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While the Biden administration’s ban on exports of certain chip technology to China is targeted at China’s military and industrial use, enterprises across the world will find their supply chains disrupted.

The new trade rules come at a time when the US is getting increasingly worried about China's growing geopolitical power, and will affect not only computer equipment, but many consumer products built on the restricted semiconductor technology. They also signal the end of the era of ever-expanding globalization...

Choosing a new laptop is a big decision, and it's often difficult if you're unfamiliar with laptop benchmarks. The best laptops offer all-around high performance and reliability with a slew of advanced features for work, school or home. Separating the good from the best can be even more challenging, and that's why we've tested them out to provide our expert opinions.

CNET's list of the best laptops for 2022 is a great place to start, with our top picks across brands, operating systems, budgets and categories. Many of the models from 2021 have been updated for 2022 with the latest chips from Intel, AMD and Apple's new M2 chips...

The UK government has legislation in the works that will formalize flexible working, increasing the number of remote-work requests workers are entitled to and shortening the time employers have to respond.

The UK government is backing proposed legislation that would give workers the right to request flexible working arrangements from day one of their employment. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw millions of workers start working from home as lockdown orders were enforced, most employees continued to have flexibility over how and when they work, with many organizations now practicing a hybrid work model...

If you want to optimize Windows 10, take a few minutes to try out these tips to speed up your PC and make it less prone to performance and system issues.

1. Change your power settings. If you’re using Windows 10’s “Power saver” plan, you’re slowing down your PC. That plan reduces your PC’s performance in order to save energy. (Even desktop PCs typically have a “Power saver” plan.) Changing your power plan from “Power saver” to “High performance” or “Balanced” will give you an instant performance boost...

After documentation for the Windows Subsystem for Android was spotted on Microsoft’s website earlier today, the company has now officially announced that Android apps are now available on Windows 11 if you’re a Windows Insider. Oddly enough, you’ll need to be enrolled in the Beta channel, not the Dev channel, in order to access the initial preview for Android apps on Windows 11. Microsoft says it wants to test this feature first on versions of Windows 11 that are already available to the public, suggesting that the feature will arrive separately from a typical feature update when it does roll out to the general public.

If you want to try out Android apps on Windows 11, you’re going to need a few system requirements in addition to the base requirements for Windows 11. According to the Windows 11 feature requirements posted by Microsoft, you’ll need a PC with at least 8GB of RAM, an SSD drive, and 8th-generation Intel Core i3, AMD Ryzen 3000, or Qualcomm Snapdragon 8c processor or higher. These aren’t basic requirements for running Windows 11, but you’ll need to meet them for Android apps...

The 2020 calendar year will long be remembered as an annus horribilis for most, except for a handful of technology companies that reaped the rewards of a global shift to remote work with successful initial public offerings (IPOs).

US companies alone raised a record $435 billion in stock sales in 2020, with more than a quarter of that figure coming from IPOs — far outstripping 2014's mark of $279 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The vast majority of those new listings defined themselves as technology companies. Cloud-based software firms like Zoom, Snowflake, Asana, Airbnb, and Palantir all performed particularly well, and continue to see their stock price flourish as remote work and e-commerce continue to be the norm for many into 2021...

Way back in 2018, Google released Android Pie. Among the UI changes and new features, there were also some developer-side changes. Those changes included new APIs, bugfixes for existing APIs, and also restrictions on access to hidden APIs.

Luckily though, there are ways to get around those restrictions. Before I get into how to bypass the restrictions, I should explain a bit about what hidden APIs are, why they were restricted in the first place, and why you might want to access them.

Hidden APIs are the APIs in Android that app developers normally can’t see. If you take a look at AOSP’s code, you’ll see a whole bunch of classes, variables, and methods that have a @hide annotation inside a comment block above them. This annotation instructs whatever tool Google uses when compiling the SDK to exclude the item under it. That SDK is then distributed to developers inside the SDKs downloaded through Android Studio. Unless you use a modified SDK, Android Studio will think any of those hidden items just don’t exist. If you try to use one directly, it will show it in red and refuse to compile...

The company has been releasing its report since 2016 so has accrued deep insights that are valuable to the development industry. This year’s report features responses from over 1,600 global API professionals and spans more than 17 different industries. The headline takeaway is that just over half (51%) of respondents started creating APIs in the last five years—indicating that API adoption and development is becoming more established.

API developers are working across multiple protocols with 57 percent of those surveyed stated they use three or more within their organisations. REST, unsurprisingly, dominates protocol usage at 91 percent. Rounding out the top five protocols are SOAP (56%), FTP/SFTP (32%), JSON-RPC (25%), and Websockets (24%)...

Back when Intel announced its 11th-generation desktop processors, CLX Gaming reached out to me asking if I wanted to check out a review unit of one of its PCs. I’d never heard of the brand, which is owned by CybertronPC out of Kansas. CLX Gaming builds custom gaming PCs, and I ended up getting the Ra. When I say custom, I mean it. You can choose every single part you want in your tower, and then CLX builds it and ships it. As part of the review experience, I got to choose the parts in mine. At first, I maxed everything out and landed on a $15,000 gaming PC, but CLX came back to me and suggested something more along the lines of $7,000.

One thing that’s cool about the customization experience is you can actually share your design. This is the one CLX sent me, although some of the parts in my unit apparently aren’t listed anymore. First of all, when you head over to CLXGaming.com, you’ll find a bunch of pre-configured options at all price points. For under $600, there’s one with an AMD Ryzen 3 3200G and 8GB RAM. If you scroll all the way to the bottom, there’s a unit with an AMD Threadripper 3960X 24-core with 32GB DDR4-2666 and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 for $5,898...

The job growth in the US IT industry accelerated in August, adding 25,400 positions, according to figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported in the latest figures from IT employment consultancy Janco Associates. That growth in IT positions comes when the highly infectious delta variant of the novel coronavirus slowed overall job growth, largely due to slowdowns in the restaurant and entertainment sectors.

The August surge in US IT jobs follows job growth of about 18,500 in June and 10,100 in July (both are revised figures), reflecting continuing business recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. In fact, IT job growth has occurred every month this year, though it was uneven in the first five months of the year...

Microsoft this week made it official: it will start distributing Windows 11 on Oct. 5, just five weeks away, to eligible PCs. "On this day, the free upgrade to Windows 11 will begin rolling out to eligible Windows 10 PCs and PCs that come pre-loaded with Windows 11 will start to become available for purchase," wrote Aaron Woodman, general manager of Windows marketing, in an Aug. 31 post to a company blog.

Although Windows 11's rollout will begin Oct. 5, the process will have an extraordinarily long tail. "We expect all eligible devices to be offered the free upgrade to Windows 11 by mid-2022," Woodman said...

Computerworld has compiled a list of upcoming technology events for the IT industry taking place in the following weeks and months.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, in-person conferences and summits may be rescheduled or canceled unexpectedly, so be sure to verify an event’s status before scheduling travel.

This list will be updated as we hear of more events, so keep checking for updates.

Click `Read more` to see the list of events...