Tag Archives: computers

Scientific Discovery from the Brilliant to the Bizarre – Len Fisher

by Myrna Posted on June 27, 2018

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Scientific Discovery from the Brilliant to the Bizarre
The Doctor Who Weighed the Soul, and Other True Tales
Len Fisher

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: April 4, 2013

Publisher: Arcade Publishing

Seller: Perseus Books, LLC


Winner of the IgNobel Prize in physics and the 2004 American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award, Len Fisher showed just how much fun science can be in his enthusiastically praised debut, How to Dunk a Doughnut . In this new work, he reveals that science sometimes takes a path through the ridiculous and the bizarre to discover that Nature often simply does not follow common sense.    One experiment, involving a bed, platform scales, and a dying man, seemed to prove that the soul weighed the same as a slice of bread. But other, no less fanciful experiments and ideas led to the fundamentals of our understanding of movement, heat, light, and energy, and such things as the discovery of electricity, and the structure of DNA; improved engines; and the invention of computers. As in his previous book, Fisher uses personal stories and examples from everyday life, as well as humor, to make the science accessible. He touches on topics from lightning to corsets and from alchemy to Frankenstein and water babies, but he may not claim the last word on the weight of the soul!

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Scientific Discovery from the Brilliant to the Bizarre – Len Fisher

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The Perfect Green Grad Gift: A Refurbished Laptop

by HaleyJ22hfomjh Posted on May 7, 2018

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The fateful day finally arrived. My trusty computer bit the dust.

As a college student with limited funds, I didn’t really have the option to buy a brand-new computer. I needed a computer powerful enough to run photo and video editing software that wouldn’t completely deplete my bank account.

My only real alternative was to buy refurbished. So that’s what I did. Since then, I’ve been a big advocate of buying refurbished computers. In fact, I’m typing this on a refurbished one that has served me well for more than three years.

If you’re looking to give your grad a computer as a gift, a refurbished one is a great choice.

3 Tips on Picking Out a Refurbished Computer

Having purchased a couple of refurbished computers, I can offer a few tips to make the process a little easier.

1. New vs. Refurbished vs. Used

A new computer is just that, brand new, never been used. Though the two are commonly confused, a refurbished computer is not the same thing as a used computer.

A used computer is typically one that someone else owned and is selling directly to you. There is no warranty or certification. The computer comes as is.

A refurbished computer falls somewhere in between new and used. It commonly originates from one of the following categories:

Demonstration models
Slightly damaged computers
Returned computers that weren’t used
Overstock/unsold models that are being replaced

Computers that have been lightly used are wiped and tested to ensure complete working condition before they are sold as refurbished models.

Computers that get damaged in shipping or have any cosmetic issues are often returned to the manufacturer, then repaired, tested and sold as refurbished models.

When purchased from a reputable dealer or the original manufacturer, refurbished computers are usually certified and must pass strict testing. They also often come with a warranty. Refurbished computers are sold at a discount compared with new computers.

2. Buying from the Manufacturer vs. a Third Party

There can be some benefits to buying a refurbished computer directly from the manufacturer. Their refurbished computers are required to pass strict testing to ensure they are in complete working order. In some instances, the testing is more stringent than what a new computer must pass.

Refurbished computers purchased from the manufacturer nearly always come with a warranty. Also, the manufacturer’s technicians work on the same computer models every day. They know which issues are most common and are probably quite proficient at making all the repairs quickly and without mistake.

Third-party refurbishers and sellers can also be a great source for a refurbished computer. These are companies that buy lightly used or slightly damaged computers and get them back into working order. They typically have their own certification process and require their computers to pass testing to ensure they work as well as new computers. They also often provide a short-term warranty.

I’ve had good experience purchasing refurbished computers from the manufacturer and from third-party sellers. What it really comes down to for me is who has the computer I’m looking for in stock.

3. How Will Your Grad Use the Computer?

Before you purchase a refurbished computer for your grad, you may want to pause and consider how he or she will use the computer.

If it will be used mainly to write papers, browse the internet and send email, then you don’t need a computer with a lot of power. In this case, I think a refurbished computer is perfect.

Typically, refurbished computers aren’t the latest model. Often they are a model or two behind what’s currently on shelves, so they won’t have the latest graphics card or most powerful CPU.

