problems computer can solve

Limits to computing: A computer scientist explains why even in the age of AI, some problems are just too difficult

Professor of Computer Science, UMass Lowell

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Empowered by artificial intelligence technologies, computers today can engage in convincing conversations with people, compose songs , paint paintings , play chess and go , and diagnose diseases , to name just a few examples of their technological prowess.

These successes could be taken to indicate that computation has no limits. To see if that’s the case, it’s important to understand what makes a computer powerful.

There are two aspects to a computer’s power: the number of operations its hardware can execute per second and the efficiency of the algorithms it runs. The hardware speed is limited by the laws of physics. Algorithms – basically sets of instructions – are written by humans and translated into a sequence of operations that computer hardware can execute. Even if a computer’s speed could reach the physical limit, computational hurdles remain due to the limits of algorithms.

These hurdles include problems that are impossible for computers to solve and problems that are theoretically solvable but in practice are beyond the capabilities of even the most powerful versions of today’s computers imaginable. Mathematicians and computer scientists attempt to determine whether a problem is solvable by trying them out on an imaginary machine.

An imaginary computing machine

The modern notion of an algorithm, known as a Turing machine, was formulated in 1936 by British mathematician Alan Turing . It’s an imaginary device that imitates how arithmetic calculations are carried out with a pencil on paper. The Turing machine is the template all computers today are based on.

To accommodate computations that would need more paper if done manually, the supply of imaginary paper in a Turing machine is assumed to be unlimited. This is equivalent to an imaginary limitless ribbon, or “tape,” of squares, each of which is either blank or contains one symbol.

The machine is controlled by a finite set of rules and starts on an initial sequence of symbols on the tape. The operations the machine can carry out are moving to a neighboring square, erasing a symbol and writing a symbol on a blank square. The machine computes by carrying out a sequence of these operations. When the machine finishes, or “halts,” the symbols remaining on the tape are the output or result.

Computing is often about decisions with yes or no answers. By analogy, a medical test (type of problem) checks if a patient’s specimen (an instance of the problem) has a certain disease indicator (yes or no answer). The instance, represented in a Turing machine in digital form, is the initial sequence of symbols.

A problem is considered “solvable” if a Turing machine can be designed that halts for every instance whether positive or negative and correctly determines which answer the instance yields.

Not every problem can be solved

Many problems are solvable using a Turing machine and therefore can be solved on a computer, while many others are not. For example, the domino problem, a variation of the tiling problem formulated by Chinese American mathematician Hao Wang in 1961, is not solvable.

The task is to use a set of dominoes to cover an entire grid and, following the rules of most dominoes games, matching the number of pips on the ends of abutting dominoes. It turns out that there is no algorithm that can start with a set of dominoes and determine whether or not the set will completely cover the grid.

Keeping it reasonable

A number of solvable problems can be solved by algorithms that halt in a reasonable amount of time. These “ polynomial-time algorithms ” are efficient algorithms, meaning it’s practical to use computers to solve instances of them.

Thousands of other solvable problems are not known to have polynomial-time algorithms, despite ongoing intensive efforts to find such algorithms. These include the Traveling Salesman Problem.

The Traveling Salesman Problem asks whether a set of points with some points directly connected, called a graph, has a path that starts from any point and goes through every other point exactly once, and comes back to the original point. Imagine that a salesman wants to find a route that passes all households in a neighborhood exactly once and returns to the starting point.

These problems, called NP-complete , were independently formulated and shown to exist in the early 1970s by two computer scientists, American Canadian Stephen Cook and Ukrainian American Leonid Levin . Cook, whose work came first, was awarded the 1982 Turing Award, the highest in computer science, for this work.

The cost of knowing exactly

The best-known algorithms for NP-complete problems are essentially searching for a solution from all possible answers. The Traveling Salesman Problem on a graph of a few hundred points would take years to run on a supercomputer. Such algorithms are inefficient, meaning there are no mathematical shortcuts.

Practical algorithms that address these problems in the real world can only offer approximations, though the approximations are improving . Whether there are efficient polynomial-time algorithms that can solve NP-complete problems is among the seven millennium open problems posted by the Clay Mathematics Institute at the turn of the 21st century, each carrying a prize of US$1 million.

Beyond Turing

Could there be a new form of computation beyond Turing’s framework? In 1982, American physicist Richard Feynman , a Nobel laureate, put forward the idea of computation based on quantum mechanics.

In 1995, Peter Shor, an American applied mathematician, presented a quantum algorithm to factor integers in polynomial time . Mathematicians believe that this is unsolvable by polynomial-time algorithms in Turing’s framework. Factoring an integer means finding a smaller integer greater than 1 that can divide the integer. For example, the integer 688,826,081 is divisible by a smaller integer 25,253, because 688,826,081 = 25,253 x 27,277.

A major algorithm called the RSA algorithm , widely used in securing network communications, is based on the computational difficulty of factoring large integers. Shor’s result suggests that quantum computing, should it become a reality, will change the landscape of cybersecurity .

Can a full-fledged quantum computer be built to factor integers and solve other problems? Some scientists believe it can be. Several groups of scientists around the world are working to build one, and some have already built small-scale quantum computers.

Nevertheless, like all novel technologies invented before, issues with quantum computation are almost certain to arise that would impose new limits.

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How-To Geek

How to make windows troubleshoot your pc's problems for you.

Windows includes a variety of "troubleshooters" designed to quickly diagnose and automatically solve various computer problems.

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Windows 7 and 8.

Windows includes a variety of "troubleshooters" designed to quickly diagnose and automatically solve various computer problems. Troubleshooters can't fix everything, but they're a great place to start if you encounter a problem with your computer.

Troubleshooters are built into the Control Panel on Windows 10, 8, and 7, so practically all Windows users can take advantage of them. On Windows 10's Creators Update , most troubleshooters are now available through the Settings app.

If you've installed Windows 10's Creators Update, you'll find these in Settings. Navigate to Settings > Update & Security > Troubleshoot.

Related: Everything You Need to Know About the Blue Screen of Death

As of the Creators Update, the following troubleshooters are available here: Blue Screen , Bluetooth, Hardware and Devices, HomeGroup, Incoming Connections, Internet Connections, Keyboard, Network Adapter, Printer, Playing Audio, Power, Program Compatibility Troubleshooter, Recording Audio, Search and Indexing, Shared Folders, Speech, Video Playback, Windows Store Apps, and Windows Update.

If something isn't working properly on your PC, the associated troubleshooter may find and fix the problem for you.

Select the troubleshooter you want to run and click "Run Troubleshooter". Many troubleshooters will run automatically and fix problems they find, while some troubleshooters will suggest various fixes you can choose whether to apply.

The Settings interface doesn't list every available troubleshooter. For example, it omits the Background Intelligent Transfer service, Windows Media Player DVD, Windows Media Player Library, and Windows Media Player Settings troubleshooters.

These are still available if you need them---they're just buried in the Control Panel. To find them, open the Control Panel, type "Troubleshoot" into its search box, and click the "Troubleshooting" icon.

Click "View all" at the left side of the Troubleshooting pane and you'll see a full list of available troubleshooters.

You'll find these tools in the Control Panel on Windows 7 and 8. You'll also need to use the Control Panel if you're using  Windows 10's Anniversary Update  or an earlier version of Windows 10.

Navigate to Control Panel > System and Security > Troubleshoot Common Computer Problems. On Windows 7, click "Find and Fix Problems" instead.

You'll see a list of the most common troubleshooters you might need.

These aren't the only available troubleshooters. Click "View All" in the sidebar to view a full list of troubleshooters. Here's a list of the troubleshooters you might find, although not all versions of Windows include the same troubleshooters:

• Background Intelligent Transfer Service : Finds and fixes problems with the Background Intelligent Transfer Service, which Windows Update and some other services use for background downloads.
• Hardware and Devices : Checks your computer for issues with hardware devices. If a hardware device--particularly a recently installed one--isn't working properly, this troubleshooter can find and fix problems with hardware detection and drivers.
• HomeGroup : Looks for problems with your HomeGroup network and file-sharing settings.
• Incoming Connections : Checks if the Windows Firewall is blocking incoming connections you need and help you unblock them.
• Internet Connections : Detects and fixes problems with your Internet connection and loading websites.
• Internet Explorer Performance : Identifies problems that can slow down Internet Explorer and fixes them.
• Internet Explorer Safety : Identifies settings that can cause security and privacy problems in Internet Explorer and fixes them.
• Network Adapter : Finds and fixes issues with your Wi-Fi adapter or other network adapters.
• Playing Audio : Scans for problems that can prevent sound from playing properly.
• Power : Identifies and fixes problems with power settings to increase your computer's battery life.
• Printer : Checks for and fixes problems with printers and printing.

Related: How to Make Old Programs Work on Windows 10

• Program Compatability Troubleshooter : Helps you choose the best compatibility settings for running programs designed for older versions of Windows.
• Recording Audio : Scans for problems that can prevent microphone audio recording from working.
• Search and Indexing : Fixes problems with Windows Search and the indexer.
• Shared Folders : Identifies issues that can prevent shared network folders from functioning.
• System Maintenance : Finds and fixes broken shortcuts and performs and system maintenance tasks, including checking if your clock is the correct time.
• Video Playback : Detects problems that can prevent videos from playing back properly and fixes them.
• Windows Media Player DVD : Fixes issues that can prevent DVDs from playing in Windows Media Player.
• Windows Media Player Library : Fixes issues with Windows Media Player's media library.
• Windows Media Player Settings : Fixes issues with Windows Media Player's settings.
• Windows Store Apps : Repairs problems that can prevent Windows Store apps--in other words, Windows 10's new Universal Windows Platform apps--from working properly.
• Windows Update : Identifies and fixes issues that can cause Windows Update to not work at all, or fail to install some updates.

To run a troubleshooter, just click it in the Troubleshooting pane. To quickly find a relevant troubleshooter, you can perform a search from the Troubleshooting window.

The troubleshooter will launch after you click it. Just click "Next" to begin troubleshooting.

Most troubleshooters will run automatically, looking for problems and fixing any issues they find. To prevent the troubleshooter from automatically making changes to your system, click the "Advanced" link at the bottom left corner of the troubleshooter window and uncheck the "Apply Repairs Automatically" option. You'll be prompted with more information before the troubleshooter makes any changes to your system.

While most troubleshooters run automatically, some troubleshooters will give you options you need to click. For example, the Program Compatibility troubleshooter will walk you through choosing a program that isn't working properly and changing its compatibility settings. The Incoming Connections troubleshooter will ask you what you're trying to do so it know what type of incoming connection to troubleshoot.

That's about it. There isn't a troubleshooter for every issue you'll encounter, and the troubleshooters that do exist won't be able to fix every problem. But troubleshooters are a good place to start when you encounter a problem with something.

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Are computers ready to solve this notoriously unwieldy math problem?

An attempt at tackling the intractable Collatz conjecture is a “noble failure” demonstrating the promise of automated reasoning techniques.

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The computer scientist Marijn Heule is always on the lookout for a good mathematical challenge. An associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Heule has an impressive reputation for solving intractable math problems with computational tools. His 2016 result with the “Boolean Pythagorean triples problem” was an enormous headline-grabbing proof: “ Two hundred terabyte maths proof is largest ever .” Now he’s deploying an automated approach to attack the beguilingly simple Collatz conjecture.

First proposed (according to some accounts) in the 1930s by the German mathematician Lothar Collatz, this number theory problem provides a recipe, or algorithm, for generating a numerical sequence : Start with any positive integer. If the number is even, divide by two. If the number is odd, multiply by three and add one. And then do the same, again and again. The conjecture asserts that the sequence will always end up at 1 (and then continually cycle through 4, 2, 1).

The number 5, for instance, generates only six terms:

 5, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1

The number 27 cycles through 111 terms, oscillating up and down—at its height reaching 9,232—before eventually landing at 1.

The number 40 generates another brief sequence:

40, 20, 10, 5, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1

To date, the conjecture has been checked by computer for all starting values up to nearly 300 billion billion and every number eventually reaches 1.

Most researchers believe the conjecture is true. It has enticed multitudes of mathematicians and non-mathematicians alike, but nobody has produced a proof. In the early 1980s, the Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős declared: “Mathematics is not yet ready for such problems.”

“What we want to know is whether humans or computers are better at solving such problems.” Marijn Heule

“And he’s probably right,” says Heule. For Heule, Collatz’s allure isn’t so much the prospect of a breakthrough as it is advancing automated reasoning techniques. After tinkering with it for five years, Heule and his collaborators, Scott Aaronson and Emre Yolcu, recently posted a paper on the arXiv preprint server. “Although we do not succeed in proving the Collatz conjecture,” they write, “we believe that the ideas here represent an interesting new approach.”

