A Brief History of BonziBuddy, the Internet's Most Friendly Malware

Did You Know? People suffering from the sleep disorder “exploding head syndrome” (also known as “episodic cranial sensory shock”) experience an unusual type of auditory hallucination as they fall asleep, wake up, or both. The hallucination takes the form of hearing loud imagined noises, such as a bomb exploding, a gunshot, or a cymbal crash. There is currently no identified cause nor has an effective treatment been identified through clinical trials. Geek Trivia The Most Expensive Typo In History Was Created By A? Auctioneer's Assistant → NASA Programmer → German Automotive Engineer → Japanese Stock Trader → Advertisement No More iTunes - See How WinX MediaTrans Simplifies the Work to the Utmost From A to Z, iTunes frustrates Windows users all the way. More than an iTunes alternative, WinX MediaTrans helps to edit, add, delete, unchain DRM and transfer iOS files in multi-way. No Apple ID needed, you manage your music, movies, photos, books and other files securely - without risk of file erasing. Chance to get Full License Key for free Want to Change Your Email Preferences? At some point in the past you subscribed to the How-To Geek newsletter, but if you'd like to change the frequency or unsubscribe, you can do so by clicking the button. Change my Subscription (or unsubscribe) Today's How-To Geek Articles By popular request, we're including a quick list of the daily articles at the top of the daily email as well as the regular format near the bottom. Why Are the PCI Express Ports on My Motherboard Different Sizes? x16, x8, x4, and x1 Explained How to Add Attachments in Gmail for the iPhone How to Use Snapchat Without Sharing Your Location A Brief History of BonziBuddy, the Internet’s Most Friendly Malware How to Install a Wired Security Camera System What Is opendirectoryd, and Why Is It Running On my Mac? How to Set Up Your Wi-Fi Connected Roomba How to Use Safe Mode to Fix Your Windows PC (and When You Should) Is Now a Good Time to Buy a New NVIDIA or AMD Graphics Card? Quick Tip: You Can Swipe Cards Away in Android Auto to Dismiss Them How to Allow (or Disallow) Direct Messaging from Everyone on Twitter What Is “Enhance Pointer Precision” in Windows? Geek Comic Today's Tech Term Direct-Connect Modem A Direct-Connect Modem is a type of modem that directly connects to a telephone line using modular connectors instead of an acoustic coupler. What We're Reading This section contains what we're reading from around the web, along with commentary from our editors. Think of it like your daily digest of the most interesting things online. Nasa's ambitious plan to save Earth from a supervolcano With an eruption brewing, it may be the only way to prevent the extinction of the human race. [BBC] Can Rotten Tomatoes Crush a Movie at the Box Office? Moviegoers, critics, and filmmakers weigh in on the website that is torturing major studios and redefining how we decide whether to go to the theater [The Ringer] Anyone Can Be Trained to Hallucinate, and That's Teaching Scientists About Perception New research suggests we're all susceptible to hallucinations, and that may not be such a bad thing. [PBS] How the tech sector can legally justify breaking ties to extremists Generally speaking, private enterprise may refuse service on ideological grounds. [ArsTechnica] Why Are the PCI Express Ports on My Motherboard Different Sizes? x16, x8, x4, and x1 Explained The PCI Express standard is one of the staples of modern computing, with a slot on more or less every desktop computer made in the last decade. But the nature of the connection is somewhat nebulous: on a new PC, you might see a half-dozen ports in three or four different sizes, all labelled “PCIE” or PCI-E.” So why the confusion, and which ones can you actually use? Read This Article → How to Add Attachments in Gmail for the iPhone While email is still an incredibly popular form of communication, it’s not always a part of everyone’s daily life. And if the time comes when you need to send a document, picture, or some other file using Gmail, you’ll need to know how to attach it. Read This Article → How to Use Snapchat Without Sharing Your Location Snapchat's new Snap Map feature is incredibly creepy—it shares your location with all your Friends every time you open Snapchat—and might make you want to consider blocking Snapchat from seeing your location at all. This will affect a few Snapchat features, so let's look at what you lose. Read This Article → A Brief History of BonziBuddy, the Internet’s Most Friendly Malware If you had a computer in the early 2000s and didn’t have a ton of common sense (or proper antivirus software), you probably ended up with an allegedly helpful purple ape named BonziBuddy crowding your desktop. He could talk, tell jokes, “sing,” and generally annoy you. He promised to help you use the internet, but mostly he just got in the way. Read This Article → How to Install a Wired Security Camera System If you’ve decided to get a wired security camera system instead of a Wi-Fi camera, the setup is a bit more involved, but you’ll end up with a better system in the end. Here’s how to install wired security cameras. Read This Article → What Is opendirectoryd, and Why Is It Running On my Mac? You’re checking Activity Monitor, seeing what’s taking up resources on your Mac, when you notice a process called opendirectoryd. What does that even mean? Read This Article → How to Set Up Your Wi-Fi Connected Roomba iRobot has a few different models of Roomba vacuums, but the Wi-Fi connected Roombas are definitely some of the most convenient. You can start or schedule cleaning jobs from your phone, ring your Roomba from your phone if you can’t find it, and even start cleaning using Alexa or Google Assistant. If you just got a Wi-Fi capable Roomba, here’s how to set yours up. Read This Article → How to Use Safe Mode to Fix Your Windows PC (and When You Should) Windows’ Safe Mode is an essential tool. On computers infected with malware or crashing because of buggy drivers, Safe Mode may be the only way to start the computer. Read This Article → Is Now a Good Time to Buy a New NVIDIA or AMD Graphics Card? A few years ago, people were predicting the death of PC gaming as we know it. Those people are feasting on an abundance of humble pie, as PC games remain a cornerstone of the industry: digital delivery gives us more variety than ever before, and even the relatively niche market of performance gaming hardware has never been more healthy. But even the most humble of PC gamers needs a graphics card (well, sort of), and it’s one of the most frequent upgrades gamers make. But is now a good time to buy one? Read This Article → Quick Tip: You Can Swipe Cards Away in Android Auto to Dismiss Them Android Auto is a highly useful tool in the car. It provides music, navigation, traffic notifications, and quick access to calls and messages. The trouble is, some of these things generate cards on Auto’s home screen, and that can get annoying after a while. Read This Article → How to Allow (or Disallow) Direct Messaging from Everyone on Twitter By default, only people you follow can send you direct messages on Twitter. This is just one of the ways Twitter tries to keep harassment to a minimum. If you want your DMs to be open to anyone, however, you've got to enable a setting. Read This Article → What Is “Enhance Pointer Precision” in Windows? The “Enhance Pointer Precision” setting in Windows can actually make you less precise with your mouse in many situations. This poorly understood feature is enabled by default in Windows, and is a form of mouse acceleration. Read This Article → Advertisement Free eBook: Successful Time Management For Dummies, 2nd Edition ($12 Value) FREE For a Limited Time If you always feel like there's not enough time in the day to get everything accomplished, this is the resource that can help change your workday and your life. Click here to download