Nothing is worse than a computer that won't display anything, especially when you need to use it. Since most PCs use the graphics card to send the display signals to the monitor, there's likely something wrong with your GPU if you see the "No signal" error message on your monitor.

Sometimes, when deleting a file on Windows, you get a pop-up window with the "File in Use" error message. This indicates that the file that you are trying to eradicate is being used by a program or process on your Windows device that has locked it, preventing it from being deleted, renamed, or moved. It could be a visible app like a media player, photo viewing app, MS Word, or Excel, or it could be a hidden process that is active in the background, like Windows Update.

Illustration: The Verge X has won an appeal to block parts of California’s content moderation law, which requires social platforms to publicly post policies against hate speech and misinformation, as well as submit semiannual reports on their enforcement efforts. A federal appeals court decided on Wednesday that the reporting aspect of the law likely violates the First Amendment, as reported earlier by Bloomberg Law.In the lawsuit, filed against California last year, X alleged the state’s social media law violates free speech because it “compels companies like X Corp. to engage in speech against their will.” A California judge later denied X’s request for a preliminary injunction of the law, arguing that the enforcement reporting requirement doesn’t appear to... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in a fight to lend out scanned ebooks without the approval of publishers. In a decision on Wednesday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that permitting the Internet Archive’s digital library would “allow for widescale copying that deprives creators of compensation and diminishes the incentive to produce new works.”The decision is another blow to the nonprofit in the Hachette v. Internet Archive case. In 2020, four major publishers — Hachette, Penguin Random House, Wiley, and HarperCollins — sued the Internet Archive over claims its digital library constitutes “willful digital piracy on an industrial scale.”The Internet Archive has long offered a system called the Open Library, where... Continue reading…

Illustration by Laura Normand / The Verge Elon Musk is a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist.” He’s declared himself so committed to the unfettered, open exchange of ideas that he’s said the only way X would let a government suppress speech on its platform is “at gunpoint.” All of this explains why Musk recently allowed X to be banned in Brazil rather than comply with the country’s mandate that the social media platform block certain accounts.It does far less to explain Musk’s history of doing that very thing in other countries — often at the behest of right-wing or authoritarian regimes.By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge The Russian government is once again trying to influence the US presidential election, the Biden administration says. In a series of actions across the government on Wednesday, several agencies sought to crack down on alleged disinformation campaigns targeting the November election. The government alleges that Russian actors operated websites and social media accounts that spread propaganda furthering Russian interests and even created fake social media personas to comment on posts to make their efforts more believable. In one of the alleged influence campaigns, Russian-controlled media outlet RT financed a Tennessee company that gained millions of views on videos posted to YouTube, according to the US. The announcements came as the... Continue reading…

Between the proliferation of SSDs and the drawn-out death of HDDs, there was a weird cross-over of the two that briefly took hold of the enthusiast community: SSHDs. Solid State Hybrid Drives were a type of storage device that combined an HDD with an SSD, with the expectation that it would be a viable compromise between the two technologies given the cost of SSDs. However, SSHDs are really nowhere to be seen these days, and there are a few reasons why.

A VPN can be an essential tool in your cybersecurity toolbox, and is useful for protecting your identity and privacy online. VPNs offer a way to encrypt your internet traffic, routing it down an encrypted tunnel, making it more difficult for prying eyes to monitor your online behavior.

Image: Roku Roku is the latest company to lean into the trend of throwing artwork onto your TV screen, offering viewers some serene relaxation time when they’re not actively watching something. Today the company announced a new feature / app called Backdrops, and it all sounds very familiar.Rolling out first to Roku-branded TVs and third-party Roku TV sets (and then to Roku streaming devices “later in the fall”), Backdrops features “a catalog that includes famous classics, wide-ranging museum collections, abstract designs, and more.”Here’s more on what to expect:Viewers can also learn more about the artwork, including artist name, year it was created, and a brief description for each image, even cycle in photos from their personal collection to... Continue reading…

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Verizon’s next big acquisition might be Frontier. Reports from The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg suggest that Verizon is in “advanced talks” to acquire the communications provider, with a potential announcement coming as soon as this week.Joining forces with Frontier could help Verizon expand its fiber footprint — by clawing back some of its old Fios subscribers. In 2015, Frontier bought Verizon’s wireline operations, including Fios fiber internet connections, across three states for $10.5 billion.With AT&T going deeper into fiber and T-Mobile planning to acquire fiber provider Metronet, Verizon executives may have decided that now’s a good time to get back into the business. During the Bank of America Securities conference today,... Continue reading…

Image: NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) will start sharing stories about some of the agency’s past missions in a new podcast. Dubbed No Such Podcast, the podcast will initially focus on foreign signals intelligence and cybersecurity in the first two episodes, both of which will be available to listen to starting tomorrow, September 5th.For years, the work of the NSA has been a closely kept secret. Then, in 2013, former agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked secret information about surveillance programs like PRISM and Boundless Informant. Outrage and intense debate over the agency’s actions quickly followed, and it continues to this day.Now, we’ll find out what the NSA chooses to reveal in interviews with its experts.The pilot episode of... Continue reading…

In addition to data organization, basic spreadsheet layouts, and performing calculations, Microsoft Excel can serve as a robust tool for making engaging, interactive dashboards. After all, static spreadsheets with endless rows of numbers can be overwhelming at times, and may fail to display and communicate key insights. Here is where interactive dashboards come in to offer you a dynamic way to explore data, spot trends, and make informed decisions.