Articles

I’ve been wondering recently about how the infrastructure of the Internet really works.   I know that I have an Internet Service Provider (ISP) that supplies my connection to the Internet. But what I don’t know is: Who provides the Internet to the ISP?  And who supplies it to them? Is there a never-ending loop […]

From all the hard drives I have bought, they never seem to be as large as the advertised size; from 320 GB down to 290 GB, from 500 GB down to 450 GB, etc. Is there a technical reason for this? Solution: The technical reason is that the hard drive manufacturers sell you capacities in

Why are there two sets of the Ctrl, Alt, and Shift modifier keys when only one of each is necessary? Solution: When touch-typing, you use the alternate side “function” keys. E.g. qwer,asdf,zxcv you’d use the right shift with your right hand without needing to stretch your left hand while pressing one of the aforementioned keys.

Why are USB hubs provided in 4- and 7-port varieties. What’s special about these numbers? Why don’t I see 3-, 5-, 6-, and 8-port hubs? Is there something special about 4- and 7-port configurations that makes them more attractive? Solution: If you’re tying up one port to only really gain two, why do it? 4

I have many different AC adapters and power supplies for a variety of devices, ranging from small 5V/1A USB chargers to laptop power adapters and desktop PSUs. However, I often hear a whining noise from  some of these power supplies. This happens most often when they are not connected to a device or otherwise in

I have worked with dozens of consumer grade WiFi routers, and they have been really hit-or-miss with this, though it seems to be getting better. Example of issue: A device that can be discovered with mDNS is connected into the router with a cable. Another device connected to the router on WiFi attempts to discover

When I go to certain addresses of PDF files, Chrome downloads the PDF instead of opening it using its built-in PDF viewer. The page is then blank white. There is no problem with my Chrome settings: I try addresses of other PDF files, and Chrome behaves as expected (I have it set to use Chrome’s

For some reason all of a sudden when I update cells in Excel, my equations are not being updated.  For example, I have a simple equation =SUM(C4:C16).  If I change any of the cells in C4-C16, the answer doesn’t get updated…  I don’t know what happened I’ve never seen this fail before.  Any ideas? Solution:

When I want to configure an addon, for example Ghostery, the tab shows a URL like this one:   chrome://ghostery/content/options.html What does it mean? Does it have something to do with the Chrome browser? Solution: The phrase chrome has been used by Mozilla since long before Google Chrome came on the market. Typically the phrase

On an Acer PC, after installing any Linux system with any bootloader, I can boot it once, but after a reboot the UEFI Linux entry is gone. The Linux system’s file in the EFI boot partition seems to still be here. I tried this with Ubuntu and ArchLinux, with GRUB and systemd-boot. Why does this