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Submission + - Are there any Linux-friendly DESKTOP x86 motherboard manufacturers? (phoronix.com) 1

Submitted by storkus
storkus writes: The release of Haswell-E and a price drop on Devil's Canyon has made me itch for a PC upgrade. However, looking around I discovered a pair of horror stories on Phoronix (2nd story link at the bottom of the first), and plenty more Googling around.

My question: if MSI, Gigabyte, Asus (and by extension Asrock) are out, who's left and are they any good? Note that I want to build a (probably dual-boot, but don't know for sure) gaming and "other" high-end machine with one of the above chips so we're talking Z97 or X99; however, these stories seem to point to the problems being M$-isms in the BIOS/UEFI structures rather than actual hardware incompatibility, combined with a real lousy attitude (despite the Steam distro being real soon now).

Comment Re:How much? (Score 1) 149

by MojoKid (#47792955) Attached to: Dell's New Alienware Case Goes to Extremes To Prevent Overheating
No one made this article or anything in it "appear to be a review." It's an announcement and news release, that's it. There is no mention of testing, or passing judgement other than maybe an opinion on the design aesthetic, which is completely subjective anyway. At this point the dialog has gone off topic and off the rails, rather than discussing the post at hand. So I'm done with it. Carry on. Thanks

Comment Re:How much? (Score 5, Insightful) 149

by MojoKid (#47790609) Attached to: Dell's New Alienware Case Goes to Extremes To Prevent Overheating

I'm guessing that blocking

googletagservices.com googleusercontent.com tru.am

before visiting his site will make that a little more difficult.

I do not know if he is a Slashdot or a Dice Holdings, Inc., employee, but it would be nice if there was some sort of transparency statement, if that's the case.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Seriously? Why do people that read a legitimate news story always try to assume something is advertising. This was a press coordinated announcement by Dell-Alienware. It's a VERY cool case and system design I think, so I submitted our story on it. Yes, I run HotHardware.com and no it's not even close to an advertisement. It's just our usual news coverage on a variety of topics around the computing space. Alienware had a press release on this new system design and we covered it, along with many other Tech news outlets I'm sure.

And ad blocking. Don't even get me started. So many ad blockers are so proud of what they do, like it's some badge of honor to block. If everyone blocked ads, many quality web sites would likely cease to exist, including Slashdot. Just because you can block, doesn't mean you should. The internet is no different than any other media, where ads pay the bills to keep the lights on and people employed to serve up news, reviews and other content you enjoy every day, essentially for free.

And good sites (like Slashdot and HotHardware) know how to separate church and state, where advertising does not affect editorial opinion.

Submission + - Dell-Alienware Revamps Area-51 Gaming PC With Unique Trapezoid Chassis Design (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Dell's enthusiast Alienware brand has always stood out for its unique, other-worldly looks (sometimes good, sometimes, not so good) and there's such a thing as taking things to the next level, this might be it. However, there's more to this refresh than just shock value. It's actually a futuristic aesthetic with a rather purposeful design behind it. Today Alienware gave a sneak peek at their completely redesigned Alienware Area 51 desktop system. This refreshed system is unlike any previous Alienware rig you've seen. With a trapezoidal shape to its chassis, Dell-Alienware says you can place the Area-51 against a wall and not have to worry about thermals getting out of the control. That's because there's a controlled gap and a sharp angle to the chassis that ensures only a small part of the system actually rests near the wall, leaving extra room for hot air to escape up and away. This design also offers users easy access to rear IO ports. Despite the unique design, there's plenty of room for high end components inside. The retooled chassis can swallow up to three 300W double-wide full-length graphics cards. It also brings to the table Intel's latest and greatest Haswell-E in six-core or eight-core options, liquid cooled and nestled into Intel's X99 chipset. No word from Dell on the price but the new Area-51 is slated to start shipping in October.

Submission + - Intel Launches 8-Core Haswell-E Core i7-5960X Desktop Processor (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Intel has officially launched their Core i7-5960X Haswell-E desktop processor today. Unlike Sandy Bridge-E and Ivy Bridge-E, which maxed out at 6 cores (12 threads), Haswell-E is an 8-core machine (16 threads), featuring execution units based on Intel's latest desktop microarchitecture. The Core i7-5960X has a base clock of 3GHz with Turbo Boost speed to 3.5GHz and will have up to 20MB of shared L3 cache. It also features an integrated quad-channel memory controller with official support for DDR4 memory at speeds up to 2133MHz, although higher speeds are possible through overclocking. Haswell-E based processors also feature up to 40 integrated lanes of PCI Express Gen 3.0 connectivity. The chip has a 140W TDP, which is slightly higher than the 130W of Ivy Bridge-E based processors. Although it has the same number of pads (2011) as previous-gen Ivy Bridge-E processors, Haswell-E based processors will require new motherboards equipped with LGA 2011 v3 sockets and support for DDR4 memory. Cooler designs from the previous generation are compatible, however. In general, the Core i7-5960X is faster overall than the previous-gen Ivy Bridge-E based 6-core Core i7-4960X. In single threaded tests, where the Core i7-5960X's additional cache and memory bandwidth aren't fully utilized, the 4960X's higher clocks usually push it ahead. In multi-threaded tests though, the 5960X's two additional cores make it significantly faster. Gaming was also much better on the 5960X.

