Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2021 i TechLife

A security researcher has published a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit on Twitter for a recently discovered zero-day vulnerability in Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and other Chromium-based browsers. While this zero-day vulnerability has already been publicly disclosed, it has not yet been patched in the latest version of Chrome or Edge. Security researcher Rajvardhan Agarwal created the PoC exploit for a remote code execution vulnerability for the V8 JavaScript engine found in Chromium-based browsers and published it in a tweet. Although the vulnerability has been fixed in the latest version of the V8 JavaScript engine, it’s still unclear as to when Google will add it to Chrome. The PoC HTML file created by Agarwal and its corresponding JavaScript file can be used to launch the calculator app on Windows 10 when loaded…

From $7,579, www.samsung.com When viewed for the first time, it’s hard not to gush over the QN900A’s stark minimalism, which aims to make everything but the content you’re watching melt away from view. The first thing you’ll notice (or maybe not notice) is the TV’s nearly non-existent bezel, which has been reduced to less than a millimeter (0.9.mm) – an achievement made possible by a new and exclusive matrixing technology that’s said to shrink the space between where the pixels at the edge of the display end and where the bezel begins. The next thing you’ll probably wonder is where the QN900A’s speakers are, as they’re not visible from front-on. In fact, the TV’s speaker grilles can be found along its left and right edges, housing an 80W 6.2.2 channel…

Mice in the cabinets. Mice in the streets. Thousands upon thousands of mice in the barn, pooping so much it takes six hours to clean up their waste. These are scenes from Queensland and New South Wales, where an out-of-control mouse infestation is making life miserable for farmers, grocers and other citizens of the eastern Australian states. One farmer described the rodent frenzy as “an absolute plague,” more severe than anything locals have seen in decades. Some farmers have already lost entire grain harvests to the rampaging mice, according to local media reports, while hotels have had to close because they can’t keep the critters out of the rooms. Staff at a grocery store in a small town northwest of Sydney reported catching as many as 600 mice a night.…

$249, www.aftershokz.com.au Most of us have used conventional headphones that either encompasses the ear with a foam pad or fit inside the ear canal and can recognise the limitations of both solutions. The pads are initially the comfortable option, but they’re not nice when the weather is warm, and those that go inside the ears can become uncomfortable with prolonged use since the ear canal was never meant to have things jammed into it. And both approaches have a limitation in that they tend to block out local sounds making them potentially dangerous when situation awareness is vital, like when you might be cycling across a busy city. There is an alternative available that was discovered long ago, bone conduction, which solves both the comfort and the awareness issue. Design…

Activision has released an update on its Call of Duty: Warzone anti-cheat progress, detailing how many permabans have been issued and how the team roots out cheaters. According to the official Call of Duty blog, over 475,000 players have been permanently banned from Call of Duty: Warzone. The latest ban wave, which crashed onto Verdansk’s shores on April 12, was the seventh large-scale ban since this February alone. Activision states that its security and enforcement teams issue bans daily “to individual offenses or repeat offenders.” Activision is also cracking down on cheat providers and resellers, or people who create accounts, farm them, and sell them at a premium. The developer has banned 45,000 “fraudulent, black market accounts used by repeat offenders” and is making sure those cheaters won’t be able…

$89.95, PlayStation, Xbox, PC, https://outriders.square-enix-games.com/en-gb Outriders is a game in the throes of an identity crisis. It’s an interesting amalgamation of Gears of War, Destiny, and Bulletstorm, with gameplay that oscillates between surprising and same-y. It has moments of rare beauty, offering up sweeping vistas of gorgeous alien monoliths surrounded by swirling blue clouds, and then it has you trudge through seven hours’ worth of muddy brown landscapes. There are flashes of variety mixed with pangs of repetition. It’s hard to pin down Outriders, a game that’s constantly pinning you down in open areas littered with chest-high walls. It shines when it leans into how it was marketed: as a bloody, messy, foul-mouthed looter shooter that lets you beat the piss out of aliens. However, Outriders has so many other…

$149, consumer.huawei.com The Huawei Watch Fit Elegant as the name suggests, is billed as a more elegant version of the Watch Fit that launched in 2020. Huawei has now renamed the original the Huawei Watch Fit Active edition. It’s taking the same fitness tracker and smartwatch hybrid look and swapping the polymer case for a stainless steel one. It does mean a slight jump in weight, but it does give what was already an attractive wearable a slightly more high grade feel. Design and display The headline draw here with the Fit Elegant edition is the promise of a more elegant design. Huawei hopes to achieve that by swapping the polymer fiber case it used on the first Fit for one made out of polished stainless steel. That added metal…

