Monthly Archives: December 2016

ZOTAC Announces GeForce GTX 1080 for Mini-ITX PCs

Posted on by

ZOTAC has introduced its GeForce GTX 1080 Mini, the industry’s first video card for Mini-ITX systems running the GP104 GPU in its full configuration. The new graphics adapter will be compatible with miniature computers with proper cooling and will be the most powerful card for SFF PCs until something better emerges.


The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1080 Mini (ZT-P10800H-10P) offers the same performance and connectivity as its larger brethren: it is based on the fully-fledged GP104 graphics processor (with 2560 stream processors, 160 texture units and 64 raster operations pipes) that works at 1620/1759 MHz (base/boost) frequencies and is equipped with 8 GB of GDDR5X memory featuring 10 Gbps and 320 GB/s of bandwidth. In fact, the GPU frequencies of ZOTAC’s GeForce GTX 1080 Mini are slightly higher when compared to those of NVIDIA’s reference cards which is worth mentioning. The board alo features three DisplayPort 1.4 connectors, an HDMI 2.0b port as well as one dual-link DVI header, which is exactly what NVIDIA’s reference cards carry.



To squeeze a GeForce GTX 1080 GPU into Mini-ITX form-factor, ZOTAC had to develop a brand-new PCB with compatible with GDDR5X memory (so, the PCB is different from ZOTAC’s GeForce GTX 1070 Mini launched earlier this year). It is unknown whether the manufacturer decided to go with NVIDIA’s 5+1-phase VRM for the GTX 1080, or altered the VRM design somehow, but the card has one 8-pin PCIe power plug as well as two SLI-HB connectors, just like other boards in its class.



Since the GeForce GTX 1080 consumes up to 180 W of power, ZOTAC also had to design a relatively small cooling system for the ZT-P10800H-10P board. The company came up with a cooler that uses an aluminum radiator with at least three thick (and long) copper heatpipes as well as two fans. In addition, the GeForce GTX 1080 Mini card has a backplate, which has positive and sometimes negative effects. The cooling system seems to be a little longer than the one used on the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 Mini, but the whole graphics adapter is barely longer than 17 cm (6.7”) specified by the Mini-ITX spec. In any case, the majority of builds designed for gamers have a few cm of extra space inside and the length is not going to become a problem.















Specifications of GeForce GTX 1070/1080 for Mini-ITX PCs
  ZOTAC

GeForce GTX 1080 Mini		 ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 Mini GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1070 Mini ITX OC (OC Mode) GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1070 Mini ITX (Gaming Mode)   NVIDIA

GeForce GTX 1080

Founders Edition		 NVIDIA

GeForce GTX 1070

Founders Edition
Stream Processors 2560 1920   2560 1920
Texture Units 160 120   160 120
ROPs 64   64
Core Clock (MHz) 1620 1518 1556 1531   1607 1506
Boost Clock (MHz) 1759 1708 1746 1721   1733 1683
Memory Capacity 8 GB   8 GB
Type GDDR5X GDDR5   GDDR5X GDDR5
Clock 10 Gbps 8 Gbps   10 Gbps 8 Gbps
TDP 180 W 150 W   180 W 150 W
Launch Date Q1-2017 12/2016 7/2016   5/2016 6/2016
Launch Price ? $395 ?   $699 $449

ZOTAC plans to display its GeForce GTX 1080 Mini at CES and start its sales in 2017. The company did not announce exact pricing and ETA, but since this is a unique custom-designed product, it will likely be priced higher than NVIDIA’s reference designs.



Related Reading:




Source: AnandTech – ZOTAC Announces GeForce GTX 1080 for Mini-ITX PCs

How Do You Define 'Cheating' In A Video Game?

Posted on by

We don’t always play games the way we’re supposed to. We’ve all pulled out that little trick that helps us get through a tough area, beat a boss, or get a higher score. It might not be turning on God Mode in the developer console or using an aimbot, but it’s not quite on the level either. But it’s fine. It’s not cheating. Right?

Read more…



Source: Kotaku – How Do You Define ‘Cheating’ In A Video Game?

In Terrible Yet Rhythmic News, Another State Banned Banning Plastic Bags

Posted on by

This week, Michigan became the fourth state to place a ban on banning plastic bags. The new bill, signed into law Wednesday by Lt. Gov. Brian Calley, bans any bills “regulating the use, disposition, or sale of, prohibiting or restricting, or imposing any fee, charge, or tax on certain containers,” including plastic bags, bottles, etc. Idaho, Arizona, and Missouri have also enacted similarly alliterative and troubling bans on bills banning plastic bags.

