Xbox Announcement Live Stream

This is it folks, Microsoft's Xbox event is now live! Click this link to follow along as the company unveils the new Xbox.

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IN WIN G7 Mid-Tower ATX Case

If you are in the market for a new mid-tower case, make sure you read our evaluation of the IN WIN G7. You get a lot of case for not a lot of money.

We have been using IN WIN cases here at HardOCP for as long as HardOCP has been in existence. Some of our first case mods were based on an IN WIN chassis. We have lost focus on IN WIN in the last decade or so because there are so many quality cases that hit the mark. Does the G7 case live up the nostalgia we have for the brand, for $56?

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Thermaltake Non-Interference Cooler F4

The crew at Pro-Clockers have the Thermaltake Non-Interference Cooler F4 in house for a little review action today.

Thermaltake’s newest CPU cooler consist of four cooler models for now and the line-up is called the NiC or Non-Interference Cooler series. The reason behind the name is that the coolers allow for the builder or end user to fill all of their motherboard DIMM slots. This is something that is often not possible with most coolers because of their massive size.

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Revenge, Ego and The Corruption of Wikipedia

Holy cow, this whole thing reads like a soap opera from the seventies. [citation needed]

Qworty’s edits undermine our faith in this great project. Qworty’s edits prove that Wikipedia’s content can be shaped by people settling grudges and acting out of spite and envy. Qworty alone, by his own account, has made 13,000 edits to Wikipedia. And Qworty, as the record will show, is not to be trusted.

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[H]ardware Round-Up

Flickr Users Hate The New Site

Apparently Flickr users aren't too thrilled with the new site design. I guess the people complaining could always just ask for a refund.

Several users chiming in on the forum say the photos are now too big and "in your face." Others say the large layout makes it difficult to interact with their fellow Flickr users. And some just find the new look confusing and messy. Many of them are asking Yahoo to at least offer them an option to use the old layout.

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PS4 Mock-Up Based On That Blurry Video

So some guy came up with this PS4 mock-up based on the video we showed you yesterday. Let's hope he's wrong because that thing still looks like a George Foreman grill.

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Do LinkedIn Endorsements Violate Legal Ethics?

Seriously? You know things are bad when a lawyer questions your ethics.

But, frankly, it happens with some frequency that I receive an endorsement from someone I have never met. That got me wondering about the ethics of these LinkedIn endorsements. Under ABA Model Rule 7.1, a lawyer is not to make any false or misleading claims about his or her services. If a lawyer permits an endorsement to remain on the lawyer’s LinkedIn profile that the lawyer knows to be misleading, even if someone else posted the endorsement, that would seem to be a problem under Rule 7.1.

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Apple Dodged Paying Billions In Taxes, Subcommittee Says

You know, it probably wasn't a good idea to send Tim Cook to give testimony to congress after all. Apple is the poster boy for tax dodging and the congressional subcommittee is salivating at the chance to get its hands on that cash.

Apple is an American success story," the report reads. "Today, Apple Inc. maintains more than $102 billion in offshore cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities (cash). Apple executives told the Subcommittee that the company has no intention of returning those funds to the United States unless and until there is a more favorable environment, emphasizing a lower corporate tax rate and a simplified tax code.

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NASA Grant To Fund 3D-Printed Pizza

Who cares about 3D-printing guns when you can print up a pizza! Now, if we can just get a NASA grant to print beer.

What kind of food would result from 3D-printing? In this case, pizza. In the next two or so weeks, Contractor will start working on the creation of a 3D-printer that creates a pizza, the reason being the layer-by-layer nature of the dish, something that is easy for the printer to recreate.

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HGST Launches the Highest Capacity Mobile Hard Drive

HGST continues to push technology innovation by offering the highest storage density (MB/mm3) of any hard disk drive (HDD) today. The new Travelstar® 5K1500 is the industry’s first 9.5mm, 1.5TB mobile hard drive and features the industry’s highest capacity in a standard 9.5mm design. Built on HGST’s proven platform for quality and reliability, the Travelstar 5K1500 delivers high shock protection, low power and solid performance to meet the growing demands for a variety of market segments, including notebooks, external hard drives, gaming consoles and all-in-one desktop PCs.

The HGST three-platter Travelstar 5K1500 offers 50 percent more capacity than currently shipping 1TB 2.5-inch 9.5mm HDDs and 200 percent more capacity than single-disk 500GB 7mm or 5mm 2.5-inch HDDs, making them ideal for capacity-hungry devices. With better PCMark® Vantage and PCMark 7 performance than currently shipping two-platter HGST 5,400RPM models, all Travelstar 5K1500 drives ship with a 32MB cache buffer and 6Gbps SATA interface.

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ENERMAX Launches Five New Fan Models

ENERMAX is pleased to launch their latest five fan models along with their new patented technology, APS (Adjustable Peak Speed) Control. As the name implies, the peak speed of these fans can be adjusted as you prefer, and the speed will be regulated automatically by pulse-width modulation (PWM) or by an integrated thermal sensor after selecting the particular RPM range.

While the current Twister Series have been introduced into the market for more than 5 years, ENERMAX decided to refresh the series by adding the new Twister Advance series offering three different RPM modes which can be selected with a small switch at the fan hub. Users can then easily adapt the ENERMAX fans for various applications. For instance, the new Cluster Advance 12cm version fan runs within the ranges of 500 to 1200, 500 to 1500 or 500 to 1800 RPM, so that users can select the best combination for their chassis. Other features such as the patented Twister Bearing, carved halo frame and batwing blades are still retained to offer users the best cooling performance.

