A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail. Operating systems are the cockroaches of the digital revolution. They’re ...

Developers talk a lot about “immutability.” Outside the technical world, it usually means something negative: unmoving, inflexible, and entrenched. However, in the technical field, these features ...

The computer's master control program. When a computer is turned on, a small "boot program" loads the operating system. Although additional system modules may be loaded as needed, the main part, known ...

One problem with building things using state-of-the-art techniques is that sometimes those that look like they will be “the next big thing” turn out to be dead ends. Next thing you know, that hot new ...

While Microsoft and Apple don’t release the source code for their operating systems, a good estimate is that it takes around 50 million lines of code to run these software behemoths. The Linux kernel ...

Sydney Butler is a technology writer with over 20 years of experience as a freelance PC technician and system builder and over a decade as a professional writer. He's worked for more than a decade in ...

The ESA’s recently launched Solar Orbiter will spend years in one of the most unwelcoming places in the Solar System: the Sun. During its mission, Solar Orbiter will get 10 million kilometers closer ...