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My Sony Vaio laptop came with Windows 7 preloaded and no physical disks. I read that there was supposed to be a recovery partition on the hard drive and figured that would be all I needed. To this point, I never had to use it. I do regular backups of my data (documents, music,etc) to an external HD. Yesterday, I was looking at Task Manager and saw a bunch of processes running. I looked at the descriptions of what they were supposed to do and stopped a bunch I thought I did not need. Computer continued to run fine. Long...

Congress plans to question about two dozen federal agencies on whether they were using backdoored Juniper network security appliances. In December, Juniper Networks said it had discovered unauthorized code added to ScreenOS, the operating system that runs on its NetScreen network firewalls. The rogue code, which remained undetected for two years or more, could have allowed remote attackers to gain administrative access to vulnerable devices or to decrypt VPN connections. The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform wants to determine the impact that this issue had on government organizations and how those organizations responded to the incident. The...

There was a glitch that wouldn't let anyone post a response the last time I did this, so I'm going to try it again. TheRobb7 My son and I were interested in watching the Xbox play the NFL season against itself in Franchise Mode. We would watch 1 game a week and simulate the rest. PROBLEM : we can't get the Xbox to do it. It will only play against itself in Exhibition Mode, which means that we couldn't compile stats and standings. Does anyone out there know of a work-around?

A little over three months ago, National Review endorsed Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) for Speaker of the House. In doing so, National Review helped place a man with a two-decade history of pushing open borders immigration policies in charge of the Republican Party’s entire legislative agenda. Ten weeks after that endorsement helped Paul Ryan secure the Speakership, Ryan proceeded to swiftly pass an omnibus spending bill that funded and expanded President Obama’s immigration agenda.

My copy of google chrome is not running as it dont fully finish launching on my launch attempt . I can not force quit it from the force quit applications window.. because its nt running. I can not launch it as the Icon in my dock seems inert. there are a couple of forums I NEED my password for and they were available immediately using chrome. At Wits End, M.M.

Ok got something weird happening, and I'm at a loss what it could be- been researching for days now- thought I had the answer, but today the problem came back again I use windows 7 Hybrid Sleep, instead of shutting down- and for years it's worked fine- no issues- As of recently, I'll put the computer into sleep mode, everything does what it's supposed to- computer powers down- tower power button light goes to yellow like it's supposed to and the light on the front of the tower goes out (The HP symbol lights up when tower is working- then...

OLYMPIA, Wash. - More than 3,000 prisoners in Washington have been mistakenly released early since 2002 because of an error by the state's Department of Corrections that resulted in wrongly calculated sentences for about 3 percent of the prison population. At a news conference announcing the error Tuesday, Gov. Jay Inslee said he has ordered immediate steps to correct the longstanding computer glitch. "Frankly, it is maddening," Inslee said. Authorities say a July 2002 state Supreme Court ruling required the Corrections Department to apply good-behavior credits earned in county jail to state prison sentences. However, the programming fix ended up...

This week, Google announced a breakthrough that could prove its quantum computer is actually using quantum mechanics. When researchers gave the D-Wave 2X a carefully crafted test problem, the 1,000-qubit computer solved it 100,000,000 times faster than a classical computer could. Quite a few tech giants and government organizations are investing in quantum computing. And many of them, including Google, NASA, and Lockheed Martin, are working with the commercial quantum computers built by D-Wave. The idea is that these devices can harness the counterintuitive effects of quantum mechanics to solve problems faster than conventional computers, which could potentially improve artificial...

The actual problem that computer scientists threw at the D-Wave Two is pretty esoteric. To oversimplify it, they asked the machine to pick the optimum choice out of a large jumble of information with nearly 1,000 variables. Such optimization problems, which involve weighing multiple choices against each other, should be far, far easier for quantum computers to crunch. That's because the basis of quantum computation, the qubit, uses the odd physics of quantum mechanic to hold information as a zero, one, or a superposition of both. Again, to over-simplify things, this allows quantum computers to consider a vast number of...

