Sofia Elizabella Wyciślik-Wilson

Mozilla asks the FBI for details of Tor vulnerability that could also affect Firefox

Mozilla is fighting to force the FBI to disclose details of a vulnerability in the Tor web browser. The company fears that the same vulnerability could affect Firefox, and wants to have a chance to patch it before details are made public.

The vulnerability was exploited by FBI agents to home in on a teacher who was accessing child pornography. Using a "network investigative technique", the FBI was able to identify the man from Vancouver, but Mozilla is concerned that it could also be used by bad actors.

Continue reading

Google slaps an AdWords ban on payday loans and other high interest finance services

In recent years Google has started to tighten up on the products that can be promoted through its services. After cracking down on porn, the latest victims of the ban hammer are payday loans and other high interest finance services.

Starting July 13, it will no longer be possible to advertise such products through AdWords. Ads for loans with repayment deadlines of under two months are now outlawed, as are ads for loans with high interest rates.

Continue reading

Google proposes equality-boosting emoji showing professional women

Google workers feel that emoji could be used to promote gender equality. A quartet of employees have put forward a new set of emoji that portray women in a number of different professional roles such as technology engineer, mechanic, and farmer.

In a bid to balance things out a little, the emoji proposal sees women portrayed in more roles than ever before, including those traditionally thought of as being male-dominated. A set of 13 new emoji have been submitted to the Unicode Consortium for consideration. They may later be added to the official emoji set.

Continue reading

Facebook panders to European privacy concerns by stripping facial recognition from Moments app

Facebook has rolled out its photo-sharing app Moments around the world, and users in Europe have been treated to a modified version. Specifically, the European version of the app lacks the facial recognition feature that allows for automatic tagging of people.

In many ways, Facebook has been forced to release a degraded version of Moments to its EU audience because of the varying privacy laws that exist in different countries. The hobbled app will not attempt to identify individuals in photos, but will group together images that "appear to include the same face".

Continue reading

GitHub's gift to paying developers -- unlimited private repositories

Today GitHub changes its pricing structure for both individual developers and organizations. As well as simplifying pricing, the change also sees the introduction of unlimited private repositories, representing a real term financial saving.

The new pricing means that developers now just have two options to choose from: individual accounts for $7 per month, or organization accounts for $9 per user per month (or $25 per month for the first five users).

Continue reading

Microsoft brings unlocked frame rates, FreeSync and G-Sync to UWP games with Windows 10 update

Gamers can be a demanding bunch, and in many regards Windows 10 has been something of a disappointment as a gaming platform. While Microsoft has used Windows 10 to merge the worlds of PC and Xbox One gaming, Universal Windows Platform (UWP) games have been somewhat crippled by crappy frame rates.

Today this changes. Microsoft is pushing out an update that allows developers to take advantage of unlocked frame rates in UWP titles just as they can with Win32 games. In addition to ramping up frame rates, the update means that developers will also be able to take advantage of AMD's FreeSync and NVIDIA's G-Sync technologies.

Continue reading

Facebook admits there is a left wing bias in Silicon Valley

Facebook may be insisting that its news curators are not suppressing right-wing stories, but a senior executive is willing to admit that Silicon Valley as a whole is rather left-leaning.

Alex Schultz, vice president of growth at the social network, says: "There is definitely a left-wing bias to any company based in San Francisco". He made the comments at an LGBT discrimination conference, joking that "a Republican may be the most at-risk diversity at Facebook".

Continue reading

India has mobile forensic tools to hack into iPhones

The case of the FBI seeking to force Apple to provide backdoor access to the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone focused attention on security and encryption once again. The agency may have been able to gain access to the phone with help from a third party, but the Indian government has gone one better.

Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has revealed that the government has a tool that can be used to gain access to, among other devices, Apple's iPhone. This is not to say that a tool has been created that bypasses encryption, rather that a method for getting past the lockscreen has been developed.

