Humble Bundle launches pay-what-you-want Linux book deal

Humble Bundle is a really cool program. If you aren't familiar, the website sells games, apps, and more with a "pay what you want" pricing scheme. Essentially, you can score a bundle of really good digital content without harming your bank account.

No, you can't just pay a penny -- usually there is some sort of minimum, such as a dollar. There are often tiers too, where you can unlock more by paying additional funds. So why does anyone pay more than the minimum? Well, some of the proceeds go to charity, so the more you pay, the more money goes to a good cause.

Continue reading

Windows 10 will automatically uninstall problematic updates

Windows 10 - Do great things

Updates to Windows are supposed to fix problems and improve security, but sometimes they do the opposite. Many Windows 10 users will have experienced startup problems after installing an update to the operating system, and this is something that Microsoft is looking to address.

Rather than leaving it down to users to seek out the problematic update and uninstall it, Windows 10 could start to automatically uninstall updates that have caused issues. If this happens to you, you'll be greeted by the message: "We removed some recently installed updates to recover your device from a startup failure."

Continue reading

Microsoft to start selling Windows 7 Extended Security Updates from April 1

Windows 7 Professional

While Windows 10 enjoys a significant and growing userbase, there are still many Windows 7 users out there. This includes a large number of enterprise users, and for these customers security is of paramount importance.

Last month we learned about the pricing for Windows 7 Extended Security Updates (ESU) which will be available when support for the aging operating system ends in 2020. Now we know that ESU will go on sale from the beginning of next month.

Continue reading

Save $$$ on Coway Air Purifiers, with an extra $50 off for BetaNews readers

Your home can be bad for your health. Not only do more accidents happen in the house than anywhere else, but the quality of the air you breathe can cause health issues, with allergens, dust, pet hair, and other tiny debris to worry about.

An air purifier can clean up the air around you, monitoring pollution and filtering it out. Coway make a number of such purifiers and four of the top models are on sale at Wellbots right now, and BetaNews readers can make even greater savings.

Continue reading

NVIDIA outbids Microsoft and Intel to buy datacenter chipmaker Mellanox for $6.9 billion

NVIDIA logo

NVIDIA has announced that it plans to buy Israeli chipmaker Mellanox. Fending off competition from Microsoft and Intel, NVIDIA's bid of $6.9 billion was enough to secure the deal which is expected to be finalized by the end of the year.

As part of the agreement, NVIDIA will purchase all Mellanox shares for $125 each in cash. It sees the company expanding further into high-performance computing and supercomputers, and boosts its datacenter business.

Continue reading

Coinhive dominates malware charts before being shut down

Coinhive continued to hold the top spot in Check Point Research's February Global Threat Index, impacting 10 percent of organizations worldwide, even though its services were shut down on March 8th.

In February, the two most prevalent malware variants were cryptominers, followed by the Emotet banking Trojan. Coinhive has seen a downward trend in its global impact, from 18 percent of organizations in October 2018 to 12 percent in January 2019 and with a further two percent drop in February.

Continue reading

Dark mode arrives in Slack's iOS and Android apps

Slack

For many workplaces -- including BetaNews -- Slack is the way workers stay in touch with each other. Jumping onto the black bandwagon, the chat and messaging tool is embracing the dark side and giving users the option to ramp up the darkness.

To enjoy a darker look to Slack, you need to be part of the beta program, and there is nothing from stopping you from signing up right now and reaping the ocular -- or just aesthetic -- benefits of the new dark mode. Dark mode is available on both iOS and Android.

Continue reading

ExTiX 19.3 (190307) is based on Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo, uses Linux kernel 5.0, and has Kodi Leia pre-installed

Here's the deal, folks -- there are far too many Linux distributions out there nowadays. It used to bother me, but over time, I made peace with it. Look, it's the nature of the beast -- we will never have a single Linux distro, as it is impossible to come to any consensus. For instance, I prefer Fedora and GNOME, but at the same time, other people like Ubuntu and KDE. If you were to poll the Linux community you would see a very segmented group of people. And so, there are an obscene number of operating systems based on the open source Linux kernel.