“It’s a noble failure,” says Aaronson, a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. A failure because they didn’t prove the conjecture. Noble because they made progress in another sense: Heule views it as a starting point in determining whether humans or computers are better at proving such problems.

Translating math to computation

For many math problems, computers are hopeless, since they don’t have access to the vast oeuvre of mathematics amassed through history. But sometimes computers excel where humans are hopeless. Tell a computer what a solution looks like—give it a target and a well-defined search space—and then with brute force the computer might find it. Though it’s a matter of debate whether computational results amount to meaningful additions to the mathematical canon. The traditional view is that only human creativity and intuition, via concepts and ideas, extend the reach of mathematics, whereas advancements via computing are often dismissed as engineering.

In a sense, the computer and the Collatz conjecture are a perfect match. For one, as Jeremy Avigad, a logician and professor of philosophy at Carnegie Mellon notes, the notion of an iterative algorithm is at the foundation of computer science—and Collatz sequences are an example of an iterative algorithm, proceeding step-by-step according to a deterministic rule. Similarly, showing that a process terminates is a common problem in computer science. “Computer scientists generally want to know that their algorithms terminate, which is to say, that they always return an answer,” Avigad says. Heule and his collaborators are leveraging that technology in tackling the Collatz conjecture, which is really just a termination problem.

“The beauty of this automated method is that you can turn on the computer, and wait.” Jeffrey Lagarias

Heule’s expertise is with a computational tool called a “SAT solver”—or a “satisfiability” solver, a computer program that determines whether there is a solution for a formula or problem given a set of constraints. Though crucially, in the case of a mathematical challenge, a SAT solver first needs the problem translated, or represented, in terms that the computer understands. And as Yolcu, a PhD student with Heule, puts it: “Representation matters, a lot.”

A longshot, but worth a try

When Heule first mentioned tackling Collatz with a SAT solver, Aaronson thought, “There is no way in hell this is going to work.” But he was easily convinced it was worth a try, since Heule saw subtle ways to transform this old problem that might make it pliable. He’d noticed that a community of computer scientists were using SAT solvers to successfully find termination proofs for an abstract representation of computation called a “rewrite system.” It was a longshot, but he suggested to Aaronson that transforming the Collatz conjecture into a rewrite system might make it possible to get a termination proof for Collatz (Aaronson had previously helped transform the Riemann hypothesis into a computational system, encoding it in a small Turing machine). That evening, Aaronson designed the system. “It was like a homework assignment, a fun exercise,” he says.

"In a very literal sense I was battling a Terminator—at least a termination theorem prover." Scott Aaronson

Aaronson’s system captured the Collatz problem with 11 rules. If the researchers could get a termination proof for this analogous system, applying those 11 rules in any order, that would prove the Collatz conjecture true.

Heule tried with state-of-the-art tools for proving the termination of rewrite systems, which didn’t work—it was disappointing if not so surprising. “These tools are optimized for problems that can be solved in a minute, while any approach to solve Collatz likely requires days if not years of computation,” says Heule. This provided motivation to hone their approach and implement their own tools to transform the rewrite problem into a SAT problem.

Aaronson figured it would be much easier to solve the system minus one of the 11 rules—leaving a “Collatz-like” system, a litmus test for the larger goal. He issued a human-versus-computer challenge: The first to solve all subsystems with 10 rules wins. Aaronson tried by hand. Heule tried by SAT solver: He encoded the system as a satisfiability problem—with yet another clever layer of representation, translating the system into the computer’s lingo of variables that can be either 0s and 1s—and then let his SAT solver run on the cores, searching for evidence of termination.

They both succeeded in proving that the system terminates with the various sets of 10 rules. Sometimes it was a trivial undertaking, for both the human and the program. Heule’s automated approach took at most 24 hours. Aaronson’s approach required significant intellectual effort, taking a few hours or even a day—one set of 10 rules he never managed to prove, though he firmly believes he could have, with more effort. “In a very literal sense I was battling a Terminator,” Aaronson says—“at least a termination theorem prover.”

Yolcu has since fine-tuned the SAT solver, calibrating the tool to better fit the nature of the Collatz problem. These tricks made all the difference—speeding up the termination proofs for the 10-rule subsystems and reducing runtimes to mere seconds.

“The main question that remains,” says Aaronson, “is, What about the full set of 11? You try running the system on the full set and it just runs forever, which maybe shouldn’t shock us, because that is the Collatz problem.”

As Heule sees it, most research in automated reasoning has a blind eye for problems that require lots of computation. But based on his previous breakthroughs he believes these problems can be solved. Others have transformed Collatz as a rewrite system , but it’s the strategy of wielding a fine-tuned SAT solver at scale with formidable compute power that might gain traction toward a proof.

So far, Heule has run the Collatz investigation using about 5,000 cores (the processing units powering computers; consumer computers have four or eight cores). As an Amazon Scholar, he has an open invitation from Amazon Web Services to access “practically unlimited” resources—as many as one million cores. But he’s reluctant to use significantly more.

“I want some indication that this is a realistic attempt,” he says. Otherwise, Heule feels he’d be wasting resources and trust. “I don't need 100% confidence, but I really would like to have some evidence that there’s a reasonable chance that it’s going to succeed.”

Supercharging a transformation

“The beauty of this automated method is that you can turn on the computer, and wait,” says the mathematician Jeffrey Lagarias, of the University of Michigan. He’s toyed with Collatz for about fifty years and become keeper of the knowledge, compiling annotated bibliographies and editing a book on the subject, “ The Ultimate Challenge. ” For Lagarias, the automated approach brought to mind a 2013 paper by the Princeton mathematician John Horton Conway, who mused that the Collatz problem might be among an elusive class of problems that are true and “undecidable”—but at once not provably undecidable. As Conway noted: “… it might even be that the assertion that they are not provable is not itself provable, and so on.”

“If Conway is right,” Lagarias says, “there will be no proof, automated or not, and we will never know the answer.”

The human who’s arguably come closest is the mathematician Terence Tao, at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2019 Tao proved the Collatz conjecture is “almost” true for “almost” all numbers (“almost” relies on two different technical definitions, nonetheless according with the plain English meaning).

Tao believes a human proof of the conjecture would be more mathematically meaningful—getting at the why of it— than a computer proof. “But having a major unsolved problem fall to an automated prover could supercharge a revolutionary transformation in how mathematicians use computer assistance in their work,” he says. “With a problem as intractable as this, we will take whatever insights we can get.”

What Heule and his collaborators are really after, however, is a scenario such that—using this approach, with this problem—the computer succeeds where the human fails, or vice versa. “At this point, we don’t know whether these techniques are much stronger than what humans can do by hand or not, or whether humans can do things that the computer can’t do,” Heule says.  “What we want to know is whether humans or computers are better at solving such problems.”

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Computer Basics  - Basic Troubleshooting Techniques

Computer basics  -, basic troubleshooting techniques, computer basics basic troubleshooting techniques.

Computer Basics: Basic Troubleshooting Techniques

Lesson 19: basic troubleshooting techniques.

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Troubleshooting

Do you know what to do if your screen goes blank? What if you can't seem to close an application, or can't hear any sound from your speakers? Whenever you have a problem with your computer, don't panic! There are many basic troubleshooting techniques you can use to fix issues like this. In this lesson, we'll show you some simple things to try when troubleshooting, as well as how to solve common problems you may encounter.

General tips to keep in mind

There are many different things that could cause a problem with your computer. No matter what's causing the issue, troubleshooting will always be a process of trial and error —in some cases, you may need to use several different approaches before you can find a solution; other problems may be easy to fix. We recommend starting by using the following tips.

• Write down your steps : Once you start troubleshooting, you may want to write down each step you take. This way, you'll be able to remember exactly what you've done and can avoid repeating the same mistakes. If you end up asking other people for help, it will be much easier if they know exactly what you've tried already.
• Take notes about error messages : If your computer gives you an error message , be sure to write down as much information as possible. You may be able to use this information later to find out if other people are having the same error.

• Restart the computer : When all else fails, restarting the computer is a good thing to try. This can solve a lot of basic issues you may experience with your computer.

Using the process of elimination

If you're having an issue with your computer, you may be able to find out what's wrong using the process of elimination . This means you'll make a list of things that could be causing the problem and then test them out one by one to eliminate them. Once you've identified the source of your computer issue, it will be easier to find a solution.

Let's say you're trying to print out invitations for a birthday party, but the printer won't print. You have some ideas about what could be causing this, so you go through them one by one to see if you can eliminate any possible causes.

First, you check the printer to see that it's turned on and plugged in to the surge protector . It is, so that's not the issue. Next, you check to make sure the printer's ink cartridge still has ink and that there is paper loaded in the paper tray . Things look good in both cases, so you know the issue has nothing to do with ink or paper.

Now you want to make sure the printer and computer are communicating correctly . If you recently downloaded an update to your operating system , it might interfere with the printer. But you know there haven't been any recent updates and the printer was working yesterday, so you'll have to look elsewhere.

You check the printer's USB cord and find that it's not plugged in. You must have unplugged it accidentally when you plugged something else into the computer earlier. Once you plug in the USB cord, the printer starts working again. It looks like this printer issue is solved!

This is just one example of an issue you might encounter while using a computer. In the rest of this lesson, we'll talk about other common computer problems and some ways to solve them.

Simple solutions to common problems

Most of the time, problems can be fixed using simple troubleshooting techniques, like closing and reopening the program. It's important to try these simple solutions before resorting to more extreme measures. If the problem still isn't fixed, you can try other troubleshooting techniques.

Problem: Power button will not start computer

• Solution 1 : If your computer does not start , begin by checking the power cord to confirm that it is plugged securely into the back of the computer case and the power outlet.
• Solution 2 : If it is plugged into an outlet, make sure it is a working outlet . To check your outlet, you can plug in another electrical device , such as a lamp .

• Solution 4 : If you are using a laptop , the battery may not be charged. Plug the AC adapter into the wall, then try to turn on the laptop. If it still doesn't start up, you may need to wait a few minutes and try again.

Problem: An application is running slowly

• Solution 1 : Close and reopen the application.

Problem: An application is frozen

Sometimes an application may become stuck, or frozen . When this happens, you won't be able to close the window or click any buttons within the application.

• Solution 2 : Restart the computer. If you are unable to force quit an application, restarting your computer will close all open apps.

Problem: All programs on the computer run slowly

• Solution 2 : Your computer may be running out of hard drive space. Try deleting any files or programs you don't need.
• Solution 3 : If you're using a PC , you can run Disk Defragmenter . To learn more about Disk Defragmenter , check out our lesson on Protecting Your Computer .

Problem: The computer is frozen

Sometimes your computer may become completely unresponsive, or frozen . When this happens, you won't be able to click anywhere on the screen, open or close applications, or access shut-down options.

• Solution 3 : Press and hold the Power button. The Power button is usually located on the front or side of the computer, typically indicated by the power symbol . Press and hold the Power button for 5 to 10 seconds to force the computer to shut down.
• Solution 4 : If the computer still won't shut down, you can unplug the power cable from the electrical outlet. If you're using a laptop, you may be able to remove the battery to force the computer to turn off. Note : This solution should be your last resort after trying the other suggestions above.

Problem: The mouse or keyboard has stopped working

• Solution 2 : If you're using a wireless mouse or keyboard, make sure it's turned on and that its batteries are charged.

Problem: The sound isn't working

• Solution 1 : Check the volume level. Click the audio button in the top-right or bottom-right corner of the screen to make sure the sound is turned on and that the volume is up.
• Solution 2 : Check the audio player controls. Many audio and video players will have their own separate audio controls. Make sure the sound is turned on and that the volume is turned up in the player.
• Solution 3 : Check the cables. Make sure external speakers are plugged in, turned on, and connected to the correct audio port or a USB port. If your computer has color-coded ports, the audio output port will usually be green .

Problem: The screen is blank

• Solution 1 : The computer may be in Sleep mode. Click the mouse or press any key on the keyboard to wake it.
• Solution 2 : Make sure the monitor is plugged in and turned on .
• Solution 3 : Make sure the computer is plugged in and turned on .
• Solution 4 : If you're using a desktop, make sure the monitor cable is properly connected to the computer tower and the monitor.

