It's easy to take a lot of things for granted when they are part of our everyday lives - like the Internet, for example! Although I do remember a time before the Internet was in my home, it wasn't a huge period; I definitely had online access as early as middle or high school. I don't often stop to think about what an amazing thing it is, but on the occasions where I do it's definitely one of those "whoa" moments. Recently, a team from the Technical University of Denmark and Sweden's Chalmers...
If you recall the sounds of your PC from back in 'the olden days,' you might remember the sounds of the whirring fans, the chime-like booting sound, and an incessant - but merry! - continuous clicking of an overnight defrag. Ah, the good old days. If you have any fondness for ASMR, this might just be the pick-me-up you're looking for at the end of a rough week. A little device called the HDD Clicker will let you enjoy the sounds of a spinning platter amidst the twilight age of the hard disk d...
Recently, Nvidia found itself having to deal with an excess of RTX 3000 GPU stock. Since the launch of the next-gen Lovelace graphics card is looming, they need to sell this stock off ahead of it - which means some price cuts along with it. All of this is based on comments made by CEO Jensen Huang on a conference call regarding Nvidia's Q2 fiscal results and was reported on by The Verge . "We found ourselves with excess inventory," said Huang. "Our strategy is to sell-in well below the cu...
Get your chuckles and puns out now, friends - we're going to talk about Uranus. A newly released survey from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concludes that a Uranus Orbiter and Probe should be the "highest priority large mission" of this decade. This survey - conducted once every 10 years - is intended to help shape funding and research efforts from now through 2032. The survey calls for a specific spacecraft that will orbit Uranus and map its gravitational...
The February feature update for Windows 11 appears to be causing some issues for users by causing the Start menu to disappear as soon as a mouse hovers over it. This is apparently caused by a conflict with widgets trying to appear at the same time. The issues with the update were reported on by TechRadar on Monday. "It's certainly a frustrating bug, and it raises the question of why wasn't this fixed before the February update landed? The Taskbar and the Start menu have both seen...
CES 2022 starts today, but we've already heard some major announcements from some big players in the tech game earlier this week. Samsung, for example, debuted its new TVs, and some of them will let you play games from the cloud, no console required! The platforms they've integrated into their televisions so far are Google Stadia, Nvidia GeForce Now, and Utomik. According to Samsung, "select" 2022 TV models will give you direct access to GeForce Now, Stadia, and Utomik cloud gaming services v...
If you're thinking of moving to Windows 11 when it releases on October 5th, then you'll want to know about Microsoft's updates to its Health Check app. This app will test your PC to see if it can adequately handle running Windows 11. The updated tool is available all the way at the bottom of Microsoft's Windows 11 page here . The user interface hasn't changed any from its previous version, but the results regarding your PC's eligibility should be much more accurate than before. ...
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...
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...
A recent hacking attempt by "state-sponsored actors" against several of Microsoft's customers was mostly unsuccessful earlier this week. Security experts at Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) have reported that threat actor Nobelium used an information-stealing malware on the computer of a customer support agent in an attempt to launch a series of "highly-targeted" attacks. Reuters claims that Microsoft did not announce the breach until after it approached the software gian...
Amid complaints from brick-and-mortar retailers in India, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs proposed a ban on flash sales on e-commerce platforms and preventing affiliate entities from being listed as sellers on Monday evening. These policies are in response to a rise in concern about what retailers allege as unfair practices employed by Amazon and Flipkart in the second largest market in the world. In its proposal, India's Ministry of Consumer Affairs suggests that e-commerce firms should ...
Over the weekend, a friend shared an article discussing the new Amazon Sidewalk service that will be debuting as an experiment on June 8th. If you live in the U.S. and use Alexa, Echo, or any other Amazon device (this includes Ring doorbells, security cams, outdoor lights, motion sensors, etc.) you will be automatically enrolled in this service unless you manually opt out. This new wireless mesh service will share a small bit of your Internet bandwidth with nearby neighbors who don't have c...
I haven't been looking into building a new computer or upgrading the one I have recently, but that doesn't mean I haven't been hearing the buzz about all of the hard-to-find CPUs that have hit the market over the last year or so. I know, for instance, that AMD's Ryzen 5000 series has been fairly impossible to find. A few of my friends have been looking and the only luck they've had locating it is with a pretty inflated price tag attached. These processors have been around for a little while n...
I've been a Windows user for a long time. Admittedly, that's rather by default - Windows was what came with my family's first PC and is the most accessible OS for most consumers, so it's obviously a fairly natural choice. It's been interesting to see Windows evolve over the years, although I, like many others, abhorred some of the changes (let's just ignore Windows Vista, shall we?). Back in October, Microsoft announced a new "Device Usage" feature they were working on for a future W...