Wayne Williams

Growing up I loved playing text adventure games, and most of my favorites came from Infocom. I was lucky in later life to write about the famed adventure company and even got to meet and interview some of the greats behind the best games.

If you’re a fan of interactive fiction and Infocom, the fantastic news is the source code for all of the company’s adventures have been uploaded to GitHub, making it possible for programmers to peruse and download the code, and even build upon it.

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TVs are available to buy in truly huge sizes these days, and with 4K (and upwards) resolution, movies and TV shows really come to life. But there’s something even more magical about watching a film projected onto a screen or a wall. With the right setup, it can be like having a cinema in your home.

You don’t necessarily need to spend a fortune on a projector though. Nebra Anybeam can turn your Raspberry Pi into a cinema projector that you can slip into your pocket and take anywhere.

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On 15 April, a fire broke out on the roof of Notre-Dame, in Paris, France. The iconic cathedral, which survived both World Wars largely unscathed, was severely damaged. Much of the 850-year old Gothic building's roof and the historic spire were completely destroyed, but thankfully the main building was saved.

A restoration fund has been started, and to raise awareness for it, French video game publisher Ubisoft is giving away the PC copy of Assassin’s Creed Unity for a limited time, and has also pledged €500,000 ($565,000) towards repairs.

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The latest -- and last -- series of the biggest TV show in the world kicked off on Sunday, and brought in some big numbers for HBO. 17.4 million viewers tuned in for the season 8 premiere of Game of Thrones, either watching live on TV or streaming the show on HBO GO or HBO Now.

Quentin Schaffer, executive vice president of corporate communications for HBO, is expecting the number to build further, saying it "could eventually surpass the viewing average last year of 33 million per episode". But while it’s all great news for HBO, piracy remains a dragon-sized problem. Straight after the first episode aired, Torrent Freak reported that over 120,000 BitTorrent users were actively sharing copies of it. That’s not HBO’s only concern however.

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Apple and Qualcomm have been suing each other since January 2017. The iPhone maker first sued Qualcomm for over $1 billion, contending that the chip maker was overcharging for its patent licenses, and in response Qualcomm counter-sued and tried to get iPhones banned in a number of countries, siting patent infringement.

In total, there were over 80 ongoing lawsuits in effect globally between the two tech firms, and yesterday saw the start of what was expected to be a three-week trial in a federal court in San Diego.

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The Kodi Foundation released Kodi 18 'Leia' three months ago, bringing a number of big new features to the hugely popular home theater software, including a new Games area, updated and improved PVR backend clients, and a redesigned Music section.

A month later, a bug fix release candidate -- Kodi 18.1 -- arrived, and today there’s another new release available to install.

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Microsoft has pushed out the next big feature update for Windows 10 to the Release Preview ring, but it will be a while yet before it’s properly available for prime time.

It’s only just been declared ready for serious testing, but already the software giant has issued an update for it, and identified a known issue.

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As part of efforts to avoid repeating the sort of mess we saw with the October 2018 Update, Microsoft last week announced that its next big Windows 10 feature update would first be pushed out to the Release Preview ring, where it will spend an extended time in testing.

If you’re interested in installing the Windows 10 May 2019 Update (Build 18362.30) you can do so now. Here’s how to get it.

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Four months ago, Microsoft announced that it planned to switch to the open source Chromium for its Edge browser, and two weeks ago we got a sneak glimpse at it.

Today, the software giant unveils official previews for the Chromium-based Edge browser, and you can download Dev and Canary builds of it now.

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It was generally assumed that the next big Windows 10 feature update -- codenamed 19H1 -- would be the April 2019 Update available later this month, but it turns out it will actually be the May 2019 Update, and users will have quite a wait before they can install it.

Microsoft says the OS update will undergo additional testing before it’s made available to everyone. A smart move, given the October 2018 Update debacle. But that’s not all.

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Whether you need to learn how coding works to build a web page or an application, or see how coding drives the data revolution, Coding All-in-One for Dummies introduces the languages and processes you'll need to know.

The demand for people with coding know-how exceeds the number of people who understand the languages that power technology. Whether you're looking for a complete beginner's guide or a trusted resource for when you encounter problems with coding, there's something for you here!

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The beauty of the Raspberry Pi is you don’t need to spend a fortune to get the barebones computer up and running. Once you’ve bought the Pi itself, you can use your own keyboard, mouse, monitor, power supply and so on, and spend as little (or as much) as you want to get any items you require but don’t currently have.

Raspberry Pi owners have been able to buy official Pi cases for a while, and now they can add an official keyboard and mouse too, so everything matches.

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Windows 10 offers a number of power plans you can switch to, depending on your needs. 'Balanced' is the recommended choice, but if you have a high-end system and want to really get the most out of it, it’s worth activating the Ultimate Performance power plan.

This plan is really designed for workstations, but gamers and video editors will benefit from it too. It likely won’t be available to simply switch to on your PC, but you can enable it with this simple hack.

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It took quite some time for Windows 10 to overtake Windows 7, but it finally did it in December 2018, at least according to NetMarketShare’s figures.

In February however, Windows 10 actually lost share, while Windows 7 gained some, narrowing the gap between the two operating systems once more. In March though, roles were reversed, as Windows 10 made some big gains, and Windows 7 lost a sizable chunk of its share.

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The October 2018 Update, or Windows 10 1809, has been nothing short of a disaster for Microsoft. It was so buggy it had to be pulled shortly after its release last October, and it only began to be pushed out as an automatic update a week ago.

AdDuplex, which monitors the share of each version of Windows 10, has been reporting for months on the incredibly poor adoption of Windows 10 1809, and March was another month in which the update gained hardly any additional share. With the next big feature version scheduled to arrive next month, it looks as if most people will be skipping the older update.

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