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We know that GPUs and CPUs often have features disabled or dialed back in order to fit a price point. We’ll show you some nifty ways to access their hidden capabilities, as well as some fixes for inherent flaws. We also know that our gear can be made to do more than it was intended to with the help of third-party software, as you’ll discover in our webcam and Roku projects. And if you want to make your smartphone smarter, increase your Wi-Fi router’s range, or RAID your SSDs, we’ll turn you on to those tricks, too. 

computing power_users

Do you sit in an office chair or on your couch for more than six hours a day? Then here are some disturbing facts: Your risk of heart disease has increased by up to 64 percent. You're shaving off seven years of quality life. You're also more at risk for certain types of cancer. Simply put, sitting is killing you. That's the bad news. The good news: It's easy to counteract no matter how lazy you are.

health computing workplace

There are several keyboard combinations that can be used to take screenshots in Mac OS X. The SystemUIServer process handles these commands.

mac computing

Researchers at I.B.M. have stored and retrieved digital 1s and 0s from an array of just 12 atoms, pushing the boundaries of the magnetic storage of information to the edge of what is possible. The findings, being reported Thursday in the journal Science, could help lead to a new class of nanomaterials for a generation of memory chips and disk drives that will not only have greater capabilities than the current silicon-based computers but will consume significantly less power. And they may offer a new direction for research in quantum computing. “Magnetic materials are extremely useful and strategically important to many major economies, but there aren’t that many of them,” said Shan X. Wang, director of the Center for Magnetic Nanotechnology at Stanford University. “To make a brand new material is very intriguing and scientifically very important.”

science computing nanotechnology

This guide provides an easy and relatively quick way to PXE boot windows which means you can install Windows over the network with PXE without the need for a CD drive. While the previous guide allows you to slip stream updates and add extra programs it took a LONG LONG time to do, especially with all the downloads it needed to do, this one just installs a vanilla XP, nice and simple, and a lot quicker

windows computing tech_tips

One of our studies, a diary study that had people record every occasion that they used their tablet over a two-week period, found that most consumers use their tablets for fun, entertainment and relaxation while they use their desktop computer or laptop for work. Tablet devices are personal - 91% of the time that people spend on their tablet devices is for personal rather than work related activities. When a consumer gets a tablet, we’ve found that they quickly migrate many of their entertainment activities from laptops and smartphones to this new device. Tablet owners are building the device into their daily routine. Our research found that the most frequent tablet activities are checking email, playing games and social networking. We also found that people are doing more activities in shorter bursts on weekdays (e.g. social networking, email) while engaging in longer usage sessions on weekends (e.g. watching videos/TV/movies).

computing tablet user_experience

Researchers in Britain are about to embark on a 10-year, multimillion-dollar project to build a computer — but their goal is neither dazzling analytical power nor lightning speed. Indeed, if they succeed, their machine will have only a tiny fraction of the computing power of today’s microprocessors. It will rely not on software and silicon but on metal gears and a primitive version of the quaint old I.B.M. punch card. What it may do, though, is answer a question that has tantalized historians for decades: Did an eccentric mathematician named Charles Babbage conceive of the first programmable computer in the 1830s, a hundred years before the idea was put forth in its modern form by Alan Turing? The machine on the drawing boards at the Science Museum in London is the Babbage Analytical Engine, a room-size mechanical behemoth that its inventor envisioned but never built.

history computing

Researchers are planning to build a working version of the Analytical Engine, which Charles Babbage conceived of in the 1830s but never completed.

history computing

Do you love free apps available on Android market but don’t have a device with Android OS to use the free apps? Want to run your favourite Android OS apps on your XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 PC? Yes, it’s now possible to run Android apps on your PC.

android app computing

"hroma-Hash allows you to quickly compare the contents of two secure text fields. It’s common for a signup flow to ask you to type your password twice (to make sure you didn’t mistype it). With this visualization, a user can instantly check to see if what she typed was the same each time, without having to submit the form."

computing security

"The most simple password scheme, and the worst, is to have one password for every site. The best scheme, and hardest to manage, is unique, non-intelligible passwords that you might not even remember. Oplop splits the difference—you name a site, use a common password, and it encrypts new passwords you can then save securely."

