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While the notorious Meltdown and Spectre chip bugs are still yet to pose a real threat in their own right, it's rather a different story when it comes to the patches designed to fix the problems. Microsoft had to pause the rollout of patches after reports that they were leaving some AMD systems unbootable.

Now the software giant has released two new updates -- one for Windows 7 (KB4073578) and one for Windows 8.1 (KB4073576) -- to fix the "Unbootable state for AMD devices" issue. But it's not all good news. These are updates that have to be manually downloaded and installed, and Microsoft has provided no instructions about how to use them.

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ProtonVPN’s free VPN service got off to a very rocky start when it launched 7 months ago. Demand was such that free users got put on to a waitlist, where they languished for months before even seeing an invite. The company did sort things eventually, and today it expands ProtonVPN further, by bringing the service to Android.

If you’re concerned about using a free VPN, the company says you shouldn’t be. The free service is funded by paid subscribers and subsidized by ProtonMail, meaning there are no ads and user data won't be sold to pay for it.

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Depending on which analyst firm you believe, Windows 10 will either finally overtake Windows 7 this month, or it won’t. Either way, the newest OS is narrowing the gap.

However, according to the Firefox Hardware Report, a public weekly survey of the hardware and software used by everyone running the release channel desktop build of Mozilla's web browser, Windows 10 still has a long way to go until it catches up to Windows 7.

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Google's latest update for YouTube on iOS promises 'general fixes and stability improvements', but also includes a welcome hidden extra -- a Dark Mode that looks especially amazing on iPhone X, and might even save you some battery life. However, there is a catch.

To activate this new mode, you need to be running YouTube for iOS version 13.01.4 (or later), and even then it might not be available to you. It seems Google is rolling the feature out slowly to select users. To see if you’re one of the lucky ones, here’s what you need to do.

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Cyber attacks driven by ransom demands are on the increase as criminals seek to cash in on the soaring values of crypto currencies according to a new report.

The 2017-2018 Global Application and Network Security Report from cyber security company Radware finds that reported ransom attacks surged in the past year, increasing 40 percent from the 2016 survey. Half of companies surveyed suffered a financially motivated attack in the past year.

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While a majority of businesses around the world have adopted cloud services, a study released today reveals a wide gap in the level of security precautions applied by companies in different markets.

The study from digital security company Gemalto finds that German businesses are more cautious when it comes to sharing sensitive information in the cloud (61 percent) than British (35 percent), Brazilian (34 percent) and Japanese (31 percent) organizations.

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About 20 years ago, when I started publishing a list of annual technology predictions, it just made sense to look back to see how I had done the year before. Alas, I made that decision without looking to see that nobody else in my line of work actually does that. But I was stuck and have found since that by being deliberately vague and putting a fair amount of thought into this stuff I’ve been able to keep my long-term stats at about 70 percent correct. We’ll shortly see if that trend continues, but first I want to discuss how this year is so different from all those others.

Nothing seems the same, does it? Maybe it’s President Trump. Maybe it’s just time for a revolution in tech and the economy, but this year feels unlike any of those others. I don’t know if it will make my predictions more accurate or less, but I have to tell you that I believe the context matters this year more than any other. I’ll get to that in a moment but first let’s see how badly I did the last time. You can read both of last year’s prediction columns here and here.

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A new correction is taking place in the crypto market, after South Korea and China indicated that they could introduce new regulations to crack down on investments and centralized trading, respectively.

South Korea is one of the biggest cryptocurrency markets, being responsible for a large part of the daily volume for the major coins and home to some of the most important exchanges, like Upbit and Bithumb.

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As enterprises move more data to the cloud one of the problems they have is understanding where everything is and how it integrates with existing workflows.

Cyber security and breach analytics specialist Eastwind Networks is launching a new Eastwind for SaaS platform that offers complete visibility for companies using online services, such as G Suite, Office 365, Dropbox, Box and Salesforce.

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The Meltdown and Spectre bugs have been in the headlines for a couple of weeks now, but it seems the patches are not being installed on handsets. Analysis of more than 100,000 enterprise mobile devices shows that just a tiny percentage of them have been protected against the vulnerabilities -- and some simply may never be protected.

Security firm Bridgeway found that just 4 percent of corporate phones and tablets in the UK have been patched against Spectre and Meltdown. Perhaps more worryingly, however, its research also found that nearly a quarter of enterprise mobile devices will never receive a patch because of their age.

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Undercover footage emerged this week in which Twitter engineers said that hundreds of company employees were reading users' direct messages. The footage was shared by Project Veritas, and now Twitter has come out on the defensive.

The conservative activist group's video purports to show Twitter employees saying that the company not only has access to, but also actively reads, users' DMs. Project Veritas is on a mission to highlight what it believes to be liberal bias in the media, and this is not the first undercover footage it has recorded relating to Twitter. Other footage shows an engineer saying the company could hand President Trump's deleted tweets and direct messages to the Department of Justice.

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One of the first things I do after installing a new Linux distribution is set a different wallpaper. Why? Desktop pictures really inspire me -- my mood can be positively altered by a beautiful image. The default wallpaper is often boring. For the most part, I prefer images of nature with bright colors. After all, if I am stuck indoors working on my computer, a wallpaper of the beach, mountains, or a colorful bird, for instance, can transport me to the outdoors -- in my mind.

Sadly, not every distro has beautiful high-quality images. Fedora, however, often does -- thanks to its "supplemental" wallpapers. What is particularly cool  about that operating system, is that it regularly accepts wallpaper submissions from the community as part of a contest. In other words, anybody can potentially contribute to a new version of the distro by simply uploading a photo, drawing, or other picture. Fedora 28 is the upcoming version of the OS, and the developers are now calling for wallpaper submissions for it. Will you submit an entry to the contest?

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2017 delivered a good deal of excitement (as well as massive, massive headaches) in IT security. WannaCry attacked more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries only to be followed by Petya a month later. And the pain extended beyond the enterprise when consumers bore the brunt of one of the most devastating hacks to hit the U.S.: the Equifax breach. The Equifax hack reportedly affected 145.5 million U.S. consumers -- or approximately 44 percent of the U.S. population -- leaving people vulnerable to financial fraud for potentially the rest of their lives.

These were just some of the year’s lowlights, all of which point to a future where nearly every organization is reliant on successful cybersecurity. It can literally mean the difference between a company’s survival and extension. As such, 2018 should be all about advancing enterprise security initiatives, and below are my top predictions to ensure the integrity of systems across the globe.

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There are two types of businesses in today’s mobile-first world: businesses that have a mobile app and those that do not. The one thing that these two sides have in common is that both are looking towards progressive web apps (PWAs) and wondering what the impact of this new app experience will be and how it will change the mobile world.

Businesses that have already invested in developing a native mobile app are looking at PWAs cautiously. While these new apps represent a new frontier to be explored and leveraged to improve and expand on an existing app experience, they also have the potential to elbow native apps out of the spotlight. Thus, these companies may find that their investment into a native app was not as long-term as they anticipated.

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A number of OnePlus customers have reported unusual credit card transactions after buying products from the smartphone maker's online store. And, today, OnePlus announces a formal investigation.

OnePlus reveals that the complaints come only from users who have made direct purchases and adds that purchases involving third-party services -- PayPal, for example -- are not affected.

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