... Fabian Wosar of Emisoft has created a tool capable of decoding files encrypted by the DecryptorMax ransomware, also known as CryptInfinite. The ransomware gets its name from the fact that the "DecryptorMax" string is found in multiple places inside its source code. Additionally, the CryptInfinite moniker is also used by some researchers because the ransomware adds the CryptInfinite key to the Windows registry, using it to store a list of all encrypted files and their location on disk. According to Bleeping Computer's Lawrence Abrams, the ransomware is spread via Word documents attached to spam email. These files pose as...

Duo Security researchers found a second weak digital certificate on a new Dell Inspiron laptop The fallout from a serious security mistake made by Dell is widening, as security experts find more issues of concern. Researchers with Duo Security have found a second weak digital certificate in a new Dell laptop and evidence of another problematic one circulating. The issue started after it was discovered Dell shipped devices with a self-signed root digital certificate, eDellRoot, which is used to encrypt data traffic. But it installed the root certificate with the private encryption key included, a critical error that left many...

Researchers have written quantum code on a silicon chip for the first time And so it begins... FIONA MACDONALD 17 NOV 2015           For the first time, Australian engineers have demonstrated that they can write and manipulate the quantum version of computer code on a silicon microchip. This was done by entangling two quantum bits with the highest accuracy ever recorded, and it means that we can now start to program for the super-powerful quantum computers of the future.Engineers code regular computers using traditional bits, which can be in one of two states: 1 or 0. Together, two bits...

So I have been having some issues with video playback on my laptop. It doesn't happen often, but every once in awhile, I'll try to play a YouTube video or Windows Media Player vid, and the video is green. Audio still plays, but the screen is green. In some cases, WMV's are just a black screen, with audio playing. Any help/suggestions are appreciated. Running Windows 8, BTW. I have 10 downloaded, just haven't upgraded yet

I am looking for a freeware program that will take .iso files and burn them to disk.

A security researcher in the US has said his Netgear router was hacked after attackers exploited a flaw in the machine. Joe Giron told the BBC that he discovered altered admin settings on his personal router on 28 September. The compromised router was hacked to send web browsing data to a malicious internet address. Netgear says the vulnerability is "serious" but affects fewer than 5,000 devices. Mr Giron found that the Domain Name System (DNS) settings on his router had been changed to a suspicious IP address. "Normally I set mine to Google's [IP address] and it wasn't that, it...

I just clicked on a thread titled 'Steve King Endorses Daniel Webster for Speaker of the House' posted by E. Pluribus Unum from Breitbart, and both times, my Avast virus protection popped up with 'threat detected'. Anyone else get this when clicking on this title? First time I've EVER gotten this while browsing FR.

Across the country, many employees are seated at desks for the majority of an eight-hour workday. As technology creates an increase in sedentary lifestyles, the impact of sitting on vascular health is a rising concern. Now, researchers have found that when a person sits for six straight hours, vascular function is impaired -- but by walking for just 10 minutes after a prolonged period of sitting, vascular health can be restored.

Move over, microchip. A random assembly of gold nanoparticles can perform calculations normally reserved for neatly arranged patterns of silicon. Traditional computers rely on ordered circuits that follow preprogrammed rules, but this strategy limits how efficient they can be. “The best microprocessors you can buy in a store now can do 1011 operations per second and use a few hundred watts,” says Wilfred van der Wiel of the University of Twente in the Netherlands. “The human brain can do orders of magnitude more and uses only 10 to 20 watts. That’s a huge gap.” To close that gap, researchers have...

My brother just acquired a MS Surface 3 tablet. He wanted to know how to connect it to a TV and "mirror" the table image on to the TV (not wireless but with wires). Any advice?

Both Russian and Chinese government security agencies have compiled data obtained from hackers who breached security protecting U.S. computer databases containing security clearance applications, airline records, and medical insurance forms, and then used the data to identify U.S. intelligence officers and agents. As a result of cyberattacks, at least one clandestine network of American engineers and scientists who provide technical assistance to U.S. undercover operatives and agents overseas has been compromised, according to two U.S. officials. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, revealed the security breach to the Los Angeles Times, which broke the story on August 31. The...