Solving more difficult problems

If you still haven't found a solution to your problem, you may need to ask someone else for help. As an easy starting point, we'd recommend searching the Web . It's possible that other users have had similar problems, and solutions to these problems are often posted online. Also, if you have a friend or family member who knows a lot about computers, they may be able to help you.

Keep in mind that most computer problems have simple solutions, although it may take some time to find them. For difficult problems, a more drastic solution may be required, like reformatting your hard drive or reinstalling your operating system. If you think you might need a solution like this, we recommend consulting a professional first. If you're not a computer expert, it's possible that attempting these solutions could make the situation worse.

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December 22, 2023

The Most Important Unsolved Problem in Computer Science

Here’s a look at the $1-million math problem at the heart of computation

By Jack Murtagh

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When the Clay Mathematics Institute put individual $1-million prize bounties on seven unsolved mathematical problems , they may have undervalued one entry—by a lot. If mathematicians were to resolve, in the right way, computer science's “P versus NP” question, the result could be worth worlds more than $1 million. They'd be cracking most online-security systems, revolutionizing science and even, in effect, solving the other six of the so-called Millennium Problems, all of which were chosen in the year 2000. It's hard to overstate the stakes surrounding the most important unsolved problem in computer science .

P versus NP concerns the apparent asymmetry between finding solutions to problems and verifying solutions to problems. For example, imagine you're planning a world tour to promote your new book. You pull up Priceline and start testing routes, but each one you try blows your total trip budget. Unfortunately, as the number of cities grows on your worldwide tour, the number of possible routes to check skyrockets exponentially, making it infeasible even for computers to exhaustively search through every case. But when you complain, your book agent writes back with a solution sequence of flights. You can easily verify whether their route stays in budget by simply checking that it hits every city and summing the fares to compare against the budget limit. Notice the asymmetry here: finding a solution is hard, but verifying a solution is easy.

The P versus NP question asks whether this asymmetry is real or an illusion. If you can efficiently verify a solution to a problem, does that mean you can also efficiently find a solution? It might seem obvious that finding a solution should be harder than verifying one. But researchers have been surprised before. Problems can look similarly difficult—but when you dig deeper you find shortcuts to some and hit brick walls on others. Perhaps a clever shortcut can circumvent searching through zillions of potential routes in the book tour problem. For example, if you instead wanted to find a sequence of flights between two specific remote airports while abiding by the budget, you might also throw up your hands at the immense number of possible routes to check. In fact, this problem contains enough structure that computer scientists have developed a fast procedure (or algorithm) for it that bypasses the need for an exhaustive search.

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The P versus NP question rears its head everywhere we look in the computational world well beyond the specifics of our travel scenario—so much so that it has come to symbolize a holy grail in our understanding of computation. Yet every attempt to resolve it only further exposes how monumentally difficult it is to prove one way or another.

In the subfield of theoretical computer science called complexity theory, researchers try to pin down how easily computers can solve various types of problems. P represents the class of problems they can solve efficiently, such as sorting a column of numbers in a spreadsheet or finding the shortest path between two addresses on a map. In contrast, NP represents the class of problems for which computers can verify solutions efficiently. Our book tour problem, which academics call the Traveling Salesperson Problem , lives in NP because we have an efficient procedure for verifying that the agent's solution worked.

Notice that NP actually contains P as a subset because solving a problem outright is one way to verify a solution to it. For example, how would you verify that 27 × 89 = 2,403? You would solve the multiplication problem yourself and check that your answer matches the claimed one. We typically depict the relation between P and NP with a simple Venn diagram:

Credit: Amanda Montañez

The region inside of NP but not inside of P contains problems that can't be solved with any known efficient algorithm. (Theoretical computer scientists use a technical definition for “efficient” that can be debated, but it serves as a useful proxy for the colloquial concept.) But we don't know whether that's because such algorithms don't exist or we just haven't mustered the ingenuity to discover them. This representation provides another way to phrase the P versus NP question: Are these classes actually distinct? Or does the Venn diagram collapse into one circle? Can all NP problems be solved efficiently?

Here are some examples of problems in NP that are not currently known to be in P:

Given a social network, is there a group of a specified size in which all of the people in it are friends with one another?

Given a varied collection of boxes to be shipped, can all of them be fit into a specified number of trucks?

Given a sudoku (generalized to n × n puzzle grids), does it have a solution?

Given a map, can the countries be colored with only three colors such that no two neighboring countries are the same color?

Ask yourself how you would verify proposed solutions to some of the problems listed and then how you would find a solution. Note that approximating a solution or solving a small instance (most of us can solve a 9 × 9 sudoku ) doesn't suffice. To qualify as solving a problem, an algorithm needs to find an exact solution for all instances, including very large ones.

Each of the problems can be solved via brute-force search (for example, try every possible coloring of the map and see whether any of them work), but the number of cases to try grows exponentially with the size of the problem. This means that if we call the size of the problem n (for example, the number of countries on the map or the number of boxes to pack into trucks), then the number of cases to check looks something like 2 n . The world's fastest supercomputers have no hope against exponential growth. Even when n equals 300, a tiny input size by modern data standards, 2 300 exceeds the number of atoms in the observable universe. After hitting “go” on such an algorithm, your computer would display a spinning pinwheel that would outlive you and your descendants.

Thousands of other problems belong on our list. From cell biology to game theory, the P versus NP question reaches into far corners of science and industry. If P = NP (that is, our Venn diagram dissolves into a single circle, and we obtain fast algorithms for these seemingly hard problems), then the entire digital economy would become vulnerable to collapse. This is because much of the cryptography that secures such things as your credit card number and passwords works by shrouding private information behind computationally difficult problems that can become easy to solve only if you know the secret key. Online security as we know it rests on unproven mathematical assumptions that crumble if P = NP.

Amazingly, we can even cast mathematics itself as an NP problem because we can program computers to efficiently verify proofs. In fact, legendary mathematician Kurt Gödel first posed the P versus NP problem in a letter to his colleague John von Neumann in 1956. Gödel observed that P = NP “would have consequences of the greatest importance. Namely, it would obviously mean that ... the mental work of a mathematician concerning yes-or-no questions could be completely replaced by a machine.”

If you're a mathematician worried for your job, rest assured that most experts believe that P does not equal NP. Aside from the intuition that sometimes solutions should be harder to find than to verify, thousands of the hardest NP problems that are not known to be in P have sat unsolved across disparate fields, glowing with incentives of fame and fortune, and yet not one person has designed an efficient algorithm for a single one of them.

Of course, gut feeling and a lack of counterexamples don't constitute a proof. To prove that P is different from NP, you somehow have to rule out all potential algorithms for all of the hardest NP problems, a task that appears out of reach for current mathematical techniques. Indeed, the field has coped by proving so-called barrier theorems, which say that entire categories of tempting proof strategies to resolve P versus NP cannot succeed. Not only have we failed to find a proof, but we also have no clue what an eventual proof might look like.

Computer Science: definition and areas of expertise

Computer science is about much more than programming; It teaches you how to think more methodically, how to solve problems more effectively, and how to create solutions using technology. These skills and knowledge can be applied to practically any domain of interest to you: Consumer goods, social media, communication, healthcare, travel, game, art, etc.

In simple terms, computer science is the study of information ( data ) and how it can be processed ( algorithms ) to solve problems, in theory but also in practice.

There is no other career where you can touch so many people’s lives !

Computer science provides the creative energy for the digital transformations on almost all aspects of life. The way we communicate, socialize, travel booking, shop, design/produce/deliver products... And it continues to be an exciting field as the technological advancements continue to grow and evolve: Data Science/Analytics, Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Autonomous Robots, Augmented Reality… Computers are so ubiquitous in the modern world that the need for more CS graduates with the skills to understand systems and create technology solutions will only continue to grow. 

Computers use data structures and algorithms to accomplish complex calculations. The study of computer science takes these capabilities to the next level while improving and inventing new computing machines that can improve people's lives.

Be part of the creation process of this new wave of innovation

If you want to have an impact on the highly connected digital world, learn programming languages, and master data structures, networks, operating systems, and cyber technologies, Computer Science is for you .

The fast-moving field of IT is a vibrant and ever-changing one, as new technologies arise, go mainstream, and then change again. From game development to scientific research, there will be plenty of opportunities for you to make people's lives easier and more enjoyable.

Computer Science: Topics of study

The major areas of study in computer science are programming, data structures, algorithms, database systems,computer networks, software engineering , cybersecurity, and IT project management.

Computer Science, both hardware and software!

The hardware side of computing overlaps with electrical engineering. It covers the basic design of computers and how they work. A basic understanding of how a computer thinks, or carries out calculations, forms the basis for understanding more advanced concepts. Understanding how a computer works in binary, for example, enables you to figure out how computers will add, subtract, and carry out other operations. Learning about logic gates allows you to understand the architecture of processors.

The software aspect of computer science encompasses programming concepts as well as dedicated programming languages. Programming concepts include functions, algorithms, and source code design. Computer science further provides coverage of compilers, operating systems, and software applications. User-oriented aspects of computer science include computer graphics and user interface design. Creation

Since almost all computers are now connected to the Internet, computer science also covers Internet technologies. This includes Internet protocols, telecommunications and networking concepts. It also includes practical applications, such as web design and network administration.

Computer Science : The art of teaching computers

The field of computer Science is halfway between art and science. Understanding, learning, creating and teaching how the computer thinks is a science, but programming languages and coding is an art.

The art of creating not only a bunch of symbols and letters, but to create a real language.

Is Bachelor of Computer Science made for me ?

Yes if you approach issues from unconventional angles, are naturally curious and inquisitive, are willing to evolve and learn new things every day, feel compelled to solve problems and puzzles, have enough grit to endure long periods of frustration and search for solutions, know how to search the web for answers, think in a logical, step-by-step manner. 

Feel ready to join International Institute in Geneva, get a Computer Science degree and bring things further ?

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Home » Tech Basics » Digital Literacy » Troubleshooting Basic Computer Problems

How to Troubleshoot Basic Computer Problems to Fix Your Computer

A big reason that discourages some people from trying to become familiar with computers and other digital technology devices is that they seem far too complex to understand. While that can be true in some respects, in a lot of other ways, it’s not. In fact, most consumer-grade digital technology is being made more accessible and intuitive all the time.

Just a heads-up that some of the services we’re reviewing here have affiliate partnerships with us, so we may earn a commission if you visit one of them and buy something. You can read more about how this works at https://techboomers.com/how-to-support-techboomers .

Part of that is making computers easier to fix when something doesn’t work correctly. And even computer troubleshooting isn’t always as difficult as you might think. To demonstrate, this article will give you some simple tips and techniques for how to fix a computer. Here’s a quick rundown of our agenda:

What is troubleshooting?

10 common computer problems and how to troubleshoot them, 7 general tips for troubleshooting computer problems.

Stick with us, and soon you’ll be a basic computer troubleshooting whiz!

“Troubleshooting” usually describes the act of fixing problems that cause machines (especially computers) to stop working, work sub-optimally, or otherwise do something irregular. Specifically, though, it actually refers to a particular problem-solving system that works through several steps.

A basic representation of the troubleshooting process looks something like this:

• Identify the specific problem – Determine exactly what it is your computer is not doing that you want it to do, or doing that you don’t want it to do.
• Consider relations to similar scenarios – Think about problems that you may have had with your computer before that were like your current one. Recall how those problems were solved, and consider what was the same or different in those instances.
• Hypothesize and treat common causes – Brainstorm some simple things that could make your computer not act in the particular way you want it to. Check and fix these things, and then see if that stops the problem and keeps it from coming back soon afterward. If it does, you’re done! If not, proceed to step 4.
• Test relevant components – If none of the common solutions work, methodically check parts (all of them, if you have to) of each system on your computer that could be responsible for the problem.
• Implement a solution on the problem component – If you think you’ve narrowed down what part of your computer is causing your issue, come up with a strategy for how to fix it, and then test it out.
• Verify that the issue is resolved – After working on the allegedly faulty computer component, if the problem is gone and doesn’t quickly start reoccurring (and, therefore, your computer is working normally again), you’re done! If not, go back to step 4.

Now that you know what the troubleshooting process is and how it works, let’s see it in action! Here are some common computer maladies and how to work through them.

1. My computer runs slowly.

General description:

Your computer takes a long time to boot up, programs take a long time to open, and both system and application functions take longer than usual to respond to your inputs.

Common causes:

• You have too many windows open at once, or too many programs running at once.
• Your computer’s registry is fragmented or corrupted.
• Your computer has installed a virus or other malware program.
• Your computer doesn’t have enough RAM to run all the programs you want it to.

