The Samsung Galaxy Note9 is a bestseller for Samsung, breaking all expectations. But Samsung has not let up the pressure, regularly announcing promotions. In this guide, we will keep track of all Samsung Galaxy Note9 price changes, offers and promotions. Bookmark and share!
Updated @ 2018-10-05 : Added details of the RM400 instant rebate.
Updated @ 2018-09-20 : Added details of the 512GB Ocean Blue pre-order promotion.
Originally posted @ 2018-09-18
The Samsung Galaxy Note9 Price + Availability
The Samsung Galaxy Note9 was a smashing success, selling out the largest pre-order Samsung ever created. With good reason too. It packs a ton of new features at great price points.
6 GB + 128 GB : £899 / $999.99 / RM 3,699
8 GB + 256 GB : £999
8 GB + 512 GB : £1,099 / $1,249.99 / RM 4,599
The Samsung Galaxy Note9 (US | MY Web | MY App) is available worldwide starting 24 August 2018. In some countries (e.g. Malaysia), it will only be offered in Midnight Black and Metallic Copper with a matching S Pen, and Ocean Blue with a Yellow S Pen. There is also a Lavender Purple colour option that is available in certain countries. Samsung may eventually introduce it at a later date to the rest of the world.
Where To Buy The Samsung Galaxy Note9
Here are some direct links to purchase the Samsung Galaxy Note9 in Malaysia.
Here are some direct links to purchase the Samsung Galaxy Note9 in the US.
Samsung Galaxy Note9 (128 GB, International Unlocked) : $849
Samsung Galaxy Note9 (128 GB, US Unlocked) : $999.99
Samsung Galaxy Note9 (512 GB, International Unlocked) : $1,214
Samsung Galaxy Note9 (512 GB, US Unlocked) : $999.99
Samsung Galaxy Note9 Offer + Promotion Guide
Samsung is never one to rest their laurels, so you can expect them to introduce regular offers and promotions to keep the pressure on their competitors. Let’s start with a look at the great Galaxy Note9 pre-order offers that quickly sold out!
The Samsung Galaxy Note9 Pre-Order Offers (Ended)
Samsung Galaxy Note9 (512 GB) : FREE Gifts worth RM 1,530 (Gear Sport smartwatch, Gear Sport Strap and Wireless Charger Pad)
Those who bought the Samsung Galaxy Note9 (US | MY Web | MY App) early got a nice surprise when they started to use Samsung Pay. They immediately received a Mystery Box containing a gift voucher or Samsung Points.
2. Free Starbucks Beverage (Ended)
Early purchasers of the Samsung Galaxy Note9 (US | MY Web | MY App) also received a free drink from Starbucks! Although the promotion was slated to end on 30 September 2018, it probably ended early due to the overwhelming response. If you did not get your free Grande-sized Starbucks drink, there’s no harm checking your Samsung Members app, just in case it is still available…
3. No Increase From SST (Ongoing)
This is not a Galaxy Note9 promotion per se. It applies to all Samsung mobile devices – smartphones, tablets and wearables. Samsung will absorb the 5% SST (Sales and Service Tax) on the purchase of those mobile devices. Great news!
4. Samsung Galaxy Note9 Yearly Upgrade Program (Ongoing)
Validity :14 September to 2 December 2018
Samsung just announced an exclusive Samsung Galaxy Note9 Yearly Upgrade Program! This Yearly Upgrade Program is limited to those who purchase a new Galaxy Note9 (US | MY Web | MY App) from 14 September until 2 December 2018. They will have the option of paying RM 100 extra for the following benefits :
automatic 10% discount on the Samsung Galaxy Note10 in 2019!
FREE 5,000 Samsung Reward Points (worth RM 125)
one month FREE instalment (if purchased with Easy Payment Plan), OR Samsung Protection Plus worth RM 298.
As you can tell, this is a great offer as the 5,000 Samsung Reward Points are already worth MORE than what you pay to join the upgrade program. In fact, the whole deal gives you 7X what you pay into it!Read our detailed analysis @ Why The Galaxy Note9 Yearly Upgrade Program Is Such A Great Deal!
5. Samsung Galaxy Note9 512GB Ocean Blue Pre-Order (Ended)
Samsung just announced that the 512GB model, which was originally available only in Midnight Black will now be available in the Ocean Blue colour with its iconic Yellow S Pen! From 21 – 23 September 2018, you will be able to pre-order the 512 GB Ocean Blue model with only a RM 300 deposit at the recommended retail price of RM 4,599 (unchanged). But that’s not all. Those who pre-order the 512GB Ocean Blue model will receive a Samsung POWERstick vacuum cleaner worth RM 889 / ~US$ 219 absolutely FREE! Please note that this offer does NOT apply to the 128GB models, or the 512GB Midnight Black model. Those who pre-order the 512GB Ocean Blue model will be able to collect their devices from 5 October through 14 October 2018.
6. RM 400 Instant Rebate!
Validity :5 October to 28 October 2018
Samsung just announced an incredible RM 400 instant rebate offer!
This RM 400 instant rebate is applicable for both the 128GB and 512GB models. However, this offer is limited to purchases from Samsung Authorised Dealers, and excludes the Samsung Online Store and telcos.
All you have to do is walk into any Samsung Authorised Dealer shop, and ask to purchase the Samsung Galaxy Note9 with the RM 400 instant rebate! What an awesome deal!
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One of the Samsung Galaxy Note9‘s most revolutionary features is its new Bluetooth S Pen. Everyone knows what it can do as a stylus, but here are FOURTEEN Galaxy Note9 S Pen features and tips that most people are completely oblivious to!
2018-10-04 :Upgraded to The Ultimate Galaxy Note9 S Pen Features + Tips Guide with additional tips and how-to instructions.
2018-09-03:Originally posted as The 7 Secret Galaxy Note9 S Pen Features You Never Knew!
Here are some direct links to purchase the Samsung Galaxy Note9 in the US.
Samsung Galaxy Note9 (128 GB, International Unlocked) : $849
Samsung Galaxy Note9 (128 GB, US Unlocked) : $999.99
Samsung Galaxy Note9 (512 GB, International Unlocked) : $1,214
Samsung Galaxy Note9 (512 GB, US Unlocked) : $999.99
What You Probably Know About The Note9 S Pen
Let’s run through what you probably know about the Note9 S Pen, since Samsung has been promoting them.
The Note9 S Pen Is A Bluetooth Device!
For the first time, S Pen communicates with the Samsung Galaxy Note9 via Bluetooth Low Energy. Opening it up reveals that the new S Pen uses the Dialog DA13580 Bluetooth Smart SoC.
The Note9 S Pen Is A Remote Control!
The Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity lets you use the shutter button to remotely perform a variety of tasks.
Hold the shutter button to open any app you wish. By default, it launches the Camera app.
When the camera is activated, press the shutter button once to take a picture, or twice to switch between the front and main cameras.
Press the shutter button once to go forward in an app or browser, or twice to go backwards.
You can customise this remote control feature in Settings > Advanced features > S Pen > S Pen remote.
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The Note9 S Pen Battery Life
This S Pen will last a good 30 minutes once it is ejected from its dock, or up to 200 clicks – whichever occurs first.
Your Samsung Galaxy Note9 will alert you when the S Pen’s battery is down to 15%, with more reminders as the battery level drops.
It Writes In A Signature Colour!
Like previous versions, you can pop out the S Pen to immediately jot your thoughts using the Screen Off Memo feature.
The Samsung Galaxy Note9 though introduces the ability to write in its signature colour!
The Ocean Blue S Pen will write in bright yellow, while the Midnight Black S Pen will write in silver, the Lavender Purple S Pen will write in purple, and the Metallic Copper S Pen will write in brown.
The only downside? The Samsung Notes app has not been updated with the ability to change its background to black.
If you prefer to write in the standard silver colour, go to Settings > Advanced features > S Pen > Screen Off Memoand disable Use S Pen signature colour.
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What You Don’t Know About The Note9 S Pen
The Note9 S Pen is more than just a stylus with a remote control button though. Here are some fun facts about it that most users are completely oblivious to!
It Will Work Even With Bluetooth Disabled!
The Samsung Galaxy Note9 (Price Check) communicates with its S Pen using Bluetooth Low Energy (formerly known as Bluetooth Smart) to keep power consumption low.
But we’ll bet you didn’t know that the S Pen will work even if you turn off the Galaxy Note9’s Bluetooth feature!
You can safely turn off your Galaxy Note9’s Bluetooth connectivity for security reasons, or to further reduce power consumption, and still have access to the S Pen’s full range of capabilities.
You Can Use It To UNLOCK Your Galaxy Note9!
To save power and protect your privacy, the Samsung Galaxy Note9 (Price Check) will turn off and lock its screen after a period of inactivity.
This can be annoying if you are using it to dictate notes or give a presentation… until you realise you can simply unlock the screen with your S Pen!
This does not mean anyone can use your S Pen to unlock your Samsung Galaxy Note9. This feature only works if you :
manually activate it at Settings > Advanced features > S Pen > Unlock with S Pen remote
It will not work if you pull out the S Pen while the Samsung Galaxy Note9 is locked. If you reinsert the S Pen into its dock, you will not be able to use it to unlock your Galaxy Note9.
This prevents strangers from using the S Pen to unlock your Galaxy Note9, while giving you the option to instantly unlock the screen if it locks up while you are using it.
Never Lose Your Note9 S Pen!
Its Bluetooth capability allows the Samsung Galaxy Note9 (Price Check) to sense when you forget your S Pen and set off an alarm to warn you.
It is more of a notification with an audio alert, but this incredibly useful feature will greatly reduce, if not eliminate, the chance of losing your S Pen.
This feature is enabled by default, but if you want to make sure it’s turned on, it’s the Alarm option under the Removal section of Settings > Advanced features > S Pen.
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It Is Powered By A Supercapacitor!
This S Pen is not powered by an internal lithium-ion battery, but a Seiko K8373 supercapacitor.
This supercapacitor is not only incredibly tiny and light, it is highly durable and withstands extreme temperatures. It can be recharged hundreds of thousands of times without any loss in capacity.
It also recharges in a flash, and delivers long battery life – just 40 seconds of charging will give you 30 minutes of use! It is also simple to recharge – the S Pen recharges automatically whenever it is docked.
