Latest Technology News

Microsoft patents technology to block pirate material from cloud storage

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A new patent from Microsoft could enable the company to not only identify and block pirate material from being shared via cloud services, but also to identify repeat offenders and take action against them.

The patent specifically refers to the ability to identify and block the sharing of "prohibited content," and this could be used to mean copyrighted material, or files that a company simply does not want to be shared. The technology relies on a fingerprinting technique which makes it possible to identify files rather than having to worry about trying to track down and delete files to prevent further sharing.

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More Vault 7 leaks from WikiLeaks: Archimedes is the CIA's man-in-the-middle hacking tool

WikiLeaks continues to release revealing documents from its Vault 7 cache. This time around the organization introduces us to a CIA tool called Archimedes -- previously known as Fulcrum.

As before, there is little to confirm whether or not the tool is still in active use -- or, indeed, if it has actually ever been used -- but the documentation shows how it can be installed on a LAN to perform a man-in-the-middle attack.

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Emmanuel Macron hit by EMLEAKS email hack ahead of French election head-to-head with Le Pen

Left-wing French presidential hopeful Emmanuel Macron has been hit by a "massive and coordinated" hack attack just before voters go to the polls. A 9GB cache of emails and photos was dumped as a torrent on Pastebin by a leaker by the name of EMLEAKS. The torrent was initially hosted on Archive.org.

It was quickly pulled offline, but not before it had spread far and wide on social media. Released just before midnight on Friday night, the leak was timed to prevent Macron from responding. French election rules forbid candidates from engaging in any form of campaigning immediately before polls open.

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Microsoft HoloLens can improve surgery

Augmented reality is an impressive technology with a big future. While there are many demos surrounding AR and mixed reality, and despite some limited real-world use, it is still largely a promise at this point. In other words, the maturing technology is hardly in the mainstream, and many of its current uses are arguably inconsequential.

Today, however, augmented reality is being shown to potentially have a significant impact on the medical community. You see, a company called "Scopis" has developed a surgery solution that leverages Microsoft HoloLens. By wearing the mixed reality glasses, the surgeon sees an overlay, allowing him/her to achieve better accuracy. This, in turn, can improve the success rate of certain surgical procedures. In this case, the focus is largely on the spine, but it could be made to work with any type of surgery.

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Marketers can't afford to ignore YouTube stars

YouTube offers businesses the ability to connect meaningfully with their audience and build an engaged base of customers and prospects. The video sharing website has never been more popular. Today, over three billion hours of videos are watched per month, with an additional 300 hours of videos being added each minute. Yet, out of all the videos uploaded to YouTube, only a very small percentage generate more than a few hundred views; and only an elite few of those ultimately end up going viral. However, when done right, uploading videos can be big business. And not just for traditional organizations.

The number of channels earning six figures each year on YouTube is increasing by 50 percent year on year. According to a 2014 Variety survey, the stars of YouTube’s most popular channels, such as Swede Felix Kjellberg’s PewDiePie and Germán Aranis’ HolaSoyGerman, are now more influential and popular than mainstream celebrities among teenagers, so they need to be taken seriously by marketers.

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UK businesses will spend £37bn on failing agile projects

Agile development

Businesses in the UK will waste £37 billion on failed agile IT projects in the next 12 months, according to a new report from 6point6. The report is based on a poll of 300 UK and US CIOs. They were asked about their experiences with agile, and how its principles are being applied and executed.

More than half of CIOs (53 percent) see agile development as "discredited," and three quarters (75 percent) don’t even want to defend it any more. Seventy-three percent of CIOs think agile IT is its own industry now, and 50 percent consider it an "IT fad."

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Advertisers need to keep an eye on gamers to reach new audiences

gamer

It’s time to stuff the stereotypes. For too long in the minds of too many, gaming has been thought of as a sub-culture populated by teenage boys sitting indoors and playing shoot ‘em ups on either a console or computer.

