Latest Technology News

Things are slowly but surely starting to move in the right direction again for Samsung and its troublesome Galaxy Note7 flagship. Most affected units have been sent back, with the vast majority of customers opting to have their device replaced with a "new" -- or safe -- one. The only main thing left to do for Samsung is make the Galaxy Note7 available again.

During the recall, Samsung paused sales of the Galaxy Note7 to avoid introducing even more potentially dangerous units on the market. But now that there are enough safe Galaxy Note7 devices in stock, potential customers in some markets can get their hands on the flagship again.

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Today, Facebook launches a new way to buy and sell goods online -- Facebook Marketplace. While the service may not win any prizes for the originality of its name, it provides a more efficient and effective way to find things that are for sale near you than currently exists on the social network.

To start with, Facebook Marketplace will be available to mobile app users on iOS and Android, but it will also come to Facebook on the desktop eventually. Facebook is taking a very hands-off approach to buying and selling, and is not getting involved in the murkier aspects of transactions such as payments or handling feedback.

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SUMo and KCleaner developer KC Softwares has unveiled its latest project, Wi-Fi troubleshooting tool dot11expert. The package displays low-level details about your network adapters, local wireless networks and access points: signal quality, SSID, MAC address, channel, authentication and more.

A separate graph plots the signal strength of all detected networks.

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Over the weekend, Linux Kernel 4.8 was unleashed on the world. This version of the kernel has been available in no fewer than eight release candidate builds, but now there's a stable build for everyone to play with.

If you've been following through the release candidates, there are not a huge number of changes with the stable release -- mainly driver, architecture and a few bits of generic code. But for anyone who skipped these releases, there's more to look forward to including Raspberry Pi 3 SoC and Microsoft Surface 3 touchscreen support.

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The developing digital landscape has changed the way people interact with hardware. We are now more device-agnostic than ever -- both in our personal and professional lives -- meaning we are often carrying around two, sometimes three, devices to complete different tasks.

The 2-in-1 (or hybrid) market has looked to address this by merging the power and performance of a laptop with the flexibility and mobility of a tablet. For the most part, Microsoft has led the way in this area with its Surface and Surface Pro devices, but is now being pushed hard by the likes of Apple and Huawei.

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Google is on the verge of launching the Pixel and Pixel XL, but no launch would be complete without its share of leaks. This time around the slipup comes courtesy of UK retailer Carphone Warehouse which posted details of Google's upcoming phones, complete with photos and full specs.

The same mistake was made by Canada's Bell, effectively confirming the specifications which thus far have only been rumors. The listings not only reveal what we can expect in terms of hardware, but also show that Google is going to offer free, unlimited photo backups at full resolution for Pixel owners.

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European regulators could hit Google with large fines if the company does not stop offering financial incentives to smartphone manufacturers to pre-install its own apps on handsets. Documents obtained by Reuters show that a potential fine could be linked to the revenue Google makes from AdWords.

With advertising being Google's primary source of income, this has the potential to be a fine of unparalleled magnitude. The European Commission knows that it needs to hit Google where it hurts if anticompetitive practices are to be effectively discouraged. The Commission says it "intends to set the fine at a level which will be sufficient to ensure deterrence".

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Facebook may have the rather lofty goal of wanting to "empower people all over the world to stay connected", but for most people the social network is just about chatting. Facebook Messenger has proved massively popular, and to cater for people with slower internet connection, the company now has Facebook Lite.

As you would probably guess from the Lite tag, this is a slightly cut-down version of the messaging tool but it still offers all of the core features. As well as helping out those with slow internet connections, it's an app that will appeal to people with more basic Android smartphones.

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Windows has never made it easy to find the tool or setting you need, and with options now split between "old" and "new" "Control Panels", it can seem more difficult than ever.

Ultimate Settings Panel is a once-commercial, now free tool which makes just about every Windows applet, settings panel or tool accessible from a single place.

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When buying PC components for a build, there are many things to consider. While brand, performance, and quality are obviously the most important factors, appearance sometimes matters too. True, not everyone cares about how computer parts look, but some people take pride in the overall appearance of their PC -- especially when a window-case is used.

CORSAIR is a well-respected company when it comes to memory, and its latest offering will likely bolster those opinions. The newly-launched DOMINATOR PLATINUM Special Edition DDR4 Memory kits are not only fast, but drop-dead gorgeous too.

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.REG files are a quick way of making multiple changes to the Windows Registry. Double-click one, REGEDIT asks if you’d like to apply its tweaks, and once you’ve said "yes" it'll update every key in the file.

Fast? Yes. Convenient? Certainly. But what if you don’t really want to make perhaps hundreds of Registry changes without having the slightest idea of what they’re doing?

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If you have a Wink hub then it's easy to set up home automation across a number of different platforms. Throw in Alexa and do a little additional setup and you'll be able to control it all with voice commands.

In the past you've been able to use groups to control multiple bulbs -- simply name each bulb and then add them to a group which you also name.

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Of the multitude of properties Googles owns, Maps and Calendar are two of the more popular ones. Both products can easily be associated with one another in the case of business travelers, so why not bring them together?

That's exactly what Google is doing, making your Calendar appointments available to see while using Maps. This isn't just driving either, it will work just as well if you are taking public transportation.

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You'd be hard pressed to find someone who enjoys a trip to their department of Motor Vehicle. While not everyone there is bad or unfriendly, the general reputation would have you believe so. Couple that with long wait times. One thing you don't think you need to worry about is a stalker.

That  appears to be sort of what happened recently in New York. The New York Motor Vehicle employee was caught using a work computer to get a date with a customer -- without the customer's knowledge.

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It was expected, that once Windows 10 stopped being free, upgrades would slow significantly. That turned out not to be the case last month when NetMarketShare’s usage figures showed it, rather surprisingly, to be business as usual. Growth in August was no different from growth in previous months, although I speculated it might have been buoyed by sales of new back to school PCs.

In September though, according to NetMarketShare, Windows 10 didn’t just show slower growth, it actually went into reverse gear and lost usage share. Yes, you read that right.

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