Wayne Williams

One of the biggest complaints about Windows 10 is that it spies on its users. Microsoft has reigned in this snooping in past feature updates, and is introducing yet more privacy enhancements in the forthcoming Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.

These changes, Microsoft says, will give users greater access to information, as well as more control over what data is collected in the first place. There are two main additions.

After a wait of nearly two weeks, Microsoft yesterday rolled out a new Windows 10 Fall Creators Update build to Insiders on the Fast ring.

At least, that was the intention. However, the release didn’t go according to plan, and many people found themselves unable to download the new build. Microsoft was quickly on the case and delivered a fix for the issue, except, well, people still can’t download the update.

The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update rollout is scheduled to begin on October 17th, although if the speed of the previous feature update rollout is anything to go by, it will be quite some time before most users get offered it (although they'll of course be able to manually update their PCs if they wish.)

Microsoft is hard at work getting the new update ready, although some major bugs meant it's been nearly two weeks since the last build was pushed out. Today the wait is over, as a new build finally arrives for Insiders on the Fast ring (not Skip Ahead).

At its first ever event at the new Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, Apple took the wraps off its latest iterations of iPhone -- the iPhone 8, its larger sibling the iPhone 8 Plus, and the re-imagined iPhone X.

If you’re in the market for a new flagship smartphone, then choosing between the iPhone 8/8 Plus and the iPhone X could be tricky, as many of the new features are available on both devices, but it becomes even harder when you consider there are even more iPhones to choose from in the official line-up.

It’s been rumored, and even revealed in a number of leaks, but the iPhone X (iPhone 10 as it’s referred to) is now official.

The super flagship from Apple features an edge-to-edge OLED screen with Super Retina display that does away with the Home button, an advanced Face ID unlocking method that replaces Touch ID, A11 Bionic chip, wireless charging, and an improved rear camera with dual optical image stabilization, and more.

In just a few hours, Apple will be taking the wraps off its latest smartphones, the iPhone 8/8 Plus and the overhauled anniversary device which is expected to be called the iPhone X. It will likely also reveal an updated 4K Apple TV, and a new LTE version of Apple Watch.

Due to a large number of detailed leaks we already have a good idea of what is going to be showcased at the first ever event at the new Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, but as always there are bound to be some surprises.

Game of Thrones is a hugely popular show, and every year we see statistics regarding how many times different episodes have been downloaded illegally.

Season 7, which has just finished on HBO, was easily the most pirated yet, helped in no small part by leaks from hackers which saw episodes available to stream through Kodi, and download on pirate sites and BitTorrent before they were even broadcast.

Analytics is now an expected part of the bottom line. The irony is that as more companies become adept at analytics, it becomes less of a competitive advantage. Businesses are now being forced to look deeper into their data to increase efficiency and competitiveness.

Enter machine learning. Recent advances have led to increased interest in adopting this technology as part of a larger, more comprehensive analytics strategy. But incorporating modern machine learning techniques into production data infrastructures is not easy.

Leading With Strategic Thinking -- Four Ways Effective Leaders Gain Insight, Drive Change, and Get Results, from Wiley, reveals what effective leaders do differently.

Eschewing the one-size-fits-all leadership model, this helpful guide outlines four general leadership types and demonstrates how each type achieves success -- whether through personal vision, structured process, collaboration, or by empowering others. The authors identify the actions and skills that distinguish strategic leadership, drawn from interviews and focus groups with over three hundred leaders from around the world.

The need for penetration testers has grown well over what the IT industry ever anticipated. Running just a vulnerability scanner is no longer an effective method to determine whether a business is truly secure.

Penetration Testing -- A Survival Guide from Packt Publishing usually retails for $55, but BetaNews readers can get it entirely free for a limited time.

The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is set to launch on October 17, but a large portion of Windows 10 users are still waiting to be offered the Creators Update which was released back in April.

Windows 10 rollouts tend to be quite slow -- Microsoft only makes each upgrade available to systems it considers compatible -- but the pace of the Creators Update rollout has been positively glacial -- way slower than the Anniversary Update that preceded it.

According to NetMarketShare, in July Windows 10 grew its usage share by 0.83 percentage points -- its largest increase in three months. (This, remember, is an OS that only managed to gain a grand total of five percent share in an entire year).

With a new major update to the operating system right around the corner, you might expect Windows 10 to have grown its share by a similar figure in August, but no. It's back to the glacial growth we usually see for the new OS.

Any photo editor -- be it on the desktop, or on the web -- can reduce an image’s size. You can shrink images down as little or as much as you like.

However, making an image bigger, well that’s a whole different matter. When you blow up a picture you can introduce all manner of problems, including blurring, general loss of sharpness, and jagged edges. That said, it is possible to increase a picture’s size without introducing these problems, if you know how.

When you type a URL into your browser’s address bar and hit enter, there will be a slight delay while the software asks a DNS (Domain Name System) server for the IP address of the site in order to be able to load it.

Switching to a faster DNS server could shave milliseconds off the lookup time, and ultimately speed up your browsing. You can do this manually, or there’s a simpler option.

Drones are great fun to fly, and if you’ve never had the chance to pilot one the Micro Drone 3.0 is a good place to start. The personal drone is easy enough for beginners to master, but with enough options to please more expert pilots.

Micro Drone 3.0 is small enough to fit in your hand, but offers pretty much everything you’ll require, including sensor-assisted flying, inverted flying, a camera port, and first-person view piloting.