So you’re setting up your brand new desktop, laptop or smartphone and you come across the option to choose the type of account or protocol to use and you have zero idea what any of it actually does. Don’t worry. We’ve been there before which is why today we’ll be comparing three of the most common e-mail protocols in use today.

 

POP3

POP3, or Post Office Protocol Version 3, is one of the e-mail protocols quickly losing popularity today thanks to the rise of broadband and mobile broadband internet.

The way POP3 works is once it’s setup on an e-mail client (Windows Mail, Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, etc.), POP3 [...]

MSI recently announced the Vortex G25, a small yet powerful gaming PC.

The MSI Vortex G25 is absolutely tiny. It’s slim build is almost reminiscent of a blade server. When stood up vertically, it takes up less space than a gaming console. It’s so compact, in fact, that it can be mounted on a VESA monitor mount. At just 5.51lbs, it won’t rip your monitor apart, either.

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Players Unknown Battlegrounds (PUGB for short) was hit with a massive number of negative reviews after inserting in-game ads on its Chinese servers.

The reviews started flowing after players on the Chinese servers began seeing advertisements in-game promoting a VPN service. The Chinese players, already unsatisfied with the game’s server performance in China, voiced their disdain by down voting the game in doves. Flooding a game with negative reviews, know as “review bombing” has become a popular way for players to voice their dissatisfaction.

Surprisingly, the negative reviews from the Chinese players triggered a wave of international players [...]

Popular messaging app WeChat recently updated its privacy policy to let users know that it logs and shares private user information with the Chinese Government. While the latest update to WeChat’s privacy policy is no surprise, it does explicitly confirm what we’ve all assumed to be true all along.

The scope of data collection covers anything WeChat collects including identity information, credit card information, chat history, phone numbers, biometric information (voice, fingerprint, etc) and more. It would be safe to assume that all versions of WeChat is subjected to the same level of scrutiny.

WeChat’s new privacy policy complies with the [...]

Der8auer, the German overclocker who’s become quite famous for delidding CPUs, has recently published a video not only de-lidding the AMD Threadripper 1950X, but he also removed the dies to learn more about what lies inside.

As the AMD Threadripper 1950X has 16 cores/32 threads, it was originally assumed to only have two 8-core Ryzen dies. Interestingly, Der8auer discovered that there are not two, but four dies under the heatspreader in a previous video. Further, each of the four dies are confirmed to be 8-core Ryzen dies by removing all the dies. This means that half the dies are disabled and are essentially just there as placeholders. Currently, it’s not [...]

The Next Generation

When Eero launched last year, it helped drive a revolutionary shift in the WiFi router market. Unlike the traditional WiFi router which was complicated to configure and manage for the average user, Eero wanted to create something that was easy to setup, easy to manage and could provide reliable whole home WiFi coverage no matter the size of the home. For the most part, Eero achieved its goal.

Now that it’s a bit more than year later, Eero has revealed the 2nd Generation Eero. Rather than a major redesign, the 2nd Generation Eero focuses on improving on the first generation product while simultaneously launching lower powered wall mounted node [...]

Internet security has become one of the most prevalent issues in the past few years and while not as popular as it should be, one of the best ways to stay safe online is to use a VPN service. In this article, we’ll discuss what a VPN is, why you need a VPN service, and how to choose a good VPN provider.

 

What is a VPN

A VPN is an acronym for Virtual Private Network. As its name implies, VPNs were originally designed primarily to allow users to connect computers in different locations onto the same “virtual” private network. At first, corporations adopted VPN technology to allow its employees to use a shared drive or an intranet service [...]

DRAM and NAND prices have soared over the past year due to shortages and it looks like VRAM prices are following a similar trajectory as well. According to a recent article by Digitimes, VRAM price quotes have soared by 30.8% in August, leaping from $6.50 per package in July to $8.50 per package.

The price increase is due to RAM leading RAM manufacturers shifting production focus to memory for servers and smartphones. Samsung, which accounts for 55% of the worldwide VRAM supply, has more than doubled its server DRAM production from 12% to 27%. SK Hynix and Micron which account for the rest of the world’s VRAM production has significantly increased production of [...]

Microsoft has recently slotted yet another addition to its already populated Windows lineup. The Windows 10 Pro Workstation edition brings some trickled down features from the enterprise edition, namely resilient file system support, persistent memory, faster file sharing, and support for server grade hardware.

Resilient file system (ReFS) uses a host of techniques to make data more fault tolerant. It can automatically perform auto correction using mirrored storage space and integrity streams. It’s also optimized for handling large data volumes.

Persistent memory uses non-volatile memory modules (NVDIMM-N) to store data and is designed for applications [...]

As prices of last generation servers continue to decrease, internet speeds continue to increase, and NAS systems become much more feature rich, many people are now opting to setup their own home servers or NAS systems.

If you don’t own your own home server or NAS system, here are five top uses for a home server or NAS.

 

Network Storage

The most common use for a home server or NAS is using it as a network storage. After all, the acronym NAS itself stands for Network Attached Storage.

Typically referred to as a “shared drive”, network storage typically employs the NFS (Network File System) or SMB (Server Message Block) [...]