Latest Technology News

The US Department of Commerce has implemented a ban on American companies selling components to ZTE. The Chinese telecoms firm is being punished for violating sanctions on Iran and North Korea after pleading guilty last year.

At the same time, the UK's cyber defense watchdog, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), has warned UK telecoms firms that the use of ZTE equipment or services pose a risk to national security. The action taken by the two nations is expected to have severe implications for the company.

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Following a huge backlash over the weekend, Weibo -- the Chinese equivalent of Twitter -- has announced a reversal of a policy that would have seen gay content banned from the platform.

Originally announced on Friday, the "clean-up" operation was due to last three months, and covered violence and pornography as well as homosexual content. Now, however, Weibo has felt the pressure of public outcry and backed down saying: "We're no longer targeting gay content".

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Public cloud services are now in use in 97 percent of organizations, but one in four have experienced data theft and cloud-first strategies are on the decline.

These are among the findings of the latest annual cloud report from McAfee. Among other highlights are that 83 percent store sensitive data in the public cloud and 69 percent trust the public cloud to keep their sensitive data secure. However, one in five organizations has experienced an advanced attack against its public cloud infrastructure.

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Cyber security company ESET is using this week's RSA Conference in San Francisco to launch its new range of enterprise security products.

These include a new ESET Enterprise Inspector, an Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solution, and ESET Dynamic Threat Defense, a tool that provides off-premise cloud sandboxing, which leverages machine learning and behavior-based detection to prevent zero-day attacks.

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A large number of free Android apps suffer with flaky security because software developers are leaving cryptographic keys embedded and passwords hard-coded.

Speaking at the BSides security conference in San Francisco, software vulnerability analyst Will Dormann revealed how he had found serious security problems in thousands upon thousands of apps. After testing 1.8 million apps, he found almost 20,000 featured built-in passwords and keys, and even when a separate password store was used, user data was still open to attack from simple password crackers.

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Breaches related to open source components have grown 50 percent since 2017, and an eye-opening 121 percent since 2014, according to a new survey from open source governance and DevSecOps automation specialist Sonatype.

But the survey finds that those companies with mature DevOps practices are 24 percent more likely to have deployed automated security practices throughout their development lifecycle.

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Following the release of Linux kernel 4.16, Linus Torvalds has said that the next kernel will be version 5.0. Or maybe it won't, because version numbers are meaningless.

The announcement -- of sorts -- came in Torvalds' message over the weekend about the first release candidate for version 4.17. He warns that it is not "shaping up to be a particularly big release" and questions whether it even matters what version number is slapped on the final release.

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The UK can be a world leader in the development of AI says a report released today from the House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence.

The report sets out five principles for the use of AI which have some echoes of Asimov's laws of robotics. The principles are:

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Spreadsheets may not be the most exciting tools out there, but there's no denying that they're important. If you use Google Sheets as part of your number crunching process, there's some great news: Google is adding macro support.

While it was previously possible to automate tasks through scripts, the newly added support for direct macro recording simplifies things greatly. Sheets can now automatically convert macro actions into an Apps Script, and the macros are designed for use on cloud-based files.

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If your laptop has Thunderbolt 3 -- and you want to connect it to a keyboard, mouse, and display -- a TB3 dock is a worthwhile investment. This allows you to both charge and connect your peripherals with a single cable. Don't have Thunderbolt 3? That's OK -- you can still utilize a USB dock. While it won't charge your machine, it will still offer much convenience.

While my MacBook Pro has Thunderbolt 3, my family and I have Windows and Linux notebooks that still use USB 3.0. For these computers, I have been testing a new USB 3.0 dock from VisionTek called "VT1000." Not only does it serve as a 3-port USB 3.0 hub (two Type-A on front, one on rear), but it also provides gigabit Ethernet, audio, and the ability to push two displays. For this, it offers very versatile connection options -- HDMI, DisplayPort, and VGA.

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Nintendo enjoyed great success when it nostalgically released the NES Classic and SNES Classic mini consoles. Happy to ride the retro game revival wave, SEGA is following suit and releasing its own mini console -- the Mega Drive Mini.

The original console was launched in the late 80s; it was known as the SEGA Genesis in North America, but in its home country of Japan and the rest of the world it was the Mega Drive. SEGA announced the Mega Drive Mini at an event in Japan, and while details are currently a little thin on the ground, excitement is already building about this latest mini console -- but there will certainly be disappointment that there will be no Sonic 3.

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For better or worse, the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) initiative seems to be moving full steam ahead. There are some very respectable distributions available in the Microsoft Store, such as Debian, Ubuntu, and Kali to name a few. Not to mention, Microsoft is trying to encourage even more maintainers to submit their distros with a new tool.

Apparently, some Windows 10 users have been clamoring for the ability to copy and paste both from and to WSL consoles -- a reasonable request. Well, as of Insider Build 17643, this is finally possible.

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Just a few days ago we reported about the upcoming redesign of Gmail on the web. Delving further into the redesign we find that there are new features, including self-destructing emails.

With a new "Confidential Mode", Gmail will not only give users the ability to set an expiry date for the emails they send to people, but also put restrictions on messages to prevent them from being printed or forwarded.

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A leaked Apple memo reveals that last year the company identified 29 leakers within its ranks, 12 of whom were arrested. The memo warns that employees that leak company information have "everything to lose".

There is obviously a wonderful irony to the leaking of a memo about leaking, but it also gives something of an insight into just how seriously Apple takes the matter. The company is notoriously secretive about its upcoming products, and willing to go to great lengths to ensure information does not make its way out early (although -- in a second dose of delicious irony -- the FCC has just "leaked" images of an as-yet-unreleased gold iPhone X).

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Concern about Russian interference in both the US presidential election and the UK Brexit referendum highlighted the importance the internet now plays in political campaigns. But as well as being a powerful tool, it's also something that is open to abuse and manipulation.

This is something Microsoft recognizes, and the company is launching a new Defending Democracy Program with the express aim of safeguarding the electoral processes.

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