Note : The S Pen’s supercapacitor will start discharging once it is out of the dock. Don’t be surprised if the battery level drops even if you did not use its remote control. This is perfectly normal.
How To Check The Note9 S Pen’s Power Level
You can check the supercapacitor’s power level in your Samsung Galaxy Note9 at Settings > Advanced features > S Pen > S Pen remote.
However, this is really not necessary, because the supercapacitor recharges so quickly! All you need is pop it in its dock for 40 seconds to get it up to 100%!
The Note9 S Pen Has TWO Power Sources!
Believe it or not, this S Pen has TWO power sources.
The supercapacitor is only used to power the Bluetooth Low Energy radio for its remote control functionality.
The stylus itself is still powered electromagnetically by close proximity to the Samsung Galaxy Note9‘s display. This means its stylus functions will never run out of power.
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How To Disable The S Pen Remote Control
If you do not like using the S Pen remote control features, you can simply turn it off.
Go to Settings > Advanced features > S Pen > S Pen remote.
Tap on the On/Off toggle to disable the S Pen remote control.
To re-enable it, just tap on the On/Off toggle again.
Note : If you can’t reactivate the S Pen remote control, the S Pen is probably out of its dock. To reestablish the Bluetooth connection, it needs to be inserted into the Galaxy Note9.
How To Connect Another S Pen
If you need to connect another S Pen to your Samsung Galaxy Note9, here are the steps :
Go to Settings > Advanced features > S Pen > S Pen remote.
At the upper right corner, tap the More Options icon.
Tap t he Reset S Pen option.
Note : It may take a few minutes for the Samsung Galaxy Note9 to establish a new Bluetooth connection to your S Pen.
The Power Of S Pen Hovering
The S Pen is not just about writing or tapping. Many users are no aware of the power of hovering with the S Pen. These are not new features, but did you know that you can activate these features by merely hovering the S Pen over the screen?
Air View : Preview information, text and images by hovering the S Pen over the screen
Scrolling : Scroll up or down by hovering your S Pen over the edge of the screen
Translate : Translate words and phrases by hovering your S Pen over them
Bixby Vision : Search for products online by hovering your S Pen over their pictures
Magnify : Magnify areas of the screen by hovering your S Pen over them.
Glance : Minimise apps to a thumbnail that you can hover your S Pen over to expand.
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Picture Credit
Pictures of the internal parts of the S Pen are courtesy of the awesome folks at iFixIt!
Where To Buy The Galaxy Note9
Here are some direct links to purchase the Samsung Galaxy Note9 in Malaysia.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
When it comes to performance, everyone knows what GigaPixels/s, GigaTexels/s, GB/s or even TFLOPS mean. But what the heck is RTX-OPS? And how did the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti get 78 Tera RTX-OPS of performance?
In this article, we are going to share with you exactly what RTX-OPS means, and how NVIDIA arrived at the magical 78 Tera RTX-OPS figure for the flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card. You will also learn why RTX-OPS cannot be compared with any other performance metrics out there…
NVIDIA RTX-OPS
When NVIDIA first announced the GeForce RTX specifications, one performance metric that stood out was RTX-OPS per second. It was easy enough to understand the other new metric – Giga Rays per second, but what the heck is RTX-OPS?
Is that a measure of the overall performance of the GeForce RTX card? Or just the new Tensor and Ray Tracing cores? What exactly does it mean to have 78 Tera RTX-OPS per second of performance?
Jeff Yen Explains RTX-OPS Calculations
In this short video, NVIDIA Director of Technical Marketing for APAC, Jeff Yen, explains how they calculate RTX-OPS, and the rationale behind creating it.
Why NVIDIA Created RTX-OPS
The NVIDIA Turing architecture is quite different from NVIDIA Pascal. Here are some improvements that prevent a direct performance comparison between the two GPU families.
The new Turing SM (Streaming Multiprocessor) can execute integer and floating-point instructions simultaneously, using independent execution units.
Turing-based GPUs have new Turing Tensor Cores that are optimised for inferencing operations, with support for much faster but less precise INT8 and INT4 modes.
Turing also enables real-time ray tracing capabilities for the first time, with dedicated Turing RT Cores.
The performance of these separate components are measured differently. The GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (US | UK | Malaysia), for example, boasts :
Floating-point performance of up to 28.5 TFLOPS (FP16) or 14.2 TFLOPS (FP32).
Tensor core performance of up to 113.8 TFLOPS.
Ray tracing performance of up to 10 Giga Rays per second or 100 tera-ops per second.
So where does 78 Tera RTX-OPS come in?
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In a game that uses hybrid rendering – combining traditional shader operations with real-time ray tracing and AI inferencing, the different “engines” in the Turing GPU can work simultaneously. Hence, their depiction of the Turing frame :
This is based on NVIDIA’s analysis of a typical hybrid rendering workload with DLSS enabled.
Deep neural network processing of DLSS using the Tensor cores takes about 20% of the frame time.
FP32 shading using the CUDA cores take about 80% of the frame time.
Ray tracing takes about half the FP32 shading time, but are performed by separate RT cores.
The new integer execution units (independent of the floating-point units) take up about 28% of the frame time.
In a hybrid rendering situation, the performance of the separate engines will not tell us what the actual performance will be. Hence, NVIDIA invented RTX-OPS – a workload-based estimate of the Turing GPU’s overall performance.
This Is How NVIDIA Calculates RTX-OPS (In Detail)
Using their analysis of the typical hybrid rendering workload, NVIDIA derived a formula that they feel will give us a better representation of the Turing GPU’s overall performance.
RTX-OPS is basically calculated using this formula :
Peak FP32 performance (in TFLOPS) x 80% + Peak INT32 performance (in TFLOPS) x 28% + Peak Ray Tracing performance (in tera-ops per second) x 40% + Tensor core performance (in TFLOPS) x 20%
When you plug in the individual performance figures for the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (rounded up), you will get :
(14 x 80%) + (14 x 28%) + (100 x 40%) + (114 x 20%) =78 Tera RTX-OPS
So that, ladies and gentlemen, is how NVIDIA calculates RTX-OPS! Now you see why it cannot be used to compare the performance of GeForce RTX cards with the previous-generation GeForce GTX cards, or any other graphics cards in the market.
What do you think of their new performance metric, and the formula that created it? Is this a useful metric for you? Tell us in the comments!
Where To Purchase The GeForce RTX?
Here are some GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and GeForce RTX 2080 purchase links in Malaysia :
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The Nokia 8110 Banana Phone was famous for being featured in The Matrix. Needless to say, nostalgia ensured that the revived Nokia 8110 was an instant hit for HMD Global. However, its popularity ensured a steady stream of counterfeit banana phones. Can you tell which is the real Nokia 8110 banana phone?
Deluge Of Fake Nokia 8110 Banana Phones
HMD Global is right to be concerned about counterfeit banana phones. They eat into the sales of their hit model, and could negatively impact the Nokia brand if people have a bad experience with these fake banana phones, but believe it’s the real banana phone.
Will The Real Banana Phone Please Stand Up?
At a recent exclusive session, HMD Global shared with us two fake banana phone examples. Take a look and see if you can tell the difference.
How To Identify A Fake Nokia 8110 Banana Phone
HMD Global shared with us some tips on how to identify the fake banana phone models.
While the fake banana phone models may look similar to the real Nokia 8110 4G, they have poorer build quality, with smaller, duller displays. They also have less capabilities than the real banana phone.
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How To Identify The REAL Nokia 8110 Banana Phone
Here in Malaysia, the real Nokia 8110 4G banana phone is distributed and sold by AVAXX Corporation (M) Sdn Bhd. So you should always look for the AVAXX sticker on the packaging.
The real Nokia 8110 4G banana phone is available in two colours – Traditional Black (the Matrix phone!) and Banana Yellow (for you monkeys!), with a recommended retail price of RM 285 / ~US$ 70. Sp be VERY SUSPICIOUS about any banana phones being sold for much less!
Where To Buy The REAL Nokia 8110 Banana Phone
To make sure you get the real deal, here are some purchase links of the REAL Nokia 8110 banana phone :
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The highlight of the WD Black NVMe SSD showcase at Computex 2018 was the massive 8TB SSD RAID array that is as fast as DDR4-2400 memory! Wonder how they accomplished this? Read on and find out!
Updated at 2018-06-22 : Our sincere apologies. We mixed up the system specifications for this SSD RAID Array. It’s actually an AMD Ryzen Threadripper system. We have since corrected the article to reflect this.
This 8TB SSD Is As Fast As DDR4 Memory!
As you can see here, Western Digital hit a throughput of 19 GB/s with the Western Digital Black NVMe SSDs (Price Check)! That is as fast as single-channel DDR4-2400 memory!
How To Create This Super-Fast 8TB SSD
The secret? Andrew Vo explains how they created this super-fast 8TB SSD RAID array using the Western Digital Black NVMe SSDs (Price Check) in this video.
This is what you will need, if you plan to replicate their project :
Each WD Black NVMe SSD is capable of a peak transfer rate of 2.8 GB/s (write) to 3.4 GB/s (read), so eight of them would have a theoretical throughput limit of 22.4 to 27.2 GB/s!
To hit 19 GB/s, you need to create a RAID 0 array of those eight 1 TB WD Black NVMe SSDs (Price Check), but you can’t use the motherboard’s RAID feature because you would be limited by the 32 Gbps / 4 GB/s DMI bottleneck.
Intel VROC
The ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 Card (Price Check) supports Intel Virtual RAID on CPU (VROC), which reassigns unused PCIe lanes of an Intel Skylake or Coffee Lake processor to boost transfer rates up to 128 Gbps or 16 GB/s.
Of course, those are the theoretical limits, and the actual throughput will be considerably lower than 16 GB/s. To go beyond that, you will need two ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 Cards (Price Check).
AMD Ryzen Threadripper
However, Western Digital used an AMD Ryzen Threadripper system instead. The Threadripper processor has 64 PCIe lanes – plenty for two Hyper M.2 X16 Card (Price Check).
In the end, Western Digital only hit 19 GB/s with two of these cards. This is 30% lower than the theoretical capability of a perfect RAID 0 array of eight 1 TB WD Black NVMe SSDs (Price Check), and 40% lower than the theoretical capability of two ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 Cards (Price Check).