$319, www.amazfit.com You get a lot of features for your money with the T-Rex Pro, but a ‘wow factor’ isn’t one of them. The T-Rex Pro looks almost exactly like the original Amazfit T-Rex. This new version also has four screws in the bezel for a practical, industrial and slightly plasticky look. There are also four metal buttons (mode, back, up and down) on the edge of the casing that are big enough to easily press while running or when wearing gloves. Too easily, in fact, making accidental presses inevitable. A 47.7mm radius watch that’s 13.5mm thick, the T-Rex Pro is a chunky polycarbonate product that has a relatively masculine look, but its paltry 59.4g means it never feels heavy when being worn. Zepp says that the T-Rex Pro is…

$169 and $249, www.razer.com The Razer Kaira is pretty sleek… for a gaming headset. With a black and green color scheme and RGB lighting on the sides of the earcups, it’s definitely got that gamer aesthetic – so much so that you wouldn’t want to wear it anywhere else outside of your house – but it’s not an awful look by any stretch of the imagination. In terms of construction, the Razer Kaira is mostly plastic with the exception of a thin metal band that runs through the bridge of the headset. What that means is that the bridge is fairly sturdy, but the joints themselves are plastic and are more likely to be prone to snapping. That’s not exactly what you want to hear when you’re buying a $149…

$2,599, www.viewsonic.com So, we’ll be honest here, the X100-4K is pretty big, and if you’re not used to how big projectors are, you might be surprised. Coming in at 463mm long, you’ll be wanting to stow this away if it’s to become a permanent room fixture. Widthways it measures 416mm and it’s 183mm high. The base stands on adjustable feet which can be raised and lowered individually by simply turning them – great if you’re setting it on an uneven surface. For a projector of this size, it’s actually quite light at 7.60kg, and that’s in part to the fact that it’s LED rather than lamp (for instance, Sony’s lightest 4K projector, their lamp-based VPL-VW270ES, is almost double that at 14kg). In terms of ports, there are four HDMI 2.0…

Many websites that sell products or services rely on third-party payment providers to process payments. When you make a purchase, you’re redirected to that provider’s website to complete the transaction before being redirected back. Sadly, scammers have found ways of intercepting traffic to these sites to pop up their own fake version of the payment site to trick users into giving up their credit card details. This form of a ‘man-in-themiddle’ attack doesn’t target the payment provider, but instead alters the code on the merchant website to redirect your traffic to the phishing site. Malwarebytes Premium’s web protection component offers users realtime protection against known phishing sites based on their behaviour, but you can take further steps to protect yourself: verify the payment provider’s website using the information in the…

Any network drive easily accessible from Windows is vulnerable to ransomware. Tightening security means changing your network shared credentials. First, if you’ve set up a user on your NAS that shares the same username and password as your Windows account for ease of access, log into your NAS’s user account settings and change the password to something unique. Also, make sure you’re not saving network credentials: when you’re next prompted to log on to a network share, make sure the box ‘Remember my credentials’ is left unticked. If – as is likely – you’ve previously saved credentials, type ‘credentials’ into the Search box and click ‘Credential Manager’. You should see entries for each saved network password under ‘Windows Credentials’ – click the downward arrow button followed by ‘Remove > Yes’…

To be frank, paired with a capable PC and using the latest gear, such as the HTC Vive Cosmos Elite or HP’s Reverb G2, which we test in this feature, VR gameplay is very solid and enjoyable on the whole. That, however, is part of the problem. For the vast majority of folk, who aren’t as into PCs as us enthusiasts, you also need to get a fairly powerful, usually expensive, rig to pair with your brand-new tethered headset in order to get the premium experience. The high frame rates that give you a smooth VR experience rely on a fairly powerful setup. Running on any old office PC just won’t be enough – frame rates will be rather choppy and it will certainly taint your immersive experience. Paired with…