Continue reading

Facebook denies censoring right wing news from Trending Topics

Having been hit with allegations of censoring news from conservative outlets, Facebook has issued a strenuous denial. Gizmodo reported claims from former Facebook "news curators" that they were directed to not only suppress news from right wing sources, but also to "inject" stories into Trending Topics regardless of their actual popularity.

Suggestions that its Trending Topics are driven by a liberal agenda have been denied by Facebook. The social network says it "found no evidence that the anonymous allegations are true", going on to say that while there is a review team in place, its guidelines "do [not] permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or one news outlet over another".

Continue reading

Think Android security updates take too long to roll out? So do the FTC and FCC

Both the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are starting to ask the questions that Android users have been asking for years: why do updates and upgrades take so long to roll out?

If you're in possession of a flagship or recent handset, the chances are you're in line to receive timely updates for the foreseeable future. But Android's fragmentation means that older handsets quickly drop off the radar, get forgotten and remain unpatched. The FCC and the FTC both want to know why security patches are slow to hit phones, and the agencies have launched separate, but parallel, investigations.

Continue reading

Microsoft Edge users can now install Adblock Plus or AdBlock extensions

Microsoft Edge

Extensions, or the lack thereof, have been stumbling block for many would-be Microsoft Edge users. Support for add-ons has finally arrived, bringing with it the potential for something people have been asking for since Edge first appeared -- the ability to block ads.

It had previously been thought that Edge might feature native ad blocking, but this turned out to be a matter of poor communication from Microsoft. We've already shown you a slightly bodged-together way of blocking ads in Edge, but now Adblock Plus and AdBlock extensions have been officially released to the Windows Store.

Continue reading

Microsoft confirms Windows 10 will remain free for people with accessibility needs

Windows 10

The free ride is coming to an end. Windows 10 was always going to be free for the first year after release, and this year is up on 29 July. There are, of course, still ways to get your hands on Windows 10 for free beyond this date.

One way is to buy a new PC with Windows 10 installed, although not many people would regard this as a free upgrade. But Microsoft has also confirmed that people with accessibility needs will still be able to upgrade to Windows 10 for free after the deadline.

Continue reading

Broadband is not an automatic right in rural areas of the UK

While most of the UK enjoys fast (or superfast if you want to swallow the rhetoric) broadband, there are still numerous pockets plagued with dial-up speeds. Talks had been underway between the government and broadband providers about whether the aim of providing broadband access to 95 percent of the country by the end of 2017 was ambitious enough.

But it is the remaining 5 percent that’s concerning. 95 percent coverage might sound impressive, but 5 percent of the population is still a huge number of people. The government has now decided that broadband is not a right to which households are entitled. Rather than forcing providers to install connections for everyone, the Universal Service Obligation (USO) will require homes and business to submit requests for connection; and, despite the name, there is no obligation for these requests to be honored.

Continue reading

Malware takes advantage of Windows' God Mode hack to slip past security

The so-called God Mode hack for Windows is rather less grand than it might first sound. Rather than granting users deity-like abilities, it simply provides one-folder access to an absolute butt-load of Control Panel options and settings. But security researchers have discovered that the technique used to create this special folder can also be exploited by malware.

McAfee says that while the Easter Egg is great for power users, it is also being used by attackers for "evil ends". By placing files within the God Mode shortcut folder, malware such as Dynamer is able to run undetected on a victim's computer.

Continue reading

'Weak' Craig Wright backs out of Bitcoin claim

Deception

Craig Wright, the main claiming to be Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto has started to backpedal on his claim. There has long been speculation about the identity of the person behind the cryptocurrency, and earlier this week Wright stepped up to the plate.

After doubts had been expressed about his claim to the Bitcoin crown Wright had promised to reveal "extraordinary evidence" as proof. But now he has had a change of heart. He's not saying -- yet -- that he's not Satoshi Nakamoto, but that he does "not have the courage" to publish the proof so many people are demanding to see.

Continue reading

© 1998-2025 BetaNews, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy - Cookie Policy.