However, without resorting to this method, a motherboard-based RAID 0 array of eight 1 TB WD Black NVMe SSDs (Price Check) would only deliver a maximum transfer rate of just 4 GB/s. Even that’s in a perfect world.
How Much Does This Super-Fast SSD RAID Array Cost?
Each 1 TB WD Black NVMe SSDs (Price Check) currently costs $399.99. So the eight SSDs alone cost a princely US$ 3,192 / € 2,765 / RM 12,779.
The ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 Card (Price Check) is much cheaper at just $59 each. That’s an additional US$ 118 / € 102 / RM 472.
All in, this 8 TB SSD RAID array will set you back US$ 3,247/ € 2,812 / RM 12,999. And that does not include the AMD Ryzen Threadripper system=.
No doubt, this is a very expensive project. But think about it – you now have a massive 8 TB SSD RAID 0 array that is as fast as DDR4-2400 memory!
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Kaspersky Lab discovered than more than 22% of the World Cup 2018 WiFi hotspots lack encryption, making them quite unsafe for use by football fans. They share some useful tips on how to stay safe while using these World Cup 2018 WiFi hotspots!
Many World Cup 2018 WiFi Hotspots Are Unsafe!
According to Kaspersky Lab research, 7,176 of approximately 32,000 public Wi-Fi networks in FIFA World Cup 2018 host cities do not use traffic encryption. This makes them potentially unsafe for use by football fans visiting the cities. The results suggest that fans should take care of their personal data, especially while using open Wi-Fi connections around the FIFA World Cup games.
Global events always result in a concentration of people connecting to networks to upload posts, stay in touch with loved ones, and share the fun with others. However, at the same time, these networks can be used to transfer financial and other valuable information across the Internet. And it’s this information that third parties – not necessarily criminals – can intercept and use for their own purposes.
Kaspersky Lab’s findings are based on an analysis of public Wi-Fi spots in 11 FIFA World Cup 2018 host cities, including Saransk, Samara, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Volgograd, Moscow, Ekaterinburg, Sochi, Rostov, Kaliningrad, and Saint Petersburg. The results show that so far not all wireless access points have encryption and authentication algorithms – aspects that are essential for Wi-Fi networks to remain secure. This means that hackers only need to be located near an access point to intercept network traffic and get confidential information from unwitting or unprepared users.
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The three cities with the highest percentage of unreliable Wi-Fi networks are :
Saint Petersburg (37%),
Kaliningrad (35%), and
Rostov (32%).
In contrast, the safest places were relatively small towns – including :
Saransk (only 10% of Wi-Fi spots are open), and
Samara (17% of Wi-Fi spots are open).
Almost two-thirds of all public Wi-Fi networks in these locations use the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA/WPA2) protocol family for traffic Still, it should be noted that even reliable WPA/WPA2 networks can allow brute-force and dictionary attacks, as well as key reinstallation attacks, meaning they are not absolutely secure.
How To Use World Cup 2018 WiFi Hotspots Safely!
If you are going to visit FIFA World Cup 2018 host cities, remember to follow several simple rules to help protect your personal data if you plan to use these World Cup 2018 WiFi hotspots :
Whenever possible, connect via a Virtual Private Network (VPN). With a VPN, encrypted traffic is transmitted over a protected tunnel, meaning criminals won’t be able to read your data, even if they gain access to it.
Do not trust networks that are not password-protected, or have easy-to-guess or easy-to-find passwords.
Even if a network requests a strong password, you should remain vigilant. Fraudsters can find out the network password at a coffee shop, for example, and then create a fake connection with the same password. This allows them to easily steal personal user data. You should only trust network names and passwords given to you by employees of the establishment.
To maximize your protection, turn off your Wi-Fi connection whenever you are not using it. This will also save your battery life. We also recommend disabling automatic connections to existing Wi-Fi networks.
If you are not 100% sure the wireless network you are using is secure, but you still need to connect to the Internet, try to limit yourself to basic user actions such as searching for information. You should refrain from entering your login details for social networks or mail services, and definitely do not perform any online banking operations or enter your bank card details anywhere. This will avoid situations where your sensitive data or passwords are intercepted and then used for malicious purposes later on.
To avoid being a target for cybercriminals, you should enable the “always use a secure connection” (HTTPS) option in your device settings. Enabling this option is recommended when visiting any website you think may lack the necessary protection.
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The highlight of the GIGABYTE showcase at Taipei 101 was the AORUS Aquarium PC Mod! They literally put a high-end desktop PC into a fresh water aquarium of fishes! Want to know how they created the AORUS Aquarium PC mod? Read on and find out!
The AORUS Aquarium PC Mod
The AORUS Aquarium PC mod is a deceptively understated mod. At first glance, you might mistaken it for a mere display – a non-functioning GIGABYTE graphics card sitting in an aquarium. Interesting, but nothing special… until the two fans start spinning and you realise – damn, this thing is actually a fully-functional computer!
What GIGABYTE did was to submerge the PC components in clear mineral oil, before creating a small fresh water aquarium above it. You can see the fishes test water-oil boundary!
As the heat from the graphics card, CPU and other components are transferred to the mineral oil, the oil needs to be pumped out and kept cooled by three AORUS ATC700 coolers behind the bank. It’s really no different from how
GIGABYTE spared no expense in their AORUS Aquarium PC mod. They used nothing but the best they had :
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The CPU L2 Cache ECC Checking BIOS feature enables or disables the L2 (Level 2 or Secondary) cache’s ECC (Error Checking and Correction) capability, if available.
Enabling this feature is recommended because it will detect and correct single-bit errors in data stored in the L2 cache. As most data reads are satisfied by the L2 cache, the L2 cache’s ECC function should catch and correct almost all single-bit errors in the memory subsystem.
It will also detect double-bit errors although it cannot correct them. But this isn’t such a big deal since double-bit errors are extremely rare. For all practical purposes, the ECC check should be able to catch virtually all data errors. This is especially useful at overclocked speeds when errors are most likely to creep in.
So, for most intents and purposes, I recommend that you enable this feature for greater system stability and reliability.
Please note that the presence of this feature in the BIOS does not necessarily mean that your processor’s L2 cache actually supports ECC checking. Many processors do not ship with ECC-capable L2 cache. In such cases, you can still enable this feature in the BIOS, but it will have no effect.
Details of CPU L2 Cache ECC Checking
The CPU L2 Cache ECC Checking BIOS feature enables or disables the L2 (Level 2 or Secondary) cache’s ECC (Error Checking and Correction) capability, if available.
Enabling this feature is recommended because it will detect and correct single-bit errors in data stored in the L2 cache. As most data reads are satisfied by the L2 cache, the L2 cache’s ECC function should catch and correct almost all single-bit errors in the memory subsystem.
It will also detect double-bit errors although it cannot correct them. But this isn’t such a big deal since double-bit errors are extremely rare. For all practical purposes, the ECC check should be able to catch virtually all data errors. This is especially useful at overclocked speeds when errors are most likely to creep in.
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There are those who advocate disabling ECC checking because it reduces performance. True, ECC checking doesn’t come free. You can expect some performance degradation with ECC checking enabled. However, unlike ECC checking of DRAM modules, the performance degradation associated with L2 cache ECC checking is comparatively small.
Balance that against the increased stability and reliability achieved via L2 cache ECC checking and the minimal reduction in performance seems rather cheap, doesn’t it? Of course, if you don’t do any serious work with your system and want a little speed boost for your games, disable CPU L2 Cache ECC Checking by all means.
But if you are overclocking your processor, ECC checking may enable you to overclock higher than was originally possible. This is because any single-bit errors that occur as a result of overclocking will be corrected by the L2 cache’s ECC function. So, for most intents and purposes, I recommend that you enable this feature for greater system stability and reliability.
Please note that the presence of this feature in the BIOS does not necessarily mean that your processor’s L2 cache actually supports ECC checking. Many processors do not ship with ECC-capable L2 cache. In such cases, you can still enable this feature in the BIOS, but it will have no effect.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
Are you trying to overclock your brand new 2nd Gen Ryzen processor? Let extreme overclocker Sami Makinen will show you how to overclock the 2nd Gen Ryzen processor!
They were all based on the ASUS ROG Crosshair VII Hero (WIFI) (Price Check) motherboard, with G.SKILL Sniper X DDR4 memory (Price Check), but with different cooling solutions.
Sami Makinen On How To Overclock The 2nd Gen Ryzen
Before we got started on our test rigs, extreme overclocker Sami Makinen from AMD’s Technical Marketing team showed us how to overclock the 2nd Gen Ryzen processor using the new AMD Ryzen Master 1.3 utility.
AMD Ryzen Master 1.3 will highlight the four fastest cores in each processor. This allows you to turn off the slower cores, so you can achieve a higher clock speed.
AMD Ryzen Master 1.3 will allow you to adjust the core clock individually, the CPU voltage, as well as memory voltage and settings.
Using LN cooling, Sami Makinen managed to overclock his Ryzen 7 2700X (Price Check) processor to 5.6 GHz, which cored over 2,500 in Cinebench R15.
AMD Ryzen Master 1.3 comes with a new Apply & Test feature. Clicking on it runs a stability test, so you can quickly know if your settings are good to save and use.
One of the new features in the AMD X470 motherboard is Enhanced XFR. This is a 2nd Gen Ryzen enhancement that allows for higher clock rates (automatically) with better coolers. The new AMD Wraith Prism cooler, for example, would allow the Ryzen 7 2700X (Price Check) to automatically achieve a higher clock speed through Enhanced XFR, than with a less capable cooler.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
Official Mac eGPU support just arrived with macOS 10.13.4! Yes, you can now add an eGPU (external graphics processor) to your Mac, greatly accelerating its performance and turning it into a gaming machine. Get the full details on the Mac eGPU support you can expect!
New Mac eGPU Support
eGPUs have been in the market for a number of years now, but this is the first time Apple has added official support for them. The new official Mac eGPU support is limited to :
MacBook Pro notebooks released in 2016 or later,
iMac computers released in 2017 or later, and
the iMac Pro
Once you have macOS 10.13.4 installed, you will be able to :
Accelerate applications that use Metal, OpenGL, and OpenCL
Connect additional external monitors and displays
Use virtual reality headsets plugged into the eGPU
Charge your MacBook Pro while using the eGPU
Use an eGPU with your MacBook Pro while its built-in display is closed
Connect an eGPU while a user is logged in
Connect more than one eGPU using the multiple Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports on your Mac2
Use the menu bar item to safely disconnect the eGPU
View the activity levels of built-in and external GPUs. Open Activity Monitor, then choose Window > GPU History.
