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As the new season of any major series kicks off, torrent traffic for episodes clogs up internet pipes around the world. This has been true of everything from True Blood to Lost, and it's no different with season seven of Game of Thrones.

Clearly the networks behind shows that are shared via BitTorrent and through other means are keen to clamp down on piracy, and anyone planning to download Game of Thrones is cautioned that HBO is actively monitoring people pirating the series, and warnings are being sent out.

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Over the years Amazon has spread its wings in various directions, and the latest venture sees the online shopping giant dipping its toe into the waters of social networking. While not strictly a social network, Amazon Spark has many of the hallmarks of one.

Borrowing heavily from Instagram and Pinterest -- among others -- Amazon Spark is available for Prime subscribers using iOS. There is, of course, a strong emphasis on shopping, and members are able to post photos of items for sale, and can click through to buy, post comment, and leave "smiles" -- Spark's take on likes.

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The Department of Homeland Security has lifted the ban on laptops on flights into the US from Middle Eastern and North African countries. The controversial ban, introduced by the Trump administration back in March, was almost extended to all international flights, but has now been scrapped altogether.

Airports have introduced enhanced security measures, and this means that the restrictions on portable electronic devices is no longer considered necessary.

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Earlier in the week, I wrote about how the Windows 10 Creators Update was incompatible with certain PCs already running Windows 10. Devices powered by Intel’s Atom Clover Trail CPU couldn’t install the latest feature update, even though upgrading from Windows 8x to Windows 10, and the Anniversary Update, worked fine.

A post from Acer suggested that it was a temporary glitch and that Microsoft was working to address the incompatibility, providing a glimmer of hope for users of the affected devices, but it turns out that’s not the case.  Atom Clover Trail processors won’t be supported in the Creators Update or any future feature updates.

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Private information of more than two million customers of the Dow Jones publishing agency have been exposed online.

According to the IB Times, a configuration error on the Dow Jones & Co. cloud storage server led to sensitive information including names, addresses, account information, emails and the last four digits of credit cards for almost 2.2 million people becoming available to anyone with an Amazon Web Services Account.

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Apple and Qualcomm might be fighting hard in the courtroom, but that's not where the battle is going to end.

That's according to the latter company's CEO, who believes the issue will most likely be settled out of the court.

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Calling the next big Windows 10 feature update the "Fall Creators Update" always seemed like a bit of an odd decision when countries outside of the USA and Canada use Autumn, and not Fall, to describe the season that follows summer.

So when it was reported, earlier in the week, that the update would be called the Autumn Creators Update for some parts of the world, we weren’t entirely surprised. The new name appeared on Microsoft’s regional pages, so it seemed pretty official. But, as it turns out, that’s not the case at all.

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OneDrive "Version History" is a really useful feature of Microsoft's cloud storage offering. If you aren't familiar, it lets you restore older versions of files when you need to do so. Did you mess up something you are working on and need to roll back? No problem. Well, actually, that isn't entirely true. There is one big problem -- it only works with Microsoft Office files.

Starting today, that problem is no more, however. Yes, goods news, OneDrive users -- Microsoft is now offering Version History on all files -- finally. In other words, you can leverage the safeguard on any file that you desire -- even if it isn't an Office file. With that said, the Windows-maker is gradually rolling it out, so you might not have it right away -- patience, OneDrive users...

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Mention 'ftp' and most people think back to a term you’d hear in the late 90s, not realizing the technology is still used behind the scenes to upload/download files to any remote server. Need to update files on your website? This will be handled by the file transfer protocol.

Transmit has been one of first choice applications for our Macs, and Panic has just released a major new upgrade, v5, which is built from the ground up to be faster and more efficient.

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Technology has played a major role in advancing most areas of our everyday lives -- but it can also have a significant effect in the world of industry.

Originally proposed by the German government back in 2013, Industry 4.0 is the label given to the gradual combination of traditional manufacturing and industrial practices with the increasingly technological world around us.

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As a sign of its continued adoption of third-party platforms, Nintendo has just launched the Nintendo Switch Online app on Google Play and the Apple App Store. Players will be able to link their accounts between the Nintendo Switch console and the new app so that they can view certain historical data/statistics, as well as directly integrate with online features of compatible games.

That said, it doesn't actually do any of that now. The app launch is in preparation of the first title that will support it -- Splatoon 2, which comes out on July 21.

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The Windows 10 Creators Update rollout began in April, but unless you took it upon yourself to manually update your PC, there’s a good chance you won’t have been offered it, especially if have an older system. In June, according to AdDuplex, just 35.7 percent of Windows 10 users were running the latest feature update.

AdDuplex has just updated its figures for July, and this shows that 50.1 percent of Windows 10 users now have the update. That might seem like a big jump forward, but to put the speed of the upgrade into context, three months after its rollout began, the Anniversary Update was already on 3/4 of all PCs.

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Sharing some accounts with friends or family members has its perks, but it can also be risky. Many people expect to use simple passwords, which is why you may be tempted to go for something that's easy to remember. Not to mention that they also lose the credentials from time to time, so you have to share them again via email or texts, which is not really safe.

But LastPass may have come up with a better option. Its new Families subscription lets you have multiple users on a plan so that you can share usernames and passwords, among other things like bank accounts and credit cards, while maintaining a high level of security.

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The IoT presents a challenge for organizations as they have to configure, secure and manage massive numbers of devices.

A new product suite from productivity specialist Helium is aimed at streamlining the ability to prototype, deploy and scale a long-range wireless network that connects thousands of end devices, giving companies a simple way to intelligently and securely deliver data from devices to the cloud and application layer.

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Media Player Classic -- the codec-packed, open source media player much loved by video downloaders and encoders around the world -- has reached the end of the line. The latest release -- Media Player Classic Home Cinema v1.7.13, to give it its full title -- is likely to be the last one ever.

The developers say that the number of people working on the project has gradually reduced over the years, and the situation is becoming untenable. The words "the project is officially dead" are not any that users will want to hear, but they have been uttered.

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