However, if your grad is going into graphic design, film or engineering, look for a machine with a bit more power. This doesn’t mean you can’t purchase a refurbished computer — you just need to do more research and be more selective to ensure the computer will meet their needs.

When you’re on a budget, a refurbished computer is a great way to go. I highly recommend purchasing refurbished over new.

Of course, if you’re getting a refurbished computer to replace an old model, make sure you recycle or donate your old computer.

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The Perfect Green Grad Gift: A Refurbished Laptop

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Friday Cat Blogging – 18 November 2016

by DixieHarden Posted on November 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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Guess who’s getting a Presidential Medal of Freedom? Hopper! Well, Hopper’s namesake anyway, Adm. Grace Hopper:

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, known as “Amazing Grace” and “the first lady of software,” was at the forefront of computers and programming development from the 1940s through the 1980s. Hopper’s work helped make coding languages more practical and accessible, and she created the first compiler, which translates source code from one language into another.1

It’s a posthumous award, but Adm. Hopper is now right up there with Vin Scully and Newton “Television Is A Vast Wasteland” Minow. Naturally, this means that the furry version of Hopper is the star of this week’s catblogging. She is trying her best to look visionary.

1Meh. I guess that’s close enough. No need to get pedantic here.

Link – 

Friday Cat Blogging – 18 November 2016

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The Supreme Court Just Made Government Hacking Much Easier

by KimberEldershaw Posted on April 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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A Supreme Court ruling issued Thursday could make it much easier for the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies to hack computers across the country, angering privacy advocates and drawing a rebuke from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

The court approved a change to Rule 41 of the federal rules of criminal procedure, which outlines how federal criminal cases are run. The current version of the rule says search warrants are only valid in the relatively small judicial districts where they were issued. Under the new rule, magistrate judges would be able to issue warrants that apply to computers throughout the country, allowing law enforcement officers to hack and infect them remotely. The change still has to be approved by Congress, which has until December 1 to reject or alter the rule change before it automatically takes effect.

The government says the change is necessary to keep up with wide-ranging computer networks and criminals who use tools to hide their physical locations online. Courts in Oklahoma and Massachusetts threw out evidence this month in two child pornography cases stemming from the government’s takeover of a dark-web site called Playpen, which it used to insert tracking tools into the computers of people accessing child porn. Because the order allowing the takeover was issued by a judge in Virginia, the judges in the two cases said, the evidence from the investigation could not be used elsewhere.

But privacy advocates say the rule change is an attempt by the government to expand its hacking powers without public debate. “Instead of directly asking Congress for authorization to break into computers, the Justice Department is now trying to quietly circumvent the legislative process by pushing for a change in court rules, pretending that its government hacking proposal is a mere procedural formality rather than the massive change to the law that it really is,” said Kevin Bankston, the director of the Open Technology Institute at the liberal-leaning New America Foundation, in a statement.

Sen. Ron Wyden also attacked the rule change as overly broad. “Under the proposed rules, the government would now be able to obtain a single warrant to access and search thousands or millions of computers at once; and the vast majority of the affected computers would belong to the victims, not the perpetrators, of a cybercrime,” he said in a press release. Wyden has promised to introduce a bill that would reverse the Supreme Court’s ruling.

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The Supreme Court Just Made Government Hacking Much Easier

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Your Job Is Safe From the Computers — For Now

by HamishFurlong Posted on September 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee try to calm our fears about robots taking all our jobs. Sure, some jobs will disappear, they say, but others will be created:

For example, machines are currently dominating the jobs in routine information processing. “Computer,” after all, used to be an actual job title of a person who sat and added long rows of numbers. Now it is, well, an actual computer.

On the other hand, jobs such as data scientist didn’t used to exist, but because computers have made enormous data sets analyzable, we now have new jobs for people to interpret these huge pools of information. In the tumult of our economy, even as old tasks get automated away, along with demand for their corresponding skills, the economy continues to create new jobs and industries.

This may not be quite as reassuring as they intended. I figure that “routine information processing” probably still accounts for tens of millions of jobs. “Data scientist,” on the other other hand, requires an advanced education and probably accounts for tens of thousands of jobs at best. This trade is going to leave a whole lot of people unemployed.

