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With every new privacy scandal that erupts across the digital landscape, we smartphone users and digital nomads must ask ourselves the same question: Have we reached diminishing returns on the usefulness of modern technology? It seems sometimes like every new convenience arrives with a litany of security concerns attached.

The latest news to strike a blow to our expectations of digital privacy is that smartphone apps appear to have been taking screenshots of users' devices and records of their keystrokes without their knowledge.

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Apple is making huge news today with the refresh of its wildly popular MacBook Pro laptops. The portable computers are more powerful than ever and feature a quieter keyboard. In addition, the company will be selling an optional eGPU made by Blackmagic that will transform the notebooks into graphical powerhouses.

MacBook Pro computers are very well-made, but they are quite expensive too. Even if you buy the Apple Care protection plan, it is a wise idea to invest in a case or bag for it too. Today, the iPhone-maker releases new leather sleeves that should protect both the 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pro laptops from scratches and dents. As you can imagine, since it is an official Apple product, it is rather pricey.

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TagHelpers are introduced in ASP.NET Core MVC as a new way of writing server-side code that renders HTML tags (elements), that is much closer to the HTML format than to Razor.  TagHelpers represent a mechanism to add server-side processing to a regular HTML tag, which in many ways is very similar to Angular or React directives.

Compared to Razor, the code is way cleaner, there is no context-switching and no need to use @ escape sequence like in Razor.

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As well as refreshing its MacBook Pro line-up, Apple today started to sell the $699 Blackmagic eGPU. This 8GB external GPU features a Radeon Pro 580 to bring more graphic horsepower to laptop users.

The aim is to bring desktop-level power to laptop users when they are working on graphic-intensive projects. At a shade under $700, it's not a cheap piece of hardware, but it also doubles up as something of a docking station.

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Traditional signature-based antivirus solutions struggle to cope with the pace of change in today's malware world. But while enterprises have had access to sophisticated machine learning solutions for a while these have largely been denied to consumers.

Now though Cylance is launching an AI-based antivirus solution aimed at the domestic internet user.

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There's growing interest in biometric security solutions as passwords are increasingly seen as outmoded and at risk from phishing and other attacks.

Biometric solutions provider ID R&D is launching a new version of its voice biometric security solution, IDVoice. Enhancements to the product allow it to deliver what is claimed to be the industry's fastest and most accurate text-independent biometric verification.

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Apple today announces that it has refreshed its MacBook Pro with the latest Intel processors for faster performance, True Tone displays, and quieter keyboards.

The switch to newer processors brings a big improvement to performance. How big a boost? According to Apple, the 8th-generation quad-core Intel Core processors in the 13-inch MacBook Pro will make it twice as fast, while the 8th-generation 6-core Intel Core processors in the 15-inch model will deliver 70 percent better performance.

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A new report finds that 86 percent of businesses describe their cloud strategy as multi-cloud today, with performance and innovation rising above cost savings as the top measures of success.

In addition the report, produced by Forrester for enterprise cloud specialist Virtustream, reveals that 60 percent of enterprises are now moving or have already moved mission-critical applications to the public cloud.

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If you are a hardcore PC gamer, you are probably willing to spend almost anything to get an edge. For online multiplayer games in particular, not only is your CPU, GPU, and RAM important, but so is your networking hardware. From your modem, to your router, and ultimately your network interface card, what you have matters.

Speaking of NICs, there is an intriguing new offering from a company called Aquantia. Called "AQtion AQN-107 Gamer Edition," it is a 10G card, which yes, is total overkill. A standard gigabit card is fine for most gamers, but the thing is, this 10G card is quite affordable. Not only is the price reasonable, but it comes with specialized software for Windows that will prioritize gaming traffic and reduce lag. Maybe buying a 10G card isn't so crazy...

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Google's Chrome browser may be popular, but you'll find a lot of its users complain about high memory usage. With Chrome 67, things just got even worse.

If you've noticed that Chrome on the desktop is using more RAM, you're not imagining it. Google has enabled a Site Isolation feature in Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome OS to help mitigate against the Spectre vulnerability -- and it's a bit memory-hungry.

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It seems that the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities saga is never-ending, and now there are two new related CPU flaws to add to the mix. Dubbed Spectre 1.1 and Spectre 1.2, the vulnerabilities (CVE-2018-3693) exploit speculative execution and can modify data and bypass sandboxes.

Two security researchers have disclosed details of the new vulnerabilities, both of which have the potential to leak sensitive data. By tinkering with the speculative execution processes of Intel and ARM CPUs, it would be possible to use malicious code to extract information such as passwords and crypto keys.

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Over the coming week, you may well notice that you lose a number of Twitter followers. Don't worry, it's (probably) not the result of something you said -- Twitter is having a spring clean and is cutting locked accounts from follower numbers.

The company says that the change is being introduced so that everyone's follower counts are "meaningful and accurate" and that they are something people can have confidence in. So just how many followers are you likely to lose?

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The security breach suffered by Timehop on July 4 was much more serious than the company first thought. In an update to its original announcement, the company has revealed that while the number of account affected by the breach -- 21 million -- has not changed, the range of personal data accessed by hackers is much broader.

Timehop has released an updated timeline of events, having initially felt forced by new GDPR rules to publish some details of the breach before all information had been gathered. The company says that it is also unsure of where it stands with GDPR, and is working with specialists and EU authorities to ensure compliance.

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There's a new version of Ubuntu on the block -- Minimal Ubuntu. It's been stripped right back to the bone to leave a tiny footprint, and these back Linux distros  should boot 40 percent faster than a standard Ubuntu server image. Despite the reduced footprint size, Minimal Ubuntu retains all of Ubuntu's standard tools (such as ssh, apt and snapd) and maintain full compatibility.

Designed for cloud developers and ops, Canonical says that the release is intended for completely automated operations, and as such much of the user-friendliness has been stripped out, but it's still ideal for used in KVM, Google Computer Engine and AWS.

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Microsoft recently released the Surface Connect to USB-C Adapter -- a dongle that adds USB-C to any Microsoft computer with a Surface connect port. The accessory was universally panned for being bulky, ugly, and overpriced. Thankfully, the newest Surface Go tablet has an integrated USB-C port -- the aforementioned dongle is not needed.

Microsoft doesn't want to leave the recently unveiled Surface Go out of the dongle party, apparently, as it is releasing two adapters for the tablet. One dongle merely converts the USB-C port into a USB-A port. The other adapter converts the USB-C port into a USB-A port and adds an Ethernet port. Strangely, Microsoft did not mention these products when announcing the Surface Go, but they are available for pre-order now. And yes, they will work with any USB-C Windows device; not just Surface devices.

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