In a world where making everything smaller and lighter is the trend, a half-tonne CPU is certainly an anomaly. The 42,300 transistors, 10,548 LED CPU machine was built by hand from regular components and can be seen at the Centre for Computing History in Haverhill, England. The builder is James Newman, who wanted to learn about transistors and then got busy. The result is a CPU that shows how it is working in real time by following the flashing LEDS. At 15m² it roughly equates to the old 33m² Intel 8086. OK not quite that powerful as it only has 256 bytes of ROM and RAM and runs at an estimated 20kHz. I'm putting this in for the people with way too much time on their hands category. You can find out more here megaprocessor.com/programming.html.
The world of malware is more predictable and just keeps on taking. According to Action Fraud, more than 4,000 people in the UK have been infected with ransomware with more than £4.5 million (205 million baht) paid out to the criminals so far. For every domain and server taken down another pops up somewhere else. Without a truly worldwide co-ordinated effort this is more like a game of whack-a-mole where the malware writers are always winning. According to the security firm Malwarebytes, around 40% of businesses experienced some form of a ransomware attack in the last year. Of these, 20% had to stop business altogether and a third lost revenue.
Oops I did it again. A recent Microsoft update for servers left all Azure RHEL instances hackable. By the time you read this, Microsoft will have patched the problem that affects Azure on Red Hat Linux installations. The patch broke the username, password authentication process allowing full admin access. Admittedly Microsoft is newer to the whole Linux platform than others and any suggestion that Redmond wanted Linux to look less secure is of course outrageous.
Smartphone users will probably be familiar with Siri, Cortana or Google Now. Each of these support voice dictation for free. So how does a business like the long-time Dragon company survive where their products cost hundreds of dollars? Testing the mobile alternatives exposes the problems with the technology at that level that is better suited to voice commands than tracking a full and complex spoken paragraph. The mobile versions, even after training, still generate lots of errors especially if industry specific words are used. Even without training a Dragon product like Professional Individual is more accurate right out of the box -- time in rework and corrections is money. Yes, for many a phrase is all they need to be recognised and for the most part the mobile alternatives can handle this. For more detailed work however there is still a place for products like those from Dragon, at least for a while yet.
Windows users have all seen it, even on your USB thumb drives, the System Volume Information folder. Actually, you will only see them if you happened to have Show Hidden Files and Folders option active but they are still there. For those using the NTFS file system, the file permission does not allow even administrators to access the folder. So what are they and why can't you open them? These folders hold system-level information like that used for generating System Restore points or folder search indexes and it doesn't want you or any program messing with this data. You have some control over how much space it takes up under System Protection for restoring and how indexing is done but don't try to delete them, under NFTS you can't and exFAT and FAT32 Windows will just recreate them. If they bother you then you can always hide hidden files and folders.
Money beats morals every time as Microsoft has demonstrated in China, where it censors its Chinese language digital assistant Xiaoice. Exactly what topics are censored Microsoft won't say but Tiananmen, nicknames for the Chinese President Xi Jingping and US President-elect Donald Trump have been shown to be blocked. The service is used by about 40 million Chinese and with another 700 million or so up for grabs Microsoft and others, like Facebook, seem happy to bow to the censorship requirements to get in the country. This is not new for Facebook which already censors material in Pakistan, Russia and even Germany where Chancellor Angela Merkel asked the social networking giant to stop negative commentary on immigration. The typical excuses given by those who would not be allowed to do this in their home countries, are business and following local laws to make a buck.
Live streaming on a plane -- the Europeans have tested it and they say it works. Inmarsat, Deutsche Telekom, Nokia and Thales have tested in-flight broadband across all 28 European Union nations. Using satellite and 300 LTE ground stations passengers use on-board Wi-Fi to connect, surf and download. This is a test service so prices have not yet been discussed.
James Hein is an IT professional of over 30 years' standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com.