The statistics to disprove this have been around for a long time -- the average age of a US games buyer was 36 last year and women make up more than 40 percent of gamers. Nearly two-thirds of US households contain at least one frequent gamer. Staggering stats that make it hard to pinpoint who the "typical" gamer is -- because there isn’t one anymore.

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OnePlus confirms the OnePlus 5 will be released this summer

OnePlus has confirmed that the successor to the OnePlus 3T is due for release soon. The OnePlus 5 has been rumored and hinted at for a while, but now it is official.

In a slightly unusual move, rather than making a direct announcement about the upcoming flagship killer, OnePlus instead chose to reveal the future launch to the Verge. Beyond "summer," we know nothing about the specifics of the launch but there are plenty of leaks and rumors to go on for the time being.

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The Galaxy S7 is the most-popular Samsung smartphone in the world

Samsung is the biggest smartphone vendor in the world, thanks in no small part to the huge success that the Galaxy S series enjoys. Those flagships generate the most sales, and that is expected to continue this year as the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ leave their mark in the consumer space.

But which Galaxy S device is the most popular with smartphone buyers? That is a question that may be tough to answer, as it's rare that the likes of IDC and Gartner reveal anything other than total shipments, but thanks to a ScientiaMobile report we now know that it is the Galaxy S7 that has attracted the most users.

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How to lock down Windows 10 Home/Pro like Windows 10 S

Microsoft this week introduced a new version of Windows 10 aimed primarily at users in education, and designed as an alternative to Google’s Chrome OS.

The main difference between Windows 10 S, and Windows 10 Home/Pro is it only runs apps from the Windows Store. You can’t install programs from elsewhere, and this includes Chrome. This mean users can only install Microsoft-verified software which, the software giant says, will result in better security and superior performance. You don’t need to buy or install Windows 10 S to get this feature though, you can simply lock down an existing version of Windows 10.

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Is a Google-made Chrome ad-blocker the answer to intrusive advertising?

In case you missed it, rumors are rife that Google will soon introduce an ad blocker in Chrome. Understandably, there's concern about the power that would give Google over the advertising industry and its competition. As a member of said competition, I am equal parts concerned and supportive of an ad blocker in Chrome.

It’s certainly an interesting story. On first thought it’s a little ironic, in that a company which makes a large proportion of its money through advertising revenue is not only giving users of its browser the ability to block ads from appearing, but turning it on by default too. If the rumor is true, the addition of an ad blocker in Chrome could limit the reach of ads to over half of the world’s internet users overnight. That’s a big change, and in many instances it’s needed.

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Newton email app now available for Windows, Alexa support arrives

Of all the email apps I have used in recent years, Newton (formerly known as CloudMagic) is my favorite. It is really easy to use, works with all the major email providers, has some pretty cool features, and, most importantly, is available on Android, iOS and macOS. So it nearly covers all the major platforms, except Windows.

CloudMagic, the company behind the app, has been working to change this since December, however, and now we get the first beta version of Newton for Windows. It is rough around the edges at this stage, as you might expect, but it will get the "core emailing" job done.

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More than half of people believe using spyware to snoop on family members is legal

digital monitoring

A new study shows that almost 5o percent of people believe it's legal to install a program on a family member's phone to snoop on their activity.

The survey of more than 2,000 people in the US and UK by software comparison service Comparitech.com also finds 57 percent would consider spying on their children's phone conversations and messages.

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Best Windows 10 apps this week

Two-hundred-and-twenty-nine in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 on the Windows Store in the past seven days.

Microsoft revealed the new Windows 10 S edition officially this week, and along with it a new Surface laptop that runs it.

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One in four banks struggle to identify customers online

bank access

Around a quarter of banks are struggling to identify their customers when delivering digital and online banking services, according to Kaspersky Lab.

The latest findings from its Financial Institutions Security Risks survey show that 38 percent of financial institutions surveyed confirm that balancing prevention techniques and customer convenience is one of their specific concerns.

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