The public version of the World Wide Web turned 30 recently. Back in 1989, Tim Berners-Lee proposed a global hypertext system called Mesh. The next year he added a hypertext GUI browser and editor and called the result the WorldWideWeb. Inside CERN, people loved it and by January 1993 the world had around 50 HTTP servers. By February, the first graphic browser appeared known as Mosaic and by April of that year, CERN decided the project belonged to humanity and the public domain version of the WWW was born. The rest and billions of web pages later, is history.
- Intel is about to bring out its Meteor Lake chip range. Chipzilla is also planning on making a name change to the range by removing the "i" designation. This will have two effects. One will be that people won't misidentify an Intel chip with a BMW car model any longer. The second is to remove brand recognition because we all grew up with the i3, i5, i7 and i9 chips. So, keep an eye out, no pun intended, for the Meteor Lake Ultra 5.
- It's the ultimate in Green thinking -- a wooden transistor. Scientists from Sweden's Linköping University and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology have built one. It's a few centimetres tall and shaped like a cross, made from three pieces of balsa wood. The cross piece is the transistor channel and the two pieces making up the stem make up the transistor gate. The balsa pieces were heated and then chemicals were used to remove lignin from the wood. This was then soaked in a conductive polymer. The result was something that could act as a double gate organic electrochemical transistor and a working on/off switch. Readers will know that I love a good invention story and this fits the bill. The likelihood that we will see wooden transistors in something commercially viable is zero. The alternative with silicon is just too plentiful to even consider going anywhere beyond novelty use for this idea.
- Theoretically, Moore's Law should have petered out years ago but chipmaker AMD has indicated that their new transistor technology will keep Moore's Law alive for the next six to eight years, but at a greater cost. The ability to double transistor density every 18-24 months has certainly become more difficult but innovative solutions have found ways around this and will apparently do so for a few more years yet.
- If you've been wondering, the chip and other component supply chain issues have not all been sorted out but should be a lot better by the end of the year. It is more likely that your supply chain will be hit by some kind of viral attack as hackers continue to ramp up their efforts to disrupt. According to the FBI, China has 50 hackers for every one of the FBI's cyber-focused agents. The agency is apparently investigating over 100 ransomware variants, each with one or more active victims. Iran and North Korea are still in the mix. This info came out recently as the FBI was asking for more money for its operations so consider the above with that context in mind.
- On the subject of China, it claims to have found evidence of water on Mars. Its Zhurong rover is currently shut down, probably due to dusty solar panels in the Martian winter but they have claimed to have seen residual evidence as part of its travels. The interest in such things is all working towards a manned presence on the Red Planet, something we all know Elon Musk is keen to do in the near future.
- Microsoft will no longer be making mice, webcams or keyboards under the Microsoft name. For those who are fans, don't worry too much as they will continue to do so under their newer Surface brand. The first Microsoft mouse came out in 1983 and was called the green-eyed mouse. Their first keyboard came out in 1994 in that curving shape some will remember, called the Natural Keyboard that allegedly helped with carpal tunnel syndrome.
- If you're interested in such things, Backblaze released its latest hard drive failure report. Out of their sample population of 17,155 units, the drives that failed did so after about two-and-a-half years. Hint, remember to do your backups. The most reliable drive size right now is 16TB, with 10TB being the worst. I have two of the latter. Seagate had the most problems, sigh, with WDC the least. If you want to know more you can find the details at backblaze.com.
- Some of us have yet to upgrade to Windows 11 and I'm reading Windows 12 will be out in 2024. At this point, it's all rumours but commentators are expecting a better user interface and better Android support. The rumours started after Microsoft claimed they wanted to release a new major version every three years.
- So here we are at the end of this week's article without once mentioning the biggest topic of the moment. You know the one, and yes, it was planned that way.
James Hein is an IT professional with over 30 years' standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com.
