Planetside 2 beta giveaway

Ahoy!

I've a special treat for Big Beard readers today - 2x Planetside 2 beta keys.
Simply drop a comment below and lucky winners will be picked at random!



http://www.planetside2.com/

iPhone 5 Camera problem

So, with a newly released apple product we have a new assortment of problems (but we're probably just holding them wrong, right?)

This time its an issue with the camera - an unwanted purple flare plants itself on the image whenever taken near a light source. This is something common across all the iPhone 5's believed to be due to the sapphire glass covering, but according to apple a giant purple flare is perfectly normal - you're just taking photos with the wrong lighting.


Check out this support letter in reply to a customers support ticket -


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Dear Matt,

Our engineering team just gave me this information and we recommend that you angle the camera away from the bright light source when taking pictures. The purple flare in the image provided is considered normal behavior for iPhone 5's camera. If you wish to reach me regarding this case number *********, please contact me at 1-877-***-**** ext. *******. I currently work Thursday-Monday: 7:00am - 3:30pm Mountain Time. If you reach my voicemail, please leave your name, phone number, case number and the best time to reach you. Email is ***********@apple.com.

Sincerely,
Debby
AppleCare Support

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Apple Maps apology letter

This made me giggle... it had to be posted, i particularly enjoyed the part:

"Everything we do at Apple is aimed at making our products the best in the world. We know that you expect that from us"

Fuck you apple, nobody expects the best in the world from you, we just expect another hipster piece of shit thats been done over and over. Go fuck yourself, thank you kindly.


Heres the full letter:

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To our customers,

At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better.

We launched Maps initially with the first version of iOS. As time progressed, we wanted to provide our customers with even better Maps including features such as turn-by-turn directions, voice integration, Flyover and vector-based maps. In order to do this, we had to create a new version of Maps from the ground up.

There are already more than 100 million iOS devices using the new Apple Maps, with more and more joining us every day. In just over a week, iOS users with the new Maps have already searched for nearly half a billion locations. The more our customers use our Maps the better it will get and we greatly appreciate all of the feedback we have received from you.

While we’re improving Maps, you can try alternatives by downloading map apps from the App Store like Bing, MapQuest and Waze, or use Google or Nokia maps by going to their websites and creating an icon on your home screen to their web app.
Everything we do at Apple is aimed at making our products the best in the world. We know that you expect that from us, and we will keep working non-stop until Maps lives up to the same incredibly high standard.


Tim Cook
Apple’s CEO

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New Crucial M4 firmware

Thats right folks, the best fucking SSD just got better with new firmware released; grab it from -

http://www.crucial.com/support/firmware.aspx


Release Notes:

Release Date: 09/25/2012


Firmware for the Crucial m4 2.5” SSD is being updated from version 000F to 010G.
The m4 is updatable to this new firmware starting from any previous version in a single step.
Do NOT use any other m4 firmware update for your 2.5” SSD such as the 01MG firmware for the mSATA form factor.
Version 010G includes the following changes:

• Improved Trim response time
• Improved power-on-to-ready time (known as POR, or TTR for Time-to-ready)
• Improved resume-time from low power modes, and improved reliability of warm reboot
• Improved power consumption by disabling HIPM (Host Initiated Power Management)

Additional details can be found in the firmware guide

Skyrim Visual Mods

There are thousands of fantastic mods available for Skyrim but with so much choice it can be a little overwhelming so I’ve composed a little list of some of the greatest, compatible visual enhancement mods for Skyrim. 

Most of these mods are available through both Skyrim Nexus and Steam Workshop.

Grab yourself Nexus Mod Manager and go through this list of mods. The ones in bold are in my opinion the most significant for true visual enhancement.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/modmanager

- Skyrim HD 2k Textures
- Static Mesh Improvement Mod
- W.A.T.E.R.
- XCE Xenius Character Enhancement
- Improved NPC Clothing - high res
- HD Misc
- HD Furniture and barrels
- Enhanced Night Skyrim
- Enhanced Distance Terrain
- Ruins clutter improvement HD
- Realistic Smoke and Embers
- Realistic Lighting with customization
- Sounds of Skyrim (not a graphics mod but heavily adds to the immersion with some great extra sound packs, comes in 3 parts: Dungeons, Wilderness & Cities)

How to overclock your GPU

Looking to get some more “Voom” from your GPU? Look no further, overclocking your graphics card couldn’t be simpler with some fantastic tools available to do most of the leg work.

You will need –

MSI Afterburner (Overclocking utility) - http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm

HWmonitor (temperature monitoring tool) - http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

Once you have those bits of software downloaded/installed follow these steps:

Step 1

Open HWmonitor, this will display the current, minimum and maximum values. Its crucial you frequently monitor this when testing a new overclock to ensure you’re not cooking that poor graphics card. As this tool is very light weight, feel free to leave it running in the background as you run benchmarks and gaming tests.

Step 2

Open MSI Afterburner and you will be greeted with a neat interface with plenty of sliders to play with, this is where the real fun comes. These sliders will be greatly variable based on numerous factors, including your type of card and its limitations, cooling and a bit of luck.  The idea behind this software is to increase the sliders in small increments, maintaining the voltage as close to its stock setting as possible.

Start with increasing the Core Clock speed (the shader will move accordingly with it)

If you experience any crashing, instability, artifacting etc increase the voltage in small increments until stable.

Step 3

Test the stability of your overclock through general usage and gaming, keeping a close eye out for any artifacting, distortion or crashes and ensure the temperatures are at an acceptable safe level. 

Once you have a stable overclock you can try increasing the memory clock speed, though in my experience this makes little to no difference in your FPS (frames per second) and tends to cause instability.

Happy OCing! :)

Tips:

- At the bottom of MSI afterburner tick the small circle “apply overclock at system startup” if you plan to run your OC regularly.

- Although commonly practised and now even encouraged by select manufacturers, Overclocking still comes with its risks, experiment with caution!

- To read further info about your Graphics card download GPU-Z  http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

How to setup a free VPN

This guide will talk you through how to use a free VPN (Virtual Private Network) for anonymous and secure browsing. Before we start this short tutorial I’ll outline a few key points of what a VPN is commonly used for (but not limited to).

- Anonymous browsing

- Hide your public IP address (giving you an alternative from another country)

- Access to websites you wouldn’t otherwise be able to use, such as those banned by your country or business/school network.

Remember VPN’s are not a guaranteed method for anonymity (though certainly a step in the right direction). 

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Hotspot Shield is a great free VPN with a good host of features, it offers everything you need for free with a few added extra features for a fee (though totally unnecessary)

Step 1

Visit http://www.hotspotshield.com/ and download the latest version.

Step 2

Once downloaded install to your preferred directory.

Step 3

Launch the application and click “Connect” – Hotspot will attempt to automatically connect you to the network and issue you with a new public IP (this process may temporarily disconnect you from the internet)

Done.

In order to check that you are successfully connected and your IP is masked as a different address visit http://whatismyipaddress.com/