Sofia Elizabella Wyciślik-Wilson

Slack and its rivals Atlassian have announced they are forming a strategic partnership that will see chat tools HipChat and Stride closed down.

As part of the deal, Atlassian has made an equity investment in Slack, while Slack has acquired the intellectual property rights for Stride and HipChat Cloud. Moving forward, Stride, HipChat Cloud, HipChat Server and HipDhat Data Center will all be discontinued, and users will be offered a migration path to Slack -- making it even stronger competition for Microsoft's Teams.

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Following on from a strike for violating YouTube policies, Infowars founder Alex Jones has been hit with sanctions by Facebook for contravening its community standards.

The social network -- which just dropped in value -- removed four of Jones' videos for violating its policies and banned the right-wing conspiracy theorist from using his account for 30 days. In the event of further policy breaches by Jones or his admins, his page could be permanently banned.

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Out of the blue today, Donald Trump took to his favorite medium of Twitter to complain that the company was "shadow banning" prominent Republicans -- and it wasn't long before Donald Trump Jr sided with his father.

The allegations stem from a Vice article that suggested Twitter was limiting the visibility of searches for key Republican figures -- something Twitter denies. The company says that a bug is to blame and it is actively working on addressing it.

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Facebook shares and the personal fortune of Mark Zuckerberg took massive hits as the social network felt the impact of a growth slowdown and the fallout of recent privacy scandals.

The company issued a warning to investors about a deceleration of growth in its userbase, leading to a stock drop of around 20 percent. A drop in share price lowered the value of Facebook by a massive $118 billion -- a record-breaking one-day drop in the value of a company.

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With the launch of Chrome 68 a few days ago, Google changed the way it handled non-HTTPS websites. But the browser update also hides a secret -- a Material Design mode that you can enable by tinkering with the relevant hidden settings.

The new look is currently available on the desktop and in the iOS version of Chrome, and it gives the browser a much cleaner, fresher look and a bit of a UI rejig.

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We may not yet know for certain what it's going to be called, but we now have a very good idea of what to expect from Android P -- or Android 9.0, if you prefer. After numerous developer previews, Google has now released the fourth and final beta ahead of the official launch later this summer.

This is very close to the final code that will be pushed to phones in the coming weeks and months, and Google says that "Beta 4 update includes a release candidate build with final system behaviors and the official Android P APIs (API level 28)". While it's aimed primarily at developers, there's nothing to stop anyone with a compatible handset (or emulator) downloading and installing the final beta of Android P.

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Google now has its own hardware security keys -- the Titan Security Key. These FIDO-compatible keys include Google firmware that verifies the integrity of security keys at the hardware level. The Titan Security Key offers secure hardware-based two-factor authentication, and is available to Google Cloud customers.

The keys are similar to those offered by Yubico -- so similar, in fact, that the company has gone out of its way to stress that it is not manufacturing the devices for Google.

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YouTube has taken action against Infowars' Alex Jones, hitting him with a strike and removing four of the right-wing conspiracy theorist's videos from its platform.

The videos -- two about Muslims, one about transgender people and one about "preventing liberalism" -- were removed for violating YouTube policies about hate speech and child endangerment. Infowars has hit back by saying that YouTube is violating its own policies in taking down the videos.

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Microsoft has just released Microsoft released Windows 10 Redstone 5 Build 17723 and Redstone 6 (19H1) Build 18204 and one of the new features is a new system that avoids restarts at awkward times following the installation of an update.

This sounds great, and Microsoft says that people have complained about this very scenario. But is an artificial intelligence or machine learning powered system really what's needed? How about just leaving users in charge to choose when their computer restarts. There you go, Microsoft; I fixed that for you.

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There have been a number of sites and apps that have gained dark modes in the last year -- macOS and YouTube to name but two -- and Microsoft doesn't want to miss the trend. The company has heard the pleas of Outlook.com users and added a new Dark Mode option to its web-based email service.

The feature is one of the most frequently requested, and users got a preview of the new Dark Mode earlier in the month. Now it's rolling out to everyone, and Microsoft is using it as an excuse to try to push Outlook.com users to its Edge browser.

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There has been a long-standing movement trying to make the web a safer place. For some time, Google's Chrome browser has alerted people when they are visiting secure sites, but with the launch of Chrome 68, it instead warns when an insecure site is encountered.

As we warned just a couple of days ago, the latest update to Chrome means you're likely to see warnings about a lot of insecure sites -- and there are some big-name sites being shamed. Included on the non-HTTPS list are some of Google's own sites, the BBC, the Daily Mail and Fox News. And there are plenty of other recognizable offenders too, as Why No HTTPS? reveals.

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As part of its continuing efforts to clean up the platform, Twitter has removed 143,000 apps in the last three months for policy violations. To help reduce the need for such measures in the future, the company has also introduced a new registration system that means developers must now request access to Twitter's APIs.

The change is a significant one, and with it Twitter will be hoping to prevent the appearance of malicious apps in the first place -- making its job easier and improving the overall experience for users.

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Apple has released a patch which addresses a serious performance issues with its latest MacBook Pros -- and it could double the speed of your new laptop.

Called "macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 Supplemental Update for MacBook Pro (2018) ", the patch fixes a throttling issue that was brought to light recently that saw massive performance reduction when running power-intensive tasks. Apple says that a software bug was to blame, causing thermal management software to perform too aggressively.

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BitTorrent Inc says that it has been acquired by TRON, a blockchain startup, to create "the world's largest decentralized ecosystem".

There have been rumors about the acquisition for a few weeks now, but the news has now been confirmed. TRON is thought to have paid $126 million in cash for company, and the two teams will merge and pool their talent resources.

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Later this year you'll be able to use Apple Pay to pay for goods bought on eBay. Starting in the fall, Apple Pay will be a payment option on eBay's Marketplace platform as the company continues to move away from PayPal.

eBay has also announced that it is teaming up with Square Capital so that it can offer business financing to sellers in the US. Aimed at targeting small businesses looking to grow, the new partnership will provide access to finance from options between $500 and $100,000.

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