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Tech NewsWelcome to the Living Room of the Future
You’ve no doubt dreamed about the living room of the future. Ever since the advent of the TV—or the radio—images of friends and families gathered around the home entertainment systems of tomorrow have been flying at you in fiction. Wall-spanning TVs, virtual reality goggles, computerized assistants that respond to your every whim—all totally fathomable yet … Continued
By Eric Limer -
Tech NewsSploidGuy builds digital computers using strings, weights, and a chessboard
Sploid reader Kimberly Nguyen has spotted this really neat video demonstrating how computer logic gates work using just strings and weights. “I’m an Electrical Engineering/Computer Engineering major and I’ve never seen anything like this before!” Me neither. It’s really clever. The essence of digital computing is the use of continuous physical states to represent a … Continued
By Jesus Diaz -
io9
10 Reasons an Artificial Intelligence Wouldn’t Turn Evil
We all know the story. The moment that computers with their lightning-quick processing power and interlinked systems gain sentience – it’s judgment day. But would that really happen? Here are some psychological reasons why digital super-intelligence isn’t going to be evil intelligence. 10. No Sunk Costs The two major franchises in which evil machines took … Continued
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Tech NewsWatch the IRS Defend Its Use of Computers in the 1960s
When the IRS began using computers in the early 60s, there was national outrage: how could a machine be trusted to look after our finances? This 10-minute video, fresh from the archives, was an attempt to convince people that everything would be OK. There was plenty of opinion to change, after all: some tax experts … Continued
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Tech News10,000 Falling Dominoes That Actually Work As a Simple Computer
YouTube is chock full of falling domino videos, but Numberphile’s Matt Parker may have trumped them all with a complicated 10,000 domino setup that just so happens to function as a very crude computer. How is such a thing even possible? This primer video explains the basics. Depending on how you choose to start the … Continued
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io9
Our National Security Is Threatened By Computers That Can’t Spell
A report published two weeks ago by the House Homeland Security Committee revealed that Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev could have been detained before the attack — if he had spelled his name differently. Tsarnaev had been on a terrorist watch list, but no action was taken when he returned to the United States from … Continued
By Mark Strauss -
Tech News
Make the Switch from Windows XP
As of Tuesday, the venerable Windows XP operating system is going kaput. Microsoft is pulling update support for the OS, leaving it vulnerable to rapidly mutating cyber threats. There’s precious little time to make sure your computer isn’t left to the wilds of the Internet. Here’s how to make the jump to the modern era … Continued
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Tech NewsSploid
Maybe living forever inside a computer is not such a good idea
Some people dream with the idea of their consciousness living inside a computer after they die. Free of any physical ties, they will forever to roam the world and eventually the cosmos, learning, seeing faraway stars through camera eyes, and playing Titanfall. As Poor Drawn Lines—one of my favorite internet cartoons—shows, it may not be … Continued
By Jesus Diaz -
Tech News
IBM Sponsored a Major Hollywood Movie About Computers in 1957
In the sixth chapter of his 2010 book The Computer Boys Take Over, Nathan L. Ensmer looks back at the 1957 movie Desk Set within the context of 1950s computing and the fear that one day we’d all be replaced by machines: What is less widely remembered about Desk Set is that it was sponsored … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech News
Razer’s Righteous New Blade Might Be the Best Windows Laptop Yet
The 2013 Razer Blade was fantastic. A finally great execution on a concept that’s been appealing as hell from the very start, a Windows gaming laptop with the premium feel of a MacBook. Now it’s back again, and yes, it is even better. Everything we loved about Blades past is still here: a stellar keyboard, … Continued
By Eric Limer -
io9Surveillance must become “too expensive” before we have privacy
NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden gave his longest speech since his revelations last year, in a conversation at the South by Soutwest Interactive conference in Austin today. One of his key refrains was that citizens need encryption technology to make it too expensive to do bulk spying. Above, you can see the full speech that Snowden … Continued
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Tech News
1940s Computer-Power
For International Women’s Day, flashback to the early days of NASA. Fundamental research in aerodynamics using wind tunnels and the very earliest push into supersonic flight are piling up stacks of data. All that data went through computers, the women who performed data transcription and reduction. Computers of the NACA Muroc Flight Test Unit. Standing … Continued
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Tech News
Where the Progress Bar Came From
We’ve all spent hours—maybe even days—of our lives cursing the slow crawl of the dreaded progress bar. But did you ever stop to think about how much worse it might be if the bar wasn’t there in the first place. Fortunately, thanks to one grad student’s genius idea back in the 80s, we’ll never have … Continued
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Tech NewsWhat Counts As a Computer These Days?
There was a time when computers were easy to spot: They filled rooms, blinked lights and whirred with fans. But these days, computers are becoming harder and harder to see. In fact, you’ve got at least one in your pocket right now. Computers have become far, far more embedded in our everyday lives than ever … Continued
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io9
A portrait of Steve Jobs made entirely out of e-waste
It seems fitting that the man whose company produced tons of e-waste should be immortalized in this way. San Francisco collage artist Jason Mecier built this incredible portrait of Apple founder Steve Jobs out of 20 pounds of discarded phones, memory sticks, boards, and more. Apple products like iPhones and iPods make up an enormous … Continued
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io9The Real Reason Why Techies Are the New Yuppies
Back in the 1980s, people talked about the 1 percent by referring to “young urban professionals,” or yuppies. The term was supposed to contrast with hippies, the youth culture of a previous generation. Today in cities like San Francisco, the idea of the yuppie has been grafted onto a new term: techie. San Francisco is … Continued
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Tech NewsHappy 30th Birthday Macintosh, the Controversial World-Changer
Today is a very special day for a very special computer. This is the computer that started it all, the device that changed everything, the very thing that kicked off the era of the personal computer. Happy 30th birthday, Macintosh. It’s been quite a trip. As the Mac puts its tumultuous twenties behind it, now … Continued
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io9
Hacked fridge sends out malicious emails in unprecedented cyber attack
You know how virtually everything these days is connected to the internet? And how tech companies don’t give a crap about security? Well, as a recent Internet of Things cyber attack has shown, our appliances are being made to turn against us. According to the security firm Proofpoint, a number of so-called smart appliances were … Continued
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io9
Read this if you want the internet to live
In a somewhat obscure legal ruling, a judge has declared that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission does not have the power to prevent network carriers like AT&T from regulating the content that goes over their wires. Here’s why this could mean the infopocalypse. Over at the New Yorker, law professor Tim Wu (author of The … Continued