Darryl Brohman reveals why he believes the Penrith dynasty will not return to full dominance over the next three years. Read...

The common denominator in all Melbourne’s premierships under coach Craig Bellamy is at least one member of the “Big Three” has played. Now the challenge is to win a title without them. Read...

The Brisbane Broncos face the Melbourne Storm in Sunday’s grand final - and the people of Sydney are still trying to figure out where to direct all the hate in their hearts. Read...

Harry Grant reflects on his journey to the Melbourne Storm after being overlooked by the Brisbane Broncos as a child. Read...

Zach Merrett has given a virtual farewell speech to the club’s faithful, winning a sixth and likely final Crichton Medal ahead of the AFL trade period in which the veteran campaigner will seek a trade. Read...

ASRock is a well-known manufacturer of motherboards and other PC components, for both consumers and industry. But right now it’s also well-known for high-end AMD 9000 CPUs, especially in some custom builds. That’s not ideal if you want to keep manufacturing motherboards. After a recent exposé video, the company is trying to make some PR headway. A little background. Through the spring and summer of this year, a small buy notable number of recent AMD Ryzen Zen5 processors have been failing, and an inordinate number of them have been in ASRock’s motherboards. Various explanations and solutions have been put forward, and there’s been the usual finger-pointing among different companies, but the preponderance of evidence seems to indicate that this is a specific problem with ASRock boards. That impression is backed up, if not totally confirmed, by a recent Gamers Nexus video. Gamers Nexus has been absolutely killing it lately with the team’s deep dive investigations, and this one’s no different. GN says there’s no complete smoking gun so far, but it sure seems that specific batches of ASRock motherboards are causing AMD CPU failures, both on the consumer and data center side. So yeah, ASRock’s CPU problem has been nagging it for months, and it doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon. It seems like the company is trying to offer some extra assurance to customers, at least in some areas. VideoCardz reports that ASRock Japan is offering extended three-year motherboard warranties (an extra year over standard) to the affected 800-series AMD boards, as well as equivalent Intel boards. There’s just one catch: You have to join the ASRock Fan Club in order to qualify. Just registering the board alone won’t cut it. If that sounds familiar, you might have heard a little something similar from Microsoft, which pulled the same move to incentivize Windows 10 users for an extra year of security updates. It’s interesting that this would debut in Japan, as ASRock is based out of Taiwan. There’s no indication that this will spread to other areas, though that’s certainly possible. I have to say that getting people to sign up for spam marketing (and some data collection/tracking, I would assume) to achieve better support, after a big PR blunder, doesn’t inspire me to look for the ASRock logo on my next PC part purchase. Read...

Rob Tarkoff has been appointed CEO of Seismic, succeeding co-founder Doug Winter, as the company enters a new phase of growth and innovation. Read...

Snagging a high-quality webcam at an affordable price doesn’t have to be difficult. I mean, this Ugreen 2K webcam is so good that it’s a game-changer, and right now it’s on sale for just $21.99 (was $35.99). That’s a whopping 39 percent discount, taking its low price even lower! Most webcams in this price range only offer 1080p, but this one provides an upgraded 2K resolution (also known as 1440p). It captures crisp footage that helps you look your best during video calls, while recording YouTube content, etc. It has automatic adjustments for lighting and color temperatures, a wide 80-degree field of view, and a fixed focus so you don’t accidentally go blurry at random times. Other nice features include two built-in microphones that work together to capture your voice as clearly as possible while also filtering out background noises, a physical privacy cover for peace of mind when you aren’t using the webcam, and an easy clip-on mount. If you just need a budget-friendly webcam that looks great and doesn’t have any unnecessary bells and whistles, you can’t go wrong with this. Get the Ugreen 2K webcam while it’s only $21.99! Save 39% on this no-frills 1440p webcam for video calls and moreBuy now at Amazon Read...

