From battling Scientology to taking down Islamic State, hacker group Anonymous celebrates its top ten accomplishments

anonymous

Recently Anonymous has mostly been in the news for targeting Islamic State on the web, playing its part in helping to shut down thousands of ISIS-supporting accounts on Facebook and Twitter.

But the hacktivist collective, which has been active since 2003, has initiated a lot of campaigns over the years, targeting a variety of people and organizations, some more successfully than others. The group’s list of achievements is quite impressive -- ranging from getting an internet predator arrested, to taking on the Church of Scientology.

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Raspberry Pi 3 launches! 10x faster, 64-bit Quad-Core CPU, built in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

Raspberry Pi 3

Four years ago today, on 29 February 2012, the Raspberry Pi Foundation launched the original Raspberry Pi. Conceived as an ultra-cheap way to encourage kids to code as they had back in the 1980s and 90s, the uncased credit card sized computer quickly found an appreciative audience outside of the education system, with over a million Pis sold in the first year alone. Since then the firm has released several new versions, including the Raspberry Pi 2 (launched a year ago), and most recently the ultra-elusive $5 Raspberry Pi Zero.

Today, to celebrate the Pi’s 4th birthday, a new member joins the family. The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B is significantly more powerful than its predecessors and yet is priced at just $35, the same price as the Raspberry Pi 2.

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Apple dicks about with its site code to avoid a kerning cock up

shockedlady

As pointed out on Twitter, and reported by TechCrunch, Apple made a little tweak to its website’s CSS code to prevent people misreading the tagline for its latest operating system, OS X El Capitan.

The line should say, "There’s more to love with every click", but the word "click" looked a lot like an entirely different, and ruder word.

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Google Chromecast could come built into future TVs

Chromecast

Google’s Chromecast is a nifty piece of kit. The $35 dongle lets you stream content from your smartphone or tablet to the big screen. It’s great for casting TV shows, movies, music, sports, games and more.

At the moment you need to purchase a dongle and attach it to your set via HDMI to use this functionality, but in the future that step might not be required as Google is reportedly looking to partner with TV manufacturers to offer Chromecast-like functionality natively.

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Windows 10 Insider Preview Redstone Build 14271 arrives on the Fast ring, and there's an update for Mobile too

Windows 10

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14267 arrived on the Fast ring 6 days ago and brought some very welcome improvements with it, including three additions to Microsoft Edge, although sadly still no support for extensions.

Today Microsoft rolls out another Fast ring update, Build 14271, and also an update for Mobile, Build 14267.1004. This is the first time the software giant has released new builds for PC and mobile on the same day.

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You'll have two chances to buy a $5 Raspberry Pi Zero on Wednesday

Pi zero featured

The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s $5 barebones computer remains ever-elusive for many would be buyers. Almost as quickly as the device goes back in stock it sells out again.

On Wednesday 24 February, The Pi Hut is going to start selling a fresh batch of Pi Zero stock, and you’ll have not one, but two chances to get your hands on the desirable little piece of kit.

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Microsoft's Bill Gates sides with FBI in Apple iPhone unlocking row, likens it to 'cutting a ribbon around a hard disk'

sad-bill-gates

The debate about whether Apple should help the FBI to access content stored on an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters rumbles on. Based on our poll, the majority of BetaNews readers are against Apple cracking the phone (67 percent say no, 30 percent say yes, and 3 percent are currently undecided), and most tech firms have expressed similar sentiment.

But in an interview today with the Financial Times (story behind a paywall) Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has come out firmly on the side of the FBI.

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How to get total control over Windows 10's automatic updates

windows update

One of the (many) things that divides opinion about Windows 10 is Microsoft’s decision to make updates mandatory. If you have Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise or Education editions you can defer updates, but you can’t reject them outright.

Windows 10 Home users don’t have this luxury and updates are installed automatically once they become available.

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Problems booting up Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14267? Here's a quick fix

Fix repair computer solution keyboard

Microsoft has been rolling out new Windows 10 Insider Preview builds to the Fast ring at a rate of about one a week for the past month or so.

The latest build, 14267, introduced some welcome improvements, including three additions to Microsoft Edge, but it also added a fast startup bug which has stopped some users being able to boot Windows.

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Warning! Linux Mint hacked -- operating system compromised

Shocked PC

Linux Mint is one of the best distos around, but if you’ve installed it recently you might have done so using a compromised ISO image.

The Linux Mint team today reveals that hackers made a modified Linux Mint ISO with a backdoor in it, and managed to hack the Mint website so it pointed to this bad version.

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Poll: Should Apple help the FBI unlock the San Bernardino iPhone?

Apple vote

The US courts say Apple should help the FBI access the contents of an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, but Apple is refusing, on the grounds that it doesn’t want to erode the security of Apple customers.

I’m personally on Apple’s side, as is my colleague Joe Wilcox, but Donald Trump wants Apple to use "common sense" and open its phone up, while John McAfee is claiming he can help the FBI unlock Apple’s device within "three weeks", primarily through the use of social engineering. The FBI for its part says it doesn’t want Apple to create a backdoor in all iPhones, just unlock the one belonging to the killer.

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Mobile operator Three to block ads at the network level

no_ads_sign

Ad blocking has been going on for years, but it’s risen in popularity a lot lately, thanks in part to Apple allowing ad blockers into the App Store. Popular content blocker Adblock Plus has been having conversations with advertisers recently too and is looking to discover just why people block ads on the web.

In an interesting move, mobile network operator Three has announced that it will be using ad blocking technology created by Israeli startup Shine to block adverts on a network level.

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Windows 10 Insider Preview Redstone Build 14267 arrives on the Fast ring -- and brings welcome improvements

Windows 10

After a flurry of new builds, Insiders on the Fast ring have had to wait a whole two weeks for the latest Windows 10 update to arrive.

Unlike previous Fast ring releases, which focused on updates to OneCore (the core that Windows 10 shares across devices) and preparing the ground work for future additions, like extensions, Build 14267 actually has some improvements worthy of note, including several usability enhancements to Microsoft Edge.

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Microsoft's Surface Book goes on sale in the UK

surface book

Surface Book, Microsoft’s hybrid laptop/tablet combo, officially launches in the UK from today.

If you're not familiar with it, the device has a detachable screen, a hinge that divides opinion (some people think it looks great, others hate it), and enough power to suit most users’ needs. It has a 13.5-inch PixelSense touchscreen display with a 3:2 aspect ratio that makes it great for getting "real work" done.

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Google wants you to 'Gmailify' your non-Gmail email accounts -- but should you?

Gmailify

While Gmail is the most popular webmail service in the world, not everyone uses it. Plenty of people prefer to get their email through Outlook.com or Yahoo Mail.

Google would like you to use its service -- naturally -- but understands you may not want to go to the hassle of switching, or changing your email address. This is where Gmailify comes in. Link your existing Microsoft or Yahoo webmail account through it (support for other email providers is planned), and you’ll get all of the benefits of Gmail without needing a Gmail address.

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