More generally, though, I’m surprised at the amount of attention given to the question of whether automation is taking away jobs right now. The bulk of the evidence suggests that it’s not—or, if it is, it’s happening at a very slow rate. But this is an uninteresting question since there’s really very little controversy about it. Artificial intelligence doesn’t exist yet, so of course it’s not taking away any jobs. The question that matters is (a) whether AI will eventually exist, and (b) how many jobs will be left for humans if and when it arrives.

Brynjolfsson and McAfee, for example, say that there are three areas where “humans have a distinct advantage over machines”: creative endeavors, social interactions, and physical dexterity. True enough. But there’s no reason to think this will last long. The vast bulk of humanity isn’t very creative; most of us are surprisingly willing to put up with obviously artificial congeniality; and physical dexterity in robots is already within shouting distance of being good enough for machines to start digging post holes. If we ever create true AI—or even something close—none of these three things will give humans any advantage over digital intelligence. Most likely, homo sapiens will be obsolete within a few decades.

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Your Job Is Safe From the Computers — For Now

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Gamers guzzle a crazy amount of energy

by PrinceKilfoyle8 Posted on September 1, 2015

Gamers guzzle a crazy amount of energy

By on 1 Sep 2015commentsShare

The average gaming computer guzzles as much energy as three refrigerators — three refrigerators! And since gaming isn’t complete without snacks, we should probably make that four.

That’s because gaming computers are to your average PC what this tricked out monstrosity is to your mom’s Acura. Hardcore gamers enhance their machines with amped-up processors, fancy computer monitors, and fast graphics cards, so battling virtual monsters can end up requiring a lot of computing power. Here’s more from Motherboard:

A new study published in the journal Energy Efficiency finds that worldwide, gaming computers suck down $10 billion worth of electricity (or 75 terawatt hours) a year. Given that sales rates are projected to double by 2020, that figure is expected to do the same. The study finds that while gaming computers comprise just 2.5 percent of personal computers worldwide, they account for 20 percent of global computer energy use.

Evan Mills, a UC Berkeley energy researcher and the study’s co-author, calculates that “a typical gaming computer uses 1,400 kilowatt-hours per year, or six times more energy than a typical PC and 10 times more than a gaming console.”

Worldwide, “it’s like 25 standard electric power plants,” Mills tells me in an email. Imagine that: 25 massive power plants, the kind that power entire cities, running their electricity directly to people playing Counter-Strike and League of Legend. “It’s also like 160 million refrigerators, globally. Or, 7 billion LED light bulbs running 3 hours per day.”

Fortunately, gamers can cut down their energy consumption by as much as 75 percent by just “switching some settings and replacing a few components,” Motherboard reports. For more information, interested gamers can check out Greening the Beast, a website that Mills runs with his son, Nathaniel.

So the next time you’re trying to destroy your opponents’ nexus in League of Legends, think about all those emissions that you’re responsible for and consider making a few changes. And if you want to be really popular among your virtual teammates, tell them to follow suit. (Grist is not responsible for any virtual harm done to your avatar for telling others to green their beasts.)

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Gaming Computers Use a Truly Astonishing Amount of Energy

, Motherboard.

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The Senate-CIA Blowup Threatens a Constitutional Crisis

by KristinaRosenba Posted on March 11, 2014

Mother Jones

This morning, on C-SPAN, the foundation of the national security state exploded.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, took to the Senate floor and accused the CIA of spying on committee investigators tasked with probing the agency’s past use of harsh interrogation techniques (a.k.a. torture) and detention. Feinstein was responding to recent media stories reporting that the CIA had accessed computers used by intelligence committee staffers working on the committee’s investigation. The computers were set up by the CIA in a locked room in a secure facility separate from its headquarters, and CIA documents relevant to the inquiry were placed on these computers for the Senate investigators. But, it turns out, the Senate sleuths had also uncovered an internal CIA memo reviewing the interrogation program that had not been turned over by the agency. This document was far more critical of the interrogation program than the CIA’s official rebuttal to a still-classified, 6,300-page Senate intelligence committee report that slams it, and the CIA wanted to find out how the Senate investigators had gotten their mitts on this damaging memo.