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Twitter Sued Over "SunValley" Name

Even though this whole thing is total B.S., it's hard not to laugh when you get to the part where the guy says "They just came and took my ball away. That's being a bully."

An Internet entrepreneur and former Wall Street derivatives analyst contends central Idaho's Sun Valley resort and the Twitter Inc. social media site heisted his handle. Leonard Barshack, who in the 1990s founded the Internet email listing service Bigfoot, is suing Twitter and the Sun Valley Co., demanding they return the handle "SunValley."

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1:1000th Scale Tokyo + 3D Projection Mapping = Amazing

If this doesn't qualify as the Must See Video of the Day, I honestly don't know what does. Thanks to Izzy Reed for the link.

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SRI Developing Augmented Reality Binoculars

If you think about all the things you could use them for, augmented reality binoculars could actually be pretty cool...if you could afford them.

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[H]ardware Round-Up II

[H]ot Deals

Today's [H]ot Deals forum thread is full of exclusive deals just for [H] readers. The coupon codes for the items listed below won't last forever and are limited to stock on hand so you'd better get in on these deals while the getting is good.

MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming Motherboard

Another review of the MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming motherboard popped up on the internet today. This time around it is the folks at PC Perspective doing the reviewing. Our evaluation can be found here.

From the initial unpacking, it is obvious that MSI squarely targeted this board at gamers and enthusiasts. Its appealing black and red color scheme and dragon branding is just the tip of the iceberg. MSI took their time with the Z77A-GD65 Gaming board layout and design, using top of the line components throughout and spacing everything perfectly.

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Ragebooter: Legit DDoS Service, or Fed Backdoor?

Did this guy just say "legit DDoS service?"

Nor is spoofing the sender address [illegal]," he wrote. "If the root user of the server does not want that used they can simple disable recursive DNS. My service is a legal testing service. How individuals use it is at there [sic] own risk and responsibilitys [sic].

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Fan Made BioShock Infinite Video

If you are a fan of BioShock Infinite, you will no doubt enjoy this "Keeping up with the Comstocks" fan-made video.

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What Tim Cook Will Say To Congress On Taxes

Apple posted a sixteen page document (scroll down to "additional information") outlining the company's tax plan that it will present to congress tomorrow. Among other things, Apple plans to inform congress of the extraordinary amount of money it pays every year in taxes:

Apple is likely the largest corporate income tax payer in the US, having paid nearly $6 billion in taxes to the US Treasury in FY2012. These payments account for $1 in every $40 in corporate income tax the US Treasury collected last year. The Company’s FY2012 total US federal cash effective tax rate was approximately 30.5%.1 The Company expects to pay over $7 billion in taxes to the US Treasury in its current fiscal year. In accordance with US law, Apple pays US corporate income taxes on the profits earned from its sales in the US and on the investment income of its Controlled Foreign Corporations ("CFCs"), including the investment earnings of its Irish subsidiary, Apple Operations International ("AOI").

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Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 Case

The Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 case is on the test bench at Benchmark Reviews today. Overall, the reviewer seemed to really like the case. Here's a quote from the full review:

If you research a little about Fractal Design, you'll discover that "Design" in their name is not an accident. They've set out to "provide products with an extraordinary design level" using a "less-is-more" philosophy. With that in mind they've made some revisions to their Arc Midi enclosure, resulting in the new Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 computer case.

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Target Testing Streaming Video Service On Employees

Would anyone here use a video streaming service from Target? I like the store just fine, I just don't think "video streaming service" when I think of Target. Do you?

Target Corp. is testing a Netflix-like movie streaming service with its own employees. Called Target Ticket beta, the service claims to offer "instant access to 15,000 titles, new releases, classic movies and next-day TV." The site requires a Target employee login to use.

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Gaming [H]eadlines

PowerColor Radeon HD 7790 TurboDuo

Shopping for an affordable video card? Make sure you read our evaluation of the PowerColor Radeon HD 7790 TurboDuo before spending your hard earned money. Trust us, you'll be glad you did.

Today we are looking at PowerColor's Radeon HD 7790 TurboDuo video card. We will be using six of today's most popular and demanding games to evaluate its performance at 1080p. The PowerColor HD 7790 TurboDuo hopes to deliver an affordable solution to gaming with a price tag of $165.

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4 Biggest Challenges Facing Google Glass

Thankfully this article only lists the four biggest challenges facing Google Glass. If they listed them all, we'd be here all day.

Google Glass faces four big issue it must overcome in order to transform itself into a mainstream product. I believe Google Glass faces big obstacles in four key areas: privacy, style, usability, and fear. Here's why these will be problems when Google goes after consumers next year.

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Blurry PlayStation 4 Console Shots

A day ahead of Microsoft's next-gen Xbox reveal, Sony has posted a video with blurry shots of the PS4 interlaced with close ups of various parts of the console. Sorry Sony, you are going to need more than this to steal Microsoft's thunder tomorrow.

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[H]ardware Round-Up

Police Raid Teacher for Uploading Book for Students

Uploading a history book to your website so your students can have access to it? I hope they throw the book at this hardened criminal!

A teacher received a huge shock last week after uploading a copy of a book to his website that offers free educational resources for students. The Latvian publisher behind the work, a $4.00 history book, complained to the authorities which resulted in the teacher being raided by the police. During interrogation the teacher learned that his mistake could cost him dearly – two years in jail, forced labor, or a fine.

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