Troubleshooting suggestions:

• Close any windows and quit any programs that you aren’t immediately using.
• Go to your Control Panel and uninstall old programs that you don’t use anymore.
• Open your Task Manager and stop programs or processes that don’t need to be running.
• Install and run an antivirus program to repair infected files.
• Take your computer to a repair shop to get its RAM upgraded.

2. I’m stuck on the “Blue Screen of Death.”

This is more officially known as a “STOP error,” and it shows up when your computer’s operating system determines that it can’t run your computer safely at the moment. It has various causes, some of which are more serious than others. Be sure to read the specific error message for hints on what went wrong.

• A piece of hardware on your computer is malfunctioning or is not compatible.
• The software controlling a piece of hardware (i.e. “driver” or “firmware”) is out of date.
• Your main hard disk doesn’t have enough free memory space available on it.
• Your BIOS or other hardware settings are misconfigured.
• Use System Restore to revert your computer to a state where it was working.
• Install updates for your operating system, device drivers, BIOS, and other programs.
• Change the settings for your BIOS and hardware back to their defaults.
• Make sure all hardware components of your computer are properly installed.
• Test your computer’s hardware for failures (likely RAM or hard disk ), and replace if necessary.

3. My computer won’t turn on.

You press the power button and your computer won’t turn on, or it powers up and then promptly shuts down. The good news (if you can call it that) is that this is almost always a hardware problem, so you can usually immediately rule out any software-related culprits.

• One or more power switches to your computer system aren’t turned on.
• Your computer’s power supply or power cord is missing, unplugged, or faulty.
• One or more of your computer’s hardware components are improperly connected or faulty.
• Your computer’s CMOS battery is out of power.
• The power button itself isn’t working.
• Make sure each switch leading to your computer’s power supply is on.
• Make sure all power cables on your computer are connected and set to the correct voltage.
• Remove all intermediary power sources and plug your computer directly into an outlet.
• Disconnect all peripheral devices (mouse, keyboard, etc.) before trying to start your computer.
• Open your computer case and make sure all hardware components are properly connected.
• Replace your CMOS battery .
• Replace your hard drive or motherboard.

4. My computer continually or randomly restarts or shuts down, especially while it’s booting.

Your computer randomly restarts or shuts down on you while you’re using it. Or, shortly after booting up, your computer crashes and shuts down or forces you to restart it. Like the “Blue Screen of Death” (which is sometimes associated with this problem), this can be caused by a few different things, and some of them require more work to fix than others.

• Your operating system is missing a key update.
• One or more of your computer’s device driver programs are out of date.
• Your computer’s motherboard, RAM, and/or hard disk are damaged.

How to troubleshoot it:

• Make sure you have installed all recommended update packages for your operating system.
• Make sure the device drivers for your computer’s hardware components are all up-to-date.
• Install, update, and run an antivirus program to repair infected files.
• Take out a RAM module and start your computer. If it doesn’t work, put it back and try another.
• Replace your hard drive and/or RAM modules, with an experienced repair person if necessary.

5. Parts of my computer are beeping or making strange noises.

You should hear minimal noise coming from your computer if it’s running optimally. But if the hard drive starts beeping, or other hardware parts start making more noise than usual, it could be a sign of a problem with your computer.

• A CD/DVD-ROM or external disk drive may be trying to access files (most of which is normal).
• One or more of your computer’s cooling fans are broken or working sub-optimally.
• A RAM module or other piece of hardware is malfunctioning or is incorrectly installed.
• The hard drive is close to failing.
• The motherboard has detected some other manner of problem .
• Remove any disks from your CD/DVD-ROM drive and disconnect any external disk drives.
• Clean your computer fans with something, like a compressed air can, or repair or replace them.
• Check the BIOS settings to make sure they’re running the fans correctly.
• Remove all RAM modules and then properly re-insert them.
• Remove any newly-installed hardware components and re-insert, repair, or replace them.
• Back up the files on your hard drive and then get it replaced.

6. My computer is overheating.

Parts of your computer feel abnormally hot when you touch them or put your extremities near them. This is usually a problem with your computer’s fans or other cooling systems, but that may have indirect causes as well, such as putting a bigger data load on your computer than it can handle.

• The airflow through your computer’s case is restricted or blocked.
• Your BIOS settings are running your computer faster than it can handle (“overclocking”).
• Adjust the BIOS settings to run the fans correctly and not run your CPU faster than it can handle.
• Make sure the vents to and from your computer’s fans aren’t blocked.
• Install and use a program that can control the speed of your computer’s fans.

7. My computer’s peripheral devices, like the mouse and keyboard, aren’t working.

Extra hardware devices that you attach to your computer – like a keyboard, mouse, or external disk drive ­– aren’t working or are acting differently than they normally do. This is mainly a connection or driver issue, but it may be something else.

• One or more of your computer’s connection ports aren’t working properly.
• Settings on your computer regarding the device have been improperly configured.
• The component itself isn’t working due to being damaged or dirty.
• Unplug the faulty device from your computer, then plug it back in (to another port, if you can).
• Go to your Control Panel and change your settings (start with “Ease of Access”).
• Clean the faulty device (taking it apart if you need to), or get it repaired or replaced.

8. My computer suddenly freezes while I’m using it.

You’re using your computer normally, when all of a sudden, the screen stops moving and your input devices don’t respond. It happens to most of us every once in a while, but if it happens repeatedly, you may have a bigger problem on your hands.

• A software program on your computer has experienced an error.
• One or more of your computer’s processes is taking up too much memory and CPU power.
• Open your Task Manager and stop programs that aren’t responding.
• Open your Task Manager and stop processes that are taking up a lot of memory or CPU power.

9. I think my computer has installed a virus or other form of malware.

As we’ve discussed, a virus or malware program can be responsible for all sorts of nasty things that happen to your computer: it slows down, unwantedly runs or changes programs, sporadically restarts or shuts down, repeatedly crashes, and more. Fortunately, its possible causes are relatively limited, and there’s quite a bit that you can do about one.

• You opened or downloaded a file that contained a malware program.
• You connected a device to your computer whose files were infected with malware.
• You visited a website that was infected with malware.
• Disconnect all removable disk drives from your computer.
• Download, install, and update the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool .
• Download, install, and update a leading antivirus program .
• Disconnect your computer from the Internet.
• Reboot your computer in Safe Mode .
• Run the Malicious Software Removal Tool and the antivirus program you installed.
• Re-connect to the Internet.
• Make sure your computer’s built-in Microsoft Security Features are operating and up-to-date.
• Know how to spot and avoid unsafe files and sites on the Internet .
• Install browser extensions to detect and block malware before it reaches your computer.

10. My computer can’t maintain a connection to the Internet.

You can’t use a web browser or other Internet-related service because you can’t connect to the Internet. Or, while you’re using the Internet, you get an error message because your computer has disconnected.

• Your Internet router may not be plugged in or working properly.
• There may be too much distance or interference between your computer and your router.
• The driver for your computer’s network card may be out of date.
• Your computer’s network card may not be receiving the power it needs.
• Make sure your Internet router is plugged in and working. If not, repair or replace it.
• Move your computer closer to your router, and/or move obstacles out of the way.
• Update the driver program for your computer’s network card.
• Go to “Wireless Adapter Settings” in “Power Options” and set to “Maximum Performance.”
• Call your Internet Service Provider and inquire about the problem.

If you’re not quite sure what the problem is, or none of those solutions worked for you, our tips below might help you get your computer up and running again.

1. Turn it off, and then turn it on again.

Shutting down and restarting your computer resets programs and processes that may have been experiencing errors or glitches. This will usually solve minor problems quickly and easily.

2. If you don’t know something, ask!

Write down information that you don’t quite understand as it appears while you troubleshoot, like error messages. Then, discuss it with a computer-savvy friend or family member, or look it up online. Chances are good that someone else knows what it means and what to do about it.

3. Start with simple fixes, and then rule out possibilities from there.

Save yourself time, money, and hassle by starting with the easy solutions first, then trying more complicated fixes if those don’t work.

4. Check your device connections.

Something on your computer may not be working simply because it isn’t plugged in properly, or at all. Make sure all parts are secured snugly to each other and that all sockets are working normally.

5. Boot your computer in Safe Mode.

Starting your computer in Safe Mode disables some advanced functions of your computer. If Safe Mode works fine but a normal boot-up doesn’t, you’ll know that your computer has a problem with something like its device drivers, a rogue start-up program, or a faulty peripheral device.

6. Keep your programs up-to-date.

Updating your software can not only potentially fix current computer problems, but it may prevent future ones by fixing glitches and other security vulnerabilities that can be exploited.

7. If all else fails, re-install the operating system.

This will reset everything, including (theoretically) any programs, malware, or faulty settings that were giving your computer trouble. Make sure to back up your data before you do this, though, because you’ll need to load it back onto the system afterwards.

Now you have some basic knowledge for how to fix your computer if something goes wrong with it! For more info on how to make your computer and Internet experiences as smooth as possible, visit our Internet 101 section. Or check out our entire Technology Basics  category, which includes the Digital Literacy section with information and tips on mastering all things digital!

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Aatish Bhatia

The Questions That Computers Can Never Answer

Computers can drive cars, land a rover on Mars, and beat humans at Jeopardy . But do you ever wonder if there's anything that a computer can never do? Computers are, of course, limited by their hardware. My smartphone can't double as an electric razor (yet). But that's a physical limitation, one that we could overcome if we really wanted to. So let me be a little more precise in what I mean. What I'm asking is, are there any questions that a computer can never answer?

Now of course, there are plenty of questions that are really hard for computers to answer. Here's an example. In school, we learn how to factor numbers. So, for example, 30 = 2 × 3 × 5, or 42 = 2 × 3 × 7. School kids learn to factor numbers by following a straightforward, algorithmic procedure. Yet, up until 2007, there was a $100,000 bounty on factoring this number:

13506641086599522334960321627880596993888147560566702752448514385152651060 48595338339402871505719094417982072821644715513736804197039641917430464965 89274256239341020864383202110372958725762358509643110564073501508187510676 59462920556368552947521350085287941637732853390610975054433499981115005697 7236890927563

And as of 2014, no one has publicly claimed the solution to this puzzle. It's not that we don't know how to solve it, it's just that it would take way too long. Our computers are too slow. (In fact, the encryption that makes the internet possible relies on these huge numbers being impossibly difficult to factor.)

So lets rephrase our question so that it isn't limited by current technology. __Are there any questions that, __no matter how powerful your computer, and no matter how long you waited, your computer would never be able to answer?

Surprisingly, the answer is yes. The Halting Problem asks whether a computer program will stop after some time, or whether it will keep running forever. This is a very practical concern, because an infinite loop is a common type of bug that can subtly creep in to one's code. In 1936, the brilliant mathematician and codebreaker Alan Turing proved that it's impossible for a computer to inspect any code that you give it, and correctly tell you whether the code will halt or run forever. In other words, Turing showed that a computer can never solve the Halting Problem.

You've probably experienced this situation: you're copying some files, and the progress bar gets stuck (typically at 99%). At what point do you give up on waiting for it to move? How would you know whether it's going to stay stuck forever, or whether, in a few hundred years, it'll eventually copy your file? To use an analogy by Scott Aaronson , " If you bet a friend that your watch will never stop ticking, when could you declare victory? "

As you get sick of waiting for the copy bar to move, you begin to wonder, wouldn't it be great if someone wrote a debugging program that could weed out all annoying bugs like this? Whoever wrote that program could sell it to Microsoft for a ton of money. But before you get to work on writing it yourself, you should heed Turing's advice - a computer can never reliably inspect someone's code and tell you whether it will halt or run forever.

Reece Rogers

Steven Levy

Brenda Stolyar

Think about how bold a claim this is. Turing isn't talking about what we can do today, instead he's raised a fundamental limitation on what computers can possibly do. Be it now, or in the year 2450, there isn't, and never will be, any computer program that can solve the Halting Problem.

In his proof, Turing first had to mathematically define what we mean by a computer and a program. With this groundwork covered, he could deliver the final blow using the time honored tactic of proof by contradiction . As a warm up to understanding Turing's proof, let's think about a toy problem called the Liar paradox . Imagine someone tells you, "this sentence is false." If that sentence is true, then going by what they said, it must also be false. Similarly, if the sentence is false, then it accurately describes itself, so it must also be true. But it can't be both true and false - so we have a contradiction. This idea of using self-reference to create a contradiction is at the heart of Turing's proof.

