Latest Technology News

Last week saw the start of a backlash against Google after advertisers voiced concern that their ads were appearing next to extremist content. The Guardian, the BBC and the British government were among the first to start to pull their ads from the network, and the trend has spread to the US.

AT&T and Verizon are among American companies that have now announced that they are boycotting YouTube by pulling their ads. After concerns about being associated with terrorist and other extremist content, an increasing number of big names are calling on Google to make guarantees about ad placement.

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Robbing the mail has a long and dishonorable history dating back to the days of the stagecoach. But UK-based online parcel broker ParcelHero is warning that automated delivery drones and droids could see the rise of a new breed of high-tech highwaymen.

The development of devices that alter the drone or droid's instructions, or simply stop them dead, is seen as inevitable. With UK online retail sales now worth more than £130 billion a year, if deliveries are to become largely automated and just one percent of items are waylaid using new technology, that's over £1bn of goods stolen a year.

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A group of hackers that goes by the name Turkish Crime Family, claims to have access to hundreds of millions of iCloud accounts, and it wants Apple to pay $75,000 in Bitcoin or Ethereum or $100,000 in iTunes gift cards to delete the compromised credentials.

This may lead one to believe that the collective has managed to hack iCloud, but according to Apple there "have not been any breaches" in any of its systems. "The alleged list of email addresses and passwords appears to have been obtained from previously compromised third-party services."

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Facebook is not shy about stealing features from other messaging tools, and it's usually Snapchat that is used as inspiration. With the latest update to Facebook Messenger, it's Slack that is being borrowed from.

Today Facebook Messenger gets two new features: Reactions and mentions. These work in very much the way you would expect, and Reactions make a successful transition from the Facebook newsfeed to Messenger after having made a brief appearance to a testing group recently.

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61 percent of UK businesses believe they will suffer from cyber crime in 2017, according to new research from Mimecast. These anxieties are justified: two thirds of large UK businesses were targeted by cyber criminals last year.

As the threat posed by cyber crime increases, businesses now invest more than ever in training, technology and skills -- global cyber spending is predicted to reach $1 trillion by 2021.

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Automation tools like IFTTT continue to be popular, and as if to prove this, Apple has just bought the iOS app Workflow. Working in a similar way to Automator for macOS, Workflow brings task-oriented automation to iPhone and iPad users.

There's good news to top off the acquisition revelation. Apple is not only keeping Workflow up and running rather than shutting it down, it's also hanging onto the original team of developers behind the app. Even better, Apple is making Workflow available free of charge, dropping the previous $2.99 price tag.

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Algorithms are at the heartbeat of Industrie 4.0 projects, according to Gartner, and that’s going to result in 30 percent of Industrie 4.0 projects sourcing algorithms from leading algorithm marketplaces by 2020.

That means a jump of less than five per cent, compared to what we currently have in the market.

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Internet of Things devices are the latest threat vector that businesses have to deal with, introducing a potential extra weakness into corporate networks and leading experts to warn of increased risk.

To help guard against the threat, Mocana Corporation is introducing a new security platform designed to protect IoT devices and associated device-to-cloud communications.

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Cobbler is a tiny portable utility which stores plain text notes -- passwords, bank details, whatever you need to keep private -- in a secure and encrypted file.

Launch the program and you’re prompted for a master password. Enter something lengthy and secure, or press Ctrl+G to generate a strong passphrase for you, and a basic editor appears.

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IT decision makers (ITDM) in the EMEA region serve as their company's "gatekeepers" and primary influencers, when it comes to choosing new technology purchases for the company. This is according to a new report by Spiceworks, which digs deeper into the roles of ITDMs and business decision makers (BDMs) when it comes to purchasing new technologies.

The study, "ITDM vs. BDM: Tech Purchase Superheroes," says BDM’s role is to "give final approval for technology funds and purchases."

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Slow patching of security flaws is leaving many US mobile users at risk of falling victim to data breaches according to the findings of a new report.

The study from mobile defense specialist Skycure analyzed patch updates among the five leading wireless carriers in the US and finds that 71 percent of mobile devices still run on security patches more than two months old.

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A team of us at Red Badger, which consisted of myself, Marcel, Graham and Roman, had two weeks to play around with Amazon’s Alexa and build a sommelier skill to recommend wine pairings to your food. We’re writing a four-part series to take you through what we learned from our varied perspectives.

There’s been so many blog posts written about the rise of chatbots and Voice User Interface (VUI), some even marking 2017 to be the year of the bots.

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My absolute favorite desktop environment for Linux is GNOME. Quite frankly, if the DE went away tomorrow, I might have to rethink my use of Linux entirely. Yeah, I am that passionate about it. Environment aside, the GNOME also includes a collection of applications, creating a coherent user experience.

Today, GNOME reaches version 3.24, code-named "Portland." While it looks great, it is hardly a monumental change. Moving from 3.22, we see some new features and applications, but on the UI front, there are improved icons too. In fact, they have doubled from 256×256px to 512×512px! Not only can these icons scale larger, but they are more vibrant and intricate too. Overall, there are many new aspects of GNOME to excite fans.

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Old, unpatched vulnerabilities allow hackers to take over systems using the User-Agent string -- an elementary part of virtually every HTTP request.

It is a known fact that while the majority of vulnerabilities discovered or reported are fixed by the vendor and a patch is issued, many systems end up not being patched in a timely manner or even at all, for that matter. There are many possible reasons for that, the most common being:

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Security researchers at Cybellum have revealed details of a zero-day exploit that makes it possible for an attacker to take full control of antivirus software. The technique can be used to take control of just about any application, but by focusing on antivirus tools, the illusion of safety offered to victims means they are likely to be completely unaware of what is happening.

The attack works by exploiting the Microsoft Application Verifier that's built into Windows. It is possible to replace the tool with a custom verifier which can then be used to inject malicious code into any chosen application. A number of well-known antivirus tools -- including Avast, BitDefender, ESET, Kaspersky, and F-Secure -- are vulnerable, while patches have been released for others.

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