A computer is a programmable machine designed to automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations.
Questions tagged [computers]
119 questions
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votes
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Did the computing term "bug" come from a moth stuck in a computer?
The story goes like this:
Back when computers still consisted of vacuum tubes, a system
went down one day and people started investigating the cause. They found that a moth
was stuck in the computer which fouled it up. When asked what was…
user6204
36
votes
1 answer
Does the Dvorak keyboard increase typing speed?
I've read somewhere, I can't seem to find it now, that in an experiment involving people learning to type, that the Dvorak keyboard didn't have a tangible typing speed benefit in comparison to the QWERTY keyboard. Do you know of any studies about…
Peter Olson
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Is using a mouse less efficient?
Users of programmable text editors such as Emacs and Vim claim that using a mouse for day-to-day programming and computing tasks makes you less efficient.
For example, in this playful Welcome to Vim video by Derek Wyatt, he calls the mouse a…
Nick
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Did Apple sue New York city over the nickname Big Apple?
An article in The Guardian - Apple's rot starts with its Samsung lawsuit win
Makes the following claim:
Apple is one of the most aggressive intellectual property litigators of all time
... It's sued about the lower case "i"; it's sued about the…
Tom77
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Will freezing your hard drive help recover its data?
Source
There seems to be (anecdotal) evidence that putting your hard drive in the freezer can make it readable again, at least for a short time:
Lifehacker - Save a Failed Hard Drive in Your Freezer
Geeks are Sexy - Freeze your hard drive to…
Oliver_C
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27
votes
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Does handwriting assist memory retention more effectively than typing?
I have both heard and experienced (perhaps as a placebo effect) that writing things out by hand allows the text to be better remembered than typing it. This particularly applies to taking notes during a lecture or seminar.
I would hazard to guess…
Apophenia Overload
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Did an AI-enabled drone attack the human operator in a simulation environment?
According to this news article on the Royal Aeronautical Society website:
...an AI-enabled drone tasked with a SEAD mission to identify and
destroy SAM sites, with the final go/no go given by the human.
However, having been ‘reinforced’ in training…
Jayson Virissimo
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27
votes
3 answers
Did Apple "jumpstart" the USB market?
Did Apple "jumpstart the USB market"? An example of the claim is as follows:
When Apple released their iMac there was a rush to release peripherals to support them. Before that nobody really cared about USB despite the fact that it was present on…
Brian M. Hunt
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27
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Can blue light from LCD panels cause damage to the eyes?
In Japan there is quite a fad about LCD blue light filtering and how they might help reduce eyestrain, etc. The web site of a major computer accessory manufacturer has an English-language press release on iPad blue light filter with a nice graph…
Ken Y-N
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26
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Is using "sleep mode" wasteful and harmful to a computer?
I have my home computer set to go into "sleep mode" when idle for a short time, and I assumed that by doing so I was saving lots of energy and that it was good for the computer by shutting down nearly every component while the computer is sleeping.…
Johnny
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Are low-spec computer parts just faulty high-spec computer parts?
Someone was telling me that lower-price or lower-spec computer parts such as graphics cards and central processing units are actually just higher-spec, higher-price units that have manufacturing faults.
So instead of the manufacturer throwing them…
Rowan Freeman
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25
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Can a computer be hacked to use a connected speaker as a microphone?
I read a book in which someone hacked into a computer and used the speakers (not a microphone) to listen to what was happening in the room. Is this even remotely possible without gaining physical access to the computer, assuming you could completely…
John Stimac
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25
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Did a TV news show cause lots of Amazon's Alexa devices to try to order doll houses?
With reference to this Stack Exchange Internet of Things question and this news article, which is only one of many:
Is there evidence that when a news anchor uttered the words "Alexa, buy me a dollhouse", that
plenty of viewers complained that the…
Mawg says reinstate Monica
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Is D-Wave Systems's "D-Wave One" a quantum computer?
D-Wave Systems claim to have produced the first commercial quantum computer:
The company's flagship product, the D-Wave One, is built around a novel type of superconducting processor that uses quantum mechanics to massively accelerate computation. …
please delete me
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Can CAPTCHA images be read automatically?
The CAPTCHA website says:
...humans can read distorted text as the one shown below, but current computer programs can't...
I realize this technique is widely used, and that this could indicate that they are indeed effective, however visual…
Hendy
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