Computers

WSJ: Google Has Developed a Touchscreen Device Which Uses Chrome OS

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google has developed a touchscreen laptop which runs its Chrome operating system—and suggests they’ll go on sale later this year. The Journal’s sources, however, are short on extra detail: there’s no word on which hardware manufacturers are working on the devices, nor exactly when it will go on…

What the World Would Look Like If Computers Were Human and Humans Were Computers

Can you imagine what the world would look like if humans were actually Apple computers and Apple computers were actually human? As in, computers are the ones getting excited for a new Human release (like how we clamor for new iPhones, etc.) It’s kind of Planet of the Apes-ish except instead of apes it’s just…

Scientists Claim They’ve Built a Computer That Never Crashes

A crashing computer is at best annoying and at worst catastrophic. But now a team of scientists has developed a new type of computer that never crashes—and it relies on chaos and randomness to achieve the feat. New Scientist reports that the new “systemic” computer, designed and built at University College London, is fundamentally different…

Build the Best PC For Your Buck

We all know that, generally speaking, buying the newest top-end part gets you the most performance. But in most cases, the premium you pay for that part covers a whole lot of other stuff as well that has no bearing on frame rates or video encoding times. We’re talking about the added cost of covering…

10 Worst Tech Rip-Offs (And How To Avoid Them)

Whether it’s a phone carrier charging you for services you don’t need or a cashier pushing pricey protection plans for your tablet, the tech-world is filled with Mobile Madoffs trying to con you out of your hard-earned cash. Fortunately, you don’t have to be the victim of information superhighway robbery. These are the 10 worst…

I can’t stop obsessing over this weird movie about computer chess

When I first watched this teaser trailer, I thought Computer Chess was a documentary put together from actual footage of the programmers who invented a computer that would eventually beat a human grandmaster at chess. But it’s actually something far more beautiful and strange. Computer Chess, which just debuted at Sundance, is a fictional story…

An Art Deco PC Case: Brilliant or Repellant?

Here’s one piece of technological design that’s bound to divide opinoon. Jeffrey Stephenson’s Project Ayr is a fanless home theater PC encased in an art-deco style Mahogany shell. But would you let it inside your home? Inside the wooden case—which itself houses an aluminum frame—there’s an Intel Core i3-3225 processor, 8GB RAM, an Intel Cherryville…

You’ll Wish Your PC Was Half As Stylish As This Fanless Mahogany Beauty

Talk about the post-PC area all you like, but some good old-fashion stationary PCs can be pretty damn cool in their own right. This slick, fanless HTPC put together by Jeffrey Stephenson is a perfect example. Starting with a mahogany shell was a good start, but that’s far from the box’s only virtue. It’s also…

Per Quartz, HP’s board is considering maybe possibly breaking the company up. Will nobody think of the printers?!

HP’s First Chromebook: Big Screen, Little Else

HP has announced its first Chromebook, and it’s notable for the fact that its screen is much larger than models from the likes of Samsung, Acer, and Lenovo. Sadly, there’s not an awful lot else to set it apart. Unlike most Chromebooks, that pack a screen somewhere between 11 and 12 inches, HP’s Pavilion 14…

Why the User Interface in Hackers Hasn’t Aged That Badly

A lot of the stuff about the movie Hackers looks really dated now, especially some of the fashions and the way it depicts hacking. But the user interface still looks pretty good, compared to a lot of other stuff from the era. Paul Franklin, the Academy Award-winning special effects designer who’s worked on all Christopher…

An anthropologist explains how hackers are changing the definition of freedom

Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking, by E. Gabriella Coleman, dives into the ocean of software hacking: its culture, personalities, and craft. But it’s also a legal history of hacking (modifying code) and cracking (illegally modifying code). Working an anthropologist, she haunted cons, chat rooms, and dug into the Linux kernel to unearth…

This Orange Guitar Amp Is More Powerful Than Your Computer

This Orange amp, called the OPC, isn’t like other guitar amps. Instead of being little more than a jumped-up loudspeaker, this thing packs more computational grunt than your main computer. Actually, it’s an update of Orange’s first attempt to make a guitar-focussed computer—but boy is it updated. Tucked away within its iconic orange casing, you’ll…

Intel to Stop Making Desktop Motherboards

It’s the end of an era: Intel has announced that, over the next three years, it will wind down production of desktop motherboards to zero. The company will continue to supply chipsets for use by third party motherboard manufacturers—the likes of ASUS, ASRock and Gigabyte—but after 2013 it won’t make more motherboards itself, reports Anandtech.…

I can’t stop watching these private feeds from insecure webcams

Over a year ago, computer security experts revealed that a popular webcam manufactured by TRENDnet wasn’t exactly secure. Because these cams are controlled via the web, it’s relatively easy to track down their IP addresses and peek through them. Though TRENDnet released a patch that was supposed to fix the problem, many consumers didn’t download…

Intel Launches Budget Ivy Bridge Processors

Now that Intel has its efficient and expensive Ivy Bridge microarchitecture in tablets and computers everywhere, it’s decided to launch a budget-friendly line of processors which use the same 22nm manufacturing process. CPU World reports that Intel is launching three Celeron CPUs, four Pentiums and a new Core i3 processor, which should theoretically be available…

Under the Hood of Facebook’s Graph Search

Facebook’s new Graph Search is an ambitious project, and brings with it the need for some serious computational grunt. Here’s how Facebook is taking on that challenge. https://gizmodo.com/what-is-facebook-graph-search-5976186 Slashdot has a great in-depth article about Facebook’ solution, called the Disaggregated Rack. Though it may sound like an elaborate torture device, it’s actually a clever solution…

For the weekend: Isaac Asimov’s Visions of the Future is available free online in its entirety

Two years before his death, legendary science and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov kicked off a TV pilot dedicated to exploring the faint and ever-shifting boundary separating science from science fiction. By highlighting advances in science and technology, Asimov sought to prepare viewers for the world of tomorrow by providing them with glimpses of what…

Intel Perceptual Computing Hands-On: I Got Subtracted From the World By the Future of Kinect

Intel’s Perceptual Computing SDK is so smart that it can pick you out from the world around you and put you on any background as if the whole world was a green screen. Think Kinect only way way smarter. I tried out a few different applications built for Intel’s Perceptual Computing Beta. The input source…

Asus Transformer All-in-One Desktop Hands On: Android And Windows 8 on Your Giant Removable Tablet

We’ve known about the Asus Transformer AIO since back at Computex, but the mutant hybrid wasn’t in working order until now. The verdict? …Kind of cool, actually. Here’s the Transformer’s story: It’s an 18.5-inch IPS-display all-in-one computer that runs both Windows 8 (with a Core i3 to i7 processor), as well as Android, with a…