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Boldly going where no man has gone before, the Kirk Ransomware brings so much nerdy goodness to the table that it could make anyone in IT interested. We have Star Trek, Low Orbital Ion Cannons, a cryptocurrency payment other than Bitcoin, and a decryptor named Spock! Need I say more? Discovered today by Avast malware researcher Jakub Kroustek, the Kirk Ransomware is written in Python and may be the first ransomware to utilize Monero as the ransom payment of choice.

IBM Q isn’t vaporware. It’s a project years-in-the-making that could help quantum computation reach its massive potential. The future of quantum computers may arrive sooner than you think. When news arrived of IBM’s move to offer the first commercially available universal quantum computer last week, it was characterized as a “handoff” from IBM Research to IBM Systems. According to the company’s CTO and vice president of quantum computing, technical strategy, and systems, Scott Crowder, that’s not entirely the case. “It’s not quite a ‘handoff,’ it’s really a partnership,” explained Crowder. “This is definitely a transition point from it being pure...

OK- installed Linux Mint Cinnamon 18.1 recently, everything was working fine- then recently what has been happening is I'll be working along fine, and then for some reason, my windows go transparent- Icons are still opaque on desktop- but everything I open, card games, Internet browser, notepad etc are all transparent- even the shutdown dialogue is- Can't find any info online linux forums about this behavior- Any thoughts on how to fix it?

All my colors are are OK except for light greern/yellow

Before I even talk about DHS employees being locked out of the computer system…lets look back at a prior story on DHS. A government watchdog agency is investigating allegations that Department of Homeland Security officials improperly attempted to breach the Georgia secretary of state’s internal elections network last year. In a Jan. 17 letter to Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, DHS Inspector General John Roth said his office was probing “a series of ten alleged scanning events of the Georgia Secretary of State’s network” that may have originated from DHS-affiliated IP addresses. DHS IG spokeswoman Erica Paulson confirmed the...

The thread on F.R.mentioned above indicated that Obama had the White House computer system replaced with a new one on January 1, 2017 and suggested that the old system is now under his control at the offices of Organizing for Action, a new N.P.O. set up by him. What evidence of his crimes and corruption are on that old system and how compromised is the new system at the White House?

I am not computer savvy at all but I know that many freepers are....All of the sudden my laptop's internal speakers quit working. Did a systems restore. Trouble shooter found nothing wrong. Computer thinks the speakers are working but there is no sound. Zip. Nada. Is it time to purchase external speakers?

My daughter is a senior in high school. She wants to major in Computer Science and minor in French She has mostly looked at small (<5,000 students) liberal arts schools. Can anyone recommend some conservative schools? ACT = 26 3.26 regular GPA 3.64 weighted GPA She is also interested in playing the cello in the orchestra.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said that President Barack Obama's actions against Russia should have come much sooner. (Photos: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP; Susan Walsh/AP) House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., thinks the Obama administration was justified in retaliating Thursday against Russia with sanctions for interfering with U.S. institutions. But he said it should've been done long ago. Far from a full-throated endorsement of Obama's actions, Ryan's statement condemned the commander in chief for eight years of what he considers "ineffective foreign policy" that left the United States more vulnerable than it was when he took office in 2009. Nevertheless, Ryan agreed that...

Ransomware spiked 6,000% in 2016 and most victims paid the hackers, IBM finds Harriet Taylor 14 Dec 2016 Spam emails loaded with ransomware — malware that scrambles data and demands a ransom to decode it — increased 6,000 percent this year compared with 2015, a new study from IBM Security found. Ransomware was in almost 40 percent of all spam messages in 2016. The problem is, the business model works: 70 percent of business victims paid the hackers to get their data back, the study found. Of those who paid, 50 percent paid more than $10,000 and 20 percent paid...

Well my old windows 8 computer is slowly dying. I have a HP running windows 10 and want to have email like I used to. This new computer will not accept Win live mail or classic shell. Help needed. Thanks in advance.

Please, need help with Windows 7 Favorites. The Favorites folders are there but all are empty of their contents. Ran CCleaner, Malwarebytes and Avira a couple days ago and manually deleted the address drop down. Don't know of anything else that could have messed it up. Just did a restore at an earlier date but the file contents are still missing. I made two new files just now but they won't accept contents.

I want to buy a new laptop and would like to stay around 11-12" and under $500. I don't have a tablet, so I'm thinking of getting one that either docks to a keyboard and is detachable, or the type that flips & isn't detachable. I'm leery of the detachable, because I've read reviews of people having trouble with them after a while. I want it to have Windows 10 and a touchscreen would be nice also, but not imperative. I'm not a gamer but I do want speed ...I'd be using it for FReeping, surfing the web, email, etc,...

The source said an analysis of the metadata on Weiner’s computer has turned up “positive hits for state.gov and HRC emails,” which led Comey to revisit the FBI investigation into Clinton using a private email server system while secretary of state. A second law enforcement source confirmed the account. Weiner is the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. He resigned from Congress in 2011, after a sexting scandal. That Clinton-related emails were on Weiner’s computer, which he purportedly shared with Abedin, was reported first by The Wall Street Journal.

Top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin has told people she is unsure how her emails could have ended up on a device she viewed as her husband’s computer, the seizure of which has reignited the Clinton email investigation, according to a person familiar with the investigation and civil litigation over the matter. The person, who would not discuss the case unless granted anonymity, said Abedin was not a regular user of the computer, and even when she agreed to turn over emails to the State Department for federal records purposes, her lawyers did not search it for materials, not believing...

I need help with RealPlayer. I have the last free version that was made available. RealPlayer apparently tries to connect to the Internet whenever the program is opened. This is, I think, causing it to crash whenever I play videos. I was without internet access for a week and the program never stopped working once.

I am sure SOMEBODY is going to complain something about my posting this, but I have always gotten good computer advice from FR. I am getting started in voice acting, and have a website promoting my talents. Can anyone tell me how to make my main page play a sound file from a list of files? I want to have 20+ comic intros on the site, and have the webpage play one of them, at random, whenever the page is re/loaded. www.everybodyandme.com

Susan* bought her 6-year-old son John an iPad when he was in first grade. “I thought ‘why not let him get a jump on things?’ ” she told me during a therapy session. John’s school had begun using the devices with younger and younger grades—and his technology teacher had raved about their educational benefits—so Susan wanted to do what was best for her sandy-haired boy who loved reading and playing baseball. She started letting John play different educational games on his iPad. Eventually, he discovered Minecraft, which the technology teacher assured her was “just like electronic Lego.”

Florida AG Shuts Down Boynton Beach Tech Support Scam August 24, 2016 11:12 AM TALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami) – A Boynton Beach tech support company which reportedly scammed its customers out of $25 million has been temporarily shut down again by court order, according to Florida’s Attorney General’s Office. The company Client Care Experts, formerly known as First Choice Tech Support, LLC, is owned by CEO Michael Seward and his partner Kevin McCormick. The state’s Attorney General’s Office said the operation was run out of a boiler room in Boynton Beach and employed more than 200 telemarketers at the location. The court...

A seminal moment in the quantum technology field just happened: Google's team of scientists have simulated a hydrogen molecule from its quantum computers, a breakthrough that suggests it could “simulate even larger chemical systems,” writes one of Google Quantum’s engineers, Ryan Rabbush. The search engine’s achievement underscores the technology’s potential as Rabbush posits it can “revolutionize the design of solar cells, industrial catalysts, batteries, flexible electronics, medicines, materials and more.”