Mac eGPU Support In Applications
The new Mac eGPU support is designed to accelerate Metal, OpenGL and OpenCL applications. In general, installing an eGPU will accelerate these kinds of applications :
Professional applications designed to utilise multiple GPUs
3D games, when an external monitor is attached directly to the eGPU
VR applications, when a VR headset is attached directly to the eGPU
Professional applications and 3D games that can accelerate the built-in display
For the best results, you should set the display attached to the eGPU as the primary display :
Go to System Preferences > Displays
Select the Arrangement tab
Drag the white menu bar to the box that represents the display attached to the eGPU
Note : The eGPU support won’t run in Windows using Boot Camp, or when your Mac is in the macOS Recovery mode, or while installing system updates.
Recommended Mac eGPU Configurations
If you are looking for a pre-configured all-in-one Thunderbolt 3 eGPU package, this was recommended by Apple :
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
The recently-discovered RyzenFall, MasterKey, Fallout and Chimera security flaws affecting AMD’s latest processor platforms are ruining the AMD Ryzen 2 pre-launch vibes. So it’s no surprise to see AMD working hard to fix the vulnerabilities.
In this article, we will share with you the latest AMD mitigation options for the RyzenFall, MasterKey, Fallout and Chimera security vulnerabilities.
What’s Really Affected?
While it is accurate to say that the AMD Ryzen and AMD EPYC processors are affected by RyzenFall, MasterKey, Fallout and Chimera, these vulnerabilities do not affect the actual processor cores. Neither are they related to the Zen microarchitecture.
Instead, the new RyzenFall, MasterKey, Fallout and Chimera security vulnerabilities are found in:
the AMD Secure Processor (integrated into the new Ryzen and EPYC processors), and
the AMD Promontory chipsets that are paired with Ryzen and Ryzen Pro desktop processors.
The AMD Promontory chipset is used in many Socket AM4 desktop, and Socket TR4 high-end desktop (HEDT) platforms.
AMD EPYC, Ryzen Embedded, and Ryzen Mobile platforms do not use the Promontory chipset.
The AMD RyzenFall, MasterKey, Fallout + Chimera Mitigations
RyzenFall + Fallout
Issue : An attacker with administrative access can write to the AMD Secure Processor (PSP registers to exploit vulnerabilities in the interface between the x86 processor core and AMD Secure Processor.
Impact : The attacker can circumvent security controls to install difficult-to-detect malware in the x86 System Management Mode (SMM). The access is not persistent across reboots.
Planned Mitigations : AMD will issue AMD Secure Processor firmware patches through BIOS updates in coming weeks. No performance impact is expected.
MasterKey (PSP Privilege Escalation)
Issue : An attacker with administrative access can write malicious firmware updates, without the AMD Secure Processor (PSP) detecting the “corruption”.
Impact : The attacker can circumvent security controls to install difficult-to-detect malware. These changes are persistent, even following a system reboot.
Planned Mitigations : AMD will issue AMD Secure Processor firmware patches through BIOS updates in coming weeks. No performance impact is expected.
Chimera
Issue : An attacker with administrative access can install a malicious driver to access certain features in the AMD Promontory chipset.
Impact : The attacker can access physical memory through the Promontory chipset. The attacker can also install difficult-to-detect malware in the chipset, but this is not persistent across reboots.
Planned Mitigations : AMD will issue chipset patches through BIOS updates in coming weeks. No performance impact is expected.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
Also known as a crawler, a bot or a spider, the search engine robot is a program crawls through your website to index its pages. This allows search engines to identify relevant pages and serve them to people searching for specific topics.
Letting a search engine robot crawl your website is critical to its ability to rank high in search results.. Therefore, it really pays to ensure that these crawlers have no problem accessing your website, and crawl through its pages.
To help you do that, here is the list of common search engine robot IP addresses.
Search Engine Robot IP Addresses
Please let us know if the list is out-of-date, or if you have any suggestion to improve this list.
Google : Googlebot
From
To
64.233.160.0
64.233.191.255
66.102.0.0
66.102.15.255
66.249.64.0
66.249.95.255
72.14.192.0
72.14.255.255
74.125.0.0
74.125.255.255
209.85.128.0
209.85.255.255
216.239.32.0
216.239.63.255
Bing : BingBot
From
To
104.146.0.0
104.146.63.255
104.146.100.0
104.146.103.255
104.146.104.0
104.146.111.255
104.146.112.0
104.146.112.255
104.146.113.0
104.146.113.255
MSN Search / Live Search : MSNBot
From
To
64.4.0.0
54.4.63.255
65.52.0.0
65.55.255.255
131.253.21.0
131.253.47.255
157.54.0.0
157.60.255.255
207.46.0.0
207.46.255.255
207.68.128.0
207.68.207.255
Baidu : BaiduSpider
From
To
103.6.76.0
103.6.79.255
104.193.88.0
104.193.91.255
106.12.0.0
106.13.255.255
115.231.36.136
115.231.36.143
115.231.36.144
115.231.36.159
Yahoo : Yahoo Slurp
From
To
8.12.144.0
8.12.144.255
66.196.64.0
66.196.127.255
66.228.160.0
66.228.191.255
67.195.0.0
67.195.255.255
68.142.192.0
68.142.255.255
72.30.0.0
72.30.255.255
74.6.0.0
74.6.255.255
98.136.0.0
98.139.255.255
202.160.176.0
202.160.191.255
209.191.64.0
209.191.127.255
Yandex : YandexBot
From
To
100.43.64.0
100.43.79.255
100.43.80.0
100.43.80.255
100.43.81.0
100.43.81.255
100.43.82.0
100.43.82.255
100.43.83.0
100.43.83.255
Please let us know if the list is out-of-date, or if you have any suggestion to improve this list.
How Can I Make Use Of This List?
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If you employ a blacklist to block out malicious attackers, you can use the list to make sure none of the search engine robot IP addresses are listed in your blacklist.
You can also add these search engine robot IP addresses to a whitelist. This ensures that your security plugins will never impede a genuine search engine robot from indexing your website.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
Maybe you had problems with your sitemaps, or never had one in the first place. But now you have new sitemaps up, and you want Google to read them and reindex your website as quickly as possible. How do you do that? Let’s find out!
Is It Important To Reindex Your Website?
If your sitemaps were corrupted, or rendered inaccessible by this CloudFlare SSL setting, you will want to quickly reindex your website. Until it is reindexed, Google Search will not refer anyone to your website.
Remember – if Google Search spiders cannot crawl your website, your website pages will not exist in Google Search.
If you had already submitted your new sitemaps in the Google Search Console, Google will eventually get around to crawling your website using those sitemaps.
But time is of essence. Why wait when you can (politely) ask Google to reindex your website?
Credit : This guide was written with help from Kok Kee from Nasi Lemak Tech!
How To Reindex Your Website Using Google Search Console
Login to Google Search Console.
Go to the Fetch as Google section (Crawl > Fetch as Google).
You will want to index from the main page onwards, so just leave the URL blank, and click on the red Fetch And Render button.
You need to do this for both Desktop and Mobile, so click on the dropdown menu, select Mobile and click Fetch And Render again.
You should see the screen below, showing both Desktop and Mobile Googlebot render requested.
Click on the Request indexing button, and the screen below will pop-up.
Click on the reCAPTCHA checkbox challenge, and select Crawl this URL, and its direct links, and click Go.
Repeat the same steps for the Mobile Googlebot.
After you are done, you should see that in both cases, the buttons have been replaced by the notice “Indexing requested for URL and linked pages“
That’s it! Google Search will soon reindex your website using the desktop and mobile Googlebots.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
If your website pages are not showing up in Google, you may have a problem with your sitemaps. This is a serious problem because it prevents Google from directing people to your website. Let us show you how to fix sitemap problems, and get Google to reindex your website!
Credit : This guide was written with help from Kok Kee from Nasi Lemak Tech!
How Serious Are Sitemap Problems?
Sitemap problems are HUGE, because they greatly sap the number of people who visit your website from a Google search. When we started having sitemap problems, the number of unique visitors to Tech ARP was instantly halved.
How does that happen?
Your website pages no longer appear in Google searches. If Google can’t see them, Google cannot display your pages in search results!
Even if your website pages do appear in Google searches, the links may be corrupt or nonsensical. Look at this example of this search result which leads to a bad link.
The description of your website page may also be nonsensical, as the example above also demonstrates.
It will show you the sitemaps for your website, as well as any sitemap errors.
Click on the error to find out what’s wrong.
You will need to use the information listed to figure out what’s wrong, and fix the problem.
a) if the sitemap was deleted, or is corrupt, you will need to generate a new sitemap
b) if the sitemap is inaccessible due to a permission setting, you need to change its permission setting.
c) if you are using CloudFlare, try disabling Always use HTTPS.
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After you fix the sitemap problem, you will need to resubmit the sitemap to Google. Go into each sitemap information page, and click on the red Resubmit button at the upper right corner.
After submitting the new sitemap, you can refresh the page to check its status.
Repeat the steps for all of your sitemaps,
Google Search Console should no longer list any sitemap error.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
The speculative execution CPU bug that literally kneecapped Intel, also affects many AMD and ARM processors. This means BILLIONS of CPUs around the world, including those powering smartphones, are affected by Meltdown and/or Spectre.
Our article Everything On The Meltdown + Spectre CPU Flaws! summarises the key details of the speculative execution bug, and what we can do about it. This guide is to help those who want a full list of affected CPUs. Because we intend this to be an exhaustive list, we split it into multiple sections.
Article Update History
Click here for the Article Update History
Updated @ 2018-03-07 : Added a new list of 5 IBM z/Architecture CPUs. Added a new list of 22 VIA desktop and mobile CPUs. Added 1 ARM mobile CPU, 1 Intel server CPU, and 1 Intel mobile CPU. Also added 20 mobile SoCs, 9 digital TV or media player SoCs, and 43 industrial SoCs.
Updated @ 2018-02-15 : Added 96 Intel server CPUs, 91 Intel desktop CPUs, and 127 Intel mobile CPUs.