computing security

School districts struggling to contain costs while keeping classrooms technologically current are looking to virtualization and cloud computing as means to achieve both of those ends. Two California schools, one private and one public, found thin and zero client solutions to work for them.

virtualization computing cloud_computing

Google Public DNS is a free, global Domain Name System (DNS) resolution service, that you can use as an alternative to your current DNS provider.

networking computing tech_tips

"The SBC6120 Model 2 is a conventional single board computer with the typical complement of EPROM, RAM, a RS232 serial port, an IDE disk interface, and an optional non-volatile RAM disk memory card. What makes it unique is that the CPU is the Harris HD-6120 PDP-8 on a chip. The 6120 is the second generation of single chip PDP-8 compatible microprocessors and was used in Digital's DECmate-I, II, III and III+ "personal" computers. The SBC6120 can run all standard DEC paper tape software, such as FOCAL-69, with no changes. Simply use the ROM firmware on the SBC6120 to download FOCAL69.BIN from a PC connected to the console port (or use a real ASR-33 and read the real FOCAL-69 paper tape, if you’re so inclined!), start at 2008, and you’re running."

computing history electronics kits

"IOB6120 Multifunction companion board for the Spare Time Gizmo's SBC6120"

computing history electronics kits

"Ersatz-11 emulates an entire PDP-11 system in software while running on low-cost PC hardware. It outperforms all of the hardware PDP-11 replacements on the market, outstripping them by a particularly wide margin in disk-intensive applications. Hardware PDP-11 replacements that use a Q-bus, Unibus, or ISA bus for I/O can't come close to Ersatz-11's disk performance because they are limited to the speed of the I/O bus for all disk transfers, regardless of actual disk (or disk cache) speed. Ersatz-11 avoids this bottleneck since it uses the PC's main memory and takes advantage of the tight disk-to-memory coupling in modern PCs. "

computing history

"This is one of those "we have the technology, so let's do it" projects, so if by the end of this description you're still wondering why anyone would want to do such a thing in the first place, then it's probably not for you. An acquaintance of mine, John Wilson, has written a very successful PDP-11 emulator, Ersatz-11, for PC hardware. One day we were talking and the topic came up of how sad it is that PCs don't have lights and switches front panels and thus it's impossible to make an emulator that really "looks" like an actual PDP-11. Well, I happened to have a KY11-D, which is the real, official, DEC front panel for the PDP-11/40, in the garage. Unfortunately I don't have the PDP-11/40 that goes with it, but that's another story! One thing led to another and eventually the discussion turned to ways the KY11 could be interfaced to a PC."

computing history electronics kits

"The term “minicomputer” was not coined to mean miniature, it was originally meant to mean minimal, which is a term that, more than anything else, accurately describes the PDP-8."

computing history

"Ever since Mark Gasson got a virus, his cell phone won't work, and he can't unlock the door to his building on campus. But those are the kind of symptoms humans can expect when they get infected with computer viruses. Mr. Gasson, a research fellow at the University of Reading, in England, has a radio-frequency identification chip implanted in his hand. It's the kind of computer chip that is sometimes used to track animals, but Mr. Gasson uses it to activate his cellphone and unlock doors. He also uses it for research that explores the potential risks of implanted devices, which he expects will become more common in humans. When he infects the chip with a virus, he can then transmit that virus to another computer. Mr. Gasson stresses that the virus in his chip is spreading from implanted technology to a computer, not from a human being to a computer. Still, he says we should consider how computer viruses could potentially affect people's bodies."

cybersecurity computing

In mathematics, computer science, and related subjects, an algorithm is an effective method for solving a problem expressed as a finite sequence of instructions. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and many other fields. (In more advanced or abstract settings, the instructions do not necessarily constitute a finite sequence, and even not necessarily a sequence; see, e.g., "nondeterministic algorithm".) Each algorithm is a list of well-defined instructions for completing a task. Starting from an initial state, the instructions describe a computation that proceeds through a well-defined series of successive states, eventually terminating in a final ending state. The transition from one state to the next is not necessarily deterministic; some algorithms, known as randomized algorithms, incorporate randomness.

algorithm computing