Amazon is always looking for new ways to get its Alexa digital assistant into more homes. It’s rolled out a variety of Echo products over the years, most recently the Fire TV Cube, and Echo Dot Kids Edition.

A year ago, the company introduced the Echo Show, an Alexa powered device with a built-in 7-inch touchscreen. Today, the retail giant announces a free software update to turn an existing Fire tablet into a slimmed down Show, and there’s a new optional charging dock to complete the experience too.

A new report from log management platform Scalyr reveals that as organizations shift from more traditional architectures to microservices, they release software more frequently, but spend more time troubleshooting issues.

The State of DevOps Observability Report, based on a survey of 155 software development practitioners, finds that organizations are shifting away from traditional, monolithic architectures, with three-quarters of survey respondents delivering at least some of their applications and more than one-third delivering most of their applications as microservices.

Amazon’s Fire tablets have been a big success for the company, with the Kids Editions proving very popular with parents. As well as offering age-appropriate content, they come with a kid proof case which makes them much harder to break than regular tablets.

Today the retail giant introduces a new model to the range. The Fire HD 10 Kids Edition is its largest kid friendly device to date, and for a price that’s very reasonable.

Certificate authority Comodo CA is expanding out of its traditional area to launch a new platform designed to secure Internet of Things devices.

Hackers increasingly target IoT devices that have no security embedded and exposed vulnerabilities. The new Comodo CA IoT unified portal directly addresses this problem by enabling trusted, third-party, mutual authentication of devices to networks.

Linux Mint is an Ubuntu-based desktop Linux distribution, right? Yes and no. While the "normal" version of the operating system is, in fact, based on Canonical's distro, there is yet another version. Called Linux Mint Debian Edition, or LMDE, it is based on Debian -- as the name implies.

Today, we learn some interesting news. The Beta of the next version of the operating system, LMDE 3 -- code-named "Cindy" -- should be released next month, in July.

Cybercriminals are using mobile devices to avoid detection and execute a number of nefarious acts, according to a new report.

The study from bot mitigation specialist Distil Networks finds 5.8 percent -- around one in 17 -- of all mobile devices across six major cellular networks are used in such automated attacks and represent eight percent of all bad bot traffic.

A new Harris Poll commissioned by insider threat detection company Dtex Systems looks at employee attitudes towards the monitoring of their digital activities.

Carried out in the wake of data collection, monitoring and privacy scandals at Facebook and elsewhere, it shows that 45 percent of Americans believe it is at least sometimes acceptable for employers to monitor employees' digital activities to protect against security threats and data breaches.

Back in March, we reported on the Mintbox Mini 2 -- a diminutive Linux Mint desktop PC manufactured by a company called "Compulab." Of course, it can run other distributions too, such as Ubuntu and Fedora. Heck, it can even run Windows 10 if you want/need. This is the second generation of Mintbox Mini with the big difference being a switch from AMD to Intel. The fanless device is not a powerhouse, but it should run the Linux distribution like a champ. Quite frankly, it is very beautiful too -- the fins look cool as hell.

Barring any last-minute issues, the release of Linux Mint 19 "Tara" is imminent -- it should be made available any day now. As a result, starting today, you can finally order the MintBox Mini 2. Apparently, Compulab was waiting for Tara's release to get closer before taking orders. In addition to the standard model, there is also a "Pro" variant.

The next big feature update of Windows 10, codenamed Redstone 5, has been shaping up nicely, with lots of great improvements and new additions.

The highlight of this future update is unquestionably Sets, a tab-based feature that’s designed to let you access related web pages, research documents, files, and applications in one location. Sets was originally planned to be part of the April 2018 Update alongside Timeline, but Microsoft needed a little more time to get things right, and so pushed it back. Sadly it now looks as if it won’t make it into the following feature update either.

It’s been a couple of weeks since Microsoft last rolled out a new Windows 10 Redstone 5 build for Insiders, but today the wait for an update is over.

Build 17704, for those on the Fast ring and Skip Ahead, includes a number of big improvements and changes.

Samsung has typically unveiled new models in the Galaxy Note series towards the end of the third quarter, but this time around the South Korean maker is speeding things up.

The upcoming Galaxy Note 9 will make its public debut on August 9, during the second Unpacked event of 2018. We do not know yet when it will actually hit store shelves, but, knowing Samsung, interested buyers should be able to snag one shortly after that.

Google is a huge proponent of open source. The company is constantly releasing projects on GitHub -- a huge win for the open source community. Not to mention, Google leverages one of the most important open source projects for its operating systems -- the Linux kernel. Both Android and Chrome OS, for instance, are Linux-based.

Today, Google becomes a Platinum Member of the Linux Foundation. This is big news, as not only will Google benefit from the platinum perks, but arguably more importantly, the Linux community will experience a huge financial win. You see, the annual cost for being a platinum member is $500,000!

June is almost over, which unfortunately means the BetaNews 20th Birthday celebration is almost over. Don't worry, we will still have more giveaways to do before July arrives.

Today, we are giving away a pair of Logitech Doodle Collection mobile wireless mice -- two winners can each win one. These mice are really fun, as they feature super funky designs -- I love it. While these small mice can be used at home with a desktop, they are more appropriate for portability with a laptop.

As workforces are increasingly spread over multiple locations, in the field or working from home, keeping them up to date and engaged with company news can be a tough task.

Increasingly managers are turning to podcasts to help keep sales teams competitive and build corporate community and business alignment among employees, partners and customers. Enterprise communications company uStudio is launching a podcasting solution purpose-built for private enterprise communications.

We all sign up to online accounts for various things but over time it can become hard to remember which address you used for each site, what password you used or indeed whether you’ve previously signed up to a site at all.

Password management specialist Dashlane is launching a new feature for mobile users of its password manager called Inbox Security Scan, to give people an insight into the current state of their online accounts.