Updated @ 2018-02-07 : Added 128 AMD server CPUs, 11 AMD workstation CPUs, 128 AMD desktop CPUs, and 59 AMD mobile CPUs.
Updated @ 2018-02-02 : Added 11 Intel server CPUs, 96 AMD server CPUs, 168 AMD desktop CPUs, 77 AMD mobile CPUs, 10 IBM POWER CPUs, 9 HiSilicon Kirin mobile SoCs, 10 MediaTek mobile SOCs, 4 MediaTek digital TV SoCs, and 6 NVIDIA devices to the lists of vulnerable CPUs.
Updated @ 2018-01-14 : Added 416 Intel server CPUs, 8 Intel desktop CPUs, and 29 Intel mobile CPUs to the lists of vulnerable CPUs. Added a new list of 51 Intel mobile SoCs.
Updated @ 2018-01-12 : Added 71 AMD server CPUs, 71 AMD desktop CPUs, 29 AMD mobile CPUs and 3 AMD server SoCs based on a vulnerable ARM CPU. Also added a table summarising the number of vulnerable processors.
Updated @ 2018-01-11 : Added 18 Intel desktop CPUs and 165 Intel server / workstation CPUs. Also added a list of vulnerable Apple iOS devices, and expanded the list of vulnerable mobile SoCs used by smartphones.
Originally posted @ 2018-01-08
What Are Meltdown And Spectre?
Meltdown and Spectre are two exploits that take advantage of three variants of the speculative execution bug that affects billions of CPUs around the world.
The Spectre exploit targeted Variants 1 and 2, while the Meltdown exploit targets Variant 3, of the CPU bug.
The CPUs Vulnerable To Meltdown / Spectre Updated!
For easy reference, we divided the affected CPUs by Company (arranged ALPHABETICALLY – no conspiracy, we promise), and subsequently by Segment (Workstation / Desktop / Mobile), or affected variants.
As of Revision 8.0, we believe we have covered all of the affected AMD, Apple, ARM, IBM, Intel and VIA CPUs. But we will add more CPUs (and devices) as and when they’re noted to be vulnerable to the Meltdown and Spectre exploits.
Note : It’s arguable that all CPUs that uses speculative execution to any degree are potentially vulnerable to Meltdown or Spectre or a future exploit. We will only focus on CPUs that are confirmed to be vulnerable to Meltdown or Spectre.
Vulnerable CPUs By The Numbers Updated!
Here is a quick summary of the number of CPUs vulnerable to Meltdown or Spectre, according to the company, and the type of processor.
Company
Spectre 1
Spectre 2
Meltdown
AMD
295 Server CPUs
42 Workstation CPUs
396 Desktop CPUs
208 Mobile CPUs
295 Server CPUs
42 Workstation CPUs
396 Desktop CPUs
208 Mobile CPUs
None
Apple
13 Mobile SoCs
13 Mobile SoCs
13 Mobile SoCs
ARM
10 Mobile CPUs
3 Server SoCs
10 Mobile CPUs
3 Server SoCs
4 Mobile CPUs
3 Server SoCs
IBM
5 z/Architecture CPUs
10 POWER CPUs
5 z/Architecture CPUs
10 POWER CPUs
5 z/Architecture CPUs
10 POWER CPUs
Intel
733 Server / Workstation CPUs
443 Desktop CPUs
584 Mobile CPUs
51 Mobile SoCs
733 Server / Workstation CPUs
443 Desktop CPUs
584 Mobile CPUs
51 Mobile SoCs
733 Server / Workstation CPUs
443 Desktop CPUs
584 Mobile CPUs
51 Mobile SoCs
Affected Variants :AMD CPUs are affected by both Variants 1 and 2 of the speculative execution CPU bug. Colloquially, many people refer to them as Spectre 1 and Spectre 2.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
The AMD Workstation CPUs Vulnerable To Spectre
Affected Variants :AMD CPUs are affected by both Variants 1 and 2 of the speculative execution CPU bug. Colloquially, many people refer to them as Spectre 1 and Spectre 2. They are not vulnerable to Meltdown.
AMD Summit Ridge (2017)
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1900X
AMD Vishera (2012)
AMD FX-9590
AMD FX-9370
AMD FX-8370E
AMD FX-8370
AMD FX-8350
AMD FX-8320E
AMD FX-8320
AMD FX-8310
AMD FX-8300
AMD FX-6350
AMD FX-6300
AMD FX-6200
AMD FX-4350
AMD FX-4320
AMD FX-4300
AMD Zambezi (2011)
AMD FX-8170
AMD FX-8150
AMD FX-8140
AMD FX-8120
AMD FX-8100
AMD FX-6130
AMD FX-6120
AMD FX-6100
AMD FX-4170
AMD FX-4150
AMD FX-4130
AMD FX-4120
AMD FX-4100
AMD Windsor (2006)
AMD Athlon 64 FX-74
AMD Athlon 64 FX-72
AMD Athlon 64 FX-70
AMD Athlon 64 FX-62
AMD Toledo (2005)
AMD Athlon 64 FX-60
AMD San Diego (2005)
AMD Athlon 64 FX-57
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55
AMD Clawhammer (2004)
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55
AMD Athlon 64 FX-53
AMD Sledgehammer (2003)
AMD Athlon 64 FX-53
AMD Athlon 64 FX-51
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AMD Desktop CPUs Vulnerable To Spectre
Affected Variants :AMD CPUs are affected by both Variants 1 and 2 of the speculative execution CPU bug. Colloquially, many people refer to them as Spectre 1 and Spectre 2. They are not vulnerable to Meltdown.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
AMD Mobile CPUs Vulnerable To Spectre
Affected Variants :AMD CPUs are affected by both Variants 1 and 2 of the speculative execution CPU bug. Colloquially, many people refer to them as Spectre 1 and Spectre 2. They are not vulnerable to Meltdown.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
The Apple CPUs Vulnerable To Meltdown / Spectre
Apple makes custom processors based on the ARM microarchitecture. They have not released specific information on which of their processors are affected by which exploit, but this is what we know so far.
Affected Variants : Apple only issued a general notice that their processors are affected by both Meltdown and Spectre, not the specific variants.
Apple A4
Apple A5
Apple A5X
Apple A6
Apple A6X
Apple A7
Apple A8
Apple A8X
Apple A9
Apple A9X
Apple A10 Fusion
Apple A10X Fusion
Apple A11 Bionic
Vulnerable iOS or tvOS Devices : Apple was vague about the iOS devices that were affected, but based on the affected CPU cores, here are the iOS devices that are vulnerable to Meltdown and Spectre :
Apple TV 2nd Generation, 3rd Generation, 4th Generation and 5th Generation
The ARM CPUs Vulnerable To Meltdown / Spectre
ARM CPUs Vulnerable To All Three Variants
Affected Variants :Variants 1 and 2, and either Variant 3 or Variant 3a, of the speculative execution CPU bug. They are vulnerable to Meltdown and both variants of Spectre.
ARM Cortex-A75
ARM Cortex-A72
ARM Cortex-A57
ARM Cortex-A15
Mobile SoCs Using These ARM CPUs (Not Exhaustive)
HiSilicon Kirin 955
HiSilicon Kirin 950
HiSilicon Kirin 928
HiSilicon Kirin 925
HiSilicon Kirin 920
MediaTek Helio X27 (MT6797X)
MediaTek Helio X25 (MT6797T)
MediaTek Helio X23 (MT6707D)
MediaTek Helio X20 (MT6797)
MediaTek MT8173
MediaTek MT8135 / MT8135V
MediaTek MT6795
NVIDIA Tegra X2
NVIDIA Tegra X1
NVIDIA Tegra K1
NVIDIA Tegra 4
Qualcomm Snapdragon 845
Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 / 808
Qualcomm Snapdragon 670
Qualcomm Snapdragon 653 / 652 / 650
Qualcomm Snapdragon 640
Samsung Exynos 7420
Samsung Exynos 5800
Samsung Exynos 5433
Samsung Exynos 5422 / 5420
Samsung Exynos 5410
Samsung Exynos 5260
Samsung Exynos 5250
Samsung Exynos 5 Dual (Exynos 5250)
AMD Server SoCs Using These ARM CPUs
AMD Opteron A1170
AMD Opteron A1150
AMD Opteron A1120
NVIDIA Devices Using These ARM CPUs (Not Exhaustive)
NVIDIA SHIELD TV (ARM Cortex-A57)
NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet (ARM Cortex-A15)
NVIDIA Jetson TX2 (ARM Cortex-A57)
NVIDIA Jetson TX1 (ARM Cortex-A57)
NVIDIA Jetson TK1 (ARM Cortex-A15)
NVIDIA Jetson Tegra K1 (ARM Cortex-A15)
Digital TV / Media Player SoCs Using These ARM CPUs (Not Exhaustive)
Rockchip RK3399
Industrial SoCs Using These ARM CPUs (Not Exhaustive)
Embedded Computers Using These ARM CPUs (Not Exhaustive)
VIA VAB-1000
VIA VAB-820 / VAB-800
VIA VAB-630 / VAB-600
VIA ALTA DS
VIA QSM-8Q60
VIA SOM-6X50
VIA VTS-8589
IBM POWER CPUs Vulnerable To Meltdown + Spectre
Affected Variants : These IBM POWER CPUs are affected by all three variants of the speculative execution CPU bug. They are vulnerable to the Meltdown and both Spectre exploits.
IBM POWER4
IBM POWER4+
IBM POWER5
IBM POWER5+
IBM POWER6
IBM POWER6+
IBM POWER7
IBM POWER7+
IBM POWER8
– including IBM Murano, IBM Turismo, PowerCore CP1
IBM POWER8 with NVLink / POWER8+
IBM POWER9
– IBM Nimbus, IBM Cumulus
IBM z/Architecture CPUs Vulnerable To Meltdown + Spectre
Affected Variants : These IBM z/Architecture CPUs are affected by all three variants of the speculative execution CPU bug. They are vulnerable to the Meltdown and both Spectre exploits.
