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Windows Insider builds for the next big feature update of Windows 10 are coming thick and fast now, with the focus on fixing bugs and improving performance.

Today Windows 10 19H1 Build 18353 arrives on the Fast ring with quite a long list of fixes -- including many for Windows Sandbox -- and a dwindling amount of known issues.

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The install base of Windows 10 has topped the 800 million mark according to the Microsoft Story Labs site. Microsoft executive Yusuf Mehdi tweeted the news yesterday.

This is an increase of 100 million since September last year and it seems likely that the increase has been partly driven by the impending end of support for Windows 7.

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It won't have escaped your notice that today is International Women's Day. The technology sector has traditionally been a male dominated one, but it seems that efforts to attract more women are paying off.

Analysis from Eclat Marketing of speakers at last week's RSA Conference shows a 53 percent increase in female speakers, with 232 compared to 153 in 2018.

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At a time when there's intense competition in the jobs market, the importance of workforce communication in employee engagement is often overlooked.

San Francisco-based communications platform SocialChorus is launching a new tool called Content Planner that gives organizations a single place to plan their content strategies and measure the impact of employee communications.

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Anyone who has had to handle software support will know that sometimes explaining by email or attempting to describe an action over the telephone can be a very frustrating experience.

We handle support queries on a daily basis and are still perplexed that some users still do not know how to enter their product key or where it should be entered. They attempt to type in the code, get a digit wrong, think they’ve been sold a duff code, won’t accept reason and get angry real quick. There’s now a cheap and easy solution.

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In sci-fi movies, machines work in choreographed grace, hovering gently, waddling cutely, and performing flawlessly. Computer interfaces seem minimalist with their floating touch interfaces and bluish color palettes. Wakanda of Black Panther, Cloud City in Star Wars, and New York City of The Fifth Element function so beautifully.

Here’s my question: Where the hell are all their IT people?!!

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Bring your own device (whereby employees work from personal devices like their mobile phones) is quickly becoming the norm in today’s business environment. Companies that embrace BYOD are able to give employees more freedom to work remotely, resulting in increased productivity, cost savings and talent retention. In fact, 85 percent of organizations now allow BYOD for at least some of their stakeholders, including employees, contractors, partners, customers and suppliers.

It is important to note that BYOD does change an organization’s threat landscape and requires security tools that are different than those that are used to protect managed devices. Unfortunately, a widespread misunderstanding about this point has contributed to an unfounded assumption that BYOD is inherently riskier than the traditional way of doing things. In reality, this is a myth fueled by companies that fail to implement proper security tools and processes for protecting data in BYOD environments. Consider the following findings from a recent report on BYOD and security:

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Technological evolutions have revolutionized the gambling industry. With the rise of gambling apps and live streams, people can now gamble anytime, anywhere with the press of a button.

Demographic gambling rates have since risen exponentially, with more women and young people taking part in the activity than ever before. In total, around 15 percent of the U.S. adult population has gambled in the past week alone. As more apps and fantasy sports teams gain popularity, the online gambling model appears to expect years of robust growth.

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Google is warning users of Windows 7 that they are at risk from a privilege escalation zero-day bug -- and the advice is to upgrade to Windows 10 as there is no patch currently available for the actively exploited vulnerability.

The problem stems from two vulnerabilities being exploited in combination -- one in Chrome, and one in Windows. Having pushed out a patch to its Chrome web browser, Google is warning that Windows 7 users are still exposed until such a time as Microsoft develops a patch.

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Most of the Skype-related news of late has been about Microsoft killing off Skype Classic and moving people to Skype 8 -- but now there's news about the web version of the communication tool. While there are a number of new features to explore -- including hi-def video calling, new notifications and call recording -- Microsoft has taken the decision to reduce the number of supported platforms.

The latest version of Skype for Web only works in Windows 10 and macOS 10.12 or newer, and only in the Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers. Firefox and Opera users are left out in the cold, and anyone running Chrome OS or Linux will be disappointed to learn that their operating systems are no longer supported.

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Navigating media and playing PC games from your couch, bed, or reclining chair can be quite tedious. When searching for a movie on Netflix, for example, it is very annoying to enter text with a remote control. Sure, there are voice search options, but it would be much nicer to use a keyboard. If you want to a play a PC game in your living room or bedroom because your computer is hooked up to a TV, using a keyboard and mouse on your lap is damn-near impossible. Instead, you have to pull out a table or something similar. Ugh. What a clunky experience!

Today, CORSAIR launches a new product that should make it much more comfortable to both play PC games and search for media while in front of your TV. Called "K83 Wireless Entertainment Keyboard," it also includes a touchpad, meaning there is no need for a mouse. It even includes an analog joystick! This one device can be used for both gaming and media. Best of all, it is reasonably priced too.

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Attacks using banking Trojans are among the most popular with cybercriminals as they are focused directly on financial gain.

According to a new report from Kaspersky Lab, 889,452 users of Kaspersky Lab solutions were attacked by banking Trojans last year, an increase of 15.9 percent compared to 2017.

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Social networking in general, and Facebook in particular, is far from synonymous with the notion of privacy. Facebook makes occasional nods to granting users greater control over their privacy, but at the end of the day, data about users is what makes Mark Zuckerberg's company tick.

But setting out his vision for the future in a blog post, the Facebook founder has set out his "vision and principles around building a privacy-focused messaging and social networking platform". We'd already heard about plans to merge the messaging platforms WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger, this is central to his vision of the future. He has bold ideas of encryption and ephemerality playing a large part in increasing privacy, but Facebook will still have to overcome the issue of user trust.

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Microsoft has long been a champion of closed source ideology -- it made its billions thanks to it. Historically, the company was against open source, publicly bad-mouthing projects like Linux.

Under Satya Nadella's leadership, however, Microsoft is a very different company. Not only does it support open source and Linux, it actually contributes open source code. In fact, Microsoft is one of the top contributors. Today, the Windows-maker announces that it is taking its commitment to open source ideology even further. How? By making its Windows Calculator program an open source project on GitHub. Yes, really.

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If you opted to replace your iPhone battery on the cheap -- avoiding Apple and opting for a third-party instead -- on a subsequent trip to your nearest Genius Bar you will have found that you were ineligible for repairs.

It did not matter if your problem was in no way related to the battery, Apple took a hard line: if you had replaced the battery yourself, you were getting no further help. But leaked internal documents show that the company is softening. Genius Bar and Apple Authorized Service Provider technicians are now permitted to carry out work on phones with non-Apple batteries.

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