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At Xbox Fanfest this weekend, Microsoft announced that it has acquired two more gaming studios.

InXile Entertainment and Obsidian Entertainment join the company's ever-expanding portfolio, and what's interesting about these two latest acquisitions is that both studios have a focus on RPGs. It is not currently known how much money has changed hands as part of the deals.

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Apple has discovered a problem with a "limited number" of SSDs used in non-Touch Bar 13-inch MacBook Pro that could lead to drive failure and data loss. The laptops in question were sold in the year between June 2017 and June 2018.

Apple has launched a service program that will enable those with affected drives -- 128GB and 256GB models -- to have the issue addressed free of charge. The problems have come to light just as the company launched a free iPhone X screen replacement program to people suffering with a "ghost touch" problem.

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Cloudflare has just made it a whole lot easier to hide your mobile browsing from your ISP -- and access content that might otherwise be unavailable. The company has launched a 1.1.1.1 app for smartphone users, making it incredibly easy to switch between DNS services with a couple of taps; what amounts to a free VPN tool.

Earlier in the year, Cloudflare launched its 1.1.1.1 DNS service to bring privacy and speed, but it was a little off-putting to users unfamiliar with tinkering with such settings. With the launch of 1.1.1.1 for iOS and Android, the process is much, much simpler -- and the app and the service itself are free.

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If you're an iPhone X owner, you could well be one of the unlucky people who has experienced a ghost touch problem with the screen.

Acknowledging that there is a problem, Apple has announced a free display repair program which customers can take advantage of if they have handsets with the issue. Here's what you need to know about getting your screen sorted out free of charge.

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Thanksgiving is coming, which makes me rather happy. I love catching up with family while chowing down on turkey, stuffing, and the like. After the big meal, I like to go through the paper advertisements for stores such as Target, Best Buy, and Kohl's to find the best deals. Then, that night at midnight, I leave the house to score some things I want for Black Friday! In the digital age, this sort of outdated -- I can just as easily shop online, but I cherish the experience. It's fun.

Microsoft has been making quite a mess of things with buggy Windows 10 updates and failing to put USB-C on its latest Surface Laptop 2 computer, but understandably, some of y'all still want/need a Windows PC. If you need a new computer, Xbox, or other tech-related product, Microsoft has finally revealed Black Friday 2018 sales. These are not just deals from Microsoft's own store, but on Windows 10 PCs found at other retailers too.

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We've known for a while that support for keyboards and mice was coming to the Xbox One, but there has been the question of "when?" hanging in the air. Now we have a date.

At its X018 event, Microsoft revealed that the date support will be added is November 14 -- so there are just a few days to wait. It is down to game developers to add the keyboard and mouse control option to their titles, and Fortnite will be among the first to push out an update that adds this support.

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When you buy a thin and light laptop, you pretty much have to wave goodbye to hardcore gaming. Sure, gaming notebooks can be more svelte these days, but they still aren't as portable as say, a MacBook Pro or Windows 10 Ultrabook.

Thanks to Thunderbolt 3, however, you can easily add an eGPU to a thin and light laptop. What is an eGPU? It is essentially a desktop graphics card inside an enclosure. Some companies sell all-in-one units, with the GPU pre-installed, but if you already have a desktop graphics card, you can also just buy the enclosure for a "bring your own card" experience.

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A new era of internet security is upon us. As browsers, security tools, and service providers move to support the new encryption standard, are you prepared to follow suit? In August of this year, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) released the Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.3. The new version, designed for the "modern internet," offers major improvements from previous encryption protocols in the areas of security, performance, and privacy. Most notably, the previous optional use of perfect forward secrecy (PFS) in 1.2 is now a requirement for all sessions in TLS 1.3.

PFS requires the use of ephemeral key cryptography, which generates a new encryption key for each client/server interaction. Previous and future sessions maintain secrecy, because the same key is never used twice. This means that even if a hacker manages to compromise one session, it will be difficult for him/her to decrypt all of the sensitive traffic on your network. That is, if your network can support TLS 1.2 and 1.3 ephemeral ciphers. Below are 6 tips for monitoring and processing encrypted data on your network as PFS becomes the norm.

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As Microsoft continues to sully the reputation of Windows 10 with buggy releases and other failures, Linux continues to be a great alternative. Slowly but steadily, consumers are starting to realize Windows isn't necessary anymore. Hell, if Microsoft no longer cares about quality, and is satisfied to release deficient operating system updates, why does it deserve our money and attention?

Linux is great because operating systems based on it can adapt to various hardware configurations -- from meager low-powered computers to hardcore gaming PCs. Android phones are Linux-based, so it should not be surprising that Samsung is keen on transforming some of its Galaxy phones and tablets into makeshift Ubuntu desktops with the use of hardware docks and its DeX software. Called "Linux on Dex," it was announced last year (as "Linux on Galaxy"), but you can now finally sign up to beta test it.

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Medicine and other scientific areas have always used computing power wherever they could find it-- to help modeling go faster and arrive at viable drugs more quickly.

But when we apply the most recent advancements in artificial intelligence to the most advanced drug development programs, we get something else entirely: truly "personalized medicine." But what's personalized about it, and how does AI play a role?

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The New York Times is to digitize more than a century's worth of photographs, and it is going to use Google Cloud to do so.

The NYT has a massive collection of photos dating back decades, and the plan is to digitize millions of images -- some dating back to the late nineteenth century -- to ensure they can be accessed by generations to come. The digitization process will also prove useful for journalists who will be able to delve into the archives far more easily in future.

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Vine may have closed down a couple of years ago, but it has certainly not been forgotten. There has been eager anticipation of its replacement, and disappointment when this was delayed earlier in the year.

Originally said to be named V2, the successor to Vine has now been revealed to be called Byte. Vine co-creator Dom Hofmann made the revelation on Twitter, adding that Byte is due to launch in the first half of 2019.

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Having a problem with Windows 10? Did it delete your files? No? Perhaps it downgraded your Windows 10 Pro installation to Windows 10 Home, or maybe it introduced display audio issues, installed bad audio drivers, failed to handle zip files correctly, or display all unicode characters, or maybe you had problems with Edge and Store apps? No? Maybe it broke Windows file associations for you, so you can’t open files in the default programs you choose.

If your problem is the latter, the good news is Microsoft is working on a fix. The bad news is it doesn’t seem to be in a huge hurry to solve the problem.

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We’re constantly reminding users to backup their data. It’s not until you hear of a severe malware attack, where a business is being ransomed over their important documents, do you realize you wish you’d stored securely them in another location.

And that’s the important point of backing up your data. It offers an additional safeguard. In the case of ransomware, the easiest solution is to simply wipe your drive and restore a cloned version of your system and you’d be back up and running within minutes.

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There has been a spate of adding dark modes to apps, websites and operating systems in recent times. Many people simply prefer the look, while others say a darker theme is easier on the eye. But there is also the school of thought that says dark mode saves battery life.

And this is very much the message that Google is sending to Android developers. At the Android Dev Summit this week Google highlighted the massive difference Dark Mode makes, seemingly in a bid to encourage more developers to embrace the idea and add the option to their apps.

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