Tech

Microsoft has officially released Windows 11, not that you probably have it on your system yet. Unlike past years, Microsoft isn’t giving everyone the option of installing Windows 11 right away, but anyone buying prebuilt from this point forward is likely to encounter it. If you’re going to use that PC for games, Windows 11 might get in your way due to some of its new security features. The impact isn’t huge, but testing from Tom’s Hardware shows it is noticeable. Windows 11 supports several new security features, one of which is known as Virtualization-Based Security (VBS). When enabled, VBS uses virtualization to create a secure area in memory that can be used to run other security features like Trusted Platform Modules (TPM) and Hypervisor-Protected Code Integrity (HVCI, sometimes called Memory Integrity).

It’s currently Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and odds are you weren’t aware of that. Google has a up to highlight all the things it’s doing to make your account safer. One of Google’s initiatives is to get more people using two-factor authentication, or two-step verification (2SV) as Google calls it. After previously expressing its intention to transition all accounts to 2SV, Google says it’s going to start doing that in earnest later this year. That could mean 150 million new accounts will be protected with 2SV. As says, having a second form of authentication for logins dramatically decreases the chance that an attacker could gain access.

Knowing how to protect yourself online should really be second nature in today’s technology landscape. It’s not difficult to fall into traps on the internet that can expose your personal information such as your identification, location, passwords, browsing history, and more. The best way to prevent such a breach is to actively protect yourself while you’re connected to the internet. One of the simplest and most effective ways to do so is by setting up a virtual private network (VPN), which can easily shield you from many of the harmful interests on the internet. Right now, you can get for the reduced price of $69.99, a significant discount of 73 percent off the full ordinary purchase price of $263.

Updated (10/4/2021): Facebook and other services were back online by roughly 5:30 PM EST. The roughly six-hour outage is the worst to hit the company since 2019. The root cause is not yet known. Original story below: At 11:39 AM EST this morning, someone at Facebook updated the company’s BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) records and knocked Facebook, Instagram, Oculus, and WhatsApp offline in the process. As of this writing, all three services remain offline. BGP is the protocol large organizations like ISPs use for sharing information on traffic routing. If a user in Germany wants to access information on an Australian server, that data request is going to move through multiple large networks.

The science of mental health is still in its infancy, given that lobotomy was seen as a viable treatment for many psychological diseases just a few decades ago. We don’t even know why some psychiatric medications work. As our understanding of the brain’s internal processes, it may become possible to treat disorders not with medication but with direct stimulation of the brain. One patient, the subject of a newly published study on the treatment of depression, can attest to that. The patient, known as Sarah, says her depression was alleviated . Direct Brain Stimulation (DBS) has found use in the treatment of Parkinson’s and certain seizure disorders.

Chrome is getting more bells and whistles. They’re great for behavioral targeting and terrible for privacy — but what else is new? Gentle reader, be warned. I’m a curmudgeon about this. The features in question are two search adjuncts, both on early rollout in the developer-focused Chrome Canary browser. One is an as-yet-unnamed experimental search tool that pops up in a side panel of the browser. The other is an organizational add-on to regular search functions, named Journeys. The side panel search tool is great for users who work in one tab, or those who tend to open 173 tabs across 5 different browser windows.

Apple’s recent new ranges of iPhones come equipped with innovative magnetic charging technology. MagSafe accessories can make life a lot easier for iPhone users. Here are 15 accessories that use MagSafe technology that are all now an extra 15 percent off. This convenient cable and wall adapter efficiently charges your compatible iPhone. Its magnets lock it steady, and its 20W power ensure fast charging. Slide this silicone cover onto your MagSafe charger to prevent it being damaged or scratched by dust or dirt particles. It’ll also protect your iPhone or phone case.

Star Trek: The Original Series can be a polarizing thing within the original fandom. It’s like magnetic poles, where you always get one with the other. TOS is rightly the butt of many jokes. Even diehard fans can roast the heck out of it, and for good reasons. But there’s also a good reason that there are so many fans to do the roasting. It is easy to fall in love with the characters, the ship, and the entire premise of exploring deep space with your friends. That makes it exciting to relay the following news: William Shatner, our timeline’s living version of Captain Kirk, is going to get into a rocket and fly into space.

Here at ET we occasionally delve into topics for no particular reason beyond curiosity. In this case, that’s lasers. At the consumer level, we’re surrounded by products that rely on lasers — optical media, barcode scanners, fiber optics, and printers are all common — but for this article, we decided to scale up a bit. There are a couple contenders for the world’s biggest laser, and they’re all involved in some really cool science. Honorable Mention: Large Hadron Collider The Large Hadron Collider isn’t technically a laser, but it’s very much the physically largest particle beam — and I’m including it here because not only is it an intangible high-energy beam, there is some (literally!) very cool laser science happening at the LHC facility.