When I saw a distro claiming to be stable while using the brand new Linux 5.0 kernel and being based on the not-yet-finalized Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo, I was intrigued. Surprisingly, despite it being around for years, it is an operating system I was not familiar with. Called "ExTiX," it seems to be developed by one man with a very no-frills website. In other words, I probably would not suggest using this thing as your main operating system for daily use. However, if you think it would be fun to play around with a Disco Dingo base and Linux kernel 5.0, it might be a fun weekend experiment. Not to mention, Kodi "Leia" comes pre-installed!

Continue reading

Flickr says free users can exceed 1,000 photos as Creative Commons images are not counted

Flickr mobile icon

When Flickr announced changes to its free accounts, many users were upset to find that they were going to be limited to 1,000 photos unless they were willing to pay for Pro account. On top of this, Flickr said it would be deleting any images that took users over the limit.

But now the company has announced something of a loosening of the rules. Flickr says that all public Creative Commons works on the site are now protected from deletion. There are also new "in memoriam" accounts for deceased members.

Continue reading

House of Lords wants to rein in big tech with a new 'Digital Authority'

Using laptop

A House of Lords committee has called for the creation of a new Digital Authority to help co-ordinate existing regulators, as well as recommending new powers. The "super regulator" would have oversight over the current range of digital regulators, and would help to tackle problems of online harm which the UK government feels technology firms have not done enough about.

There is a strong feeling from the government that self-regulation by technology companies has failed, and a report entitled Regulating in a Digital World sets out a series of principles that would underpin a new approach.

Continue reading

Get 'The Cyber Risk Handbook -- Creating and Measuring Effective Cybersecurity Capabilities' ($43 value) FREE for a limited time

Cyber risk is a fast-growing enterprise risk, not just an IT risk. Yet seldom is guidance provided as to what this means.

This ebook is the first to tackle in detail those enterprise-wide capabilities expected by Board, CEO and Internal Audit, of the diverse executive management functions that need to team up with the Information Security function in order to provide integrated solutions.

Continue reading

2019 predictions #2 and #3 -- A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) shakeout and legal trouble for AWS

Prediction #2 -- And then there were only 3.5 VPC Cloud players. Cloud computing will continue to grow in 2019 with the key term being not Public Cloud, Private Cloud or Hybrid Cloud -- which are all so 2018 -- but Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). Virtual Private Cloud is an Amazon Web Services (AWS) invention but all the AWS competitors seem to be embracing the idea.

What has developed is that the VPC solution based on Open Source using Linux will change the Internet-as-a-Service (IaaS) Cloudscape to VPC-only during 2019.

Continue reading

StarTech launches two USB-C multiport adapters for business professionals

The USB-C connector is absolutely here to stay. Not only is the reversible plug used by USB, but Thunderbolt 3 too. The upcoming USB4 standard will use the connector as well, and is backwards-compatible with USB 3.x. This means any USB-C dongle or adapter you buy today will be supported for many years -- how cool is that?

Today, StarTech launches two new USB-C multiport adapters that are designed for business professionals. Of course, they can be used for personal use too. One of them (CDPVDHMDPDP) is focused solely on video, while the other (DKT30CHVGPD) does video, Ethernet, and offers USB-A ports. Best of all, they both feature power delivery and an integrated USB-C cable that can be tucked into the device itself. In other words, you won't have to worry about losing or forgetting a wire.

Continue reading

Take your marketing automation further with AI

AI money

It’s been said that artificial intelligence is the future, but I’d argue that AI is very much a thing of the here and now. It’s playing an increasingly significant role in marketing efforts, and is taking marketing automation to the next level. And during an era when customers are demanding fast and hyper-personalized service, AI-based technologies couldn’t be more critical.

AI-based technologies bolster marketing automation efforts through personalized interactions. Your business can benefit on a multitude of fronts by embracing these game-changing advancements. 

Continue reading

Creative destruction: Using data skills to rethink business cultures

Data should underlie every business decision. Yet too often some very human cultural artifacts really lead the business down certain routes where it moves away from modelling decisions on the best data. It’s only human. Yet to be a better human guiding the corporate machine we need to transcend the way "we’ve always done it".

In the data age gut, tradition, and inertia shouldn’t be why strategic decisions are made. And yet, hand on heart, we all continue to do it, because that’s part of being human. Well, it’s time to be more than human, time to get creative. Time to smash the way "we’ve always done it." Time to apply some creative destruction to break down the worst parts of making decisions within organizations, and start using the data, technology, and creativity that lies around us, untapped.

Continue reading

© 1998-2024 BetaNews, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy - Cookie Policy.