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A leaked memo written by Facebook's vice-president, Andrew Bosworth, entitled "The Ugly" gives a glimpse into the attitude the social network has towards its own growth. "Boz" Bosworth says the "ugly truth" of Facebook's growth is that connecting people could lead to deaths -- but so be it.

In the memo, Bosworth says "anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good". He goes on to say: "That's why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it". With the criticism that has been leveled at Facebook recently, the leak could hardly have come at a worse time.

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As if the Meltdown and Spectre chip vulnerabilities weren't bad enough in their own right, the patches designed to fix them caused a further series of problems. A Swedish researcher recently discovered that Microsoft's Meltdown fixes lowered security in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and now the company has issued a fix.

As the new patch is being released outside of the usual schedule, it is indicative of the importance of the security update. KB4100480 is a kernel update for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 that addresses CVE-2018-1038 problems.

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This Saturday's World Backup Day is set to raise awareness of the importance of backing up important documents.

Backup solution specialist CloudBerry is marking the day by offering a 50 percent discount until April 2nd on its CloudBerry Backup program for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

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Geting in shape can be very hard. Not only do you need the means to get fit -- education on what to eat, for instance -- but you also need time. Sadly, so many people put in long hours at work -- sometimes toiling away at two or more jobs -- that finding time (and energy) to exercise can be a near-impossibility. Luckily, technology can help with these deficiencies, as software can educate, while hardware -- such as wearables -- can (potentially) motivate and track progress.

While technology can be good, it can also be vulnerable, leading to stolen user data. Under Armour's 'MyFitnessPal' is the latest platform to experience a security breach. If you aren't familiar with it, Under Armour calls it a "Free calorie counter, diet, and exercise journal." Unfortunately, hackers have made off with the data of 150 million users. I guess you could say MyFitnessPal has become MyFitnessFoe!

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The Redstone 4 branch of Windows 10 -- the Spring Creators Update -- has reached RTM, and will begin rolling out to non-Insiders around the April 10.

For those users already looking to the future, Microsoft is already pushing out builds for the following feature update, codenamed Redstone 5. Build 17634, for users on the Skip Ahead ring, adds search functionality to the calendar and a number of other improvements and fixes.

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Prolific software developer Nir Sofer has created 10 more new tools, but they aren’t currently linked to on his site, or anywhere else.

They are somewhere on the NirSoft site, but finding them won’t be easy. Do you have what it takes?

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Terry Myerson, the executive vice president of Windows, is to leave Microsoft "in the coming months". Myerson has been at Microsoft for 21 years, and has been involved in Windows Phone, Windows 10, Xbox One, and Surface devices.

His departure is part of a large reorganization at Microsoft that sees Rajesh Jha, the executive VP of Microsoft Office products, expanding his responsibilities to take over Myerson's role, and Panos Panay serving as the company’s Chief Product Officer.

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Top barriers to DevOps adoption include stagnant organizational cultures and managing a jumble of legacy processes.

A new survey of DevOps and IT professionals from sandbox software company Quali finds 22 percent of respondents cite organizational culture, 21 percent legacy processes, and 20 percent growing software complexity as their top concerns.

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The higher education sector has seen a big increase in cryptocurrency mining activity according to a new report from AI security company Vectra.

Vectra used its Cognito platform to monitor traffic and collect metadata from more than 4.5 million devices and workloads from customer cloud, data center and enterprise environments. It discovered that, of all the cryptocurrency mining detections, 60 percent occurred in higher education.

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According to new research, 79 percent of healthcare professionals say they are concerned about the cyber security of their own healthcare information.

At the same time, 68 percent believe their organizations are doing enough to protect patient privacy and personal information from cyber attackers.

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Data breach checking website Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) -- used by governments and individuals around the world -- has announced a new partnership with 1Password.

The arrangement is a first for Troy Hunt's site, but it comes just over a month after 1Password started using a password-checker he developed. Hunt says that he has turned down numerous offers to sponsor Have I Been Pwned, but feels that teaming up with 1Password makes sense.

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Google has introduced new policies for its customers living in the European Economic Area. The updated policies allow users longer to apply for a refund on purchases made through the Google Play Store

While most of the world has a 48-hour timeframe to ask for a refund, this has been extended to a full two weeks in the EEA. The policy changes have come into play to comply with EU law which gives customers a 14-day "cooling-off" period during which they are entitled to ask for their money back -- but it doesn't cover everything.

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Still holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been given the snip. Ecuador took the decision to cut off the fugitive's internet connection, severing one of his lines of communication with the outside world.

Assange -- who a judge recently described as a man who "appears to consider himself above the normal rules of law" -- has been living in the embassy since 2012 when he was wanted for questioning in Sweden on sexual assault allegations. He has hidden away claiming he could be extradited to the US to face charges over WikiLeaks revelations, but he is also wanted by British police for skipping bail.

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Two security issues have been discovered in Grindr, the gay dating app, which could reveal the location of users even if they opted to keep this information private. There are concerns that the privacy compromise could lead to harassment of Grindr users.

Trevor Faden created a site called C*ckBlocked (that's the actual name, we're not being prudish and getting out our censorship pens) which was designed to give Grindr users the chance to see who had blocked them. By exploiting a security loophole similar to the one exposed in the recent Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, Faden's site was able to access a wealth of private data including deleted photos and user locations.

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Kodi is a perfectly legal, open source media center. It can play any kind of audio and video, and is packed with features. However, its support for third-party add-ons, including those that allow for illegal streaming, means that it’s often viewed as being synonymous with piracy.

Google frequently tweaks its search algorithm to downgrade pirate related terms, and Kodi's reputation -- deserved or not -- means it has become a victim of this approach.

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