Here's how computer scientist Scott Aaronson introduces it :

[Turing's] proof is a beautiful example of self-reference. It formalizes an old argument about why you can never have perfect introspection: because if you could, then you could determine what you were going to do ten seconds from now, and then do something else. Turing imagined that there was a special machine that could solve the Halting Problem. Then he showed how we could have this machine analyze itself, in such a way that it has to halt if it runs forever, and run forever if it halts. Like a hound that finally catches its tail and devours itself, the mythical machine vanishes in a fury of contradiction.

Michael Holden

And so, let's go through Turing's proof that the Halting Problem can never be solved by a computer, or why you could never program a 'loop snooper'. The proof I'm about to present is a rather unconventional one. It's a poem written by Geoffrey Pullum in honor of Alan Turing, in the style of Dr. Seuss. I've reproduced it here, in entirety, with his permission.

SCOOPING THE LOOP SNOOPER A proof that the Halting Problem is undecidable Geoffrey K. Pullum No general procedure for bug checks will do. Now, I won’t just assert that, I’ll prove it to you. I will prove that although you might work till you drop, you cannot tell if computation will stop. For imagine we have a procedure called P that for specified input permits you to see whether specified source code, with all of its faults, defines a routine that eventually halts. You feed in your program, with suitable data, and P gets to work, and a little while later (in finite compute time) correctly infers whether infinite looping behavior occurs. If there will be no looping, then P prints out ‘Good.’ That means work on this input will halt, as it should. But if it detects an unstoppable loop, then P reports ‘Bad!’ — which means you’re in the soup. Well, the truth is that P cannot possibly be, because if you wrote it and gave it to me, I could use it to set up a logical bind that would shatter your reason and scramble your mind. Here’s the trick that I’ll use — and it’s simple to do. I’ll define a procedure, which I will call Q, that will use P’s predictions of halting success to stir up a terrible logical mess. For a specified program, say A, one supplies, the first step of this program called Q I devise is to find out from P what’s the right thing to say of the looping behavior of A run on A. If P’s answer is ‘Bad!’, Q will suddenly stop. But otherwise, Q will go back to the top, and start off again, looping endlessly back, till the universe dies and turns frozen and black. And this program called Q wouldn’t stay on the shelf; I would ask it to forecast its run on itself. When it reads its own source code, just what will it do? What’s the looping behavior of Q run on Q? If P warns of infinite loops, Q will quit; yet P is supposed to speak truly of it! And if Q’s going to quit, then P should say ‘Good.’ Which makes Q start to loop! (P denied that it would.) No matter how P might perform, Q will scoop it: Q uses P’s output to make P look stupid. Whatever P says, it cannot predict Q: P is right when it’s wrong, and is false when it’s true! I’ve created a paradox, neat as can be — and simply by using your putative P. When you posited P you stepped into a snare; Your assumption has led you right into my lair. So where can this argument possibly go? I don’t have to tell you; I’m sure you must know. A reductio: There cannot possibly be a procedure that acts like the mythical P. You can never find general mechanical means for predicting the acts of computing machines; it’s something that cannot be done. So we users must find our own bugs. Our computers are losers!

What you just read, in delightfully whimsical poetic form, was the punchline of Turing's proof. Here's a visual representation of the same idea. The diamond represents the loop-snooping program P, which is asked to evaluate whether the program Q (the flow chart) will halt.

"The program will halt when the loop snooper said it wouldn't, and it runs forever when the loop snooper said it would halt!"

Like the serpent that tries to eat its tail, Turing conjured up a self-referential paradox. The program will halt when the loop snooper said it wouldn't, and it runs forever when the loop snooper said it would halt! To resolve this contradiction, we're forced to conclude that this loop snooping program can't exist.

And this idea has far-reaching consequences. There are uncountably many questions for which computers can't reliably give you the right answer . Many of these impossible questions are really just the loop snooper in disguise. Among the things that a computer can never do perfectly is identifying whether a program is a virus, or whether it contains vulnerable code that can be exploited. So much for our hopes of having the perfect anti-virus software or unbreakable software. It's also impossible for a computer to always tell you whether two different programs do the same thing, an unfortunate fact for the poor souls who have to grade computer science homework.

By slaying the mythical loop snooper, Turing taught us that there are fundamental limits to what computers can do. We all have our limits, and in a way it's comforting to know that the artificial brains that we create will always have theirs too.

Emily Mullin

Victoria St. Martin

Caitlin Kelly

Lyndie Chiou

6 common computer problems... and how to fix them

No one likes it when your computer suddenly stops working, so we’ve listed the most common computer problems and explained how to fix each one.

The most common computer problems might be something a lot of people have to struggle with, but that doesn't mean you have to. Now you're here, you no longer need to worry about that spinning wheel of doom or the jolting error messages that come with a blue screen of death. You've found the fix.

A computer crash, when everything freezes, can be annoying at best but may be catastrophic if you're working and you end up losing your efforts. Yes, cloud storage is a great way to work to help offset this, but even that can have issues.

You may have already wisely invested in the best home computers or the best laptops , but there can still be issues. Often those issues are in the form of error messages which make little to no sense to a normal human being. That's why we're going to get ahead of the problems before they arrive, or at least know how to fix them should we run into trouble. While this guide will help you it's also worth checking out the best repair software for PC should you need to take this even further.

1. WiFi is slow or patchy

The most common issue these days that really grinds our gears is WiFi connectivity problems. Since most cloud-based programs now rely on that WiFi bandwidth to work, it has become the bottleneck through which everything else must pass. As a result, slow or inconsistent WiFi means much of what you're running can be backed up.

Slow WiFi can mean poor video chat connections on Zoom, it can mean buffering wait times for video and audio streaming, it can even mean documents are not saved properly leaving you at risk of losing work. That's all without even considering large file downloads which take up even more bandwidth. 

The fix While WiFi is a complicated beast, and everyone's setup is slightly different, the classic go-to first fix is one you probably already know and the one that works best: turn the WiFi off and on again. But there is an art to doing even this correctly. The key here is to make sure your connection is totally down, before you power on again. This means you'll be assigned a new IP address and any of your caches will be cleared. 

To do this right, go to your WiFi router and unplug it. That's a total power off, guaranteed. Then wait at least one minute. Ideally, if you can spare it, wait five for good measure. Then plug the power back in and wait for everything to get back online. This can take a good five minutes and may need a while to 'settle', so it's worth giving 10 to 15 minutes before you jump back in, ideally.

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Another good move is to restart any devices you're using, regularly. For laptops, phones and desktop computers, that means a shut down and power on at least once a day. You get to sleep and refresh, why shouldn't your hard working gadget?

To see how well this all works, carry out a speedtest first, then go through the process and do a speed test again. You may be surprised to see how much faster everything is running after this refresher. 

2. Blue Screen of Death (BSoD)

The 'blue screen of death' is one of the most recognisable computer errors that can occur, and if you’ve ever used a PC there’s a good chance that you might have encountered a blue screen of death error already.

What usually happens is that your PC will become unresponsive for a few seconds, and then the screen will turn completely blue and an error message (that’s sometimes completely indecipherable) will appear. Your PC will then restart, and if you’re lucky you won’t have lost too much work. 

While the name ‘blue screen of death‘ started off as a bit of a joke, it hints at how scary this error message can be. If you get a blue screen of death without saving your work, the resulting reboot of your PC can make you lose any changes you've made to a document.

While some blue screen of death errors are one offs, most of the time they are an indication that there’s something wrong with your PC, and there are a number of reasons why you may get a blue screen of death error. Failing hardware, corrupted software, missing DLL files or problems with drivers can be the main culprits. 

The fix The way to fix a blue screen of death error will vary depending on what caused it to appear. The good news is that in Windows 10, Microsoft has made the blue screen of death error message more useful than the baffling codes of old. 

There will also be a QR code that is displayed along with the error message. Use your smartphone to scan the QR code and you should be taken to a webpage that will explain the error message in more detail, and offer advice on how to fix it.

3. Windows is slow to boot

A slow-booting PC is one of the most common - and annoying - computer problems you can encounter. Luckily, it’s also one of the easiest to fix. There are several reasons why your PC will take a long time to load up - but the most common cause is that there will be too many programs trying to load up in the background when Windows starts.

You may notice when you install a new program that it sets itself to load when you first log into Windows. While this can sometimes be useful, as a means those programs open up quickly when you need them, when too many of them try to start up once it can slow your PC to a crawl. The easiest way to fix this problem is to identify what programs are loading up when Windows starts and disable any programs that you do not need.

The fix To fix this, open up the Task Manager in Windows 10 by pressing CTRL + Shift + Esc on your keyboard. In the Task Manager window, click on the ‘Start-up’ tab at the top of the window. This lists all the apps and programs that load when Windows 10 starts up. If this is a long list, that will be the cause of your PC being slow to boot.

In the Task Manager, you’ll see the name of the app followed by the publisher, its status and the start-up impact. If it says “High” in the ‘Start-up impact’ column, then that means the program is slowing down Windows 10’s boot-up speed. If you don’t need the app to load when Windows starts, then right-click on its entry and select ‘Disable’. This will prevent the app from loading when Windows 10 starts.

Remember, this doesn’t mean you won’t be able to use the app when you need it, it just means it doesn’t preload with Windows. Hopefully, disabling a number of these apps will make a noticeable difference to the time it takes for Windows 10 to load.

If you find that your PC is still slow to boot, there may be other issues affecting it. For example, you may want to check that you have the latest updates and drivers installed for your hardware. If you really want to give your PC a speed boost when it comes to boot times, then you may want to think about installing an SSD in your PC and running Windows 10 from that. An SSD (Solid State Drive) is a much faster drive than a traditional hard drive and installing Windows 10 on one can make a huge difference to how fast it boots.

4. Applications won’t install

Another common computing problem that many people face are applications not installing. The main reason for this is a lack of hard drive space. If your hard drive has become full, it may mean that you are no longer able to install new applications. If this is the case, then you’ll need to do a bit of spring cleaning.  

The fix First of all, you can delete any large files that you no longer need. Open up File Explorer and then navigate to your Downloads folder. This folder often holds lots of large files that you no longer need, so feel free to delete any large files from there. 

You can also free up hard drive space by uninstalling any programs that you no longer use. In the search box in the Taskbar (this is the bar that runs along the bottom of your screen in Windows 10) type in “uninstall”, then click on ‘Add or remove programs’. Scroll down the list of programs that is displayed and click on any that you no longer need. A button will appear saying ‘Uninstall’. Click it to remove the program from your PC. 

You can also get Windows 10 to clean up your hard drive for you. Again, in the search box of the taskbar, type in “disk cleanup” and then press return on your keyboard. From the window that appears, select the drive that you want to clean up. By default this will be the C: drive, which is where Windows 10 and the majority of the programs will be installed. Click ‘OK’, and Windows 10’s Disk Clean-up tool for scan your drive and find files that you can safely delete to free up disk space. From the window that appears you’ll see how much space you can save on your hard drive. Tick the box next to each type of file that you want to remove then click ‘OK’.

5. Windows Update problems

It’s important to keep Windows 10 updated to ensure that your PC runs as well as possible, whilst also being protected against the latest security threats. Even the best antivirus software won't keep you safe if your version of Windows is out of date. However, there are times when you may encounter a problem when updating Windows 10. 

One of the most common problems with Windows Update is when an update fails to install. You will usually see an error message appear explaining that the update has not been successful. Most of the time, this error message is quite good at explaining what the problem is and how to fix it, and one of the most common reasons for Windows update not installing is incompatible software. This means you may have an old version of an app or program that is preventing the Windows update to install. If this is the case, the error message should explain which program is causing the issue. 

The fix Either uninstall the program which is causing the error, or visit the developer’s website to make sure you have the latest version installed. Afterwards, try installing the update again. 

Another reason why a Windows update may fail to install is due to a lack of hard drive space. Each update requires a minimum amount of hard drive space to be available to install correctly, and if your hard drive is too full, then the installation will fail. To fix this problem, free up hard drive space using the methods we outlined in the step above.

If you find that your computer is behaving erratically after installing a Windows update, then it could be that the Windows update itself is causing the problem. To fix this, you will need to uninstall the update. To do this type in “Windows update” into the Taskbar search box and select ‘Windows Update settings‘. In the window that appears, click ‘View update history’. Then, select either ‘Uninstall updates’ or ‘Recovery options’ and follow the steps to uninstall the problem update. Make sure you check Microsoft’s support website to see if Microsoft has released a permanent fix for the problem update.

6. Apps behaving badly

Another common PC problem is when apps and programs start acting strangely. Perhaps they suddenly close down without warning, or maybe documents look a bit strange in Word. 

