Opera Max -- the free data-saving and VPN-like tool from the team behind the Opera web browser -- is being killed off.

The app has been removed from Google Play with immediate effect, and there will be no more updates. Opera is not really giving a reason for the sudden decision other that the fact that Opera Max had "a substantially different value proposition than our browser products."

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Google's latest acquisition is Senosis Health, a Seattle-based startup focused on monitoring and diagnosing health conditions via mobile phones. This is not Google's first venture into the world of health, but it could signify its next big step.

Senosis Health, founded by Shwetak Patel, has transformed regular smartphones into medical devices that can be used to monitor everything from jaundice in babies to chronic respiratory diseases. The aim is to do as much as possible without the need for extra, specialist equipment.

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Bots are at a tipping point in customer care, and many large bands, including RBS and Vodafone, are already bringing AI and bots to life for millions of their customers. But the hype around bots has also introduced many misconceptions. If implemented poorly, bots could have a disastrous effect on the customer experience.

From our work with many of the world’s leading bot-makers and largest brands over the last few years, we have learned there are four "secrets" to making bots successful in customer care, without which bot projects are more likely fail.

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Workloads on AWS can be vulnerable to a number of different threats including cross-site scripting, SQL injection and botnets, and if one virtual server is compromised malware has potential to move to a customer's other machines.

To secure this McAfee is launching its Virtual Network Security Platform for AWS to provide advanced security in the public cloud.

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HBO continues to feel the fallout from the recent hack it suffered. We have seen leaks of episodes and scripts from Game of Thrones, and the network allegedly tried to offer the hackers a "bug bounty" to stop the leaks.

The offer did not work, and the leaks continue. Episode five of Game of Thrones season seven may have aired last night (meaning today will undoubtedly see a flurry of downloads from torrent sites), but the hit show has been let off the hook in the latest batch. This time, it is episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm and other shows that have been leaked.

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The price of Bitcoin continues to rise, with the cryptocurrency now trading at over $4,000. It's only a matter of days since the price set at record when it passed $3,500, but this has now been broken already.

The surge has been driven by Japanese interest in the currency, and trading currently stands at just under $4,200. After something of a wobbly period, the rise in Bitcoin has been fuelled by investors seeing it as a quick way to make a healthy return.

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Security researchers from Lookout are warning about raft of spyware-infected apps that have been found in Google Play. Seemingly connected to Iraq, more than a thousand apps hve been found to include SonicSpy spyware.

The spyware is embedded in a variety of legitimate-looking apps, such as messaging tools based on Telegram. One such example is an app called Soniac which was found to be capable of not only recording audio and retrieving contacts, but also taking photos and gathering phone logs. Lookout warns that SonicSpy is sneaky, and tries to hide from users to avoid detection.

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Twitch used to just be a platform for people to stream themselves playing video games. While it still is used for that, it has evolved to be much more, such as vlogging and general interactions. The Amazon-owned company is wise to expand, as it betters its competition abilities with the monster that is YouTube. Google's service is insanely popular, but as more and more content creators grow tired of YouTube's heavy-handed antics, they will look for somewhere else to go. That somewhere is Twitch for many.

YouTube is largely a web browser affair on the desktop, while on Android and iOS, Google produces solid mobile apps. Twitch has decided to take the app approach on the desktop too, as there are now apps for both Windows 10 and macOS.

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Following on from the launch of the OnePlus 5, owners of previous generation handsets from the Chinese company may well have been wondering how much more support they can expect. In an interview published on the OnePlus forums, the company's head of product has revealed all.

Oliver Z says that OnePlus 3 and OnePlus 3T owners will not see any more major updates after Android O is released. If you were hoping to see Android P, you're out of luck. This is going to be hard for some OnePlus fans to take; while it means the handsets will have been treated to two major OS updates, in terms of the length of time for which major upgrades are being provided, there is certainly room for disappointment.

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Chuwi is not a particularly well-known brand at the moment, but the company is starting to carve out something of a name for itself. We've already seen a handful of low-cost tablets and laptops from the Chinese brand, but its upcoming LapBook Air looks especially interesting.

That the name blends elements from the MacBook Air and Surface Book is no mistake -- this is a laptop designed to compete with both. Chuwi claims the full-metal chassis is "just like touching the real MacBook," but it's the incredibly thinness that's the real head-turner here.

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The hack suffered by HBO has been in the headlines for the last couple of weeks, not least because it led to the leak of episodes and scripts. The anonymous hackers were known to have made a ransom demand, but details of how this was handled were not made public.

Now a leaked email suggests that HBO offered the perpetrators a sum of $250,000 to delay the leaks. But rather than offering up the sum as a ransom payment, HBO refers to the money as a "bug bounty payment."

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Big data and analytics are topics firmly embedded in our business dialogue. The amount of data we’re now generating is astonishing. Cisco predicts that annual global IP traffic will reach 3.3 ZB per year by 2021 and that the number of devices connected to IP networks will be more than three times the global population by 2021, while Gartner predicts $2.5M per minute in IoT spending and 1M new IoT devices will be sold every hour by 2021. It’s testament to the speed with which digital connectivity is changing the lives of people all over the world.

Data has also evolved dramatically in recent years, in type, volume, and velocity -- with its rapid evolution attributed to the widespread digitization of business processes globally. Data has become the new business currency and its further rapid increase will be key to the transformation and growth of enterprises globally, and the advancement of employees, "the digital natives."

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In an era where the preferred application platform is the cloud and DevOps is set to drive performance in today’s digital economy, industry skeptics still view containers as "over-hyped," with no long-term value in the enterprise.

However, with large investments from Amazon, Google and Microsoft, the option of containers is becoming a viable solution -- and over the next three years, predictions are that it’s set to see a huge rise in its implementation.

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Kodi has been in the news a lot lately, and not for the best reasons. While the software itself isn’t illegal, using third-party add-ons to watch copyrighted content is, and many of those add-ons have been pulled recently following threats of legal action. Controversial add-on site TVAddons even vanished briefly from the web, before reappearing a week ago.

Despite all this, it’s business as usual for the Kodi Foundation which does its best to distance itself from the piracy accusations so often leveled at it, and the team has just released a new build for the popular open source media player.

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With the emergence of IoT, everything becomes connected; there is a continuous blurring between real world and digital world where everything is moving to become predominantly digital. Apps are location-aware, context-aware, and aware of everything around them (supply chain, logistics network) and that’s bringing the custom device world into mainstream industry-wide. Bring together any device (custom or mainstream, mobile or fixed) and everything is connected and focused on the experience of the end user.

In this new world, mobile apps are being rolled out continuously and at a far greater speed. Change is fast, and customer expectation sky high. Add to that we are living in a diverse and fragmented technology world across different platforms and devices with increasing adoption of AI and machine learning, with security as an ongoing and ever-increasing challenge.

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