The Engineering of the Drinking Bird

Operating In Obscurity

It ain’t just about Windows, macOS, or Linux. Also-ran or fairly obscure operating systems, like OS/2, are everywhere—in some cases, hiding under your nose.

The Scrolling Orb

The evolution of the trackball, which is more than an upside-down mouse. It’s the Royal Canadian Navy’s greatest gift to modern-day computing. Really.

Encoded, Decoded

How Usenet—a protocol intended for conversations—was forever changed once the public figured out you could transfer binary files through it.

Welcome to the Voice Wars

This week, Google moved to block users of Amazon’s Fire TV and Echo Show devices from watching YouTube. That might sound like a minor skirmish between a pair of tech companies jostling for position in outlying territories. But it could also be the start of something much bigger: a struggle for dominance of a far less open internet in which no one—consumers least of all—wins.

Compression Decompressedor, Making Things Smaller: A Visual Introduction

Compression is everywhere. It's used to more efficiently store data on hard drives, send TV signals, transmit web pages like this one, stream Netflix videos, package up video games for distribution, the list is endless. Almost no significant area of modern computing exists that doesn't make use of compression technologies.

So what is it?

Whether you've been using desktop compression software for years, or never thought about it at all, this article will try to explain a little of what goes on under the hood when you squash a file or stream a video. We'll look into the answers to the big questions, and probably raise more new ones along the way.

What does it mean to compress something?

How can you make something smaller than it already is?

How do you practically go about doing that?

Let's get to work!

Computer printers have been quietly embedding tracking codes in documents for decades

In 2004, when color printers were still somewhat novel, PCWorld magazine published an article headlined: “Government Uses Color Laser Printer Technology to Track Documents.”

It was one of the first news reports on a quiet practice that had been going on for 20 years. It revealed that color printers embed in printed documents coded patterns that contain the printer’s serial number, and the date and time the documents were printed. The patterns are made up of dots, less than a millimeter in diameter and a shade of yellow that, when placed on a white background, cannot be detected by the naked eye.

Introducing Microsoft Surface Studio

The best emulators for old-school gaming

As the battle for superiority between console gamers and PC gamers continues, the world of emulators serves as bridge between communities. These software superheroes renounce the need for collecting lots of expensive hardware—unless you’ve built yourself a killer battlestation. With the help of emulators, players can enjoy playing a variety of different consoles from the comfort of their computer screens.

What Windows 10's "Privacy Nightmare" Settings Actually Do

Windows 10 has some handy new features, but if you believe the rest of the internet, it also comes with features that eviscerate any semblance of privacy. But that view is a little overblown. Let’s take a closer look at what each of these settings actually do—and which ones are actually a privacy problem.

Windows 10 has a reputation for “phoning home” more often than its predecessors, and while that’s primarily true, much of this was already present in Windows 8—and an awful lot of it is present in other products like Android, iOS, and Chrome. That’s not to say all of those settings are good, just that there’s very little new happening here.

You can read the privacy statement for Windows 10 here. It’s not quite as sweeping as the Windows Insider Preview policy that caused so much commotion, but it’s still very broad (as most privacy policies are).

Plenty of sites have published lists of all the features you should turn off in Windows 10 to protect your privacy, but many don’t explain in detail what each of these settings do, which makes it hard to separate FUD from fact. So let’s go through those settings and explain what we know about them, where the real problems are, and how to turn everything off.

The New Alienware Area 51

Top 100 Greatest N64 Songs of All Time!

15 Inaccuracies Found In Common Science Illustrations

VPNs: What They Do, How They Work, and Why You’re Dumb for Not Using One

For as ubiquitous as connectivity has become and how reliant we've grown on it, the Internet is still a digital jungle where hackers easily steal sensitive information from the ill-equipped and where the iron-fisted tactics of totalitarian regimes bent on controlling what their subjects can access are common. So instead of mucking around in public networks, just avoid them. Use a VPN instead.

The Complete Guide to Turning Your Video Game Console Into a Living Room Media Center

Your video game console is great for playing games, but you might not realize it's also one of the best media centers around. Here's how to set up all of the modern consoles so you can stream videos and music to them right from your computer.

The PS3 and the Xbox 360 both have media center capabilities built right in, so they're easy to set up. The Wii (and Wii U) don't have as much built-in, but have workarounds that can turn them into media boxes as well. In this post, we'll break down how to set up each console, as well as the best practices for getting the best quality out of your stream.

Five Best DVD Ripping Tools

If you want to take your movies with you on the road, or just want to clean up those physical discs but keep your films and TV shows on your HTPC, you'll need to rip them first.

DOE wants 5X battery power boost in 5 years

The U.S. Dept. of Energy has set a goal to develop battery and energy storage technologies that are five times more powerful and five times cheaper than today's within five years.

To accomplish this, U.S. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu is taking some lesson from U.S. history.

The DOE is creating a new Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, at a cost of $120 million over five years, that's intended to reproduce development environments that were successfully used by Bell Laboratories in the World War II Manhattan Project that produced an atomic bomb.

Two Analysts Just Went To Kansas City To Check Out Google Fiber—And They Were Blown Away

Two analysts from BTIG Research went to Kansas City to see what Google's new cable-company killer, Google Fiber, is like.

What's it like?

It's awesome.

Fun Facts about Words

We speak, hear, write, and type words all day long, so words can seem pretty boring and not much fun. However, there are some pretty interesting facts about common (and a few that are not so common) words.

The Five Best Home Wi-Fi Routers

Buying a wi-fi router these days is no easy task. Long gone are the days where one model rose above the rest: now there are routers with different features, some that focus on range, others that focus on speed, and still others with advanced features like NAS support and traffic shaping options.