Once again, there is a wide range of reasons why an app may not be working correctly. 

The fix The first thing you should do is save your work, then restart your PC. Load up the app, and see if it is now working as intended.

If there’s still an issue, you next port of call should be an internet search engine, where you can type in the name of the program and a description of the issue. Hopefully, other people will have had similar issues, figured out how to fix it, and shared their solutions online. 

It’s also worth checking the website of the developers of the app to see if they have released a fix. If the developer’s website has a forum, that can be a good place to look for fixes. While you’re there, make sure you have the latest updates installed. If that fails to fix the problem, it may be worth contacting the app’s support team for more help with fixing the problem.

Luke is a veteran tech journalist with decades of experience covering everything from TVs, power tools, science and health tech to VPNs, space, gaming and cars. You may recognize him from appearances on plenty of news channels or have read his words which have been published in most tech titles over the years. In his spare time (of which he has little as a father of two) Luke likes yoga, surfing, meditation, DIY and consuming all the books, comics and movies he can find.

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Generative AI is transforming the software development industry. AI-powered coding tools are assisting programmers in their workflows, while jobs in AI continue to increase. But the shift is also evident in academia—one of the major avenues through which the next generation of software engineers learn how to code.

Computer science students are embracing the technology, using generative AI to help them understand complex concepts, summarize complicated research papers, brainstorm ways to solve a problem, come up with new research directions, and, of course, learn how to code.

“Students are early adopters and have been actively testing these tools,” says Johnny Chang , a teaching assistant at Stanford University pursuing a master’s degree in computer science. He also founded the AI x Education conference in 2023, a virtual gathering of students and educators to discuss the impact of AI on education.

So as not to be left behind, educators are also experimenting with generative AI. But they’re grappling with techniques to adopt the technology while still ensuring students learn the foundations of computer science.

“It’s a difficult balancing act,” says Ooi Wei Tsang , an associate professor in the School of Computing at the National University of Singapore . “Given that large language models are evolving rapidly, we are still learning how to do this.”

Less Emphasis on Syntax, More on Problem Solving

The fundamentals and skills themselves are evolving. Most introductory computer science courses focus on code syntax and getting programs to run, and while knowing how to read and write code is still essential, testing and debugging—which aren’t commonly part of the syllabus—now need to be taught more explicitly.

“We’re seeing a little upping of that skill, where students are getting code snippets from generative AI that they need to test for correctness,” says Jeanna Matthews , a professor of computer science at Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y.

Another vital expertise is problem decomposition. “This is a skill to know early on because you need to break a large problem into smaller pieces that an LLM can solve,” says Leo Porter , an associate teaching professor of computer science at the University of California, San Diego . “It’s hard to find where in the curriculum that’s taught—maybe in an algorithms or software engineering class, but those are advanced classes. Now, it becomes a priority in introductory classes.”

“Given that large language models are evolving rapidly, we are still learning how to do this.” —Ooi Wei Tsang, National University of Singapore

As a result, educators are modifying their teaching strategies. “I used to have this singular focus on students writing code that they submit, and then I run test cases on the code to determine what their grade is,” says Daniel Zingaro , an associate professor of computer science at the University of Toronto Mississauga . “This is such a narrow view of what it means to be a software engineer, and I just felt that with generative AI, I’ve managed to overcome that restrictive view.”

Zingaro, who coauthored a book on AI-assisted Python programming with Porter, now has his students work in groups and submit a video explaining how their code works. Through these walk-throughs, he gets a sense of how students use AI to generate code, what they struggle with, and how they approach design, testing, and teamwork.

“It’s an opportunity for me to assess their learning process of the whole software development [life cycle]—not just code,” Zingaro says. “And I feel like my courses have opened up more and they’re much broader than they used to be. I can make students work on larger and more advanced projects.”

Ooi echoes that sentiment, noting that generative AI tools “will free up time for us to teach higher-level thinking—for example, how to design software, what is the right problem to solve, and what are the solutions. Students can spend more time on optimization, ethical issues, and the user-friendliness of a system rather than focusing on the syntax of the code.”

Avoiding AI’s Coding Pitfalls

But educators are cautious given an LLM’s tendency to hallucinate . “We need to be teaching students to be skeptical of the results and take ownership of verifying and validating them,” says Matthews.

Matthews adds that generative AI “can short-circuit the learning process of students relying on it too much.” Chang agrees that this overreliance can be a pitfall and advises his fellow students to explore possible solutions to problems by themselves so they don’t lose out on that critical thinking or effective learning process. “We should be making AI a copilot—not the autopilot—for learning,” he says.

“We should be making AI a copilot—not the autopilot—for learning.” —Johnny Chang, Stanford University

Other drawbacks include copyright and bias. “I teach my students about the ethical constraints—that this is a model built off other people’s code and we’d recognize the ownership of that,” Porter says. “We also have to recognize that models are going to represent the bias that’s already in society.”

Adapting to the rise of generative AI involves students and educators working together and learning from each other. For her colleagues, Matthews’s advice is to “try to foster an environment where you encourage students to tell you when and how they’re using these tools. Ultimately, we are preparing our students for the real world, and the real world is shifting, so sticking with what you’ve always done may not be the recipe that best serves students in this transition.”

Porter is optimistic that the changes they’re applying now will serve students well in the future. “There’s this long history of a gap between what we teach in academia and what’s actually needed as skills when students arrive in the industry,” he says. “There’s hope on my part that we might help close the gap if we embrace LLMs.”

• How Coders Can Survive—and Thrive—in a ChatGPT World ›
• AI Coding Is Going From Copilot to Autopilot ›
• OpenAI Codex ›

Rina Diane Caballar is a writer covering tech and its intersections with science, society, and the environment. An IEEE Spectrum Contributing Editor, she's a former software engineer based in Wellington, New Zealand.

Yes! Great summary of how things are evolving with AI. I’m a retired coder (BS comp sci) and understand the fundamentals of developing systems. Learning the lastest systems is now the greatest challenge. I was intrigued by Ansible to help me manage my homelab cluster, but who wants to learn one more scripting language? Turns out ChatGPT4 knows the syntax, semantics, and work flow of Ansible and all I do is tell is to “install log2ram on all my proxmox servers” and I get a playbook that does just that. The same with Docker Compose scripts. Wow.

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15 Common PC Problems and How to Troubleshoot Them

There’s no need to rush off to the tech repair store for every problem your PC might have. A lot of usual computer issues can be solved quite easily on your own , allowing you to handle them with a few straightforward steps .

This guide is here to help you fix common PC issues by yourself. Below, you’ll find a rundown of the top 15 hardware problems that PC users encounter and how you can deal with them without outside help.

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1. PC Overheating

A heating PC slows down the entire system and can lead to frequent crashes. Moreover, PC components might permanently damage due to continuous exposure to heat.

There are two primary reasons your PC might overheat: either the cooling system isn’t functioning correctly, or the PC is generating more heat than the cooling system can manage. For both scenarios, I’ve detailed a comprehensive guide on various methods to manage an overheating PC. Make sure to check it out.

2. Dysfunctional USB Port

If your USB port stops working, it might not necessarily be broken. Here are some solutions that can help resolve this issue:

Method 1: Restart the PC

Restarting your PC can solve many issues, including problems with the USB port.

Method 2: Uninstall USB Port Driver

Uninstalling the driver of the USB port will prompt Windows to reinstall it upon restarting your PC, potentially fixing the issue. Here’s how to do it:

• Press Windows + R keys and enter devmgmt.msc in the Run dialog to open the Device Manager .
• Expand the Universal Serial Bus controllers option.
• Right-click the entry USB Host Controller and then click on Uninstall .
• Repeat this for all entries with USB Host Controller to uninstall drivers for all the USB ports.
• Once deleted, restart your PC, and Windows will automatically reinstall the drivers , fixing any driver-related issues.

Method 3: Disable USB Selective Suspend

The USB Selective Suspend feature in Windows saves power by suspending idle USB ports, but sometimes it might prevent a USB port from working. Here’s how to disable it:

• Press Windows + R keys and type powercfg.cpl in the Run dialog to open Windows Power Options.
• Click on Change plan settings next to your current plan, then click on Change advanced power settings .
• Expand USB settings and disable USB selective suspend setting .
• Restart your PC to see if the issue with the USB port is resolved.

Note: Keep this option enabled to save battery power. If disabling it doesn’t resolve the USB port issue, consider enabling it again.

3. PC Keeps Disconnecting from WiFi

If your Wi-Fi is functioning properly but your PC keeps disconnecting from it, the issue may be due to your PC’s network card not receiving full power. Windows features a built-in power saver option that reduces power to the network card. You’ll need to disable this feature by following these steps:

• Navigate to Advanced settings in the Power Options .
• Expand Wireless Adapter Settings and then Power Saving Mode .
• Adjust this to Maximum Performance .

Alternatively, if your PC continues to disconnect from Wi-Fi and the issue persists, the problem might be a faulty wireless adapter driver. Consider using Auslogics’ Driver Updater to detect and resolve issues with device drivers by fetching and installing the latest official driver software.

4. PC Beeps

The motherboard of your PC is equipped to detect issues and uses beeps of varying rhythms to communicate problems. For an in-depth understanding of what different beep patterns mean, check out this detailed article on interpreting these signals.

If your PC fails to start after emitting these beeps, solving the problem can be challenging. Nonetheless, I’ll discuss two common issues that cause beeps and how you can resolve them yourself.

Problem 1: RAM Displacement

One common issue I encountered is the RAM becoming loose or displaced, leading to 2-3 beeps from the PC without it booting up. The solution is straightforward: open up the PC (though laptop users might prefer professional help) and reseat the RAM. Here’s how:

• Clean any dirt from the RAM slot using a cotton bud after removing the RAM completely.
• Reinsert the RAM, applying sufficient pressure on both ends to ensure it is fully seated.
• Secure the clips, ensuring they’re properly locked, as even slightly loose RAM can prevent your PC from working.

Refer to this video for guidance on installing the RAM properly:

Problem 2: Issues with Newly Added Hardware

Beeps can also result from damaged or incorrectly installed hardware components. Remove any hardware you’ve recently added to see if it addresses the issue. If your PC functions correctly afterward, ensure the component is installed correctly or consider repairing or replacing it.

5. PC Fans Not Working

If you discover that one or more fans within your PC are not functioning, it might be due to accumulated dirt. You’ll need to open your PC and clean the fans and other components using a can of compressed air or a leaf blower.

For guidance on the cleaning process, watch this helpful video:

If cleaning doesn’t solve the issue, consider using the SpeedFan app to diagnose and possibly fix the problem. This app allows you to control your PC’s fans, though your motherboard must support fan control to utilize this feature.

6. PC Not Using Full RAM Capacity

There are times when your PC might not utilize all the RAM installed. For instance, you could have 4GB of RAM, but the Task Manager only shows 2GB in use. Often, this is due to a specific Windows setting.

Note: If a small amount of RAM (200-400MB) is not being utilized, it’s likely reserved for hardware use, and there’s not much that can be done about it.

The solution is straightforward – Windows may have been set to use only a part of the available RAM. Here’s how you can adjust it:

• Press Windows + R keys and type msconfig in the Run dialog to open System Configurations .
• Navigate to the Boot tab and click on Advanced options .
• Check the box next to Maximum memory and enter the total amount of RAM installed (in MBs).
• Click OK and restart your PC to apply the changes.

Good to know: While adjusting these settings, also consider checking the Number of processors option to ensure your PC is using all available CPU cores. Set it to the maximum number to utilize full CPU power.

If the issue persists, it’s possible that one of the RAM modules may not be properly installed. Attempt reinstallation to see if it resolves the issue.

7. Overworking Fan

Your PC’s fan speeds up based on your PC’s temperature—the higher the temperature, the faster the fan runs. If your PC’s temperature is normal (you can check it using HWMonitor), but the fan is still running at full speed, you might need to manually adjust the fan speed.

The SpeedFan app can help you monitor and adjust the speed of your PC’s fans. This issue of fans overworking typically occurs only with motherboards that have fan control capabilities, so compatibility with the app shouldn’t be a concern.

8. PC Crashes Before Loading the OS

If your PC crashes immediately after showing the manufacturer logo and before loading the operating system, the issue likely lies with the RAM or the hard disk. This means the operating system can’t load because the RAM is corrupted or the hard disk is damaged.

For those with multiple RAM slots, removing each RAM module one at a time and starting the PC can help identify the faulty component. Ultimately, you’ll need to replace the corrupted RAM or hard disk.