IBM z14
IBM z13
IBM zEC12
IBM z196
IBM z10
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Intel UMPC / Smartphone SoCs Vulnerable To Meltdown + Spectre
Affected Variants : These Intel SoCs are affected by all three variants of the speculative execution CPU bug. They are vulnerable to the Meltdown and both Spectre exploits.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
Intel Server / Workstation CPUs Vulnerable To Meltdown + Spectre
Affected Variants : These Intel CPUs are affected by all three variants of the speculative execution CPU bug. They are vulnerable to the Meltdown and both Spectre exploits.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
Intel Desktop CPUs Vulnerable To Meltdown + Spectre
Affected Variants : These Intel CPUs are affected by all three variants of the speculative execution CPU bug. They are vulnerable to the Meltdown and both Spectre exploits.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
Intel Mobile CPUs Vulnerable To Meltdown + Spectre
Affected Variants : These Intel CPUs are affected by all three variants of the speculative execution CPU bug. They are vulnerable to the Meltdown and both Spectre exploits.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
VIA Desktop CPUs Vulnerable To Meltdown + Spectre
Affected Variants : These VIA CPUs are affected by all three variants of the speculative execution CPU bug. They are vulnerable to the Meltdown and both Spectre exploits.
VIA Nano QuadCore (2011)
VIA Nano QuadCore L4800E
VIA Nano QuadCore L4700E
VIA Nano QuadCore L4650E
VIA Nano Dual Core 2011)
VIA Nano X2 E L4350E
VIA Nano X2 E L4350E
VIA Nano 3000 Series (2009)
VIA Nano L3600
VIA Nano L3050
VIA Nano L3025
VIA Nano 2000 Series (2008)
VIA Nano L2200
VIA Nano L2100
VIA Mobile CPUs Vulnerable To Meltdown + Spectre
Affected Variants : These VIA CPUs are affected by all three variants of the speculative execution CPU bug. They are vulnerable to the Meltdown and both Spectre exploits.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
Updated @ 2018-02-28 :Added a new page on the AMD Spectre 2 hardware mitigation options.
Originally posted @ 2018-02-01
Only Spectre
Now that the dust has settled, we know that AMD processors are completely invulnerable to Meltdown, but are vulnerable to both Spectre exploits. Therefore, AMD only needs to mitigate against the two Spectre exploits.
In the Spectre 1 (GPZ Variant 1) exploit, a malware can make use of the processor’s speculative execution capability to bypass the memory bounds check, thereby accessing memory that it did not have permission for.
AMD is recommending software-only solutions for Spectre 1, which include operating system kernels, JIT (Just In Time) compilers, browsers and other user applications.
AMD recommends the V1-1 (lfence) software solution for the GPZ Variant 1 (Spectre 1) exploit.
GPZ Variant 2 (Spectre 2)
In the Spectre 2 (GPZ Variant 2) exploit, a malware may trick the CPU branch predictor into mis-predicting the wrong path, thereby speculatively executing code that would not otherwise be executed.
AMD offers both software-only, and software + hardware mitigations, for Spectre 2.
AMD recommends the V2-1(retpoline) option for the GPZ Variant 2 (Spectre 2) exploit.
Technique : Clear out untrusted data from registers (e.g. write 0) when entering more privileged modes, or sensitive code.
Effect : By removing untrusted data from registers, the CPU will not be able to speculatively execute operations using the values in those registers.
Applicability : All AMD processors.
Note : Instructions that cause the machine to temporarily stop inserting new instructions into the machine for execution and wait for execution of older instructions to nish are referred to as dispatch serializing instructions.
AMD Spectre Mitigation G-2
Target : Spectre 1 and Spectre 2
Technique : Set an MSR in the processor so that LFENCE is a dispatch serializing instruction and then use LFENCE in code streams to serialize dispatch (LFENCE is faster than RDTSCP which is also dispatch serializing). This mode of LFENCE may be enabled by setting MSR C001_1029[1]=1.
Effect : Upon encountering an LFENCE when the MSR bit is set, dispatch will stop until the LFENCE instruction becomes the oldest instruction in the machine.
Applicability : All AMD family 10h/12h/14h/15h/16h/17h processors support this MSR. LFENCE support is indicated by CPUID function1 EDX bit 26, SSE2. AMD family 0Fh/11h processors support LFENCE as serializing always, but do not support this MSR. AMD plans support for this MSR and access to this bit for all future processors.
Effect : The processor will never speculatively fetch instruction bytes in supervisor mode if the RIP address points to a user page. This prevents the attacker from redirecting the kernel indirect branch to a target in user code.
Applicability : All AMD processors that support SMEP (Family 17h, Family 15h model >60h)
Note : The load-store unit is a key area for controlling speculation because information leakage comes from the residual nature of cache lines after a speculative fill.
Effect : The processor will never initiate a fill if the translation has a SMAP violation (kernel accessing user memory). This can prevent the kernel from bringing in user data cache lines. With SMEP and SMAP enabled the attacker must nd an indirect branch to attack in the area marked by SMAP that is allowed to access user marked memory.
Applicability : All AMD processors that support SMAP ( family 17h and greater)
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AMD Spectre 1 Mitigation Options
AMD Spectre Mitigation V1-1
Target : Spectre 1 only
Technique : With LFENCE serializing, use it to control speculation for bounds checking. For instance, consider the following code:
2: ja out_of_bounds ; if greater, index is too big
3: mov ebx, [eax] ; read buffer
In this code, the CPU can speculative execute instruction 3 (mov) if it mispredicts the branch at 2 (ja). If this is undesirable, software should implement:
2: ja out_of_bounds ; if greater, index is too big
3: lfence ; serializes dispatch until branch
4: mov ebx, [eax] ; read buffer
Effect : In the second code sequence, the processor cannot execute op 4 because dispatch is stalled until the branch target is known.
Applicability : All AMD processors.
AMD Spectre Mitigation V1-2
Target : Spectre 1 only
Technique : Create a data dependency on the outcome of a compare to avoid speculatively executing instructions in the false path of the branch. For instance, consider the following code:
2: ja out_of_bounds ; if greater, index is too big
3: mov ebx, [eax] ; read buffer
In this code, the CPU can speculative execute instruction 3 (mov) if it mispredicts the branch at 2 (ja). If this is undesirable, software should implement:
3: ja out_of_bounds ; if greater, index is too big
4: cmova eax, edx ; NEW: dummy conditional mov
5: mov ebx, [eax] ; read buffer
Effect : In the second code sequence, the processor cannot execute op 4 (cmova) because the ags are not available until after instruction 2 (cmp) nishes executing. Because op 4 cannot execute, op 5 (mov) cannot execute since no address is available.
Applicability : All AMD processors.
AMD Spectre Mitigation V1-3
Target : Spectre 1 only
Technique : Create a data dependency on the outcome of a compare to mask the array index to keep it within bounds. For instance, consider the following code:
2: ja out_of_bounds ; if greater, index is too big
3: mov ebx, [eax] ; read buffer
In this code, the CPU can speculative execute instruction 3 (mov) if it mispredicts the branch at 2 (ja). If this is undesirable, software should implement:
2: ja out_of_bounds ; if greater, index is too big
3: and eax, $MASK ; NEW: Mask array index
4: mov ebx, [eax] ; read buffer
Effect : In the second code sequence, the processor will mask the array index before the memory load constraining the range of addresses that can be speculatively loaded. For performance it is best if $MASK is an immediate value.
Applicability : All AMD processors. This mitigation works best for arrays that are power-of-2 sizes but can be used in all cases to limit the range of addresses that can be loaded.
Note : In the case of RET instructions, RIP values are predicted using a special hardware structure that tracks CALL and RET instructions called the return stack bu er. Other indirect branches (JMP, CALL) are predicted using a branch target bu er (BTB) structure. While the mechanism and structure of this buffer varies significantly across AMD processors, branch predictions in these structures can be controlled with software changes to mitigate variant 2 attacks.
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AMD Spectre 2 Mitigation Options
AMD Spectre Mitigation V2-1
Target : Spectre 2 only
Technique : Convert indirect branches into a “retpoline”. Retpoline sequences are a software construct which allows indirect branches to be isolated from speculative execution. It uses properties of the return stack bu er (RSB) to control speculation. The RSB can be lled with safe targets on entry to a privileged mode and is per thread for SMT processors. So instead of
1: jmp *[eax] ; jump to address pointed to by EAX2:
To this:
1: call l5 ; keep return stack balanced
l2: pause ; keep speculation to a minimum
3: lfence
4: jmp l2
l5: add rsp, 8 ; assumes 64 bit stack
6: push [eax] ; put true target on stack
7: ret
and this 1: call *[eax] ;
To this:
1: jmp l9
l2: call l6 ; keep return stack balanced
l3: pause
4: lfence ; keep speculation to a minimum
5: jmp l3
l6: add rsp, 8 ; assumes 64 bit stack
7: push [eax] ; put true target on stack
8: ret
L9: call l2
Effect : This sequence controls the processor’s speculation to a safe known point. The performance impact is likely greater than V2-2 but more portable across the x86 architecture. Care needs to be taken for use outside of privileged mode where the RSB was not cleared on entry or the sequence can be interrupted. AMD processors do not put RET based predictions in BTB type structures.
Applicability : All AMD processors.
AMD Spectre Mitigation V2-2
Target : Spectre 2 only
Technique : Convert an indirect branch into a dispatch serializing instruction sequence where the load has nished before the branch is dispatched. For instance, change this code:
1: jmp *[eax] ; jump to address pointed to by EAX2:
To this:
1: mov eax, [eax] ; load target address
2: lfence ; dispatch serializing instruction
3: jmp *eax
Effect : The processor will stop dispatching instructions until all older instructions have returned their results and are capable of being retired by the processor. At this point the branch target will be in the general purpose register (eax in this example) and available at dispatch for execution such that the speculative execution window is not large enough to be exploited.
Applicability : All AMD processors. AMD plans that this sequence will continue to work on future processors until support for other architectural means to control indirect branches are introduced.
AMD Spectre Mitigation V2-3
Target : Spectre 2 only
Technique : Execute a series of CALL instructions upon entering more privileged code to ll up the return address predictor.
Effect : The processor will only predict RET targets to the RIP values in the return address predictor, thus preventing attacker controlled RIP values from being predicted.
Applicability : All AMD processors. The size of the return address predictor varies by processor, all current AMD processors have a return address predictor with 32 entries or less. Future processors that have more than 32 RSB entries are planned to be architected to not require software intervention.
