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n 1971, Intel, then an obscure firm in what would only later come to be known as Silicon Valley, released a chip called the 4004. It was the world’s first commercially available microprocessor, which meant it sported all the electronic circuits necessary for advanced number-crunching in a single, tiny package. It was a marvel of its time, built from 2,300 tiny transistors, each around 10,000 nanometres (or billionths of a metre) across – about the size of a red blood cell. A transistor is an electronic switch that, by flipping between “on” and “off”, provides a physical representation of the...

For your enjoyment, written in 1955 and depicting the elections of 2008 and 2012 way in the 'future'....... Franchise Linda, age ten, was the only one of the family who seemed to enjoy being awake. Norman Muller could hear her now through his own drugged, unhealthy coma. (He had finally managed to fall asleep an hour earlier but even then it was more like exhaustion than sleep.) She was at his bedside now, shaking him. "Daddy, Daddy, wake up. Wake up!" He suppressed a groan. "All right, Linda." "But, Daddy, there's more policemen around than any time! Police cars and...

ANY sufficiently advanced technology, noted Arthur C. Clarke, a British science-fiction writer, is indistinguishable from magic. The fast-emerging technology of voice computing proves his point. Using it is just like casting a spell: say a few words into the air, and a nearby device can grant your wish. The Amazon Echo, a voice-driven cylindrical computer that sits on a table top and answers to the name Alexa, can call up music tracks and radio stations, tell jokes, answer trivia questions and control smart appliances; even before Christmas it was already resident in about 4% of American households. Voice assistants are...

Law enforcement has a number of informants working for it and the companies that already pay their paychecks, like UPS, for example. It also has a number of government employees working for the TSA, keeping their eyes peeled for "suspicious" amounts of cash it can swoop in and seize. Unsurprisingly, the FBI also has a number of paid informants. Some of these informants apparently work at Best Buy -- Geek Squad by day, government informants by… well, also by day. According to court records, Geek Squad technician John "Trey" Westphal, an FBI informant, reported he accidentally located on Rettenmaier's computer...

Has anyone been attacked by Cerber Ransomware? I work at a small non-profit and was attacked last week. Most people who work here are volunteers and since we are a small non-profit, not much money is available to pay the ransom. What to do, what to do....

I am blessed to be running Windows 10 Version 10.0.10586, Build 10586, and have customized it a quite a bit, but under power management (powercfg.cpl) there are processor settings which i never saw before, though i have been there before and adjusted things. " I am looking for for Max performance (and still be able to Sleep), and made sure the Max. CPU state is 100%, but wondered what the best would be for the rest. I have searched the Internet for the best settings for these new options but saw nothing yet. Feel free to chip in (pun not...

Zero Wing, an old shooter most famous for its "All your base are belong to us" intro, was presumed (at least among Westerners) to have three to four different endings. Turns out only the English language version has three; the Japanese one has 35, most of which are absolute nonsense. Legends of Localization dug into the game at a reader's request and found that outside the game's more traditional endings there are a ton comprised of gibberish, lame jokes and references to pop culture gags made before most of us were even born. Each one of these secret endings uses...

"Going through old papers my dad gave me, I found his map of the internet as of May 1973. The entire internet."

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California regulators were poised on Wednesday to adopt the nation's first mandatory energy efficiency rules for computers and monitors - devices that account for 3 percent of home electric bills and 7 percent of commercial power costs in the state. The state Energy Commission said that when fully implemented, the plan will save consumers $373 million a year and conserve as much electricity annually as it takes to power all San Francisco's homes. Final approval of the standards, expected at a meeting in Sacramento of the five-member commission, caps a nearly two-year planning process that had...

Most people think you can usually find a better deal when you shop online. But the price you see can be different than what other people see. The type of computer you use, your online search history, even your zip code have all been used by online retailers to determine what price you pay. In a study conducted by researchers at Northeastern University in Boston, nine out of 16 online retailers and travel websites tested showed different prices or difference results for the same searches. “I always assumed all the prices would always be the same,” said Liz Owens. Owens,...

