Latest Technology News

It used to be that if you wanted a powerful gaming PC, you would need a monstrous tower with many loud fans. Nowadays, you can build a Mini-ITX system that offers impressive specifications in a tiny package.

What if you want something even smaller? Zotac has a new VR-Ready mini PC that is shockingly tiny. Inside the diminutive 'MAGNUS ERX480' barebones box is an Intel Skylake Core i5-6400T and an AMD Radeon RX480 (4GB GDDR5 256-bit). It supports DDR4 RAM (1866 or 2133) up to to 32GB and an M.2 connector for storage. For convenience, it can also be had with both RAM and storage installed from the factory. You can choose to have Windows 10 pre-installed too.

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Imagine living somewhere where traffic jams were a thing of the past, where ambulance crews started on-route to an emergency before anyone had dialed 911 and where critical infrastructure operated at maximum efficiency. This utopian city may not currently be possible, but the Internet of things could change that in the not too distant future.

By connecting various aspects of the urban landscape to the Internet, local administrators will gain access to countless extra data sets that could help them provide better services for their citizens. These smart cities not only promise to improve the lives of their inhabitants, but also provide potentially lucrative commercial opportunities for a number of businesses.

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Online advertising is a divisive issue, and one that sees many people turning to ad blockers to improve their online experience. The biggest name in the business is Adblock Plus which has come under fire in recent months for its Acceptable Ads program that allows certain ads to be whitelisted.

The company behind Adblock Plus, Eyeo, today published an extraordinary blog post in which it attacks "crazy accusations" made about it and its program. Introduced in the format of an election-style fact checker, the post from Ben Williams drips with barely disguised fury at what are described as "slants, spins and downright lies".

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The concept of machine learning has been around for some time. Deep learning is an area of research aimed at taking things further still and getting closer to an artificial intelligence system by using neural networks in a way that imitates the human brain.

Sometimes also referred to as hierarchical learning or deep structured learning, it seeks to model data in order to solve problems like object and facial recognition, natural language processing and speech recognition.

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One of Windows 10’s biggest new features is the inclusion of Microsoft’s personal assistant, Cortana. She can do all sorts of things for you, from searching the web, to setting reminders, and even looking up songs as they play.

You can summon Cortana at any time simply by saying "Hey, Cortana", but if you’d rather call her something different -- "Siri", perhaps, or "Darling", or "Ava" -- it’s possible to give her a name change. This is how.

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November 8, 2016 is Election Day, and I am excited. While neither of the two major presidential candidates are exceptional in my eyes, I have decided on one of them. It is my responsibility and duty as an American to vote, and when I cast my ballot for her/him, I will do so proudly -- not holding my nose as I pull the lever.

If you are still undecided about choosing a candidate, or simply don't know where to go to vote, I have good news. Twitter is making it all very easy. Simply direct message the @Gov account, and you can obtain useful information. You can also use the #Election2016 hashtag when tweeting about the election.

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It is no secret that Microsoft has been working on a Slack rival, but it is not until today that we get to take a proper look at the new collaboration tool. Called Microsoft Teams, it will officially launch in the first quarter of 2017, though the software giant is making it available as a public preview starting today. Should you give it a try?

The benefit to Microsoft Teams, as the software giant explains it, is the integration with some of its most important products and services, like Office 365 and Skype, to help users collaborate more easily on different projects. You also get support for services like GitHub and Twitter and different security features, but those are also available in other collaboration tools -- like Slack, for instance.

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We already know that ransomware is a lucrative business for the attackers. But for the victims, especially smaller businesses, it can prove devastating.

A new solution offering enterprise-class ransomware protection for small and mid sized companies is being launched by data protection specialist Datto. In the event of an attack it aims to shorten downtime, save money and reduce the impact to business, giving companies an effective and reliable alternative to paying hackers' ransoms.

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New research shows that 98 percent of developers use open source tools at work, with 56 percent revealing that more than half of their development tools are open source, and 18 percent using only open source tools.

The study from code collaboration platform GitLab also shows that more than half of developers (55 percent) are able to choose the tools they work with.

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Last Wednesday, Microsoft revealed, among other things, an updated Surface Book. The following day, Apple introduced a new MacBook Pro. Both devices look great, sport powerful innards and come with a suitably high price tag.

Which you go for will likely depend on whether you’re a fan of Microsoft or Apple, but if you’re not firmly entrenched in either camp, and need a little guidance to decide which laptop to go for, here are all the details you need.

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In order to retain customers businesses need to be responsive to their needs and send them relevant communications.

Mobile growth platform company Urban Airship is making it easier for marketers to do this with a service that lets them deliver individualized messaging to any platform, device or marketing channel and use real-time customer data from any system.

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Adlice PEViewer -- aka RogueKillerPE -- is a free tool for analyzing and exploring Windows executables.

The results can help you troubleshoot programs, find out more about what they’re doing, and perhaps identify malware that your regular antivirus tool has missed. It’s the free version of a commercial tool and a nag screen appears occasionally, but not enough to be annoying and there are no other major restrictions.

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When businesses think of automation, they probably conjure up images of simplicity, efficiency, lower costs and increased productivity. Of course, this is something of an oversimplification and there are certainly challenges to adopting workplace automation.

However, it is not hard to see why more and more industries are automating their business processes. Whether it’s via robots or software, automation can eliminate the repetitive, manual tasks that, while essential, are a huge drain on employee time. Automation lets members of staff direct their energies into more productive areas, such as coming up with innovative new ideas.

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As cyber attacks get more sophisticated, so being able to spot them requires a different approach from simply looking for signatures.

Behavioral detection company LightCyber is launching a new version of its Magna platform that increases the precision and speed of detecting an in-progress attack from either a malicious insider or external bad actor.

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It was supposed to be a feature that allowed more efficient versions of websites to be delivered to people running out of battery power.

But the Battery Status API built into Firefox was also found to be problematic from a privacy point of view after it was discovered that visitors' battery levels could be used to track them online. In response to this the API is being pulled from Firefox.

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