019) doesn’t offer a huge leap over last year’s model isn’t that important. What is important, though, is whether or not the MacBook Pro 15-inch (2019) offers a compelling upgrade for people rocking MacBook Pros from years ago. Also, with Windows laptops offering stylish and powerful alternatives (especially in the burgeoning Ultrabook category) – can this…

DON’T BOTHER LOOKING FOR BUTTONS ON THIS MONITOR, THOUGH – THEY’RE NOT THERE. THIS MONITOR WILL TURN OFF OR ON, DEPENDING ON WHETHER OR NOT IT DETECTS A SIGNAL. THIS IS A COOL IDEA, IN THEORY, BUT IT DOES MAKE US WONDER WHY THE BEZELS ARE SO THICK WHEN THERE ARE NO BUTTONS. THERE ARE SO many monitors out there these days that are packed with huge screens, impossibly thin bezels and HDR, that when a display rolls around that just offers a great resolution and impeccable image quality, it’s kind of a breath of fresh air. And, that’s basically the LG UltraFine 24MD4KL-B in a nutshell. This USB-C monitor is practically designed for Macs and Ultrabooks, with its buttonless design and relatively lightweight build. With a single Thunderbolt 3…

TRUE WIRELESS EARBUDS are increasingly dropping in price; while you can fork out for a model from big names like Apple, Sony, Beats, and Bose, more and more companies are releasing their own AirPods alternatives for under $250. JLab’s latest offering, the JBuds Air Executive True Wireless earbuds are one of these alternatives – but can they measure up to pricier options in terms of connectivity, battery life, and sound quality? The JBuds Air Executive buds aren’t the prettiest earbuds we’ve seen, sporting chunky black housings with the JLab logo in silver – with their protruding stems, they look like a beefed-up and less polished version of the Apple AirPods. The housings are touch-sensitive, and can be used to control your music playback, summon your device’s voice assistant, answer and…

WE LOVE GAMING at TechLife but we have to pull ourselves back from time to time, and remember that some people just want a good, reliable computer to do their work on. Heck, we spend most of our time busily writing away in Google Drive on rigs packing graphics cards worth hundreds if not thousands of dollars. You know, you can build the most powerful PC available, but if you’re not going to push the limits of what its hardware is capable of, you’re practically washing money down the drain. With that in mind, we took a look at building a machine that we could use for that thing we all dread: good, honest work. Pre-built systems are popular for simple desktop work – writing, web browsing, and so on…

WE LOVE ICLOUD Photo Library. Being able to take a photo on an iPhone and see it instantly on your Mac or the kids’ iPad is one of those magical moments that makes us love Apple. But for all its benefits, iCloud Photo Library – or iCloud Photos, as it’s called in iOS 12 and macOS Mojave – is a lousy backup. That’s because it isn’t actually intended as one. iCloud’s job is to sync changes between your devices, so you can access any of your photos on any of your devices at any time, and changes you make in one place take effect elsewhere too. However, if an image is damaged in one place, that’ll propagate, and without another backup – one that’s detached from iCloud – the picture…

MOST BUSINESSES OF any size now regularly go through a cyber security audit, where the company’s activities are checked against good practice and vulnerabilities and risks are identified so that they can be mitigated. Most home networks never experience that – and they really should. While home users can’t be expected to hire a team of penetration testers to go over their digital lives with a fine-toothed comb, it’s still a good idea to run an annual audit on your own digital equipment. It’s mostly just checking that you and your family are engaging in good practice to ensure that the risk of being hacked, of having your identity stolen or your important memories lost are minimised. We’ve put together here a quick ten point checklist that you can use…

THERE ARE CERTAIN effects that you can only really achieve through in-camera filtration and which are not possible to re-create in post-production. For example, the way that polarisers remove surface glare and reflections or extending shutter speeds with neutral density filters. When it comes to filters there are two basic types: screw in filters or square, slot-in filters, also known as ‘system’ filters. The latter are far more versatile, allowing you to use the filters with multiple lenses with different filter threads, stack two or three filters with little risk of vignetting, and adjust the height of graduated filters. Filter systems comprise of three parts: the adaptor ring, which screws into the filter thread, the filter holder, which attaches to the ring and the filters. The holder consists of guide…

Portable bidet A ‘REVITALISING MICRO SHOWER’ THAT’S FULL OF POOP. $206 | sonney.com If giving your colleagues and social associates a detailed synopsis of your activated almond diet or eco glamping weekend retreat isn’t delivering the moral superiority you expected, then it’s time to move on to an entirely unfounded environmental issue: the use of toilet paper. Yep, thanks to a whizz team of marketing execs in Silicon Valley, good ol’ TP is the devil and a portable bidet named Sonney is our environmental saviour. We’ve got nothing against anal supersoakers per se, but we couldn’t help but point out the non-recyclable or degradable plastics and mined metals in this rear irrigation kickstarter are, arguably, far more environmentally irresponsible than toilet paper from renewably farmed trees. Zucklight THIS LIGHT ZUCKS,…