Read more…



Source: Gizmodo – In Terrible Yet Rhythmic News, Another State Banned Banning Plastic Bags

Consumer Reports Stands By Its Verdict, Won't Recommend Apple's MacBook Pro

Posted on by

Consumer Reports took many by surprise last week — certainly Apple — when it said it doesn’t recommend the company’s new MacBook Pro models. The American magazine, which has garnered credibility over 80 years of its existence, said battery life on Apple’s new laptops were all over the place — hitting 19 hours in a test, but less than four hours in another. Last week, Apple’s VP of Marketing, Phil Schiller insisted that Consumer Reports’ findings didn’t match the company’s field data, and that Apple was working with Consumer Reports to understand its review. Now Consumer Reports has responded: The nonprofit organization is standing by its initial verdict in which it did not give the MacBook Pro (2016) its “recommended” rating. The organization has now said it doesn’t think re-running the tests will change anything. “In this case, we don’t believe re-running the tests are warranted for several reasons. First, as we point out in our original article, experiencing very high battery life on MacBooks is not unusual for us — in fact we had a model in our comparative tests that got 19 hours,” it said. “Second, we confirmed our brightness with three different meters, so we feel confident in our findings using this equipment. Finally, we monitor our tests very closely. There is an entry logged every minute, so we know from these entries that the app worked correctly,” it added.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Consumer Reports Stands By Its Verdict, Won’t Recommend Apple’s MacBook Pro

How To: Make Cheese Shot Glasses For Wine

Posted on by

cheese-shot-glasses.jpg

In ‘How Can I Make All My New Year’s Eve Guests Puke On My Carpet’ news, this is a short video from PopSugar detailing how to make cheese shot glasses for drinking wine. After all, wine and cheese do go together like peanut butter and jelly, just for fancy people. It basically involves melting shredded cheddar cheese (the fanciest of all cheeses), then filling shot glass molds with it and waiting until it hardens (SHOCKING PROTIP: you can also make shot glasses out of pretty much anything else that will melt and harden the same way). That’s pretty nasty. Besides, who takes shots of wine anyways? I mean, besides my aunt and her friends when they’re playing power hour. I didn’t even last 30 minutes with those broads before I passed out and they drew penises on my face.

Keep going for the video.

Source: Geekologie – How To: Make Cheese Shot Glasses For Wine

This Week's Most Popular Posts: December 23rd to 30th

Posted on by

The last week of the year is like one long Sunday afternoon, and we’ve put this quiet time to use by looking at where to watch the best movies of 2016, heralding the end of CyanogenMod, assessing the threat of car hacking, and more. Here’s a look back.

Read more…



Source: LifeHacker – This Week’s Most Popular Posts: December 23rd to 30th

Don't Eat Food Prepared by a Celebrity Chef on TV

Posted on by

My Guy, laying on the sauce (Image: AP Images for Carnival Cruise Line)

If you’ve ever watched my Guy, Guy Fieri on television, you’d know that the best part is watching him manhandle meat, greasing up his gloveless Guy-paws with the grubbiest gristle. Well, a team of scientists think maybe these celeb chefs need to be a better influence when it comes to food safety.

Read more…



Source: Gizmodo – Don’t Eat Food Prepared by a Celebrity Chef on TV

CEO Jack Dorsey Wants An Edit Button

Posted on by

Is it just me or does it seem like Jack Dorsey doesn’t know crap about Twitter? Everyone, since the dawn of social media, knows about the ol’ “editing a post after people have responded” gag. You know, where you ask “how many people like ice cream” and then you change “ice cream” to something messed up like “killing kittens” and then sit back and laugh at the people that already responded.


Comments

Source: [H]ardOCP – CEO Jack Dorsey Wants An Edit Button

Has the Internet Killed Curly Quotes?

Posted on by

Glenn Fleishman, writing for The Atlantic: Many aspects of website design have improved to the point that nuances and flourishes formerly reserved for the printed page are feasible and pleasing. But there’s a seemingly contrary motion afoot with quotation marks: At an increasing number of publications, they’ve been ironed straight. This may stem from a lack of awareness on the part of website designers or from the difficulty in a content-management system (CMS) getting the curl direction correct every time. It may also be that curly quotes’ time has come and gone. Major periodicals have fallen prey, including those with a long and continuing print edition. Not long ago, Rolling Stone had straight quotes in its news-item previews, but educated them for features; the “smart” quotes later returned. Fast Company opts generally for all “dumb” quotes online, while the newborn digital publication The Outline recently mixed straight and typographic in the same line of text at its launch. Even the fine publication you’re currently reading has occasionally neglected to crook its pinky.(Via DaringFireball — John’s take on this is insightful.) At Slashdot, we also avoid curly quotes — and when we miss, you see them as weird characters on the site!

