Thinking of building a new gaming PC? Struggling with whatever random error your desktop is throwing up this week? Under The Hood gives you a quick and concise run-down of the most important things that happened to the PC master race in the last seven days.
Apple Power Adapters Recalled Over Electric Shock Risk
Apple has issued a voluntary recall of Australian AC two-prong wall plug adapters for Mac and iOS devices from between 2003 and 2015. The adapters were also included in the Apple World Travel Adapter Kit. Apple has reported there have been 12 incidents globally of the adapters breaking, and creating a risk of electric shock.
An affected two-prong plug adapter has either four or five characters or no characters on the inside slot where it attaches to the main Apple power adapter. Apple advises to stop using these adapters immediately. Visit the website for information on how to identify and exchange affected adapters for the new, redesigned version.
The affected adapters are also used in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Continental Europe, New Zealand and South Korea. The recall does not affect any other Apple AC wall plug adapters designed for Canada, China, Hong Kong, Japan, United Kingdom, United States or any Apple USB power adapters.
Microsoft Wants To Build Data Centres Underwater
“50% of us live near the coast,” Microsoft says. “Why doesn’t our data?” Building huge data centres underwater might sound bizarrely Jules Vernesian, but it’s exactly what Microsoft’s testing. The plan’s called Project Natick, and its website states its purpose: “to understand the benefits and difficulties in deploying subsea data centres worldwide.”
Why build data centres underwater? Customer proximity, for one. Since so many large cities are coastal, building cloud computing data centres in the nearby bodies of water (as opposed to in the middle of nowhere, as is usually the case) could improve the performance of services like Netflix for millions of urbanites. Plus, putting servers underwater basically eliminates the possibility that they will crash due to overheating. And finally, Microsoft suggests it can pair the underwater data centres with tide-powered electrical generators or turbines, which could help address increasing energy demands.
The first prototype is called Leona Philpot (after the Halo character who appears on Microsoft’s Xboxes) was tested last spring about a kilometre off the California coast, 9m under water. The test enclosed a single data centre computing rack in an 2.5m-wide steel capsule, which was covered in sensors that monitored pressure, humidity and other factors that helped the engineers learn more about possible challenges they will face in the future.
Microsoft Edge’s Private Mode May Actually Record Your Browsing
If you’ve been using Microsoft Edge and hoping that all your private browsing was actually, you know, private, then think again. Turns out that it may be possible to reconstruct the site history of the browser, whatever mode it’s in.
Beta News reports that Edge seems to record the browsing history even when a user activates its InPrivate mode. It all apparently gets stored away in the browser’s WebCache file, which can be used to fully describe the history of website that the browser’s been used to view, whether in normal or private mode.
It seems researcher Brent Muir noticed the issue last year on his Digital Forensic Musings blog, writing “In the case of Microsoft Edge even the private browsing isn’t as private as it seems. Previous investigations of the browser have resulted in revealing that websites visited in private mode are also stored in the browser’s WebCache file.”