Techreport

E-retailer and cloud hosting juggernaut Amazon has refreshed its Fire TV Stick streaming media player with a new quad-core SoC and support for latest-and-greatest 802.11ac MIMO Wi-Fi. The remote in the new version brings voice activation as a standard feature, too. On the software side, the revised HDMI dongle packs improved support for Amazon's Alexa voice-activated digital assistant. ...Read more...

Gigabit Ethernet is ubiquitous. If you work in corporate IT, chances are you service at least one site wired with Category 5e or Category 6 cabling running 1000BASE-T. However, as networks expand and add new services, Gigabit Ethernet may start to feel a little congested. Adding or replacing cabling is an expensive proposition, but never fear: the IEEE has just ratified proposal 802.3bz-2016, which lays out the new 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T specifications. The new specs define a method for delivering 2.5Gbps and 5Gbps over existing Cat5e and Cat6 cables.

Three new fingerprint readers compatible with the Windows Hello biometric login management technology baked into Windows 10's Anniversary Update are now available from the Microsoft Store, courtesy of BIO-key International. Two of the readers are dongles designed for use with laptops and tablets. The third device has a cable and should work well with desktop systems. ...Read more...

Many of the technological nightmares we bring to life on film revolve around artificial intelligence gone wrong, usually somewhere around the year 2000. 2016 is almost over, though, and we don't live in a post-apocalyptic future—at least, not yet. AI still struggles to do things humans do with ease, like forming coherent sentences and playing games millions of people play easily. But Google has been making big strides in both of those areas this year. Case in point is a recent boost to Google Translate's performance thanks to deep neural networks.Earlier this year, one of Google's deep neural networks tackled one of the toughest puzzles in artificial intelligence research when it defeated Lee Sedol, a Korean grandmaster in the game of Go. Go is relatively simple to learn, but difficult to ...Read more...

BlackBerry has announced that it will no longer manufacture its own phones. The former giant in the smartphone world says that BlackBerry devices will continue to exist, but their production will be outsourced to third parties. In the future, the company will refocus its business on software rather than hardware.Sales of BlackBerry phones have dropped precipitously in recent years. Judging by the global market share of its BlackBerry OS for smartphones, the company's best year was 2009, when it held 20.1% ...Read more...

While we're reporting on things we can't have in the USA, take a look at the new Project S chassis from German case-builders Nanoxia. The case is designed a bit like a four-unit rack-mount enclosure. The external casing—comprising a steel shell with a glass top—is actually a drawer that the PC's guts and front bezel slide into. ...Read more...

Nvidia keeps plugging away at the challenging problems presented by autonomous vehicles. The green team unveiled Xavier, its latest product targeting this expanding market, at the inaugural European GPU Technology Conference this morning. Xavier is a 16-nm FinFET SoC packing eight ARM CPU cores alongside 512 next-generation Volta stream processors. The SoC also includes a novel bit of silicon Nvidia refers to as a "computer vision accelerator." ...Read more...

be quiet! is showing off its Silent Loop series of all-in-one CLCs. Closed-loop coolers have been rising in popularity in the last few years, and the German PC component vendor is getting its feet wet with its first product aimed at this market. ...Read more...

Gamers and content creators are not alone in their frustration with the last decade's slowing increases in CPU performance. Massive datacenter operators like Microsoft are coming up with new ways to increase server performance using unconventional hardware. Microsoft in particular is upgrading 34 datacenters around the world with field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) in an operation the software giant calls "Project Catapult." ...Read more...

Apollo Lake is out, and Asus has the first motherboard we've seen equipped with one of the low-power SoCs. The appropriately-named J3455M-E includes a Celeron J3455 mounted directly to the board. ...Read more...

Taiwan-based monitor company AOC announced this week that its Agon line of gaming monitors is heading stateside. While we've covered these displays before, the Agon line hadn't made an official appearance in the United States before now. ...Read more...

Many of us have gotten spoiled by our always-available internet connections, but web access isn't that dependable in every market. Google has announced a couple of improvements for Chrome on Android that could improve browsing experience for those with slow or limited data connections. These improvements build on Chrome's Data Saver mode, which removes most of the images from web pages when users are browsing with a slow connection.First, Google has expanded the Data Saver technology to videos. The company claims that users will be able to use 67% less data when watching MP4 format videos with Data Saver enabled. Additionally, Data Saver will now optimize websites by paring them down to the bare essentials. Users can opt ...Read more...

