The US House of Representatives' Intelligence Committee is looking into the relationship between the Chinese government and Huawei, as well as ZTE, both Chinese telecom manufacturers. Mike Rogers, Committee chairman has said that he believes its necessary to look into whether or not the two manufacturers are receiving unfair subsidies from the Chinese government, and whether hardware from the two companies could represent a national security threat.

Later this summer the committee is expected to release a report where there'll be two versions: a classified version and an unclassified version. The report is expected to address both trade practices and security concerns in regards to Huawei and ZTE.

The report might sway US companies from buying the Huawei or ZTE goods, considering the national security aspect of things. The Intelligence Committee has been running an investigation looking into the two manufacturers and their Chinese government ties. Critics allege that the two companies receive cheap loans, land and other subsidies from the Chinese government which allow the companies to make wares cheap, and dump them on foreign markets at prices below their competitors can afford.

We know that the US government, and many others, use drones for 'security' purposes, but mostly for spying and intel gathering activities. But, even at the size they are now, they can't really be seen all that well to the unsuspecting eye.

What if they could get small enough to fly right next to you without you even noticing? Surely, I jest. But, it's no lie, or trick. Vanessa Alarcon was a college student when she attended a 2007 anti-war protest in Washington, D.C. and heard someone shout "Oh my God, look at those". Alarcon told The Washington Post:

I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects.

It only takes one incident, but that one incident is bad enough, so Samsung are investigating the case of the GALAXY S III that exploded in a user's car, with fears over a potential overheating problem. The user was baed in Dublin, Ireland, where he was driving and noticed a white flame and sparks coming from the S III before it exploded on the dashboard of his car.

The user posted on popular Irish forum Boards.ie, where he said:

The phone burned from the inside out. Burned through the plastic and melted my case to the phone. The phone kept working but without any signal.

Apple's latest MacBook Pro may feature that gorgeous 2880x1800 resolution with it being dubbed 'Retina display', but it seems that the notebook doesn't run that high resolution by default. The new Retina MacBook Pro (or rMBP) uses the screens extra pixels to display a higher level of detail on a canvas representing the previous 1440x900 resolution.

The result of this? All windows and user interface elements all appear to have the same relative size as the rMBP's predecessor with the 15-inch 1440x900 display, but with 400-percent more detail. If owners of the new rMBP wish to use a high resolution, then you can go to System Preferences and select a different resolution, all the way up to 1920x1200.

Those who want even more screen real estate, ranging up to the eye-busting 2880x1800 will have to use a workaround that is, wait for it, not authorized by Apple. Macworld reports that in order to get to the 2880x1800 resolution, you'll need to use either a third-party app like the paid SwitchResX, or one of a number of free options suhc as Change Resolution.

Here's a cool new tip and trick for you Google searchers out there, which, judging by the market share, is most of you. If you're anything like me, you're not one to clutter up your favorites list with a bunch of bookmarks. The only downside to this is finding that really informative website you found yesterday while Google'ing.

Have no fear, as Google is using the vast amount of information about you to help you! As long as you are logged in to your Google account, you can filter the results to show only pages you haven't visited or only pages you have visited. There are other filter options as well, but these are the coolest.

After searching on Google, click on "Show Search Tools" on the left hand side of the page. This will pull up a menu with various options. On that menu, all you have to do is select "Visited Pages" and only pages that you have clicked on will show up. Nifty! But what if I want to find something new? Select the option "Not yet visited" and pages you haven't visited will show up.

Alan Turing, a man you've probably never heard of and you probably couldn't live without his work, would have celebrated his 100th birthday tomorrow. Mr. Turing was the man who basically invented modern computing. He was also significantly important during World War Two due to his work in cryptography and code breaking.

Now, one of his inventions has been rendered in Lego form as a cerebration of his brithday, which, for inventors, is like an actor being parodied on The Simpsons. It's a sign that you have really made it. The machine is really simple and the heart of the machine is a Lego Mindstorms NXT set, but the soul is Alan Turing's genius.

The use of Legos demonstrates just how simple his machine was:

As if we don't already have enough internet codes, it appears there will soon need to be one more. A Google employee has offered up one option for the code that will surely soon be necessary. Tim Bray has proposed that the new code be '451' in order to honor the late author Ray Bradbury, whose science fiction classic Fahrenheit 451 warned of a dystopian world defined by government-imposed censorship.

"We can never do away entirely with legal restrictions on freedom of speech. On the other hand, I feel that when such restrictions are imposed, they should be done so transparently; for example, most civilized people find Britain's system of superinjunctions loathsome and terrifying," said Bray in an interview with the Guardian.

"While we may agree on the existence of certain restrictions, we should be nervous whenever we do it; thus the reference to the dystopian vision of Fahrenheit 451 may be helpful. Also, since the Internet exists in several of the many futures imagined by Bradbury, it would be nice for a tip of the hat in his direction from the Net, in the year of his death."

There's still a fair bit of time before Intel releases server chips based upon the Ivy Bridge architecture, but that isn't stopping avid readers and power users from questioning what comes next. Next, by the way, is Haswell, which is the successor to the current Ivy Bridge architecture and is a completely new design.

The leaked slides would appear to be real and detail some of the chip's features that we should expect when it releases. As far out as it still is, some of these details could be subject to change. The slide claims that there will be minimum of 10 cores per CPU and will sport up to 35MB of total LLC, about 2.5MB a core.

It is said to have 40 PCI-e lanes and will sport Hyperthreading and Turbo Boost. It appears that the new CPU will be getting a new socket (of course) called R3 or Socket R3. This is most likely so that it can handle the 4 channels of DDR4 operating from 1333MTS all the way up to 2133MTS. Additionally, it sports two QPI paths so there will be a max of two CPUs per system.

Looking through the specifications sheet for the upcoming Microsoft Surface tablet that runs the ARM processor reveals some interesting information. One, Microsoft has no quoted battery life specification and also never gave one during the presentation. And two, the specs say how many watt-hours the battery holds.

"They didn't talk about battery life, which is very important to decisions about [which] tablet to buy," said Michael Cherry of Directions on Microsoft. Gregg Keizer at ComputerWorld points out that Surface RT battery is rated at 31.4Wh which is not tiny, but is about 25% smaller than that of Apple's 42.5Wh rated battery.

At the same time however, if one looks at the iPad 2, they will find a 25Wh battery which provides 12.5 hours of battery life. The longer battery life is due to a lower resolution screen. Currently there are too many variables to produce an accurate prediction, but an early guess places the battery life at the same or worse.

It looks as though Valve believes there is some value to using games in education. It's been occasionally supported by studies that doing something fun helps kids learn and keeps them engaged, so the reasoning behind 'Steam for Schools' is solid. This summer, educators can apply to be included in the beta which provides a copy of Portal 2, its level editor and its workshop for hosting those levels.

"We have a limited version of Steam, which is called 'Steam for Schools.' And what we're doing is asking for teachers, after school programs, organizations - anywhere where there's a student relationship, which includes homeschooling - for them to submit a form to be part of it. It's still in beta," Valve's Leslie Redd told attendees of the Games for Change festival in New York City.

Valve has received no outside funding or grants to help pay for this program. They are a pretty successful commercial venture, so they do have a bit of extra cash laying around. Besides, doing things for children is probably the best PR a company can get, and it can't be costing that much to give away a copy or two of Portal 2.