I learned today that there is a site called "Hackerone" that connects companies with users who like to hack and tinker with websites, apps, and other pieces of software. These individuals can then submit exploits and hacks to companies privately, and in exchange they are frequently compensated with a fair amount of money. This is precisely what happened earlier this week when a user called Drbrix found an exploit on Valve's Steam app. The Steam wallet exploit discovered by Drbrix would hav...
I remember when I had my first interview at Stardock. One of the people in the room, a guy named Kris, looked at me and fired off a series of PC user questions, things like: what kind of computer do you have, what operating systems do you run, and what web browser do you use? I answered each, and when I got to the web browser part and answered Chrome, he fired back with a question that caught me off-guard. “Why?” ...honest answer? I have no idea why . I...
Another day, another data leak. This time, it comes courtesy of a popular development platform called Power Apps. This Microsoft web tool allows organizations to quickly create web apps and has an abundance of tools for public facing websites and back-end data management. In spite of the tool's usefulness, it comes with its dangers: incorrectly configuring the product can leave huge segments of private data visible to the public. Cybersecurity firm UpGuard recently discovered that...
A few years ago, I built my first ever PC. I've had PCs before, of course, but this was the first one I'd ever built for myself from scratch - though I definitely had supervision! It was a nerve wracking experience, but I genuinely enjoyed learning all the in's and out's of PC building. Would I do it again, though? Hell no! That was too stressful. I get why people love building PCs, but I'd just rather have one of my enthusiast friends build it for me because it's something they love. I...
If you play games as a hobby, chances are you have at least a little bit of a games backlog that you haven’t had a chance to get around to playing. Maybe it’s because you lead a busy life that keeps you away from the computer and your consoles most of the time - or maybe, if you’re like me, it’s because you keep going back to the same 5 or 6 games over and over again instead of trying something new. Why do we do that? Well, there are tons of reasons, and...
The Internet can be a tricky place to navigate. I talked a little bit about keeping your PC secure in a blog last week , but to be honest I barely scratched the surface when talking about all the different ways hackers and malware are clamoring to get to your personal information. ArsTechnica reported this week that some hackers impersonated the site Brave.com and pushed malware to unsuspecting users. Their technique was so sneaky that the faux site was capable of fooling even the most sec...
Greetings, GalCiv IV fans! Over the last month, we have been hard at work turning out a new update to Galactic Civilizations IV for all of you. v0.45 released last week and focuses primarily on the ideology system. Let's take a look at what we added in the update! Before we get into it, though, please take note that this new update WILL break your saved games - sorry about that! We do our best to maintain game saves because we know how much time goes into them, but the new ideology system ...