Inside Hillary Clinton's campaign, she was known as Ada. Like the candidate herself, she had a penchant for secrecy and a private server. As blame gets parceled out Wednesday for the Democrat's stunning loss to Republican President-elect Donald Trump, Ada is likely to get a lot of second-guessing.

Ever wanted to make Natalie Portman yell obscenities at your neighbors? What if Garey Busey could leave your mother a sexy voicemail on her birthday? Wanted to prank your little brother by forcing him to call his crush and profess his love? Adobe has you covered. When Adobe released photoshop in 1990, it dreamed of a world where movie studios and photo editors could do in minutes what once took hours. It never dreamed the world would take the digital editor and use it to put celebrity heads on porn star bodies, distort women’s bodies in magazine cover, and create...

Taipei, Nov 5 (IANS) Taiwanese tech giant HTC will open hundreds of virtual reality gaming arcades in Taiwan, China, Europe and the US by end 2017 under its “Viveport Arcade” programme. The company is developing virtual reality games for its VR devices and hopes the gaming arcades will serve to promote its virtual reality Vive headset, the Taipei Times reported Saturday. The programme will begin in Taiwan and China and then be extended to the US and Europe at an unspecified date. HTC is hoping to expand its Viveport programme to internet cafes, movie theatres and virtual reality centres by...

The personal desktop computer used to once be an exclusive and expensive machine, though we now know it and its laptop counterpart as a mass-market commodity that most people can afford. This week, however, the companies that defined the personal computer, Microsoft and Apple, gave us a glimpse of the future and it looks like a return to the past: the PC is going back to being an exclusive and expensive machine. Set aside all the explosions of color on gorgeous, high-resolution displays. Ignore the glamorous promo videos and the ultrathin, all-metal chassis of the new Surface Studio and MacBook...

There’s a device out there called USB Kill 2.0 (or USB Killer and other variants) that can fry an electronic device with a USB port. While it looks like an every day USB flash drive, rather than memory, these devices have capacitors that can store up juice being transmitted over the USB bus and then discharge at once. The result is a high-voltage attack on your PC, Mac, smartphone, or other device that can fry the electronics.YouTuber EverythingApplePro posted a demonstration video with one of these devices where he fried a PC and tried to fry an iPhone 7 Plus...

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. secretly arrested a National Security Agency contractor in recent weeks and is investigating whether he stole and disclosed highly classified computer codes developed to hack into the networks of foreign governments, according to several senior law enforcement and intelligence officials. The theft raises the embarrassing prospect that for the second time in three years, an insider has managed to steal highly damaging secret information from the N.S.A. In 2013, Edward J. Snowden, who was also a contractor for the agency, took a vast trove of documents that were later passed to journalists, exposing N.S.A. surveillance programs...

If you want a new PC running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, you'll have fewer options beginning on Nov. 1. Here's what the end-of-sales deadline means.

I need help with RealPlayer. I have the last free version that was made available. RealPlayer apparently tries to connect to the Internet whenever the program is opened. This is, I think, causing it to crash whenever I play videos. I was without internet access for a week and the program never stopped working once.

Apple’s Phil Schiller thinks it’s sad that people use 5-year-old computers. Well, Phil, there’s an auto repair shop in Poland that’s going to send you spiraling into a long depression.Why? Because one of the computers they’re using on a day-to-day basis is a Commodore 64, and I don’t mean one of the slick nostalgic remakes. I’m talking about a classically beautiful beige C64 and its whirring, clunking 5.25″ floppy disk drive.It’s been there for more than 25 years. See, not everyone finds the idea of using an old computer sad. Some, like the mechanics at this shop in Gdansk, treat...

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump continues to garner more support from solution providers than Democratic rival Hillary Clinton has, outpacing the former secretary of sate in the latest monthly CRN survey on the presidential race. The poll, which was taken by 208 solution providers from Sept. 6-26, revealed that 52 percent of those surveyed believe a Trump presidency would be better for business, a slight decline from the results of a similar poll in August, when 54 percent of participants chose Trump. The latest poll closed before Trump and Clinton faced off Monday night in their first debate of the...