Free Republic

Adding to the shocking spate of school violence across the nation, a 74-year-old Indiana substitute teacher claims he suffered a gruesome black eye from a teen — and teachers stopped him being arrested. Shellshocked Rob Gooding, of Indianapolis, told News 8 he was serving as a substitute at Perry Meridian High School on February 1 when an unruly student suddenly approached him during a business class. The hulking teen — who Gooding claims stood over 6 feet — raised his Chromebook and was poised to crash it down on his head. “I saw him come up, and he said, ‘I’ve...

Microsoft has announced the launch of what they are calling “Windows app,” a new service designed to stream the full Windows desktop operating system from the cloud to various devices, including Chromebooks. This new offering from Microsoft signifies a major shift in how the company thinks users will be using Windows in the future and is clearly a response to the “Chromebook threat.”Let’s first dive into what this new service entails exactly. The Windows App is essentially a new remote desktop hub that enables users to stream Windows Cloud PC and remote desktop services on a range of devices. This...

A new report has found that the millions of taxpayer-funded Chromebooks that flooded schools during the pandemic are being discarded because of their expiration dates. Chromebooks were an affordable way to help educate students during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they weren’t programmed to last. Chromebooks have a built-in “death date,” after which software support ends. Once laptops have “expired,” they don’t receive updates and can’t access secure websites. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund shows replacement parts are both expensive and hard to obtain. In numerous cases, replacement keyboards would cost around $90, roughly half the cost of...

“Should I buy a Chromebook?” is a question that is asked with increasing frequency by individuals, businesses, parents and students looking to reduce their computing costs or work more collaboratively in the cloud. This Chromebook review explores the pros and cons of using Chromebooks and other Chrome OS-based computers, helps you answer that question and highlights a few Chromebooks that you might want to consider using. Because of the nature of the work I do, and the times we live in, I seem to have ended up using a LOT of different devices. Depending on where I’m working, I switch...

Psychologist Nicholas Kardaras, author of "Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids - and How to Break the Trance", treated a patient with severe videogame addiction, who was gaming 19 hours per day and using adult diapers so as not to "waste time" using the restroom. Increasing overlap between social media and compulsory schooling has reached a certain boiling point during the Covid-19 pandemic. Schooling is not for maximizing children's potential, it is for socializing them to be mindless consumers and good drone employees of giant corporations, as it has been since the late 19th century Titans of...

At a time where many people use multiple different electronic devices at any given moment, the 240W charger offers a single, central power source for them all. Beginning with the 100W charger back in 2019, which could charge everything from your earbuds to your Google Chromebook, the standards became USB Type-C and Power Delivery. Most recently, the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) has released Revision 2.1. This updated version contains a descriptive 415 pages of updates, including preparation for USB4 device as well as approaching revisions for Power Delivery, centering on 240W charging using the new Extended Power Range sub-specification. This...

The Committee on Liberatory Information Technology has announced a long-standing Chromebook bug that could reveal user location history. Evidently already on the radar of Google, the platform has a feature allowing anyone with physical access to your device to connect as a guest and view your Wi-Fi logs. Of course, once said intruder has accessed these logs, they would then need the technical knowhow to make sense of them. However, if they are skilled enough, they may be able to track your place history by viewing your Wi-Fi network access over the past seven days. It turns out the bug...

Chromebooks may be impressively versatile, but a good Chromebook hack helps it break out of its browser-based confines and try new talents on for size. Top of the list, of course, is the ability to install a full Linux desktop operating system via the Crouton project. But there’s a lot you can tweak or add to multiply a Chromebook's powers. Some of these features require you to install Linux— a really easy task if you follow our Crouton tutorial—but many do not.Here are five Chromebook hacks that will improve your user experience and make these laptops even more powerful.Steam streaming (snip)Chrome Remote Desktop...

Despite the ongoing slump of PC sales, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT ) recently received news that gave it reason to celebrate. At the beginning of December, the market share for its Windows 8.1 update had increased to the point that it edged Apple's OS X Mavericks out of the top five installed operating systems; this left only Windows products in the list (which also includes Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows 8, and Windows Vista.) While it's true that Windows 8.1 only reported 2.6% of the installed market, when the rollout for Windows 8 and 8.1 has had as many problems as...

(Newser) – Google unveiled its new touchscreen Chromebook yesterday, and it was not what anyone was expecting. Until now, Google's Chromebooks have been exceedingly cheap, but the Chromebook Pixel will cost a whopping $1,300—for a computer that can only run web apps. Here's what pundits are saying: "What is Google thinking?" asks Jean-Baptiste Su at Forbes. "The Chromebook Pixel is, simply put, a ripoff!" It costs more than the MacBook Air, and it's "not even a real computer. ... Nobody in their right mind should spend that kind of money on a laptop that does so little." Windows 8 got...