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Has the Internet Killed Curly Quotes?

Knotes for Mac Gives You Quick Access to Your Kindle Highlights

Posted on by

Mac: You can access your Kindle highlights from your Kindle itself, the apps, or the web app, but none of those are particularly handy, especially if you use your Kindle for research. Knotes makes it easier to access those notes right from your Mac.

Read more…



Source: LifeHacker – Knotes for Mac Gives You Quick Access to Your Kindle Highlights

Oculus VR Acquires The Eye Tribe, Developer of Eye Tracking Technologies

Posted on by

It has been announced that Oculus VR as bought The Eye Tribe, a company known for its eye tracking hardware and software technologies, earlier in December. Facebook’s VR division does not say how it plans to use the acquired company, but the two primary reasons for the takeover could be The Eye Tribe’s gaze tracking IP along with the company’s experience with foveated rendering. Theoretically, the buyout may indicate that foveated rendering could become an important feature of the upcoming VR platforms.


The Eye Tribe was established in 2011 with the aim to develop software and hardware technologies for eye tracking. By 2013, the company introduced its eye-tracking device for PCs and tablets that cost only $99 along with an SDK to develop software for the product. The company actually started shipping the units to developers in 2014, but the devices have never been integrated into actual tablets or computers shipped to end-users. Eventually, the company designed eye tracking technologies for smartphones and earlier this year demonstrated an eye tracking tech for VR headsets.


Eye tracking itself could enable a more intuitive control for virtual reality interactions when combined with gestures, voice and other methods. However, this might not be the only reason why Oculus VR was interested in The Eye Tribe. Usage of gaze tracking also enables developers to use foveated rendering, which allows optimizing the use of GPU horsepower. The method is relatively simple on paper: each scene is rendered first in low resolution and with the least amount of polygons and then the specific part of the screen where the user is currently looking at is rendered in high resolution. Developers may play with such effects like depth of field, blur and antialiasing to further optimize performance and/or improve quality, but all of those tricks require gaze tracking.



The foveated rendering technique is already supported in Unity3D engine and is enabled by the Tobii EyeX tracking device. According to the developers, usage of the tech helped to improve performance of a laptop from 11 FPS to 42 FPS. Microsoft and NVIDIA are also researching foveated rendering and the latter has even come up with new ideas on the matter. The company says that foveated rendering per se is not a panacea for VR (at the end of the day, you can improve performance of any platform by using foveated rendering with gaze tracking) because rendering in lower resolution for peripheral vision results in flickering if the foveation is too aggressive, meanwhile blur itself reduces contrast and introduces a sense of tunnel vision. NVIDIA has a number of suggestions how to minimize negative effects of foveated rendering (e.g., by introducing contrast preservation), but currently this is a research project.


For VR applications, foveated rendering makes sense, especially if we are dealing with a headset based on a smartphone that has a limited amount of GPU horsepower. To enable it, Oculus VR needed gaze tracking IP and a team that understands how things work here. This does not mean that foveated rendering will be a part of Oculus VR’s next-gen VR headset because its current form requires some additional work. However, with eye tracking IP and appropriate team, Oculus VR could implement the technology in the future.


Related Reading:




Source: AnandTech – Oculus VR Acquires The Eye Tribe, Developer of Eye Tracking Technologies

That ‘Fake Plastic Rice’ in Nigeria Was Actually Something Much More Depressing

Posted on by

Image: ProjectManhattan/Wikimedia

Last week, Nigerian officials seized over 100 bags of what was claimed to be plastic rice. Lab tests have since shown the product isn’t fake, as Gizmodo and other outlets reported. But it is badly contaminated rice that’s unsafe for human consumption. The incident is casting light on the sorry state of the economy and food production in Nigeria—along with a government that’s anxious to deflect the blame elsewhere.

Read more…



Source: Gizmodo – That ‘Fake Plastic Rice’ in Nigeria Was Actually Something Much More Depressing

GoBaby Lets You Rent Strollers and Car Seats at Your Travel Destination

Posted on by

iOS: When you travel with kids, lugging their gear can be a major headache. Tiny ones need a car seat to keep them safe, maybe a stroller for when their little legs give out, and a crib to sleep in at your destination. GoBaby helps you find gear you can rent while traveling.

Read more…



Source: LifeHacker – GoBaby Lets You Rent Strollers and Car Seats at Your Travel Destination