Since Toshiba pared back its OCZ-branded SSD lineup back in May, the company has been slowly rebuilding the brand's portfolio. To that end, Toshiba has announced the OCZ TL100 SATA SSD in 120GB and 240GB capacities. These entry-level TLC SSDs use an unspecified Toshiba controller and connect to SATA 6Gbps ports. ...Read more...

Nvidia and Apple might be getting back together after a couple years apart. According to a report from Bloomberg, a job description for a position with the green team (since revised) offered candidates the potential to "help produce the next revolutionary Apple products."That's not the only smoke from this rumor, though. According to Bloomberg, a total of three listings for software engineers at Nvidia directly reference the Mac, Apple, and macOS, suggesting that the company's relationship with Apple may be expanding. While all ...Read more...

Gaming peripheral manufacturer Razer has upgraded its Deathadder Chroma mouse to Elite status. The Deathadder Elite's spec sheet is flush with numbers, some of which are definitely larger than those of the previous edition of the mouse. ...Read more...

Virtualization is everywhere these days, and your browser might soon be wrapped in it as well. Microsoft has announced that the "next major update" of Windows 10 Enterprise will offer a virtualization option for Microsoft Edge in a bid to thwart most types of web-based attacks.The new technology is called "Application Guard" and it's part of Microsoft's Secure Productive Enterprise suite. Application Guard uses Windows 10's Virtualization Based Security , a feature that uses Hyper-V for isolating applications from the underlying operating system. According to the company, Windows Defender Application Guard for ...Read more...

The "Siryus" case from Dutch PC component vendor X2 will ensure the system inside is always at 45°—a 45-degree angle, that is. The case mounts the motherboard and components at an angle, leaving the rear I/O panel elevated and surrounded on either side by beefy-looking tubular aluminum handles. A large aluminum panel serves as a foot. Owners of nice furniture can relax, since the foot comes with a pair of rubber grips, too. ...Read more...

We haven't had our hands on NZXT's S340, but our friends at TechPowerUp were very fond of the case when it launched in 2014. That mid-tower ATX case features a minimalist exterior design that gives way to a surprisingly feature-filled interior. Now, NZXT is bringing out the S340 Elite, which discards the metal-and-plastic side panel of the original case for a sheet of tempered glass. ...Read more...

Motorola's woes continue. Lenovo, which acquired Motorola from Google in 2014, laid off some of the phone maker's staff last summer after some troubling financial reports, and now the pink slips have shown up again. Despite some positive buzz from the Moto X, Moto G, and Moto Z families of smartphones, Lenovo has decided to lay off much of its Chicago-based Motorola staff. The layoffs will purportedly affect over half of the phone manufacturer's remaining workforce.Droid Life shared a statement from Motorola which confirms the "resource action." The company didn't provide exact numbers, but indicated that the layoffs affect less than 2% of its 55,000 employees across the globe. Lenovo claims that the positions ...Read more...

If you've been holding off on jumping into Nvidia's 10-series graphics cards in the hopes of getting one that's chilled by an external radiator, EVGA may have a solution in its GeForce GTX FTW Hybrid series. The company's GTX 1080 Hybrid card has been available for some time now, but the GTX 1070 Hybrid is just now becoming available for pre-order through the EVGA website. ...Read more...

Owners of a few Chromebooks suffering from app envy can now rejoice. The latest 53.0.2785.129 Chrome OS release opens the doors to the Google Play Store to owners of the Acer Chromebook R11, Asus Chromebook Flip, and Google Pixel (2015) using the stable channel of Google's Linux-based operating system.Chrome OS devices have had limited access to Android apps going all the way back to late 2014. Speculation about a merger of Google's Chrome OS and the company's more popular Android smartphone OS has been present since ...Read more...

Owners of a few Chromebooks suffering from app envy can now rejoice. The latest 53.0.2785.129 Chrome OS release opens the doors to the Google Play Store to owners of the Acer Chromebook R11, Asus Chromebook Flip, and Google Pixel (2015) using the stable channel of Google's Linux-based operating system.Chrome OS devices have had limited access to Android apps going all the way back to late 2014. Speculation about a merger of Google's Chrome OS and the company's more popular Android smartphone OS has been present since ...Read more...

Steam's storefront has been looking a little samey since it received the "Discovery" facelift in 2014. Valve apparently agrees, as the company sent out an announcement this weekend to Steamworks developers advising them of upcoming changes to the storefront. That announcement is only visible to registered Steamworks developers, but the full text of the announcement is already up thanks to NeoGAF forums member Nzyme32. ...Read more...