AMD Spectre Mitigation V2-4
Target : Spectre 2 only
Technique : An architectural mechanism, Indirect Branch Control (IBC), is being added to the x86 ISA to help software control branch prediction of jmp near indirect and call near indirect instructions. It consists of 3 features: Indirect Branch Prediction Barrier (IBPB), Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation (IBRS) and Single Thread Indirect Branch Predictors (STIBP).
Effect : These features give software another mechanism through architectural MSRs to provide mitigation for different variant 2 exploits.
IBPB – Places a barrier such that indirect branch predictions from earlier execution cannot in uence execution after the barrier. IBRS – Restricts indirect branch speculation when set. STIBP – Provides sibling thread protection on processors that require sibling indirect branch prediction protection
Applicability : As a new feature, these mechanism are available in only a limited number of current AMD processors and require a microcode patch. These 3 features are individually enumerated through CPUID and all processors do not support all features. These features also require software updates to write the MSR where appropriate.
Note : After a RIP value is predicted, the new RIP value is sent through a TLB and table walker pipeline before instruction bytes can be fetched and sent for execution.
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AMD Spectre 2 Hardware Mitigation Options
On 7 February, AMD revealed three AMD64 mechanisms to mitigate against Spectre 2 (indirect branch target injection). They are designed to increase control of indirect branches, and identified by CPU ID bits.
Feature
AMD Version (CPUID Function)
MSR Exist
Indirect Branch Prediction Barrier (IBPB)
8000_0008 EBX[12]=1
PRED_CMD (MSR 49)
Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation (IBRS)
8000_0008 EBX[14]=1
SPEC_CTRL (MSR 48)
Single Thread Indirect Branch Prediction (STIBP)
8000_0008 EBX[15]=1
SPEC_CTRL (MSR 48)
AMD IBPB Hardware Mitigation
Target : Spectre 2 only
Technique : This is a write-only MSR (model-specific register) that, when written with a 0, prevents older indirect branches from influencing predictions of indirect branches in the future. This applies to jmp indirects, call indirects and returns.
As this feature prevents the processor from using all previous indirect branch information, it is meant to be used only when a software switches from one user context to another that requires protection.
CPUID Function 8000_0008, EBX[16]=1 indicates an IBRS always on mode. The processor prefers that IBRS is only set once during boot and not changed.
If IBRS is set on a processor supporting IBRS always on mode, indirect branches executed in a less privileged prediction mode will not influence branch predictions for indirect branches in a more privileged prediction mode.
This also reduces the performance impact of the WRMSR (Write to Model Specific Register) on less privileged to more privileged entry point and the WRMSR on more privileged to less privileged exit points.
AMD IBRS Hardware Mitigation
Target : Spectre 2 only
Technique : Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation (IBRS) exists at MSR 0x48 (SPEC_CTRL) bit 0.
When this bit is set, it keeps indirect branches that occurred in a lesser prediction mode from before it was set from influencing the future indirect branches that are going to execute now while IBRS is 1. A lesser prediction mode is CPL 3 vs CPL[2-0] and Guest vs Host mode.
If software clears IBRS, it is now allowed for the older indirect branches that occurred when IBRS was 0 to be used to influence the indirect branches.
It is also possible that while IBRS is 1, another write of 1 to IBRS bit 0 occurs. This starts a new window where older indirect branches should not influence future indirect branches.
Therefore if IBRS were set in a lesser privilege mode, on a transition to a more privileged mode the more privileged mode would have to set IBRS to 1 to indicate to hardware that it wants branches in the more privileged mode separated from those in the lesser privileged mode with IBRS set.
On processors with a shared indirect branch predictor, IBRS being set provides protection from being influenced by a sibling thread’s indirect branch predictions. For the ret type of indirect branch, software is responsible for clearing out the return stack buffer with 32 calls that have a non-zero target.
Processors that support more than 32 RSB (Return Stack Buffer) entries will be responsible for clearing the extra RSB entries. Clearing out the return stack buffer maybe required on the transition from CPL3 to CPL0, even if the OS has SMEP enabled.
CPUID Function 8000_0008, EBX[18]=1 indicates that the processor prefers using the IBRS feature instead of other software mitigations such as retpoline. This allows software to remove the software mitigation and utilize the better performing IBRS mechanism.
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AMD STIBP Hardware Mitigation
Target : Spectre 2 only
Technique : The Single Thread Indirect Branch Predictor (STIBP) exists at MSR 0x48 (SPEC_CTRL) bit 1.
When this bit is set in processors that share branch prediction information, indirect branch predictions from sibling threads cannot influence the predictions of other sibling threads. Return instructions are always immune to influence by the other thread and do not require this bit to be set for protection.
Any attempt to write SPEC_CTRL bits 63:2 results in general protection fault (GP fault). If a processor only supports STIBP (bit 1) for ease of software implementation, the processor does not GP fault attempts to write bit 0. In a similar manner, if a processor only supports IBRS, attempts to set STIBP do not GP fault.
Both SPEC_CTRL and PRED_CMD are not architecturally serializing WRMSRs. They are still execution serializing and prevent any execution of future instructions until they have completed.
CPUID Function 8000_0008, EBX[17]=1 indicates an STIBP always on mode. The processor prefers that STIBP is only set once during boot and not changed. This reduces the performance impact of the WRMSR (Write to Model Specific Register) at the necessary toggle points.
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Ever since the Meltdown and Spectre exploits were exposed, Microsoft has been working overtime to patch Windows against them. Unfortunately, they were quite secretive about their Spectre and Meltdown patch list and schedule. We usually only find out when something bad happens, like when some patches bricked AMD systems.
They changed that stance recently, quietly releasing their Windows Spectre and Meltdown patch schedule. This schedule listed the patches they have released so far, or are about to release. For your convenience, we have divided and sorted them according to the applicable Windows version.
Please note that the current Microsoft Spectre and Meltdown patch schedule covers the January and February 2018. We will update the schedule as and when Microsoft releases them.
Article Update History
Click here for the Article Update History
Updated @ 2018-02-22 :Added the late January and early February 2018 Spectre and Meltdown patch schedule for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016.
Originally posted @ 2018-01-24
The Spectre + Meltdown Patch Schedule For Windows 10
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To celebrate Safer Internet Day, Google shared these tips on how to stay safe online! Don’t forget to share this with your family and friends!
We know that keeping your information safe and private is important to you, which is why we’ve baked security features into all our products. We’ve also developed technologies to help keep the broader internet safe, too.
Whether you’re using Gmail, Android, YouTube, or are simply browsing the web, here are some of the tools and features that you can be confident will help you keep safe:
Safer Internet Tip #1 : Personalize your account security
The Security Checkup provides a clear security status and personalized recommendations to strengthen your account security. A green check mark means you’re good to go, and a yellow or red exclamation point means there’s at least one issue for you to take care of.
Safer Internet Tip #2 : Look out for automatic warnings
Spotting phishing scams or dangerous websites can be a challenge, even for savvy web users. Our automated systems detect and warn you about sites with malware, or attempts to phish you. Just keep an eye out for our warnings and follow the instructions—we’ve got you covered.
Safer Internet Tip #3 : Protect your Google account with two-factor authentication
Secure your email inbox by activating 2-step verification. With this feature, you’ll need a password and a verification code that’s sent to your mobile phone to be able to get into your inbox. Enroll in 2-step verification here to add an extra layer of security your account.
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Safer Internet Tip #4 : Download apps on Google Play for peace of mind on your Android
If you’re an Android user, the safest place to download apps is from the Google Play store. Google Play Protect checks apps and your device around the clock to keep out malicious programs and makes sure you have the latest in mobile security protection.
In 2017 alone, we took down more than 700,000 apps that violated Google Play policies, 70% more than the apps taken down in 2016. Google Play Protect is the ideal security blanket for your mobile device, so can you consider yourself and your data covered.
Google Play Protect is also there to help you if you ever misplace your phone. Visit android.com/find to locate, ring, lock and erase your Android devices—phones, tablets, and even watches.
Safer Internet Tip #5 : You too can help keep YouTube safe
YouTube has always allowed people like you and me to report content we think is inappropriate. Once you’ve flagged a video, it’s submitted for review to YouTube staff who then carefully look at the content to determine whether there’s a violation of YouTube’s Community Guidelines to see if it should be removed. You can also flag individual comments under any video for abuse or spam.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
Western Digital colour-codes their hard disk drives not to make the drives look sexier, or to help sell more hard disk drives. They created the WD drive colours to help users understand the distinct advantages or use of each drive family. In this article, Western Digital will help us show you how to choose the best drive for your PC.
Every Drive Has A Purpose
There is no better person than Albert Chang, Senior Manager of Product Marketing at WD Asia Pacific, to explain why every drive has a purpose. He also points out a key point that users often forget to factor when consumers purchase a drive – the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).
That’s right. The TCO is often overlooked, because that is ultimately the price you are paying over the lifetime of a drive. So make sure you don’t just buy the cheapest possible drive, because that may result in a high TCO… including the loss of priceless data.
Introducing The Five WD Drive Colours
Here is a quick primer on the five WD drive colours, and how they can help you determine the best drive for your PC.
Now, let’s take a closer look at each WD drive colour, and find out what advantages each drive colour boasts!
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WD Blue For Mainstream PCs
The WD Blue (Price Check) family are focused on offering highly-affordable drives with large storage capacities.
The WD Blue family does not just consist of hard disk drives. Western Digital also offers WD Blue SSHDs (solid state hybrid drives) and WD Blue SSDs (solid state drives).
For more information, you can read these WD Blue articles :
The WD Black family (Price Check) is targeted at power users and gamers who want the fastest possible hard disk drives for their PCs.
The WD Black drives offer a much higher spindle speed, a very large cache, and a fast processor. For more information, you can read these WD Black articles :
The WD Red (Price Check) family of NAS drives is specifically designed for the “always on” environment of a NAS enclosure. They run cooler and vibrate less, greatly increasing their reliability and lifespan in NAS enclosures.
The WD Red drives are also optimised for NAS usage patterns (80% reads, 20% writes), so you will be able to access your files faster than with a regular hard disk drive.
For more information, you can read these WD Red articles :
WD Purple drives (Price Check) are designed to handle the high-temperature, “always-on” environment of the CCTV and DVR systems. Regular drives will fail quickly under such conditions.
