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Online hate crimes are to be treated as seriously as abuse offenses committed offline as the UK's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) aims to crack down on abuse and harassment on the likes of Facebook and Twitter. New policies covering hate crime relating to race, religion disability, sexuality -- including, for the first time, specific bisexual hate crimes -- will lead to harsher sentences for offenders.

Alison Saunders, director of public prosecutions, wants to do more to fight online abuse because of the risk of it escalating into the sort of extremist hate seen in relation to events in Charlottesville. She says that abuse of all kind, and on all platforms, should be treated with equal severity.

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A supplier of US voting machines has confirmed a major data leak that has seen the details of more than 1.8 million voters in the state of Illinois exposed.

The leaked data includes full names, addresses, dates of birth, social security numbers (albeit partial), as well as party affiliations. In some cases even ID numbers and driver license numbers were exposed.

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Last week Plex upset a large portion of its userbase by announcing a change to its privacy policy. The change, which was due to take effect in late September, meant that it would not be possible to opt out of data collection.

After a serious backlash, the company has changed its mind, backtracking on the privacy policy update, saying that it recognized the concerns raised by users. The company insists that it was not trying to sneak the policy change by users and that it had no intention of selling data. Importantly, however, users are still going to be able to opt out of playback data collection if they want.

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Later on today you will be able to learn everything you could possible want to know about the Xbox One X. Microsoft is holding a press conference at Gamescom in Germany and you can watch it here, live.

The presentation kicks off at 12:00PM PT / 3:00PM EST / 8:00PM BT / 9:00PM CET, and Microsoft has already made it clear that pre-order details will be revealed.

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At GamesCon later today, we're going to hear about Microsoft's Xbox One X but it's looking as though there's also going to be some news about the Xbox One S.

Microsoft accidentally -- probably -- posted about an Xbox One S Minecraft Limited Edition on the Minecraft Facebook page. The video included a link to the pre-order page for the console.

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Anyone shopping for an Amazon Echo Dot a couple of days ago may have spotted that the online retail giant was making its second-generation assistant available free of charge.

But the old adage "if it seems too good to be true, it probably is" turned out to be completely accurate. The $49.99 "Audible Promo" discount that led to the device being reduced in price to $0 was a SNAFU -- but Amazon is going to make up for it.

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Plex -- the much-loved media server software -- has updated its privacy policy, and people are not happy with the changes. Included among the changes is a notification that future features may collect and share details about what you're streaming.

Usage statistics are collected by many companies -- including Plex -- to improve products; moving forward users will not be able to opt out of this data collection. Needless to say, Plex users are more than a little upset.

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Facebook won't -- usually -- hand over your private messages to anyone after you die. The social network has used a new blogging series called Hard Questions to reveal just how it handles deaths of its users.

The site's director of global policy management, Monika Bickert, says that Facebook aims to not only be sensitive, but also to respect the wishes of the deceased. After death, accounts are memorialized by default, but everyone is also free to create a "legacy contact" who will be able to mange their account in the event of their death. But Facebook is, it says, also keen to protect the privacy of survivors.

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To make it easier for people to access up to date information about what is going on the world, YouTube is adding a "Breaking News" section to its website and mobile apps.

The new section takes the form of an additional video carousel, and it provides access to new stories from a number of sources. At the moment, not all users are seeing the Breaking News carousel, and Google has not made an official announcement about it, but it does seem to be spreading out at the moment.

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A few days ago, HBO's latest humiliation was to have its social media accounts taken over by hackers, and the bad news just keeps on coming for the network. The "Mr Smith group" behind the huge data breach that has seen endless Game of Thrones leaks contacted Mashable with the login details for many HBO social media accounts.

On top of this, the group is also threatening to release Game of Thrones S07E07 -- but considering the number of episodes that have leaked from this season, this was to be expected.

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Google is undeniably the best search engine for results -- concerns about privacy be damned. Alternatives such as Bing and DuckDuckGo aren't terrible, but the optimal experience still comes from Google -- for now.

Today, Google announces a cool new search feature for its Android operating system. When using either the Chrome web browser or the official Google app, you will now sometimes see video previews in results. In other words, rather than needing to click a video to load it entirely, you can instead see a brief snippet, allowing you to see if the video should meet your needs.

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Box has revealed a major upgrade to its cloud content management systems thanks to a new partnership with Google.

The online storage giant will now use Google's Cloud Vision platform to improve its image recognition capabilities, allowing enterprises a quicker way to identify key insights from the images uploaded into its service as part of unstructured data.

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The UK is continuing to embrace mobile and contactless payments, with the total spend using such services booming in the first half of 2017, new research has revealed.

The latest payment figures from Worldpay, the UK's largest credit and debit card payment processor. It found that the amount of money spent using mobile payments topped £370 million in the first six months of 2017.

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"Sense8" is hardly Netflix's most popular television series, but it has developed a cult following and is beloved by many. After all, it was co-created by the Wachowskis (sisters Lilly and Lana) -- writers and directors of the famous Matrix films.

That is why its cancellation by Netflix after only two seasons was heartbreaking for fans of the show. Even after an outpouring of feedback and emotion from fans, the streaming video service still declined to reverse course. There may still be a chance for "Sense8" to survive, however, thanks to an unlikely thing -- porn. Wait, what?

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We still use Skype. It’s still a decent tool to be able to converse with a wide range of colleagues spread across the world and, frankly, most people we need to communicate with are on Skype (or have access to a Skype account, at least).

Recent changes to the mobile version caused more than a few eyebrows to be raised. Luckily we don’t use the mobile edition, so when Microsoft announced changes to the desktop edition, this had us worried. Windows 10 users will receive the update automatically, as it’s built into your operating system, but Windows 8/7 and Mac OS X users can download a v8 preview right now.

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