The CIA’s infiltration of the Senate’s torture probe was a possible constitutional violation and perhaps a criminal one, too. The agency’s inspector general and the Justice Department have begun inquiries. And as the story recently broke, CIA sources—no names, please—told reporters that the real issue was whether the Senate investigators had hacked the CIA to obtain the internal review. Readers of the few newspaper stories on all this did not have to peer too far between the lines to discern a classic Washington battle was under way between Langley and Capitol Hill.

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The Senate-CIA Blowup Threatens a Constitutional Crisis

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CIA Lashes Out at Senate Staffers it Says Mishandled Classified Info

by HollieHazon Posted on March 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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McClatchy has an update to yesterday’s story about the CIA monitoring Senate staffers who were investigating the CIA’s detention and torture practices. Apparently, long after their report was complete and the CIA had already responded, the Senate staffers were trawling through a CIA database and ran across an internal review ordered by former CIA Director Leon Panetta of previously released materials. The staffers concluded that the Panetta review confirmed their findings, even though the official CIA response had strongly disputed them:

The aides printed the material, walked out of CIA headquarters with it and took it to Capitol Hill, said the knowledgeable person.

….The CIA discovered the security breach and brought it to the committee’s attention in January, leading to a determination that the agency recorded the staffers’ use of the computers in the high-security research room, and then confirmed the breach by reviewing the usage data, said the knowledgeable person.

Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., a member of the Intelligence Committee who has led calls for the release of the report, disclosed at a hearing in December the existence of the Panetta review without saying how the committee had learned of it. He contended that the review broadly corroborated the committee’s findings and questioned why it was dramatically different from the CIA’s official response.

Roughly speaking, Senate staffers say their actions were justified because they had evidence the CIA was lying to them. The CIA says its actions were justified because Senate staffers were removing top secret materials that weren’t supposed to leave the secure room they were working in.

In the meantime, the 6,300-page report itself is still in limbo, with the CIA fighting tooth and nail to prevent it from being released. But maybe it’s time for the report and the internal review and the CIA response and everything else to be published so the American public can decide for itself what it thinks of all this? We’re the ones paying the bills, after all.

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CIA Lashes Out at Senate Staffers it Says Mishandled Classified Info

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Is Ezra Klein the Next Roger Ailes?

by Shelby Morris Posted on January 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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Andrew Sullivan today:

I have to say it’s been amazing to see Washington get almost giddy about the Ezra Klein story. Well, maybe only Washington journalists … but, still….All the stories about these ventures rightly take a wait-and-see approach as to whether we are witnessing a realignment in which those old big media companies accelerate their decline by being unable to accommodate their new media stars … or whether these new ventures will eventually founder in a grim business climate for journalism. These new models may be evanescent or central to the future. We just don’t know yet.

This is true: we don’t know yet. At the same time, no one should feel like this is something new and unprecedented. It’s the same thing that’s been happening to popular media for over a century. When radio was invented, it attracted young entrepreneurs like William Paley (using family money) and Richard Sarnoff (working his way up the ranks at RCA). The burgeoning market for middle-class reading material attracted young entrepreneurs like Henry Luce (magazines), William Randolph Hearst (newspapers), and Simon & Schuster (books). The film industry attracted young entrepreneurs like Walt Disney and Howard Hughes. Cheap four-color printing prompted Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson to start up the company that would later become DC Comics. Car culture produced car magazines. Computers produced computer magazines. Gaming produced gaming magazines. The rise of cable TV brought us CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. When politics collided with the rise of the internet, we got websites like Drudge Report, Talking Points Memo, the Huffington Post, and Politico.

Will Ezra Klein’s new venture succeed? Who knows. But I think it’s safe to say that some of these ventures will succeed, and they will indeed produce a realignment in the political media universe. They already have, after all: Fox News and Politico are probably more influential already than the entire old-guard newspaper industry combined.

Young (and some not-so-young) entrepreneurs have been reshaping popular media forever. It’s no surprise that this is continuing. What else would you expect, after all?

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Is Ezra Klein the Next Roger Ailes?

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Baby Boomers vs. Millennials: How Internet-Obsessed Are You? (Infographic)

by Aaron Duff Posted on July 30, 2013

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Baby Boomers vs. Millennials: How Internet-Obsessed Are You? (Infographic)

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