Those curious spikes on your CPU graph...

I've been reading lately on a couple of different forums about the annoyances of having those quickly-repeating spikes of the various cores in your CPU which are seemingly unrelated to any activity of yours on the computer. Various writers have asked if this is a sign of malware being active on your machine. Sometimes that could be hard to tell, since one of my trusty security programs, ThreatFire,
is no longer active in its role of zero-day behavioral detection of malware. 

But not to worry, Kiddies - there's probably a relatively simple explanation for all that bouncing up and down of the activity graphs for your CPU. Let's take yet another look at the Windows 8 Start Screen, with all its cute little live tiles.... and please note I said "live tiles" because some of them are 'live'.... meaning that they are actively communicating back and forth with home base to get those constant updates of photos and news and weather and God-knows-what we all know and love but never stop to think much about... Are you getting the picture now? 

Try unpinning some of those from your display, and watch what happens with that bouncing graphic for your CPU activity. It gets a lot quieter, right? So it wasn't some secret malicious new-fangled spyware hiding in there after all - it was stuff you chose to have running to keep you up-to-the-minute on the news and weather in friendly but far-off Bunga Bunga, where men are men and the gals are all naturally double-breasted. And you thought...... but never mind that, we've pretty-much explained it already, haven't we? And you can start breathing normally again now. Your computer wasn't out to get you after all....