9. PC Isn’t Powering On

If your PC isn’t powering on at all, with no lights turning on, the problem could be with the power source.

Desktop users: Ensure that the extension cord, power outlet, and all connections are functioning correctly. If they are, try swapping the power cable with another one, such as the monitor’s, to see if the PC turns on. If this resolves the issue, you’ll need a new power cable.

Laptop users: Try removing the battery and then reinserting it before starting the laptop. If that doesn’t work, remove the battery again and connect the laptop to the charger to try powering it on without the battery. If the laptop powers on, the battery may need to be replaced.

Note: It’s also wise to disconnect any external devices from your PC when attempting these solutions, as a malfunctioning device could be the cause of the power issue.

10. Noisy PC

A noisy PC often signals the need for a thorough cleaning. You can clean it yourself using a can of compressed air or a leaf blower. Overclocking your PC’s GPU and CPU might also contribute to the noise.

Here’s a video demonstrating simple methods to clean your PC:

Sometimes, the noise could be coming from a disc in the DVD ROM. For more details on PC components that can cause noise, check out this informative article.

11. Noisy Hard Drive

Clicking or grinding noises from your hard drive are warning signs that it may be failing. Hard drives have a finite lifespan, and these sounds often indicate imminent failure. The CrystalDiskInfo hard drive monitoring tool can help assess the health of your hard drive, displaying conditions like “Good,” “Caution,” or “Bad.”

It’s crucial to back up your data immediately and consider acquiring a replacement hard drive before the current one fails.

12. Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)

The feared Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) can be triggered by both software and hardware issues, though it often points to hardware problems. It’s crucial to address BSOD promptly as it indicates significant trouble.

BlueScreenView, a helpful Nirsoft utility, provides valuable information following a BSOD event, aiding in the identification and resolution of the issue. Here are some common BSOD triggers and their fixes.

How to Fix “Apps Not Responding” in Windows 10

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Corrupted Drivers

Corrupted drivers can lead to BSOD. To diagnose and address this issue, follow these steps:

• Access Device Manager by typing devmgmt.msc in the Run dialog.
• Expand each category and look for any drivers marked with a yellow triangle icon.
• If any are found, right-click on the driver and select Update Driver Software to update it.

Alternatively, third-party apps like IObit Driver Booster can automate the process of identifying and resolving driver issues.

Excessive Load on RAM

Opening more programs than the RAM can handle might freeze the system and trigger BSOD. Limit the number of concurrent programs or consider upgrading your RAM to avoid this issue.

Faulty Hard Disk

A BSOD can also signal a failing hard disk. Refer to the guidelines in problem #11 to detect hard disk issues.

Overheating PC

An overheating PC may lead to BSOD if excessive stress is placed on the components. Follow the instructions provided in problem #1 to address this.

13. Blank Monitor

If your monitor displays nothing, it could indicate an issue with the monitor itself or the graphics card. Test the monitor with another PC to determine the source of the problem.

If the monitor doesn’t power on at all, try replacing the power cable with one that’s known to work. For more troubleshooting tips, here’s a useful article on fixing a monitor that shows nothing.

14. Monitor Goes Black After a Few Seconds

If your monitor goes black after displaying for a few seconds, it may be related to color quality or screen adjustment settings. Try pressing the auto-adjust button on your monitor. If that doesn’t resolve the issue, consider changing the display color from 32-bit to 16-bit.

Connecting your PC to a different monitor to adjust the graphics card settings could also be helpful. Using the auto-adjust feature might briefly restore the display, allowing you to tweak the color settings in that short window.

15. Keyboard Issues

If your keyboard is noisy or fails to type repeated words correctly, it’s likely not a hardware issue. Windows settings such as toggle keys and filter keys might be activated, leading to these symptoms. To disable them, follow these steps:

• Access the Control Panel and select Ease of Access .
• Click on Change how your keyboard works .
• Uncheck the boxes next to Toggle keys and Filter Keys to resolve the issue.

How to Fix Mouse Left-click Malfunction in Windows

Some of the most accepted solutions to fix left-click not working issue on your Windows. Read more

Wrapping Up

While many hardware issues can be resolved by adjusting settings or using specific software, some problems may necessitate a trip to the computer repair shop. Knowing what’s wrong with your PC enables you to take appropriate action. We’d love to hear about any PC hardware problems you’ve encountered and how you solved them, so please share your experiences in the comments.

7 Everyday Work Problems AI Helps Me Solve

A s we all constantly hear, AI is poised to change everything forever—it will replace workers, create new drugs, maybe destroy the world.

But for the moment, I’m more excited about the ways AI already can fix the annoying, day-to-day problems that plague my working life.

I can get help if I zone out during a meeting, need to write a diplomatic note to an irksome colleague or want tech help ASAP. These aren’t exactly the world-shaking problems that AI promises to solve, but they are the kinds of things that frustrate us constantly.

Here are seven of the biggest problems AI tools have already solved for me.

I lost track of a meeting.

Sometimes the ping of an incoming message or the tedium of back-to-back video calls means I lose track of what is happening in a meeting. This is when an AI meeting assistant comes in handy. These tools transcribe, recap and organize what happens in a meeting so you get a tidy summary with action items afterward. Some assistants (like the transcription built into Zoom and Teams, or the add-on app from Otter.ai) even transcribe in real time, so you can quickly scroll back through the conversation.

I’m overwhelmed by email.

The job of managing email has become dramatically easier thanks to a new generation of email clients that use AI to triage the incoming flood and expedite the job of responding. AI-enhanced email programs like Superhuman and Shortwave can analyze the content of your messages and keep track of different senders, allowing them to organize your inbox by message type and priority (so all your sales newsletters get grouped together, say, and don’t clutter up your main inbox). The programs can also draft message replies.

Using an AI-enabled email client keeps my primary inbox to just the most important messages, so I don’t fall behind or get overwhelmed; I look at everything else (my newsletters and my “other” pile) when I have time.

I have to deal with an annoying colleague.

Sometimes I get so annoyed with an uncooperative, argumentative or condescending colleague that I can’t resist writing a very sharp, hostile email. I used to give myself a 24-hour cooling-off period before sending those draft messages, and then give them to my husband to review and edit. Now, I give the same job to an AI.

If I tell the AI something like, “Please rewrite this email reply so that it is constructive and cordial, rather than hostile,” I get a fresh perspective on how to reframe my snappy comebacks. That is how I learned to say, “During the past weeks, aligning directly was challenging,” rather than, “It is super frustrating that I couldn’t get any time from you.” I still get the emotional satisfaction of being as direct as I want, but the AI smooths off my edges and turns the draft into a message that can actually get the outcome I want.

I need tech support.

A day rarely goes by without needing some kind of tech support—such as learning how to use a new app or troubleshooting glitches with a videoconferencing platform. But I hate watching how-to videos, and I don’t always have time to read through an online manual or to call a manufacturer. Now I just ask Perplexity or ChatGPT how to solve my problem. That way I get step-by-step instructions that are tailored to my particular level of expertise, and I can ask clarifying questions if I get confused or if my initial steps didn’t work.

I don’t understand the subject.

If I need to read up on an academic or technical subject that is totally new to me, I often ask a general-purpose AI (like Claude, Perplexity or ChatGPT) to give me a broad summary of the field, or I use an AI-enabled academic-research tool like scite to give me a summary of the top insights in the field. But that is just a starting point, because AIs often base their summaries on a quirky subset of the academic literature, or they outright make things up. Once I have my bearings, I pick a few credible articles (ones with a lot of citations, or which have been recommended by experts) and get an AI to summarize them and clarify any points I don’t understand.

I hate doing tedious work.

I have yet to find a job that doesn’t involve some amount of tedious work—whether it is invoicing, proofreading, data cleaning or file organizing. Now I give just about all my boring and annoying tasks to an AI. For example, I have a supplier who gives me invoices in a form my accounting system won’t accept; rather than redoing those invoices by hand (or asking my nontechie supplier to fix them), I use AI to do the work for me.

It took all of five minutes to come up with the prompt that does the job: “You are a billing agent for a supplier. Your main role is to take rough billing notes and organize them into a structured table. The table should have columns for date, time period and hours worked, with one row a day. Your goal is to provide clear and accurate billing information, ensuring that all details are neatly organized and easily understandable.”

Once I have that prompt, I can use it over and over. Now all I do is paste my supplier’s latest invoice after that prompt, and I get back a table I can slap into Excel and send to my bookkeeping app.

I need more examples.

When I’m working on an article, presentation or report, I’m often stuck for just the right example to make it complete—which can mean searching the internet for hours or asking friends and colleagues to share their own examples and experiences. But now I just ask a web-enabled AI like Perplexity for something like “five examples of manufacturing companies that have embraced hybrid work.” Or I ask a couple of different AIs to help me brainstorm more examples for a work in progress—like feeding Claude and ChatGPT a draft of the first six problems in this article, and asking them to suggest more problems AI might be able to solve.

When I did that, the AIs fed me a list that reminded me of many other ways AI has removed big pain points from my working life. “Finding relevant information in a sea of data”: Yes, I often upload spreadsheets to AIs and ask them for help reorganizing or surfacing patterns. “Enhancing creative brainstorming”: True, AI has removed the bottleneck of needing a sounding board for my new ideas, because now I can always turn to an AI as my virtual sounding board. “Enhancing social-media management”: Just as ChatGPT suggested, I have used AI to analyze the performance of online posts and figure out the best hooks and titles for future updates.

The list went on and on, in a beautiful illustration of what makes AI solutions so powerful: AI can not only address our working pain points, but also retains a memory of everything it’s fixed, long after my human memory forgets what it was like to work in any other way.

Alexandra Samuel is a technology researcher and co-author of “Remote, Inc.: How to Thrive at Work…Wherever You Are.” She can be reached at [email protected].

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Our tech has a climate problem: How we solve it

AI, EVs and satellites can help fight the climate crisis. But they, too, have an environmental cost. This hour, TED speakers examine how we can use each innovation without making the problem worse.

ChatGPT vs. the climate: The hidden environmental costs of AI

by  Manoush Zomorodi ,  James Delahoussaye ,  Sanaz Meshkinpour

Short-term loss for long-term gain? The ethical dilemma at the heart of EVs

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Satellites can monitor climate emissions... but space junk puts them at risk

by  Manoush Zomorodi ,  Harsha Nahata ,  Sanaz Meshkinpour

Wind energy can be unpredictable. AI can help

by  Manoush Zomorodi ,  Rachel Faulkner White ,  Sanaz Meshkinpour

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Self-Esteem

It’s ok you can’t solve every problem, trying to “fix" everything can leave you feeling like a failure..

Updated May 10, 2024 | Reviewed by Ray Parker

• What Is Self-Esteem?
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• Your intrinsic value is more than what you can do for other people.

You are still worthwhile and can be successful, even if you don’t have all the solutions.

• Consider which decision will make you feel you’ve stayed true to your values.

In coaching others, I often discuss problem-solving strategies to help individuals think creatively and consider many options when they are faced with challenging situations.

Problem solving 1-2 includes the following:

• Define the problem, identify obstacles, and set realistic goals .
• Generate a variety of alternative solutions to overcome obstacles identified.
• Choose which idea has the highest likelihood to achieve the goal.
• Try out the solution in real-life and see if it worked or not.

Problem-solving strategies can be helpful in many situations. Thinking creatively and testing out different potential solutions can help you come up with alternative ways of solving your problems.

While many problems can be solved, there are also situations in which there is no “perfect” solution or in which what seems to be the best solution still leaves you feeling unsatisfied or like you’re not doing enough.

I encourage you to increase your comfort around the following three truths:

1. You can’t always solve everyone else’s problems.

2. You can’t always solve all of your own problems.

3. You are not a failure if you can’t solve every problem.

You can’t always solve everyone else’s problems.

When someone around you needs help, do you feel compelled to find solutions to their problem?

Are you seen as the problem solver at your job or in your close relationships?

Does it feel uncomfortable for you to listen to someone tell you about a problem and not offer solutions?

There are times when others come to you because they know you can help them solve a problem. There are also times when the other person is coming to you not for a solution to their problem, but for support, empathy, and a listening ear.

Your relationships may be negatively impacted if others feel that you don’t fully listen and only try to “fix” everything for them. While this may feel like a noble act, it may lead the other person to feel like they have failed or that you think they are unable to solve their own problems.

Consider approaching such situations with curiosity by saying to the other person:

• As you share this information with me, tell me how I can best support you.
• What would be most helpful right now? Are you looking for an empathetic ear or want to brainstorm potential next steps?
• I want to be sure I am as helpful as I can be right now; what are you hoping to get out of our conversation?

