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In the run-up to the 2016 US election, Russian bots shared Donald Trump's tweets 470,000 times -- nearly ten times those of Hillary Clinton.

The figures come courtesy of Twitter, who shared the data with Congress for a review into Russian influence on the election. In the period September 1 to November 15, 2016, Russian bots accounted for more than four percent of Trump's retweets.

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Phone-maker OnePlus has had a tough time of things in the press recently with claims about users' clipboard data being mined, and the problems following a credit card breach. A second suggestion that the company was sending clipboard data back to China surfaced recently, but the company has been quick to deny any wrongdoing.

Suspicions were raised when a OnePlus user noticed a file called badwords.txt which includes a list of words such as "chairman," "private message" and "address."

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The clandestine mining of cryptocurrency is something that we have seen in various forms over the last year or so, in website code and Android apps. A new discovery by security firm Trend Micro shows that hackers have found a way to inject Coinhive mining code into ads that appear on YouTube.

The crypto-jacking technique means that hackers have been able to profit by using other people's CPU time to mine the Monero cryptocurrency while they watch videos. Trend Micro reports that there has been a huge increase in Coinhive web miner detections in recent days, with hackers abusing Google's DoubleClick to distribute the code through big sites including YouTube.

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Malwarebytes is great software, designed to protect Windows, Mac, and Android devices. As someone who fixes computers for both friends and family, I often rely on the free version to detect malware on Windows machines -- it is a great tool to keep in your virtual "toolbox."

Unfortunately, this software which normally helps computers to run well, has started making them run poorly. You see, a recent update is causing high CPU and RAM usage, making the computer slow to a crawl. Luckily, a fix is already available. Keep in mind, the bug is caused by the web protection feature, which is only for "Premium" subscribers. Users of the free Malwarebytes software should be unaffected. Here's how to return your PC or business workstation to its full speed potential.

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There are many Linux-based operating systems out there, but not many I would call great. My absolute favorite is Fedora, as I am a GNOME fan that likes using a distro that focuses on truly free and open source software. Not to mention, it quickly gets many updated packages while also retaining stability. So yeah, Fedora is great.

Another great Linux distro? Netrunner Rolling. This Manjaro-based operating system uses KDE Plasma for its desktop environment. As the name implies, it follows a rolling release, meaning it is constantly being updated to fresh packages -- no major upgrades needed. It has a lot of polish and many quality pre-installed programs which indicates the developers truly care about the overall user experience. Quite frankly, it reminds me of Windows 7 -- in a good way -- which also makes it a wise choice for those unhappy with the much-maligned Windows 10. Today, Netrunner Rolling gets its first ISO refresh of 2018.

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2017 was a wild ride for cryptocurrencies and for Bitcoin in particular, rising in price at one point above $19,000 only to drop back to a bit over half of that number now. But which number is correct? If only the market can tell for sure -- and these numbers are coming straight from the market, remember -- what the heck does it all mean? It means Bitcoin isn’t a currency at all but traders are pretending that it is. 2018 will see investors finally figure this out.

Confusion abounds, so let’s cut through the crap with an analogy. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and a ton of others operate almost exactly like a market that uses only U.S. one dollar bills and doesn’t allow exchanging those bills… ever. If you need five dollars, that will be five one dollar bill, please. If you need less than a dollar then you and your counter-party have to agree how much of a one dollar bill you each own. And they aren’t just any one dollar bills: they are specific bills, each with its own unique serial number that can be checked against a U.S. Treasury database to make sure the money is real -- that it is actually worth a dollar.

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If you have a large garden in need of a re-design, this can end up costing far more than you realize. Factor in a landscape designer, hiring a horticulturist and builders to lay paving flags, the costs soon add up.

You might be tempted to tackle this yourself. Problem is, you still need to hire a designer to interpret your ideas and, frankly, this might not save you much money at all.

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The introduction of Ubuntu 17.10 "Artful Aardvark" saw the Linux-based distribution switching to Wayland as the default display server. However, when the next LTS release arrives this year, Canonical will offer something else instead.

Canonical says that Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, codenamed "Bionic Beaver," will offer Xorg as the default graphics server. The distribution, which is set to land in April, will have Wayland available, but as an alternative.

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The discovery of the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities in processors caused a great deal of panic and confusion. The poor reliability and performance hit brought about by patches did little to help consumer confidence, but Intel says it will be releasing processors in 2018 that are free from the problems.

The move will be welcomed by customers who have been frustrated by problematic bug fixes designed to mitigate against the bug but which brought issues of their own. A timescale for the hardware solution has not been pinned down more specifically than "later this year."

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Using any smartphone means having to work within its storage limitations. The prevalence of cloud services has taken some of the strain off physical storage, but running out of room locally can still be an issue.

To help with this problem, Google offers Files Go. Now the company has updated the app to make it an even more powerful tool for freeing up space. The app can now handle SD cards and tablets, and includes a new option to change file associations.

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Ahead of this Sunday's (January 28) Data Privacy Day, enterprise cyber security company Tripwire has conducted a poll of Twitter users asking who they were most concerned about collecting their private information.

Of the more than 300 people who took part, 40 percent say they would be most worried about corporations stealing their information. While nearly a third (27 percent) say they are most concerned about the government gathering their critical data.

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Google is a company that's synonymous with advertisements. It makes huge amounts of money from delivering carefully targeted ads, much to the chagrin of those on the receiving end. To make life a little more bearable -- although not ad-free -- the company is making changes to Ads Settings and the Mute This Ad feature.

The changes affect not only the millions of websites that are filled with ads delivered through Google, but also the myriad of apps that are ad-supported. The latest changes make it possible to mute ad reminders, and also increases the level of control users have over ad muting.

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Machine learning (ML) is getting a lot of attention these days. Search engines that autocomplete, sophisticated Uber transportation scheduling and recommendations from social sites and online storefronts are just a few of the daily events that ML technologies make possible.

Cybersecurity is another area where ML is having a big impact and providing many benefits. For instance, ML can help security analysts shorten response times and dramatically improve accuracy when deciding if a security alert is an actual threat or just a benign anomaly. Many view ML as the primary answer to help save organizations from the severe shortage of skilled security professionals, and the best tool to protect companies from future data breaches.

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While Dell is one of the largest Windows computer manufacturers, it is also a big proponent of Linux. For instance, the company sells machines running Ubuntu -- its relationship with Microsoft be damned.

Ubuntu is not the only Linux-based operating system that can be found on a Dell laptop. Actually, the company also sells Chromebooks, which run Chrome OS. Yes, Google’s web-focused desktop OS is a Linux distro. Today, Dell unveils its latest such Chromebook, the 5190. It is rugged, has USB-C, stylus support, and offers an impressive 13 hours of battery life.

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Many of us rely on free basic security, thinking that it offers comprehensive protection against the latest threats. Indeed, many free security tools do not include real-time protection, only running on demand.

With the rise of ransomware, it’s proving to be an easy way to obtain a quick release fee from individuals. No-one wants to lose their data and, if you work from home, you cannot afford to spend time trying to recover your data or paying for a professional to fix your PC. Many will pay the ransom to secure their encrypted data.

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