Birth of the transistor
Discussion
Stuff I never knew: https://www.rfinsights.com/device/the-invention-of...
Including the first computer bug!
Including the first computer bug!
Well, FWIW I fed it to Copilot who said:
'Short version: the page content itself looks like a perfectly normal, long-form technical article about the history of the transistor—no obvious scam, download prompts, or embedded executables in what I can see.
What I can’t see from here are:
Ads/trackers: Many AV tools flag pages because of aggressive ad scripts, tracking pixels, or third‑party JavaScript (e.g., from ad networks or analytics) rather than the article itself.
Reputation/heuristics: Some engines will warn on newer or low‑traffic domains, or on sites that load lots of external resources, even if those resources aren’t truly malicious.
Injected content: If your browser or a plugin has been compromised, it can inject its own scripts into otherwise clean pages—AV then blames the site you’re visiting.
If you want to sanity‑check it:
Open it in a different browser (or a different device) and see if the same AV alert appears.
Use a site scanner like VirusTotal’s URL check to see what multiple engines say.
Avoid clicking any pop‑ups, “update” prompts, or downloads that aren’t clearly part of the article.
From the visible article HTML/text, there’s nothing that obviously “shouldn’t be there”; the alerts are almost certainly about scripts or external resources rather than the transistor write‑up itself.
'Short version: the page content itself looks like a perfectly normal, long-form technical article about the history of the transistor—no obvious scam, download prompts, or embedded executables in what I can see.
What I can’t see from here are:
Ads/trackers: Many AV tools flag pages because of aggressive ad scripts, tracking pixels, or third‑party JavaScript (e.g., from ad networks or analytics) rather than the article itself.
Reputation/heuristics: Some engines will warn on newer or low‑traffic domains, or on sites that load lots of external resources, even if those resources aren’t truly malicious.
Injected content: If your browser or a plugin has been compromised, it can inject its own scripts into otherwise clean pages—AV then blames the site you’re visiting.
If you want to sanity‑check it:
Open it in a different browser (or a different device) and see if the same AV alert appears.
Use a site scanner like VirusTotal’s URL check to see what multiple engines say.
Avoid clicking any pop‑ups, “update” prompts, or downloads that aren’t clearly part of the article.
From the visible article HTML/text, there’s nothing that obviously “shouldn’t be there”; the alerts are almost certainly about scripts or external resources rather than the transistor write‑up itself.
Simpo Two said:
Thanks; I'm on Win 11. Didn't think anyone used Win 10 TBH!
I think you may find vast numbers of legacy Win10 users who - like me - apparently lack the correct hardware for Win11 despite having an Intel Core i7 chip.Do you have Malwarebytes? I'm not sure it has anything to do with the Win version.
littleredrooster said:
Do you have Malwarebytes? I'm not sure it has anything to do with the Win version.
I have Defender which is part of Win11. I asked Google and it said 'It provides continuous real-time protection and automatic background checks on Windows 10 and Windows 11' and 'Microsoft Defender Antivirus (built into Windows 10 and 11) is very good at detecting and blocking standard malware, performing on par with top paid antivirus programs in major lab tests'. A friend and former IT boff uses it; I've never known him to be wrong so I'm happy to proceed.I much preferred WinXP but eventually had to jump to 10 and I think that automatically updated to 11. The blue square bit makes no sense to me but I manage to do what I need to do.
Simpo Two said:
littleredrooster said:
Do you have Malwarebytes? I'm not sure it has anything to do with the Win version.
I have Defender which is part of Win11. I asked Google and it said 'It provides continuous real-time protection and automatic background checks on Windows 10 and Windows 11' and 'Microsoft Defender Antivirus (built into Windows 10 and 11) is very good at detecting and blocking standard malware, performing on par with top paid antivirus programs in major lab tests'. A friend and former IT boff uses it; I've never known him to be wrong so I'm happy to proceed.I much preferred WinXP but eventually had to jump to 10 and I think that automatically updated to 11. The blue square bit makes no sense to me but I manage to do what I need to do.

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