SKILL LEVEL Anyone can do it SUITABLE FOR… Windows 10 Jargon buster! HDR High Dynamic Range is a technology for more vivid images: the dynamic range is the difference between the brightest and the darkest parts of an image or video. WCG Wide Colour Gamut is related to HDR, but where HDR is about brightness WCG is about colours. WCG displays can show more colours than standard ones and look more realistic as a result. PICTURE PASSWORD A pattern you swipe over an on-screen photo to unlock your PC. Best tip! If Sync Settings is switched on, your personalisation can be applied to any Windows 10 PC you use. Of all the things we love about Windows, one of our favourites is its personalisation. From the very earliest versions to…

The green giant has finally given the green light to higher-quality audio. Set to launch later this year, Spotify HiFi is the service’s long-awaited entry into CD-quality streaming. According to Spotify, high-quality music streaming has been one of its users’ consistently most requested new features – though that should come as little surprise after four years of waiting for it to arrive. The company initially revealed the higher-quality service in a teaser in 2017, but it wasn’t until February this year that the Spotify HiFi tier was announced to the world. The HiFi tier will allow Premium subscribers to upgrade their membership so they can listen to significantly better quality streams than are currently available. The big question is how will Spotify HiFi compare with existing lossless audio propositions, such…

The Skin Smoothing Filter is part of Adobe’s Neural Filters command: a range of new filters that employ artificial intelligence to analyse image content and determine which areas to affect. Skin Smoothing can automatically recognise people and faces in your photos, isolate the skin and let you apply a softening effect. Pimples, spots, wrinkles, eye bags and rough skin can all be de-emphasised within a few clicks. Even a model with great skin like this can benefit from some subtle smoothing. Skin Smoothing gives better results than many other smoothing techniques, as it lets you smooth out tones while retaining texture in the pores, which is essential for keeping the portrait looking natural. Neural Filters are part of a bold new direction for Photoshop, as Adobe embraces AI. They won’t…

The collision occurred in 2016, but researchers only confirmed the details of the event in March 2021. This antineutrino, an antimatter counterpart of the wispy, difficult-to-detect particle known as a neutrino, collided with an electron in the ice of Antarctica at nearly the speed of light. That collision created a shower of particles detected by the buried IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a facility responsible for much of the important high-energy neutrino research of the last decade. Now IceCube physicists report that the particle shower included evidence of a long-theorised but never-before-seen event known as Glashow resonance. Back in 1960, the physicist Sheldon Glashow, then a postgraduate researcher at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics in Denmark, predicted that when a sufficiently high-energy antineutrino collided with an electron, it would produce a…

$279, www.logitechg.com Competitive PC gamers are always trying to get the best hardware that money can buy, and a good gaming mouse is certainly one of the key components to focus on. The Logitech G Pro X Superlight Wireless Gaming Mouse is probably the lightest mouse we’ve ever tested, and it’s an absolute joy to use. The lightness comes with a few sacrifices – there’s no swanky RGB lighting, the body feels a bit smaller in your hand, and there’s no dedicated button for switching DPI levels. For some, these will be a worthy omission in favor of keeping the mouse as light as possible, but for others it might lead to other choices in Logitech’s gaming lineup. Design There’s no denying that the G Pro X Superlight is a…

There’s no shortage of investment in the XR space with Facebook announcing a partnership with Ray-Ban to release its first pair of smart glasses and devs have already built a VR mod for the popular early access viking survival game Valheim. AI has its sights on skin cancer with an app that’ll classify multiple spots simultaneously and highlight the spots that should get follow up checks. If that wasn’t enough, the GPT-3 large language model is also being used by 300 commercial applications and is currently producing about as much content as 4.5 million professional writers would, on average, each day. XR Facebook is partnering with Ray-Ban to make its first ‘smart’ glasses. Oculus owner picks Ray-Ban to be wingman for its first smart glasses. $TBC | facebook.com/RayBan/ Facebook CEO,…

$49.95, PlayStation, Xbox, PC, www.eagames.com It takes a bold man to risk thousands of dollars on the promise that no-one will find their game boring. But Josef Fares is just that brazen. After watching the credits roll on his latest co-op adventure, it’s clear that his confidence was well placed (and plentiful), as It Takes Two is anything but dull. The latest title from Fares’ studio, Hazelight, It Takes Two explores themes of relationships, divorce, and parenthood, with you and a friend taking control of a husband and wife duo at the end of their tether – sometimes quite literally. May and Cody, buckling under the pressures of balancing work and family life, have decided to get a divorce. However, the moment they tell their young daughter Rose, she enlists…