You can’t always solve all of your own problems.

We are taught from a young age that problems have a solution. For example, while solving word problems in math class may not have been your favorite thing to do, you knew there was ultimately a “right” answer. Many times, the real world is much more complex, and many of the problems that you face do not have clear or “right” answers.

You may often be faced with finding solutions that do the most good for the most amount of people, but you know that others may still be left out or feel unsatisfied with the result.

Your beliefs about yourself, other people, and the world can sometimes help you make decisions in such circumstances. You may ask for help from others. Some may consider their faith or spirituality for guidance. While others may consider philosophical theories.

Knowing that there often isn’t a “perfect” solution, you may consider asking yourself some of the following questions:

• What’s the healthiest decision I can make? The healthiest decision for yourself and for those who will be impacted.
• Imagine yourself 10 years in the future, looking back on the situation: What do you think the future-you would encourage you to do?
• What would a wise person do?
• What decision will allow you to feel like you’ve stayed true to your values?

You are not a failure if you can’t solve all of the problems.

If you have internalized feeling like you need to be able to solve every problem that comes across your path, you may feel like a failure each time you don’t.

It’s impossible to solve every problem.

Your intrinsic value is more than what you can do for other people. You have value because you are you.

Consider creating more realistic and adaptive thoughts around your ability to help others and solve problems.

Some examples include:

• I am capable, even without solving all of the problems.
• I am worthwhile, even if I’m not perfect.
• What I do for others does not define my worth.
• In living my values, I know I’ve done my best.

I hope you utilize the information above to consider how you can coach yourself the next time you:

• Start to solve someone else’s problem without being asked.
• Feel stuck in deciding the best next steps.
• Judge yourself negatively.

1. D'zurilla, T. J., & Goldfried, M. R. (1971). Problem solving and behavior modification. Journal of abnormal psychology, 78(1), 107.

2. D’Zurilla, T. J., & Nezu, A. M. (2010). Problem-solving therapy. Handbook of cognitive-behavioral therapies, 3(1), 197-225.

Julie Radico, Psy.D. ABPP, is a board-certified clinical psychologist and coauthor of You Will Get Through This: A Mental Health First-Aid Kit.

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At any moment, someone’s aggravating behavior or our own bad luck can set us off on an emotional spiral that threatens to derail our entire day. Here’s how we can face our triggers with less reactivity so that we can get on with our lives.

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current events conversation

What Students Are Saying About Tech in the Classroom

Does technology help students be more organized, efficient and prepared for the future? Or is it just a distraction?

By The Learning Network

Is there a problem with screens in schools?

We invited students to weigh in on that question in our Picture Prompt Tech in the Classroom , which was based on an Opinion essay arguing that we should “get tech out of the classroom before it’s too late.”

Is there too much tech in your school day? — we asked students. Would you prefer more screen-free time while you are learning, or even during lunch or free periods?

Below, they share the good, the bad and the ugly about technology use in school.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the conversation on our writing prompts this week!

Please note: Student comments have been lightly edited for length.

Some students saw the value of technology in schools, including its ability to prepare students for the future.

I believe that technology in the classroom is a good thing when it is properly moderated. I think completely taking away screens from a student will not help them develop computer skills which they will most likely need in a world like ours, where most of everything is online. Sometimes phones cannot get the job done, and computers will be needed. If schools completely remove devices from the curriculum, then students will be completely clueless when they take classes involving a computer. Too much screen time can be bad for the student, but if it is well moderated, then screen time won’t be an issue.

— Saheed, GMS

I personally do not mind the amount of technology in the classroom. I personally find typing to be a lot easier instead of writing. On top of that, this amount of technology is used in adults’ day to day lives, too. Writing has become less and less relevant for everyone, because most jobs require a computer nowadays. So I think it’s actually better to have the amount of technology we do in the classroom.

— Timothy, Greenbelt Middle

They said, even though there might be down sides, the good outweighs the bad.

Screens in the classroom allows students to complete work in a more organized manner and use online resources to help them learn. It helps teachers to be able to make sure students turn work in before a certain time. However, having screens in the classroom raises students overall screen time which is bad for their eye health and sleep.

— Emily, Greenbelt Middle

I believe that computers should definitely be used at school because it has more pros than cons. They help with everything. The only problem with them is the people using them. The people using them are often misusing them and not charging them.

— Deegan, California

And they argued that tech is so entrenched in the student experience that taking it away would cause a lot of disruption.

There are no problems with screens in school. I believe without screens, school would be much less productive, produce so much waste of paper, and assignments would be lost a lot. Also when I have paper homework, which is almost never, almost every time I get it I forget because everything is on the iPad. This is important because if there is any change in the iPads we use, it’ll affect everyone drastically. Also it would just be really annoying to get used to a whole new thing.

— August, GBW

But another contingent of students said, “There is definitely a problem with screens in school.” They called them a distraction.

There is definitely a problem with screens in school. While regular technology use in school is highly efficient and much more convenient than using textbooks and paper, I still feel like using technology as the main method for learning is detrimental. There are plenty of students in my classes who are hiding behind their iPads to play games or go on their phones rather than utilizing their technology to enhance their learning experience. So in turn, I think we need to minimize (but not completely take away) the prominence of tech in our classrooms. This matters because it’s so important for students to learn how to completely pay attention and focus in on one task so that they are prepared for the moments in life where they don’t get the opportunity to look at their phone if they’re bored or to text their friends. Trust me, this may seem like I’m one hundred percent anti-phones but the truth is I love my phone and am somewhat addicted to it, so I realize that it’s a major distraction for myself in the classroom. Moreover, staring at an iPad screen for 7 hours a day puts significant strain on our eyes, so for the sake of our health and our attention spans, we need to minimize tech use in school.

— Mary, Glenbard West High School

Tech inside classrooms has had many positive effects and many negative effects. Without technology, it would take forever to find sources/information and it would also take ages to do complex things. With technology, people can easily find information and they can easily do many things but the big downside is that they can easily just search up games and get distracted. On one side, it has provided many different changes to students so they can learn in a fun and entertaining way but in another, people are mostly on their phones scrolling through YouTube or Instagram. Many people don’t have control over their body and have a big urge to go on their cellphones.

— Srikanth, Greenbelt Middle School

In my opinion, yes there is a problem with screens in schools. It distracts kids from focusing on their work. Many students are always on their phone during class, and it is disrespectful as well as sad for them. They will not be able to learn the material that is being taught. Personally, I think that screens should be reduced in class, but I do not think that is possible. Whenever a teacher takes away someone’s phone, they get very mad and say that it is their right to have their phone. In these cases it is very confusing on how to act for the teacher!

— Kadambari, gms

Some reported that their peers use technology to cheat.

It might be a problem depending on what people are doing. If it is used for school, like typing an essay, working on homework, or checking your grades it’s okay, but I know people who abuse this privilege. They go onto YouTube and watch things, listen to music when they aren’t supposed to, and play games. Many people cheat to the point where it takes forever to start a test because people don’t close out their tabs. It helps to be able to do these ‘Quick Writes’ as we call them in my ELA class because I can write faster (I know it’s called typing). It’s harder to access things because of the restriction because people mess around so they block so many useful websites and words from our computer. I like to type on the computer, but I feel people abuse this privilege too much.

— Nina, California

When the teachers assign tests on computers, sometimes teachers have to lock students’ screens to make sure they’re not cheating. Sometimes they do it on paper and they try to cheat while hiding their phones in their laps. And then if another student sees them doing that, they will tell and the student who would have the phone out could start a big argument.

— Taylor, Huntington Beach

Several lamented the sheer number of hours teenagers spend in front of screens.

I feel that we have become too comfortable with using screens for nearly every lesson in school, because it has gotten to the point where we are spending upwards of 4 hours on our laptops in school alone. I understand that it would be hard to switch back to using journals and worksheets, but it would be very beneficial for kids if we did.

— Chase, school

I think we should reduce the tech a little just because most students are going straight to screens when they get home, after a full day of screens … Although I know this would be very difficult to do because everything in the world now seems to go online.

— Jaydin, California

And they even worried about their handwriting in a world full of typing.

I think technology in a class is very helpful, but I think that we should incorporate more writing. Since the pandemic, most of the work has been online and it never gave students the opportunity to write as much. When we came back from lockdown, I almost forgot how to write with a pencil. My handwriting was very different. And now we don’t get much time to write with our hands so I think we should have fewer screens.

— Eric, Greenbelt

Some students said that less time spent on screens in school would give them a break from the always-on digital culture they live in.

Although typing is useful and using the internet is very useful, I think we should go back to how it was about 20-40 years ago when all people used the computer for was to type an essay. Drama didn’t get spread in a millisecond, we didn’t have to worry as much about stereotypes. Now all kids want to do is text each other and watch videos. I’m well aware that I have fallen into this trap and I want out, but our lives revolve around technology. You can’t get away from it. I know this is about schools not using technology, which the world without it would be impossible now, but life would be so much simpler again.

— Ivy, Huntington Beach, CA

I will say that my phone is usually always with me during school hours, but I don’t use it all the time. I may check the time or play a short game as a brain break. But I do see some people absolutely glued to their phones during class time, and it’s honestly embarrassing. You really can’t go without your phone for an hour?? It’s almost like an addiction at this point. I understand using your phone to quickly distract yourself; I do it too. And I also think it’s okay to have your phone/electronic during lunch time or free periods. But using it to the point that you can’t properly pay attention in class is just embarrassing. So, in summary, I do think that schools are having a problem with screens.

— Allison, Greenbelt Middle School

And they named classes in which they think screens do and do not have a place.

I feel like for classes for younger kids, technology is definitely not good. Kids should be playing, using their hands, and actually experiencing things instead of being on tablets in kindergarten. I think using computers in school is good though. It’s a lot more efficient, and we live in a society where fast and efficient things are the trend.

— sarah, maryland

I think screens have their place, and will always have their place, in schools and education. The capabilities of computers will always surpass anything else, and they should not be banned from school environments. Still, I have one exception: English class. Other than final drafts of essays, everything in English should be on paper. You can formulate ideas better and minimize outside influence on your thinking.

— Addie, The Potomac School

Learn more about Current Events Conversation here and find all of our posts in this column .

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Can Former Aaron Rodgers Teammate Solve Jets Tight End Problem?

Ralph ventre | 1 minute ago.

• New York Jets

The New York Jets ' unwillingness to draft Georgia tight end Brock Bowers at No. 11 overall has arguably left a hole in their offense.

Jets brass is apparently content with the team's tight ends room, but ESPN analyst Aaron Schatz suggests differently. The former Football Outsiders writer identified the "biggest remaining roster holes for all 32 teams" and tight end was his pick for Gang Green.

According to Schatz, New York still has the ability to remedy the situation by adding current free agent Robert Tonyan, who played five seasons with Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers. The 30-year-old Tonyan had a career season in 2020, catching 52 of 59 targets for 586 yards and 11 touchdowns. He spent the 2023 campaign with the Chicago Bears, receiving only 17 targets over 17 games.

From ESPN's Aaron Schatz :

"The Jets have a pretty steady and deep roster across the board, with the big issue being the lack of a star at tight end. Tyler Conklin, who signed with New York from the Vikings in 2022, hasn't had a positive receiving DVOA in six NFL seasons and ranked 43rd among qualifying tight ends in the past two seasons. ... New York should consider bringing in quarterback Aaron Rodgers' former Green Bay target Robert Tonyan, who is still a free agent."

As for the Jets current personnel, Conklin may not measure up to Schatz's DVOA metric, but he totaled 1,173 receiving yards over the past two seasons in spite of New York's quarterback instability. It is worth noting that he did not find the end zone in 2023 and has only three touchdowns in 34 games as a Jet.

Jeremy Ruckert, a 2022 third-round draft pick, appears in line to be the Jets TE2. Seemingly more of an effective run blocker than most, Ruckert has yet to show the ability to contribute as a pass-catching threat. He has 17 receptions on 24 total targets in 24 games.

New York is scheduled to kick off OTAs Phase 3 next week with practices on May 20-21.

RALPH VENTRE

Ralph, a former college football conference administrator, brings 20 years of media experience to the New York Jets beat. Prior to concentrating on Gang Green, he covered the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision for NFL Draft Bible on FanNation. Ventre remains as an official voter for the Stats Perform FCS Top 25 and the annual legacy awards. The Fordham University graduate is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America. The veteran sports media professional resides in his native state of New Jersey.