In the days leading up to a potential blackout of NBC channels on YouTube TV, NBCUniversal made a seemingly outlandish claim. “Google, with its $3 trillion market cap, already controls what Americans see online through search and ads—now it wants to control what we watch,” the company said. While NBC did not elaborate on what exactly that meant, we’ve since learned that Google (which owns YouTube TV) wants to fundamentally change how programmers like NBC distribute video in the streaming age. In addition to carrying NBC’s broadcast and cable channels, Google also wants YouTube TV to serve streaming content from Peacock, NBC’s separate streaming service. (For now, the companies have agreed to a short-term deal extension to avoid a blackout.) Why is this a big deal? If Google gets its way, it will give customers one place to watch all of NBC’s programming, tearing down a longstanding divide between pay TV packages and standalone streaming services. While that ultimately makes sense for viewers, it’s probably not something NBC and its programming peers want. What the YouTube TV and NBC dispute is about As I often tell folks who are trying to cut cable TV, streaming TV options typically fall into two buckets. The first bucket includes standalone streaming services such as Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, and Peacock. They offer a mix of original and library programming, including exclusive shows and movies that aren’t available on cable. The second bucket consists of live TV streaming services, also known as cable replacements, or vMVPDs in the TV industry (the acronym stands for virtual multichannel video programming distributor). These services replicate the cable experience with a big bundle of live TV channels, cloud-based DVR service, and a library of on-demand programming. YouTube TV is the largest of these services with an estimated 10 million subscribers. Others include Hulu + Live TV, Fubo, and Sling TV. The distinction between these buckets used to be pretty clear, but in recent years the lines have blurred. Standalone streaming services increasingly carry content that was once exclusive to cable channels, and live TV providers have started bundling up access to individual streaming services that have their own exclusive programming. (DirecTV, for instance, offers a bundle of entertainment channels, Disney+, Hulu, and HBO Max for for $35 per month.) These changes are happening because traditional pay TV bundles are becoming worthless for anything but news and sports. The best new shows moved over to standalone streaming years ago, so distributors want to bundle up those services as a way to preserve value. But surely you can see the problem, right? If YouTube TV starts offering bundled access to services like Peacock, people might spend less time using the actual YouTube TV app. The future could be one in which subscribers must sign into a bunch of different apps to watch everything that comes with a YouTube TV subscription, which isn’t great for YouTube and isn’t ideal for viewers either. Enter “ingestion” So when Reuters’ Aditya Soni and Puck’s John Ourand report that YouTube TV is seeking “ingestion” of Peacock’s content, they mean that YouTube wants to solve the problem of sending subscribers elsewhere. YouTube TV doesn’t want to just bundle Peacock subscriptions with its service, it wants the full Peacock catalog to be available directly inside YouTube TV. NBCUniversal doesn’t like that idea. It wants people spending time inside the Peacock app, where it can collect viewing data, make more money from targeted ads, and promote more Peacock content. When the company says Google “wants to control what we watch,” it’s likely alluding to YouTube being in control of the experience, plus all the advertising and data collection that comes with it. (Also, NBCUniversal is owned by Comcast, which has its own plans to aggregate streaming content, so it might not want to cede ground to a competitor.) Not every programmer is entirely opposed to “ingestion.” Philo, for instance, says it will bring HBO Max and Discovery+ content into its own app early next year, and Fubo will add ESPN+ programming to its app in the coming weeks. Amazon has also built a thriving business selling subscriptions to other streaming services (including Peacock’s ad-free tier) and offering their content through its own Prime Video app. Still, programmers are unlikely to give up complete control of their content to third-party aggregators, which means skirmishes like the one between YouTube TV and NBC will keep happening with each new carriage renewal. While Hollywood loves to complain about how streaming destroyed the pay TV bundle, it’s not all too eager to let streaming companies build it back up again. Sign up for Jared’s Cord Cutter Weekly newsletter for more streaming insights. Read...

Series appoints humanoid robot Uri as Chief Marketing Officer, harnessing AI and robotics to revolutionise marketing and student engagement in social networking. Read...