$3,599, www.gigabyte.com The Gigabyte Aorus 17G didn’t get the memo that gaming laptops have been following a trend of late, discarding the previously chunky aesthetic in favor of a slimmer, more portable build. Instead, this powerful laptop is still rocking the tank-like appearance, and makes no effort to hide its identity as a dedicated gaming machine. If you liked the previous RTX 2070-powered Gigabyte Aorus 17G (2020) then you’re sure to love the latest offering too – the familiar exterior has been upgraded to contain an Nvidia 3070 laptop graphics card to power the latest AAA games, and the already impressive 240Hz display has been replaced with a faster 300Hz one for an edge in competitive titles. Design There’s no sugar coating it – the Gigabyte Aorus 17G is thicc.…

“The biggest difference between the latest iteration of the Google Nest Hub and previous generations is the new Sleep Sensing feature.” $149, store.google.com The Google Nest Hub 2, or the second generation as the tech giant is calling it, is Google’s latest smart display, and like the previous version, which was called the Google Home Hub before the name was changed to Google Nest Hub, it’s billed by Google as the perfect bedside smart display. While that claim was a bit of a stretch in the case of the original model (it was based in part on Google’s Hub not having a camera), Google may feel it’s got a stronger case this time around, because unlike any other smart display on the market, the new Google Nest Hub can track…

$199, shop.westerndigital.com The latest version of WD’s portable hard disk drive throws up a question right out of the gate – what is with the name? It doesn’t help that WD keeps the same names for its hard disk drive ranges even if new models are released almost every year. Take the My Passport Ultra, for example: it was first reviewed in 2013, and back then, it had a different design and a much smaller capacity. WD has given the plastic/metal combo from the previous generation a different design, fusing modern anodised metal and textures, in either a dark blue or a silver finish. That’s down from six options in the previous range (which are still on sale). There’s a white activity light which indicates that the device is active,…

$169, brooksrunning.com.au The Brooks Adrenaline GTS 21 is a support shoe, with the cushioning and rigid sole unit you’d expect. Compared to last year’s GTS 20, it uses more of Brooks’ DNA Loft material in the midsole (a cushioning material made from EVA and rubber, designed to be soft and lightweight, but durable). DNA Loft now extends along the outside edge of the midsole for smoother transition as your foot rolls, but Brooks has opted to keep the firmer BioMoGo foam on the inside. This is a good compromise that provides a little extra cushioning, while also preventing the sole unit from twisting. The GuideRails support system is designed to control movement as your foot rolls, and is intended to reduce excess rotation of your heel and shin. It consists…

$99, nanoleaf.me The Nanoleaf Essentials Lightstrip isn’t remarkably different from most others available on the market today. The starter pack is a 2m strip that’s a touch over half-inch wide, housing 21 LEDs per meter in groups of five. Meter-long expansions are available, and up to eight can be connected to the Lightstrip for a total of 10m. Anything more and the brightness will be affected. Like the Nanoleaf light panels, the Essentials Lightstrip has a peel-and-stick adhesive layer on the back, and comes with a power cable connected to a small controller (also with its own adhesive pads) at one end and a rather chunky AC adaptor at the other. Another small cable connects the strip itself to the controller via tiny pins. The controller can handle all the…

In most cases your security software should stop infections in their tracks, but if some creep through you may find them difficult to remove. Start by attempting to boot into Safe mode with networking – doing so usually cripples the malware enough to allow your security software to download the latest updates, perform a successful scan and remove the malware. The quickest way to do this is to type ‘msconfig’ into the Search box and click System Configuration. Assuming you’ve not been locked out by the malware, switch to the Boot tab to tick ‘Safe boot’ and select ‘Network’ before clicking OK and rebooting. If this doesn’t work, visit your security vendor’s home page on a clean machine to create a rescue disc – failing that, use Kaspersky’s tool (https://…

1 BROWSER SECURITY Open your browser’s Settings page and look for the Security and Privacy section. For example, Firefox users should make sure that Enhanced Tracking Protection is switched on along with Deceptive Content & Dangerous Software Protection. In Chrome, look for Safe Browsing in Privacy and Security. 2 INSTALL UBLOCK ORIGIN Visit your browser’s add-ins page (Chrome Web Store, Microsoft Store for Edge, or about:addins in Firefox) to search for – and install – uBlock Origin. Once in place, it’ll start blocking all intrusive ads, including many malicious ones. Click its browser toolbar icon to view stats. 3 AVOID UNSAFE TECH Many dangerous ads are employed using the likes of outdated and insecure technologies like Flash and Java. Up-to-date browsers now block these, but if you’ve installed Java open…

