Crypto Crew

Your digital footprint is always growing - so how can you keep it under control? Have you ever been caught out by your boss seeing your Instagram photos from a night out after you pulled a sickie the next day? Or by ill-considered videos you posted online coming back to haunt you in later life? If so, then you can blame your digital footprint. An unfortunate side-effect of our modern, hyper-connected world is that we're constantly leaving a trail of information about our lives, hobbies and activities behind us. Your 'digital footprint' is made up of all this data, and it can reveal a scary amount about you. Your digital footprint isn't just made up of the things you post online though - it also consists of publicly-available data from official records, as well as data gathered by tech companies and ISPs about your online activity. This information is used by companies to build profiles of you, which they then use for things like targeted advertising. However, if it fall...

Selling your laptop? Make sure that all your personal data is gone before it reaches its new owner One major worry when it comes to disposing of your laptop is what happens to the data when you either hand it over to its new owner (if you sell it, for example), take it to a recycling centre or just decide to bin it. And this worry is not at all misjudged. What happens if you leave a trace of your identity on the device and someone manages to use it to pretend to be you? Even worse, imagine if you're still logged into online banking, or your card details are all stored and that data's used to empty your bank account or purchase goods. Even if you think you've deleted all the information from your computer, there's likely to be some still hidden on it, that even the less practiced criminal could easily extract. This could be as sensitive as credit card details, or it could be passwords, your entire address history or your mother's maiden name that can be used to break...

Bear these essential points in mind when building or upgrading your infrastructure Servers are the core of any IT infrastructure for large and small businesses alike. Properly configured server infrastructure can keep your operations moving, enabling the IT team to focus on more innovative projects. When building a server setup or upgrading existing infrastructure, there are some important points to bear in mind to ensure you get the most out of your servers. Know how you’ll use the servers The variety of server hardware, applications and configurations in the market means it has never been easier to get the infrastructure you want. At the same time, a dizzying array of options can make selecting and implementing the right kit a bewildering process. To combat this, it’s best to have a clear idea of how your business will use the server infrastructure. For example, do you want a rack of servers designed for general all-purpose workloads, from crunching data to powering office apps? Or w...

We explain what a default gateway is and how to find its IP address Networking can be tricky. It involves a lot of complex moving parts such as the default gateway, which is a critical part of any network. It may sound complicated, but in reality, it's much simpler than you may think. Essentially, the default gateway is simply the device that devices on a network pass all their traffic through before communicating with a different network. It's basically the doorway that your local network uses to connect to the internet. When a node on the network wants to transfer packets between another IP address, it sends it to the default gateway to be sent on to its destination. On smaller Local Area Networks (LANs), such as a home or small business network, the default gateway is likely to be the router that provides the network's broadband connection. For larger businesses that operate many smaller network segments as part of a larger whole, there might be different default gate...

We take a closer look at how DHCP can make network administration easier Setting up and configuring networks to cope with all the devices that need to connect to them in a modern business can be quite a task for even veteran IT administrators. Manually assigning internet protocol addresses to network devices, for example, can be a time-consuming task. But the use of a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server helps do away with that arduous work. Just what is DHCP? DHCP itself is a network management tool for use with networks working on the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), which combined form the TCP/IP suite of internet protocols. Essentially, DHCP is the protocol responsible for the management and automatic configuration of IP addresses within a network. But it also handles the configuration of default gateways, domain name server (DNS) information and the assigning of correct subnet masks for devices on the network. A DHCP server is fairly ...

Windows 10’s free upgrade offer is officially over. But, unofficially, free copies of Windows 10 are still available. There are a few ways you can still get Windows 10 for free, without using a pirated license: you can install Windows 10 with a 7 or 8 key, or install Windows without a key—it will work just fine, save for a small watermark reminding you to purchase a license. Here’s how each of those methods work. Provide a Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 Key While you can no longer use the “Get Windows 10” tool to upgrade from within Windows 7, 8, or 8.1, it is still possible to download Windows 10 installation media from Microsoft and then provide a Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 key when you install it. We tested this method once again on January 5, 2018, and it still works. Windows will contact Microsoft’s activation servers and confirm the key to the previous version of Windows is real. If it is, Windows 10 will be installed and activated on your PC. Your PC acquires a “digital license” and you can con...

Although neuroscientists have a general idea of what parts of the brain do what, catching them in the act is a difficult proposition. But UC Berkeley researchers have managed to do it, visualizing based on direct measurement the path of a single thought (or at least thread) through the brain. I should mention here that as someone who studied this stuff (a long time back, but still) and is extremely skeptical about the state of brain-computer interfaces, I’m usually the guy at TechCrunch who rains on parades like this. But this is the real thing, and you can tell because not only is it not flashy, but it was accomplished only through unusually gory means. Just want to see the thought go? Watch below. But continue reading if you want to hear why this is so cool. Normal scalp-based electroencephalography (EEG) is easy to do, but it really can only get a very blurry picture of brain activity near the surface, because it has to detect all that through your hair, skin, skull, etc. What if ...