Foreign accent syndrome is a rare condition in which patients, thanks to neurological or muscular damage caused by a stroke, head trauma, or other event, develop speech patterns that are perceived as sounding like a foreign accent to listeners. In this way, a person speaking American English might sound “French” or “German” to the listener, but they have not gained any knowledge of the language, they simply have altered speaking patterns as a result of the precipitating event that mimics traits of that language.
If you’re a PC gamer, you’ve probably experienced this situation before: you wait months or years for an exciting new game to jump from major consoles to the PC, only to find out that the ported game is a buggy, broken mess.
Building your own desktop isn’t as difficult as it looks—it’s often called “LEGO for adults.” And while that phrase might be a bit condescending (adults can enjoy LEGOs too, ya jerks), it’s not wrong. Even so, the sheer breadth of choices, options, and compatibility issues can be intimidating, especially for a first-time builder. Here’s a collection of online tools to help you make sure that process goes as smoothly as possible.
Steam allows you to remotely install games from your smartphone, just like you can with a PlayStation 4 or Xbox One. You can download games to your gaming PC from anywhere, ensuring those big downloads are complete and the game is ready to play when you get home. You can also do this from any web browser.
Starting with Windows 10’s Fall Creators Update, the Windows Subsystem for Linux now allows you to manually mount drives. It still automatically mounts all internal NTFS drives. However, you can now manually mount external drives and network folders using the Linux mount command.
Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas, or MOBAs, refer to a very specific subset of top-down, team-based strategy titles. Despite humble beginnings as a modded offshoot of real-time strategy games, these titles have exploded into the forefront of PC gaming, gaining tens of millions of players and a spot at the top of the eSports (blech*) world.
Valve just added digital gift cards to Steam, allowing you to send money directly to a friend’s Steam Wallet. You can also use the same trick we used adding Steam Wallet funds to send almost any amount—not just the preset values.
The Raspberry Pi, a tiny, low-powered, inexpensive system-on-a-chip computer, has become famous as the preferred tool of DIY gadget builders and tinkerers. But thanks to its explosive success, it’s no longer the only choice on the market for cheap all-in-one gadgetry and development. If you can’t get your hands on a Pi, or you want to try something else, give these alternatives a look.
The Windows Subsystem for Linux received a huge update in Windows 10’s Fall Creators Update. It now supports multiple Linux distributions, not just Ubuntu. Ubuntu, openSUSE, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server are available at launch, with Fedora and other Linux distributions set to arrive in the future.
Ubuntu 17.10 “Artful Aardvark” has dropped the Unity 7 desktop, instead switching to GNOME Shell. Ubuntu’s developers tried to make the GNOME Shell desktop work as much like Unity as possible, but there are still some big differences. Here’s what you need to know.
I hate video chats. As a tool for a work-from-home writer, it’s obviously pretty essential, but between my pale complexion and a desk full of computer monitors, the picture streaming through my webcam makes me look like the least attractive extra in an Anne Rice movie.
After quite a few unexciting releases, Ubuntu 17.10 “Artful Aardvark” is full of huge changes. Ubuntu Phone is dead, and so is Ubuntu’s dream of a converged desktop. Ubuntu’s developers are no longer working on Unity 8, and Ubuntu 17.10 ditches the old Unity 7 desktop for GNOME Shell.
Whether you’ve installed the Linux subsystem on Windows 10 or are getting started using the Linux Terminal, there are all kinds of shorthands you need to learn…none of which are intuitive.
If you’ve been playing PC games in the last few years, the accumulated games in your Steam account are probably worth hundreds (or maybe even thousands) of dollars. Perhaps even more importantly, your Steam account might contain in-game items that can be traded for real-world cash…and thus, stolen with some very real consequences. So it’s a very good idea to apply Valve’s Steam Guard two-factor authentication to your account.
Today, security researchers published a paper detailing a serious vulnerability in WPA2, the protocol that keeps most modern Wi-FI networks secure—including the one in your home. Here’s how to protect yourself from attackers.
Mechanical keyboards are a surprisingly resilient trend among gamers and power users. But as they get more popular, the various options and technical variations become more and more complex. If you’re looking for everything you need to know to get started in this surprisingly varied portion of the PC world, we’re here to help you out.
Netflix frequently tests new features and designs on a small number of users before rolling them out to everyone. The company has tested things like a Skip Intro button or a mobile data saver feature weeks or months before anyone else gets them. If you want to be among the users that get to try out new features, here’s how to join Netflix’s test program.
Hacking in the movies is crazy exciting: fingers fly across the keyboard, and the screen is an ever flashing array of cryptic characters. It’s all so…interesting. Real hacking, sadly, isn’t that intense. However illegal what you’re doing may be, you’re still just someone sitting at a computer. Most the time you’re just trying to get people to use a fake Google sign-in page.
A video’s bitrate is a key piece of information in determining the quality of said video. Even if two videos have the same resolution, a lower bitrate is going to result in less detail and clarity. Here’s how to see the bitrate of any video you’re playing in real time with VLC.
With Firefox 57, scheduled for release in November 14, 2017, Mozilla will end support for legacy extensions, and only support newer WebExtensions. Here’s how to check if your extensions will stop working—and how to keep using them after November, if you need to.
Your computer stores the time in a hardware clock on its motherboard. The clock keeps track of time, even when the computer is off. By default, Windows assumes the time is stored in local time, while Linux assumes the time is stored in UTC time and applies an offset. This leads to one of your operating systems showing the wrong time in a dual boot situation.
Whether you work at your computer or just enjoy the occasional long gaming session, it’s important to take breaks regularly. Getting up to take a walk, grab a coffee, or do some stretches helps reduce eye strain, prevent repetitive strain injury (RSI), and is otherwise just plain good for you. And one study from the University of Illionoise at Urbana-Champaign shows that breaks might even enhance productivity by increasing focus.
Everyone who regularly uses the command line has at least one long string they type regularly. Instead of entering all that again and again, quickly search your history to find the complete command.
Command line users know to how read the manual: type “man” followed by the name of a command—you’ll see a detailed explanation. These manuals are useful but verbose, using hundreds of words to explain every detail of a command.
When burning a CD, you can either burn it as a data disc or an audio CD. A data CD can hold up to 700 MB, while an audio CD can hold 80 minutes of sound. If you have 200 MB of MP3 files that add up to three hours of music, you can still only burn 80 minutes to the disc. Why is that?
When large-scale flash storage first came to the consumer market as an alternative to conventional hard drives, the biggest concern (aside from price) was longevity. Tech fans had a pretty good idea of the general reliability of hard drives, but SSDs were still something of a wild card.