1 PROTECTED FOLDERS Open the main Bitdefender program and select Protection from the left-hand pane. Verify Safe Files is switched on, then click ‘Protected Folders’. Click ‘Protect More Folders’ then tick the folder(s) you want to protect from unauthorised access. Click OK. 2 WHITELIST APPS Bitdefender allows certain known trusted programs like Microsoft Office access to your folders but will automatically block unknown apps. You may first see an error message attempting to launch or use the program, then a Safe Files dialogue pops up. 3 TRUSTED APPS Click ‘View details’ to investigate the app in question – its name and file path will be listed, helping you identify if it’s safe or not. Assuming it is, flick the switch to ‘on’. While you’re here, you can also manually add…

We’ve detailed the hurdles VR needs to overcome to become truly cemented in our technological lives, but there’s another angle that’s just as important: development – in particular, investment. Because of the steady speed of sales in VR headsets, game development has certainly come along, but it hasn’t seen quite the astronomical leaps the main PC and console market has seen over the last few years. This means we’re left with a much narrower market for VR games than standard releases. This further damages the ecosystem of virtual reality, as it’s harder for it to gain momentum, because there’s no must-have killer app, outside of Half-Life: Alyx. The problem is market share, and it’s a chicken-and-egg scenario. Because the VR market is rather small compared to the combined might of…

The shared pursuit of love and happiness aside, not everyone is after the same thing – as Dali acknowledges in the design of its latest stereo speaker system, the Oberon 1 C. Audio systems, whether they are modest all-in-one micros or more ambitious active speaker types, often adopt a one-size-fits-all model – it’s part of their convenience appeal, after all. But these Oberons have been designed to appeal to more than one kind of buyer and set-up. This standmounter package belongs to a three-strong active speaker system series, which also incorporates the 7 C floorstanders and On-Wall C wall-mounted speaker and is based on the Danish company’s Oberon passive speaker range. As Dali’s most affordable active range, they sit beneath the Rubicon C and Callisto C series, which are also…

“THE LSXs REMAIN ONE OF THE FINEST EXAMPLES OF THEIR KIND” You could say that all-in-one active wireless speaker systems are a case of thinking inside, rather than outside, the box. Whether they rely on an external connectivity hub, as the Dali and Q Acoustics do, or not, the core of the system lies within the speaker cabinet walls. We can’t imagine it’s easy to implement: there’s electronics interference to consider, as well as the need for physical space in the box and the speakers’ seamless communication with a box if there is one. Of course, as with any streaming product, wide service availability and convenient user experience are both key in an integrated system like this. KEF was perhaps the first manufacturer properly to impress us with such an…

REQUIRES macOS 10.15 or later YOU WILL LEARN How to create custom playlists in Apple Music using rules–based criteria IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes For people of a certain age, the mixtape was a rite of a passage – a carefully curated compilation of your favorite sounds shared with friends, lovers, workmates, and more. They took hours to make and were created with love and care. The arrival of iTunes changed all that – playlists now did the heavy lifting, freeing up your time; Shuffle mode allowed your Mac, iPhone or iPad to serve up an endless stream of tracks, turning music into a commodity. But it doesn’t have to be that way. On the one hand, an Apple Music subscription ($11.99/ month) can serve up human–curated stations that will…

In last month’s issue, we provided a (somewhat unflattering) overview of the internet’s most recent gold rush obsession: the non-fungible token (NFT). This month we thought we’d dive deeper into the technology and look at some of the issues and elements that we didn’t have space to cover last month. So let’s get to it. Buying NFTs According to a new report from nonfungible.com, more than US$2 billion was spent on NFTs in just the first quarter of this year alone – so you may be asking: where does one buy and sell these NFTs? That is actually somewhat complicated. NFTs are non-fungible: it’s right there in the same. That means that each NFT is unique – they aren’t equally exchangeable like a Bitcoin is. So there is no NFT-exchange…

Within the Neural Filter command you’ll find a range of beta filters (click the test tube icon to access them). These encompass all sorts of effects, from adding colours to old photos (Colorize) to tinting backdrops (Depth-Aware Haze). One of the most interesting Neural Filters is Smart Portrait. Like Skin Smoothing, it is able to recognise faces in your portraits, but its controls are more ambitious. You can add smiles, age or de-age a face, alter the direction of a gaze and shift a head position. Results are mixed (which is why the filter is still in beta mode), but it’s worth exploring.…