Streaming media player specialist Roku has refreshed much of its line-up of compact set-top boxes. Roku is positioning its new "Express" model as an affordable competitor for Google's Chromecast and Amazon's Fire TV Stick, while the upmarket Premiere and Ultra models are ready for UHD and HDR content. ...Read more...

Many people at TR love small-form-factor machines because it's fun to see how much power you can pack into a tiny space. It's difficult to deny the appeal of a truly overpowered machine in a full-tower case, though. In Win just announced its new 509 case with an E-ATX design that looks suited for even the most monstrous PCs. ...Read more...

7 Up

Bethesda and id's newest take on Doom, one of the founding fathers of first person shooters and multiplayer gaming, released this spring to generally positive reception from critics and fans alike. id Software continued to add PC-friendly features to the game like Vulkan support and showing love to the platform that made Doom the legend it is. Now, with the third free content update, id has added the one thing that was missing: Deathmatch....Read more...

Android Police has published some speculation that Google will introduce a new Wi-Fi router under the name Google Wifi (sic) at the company's hardware launch event on October 4. The rumor mill suggests the new router will have the ability to team up with other identical units to form a mesh network, similar to eero and Luma Surround.Google's new router is said to offer AC1200 speeds, Bluetooth and 802.15.4 connectivity (the protocol underlying ZigBee and MiWi), and polished setup and operation. The company has stuck its toe into the wireless router market ...Read more...

Technology enthusiasts looking to shoehorn computers into unusual places often turn to the Raspberry Pi. The Pi is inexpensive, with prices of $5 for the Pi Zero and around $35 for the more powerful Pi 3. It also consumes little electricity, has its own Linux distribution, and is backed by an active community. Some tasks are simply too much for even the ARMv8 1.2GHz quad-core atop the Pi 3, though. Israeli PC vendor SolidRun thinks it has the solution for that and announced the MicroSoM, a lineup of Intel Braswell-based system-on-a-module boards (SoM) for use in more demanding applications including medical equipment, drones, and industrial and point-of-sale systems. ...Read more...

Greetings, gerbils! It's a chipper day here at TR HQ, and I'll be your host for today's game show. Here are many doors, all numbered. Any one of these doors may contain a prize. Wait, all of them do! Behind each door there is a great deal on a piece of hardware. Come along now. No need to trample each other, folks, there's plenty to go around.There's a chance you're looking for a deal on something we didn't feature here. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership ...Read more...

Gerbils like to build their own boxes, so pre-built desktops like the Asus G11 series don't get a lot of love here at TR. Asus launched this line a year ago, aimed at folks who want a serious gaming PC without spending serious time picking and assembling parts. Last year's Maxwell-equipped models were looking more than a little stale, though. Asus has fixed that, and is announcing that the G11s are now available with GeForce GTX 10-series graphics cards. ...Read more...

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was released roughly a month ago to generally positive reviews. Square-Enix isn't wasting any time, though. The first expansion for the game, called System Rift, is out today. Players can get into the skin and augments of Adam Jensen to once again work with his almost-friend Frank Pritchard. Take a gander at the trailer:...Read more...

Titanfall 2 is still just short of a month away, but details are starting to come out about what we can expect from our gaming rigs while running the game. Of course, it's still up to Respawn Entertainment to get the game out the door in working condition, but the developer has revealed what kinds of systems players will want to be running on to run the game at not only minimum and recommended specs, but also to pull 60 FPS at 4K resolution. ...Read more...

Peter "Durante" Thoman—creator of DSFix for Dark Souls and the Generic Down-Sampling Tool—has posted an article at PC Gamer about the realities of game optimization. This isn't the first time Durante has written for the site, and in your scribe's opinion, he writes frankly and clearly about PC gaming in a way few people do.With every new major PC game release, there will always be some users that complain about the game's "optimization." As Durante says, these complaints are usually just shorthand for "this game doesn't run well on my PC." His write-up seeks to shed light on exactly ...Read more...

Update: Yahoo has confirmed the data breach, and says the leaked information pertains to 500 million accounts and dates back to 2014. The leaked data "may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords [...] and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers." The company will be notifying affected users. We urge anyone with a Yahoo account to change their password immediately. The original story follows below:Technology news website Recode reports former web search leader Yahoo may imminently acknowledge a massive data ...Read more...

Technology news website Recode reports former web search leader Yahoo may imminently acknowledge a massive data breach. The site claims that "several hundred million" user accounts may have been compromised.Rumors of a breach began circulating back in August when a black hat hacker going by the name "Peace" claimed to have ...Read more...

