The new camera system is perhaps the best of the G5’s unique features. The main 16-megapixel camera is just as good as it was on the G4, producing great photos in strong lighting and surprisingly decent photos in low light. The secondary wide-angle camera is something you won’t find on other devices, and it definitely comes in handy for shooting landscapes by capturing far more of any given scene. Unlike some gimmicky camera features, I actually found myself using both cameras frequently, which speaks volumes about its usefulness....

The LG Optimus 4X HD is a big phone, like most of the other flagship smartphones to hit the market this year. Due largely to its very nice 4.7-inch, IPS touchscreen display, which offers 720p HD resolution, LG’s Optimus 4X HD measures 133.0 x 68.2mm x 9.5mm, which makes it slightly shorter and narrower than HTC’s One X, but also half a hair thicker. At 133g in weight, the phone doesn’t feel like a total brick in your purse or pocket....

Once you have finished cleaning things up, it’s time to mess them up again by downloading new apps from the Google Play Market, which offers a few hundred thousand applications for the Optimus 4X HD user’s pleasure. LG’s standard browser on the Optimus 4X HD is highly functional and offers a somewhat changed user experience from most stock Android browsers. I’m not sure that it is any better than the others, but the changes are at least something different....

The optical telephoto zoom camera module, or simply the optical zoom camera, from LG Innotek will deliver true optical zoom capabilities across the 4-9x telephoto range thanks to an internal zoom actuator that physically moves the lens. For comparison, most modern smartphones utilize multiple fixed camera modules at different focal lengths and fill in the gaps using less desirable digital zoom. LG’s solution will work in conjunction with an optical image stabilizer and should reduce both the number of individual camera modules on the back of flagships and the size of the camera bump....

We kicked things off by securing the Prolimatech Genesis’ CPU bracket to the back of the Asrock Z87 Extreme9a/c, though forgetting this step is no biggie, as it can be performed with the board installed thanks to a hole in the motherboard tray. The motherboard slotted into place without any fuss and connecting everything else was as easy as can be. Installing the optical drive, in this case a DVD-RW, was very straightforward thanks to Lian Li’s tool-less design, and installing the hard drives was just as simple, though slightly less conventional as you must attach four rubber wheels to the drives before inserting them into the bays....

Despite Lost Ark’s early access paywall, the game sold over 500,000 copies. Within two days of the game’s free-to-play (F2P) release, Lost Ark gained an enormous following and stacked up more than 1 million concurrent players. As of this writing, the game’s peak concurrent player count sits at just over 1.3 million. The Lost Ark provides players with the opportunity to create one of several customizable hero classes, each with its own sets of unique skills....

In the first set of images you will notice that with anti-aliasing turned off there is not a huge difference in visual quality. There are just a few jagged edges that are smoothed over such as the window frame, still overall not a huge difference in this scene. With PhysX turned on in the third screenshot the only key difference is the rubble on the window sill. This alone saw our GeForce GTX 480 drop around 15% of its original performance....

Card payments company Dojo analyzed data from the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) on 100,000 passwords to come up with a list of the most commonly-used categories people look to when picking a password. Victims tend to use variations of the same password, often with a few other easily guessable characters, e.g. Love123456. The most popular category was terms of endearment, found in 4,032 of the most commonly hacked passwords....

At 1920x1200 it takes the Radeon HD 6870 to exceed an average of 60fps. This card was a mere 2-3fps slower than the 5870 and 6950. The new Radeon HD 7850 averaged 69fps matching the old GeForce GTX 480. Meanwhile the GeForce GTX 570 and Radeon HD 6970 both scored 76fps, while the new 7950 was slightly faster with 77fps. Towards the top of the food chain we have the GeForce GTX 580 with 84fps and the Radeon HD 7970 with 87fps....

Now at the extreme resolution of 2560x1600 we find that very few graphics cards can achieve an average frame rate of 60fps. The only graphics cards to pass the mark were the Radeon HD 7970 (61fps), GeForce GTX 670 (65fps) and the GTX 680 (70fps). The GeForce GTX 580 and Radeon HD 7950 fell short with 54fps, and the Radeon HD 7870 and 6970 were just 2fps slower. Beyond those the frame rates fall below 50fps....