Primal Life Organics V3 Real White Teeth This RGB setup is designed for your mouth. US$499 | primallifeorganics.com/collections/led-whitener/Want pearly white teeth? Well ditch the toothpaste and all the hogwash your accredited dentist or medical doctor tells you and take a read of the super legit for-profit website naturalteethwhiteners.com (that was sarcasm for anyone here who thinks Bill Gates invented the coronavirus). Featuring all the trappings of a parasitic pyramid scheme this V3 Real Teeth Whitening System says it’s red and blue LEDs in the mouthguard make your teeth whiter after 15 minutes. Gosh, imagine what 15 hours over an RGB keyboard could do. Silver Storm Wireless Waterproof Mouse Rinse your tech with this fresh mouse wash. US$78.83 | sealshield.comLook, we know that since COVID we’ve all been spending a lot…

From $1,199, www.acer.com What you get with the Acer Swift 3X is a fairly standard, yet clean, laptop design. It won’t blow you away, but we still like the look and feel of it. Our only worry is that the screen seems a little thin, as it feels like it wouldn’t take much to break it – though thankfully we didn’t find out during our review. Apart from that, the HD display is good. Acer’s Swift 3X comes with a 14-inch (35.6 cm) LCD screen that looks great and uses ComfyView (anti-glare) technology. A slightly larger display would be nice, but that’s our only complaint on this front. We’re also fans of the fingerprint scanner. It was as easy to set up as on any smartphone, and we found it…

While remote work has been a rising trend for many years, Covid-19 has undoubtedly acted as a catalyst for the movement. Many major companies have embraced the shift to remote work, for example with employees at Twitter being offered the choice to work from home indefinitely, going into the office if and when they choose. However, this can bring with it some disadvantages. With many knowledge workers realising that remote work isn’t always the personal liberation that it’s trumpeted to be, organisations need to look at offering employees the flexibility to choose. So what does the future of work look like – remote, in-office, or hybrid? In my opinion, it’s all about hybrid work. The pitfalls of remote work Working exclusively at home has become a reality for many across…

A five-year-old girl walking with her father spotted the blubbery newcomer. The young girl, named Muireann, pointed out the walrus to her dad, Alan Houlihan, as they walked on Valentia Island in County Kerry. “I thought it was a seal at first, and then we saw the tusks,” Houlihan said. “He kind of jumped up on the rocks. He was massive. He was about the size of a bull or a cow.” Most walruses (Odobenus rosmarus) live near the Arctic Circle, where they hunt for shellfish in shallow water and clamber up onto the icebergs and beaches to rest. The humongous creatures rarely crop up along the Irish shoreline. The first recorded walrus sighting there occurred in 1897, but no other walruses were seen until the 1980s. Since then, fewer…

Bearded lollygagger George RR Martin famously spends his time gawping at the walls of his home office, pretending to write the next A Song of Ice and Fire book while sat in front of a DOS computer running 1987’s WordStar 4.0. Guru writes with, depending on his platform, tangentially archaic software that pushes everything but the words out of the way; on Windows it’s WriteMonkey, on Mac he goes for BBEdit. He has heard of novelists writing full books on their phones (try JotterPad, free with IAPs), and technophobes hand-writing every word of their memoirs. “If you are planning to use a computer, certain peripheral components will make the job a lot easier.” The important thing is to write. Guru’s long-suffering Editor would certainly suggest, as he often does to…

Former Dragon Age writer David Gaider – now co-founder at Australian game studio Summerfall – would love to see a Snyder cut-style remake of Dragon Age 2 given how much BioWare had to cut out during development. He described all the content he’d add and restore in such a remake in a recent Twitter thread, and it’s a treat for fans. “I’m willing to bet [Mark Darrah] or [Mike Laidlaw] (or anyone else on the team) would give very different answers than me, but it’s enough to give a sober man pause, because that was the Project of Multiple Regrets,” Gaider said. Relatedly, in a separate tweet he described Dragon Age 2 as “a fantastic game hidden under a mountain of compromises, cut corners, and tight deadlines,” which speaks to…

