TweakTown News - Page 1

Welcome to TweakTown on our brand new web server. If you're reading this, you are reading from our beasty new web server!

Given the enormous increase in readers hitting up TweakTown this year due in part to COVID lockdowns, we decided it was time to upgrade our old web server. Our old server was not terrible, but it started to show its age, especially at times of high traffic. We have put in an incredible amount of time and resources to making sure TweakTown not only looks great and works well on any devices, but it also always fast.

We have invested considerable developer resources into deploying all sorts of new web tech, such as advanced caching techniques, to ensure a great experience. Besides our content itself, these are the key factors we look to nail for you, our readers.

I'm very happy to announce that for the next 24 hours starting right now, all revenue (not profit, but all incoming funds) will go to the RSPCA Kangaroo Island Bushfire Appeal, which is an emergency response for animals in need.

Sadly, so many human lives and homes and businesses have been destroyed in Australia's worst natural disaster ever, but there has also been an huge impact on the wildlife in Australia. In particular, on Kangaroo Island near Adelaide, South Australia, which has seen huge amount of its habitat and koala population destroyed by recent savage bushfires fueled by drought, heat, heavy winds, and possibly deliberately lit fires.

The fund has already raised over $200,000 and we hope we can contribute as much as possible to the fund.

We challenge other tech sites to match our donation and do something similar!

Not only are we looking for US-based news reporters, but we are on the lookout for a US-based video professional, too. TweakTown is wanting to step into the world of video content in a big way, so we need a professional video guy or girl, too.

The candidate would need extensive experience in video content, with previous bodies of work as an example before applying. Preferably, we are looking for someone who is already in the industry who might work for a smaller site or company (or even on your own) and wants to join the big leagues, but you don't need to be intimidated by this. You might do kick ass work and just haven't been noticed yet, so this is your chance!

We would need someone based in the US who is willing to travel to trade shows and expos around the world, including CES in Vegas, E3 in LA, Computex in Taipei, and more. We are looking for someone who has considerable experience in YouTube, Vessel, and more - and has no issues dealing with deadlines. There's no super amount of technology expertise required, but this would be an advantage.

Previous experience is preferred, especially when it comes to trade shows and product reviews or unboxings of products. As we said, this isn't required, but it will go in your favor. This is a paid position, as we are looking for someone to grow into our team for the long term. We aren't looking for someone for a 3-6 month period or temporary, but someone who wants to build a future with TweakTown.

If you want to apply, send an email with your name, details, links to your work and why you think you'll be great for the job to jobs@tweaktown.com and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

TweakTown is expanding! We are on the lookout for a US-based news reporter that will join our team. The job is pretty straight forward and easy, and it's a ton of fun, too.

The candidate will of course need to be based in the United States, with the West Coast being preferred. The candidate would be required to have above average English and grammar skills, and a large interest in technology and games. Previous experience isn't required, but it is definitely favorable. You'll of course need Internet access, a computer of some sort to write on, and the time required (which varies depending on your typing speed, and how quickly you get used to writing news, hopefully for a living).

This is a paid position, where you'll start off on a trial for 1-2 weeks before joining our awesome news crew led by yours truly. We are looking for a serious candidate, so if you're working a full-time job, you'll have to think twice before applying. The candidate would also have to be excited about attending local technology and game trade shows, such as the Consumer Electronic Show in Vegas, E3 in LA, and more.

If you'd like to apply, send us an email with a few details about yourself to jobs@tweaktown.com - include your name, previous experience, where you're based, and then a little on why you think you'd be perfect for the job. Please remember, we're looking for serious candidates, as this will turn into a full-time position. There's a large future for you here at TweakTown, yes you - so apply now!

Earlier today we discovered that TweakTown had been attacked with malicious code from rmr-group.com being inserted to most of our pages. We first discovered the attack due to a warning from Google Chrome. It's the first time this has happened to TweakTown in our long online history.

After having detected the problem, we removed all injected code from our pages. We are now running a full server scan to detect any issues. We are also changing all of our passwords and scanning our own personal systems for any issues.

We would like to apologize for any harm this may have caused to you or your PC. As a result, we recommend that all our readers run a full malware scan on their systems, as a precaution. It's unlikely any harm has been done, but it's better to be safe than sorry. We recommend Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Microsoft Safety Scanner - both are free.