David Guyer, program manager for Windows Updates in Endpoint Manager at Microsoft, writes on the Microsoft IT Pro Blog (via Bleeping Computer) that devices that don’t meet a certain amount of connected time are very unlikely to update successfully. Microsoft tracks how long a device is powered on and also connected to one of its services, such as Windows Update, using a measurement it calls ‘Update Connectivity.’ The company discovered that a device requires a minimum of two hours of continuous connectivity followed by six total connected hours after an update is released to update reliably....

The December 2022 update for Excel includes several new functions for the web, Windows, and Mac versions. Chief among them are optional autofill features to help web users enter formulas. With Formula Suggestions engaged, web Excel automatically suggests SUM, AVERAGE, COUNT, COUNTA, MIN, or MAX formulas whenever users type a “=” sign based on context. For example: if the software notices a column called “Average” next to other columns containing numbers, it might automatically suggest a formula to average out the adjacent numbers....

If you’re in that camp, this deal gets you a lifetime license for Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for $49.99, that’s 85% off the regular price for a standalone license. You get all the essential Microsoft apps with a one-time purchase including Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher and other collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams and OneNote. Microsoft’s latest iteration of Office packs several new features and a streamlined look. Real-time co-authoring, for example, allows users to work with others on the same document at the same time using OneDrive....

A ResetEra user shared a Spanish survey implying that Microsoft is exploring a lower-cost, ad-supported tier for Game Pass subscriptions. In addition to access to the Game Pass library, the proposed basic plan would include online multiplayer gaming for only €3 a month, making it one of the cheapest online multiplayer subscriptions in the console market. Online multiplayer for non-free-to-play titles on Xbox currently costs $10 a month with an Xbox Live Gold subscription, or $15 a month with a Game Pass Ultimate subscription....

On Monday, sources told Reuters that Microsoft would soon offer European Union regulators more concessions to assuage concerns over its attempt to buy Activision. However, these remedies must come before the EU’s January deadline. The EU became the latest regulator to formally put the deal under the microscope earlier this month following probes from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the UK and the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC)....

The only real difference between the S625 and S626 is a 200 MHz clock speed improvement across the eight ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores. The S625 was clocked at 2.0 GHz, the S626 hits 2.2 GHz, so we’re looking at a 10 percent improvement at best. Not exactly earth shattering in my opinion, especially when you consider both SoCs use the same Adreno 506 GPU clocked at 650 MHz, and the same memory controller good for 7....

With a peak of over 19,000 feet, Mount Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in Africa and the highest single free-standing mountain above sea level in the world. It’s a popular destination for adventurous types, and will likely attract even more visitors now that it offers internet access. As per The Guardian, the broadband network was set up at an altitude of 12,000 feet by the state-owned Tanzania Telecommunications Corporation. While we can expect plenty of people to livestream themselves climbing the mountain on Facebook or Instagram, the internet connectivity was put in place primarily for safety reasons....

Netflix also picked up Night School Studio in September 2021 and Boss Fight Entertainment this past March, and will soon have four gaming studios under its wing. Night School Studio launched in 2014 and is best known for Oxenfree, a graphic adventure game that dropped in early 2016. Boss Fight Entertainment was founded in 2013 by Bill Jackson, David Rippy and Scott Winsett, and has put out two games to date....

Led by MIT’s Mengjia Yan, researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) created the novel attack using a combination of memory corruption and speculative execution to bypass the M1’s security. The research team’s proof of concept also demonstrated the attack’s effectiveness against the CPU kernel, which could have far-reaching impacts on any PAC-enabled ARM system. A PAC typically guards the OS kernel by causing any mismatch between a PAC pointer and its authentication code to result in a crash....

Compared to the Lumia 1020 and other Lumia devices, the 1520 appears to be targeting lossless zoom rather than low light capabilities. The pixel size is the same as the Lumia 1020 at 1.1 µm, but the f/2.4 lens is a quarter-stop less than the 1020’s f/2.2 lens, meaning it will let in slightly less light for those critical low-light images. The Lumia 925’s f/2.0 lens and 1.4 µm pixels means it can capture 75% more light than the 1520, again which will affect images in dark conditions, although optical image stabilization (OIS) should compensate somewhat....