Mihăiță Bamburic

Developers who want to sell apps or offer in-app subscriptions on Google Play have to give 30 percent of the revenue up. It's the cost of doing business on Google's popular app store -- and the same goes for the App Store and Microsoft Store as well.

However, in a move that mirrors Apple's policy change last year, Google will soon take a lower cut from developers who retain subscribers for more than a year.

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Six months after introducing Ubuntu 17.04 "Zesty Zapus," Canonical has released a new version of its popular Linux-based distribution. Ubuntu 17.10, also known as "Artful Aardvark," arrives with a host of major changes, including the highly-anticipated switch to a new desktop environment and display server.

Canonical has shipped the alpha and beta versions of Ubuntu 17.10 with Unity, but the first official release now comes with GNOME 3.26 as the desktop environment of choice. Wayland is the default display server, replacing Mir. And that is not all that is new.

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With the release of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, Microsoft pushed out a major update for .NET Framework, which arrives with a large number of changes, including support for .NET Standard 2.0, adding roughly 200 new APIs as a result, and improved performance.

And, for developers to be able to take advantage of the new features that are part of .NET Framework 4.7.1, Microsoft also updated the Visual Studio 2017 IDE to version 15.5.

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Microsoft has released Windows 10 Fall Creators Update and if you want to get your hands on the latest version of the operating system you can now download the ISO files straight from the software giant's website.

Microsoft has a dedicated landing page for Windows 10 ISO files, which lets you download both the 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 10 Fall Creators Update ISO files without messing around with the Media Creation Tool. However, if you click that link from a Windows device you will be redirected to the Media Creation Tool page. That's a bummer, but you can easily avoid that. Here's how.

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Microsoft has officially launched the much awaited Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. The latest release brings lots of exciting new features and improvements that make the operating system much more powerful and refined. And, naturally, many of you will want to create a bootable USB drive to perform a clean install of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.

Creating a bootable Windows 10 Fall Creators Update USB drive is very easy. All that you need is a USB drive, a Windows 10 Fall Creators Update ISO, a Windows device, and a couple of minutes to spare.

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The new DiskStation DS418j is among Synology's most attractive options for home users with higher storage needs. Part of the entry-level J Series, the four-bay NAS has solid hardware and all the right features that you expect in this segment, including a powerful operating system and lots of useful software add-ons.

It is also among the most-affordable NAS devices in the four-bay range, which makes it a prime choice for buyers on a budget. But, just how good is it in real life? I've tested the DS418j to find out.

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Buying cryptocurrency is not as easy as you might think. It also takes longer than you might expect, which is a problem when you want to take advantage of an opportunity in this market as quickly as possible.

Coinbase seems to have solved this issue, announcing that customers will be able to instantly buy Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin using their bank account. Prior to this change, they had to wait several days for the purchased coins to be available.

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Since the beginning of the year, Bitcoin has taken numerous hits from so-called "experts" and gone through a couple of major crashes. And, despite all that, the price of the most-valuable cryptocurrency has set a new record, going over $5,200 for the first time today. Bitcoin is up over 500 percent since January 1.

Bitcoin's influence in the cryptocurrency market still looms large. Its market cap, $86 billion, represents over 50 percent of the whole market, which is currently valued at around $162 billion. Bitcoin's daily value is around $2 billion, far more than any of the other players.

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Huawei has gained serious ground in the smartphone market this year, threatening Apple's position as the second-largest player. This is due, in part, to the success of its Honor brand, which gives consumers value-focused smartphones, like the Honor 8 and Honor 6X.

Today, Huawei introduces a new model in the Honor line, the Honor 7X. It's perhaps its most attractive one yet, featuring a large edge-to-edge screen, solid internals and a dual camera at a highly attractive price.

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It is no secret that the PC market is struggling. Even though there are some encouraging signs, like upgrades to Windows 10 on the business side, it is becoming harder and harder for manufacturers to attract buyers -- even in the back-to-school season.

Gartner, which just released its report on PC shipments in the third quarter of 2017, says that "traditional promotions," like back-to-school sales, are "no longer an effective growth driver," which is why this back-to-school sales season has been "very weak." The report says that the market declined by 3.6 percent year-over-year, as a result.

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Even though Microsoft is not making a lot of money by selling Surface devices, it is hard to imagine that the PC line will be put out to pasture by 2019 because of it, as some top industry executives believe. It plays too big of a role in the PC ecosystem to be killed off.

As I explained in the article discussing those claims, we should not look at Surface "as a standalone effort, but rather as part of a long-term strategy" through which "Microsoft is not only making high-end Windows devices more attractive, it is also encouraging its partners to come up with better designs." Unsurprisingly, my view is mirrored by Surface chief Panos Panay, who calls those claims the "tabloid rumor of the week."

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The cloud may offer more convenience, but, if you want to store lots of content, you can't really beat a good old fashioned hard drive. The new 12TB options from Seagate, which are part of the BarraCuda Pro, IronWolf and IronWolf Pro lines, are a perfect example of this, packing a ton of space at a pretty reasonable cost.

The 12TB BarraCuda Pro is designed for desktop users, being touted as the "fastest, highest-capacity and most reliable hard drive" that consumers can get right now. The IronWolf and IronWolf Pro, on the other hand, are optimized for NAS use.

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Microsoft today addresses one of the biggest shortcomings of its Edge browser, announcing its upcoming availability on the two biggest mobile platforms: Android and iOS.

Microsoft says that support for Android and iOS is "one of the most common requests" that it has received from Edge users on Windows 10. By making it available across multiple platforms, the software giant is making its browser a viable option in this space for folks who use a mix of devices.

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Even though smartphone manufacturers rigorously test new devices before releasing them into the market, defects sometimes do make it into production. In the best-case scenario, you can live with them. Sometimes though, you get one so serious that the manufacturer has to recall the smartphone -- take the Galaxy Note7 for example, which had the bad habit of catching fire spontaneously.

Apple seems to have a potentially major problem of its own with the iPhone 8 Plus. A number of users are claiming that their new smartphone has split open while charging, effectively turning it into a very expensive brick.

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Google just announced the second-generation Pixel smartphones. The new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, which come with Android 8.0 Oreo, feature a best-in-class camera, improved display with always-on functionality, faster internals and more storage than before.

The main differences between the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL are in the display and battery departments. The Pixel 2 features a 5-inch AMOLED screen with a resolution of 1,920 by 1,080 and 16:9 aspect ratio whereas the XL version comes with a 6-inch pOLED panel with a resolution of 2,880 by 1,440 and 18:9 aspect ratio. The Pixel 2 XL has the most-impressive display of the two, hands down.

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