Submission + - Particle physics to aid nuclear cleanup (symmetrymagazine.org)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: Cosmic rays can help scientists do something no one else can: safely image the interior of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.... [M]uon tomography, is similar to taking an X-ray, only it uses naturally produced muons. These particles don’t damage the imaged materials and, because they already stream through everything on Earth, they can be used to image even the most sensitive objects. Better yet, a huge amount of shielding is needed to stop muons from passing through an object, making it nearly impossible to hide from muon tomography.

“Everything around you is constantly being radiographed by muons,” says Christopher Morris, who leads the Los Alamos muon tomography team. “All you have to do is set some detectors above and below it, and measure the angles well enough to make a picture.”

By determining how muons scatter as they interact with electrons and nuclei within the item, the team’s software creates a three-dimensional picture of what’s inside.... To prove the technology, the Los Alamos team shipped a demo detector system to a small, working nuclear reactor in a Toshiba facility in Kawasaki, Japan. There, they placed one detector on either side of the reactor core.

“When we analyzed our data we discovered that in addition to the fuel in the reactor core, they had put a few fuel bundles off to the side that we didn’t know about,” says Morris. “They were really impressed that not only could we image the core, but that we also found those bundles.”

Based on that successful test, Toshiba signed an agreement with Los Alamos and later with Decision Sciences to design and manufacture muon-detector components for use at Fukushima Daiichi.

Submission + - IEEE Guides Software Architects Toward Secure Design (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: The IEEE's Center for Secure Design debuted its first report this week, a guidance for software architects called "Avoiding the Top 10 Software Security Design Flaws." Developing guidance for architects rather than developers was a conscious effort the group made in order to steer the conversation around software security away from exclusively talking about finding bugs toward design-level failures that lead to exploitable security vulnerabilities.
The document spells out the 10 common design flaws in a straightforward manner, each with a lengthy explainer of inherent weaknesses in each area and how software designers and architects should take these potential pitfalls into consideration.

Submission + - Think It's Funny 'Swatting' Your Gaming Buds? Twitch Shows Police Not Amused (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Twitch streamer and YouTuber Jordan "Kootra" Mathewson is the latest victim in a trend called "Swatting." People who tuned into The Creatures' Twitch channel this past Wednesday to watch Mathewson play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive witnessed SWAT officers enter the room and arrest Mathewson in response to a false report of an active shooter. Mathewson was live-streaming on The Creatures, a group of gamers who create content for YouTube, Twitch channel at the group's office building when SWAT busted in. Police received an anonymous call, via landline, that claimed there was an active shooter. Streamers watched for about six minutes as the police officers arrested Mathewson, searched him, and briefly questioned him before the stream was turned off. Police are still investigating the call that was made, which led to Mathewson's arrest, and are looking for the party responsible. In the meantime, a person that goes by @ScrewPain on Twitter has claimed responsibility on his account for the swatting prank.

Submission + - Microsoft Ships Replacement Patch With Two Known Bugs 1

Submitted by snydeq
snydeq writes: Microsoft has re-released its botched MS14-045/KB 2982791 'Blue Screen 0x50' patch, only to introduce more problems, InfoWorld's Woody Leonhard reports. 'Even by Microsoft standards, this month's botched Black Tuesday Windows 7/8/8.1 MS14-045 patch hit a new low. The original patch (KB 2982791) is now officially "expired" and a completely different patch (KB 2993651) offered in its stead; there are barely documented revelations of new problems with old patches; patches that have disappeared; a "strong" recommendation to manually uninstall a patch that went out via Automatic Update for several days; and an infuriating official explanation that raises serious doubts about Microsoft's ability to support Windows 9's expected rapid update pace.'

Submission + - Old Doesn't Have To Mean Ugly: Squeezing Better Graphics From Classic Consoles (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: If you're a classic gamer, you've probably had the unhappy experience of firing up a beloved older title you haven't played in a decade or two, squinting at the screen, and thinking: "Wow. I didn't realize it looked this bad." The reasons why games can wind up looking dramatically worse than you remember isn't just the influence of rose-colored glasses — everything from subtle differences in third-party hardware to poor ports to bad integrated TV upscalers can ruin the experience. One solution is an expensive upscaling unit called the Framemeister but while its cost may make you blanch, this sucker delivers. Unfortunately, taking full advantage of a Framemeister also may mean modding your console for RGB output. That's the second part of the upscaler equation. Most every old-school console could technically use RGB, which has one cable for the Red, Green, and Blue signals, but many of them weren't wired for it externally unless you used a rare SCART cable (SCART was more common in other parts of the world). Modding kits or consoles cost money, but if you're willing to pay it, you can experience classic games with much better fidelity.

Submission + - Seagate Ships World's First 8 Terabyte Hard Drive (hothardware.com) 1

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Seagate announced today that it has begun shipping the world's first 8 Terabyte hard drive. The 8TB hard drive comes only five months after Western Digital released the first ever 6TB HDD. Up until then, Seagate's high capacity HDDs had been shipping only to select enterprise clients. The 8TB HDD comes in the 3.5-inch form factor and, according to the manufacturer, features a SATA 6Gbps interface and multi-drive RV tolerance which makes it suitable for data centers. It's unclear what technology the drive is based on, or if PMR (Perpendicular Magnetic Recording) or low-resistance helium technology was employed.

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