PC component vendor Thermaltake has peeled back the protective sticker on the latest addition to its Pacific V-GTX 10 Series of full-coverage water blocks for Nvidia GeForce GTX 10-series graphics cards. The new block is designed for full coverage liquid cooling of Asus ROG Strix GTX 1070 and 1080 cards. This model is similar to the existing Pacific V-GTX 10 Series Founders Edition water block, which as the name implies is compatible with Founder's Edition GTX 1070 and 1080 pixel-pushers. ...Read more...

Not to be outdone by its rivals, AMD also released new drivers for Forza Horizon 3. The Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.9.2 release includes specific optimizations for Microsoft's new racing title as well as a CrossFire profile for the upcoming spaceflight sim Dreadnought. ...Read more...

When you're streaming a game on Twitch, you are part of the content as much as the game. Viewers want to see and hear their favorite streamers, watching them react to games in real time. Peripheral manufacturer Mionix wants you to share even more—not just what you're saying, but what you're feeling as well. The Mionix Naos QG Gaming Mouse (QG standing for Quantified Gaming) intends to do just that. ...Read more...

Way, way back in the year 2000, when the first 64MB SD card was still a new piece of tech, having so much memory in such a small space was tough for us to wrap our heads around. An Amazon review from the time said that "the first thing that you'll do when you see this thing is wonder how the manufacturer could pack 64MB of space on something so small." The reviewer marveled at the size, assuring the wide-eyed reader that the hardware wasn't a big floppy disk, as the close-up picture could've been considered misleading.It's a different world now, but SanDisk is still working to pack more and more memory into those tiny cards, and this week ...Read more...

Japanese PC cooling specialist Scythe has announced a new compact tower-style CPU cooler called Byakko, a word that translates to White Tiger. The Byakko HSF packs a trio of 6-mm heatpipes and a 92mm fan into an overall height of merely 130mm (5.12" for Americans). ...Read more...

The release of a new AAA game on PC usually signals the release of a new GeForce Game Ready driver release, and the upcoming release of Forza Horizon 3 is no exception. The new driver also adds what Nvidia's release notes describe as "security updates for graphics components" and an SLI profile for the upcoming game Ark: Survival Evolved. ...Read more...

Shuttle, the company that can be named responsible for the original explosion of small-form-factor desktop computing, is bringing out a new series of XPC SFF PCs. However, unlike the XPCs you might be familiar with from the days of yore, these little computers are more akin to the Intel NUC than something like those Syber Cs from yesterday. ...Read more...

The wait may be over for U.S. Galaxy Note7 owners waiting for replacements for their smokin' hot devices. Samsung has announced it safely landed 500,000 Note7 replacements devices to be distribute to "carrier and retail stores" around the country, contrary to earlier reports. ...Read more...

The move to FinFET fabrication for graphics processors has really opened up the options in the laptop gaming market. While some vendors like Eurocom are taking advantage of the new efficiency to stuff ever faster hardware into laptops, Asus is hunting in the middle ground between speed and power with its new ROG Strix GL702VM slim gaming laptop. ...Read more...

A little under a year ago, Samsung set a new bar in consumer NVMe SSD performance with its 950 Pro M.2 SSDs. Those drives used PCIe 3.0 x4 interfaces to deliver blazing-fast performance. Today, the company is aiming even higher with its updated 960 Pro and the new 960 Evo. The 960 Pro uses a new controller and Samsung's 3D V-NAND to deliver a nice boost in sequential and random performance on paper, while the 960 Evo should offer consumers a more accessible route to the NVMe fast lane. ...Read more...

Howdy, folks. After about 14 hours of flying yesterday, I'm in beautiful Seoul, South Korea this week to hear about what Samsung has in store for the next generation of high-performance SSDs. ...Read more...

Component and peripheral manufacturer EVGA announced a pair of power supply units the company hopes will brighten your day. Because they have LEDs! Meet the EVGA G2L units. ...Read more...

Intel began shipping a limited selection of its new Kaby Lake CPUs to OEMs in July, and a few manufacturers have already announced products with the new chips. Desktop CPUs based on Kaby Lake architecture, part of the "optimize" phase of Intel's process-architecture-optimize cadence of product launches, aren't expected until the first quarter of 2017. ...Read more...

The system requirements for EA's upcoming World War I-inspired first person shooter Battlefield 1 are out. While the video card requirements are surprisingly modest, the baseline CPU that developer DICE recommends is a Core i5-6600K, a quad-core CPU with 3.9 GHz turbo clocks and 6MB of cache. That requirement looks to be a bit of hyperbole, since DICE also states that an AMD FX-6350—a much slower CPU—will handle the game too. Full system requirements are shown below:Minimum ...Read more...