They are also designed to handle multiple video streams without dropped frames, or gaps in recorded footage… and do this 24/7 without rest!
For more information on the WD Purple, and why it is the best drive for surveillance and CCTV systems, please read :
Qualified for nearline storage use in datacenters, datacenter hard disk drives like WD Gold (Price Check) are designed to offer high storage capacities at maximum performance and reliability while operating continuously 24 hours a day in large drive arrays.
So if you want nothing but the best drive to secure your company’s data, there can be no doubt that the WD Gold (Price Check) is the ultimate storage solution.
For more information, you can read these WD Gold articles :
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
Want to have elevated God-like privileges to your Mac OS X system? Then you need to be a Mac root user. In this guide, we will teach you how to enable the root user account in OS X, change the password, and disable it.
For experienced users or power users, you can use Terminal to quickly make these changes :
If you are the primary user of a MacOS X system, you have an administrator account with administrator privileges. This gives you more privileges and access than a standard user account. However, that is not the highest access level possible.
There is a Mac superuser account called “root” that gives you elevated read and write privileges to hidden or protected areas of the system. With the Mac root user account, you can even access files in other user accounts.
In fact, it gives you such God-like powers, you can modify or even delete critical system files. So this Mac root account should only remain disabled unless you really, REALLY need to use it.
OS X High Sierra currently has a root bug that allows practically root access in a few simple steps. Therefore, Apple advises you to enable the Mac root account, with your own password, until they fix the bug.
How To Enable The Mac Root User / Change Password (Terminal Method)
Requisite : You need to be logged into an administrator account.
Please note this method is used to both enable the root account, and to change its password. The single command line of sudo passwd root both changes its password, while enabling the root account.
Step 1 : Click on the Apple () menu, and select System Preferences.
Step 2 : Click on Utilities, and select Terminal.
Step 3 : Type sudo passwd root and press Enter.
sudo passwd root
Step 4 : You will be asked for your administrator password, not the new root password. Key in your administrator password and hit Enter.
Step 5 : Now key in the new root password, and hit Enter. Then retype the new root password for verification, and hit Enter.
That’s it! You have successfully enabled the Mac root account, with a password of your choice. To use it, you need to log off your administrator account.
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How To Disable The Mac Root User (Terminal Method)
Requisite : You need to be logged into an administrator account.
Step 1 : In Terminal, type dsenableroot -d and press Enter.
dsenableroot -d
Step 2 : Key in your administrator password (not the root user password), and hit Enter.
If you succeed, you will see the notification : ***Successfully disabled root user.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
How To Enable The Mac Root User Account (GUI Method)
Requisite : You need to be logged into an administrator account.
Step 1 : Click on the Apple () menu, and select System Preferences.
Step 2 : Click on Users & Groups.
Step 3 : In the Users & Groups screen, click on the lock and key in your administrator name and password.
Step 4 : Click on Login Options.
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Step 5 : Click on the Join… (or Edit…) button next to Network Account Server.
Step 6 : Click on the Open Director Utility… button.
Step 7 : Click on the lock, and key in your administrator name and password.
Step 8 : In the Directory Utility menu bar, select Edit and click on Enable Root User.
Step 9 : Now, key in the password you want, and a second time for verification, and click OK.
That’s it! You have successfully enabled the Mac root user account, with a password of your choice. To use it, you need to log off your administrator account.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
How To Change The Mac Root User Password (GUI Method)
Requisite : You need to be logged into an administrator account, and have the root user account enabled.
If you have just enabled the root user account, and are still in the Directory Utility screen, skip ahead to Step 8.
Step 1 : Click on the Apple () menu, and select System Preferences.
Step 2 : Click on Users & Groups.
Step 3 : In the Users & Groups screen, click on the lock and key in your administrator name and password.
Step 4 : Click on Login Options.
Step 5 : Click on the Join… (or Edit…) button next to Network Account Server.
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Step 6 : Click on the Open Director Utility… button.
Step 7 : Click on the lock, and key in your administrator name and password.
Step 8 : In the Directory Utility menu bar, select Edit and click on Change Root Password.
Step 9 : Now, key in the new password you want, and a second time for verification, and click OK.
That’s it! You have successfully changed the Mac root user password. To use it, you need to log off your administrator account.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
How To Disable The Mac Root User Account (GUI Method)
Requisite : You need to be logged into an administrator account, and have the root user account enabled.
If you have just enabled the root user account, and are still in the Directory Utility screen, skip ahead to Step 8.
Step 1 : Click on the Apple () menu, and select System Preferences.
Step 2 : Click on Users & Groups.
Step 3 : In the Users & Groups screen, click on the lock and key in your administrator user name and password.
Step 4 : Click on Login Options.
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Step 5 : Click on the Join… (or Edit…) button next to Network Account Server.
Step 6 : Click on the Open Director Utility… button.
Step 7 : Click on the lock, and key in your administrator name and password.
Step 8 : In the Directory Utility menu bar, select Edit and click on Disable Root User.
That’s it! You have successfully disabled the Mac root user account.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
There have been many reported cases of Facebook hacking, with people losing access to their Facebook accounts, sometimes permanently. There are cases in which their Facebook posts and data have been tampered with after being hacked. This is not something anyone wants to experience. However, there is a way to backup Facebook account data using Acronis True Image (Lowest Price), and restore it later!
In this guide, Acronis will teach you how to backup your Facebook account, and then restore it later if your account gets hacked, or you regretted deleting your Facebook account.
How To Backup Facebook
These steps require Acronis True Image 2017 (Lowest Price) to be installed. Acronis offers a one-time purchase option, as well as a yearly-subscription licence which includes free upgrades as long as the licence is maintained.
Configuring Acronis True Image 2017 (Lowest Price) to backup Facebook accounts is easy. Your Facebook profile is treated in a similar way to other computer devices.
Step 1 : Go to Resources, click Add, and select Facebook.
What you’ll see next is a standard Facebook login screen asking for your permission to use your Facebook account with Acronis True Image 2017 (Lowest Price).
Step 2 : Enter your login details.
Step 3 : Follow the prompts until you see the familiar “Items to back up” dialog screen.
Step 4 : Tick the “Entire account” box to make sure that all your Facebook content is protected.
Saying that all Facebook content will be backed up is not quite correct. Acronis True Image (Lowest Price) accesses your account via the standard Facebook API, and there are some things that Facebook likes to keep to itself. For example, your Friends list is one of the things that Facebook will not let you to back up.
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Step 5 : Set up how often you wish to back up your profile. If you are an active user, you may want to back up your account every day. Otherwise, once every other day or once a week may be sufficient.
If you don’t enable regularly scheduled backups, you can still perform backups manually.
Step 6 : Follow the prompts until you see the “Run Now” button.
Step 7 : Click the “Run Now” button and go and have a drink.
In a few minutes (or hours, depending how big your profile is), your Facebook account will clone itself onto your computer.
How To Restore Facebook
Here are the steps to restore your Facebook account. Again, this requires Acronis True Image 2017 (Lowest Price) to be installed.
Step 1 : Open Acronis True Image.
Step 2 : Locate your Facebook backup and click Recover.
Alternatively, you can also browse contents of your backup and download individual photos, video, and other content.
That’s it! You can choose to recover your entire Facebook account, or download only the files you need. It’s that simple.
If you like our work, you can help support our work by visiting our sponsors, participating in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donating to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!
ASUS just released a huge-ass Android 7.1.1 Nougat update for the ASUS ZenFone 3 Zoom smartphone. Amongst the many updates and upgrades is a new Portrait Mode. Software bokeh may not be new, but the ZenFone 3 Zoom Portrait Mode promises a better looking and more accurate bokeh effect, thanks to the way it uses its dual camera system.
Updated @ 2017-07-07 : Added some ASUS ZenFone 3 Zoom Portrait Mode sample photos
Originally posted @ 2017-06-29
The ZenFone 3 Zoom Portrait Mode
The ZenFone 3 Portrait Mode works by using the ZenFone 3 Zoom‘s two cameras simultaneously to calculate portions of the photo that should be blurred out for that bokeh effect. The blur effect can be changed in real time via a slider in the new Portrait Mode interface.
This type of “software bokeh” effect is not new. Other smartphones have introduced similar camera modes like “Bokeh” or “Subject Focus” but most of them either use the second camera as a dedicated “depth sensor”, or use software to blur out the background. Other ASUS ZenFone models also have the similar Depth of Field Mode that creates a similar effect, but it requires multiple shots, which means you’re limited to still objects.
The new ZenFone 3 Zoom Portrait Mode differs from those methods though. It makes use of the dual cameras to simultaneously shoot two photos – the 59 mm lens focusing on the subject, while the 25 mm lens takes the background. Using the depth information from the two photos, the depth of field can be made shallower or deeper depending on the f-stop you wish to simulate (from f/0.95 to f/22).
While this is still a software bokeh effect, it should result in a far more accurate and realistic blurring of the background. You may recall that the traditional software bokeh can inadvertently blur the wrong parts of the picture. Using both lenses simultaneously should eliminate that problem, and allow the bokeh effect to be applied even to moving objects.
The new interface – when opening the camera for the first time since the update, you’ll notice some subtle changes in the UI. Gone is the dedicated switch to Manual Mode (though you can always just tap the Modes button and switch from there) and is now replaced with a Portrait Mode button, which you can tap to switch.
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How To Use The ZenFone 3 Zoom Portrait Mode
When you open the ZenFone 3 Zoom‘s camera for the first time after installing the update, you’ll notice that the Manual Mode button is gone, replaced by a Portrait Mode button. The Manual Mode is now accessible via the Modes button.
Once you switch to Portrait Mode, an f-stop slider will appear. The slider allows you to adjust the virtual depth-of-field, which will determine where and how much of the bokeh effect is applied.
When you take the photo, the ZenFone 3 Zoom will take two photos – the main camera with f/1.7 lens takes a photo of the background, while the secondary camera with f/2.8 lens takes a photo of the subject. Your f-stop setting will be applied to the final image using the depth information from the two photos.
Try out the new ASUS ZenFone 3 Zoom Portrait Mode and let us know how it works for you!
Some Portrait Mode Samples
We took the opportunity during the ASUS ZenFone AR launch to take photos of these models to demonstrate the ZenFone 3 Zoom Portrait Mode effect.
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