Latest Technology News

'Glitch' to blame for Uber customers getting overcharged

Uber has said that a system glitch was to blame for a number of customers who were massively overcharged for their rides over this past weekend.

Users of the service in the UK and also the US were apparently affected, according to a report in the Telegraph, with complaints popping up on Twitter. A number of folks complained of being charged around £70-£80 for very short trips that shouldn’t have been much more than a tenner.

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VMware Workstation 12 Pro, Player 12, Fusion 8 ship with Windows 10 support

VMware has announced the release of VMware Workstation 12 Pro, VMware Workstation 12 Player and VMware Fusion 8.

VMware Workstation features full Windows 10 compatibility: you can run it as a host or a VM, it’s supported for both Auto Detect and Easy Install, and you’re able to migrate any Windows 10 PC to a virtual machine.

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Samsung smart fridge might leak your Gmail credentials

Your smart fridge might be good for storing cold beer, but it definitely isn’t good for storing your Gmail credentials, as those can be easily stolen. During the recent DEF CON hacking conference, the vulnerability was unveiled at the IoT hacking challenge run by Samsung.

The fridge that got owned was the RF28HMELBSR smart fridge. It downloads Gmail Calendar information and displays it on an on-screen display. The device does implement SSL, but it fails to validate SSL certificates, thereby enabling man-in-the-middle attacks against most connections.

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Free versions of enterprise streaming analytics platform launches

Businesses are under pressure to get applications out quickly and that means they benefit from having real-time streaming analytics as a way of cutting preventable losses, gaining operational insight and uncovering new business opportunities.

Big data specialist Impetus Technologies is helping developers do this by launching free versions of StreamAnalytix, its enterprise-class, streaming analytics platform, based on open source technology components.

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Google Classroom gets additional features

It's back to school time, at least here in the US. The big yellow busses have begun rolling, and kids are standing curbside, hopefully under the watchful eye of an adult. There are many things to consider this time of year -- what computer to buy, a phone they can use to call in an emergency. In fact, my colleague Brian Fagioli did an overview of his choices in technology for the student.

But software also plays a major role in this equation, with things like Windows, Office and Google Docs all being possible players in your child's life. One you may not have known about is Google Classroom, but it does exist and it's getting a back-to-school update.

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Samsung Galaxy Note 5 vulnerable to massive S Pen snafu

If you've managed to get your hands on a new Samsung Galaxy Note 5 -- and this might sound like a case of stating the bleeding obvious -- make sure you put the S Pen into its slot the right way round. Inserting the pen the wrong way round could result in you breaking not just the stylus itself, but also kill some functionality of the Note 5.

While, ordinarily, slipping the S Pen home point first should not be too taxing, if attempted by someone who is a little tired, drunk, young, or stupid, it could go horribly wrong. You could end up with a Note 5 with an S Pen that just can’t be removed, or -- if you exert sufficient force -- you may remove the S Pen and break either the pen or the innards of the phone.

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Using social collaboration to deliver better IT visibility

Tech suport

For enterprises to stay on top of their IT and in particular to deal with incidents they need to be able to navigate through high volumes of information and work out what’s important.

In order that operations teams can minimize time lost from searching mixed information sources and spend more time on resolving incidents, ops performance specialist PagerDuty is announcing integration with VMware's Socialcast enterprise social collaboration tool.

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How to create a system restore point -- even if your PC is turned off

If your PC isn’t behaving as it should then System Restore could help, quickly restoring your system files and settings to a more trouble-free time. Unless, that is, you don’t have a suitable restore point available (oops).

Restore Point Creator is a handy tool which can automatically create restore points when you log on, or on some daily, weekly or interval-based schedule.

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NSA wants to future-proof encryption standards against quantum computers

The NSA is concerned that current methods of cryptography, used to encrypt data and ensure that if it does fall into the wrong hands it’s not readable or usable, are going to be woefully inadequate and easily broken when quantum computers come into play.

Of course, this isn’t going to be something that happens in the near future, as quantum computers -- which instead of bits, use qubits that can hold three states instead of the usual binary 0 or 1 -- are still merely conceptual in nature, and won’t be fully realized for many decades yet.

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Clarizen improves visibility into work management

Collaboration

Work collaboration specialist Clarizen is launching the latest version of its software aimed at delivering 360-degree visibility at any level of the enterprise, so teams can improve transparency within projects and among users and increase efficiency, accuracy and overall project quality.

Features include pre-built dashboards and reports that provide immediate visibility into projects and company wide effectiveness. New in-context data formatting automatically highlights key problems across all work items, as well as reports based on configurable rules.

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Xirrus makes Wave 2 easier for businesses

Wi-Fi

Wave 2 Wi-Fi -- otherwise known as 802.11ac -- brings a number of advances to help wireless networks keep up with the increased demand from mobile devices.

Wireless network specialist Xirrus is aiming to make Wave 2 more accessible for business by introducing the industry’s fastest and only customizable Wave 2 Wi-Fi solution.

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Windows 10 Mobile will not support 4GB smartphones -- are you affected?

Microsoft has updated a landing page for Windows 10 Mobile to reveal that Windows Phone 8.x devices with less than 8 GB of internal storage will not be upgraded to the upcoming operating system. This will come as bad news to some folks who have invested in the platform.

Windows 10 Mobile can very well run on devices that were designed with Windows Phone 8 or Windows Phone 8.1 in mind, as long as there is enough storage space to accommodate the new OS. It, for instance, runs well on both my Nokia Lumia 920 and Lumia 520. Manufacturers which have cut corners are, obviously, to blame for this.

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Ad-blocker Crystal massively reduces bandwidth usage and page load times in iOS 9

There's a lot to look forward to in iOS 9. We already know that the new version of Safari will include the option to block ads, but the browser is not going to be alone in clearing out unwanted ads. Crystal is an ad blocker for iOS 9 created "with the goal of making web browsing with the iPhone and iPad a great experience again".

It started life as a tool for testing iOS 9's own content blocker, but grew into a stand-alone project. Crystal is currently in closed public beta but its developer, Dean Murphy, has released some figures that show how effective it is. The results show that Crystal can speed up page load times by nearly four times and reduce bandwidth consumption by 53 percent. Impressive stuff, and the stats make for extremely interesting reading -- particularly for those waiting for the launch of a new iPhone.

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It's about to get easier to donate money to non-profits via Facebook

Facebook is known as The Social Network, but it's about more than just being social. It's also used by businesses, charities, and other organizations to promote products, services and causes. To make it easier for non-profits to raise money Facebook is introducing a Donate Now button.

This is something that makes life easier for the donor and the recipient. Many non-profits are small operations which may not want to go to the trouble of setting up a fully-fledged website with a donation page. For people who discover a worthy cause through Facebook, it makes sense to be able to hand over some money through the same medium.

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Most Android lock patterns are easy to guess

Your Android lock screen patterns are so predictable, it almost makes no difference if you use one or not.

According to a study by a woman named Marte Løge, a graduate of Norwegian University of Science and Technology, a vast majority of Android users use lock patterns which are easy to guess.

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