$79.95, Switch, PC www.nintendo.com.au Sometimes smaller really is better. After the highs of Monster Hunter: World’s astounding success, it’d be reasonable for Capcom to shoot for an even bigger, more complicated game. Instead, though, the Monster Hunter development team has opted for a smaller, more personal adventure, trading in World’s sprawling plains and snow-capped mountain ranges for a decidedly more low-key tale in Monster Hunter Rise. As the titular monster hunter, the silent protagonist awakens to life in the small village of Kamura on the frontier, embarking on quests for the population to slay tyrannical beasts patrolling the wilderness. Monster Hunter Rise is a hack-and-slash action game at its core, but one with a graceful elegance through its 14 varied weapon types and devastating skill combos. The result is something…

“The Realme 8 Pro doesn’t feel like it belongs at its price tag, however, and if it had launched with a higher price we wouldn’t have batted an eye – it has a super-high resolution main camera and incredibly fast charging, and it looks great too.” $TBC, www.realme.com While Realme isn’t currently a huge name in the West, if it keeps putting out phones like the Realme 8 Pro, we can’t see that remaining the case for much longer – it’s a fantastic affordable phone, and one which Motorola, Nokia and Redmi should take note of. Launching alongside the Realme 8 in early 2021, and following on from 2020’s Realme 7 series, the 8 Pro is likely to be the top affordable phone from the Chinese brand in 2021. It…

$2,438, www.dell.com.au The Dell U4021QW is undeniably sleek, though it’s still a Dell product, so its much more about functionality than flash. The monitor’s construction is entirely plastic - other than its hardware – but it’s solid and doesn’t feel flimsy like other plastic builds typically do. All the monitor’s ports are found on the underside of the back panel, facing down, making it fairly easy to connect DisplayPort, HDMI, Ethernet, and USB connectors without too much trouble. The monitor’s tilt helps you access these, though they’re just high enough up on the back panel that you will probably need to pull the monitor out toward the edge of the surface so you can see the port you’re looking for. The entire monitor, including stand, weighs in at 13.8 kilos…

“This small, sphere-shaped device provides a compact home for Alexa to live inside yours. It also packs in enough sound performance to fill most rooms – although audiophiles be warned, this isn’t going to compete with your sound system.” $59, www.amazon.com.au The Amazon Echo Dot (2020) is one of the newest products in the Amazon Echo range and the latest Echo Dot. The Amazon Echo Dot – in its various iterations over the past few years – is one of the best options for people who aren’t sure about smart home tech but want to take the first step. With such an easy set-up and such a low price tag, it’s a way to try connected tech without the commitment of too much time, money and energy. This small, sphere-shaped…

$449, wearfauna.com Need some Bluetooth-enabled speaker-sunglasses for the summer? These competitors to the Bose Frames succeed on comfort and convenience, but don’t quite match the bigger brand on sound quality. ‘Open audio’ is the future. The ability to go for a walk or run without having to block out everything happening around you is safer and more pleasant than being locked away in your own head. Open audio is exactly what Fauna Audio’s Spiro Transparent Brown sunglasses offer inside a subtle, stylish and discrete unisex package that cleverly hides its core technology. There’s no way anyone walking past you in the park is going to know your temples are kitted-out with a couple of microspeakers, a woofer and a microphone. Nor is anyone going to notice when you double-tap the…

“A neat trick about Hue Lightstrip Plus is that they can also be cut to a shorter length, if required.” $139, www.philips.com The Hue Lightstrip Plus looks like any other lightstrip you may buy, and tries to be as unobtrusive as possible with its design. The strip itself consists of tiny LED lights grouped together in certain sections, covered by a thick transparent plastic. At the back is an adhesive backing that lets you stick the lights to pretty much any flat surface. A neat trick about Hue Lightstrip Plus is that they can also be cut to a shorter length, if required. There are specially marked areas on the strip where you can cut them, so as long as you’re only cutting on these lines, you can then reattach…

Malware isn’t the only threat to your PC’s health – physical dirt, grime and dust can have a cumulative effect in shortening its life too, while harbouring germs that can be detrimental to your own physical wellbeing. Start with your keyboard. Unplug it, turn it over and shake any loose debris from it. Use compressed air to clean out dirt from between the keys and a non-bleach disinfectant wipe (not too wet) to clean the tops of the keys afterwards. The same type of wipes can be used to clean your mouse – focus on the optical sensor beneath it. Also take the time to check inside your PC case – you’ll be surprised how quickly dust builds up inside, leading to increased heat and stress on your components. Again,…

