Rob Williams
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
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One of the coolest aspects of Linux is its ability to support hardware long before other OSes - and even well before consumers can even get their hands on the hardware. Take USB 3.0, for example, which hit the kernel months before the first products hit the market, in September of 2009. And then there's the SSD command TRIM, which was first...
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A couple of weeks ago, rumor got out that Google had plans to open up its own retail stores, a la Apple or Microsoft, and for the most part, it seemed to make a ton of sense. After all, what better way to get your products in the faces of consumers than going straight to them? There's also the fact that Android is a hot product, and Google...
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When Canonical debuted its "Ubuntu Tablet OS" last week, company CEO Mark Shuttleworth helped show off its many features in a six-minute video. And what we saw at CES2013 first hand was impressive - an OS that tries to do things a bit different, and uses all four edges to make navigating the OS' different functions an...
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The folks at Pwnie Express make some of the coolest penetration-testing products on the planet. Its most-popular offering has been the "Pwn Plug", an inconspicuous mini-PC that plugs into a wall socket and looks little different than a large power adapter. Then there's the "Power Pwn", a product sharing a similar idea, but offers additional...
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Microsoft has just joined the small list of companies that have experienced a cyberattack this past month, made all the more interesting due to the fact that it's the same one that Apple and Facebook suffered. Compared to Facebook's informative post, Microsoft's could be considered minimal, with the bulk of...
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Intel's François Piednoël is no fan of the competition making claims about what his company can and can't do, so he's taken to YouTube to post a video to showcase what the company's upcoming Clover Trail+ SoC is capable of. A quote that helps lead into the video comes from ARM, which claims that "Intel...
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The researchers at Erlangen University in Germany would like to offer some advice: don't put that Android 4.0+ phone in the freezer. It's been discovered that even on a phone with PIN security and encryption, data can be retrieved from the device via a cold boot attack - that is, the process of turning on the...
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If the first thing to come to mind after hearing that a store with "Apple" in its name, or one which uses a logo with an apple in it, was forced to shut down, I think very few people would blame you if you thought it was caused by the Cupertino giant's hands. It's happened before, after all, and I'm sure it will...
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Offering compelling products is just half of the battle of getting them into the hands of consumers. The other half is having them being seen by consumers - something a little difficult when so many companies are vying for the same shelf-space at retail. It's no surprise, then, when a company decides to take things...
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The verdict might still be out on whether or not the masses dig the Modern UI of Windows 8, but that hasn't stopped some developers from putting major weight behind their efforts to support it. Take Mozilla, for example, which has no intention of not given its users the option. If there's one thing that sucks, it's...
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PunkBuster, the anti-cheating service implemented in hundreds of online games, is down. As of the time of writing, the official PunkBuster website is up and down, after having been completely down for the past couple of hours. On Twitter, there are numerous reports of gamers who've been unable to play online in the...
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As we reported on earlier, geek super hero Bill Gates took to Reddit's AMA section to tackle as many questions from users as possible in the span of just a single hour. In the end, he did quite well, answering a total of 35 questions tackling a wide-range of different subjects. One question that just has to be asked...
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If there's one thing that NVIDIA proved to us loud and clear during 2012, it's that it loves free-to-play PC gaming. But who could blame them? When the idea of F2P first hit the market, most of the games felt free - but not in a good way. But today, many F2P offerings are just as meaty as those you might pay $50 for...
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Stretch those network pipes, because on Tuesday, a big workout is coming. That's when Microsoft's monthly "Patch Tuesday" hits, and this is one particular roll-out where the word "mammoth" definitely fits. In total, there are 57 flaws to be patched, 12 of which are either considered to be "Critical" or "Important". On...
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We posted last week about a severe bug plaguing select Samsung notebooks where simply installing Linux could result in a non-functional machine, and since then, kernel developers rolled-out an update that helped side-step the issue. While things seemed fine and good since then, it turns out that the situation is even worse than originally...
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Can something that's just taken a couple of months to arrive still be considered "long-awaited"? If so, the official Linux UEFI pre-bootloader fits the bill, as it's something that's been needed ever since the introduction of the Microsoft-pushed Secure Boot mechanism on UEFI-equipped PCs. We've talked about this pre-bootloader a couple of...
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Although Samsung sells more smartphones than Apple, its app store doesn't hold a candle to what the Cupertino company has built. The same can be true for all other smartphone vendors as well. One of the reasons smartphones really took hold of the world is because of what Apple had accomplished with its App Store, and...
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Following rumors that hacktivist collective Anonymous had breached the US Federal Reserve servers this past weekend comes word from the Fed itself to acknowledge that it did in fact happen. Despite the fact that Anonymous managed to leak information on some 4,000 banking executives, the Federal Reserve is down-playing...
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It looks like a relative breakthrough has been made where materials sciences and nanotechnology are concerned. Scientist Liangbing Hu, stationed at the University of Maryland, turned to one of the most simple materials in order to built a transistor: paper. You might not think of paper as being a good base for anything but writing or packing...
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When the Linux Foundation announced that it was creating its own UEFI boot solution, it seemed that our woes about not being able to install Linux on Secure Boot systems would soon be coming to an end. While the "pre-bootloader" is still not production-ready, it's been readily worked on, and recently experienced some...
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If our not-too-subtle hint a couple of weeks ago about the perils of having Java installed wasn't enough to convince you to uninstall, you should waste no time in heading on over to the official site and grabbing the latest version (7u13). When it comes to Java, the Swiss-cheese of the software world, it's important...
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The Call of Duty series is immense. Each title manages to sell a record-breaking number of copies, and across all of the platforms they're available for, players tend to stick with them until the next one comes out. Despite all this, the game has very little presence in the pro-gaming landscape. Instead, it's titles...
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