Thanks for your understanding on the matter, and we will do all we can to ensure this doesn't happen again.

Next week on April 10 from 10am till 11am PST (GMT -8:00) we will be hosting a free webinar with SanDisk.

In this webinar, you'll learn how to boost your computer's performance by switching to a Solid State Drive (SSD). Our own SSD experts Chris Ramseyer and Paul Alcorn lay it all out-from faster games to longer battery life and lower power bills.

Topics Include:

SSD vs HDD: The difference between solid state drives and traditional hard drives-and why it matters to you

Key Benefits: The benefits you can expect from switching to an SSD

Installation: How to pick and install the right SSD for you

We encourage all our readers to get involved. Head on over to the SanDisk sign up page and fill out the simple form.

Today we are very excited to be announcing a new part of our website called Tweakipedia. Tweakipedia will be an amusement park of technology, filled with guides from how to overclock your computer to installing Windows from a USB drive. Not only that, but we will be taking in reader submissions on tweaks and guides.

This means that if you have a tweak recommendation, then you can submit it to us and we'll get it into Tweakipedia. We'll also love to hear suggestions on what you'd love to see next, so if you are itching to see how a certain GPU (or three) performs in a particular game, then you can request that. If you didn't know how to do a particular task - for example, building a system with Corsair's Obsidian 900D case - then we would secure that part and write a how-to build guide on it.

The idea is that the reader is heavily involved in Tweakipedia. We want you to submit ideas, requests, your own guides and tweaks - everything. This way, you're directly contributing to Tweakipedia and seeing it slowly morph into a gigantic source of great tech information. That is the next point - Tweakipedia will be a source we can continue to come back on in future reviews, articles and more.

What a few days it has been!

We changed from our older servers over to a new host with a single high-powered dual Xeon server with all the trimmings such as RAID 10 Intel SSDs, 48GB of RAM and more. We thought it would be a fairly simple process to move all of our files and databases over to the new server and get online in a few hours. The new server is running a different server control panel with some other different configurations that we weren't familiar with. It really did a good job of confusing us all, but finally we are back online. Things are not 100% perfect yet, but we're close. Apache redirects... grrrrr!

We are working as fast as we can to bring the site back to 100% working order, it won't be long now. The good news is that we are now on a very powerful server that is going to be able to hold up when we get hit with a lot of traffic, and it will also be a great server for us to grow into as we continue to grow. It's been an expensive and stressful event, but we've learnt a lot.

I would like to single out Dave from WiredTree (and the rest of the support team, too) for helping us migrate from our older servers. Thanks for your help guys and dealing with our constant questions and pestering. It has been a testing few days for sure, but we're almost at the end.

We are currently moving all data from our old servers over to a single new high-end web server located in Los Angeles with a different host.

At the moment our forums are down and we aren't adding any new content to the site. We have plenty of hot tech content lined up for you as soon as we're on the new site and the DNS is switched over.

It's going to be worth the wait. As TweakTown grows, we required a better solution for our hosting needs, and we think we've got a server that is going to last us for a good while and result in faster performance and less downtime. Our new host also offers stock performance tuning and security hardening, and we're excited to see the performance ourselves of this new investment once it goes online.

CPU: Dual Intel Xeon E5620 2.4GHz

RAM: 48GB DDR3 ECC Registered

Storage: 4 x 180GB Intel 520 SSDs in RAID 10 on Adaptec 6405 RAID controller

Software: LiteSpeed Web Server

LAN: 1Gbps

We'll post another update once we're live on the new server!

Today we are introducing (or re-introducing if you've known TweakTown long enough) our newest section, Ask the Experts.

As the name implies, it gives you our readers the ability to submit tech questions and we'll do our best to try and help you solve them. Or it may not be actual problems you are facing, buy having trouble deciding on what product to buy. We are here to help and offer our advice and opinion. Hey, you even get your name and country up on the site as well!

Anthony Garreffa is manning our Ask the Experts section and is all set to receive your questions right now. He'll do his best to answer them. Sadly we won't be able to post and answer all questions, only the best ones will be selected. From time to time, we may also run a giveaway for the best questions - so, stay tuned.

Starting asking us your questions, right now!