1 LOCK DOWN ROUTER Open your browser and log into your router’s configuration utility via its IP address. If you’ve not yet done so, look for an administration section where you can change the password (choose a strong one using your password manager) and disable remote administration. 2 FORCE SECURE ACCESS If the option exists, tick the box to access your router over a secure (HTTPS) connection. If you run into problems – our TP-Link doesn’t support the newer TLS connections required in Firefox, for example – then at least change the port for non-secure remote management from the default (80). 3 DISABLE UNSAFE SERVICES You’ll need to hunt around for these specific options but disable UPnP (use manual port-forwarding instead), followed by the following services if you can locate…

Over the course of the past seven decades, the term “virtual reality” has been thrown around quite a bit within the tech world. However, during that time, it has actually become a rather divisive and subjective form of entertainment. Tedious and awkward are just two ways it has been described. The term itself most certainly encompasses far more now than when the modern take on the technology first debuted in 2016. Heck, today you can get VR headsets for your phone that cost just 20 bucks, while on the flipside you could easily spend over $12,000 getting all the right gear for the ultimate virtual-reality rig. What VR has been missing since its conception, however, is simplicity and efficiency, and that is seemingly finally starting to change, with better-supported tech…

Scaling something down proportionally to create a smaller replica may work for model villages and food recipes, but in speaker design the rules aren’t quite as simple. Nevertheless, KEF went ahead and shrunk its original multi-Award-winning LS50 Wireless streaming system, now in its second generation, down to make a miniature, half-price version – the KEF LSX, currently available for $1,895. The LSX shares its successful sibling’s blueprint as an all in one hi-fi system: a network streamer, Bluetooth receiver and amplification within a pair of compact stereo speakers. But creating the LSX wasn’t a case of simply miniaturising everything in the LS50 Wireless’s anatomy and cutting the price in half. In addition to the smaller cabinets, smaller Uni-Q driver arrays and smaller, 200W amplification, some changes were made to cater…

Backup and reinstall I would like to know how to make a backup of my entire computer. Also, I would like to download a brand-new install of Windows 10 64-bit. My version was previously one downloaded by an employee of Office Depot. Unfortunately, I don’t have a copy – this could be a problem if my computer crashes, as I’ll have nothing to show for it. Please advise. Jerry Yaron TechLife responds: Go to www. macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx to download and install Macrium Reflect Free. Once installed, open Macrium, and, assuming that Windows, your apps and all your personal files are on a single drive, choose “Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows,” then follow the prompts to create a recurring backup to your hard drive. Choose…

REQUIRES Eevie — Your Climate Guide app (free), iOS 11 or later YOU WILL LEARN How to reduce your environmental impact IT WILL TAKE A few moments per day GENIUS TIP Smart home devices, such as app-enabled thermostats, can cut emissions and costs considerably over their lifetime. Are you carbon neutral? Apple is aiming to be completely carbon netural by 2030, and its global corporate operations already are. And with the Eevie app on your device, you can head in that direction too. From driving cars and heating our homes to buying a new MacBook, the things we do have an environmental impact and lead to increased carbon emissions. Fortunately, we are now becoming more and more aware of the changes we need to make. We can change our habits…

Nearly every router on the market today has some sort of quality of service (QoS) mechanism, though most aren’t switched on by default. For many home users, however, it is worth investigating – especially if you live in a crowded house or environment in which there is often competition for limited internet bandwidth. So this month let’s take a look at what QoS does, and how you can turn it on. How does QoS work? The short explanation for QoS is this: QoS lets you prioritise traffic, so that the things that need the highest priority get dibs on the internet connection, while less important devices and services have to wait. To dive a little deeper, though, routers are what are known as store-forward devices. When a router receives a…

Fisheye lenses are incredibly popular for special effects, as they provide a unique style of image that’s hard to convincingly achieve with any software technique. The fisheye effect can certainly be simulated using software filters and distort tools, but for a true fisheye perspective a dedicated lens – such as the Nikon AF-S Fisheye Nikkor 8-15mm f/3.5-4.5 optic we’ve used here – is required. One of the issues with fisheye lenses, however, is their specificity: while they are fantastic for certain interior shots, the distorted edges are not well-suited to portraiture or other scenes featuring straight edges. For this reason, many photographers avoid investing in high-grade optics, or find that they are unable to get enough use from the lens to fully justify the cost of buying one. There are…