The Problem With Problems Trivia Quiz

Answer: Cooling fan

As the name would suggest, there may be an issue with a cooling fan - this may be that it isn't functioning properly, or that the computer may need more than one fan. There are different types of cooling fans - without getting too technical, probably the most interesting difference is air cooling versus liquid cooling. Air cooling is definitely a cheaper option - though not a bad one - but liquid cooling is quieter, which can be very beneficial.

In the BIOS settings, there is a thermal shutdown option - this sets a temperature for the computer to turn off for safety reasons if that temperature is exceeded. This is a very important safety feature both for you and for your PC!

Answer: A computer virus/malware

There are lots of different symptoms of potentially being infected by a virus, but the computer running considerably slower than normal is probably one of the most noticeable. Obviously if you're getting strange pop ups, they are also extremely noticeable. Ransomware is probably the most noticeable - where you get locked out of a system which is effectively held ransom until you agree to pay a sum of money to unlock it. Some are much more subtle, such as unknown programs running in the background - but you might never notice those unless you're perhaps looking very closely at task manager.

Regularly scanning your computer with anti-virus software - not just when you think you might have a virus - doesn't really have downsides so it's good to get into the habit. Computers can also pick up other types of malware such as spyware, which a regular anti-virus scanner may not always pick up (depending on the software), so it's also worth having a malware scanner.

Answer: Phishing

It's always good to be cautious about clicking links in any email, even if they're purported to be from a trusted sender. It's also worth knowing if there's any policy on whether an establishment such as a bank will ever email you at all, and if they do, in what circumstances they'll do it.

Bad spelling and grammar are some of the most obvious signs of phishing, but it's not good to rely only on checking that as bad spelling and grammar is extremely easy to fix. Not being referred to by name is a more useful red flag. Link text - even if the link text just looks like a website address - is very easy to fake. A measure that can be useful to check this is to hover your mouse over a link without clicking it and scrutinising the URL that appears at the bottom left of your screen extremely carefully. It's worth also recognising that email addresses can be "spoofed" and that there are ways to check whether or not an email has been spoofed so you look it up if you're really unsure.

However, the main thing to take away with anything that may be a phishing email is: if in doubt, don't trust it, and don't click any links. It's not worth the risk of getting it wrong and there's other ways of verifying the veracity of the information in the email.

Answer: BSOD (Blue Screen of Death)

The design of the blue screen of death has changed quite a bit over various iterations of Windows. Since Windows 10 and the large sad face, it definitely looks a lot less technical, although it still does give details of the error (though in smaller - albeit still all caps - text now). Since these terms can be quite confusing and are perhaps not particularly useful to people who aren't experts, this makes the screen a bit more user friendly and perhaps a little less frightening. If you need to call in support to fix the error, however, it's extremely useful if you can give this information to them as it will help them to identify the cause of the problem considerably more quickly and so could potentially expediate a resolution (which may well involve having to buy new parts).

Some other BSOD error messages can include: BAD_POOL_CALLER, IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, REGISTRY_ERROR. These are just a few: there are many, many blue screen errors, some of which will be far rarer to see than others.

Answer: Google

The babelfish translation website appeared in 1995, and while it's perhaps no longer as well-known as some of its competitors it is named after the babelfish in the Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy books by Douglas Adams. As the name may suggest, in the books it's a small fish that can translate any language or dialect instantly when it has been placed in the ear. It's therefore an apt name for the site, but it's notable for being frequently mis-spelled.

Despite launching over 10 years later in 2006, Google Translate is now probably the most well-known web translation service, and frequently the top of searches for "best website translation" or "most popular website translation". Whether this is because it genuinely has the most accurate translation or due to the ease of use and well-known nature of the Google search engine is perhaps irrelevant and would in any case be quite hard to measure.

It's always worth remembering that no translation service that automatically translates for you is guaranteed to be 100 percent accurate - especially if words in the initial input are mis-spelled and therefore the wrong word is included. People should always keep that in mind when using these sites.

Answer: Steam

Steam initially had quite humble beginnings. It originally launched in 2003. Developed by Valve Corporation, it was originally used solely for Valve games so that updates to those games could have updates automatically pushed out. Valve were responsible for various popular games, most notably at the time Half-Life and Counter-Strike. The first game that actually depended on Steam to run was Half-Life 2. By 2005, Steam was offering games that were not just by Valve, and it grew from there.

Despite there becoming more competition over the years with other digital distribution services, Steam has remained immensely popular and now offers over 73,000 games. It's optimal to have an active internet connection while using Steam. Although there is an offline mode, features are somewhat limited in this mode.

Answer: A chat app (voice/video/text)

Discord is one of many chat apps available. Others that have been particularly famous include Skype and Zoom. Released in 2015, it was primarily intended as a tool for gamers and in 2021, it boasted over 350 million registered users. Its gaming roots can be noticed in some of its features, such as being able to see the name of whatever game a user is playing while they are online on Discord.

Over time, Discord has expanded simply from being a community for gamers and is now used by many other communities. Its rapid increase in popularity coincided with the COVID pandemic and the need to find other ways to coordinate during lockdowns and quarantine.

Answer: Chain mail/letters

Chain mail - also known as chain letters, though that term is less apt when we're discussing an email - is not a new concept. It's hard to know exactly when the practise began. One of the earliest known examples of chain mail is from 1888 when, to counter debt, a female group of missionaries urged the receiver of the letter to send them some money, and also to forward on the mail to three people. The idea was that there would be a snowball effect which would earn enough money to help counter this debt. People would only have to pay a small amount of money, but with many people receiving the message, this would add up over time.

From these initial earnest attempts to earn money, chain mail gradually came to contain more sinister offerings: more money collections by fraudsters, encouragement to pass on the letters via promising either good luck or dooming people to bad luck and threats such as "this person did not pass on the message and then they died".

With the advent of the internet, chain letters resurfaced through emails. Obtaining email addresses from various places on the internet such as people actively posting their email addresses or them being visible on profiles etc., it meant you didn't need to know a person to have an "address" to send your chain mail to.

The concept of a chain letter still exists on the internet, but now resembles a letter even less than before. Some of the more modern versions of these concepts are shared on websites such as TikTok and can involve sharing videos instead, for instance, and if you don't something unfortunate will happen.

Answer: Zoom

It's surprisingly easy to accidentally change the Zoom settings on an email, and if you haven't deliberately been messing with the slider and therefore are fully aware of what the problem is, people can find it very confusing. It's a common enough error that Microsoft have a support base article up on how to solve it!

If the text size hasn't been changed but things seem far too large or small compared to normal, it's always worth checking your Zoom setting which should be 100 percent by default. You can, of course, have a different preference and set it to that instead. Provided you know what percentage you're happy with, it shouldn't matter!

Answer: Safari

Safari is a web browser that was designed with Apple products in mind. It did have a brief visit to Windows and is potentially available on Linux, but its primary focus is on serving Apple's products well. This means that it is optimised for iPad and iPhone.

While Safari is indeed the default web browser on iPad, it doesn't mean it's the only option. Some other options that you can use are Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and DuckDuckGo. Quite a few of those may sound quite familiar.