Latest Technology News

We've just wrapped up one convention and I'll leave you to decide what you thought of it, but, leanings aside, it can be assumed that unity wasn't really involved. Now the Democrats are set to descend on Philadelphia next week, an event that was expected to be much more pleasant. That may not be the case.

The case in question involves a dump of some 20,000 emails by Wikileaks. Only several seem relevant to the current situation, but those involve Democratic National Chair Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, and seem to indicate a clear intent to be rid of candidate Bernie Sanders. We say "seem" because it's hard to say and we aren't here to point fingers.

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For people concerned with their privacy the Dark Web and Tor seem like natural bedfellows. Not for the first time, concerns are currently raised that Tor may not be anywhere near as anonymous as users might like to think, with researchers saying they have discovered dozens of computers engaged in surveillance of the Dark Web.

Computer scientists from Northeastern University used honeypot addresses to identify over 110 malicious machines storing identifying information about users accessing .onion addresses via Tor. At the moment it is not clear whether data gathered by the computers has been used to identify individuals, but the possibility exists.

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Rightly or wrongly, telemetry in Windows 10 has been roundly and soundly criticized. But while the feature may be a privacy concern for some, Microsoft says that it is using the data gathered to provide advice to would-be Windows 10 users about driver and application readiness.

This is something that is aimed at enterprise users for whom Microsoft recognizes that certain apps are mission-critical for businesses. This is why the company has launched Upgrade Analytics to "provide customers with insights which allow them to [...] mitigate potential problems".

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Helping out with a drug trafficking case, Yahoo was able to recover emails that had previously been deleted. Now a judge wants to know how this was possible.

Yahoo's only policies state that email cannot be recovered once they have been deleted, and defense lawyers for Russell Knaggs -- who planned to move cocaine from South America -- want to know how the company was able to produce deleted email in this case.

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Cyanogen Inc -- the cheeky little upstart behind Android-based CyanogenMod -- is reportedly laying off 20 percent of its workforce. The company is a fairly small operation with just 136 employees, but the lay-offs are significant as they are mostly from the OS side of things.

It seems that the open source Android-inspired operating system has failed to generate quite as much interest as hoped, although it does have a very dedicated cult following. It is not clear quite what the future holds for CyanogenMod, but things are not looking good at the moment.

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It’s generally considered that the newly released Windows 10 Build 14393 is the Anniversary Update as Microsoft not only hasn’t rolled out any new builds since that one arrived on Monday (and they were coming thick and fast previously), but it’s just released a patch for that build.

The cumulative update for PC and Mobile mops up some more problems, and bumps the OS preview up to 14393.3.

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Terrorism has been front and center lately thanks to high profile attacks around the world and the scare tactics being used in the current US election. But how do these people communicate? What is the tool of choice for today's Jihadist – well the ones that don't fire bullets or blow up.

Communications and internet are essential to any modern group. Flashpoint Security took a look into what programs are most prevalent, and results are largely unsurprising.

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For many mobile users, it's important to keep an eye on data usage to ensure tariff limits are not exceeded. A major contributor to gobbling up monthly bandwidth allowances is the updating of apps, and Google is taking steps to reduce the size of APK updates.

In a post on the Android Developers Blog, Google speaks directly to developers, pointing out the various steps they can take to optimize the size of updates. The company also calls for greater transparency so users know the size of updates before committing to a download.

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Just a couple of days after a horrendous DDoS attack took down Pokemon GO servers for a day, Arbor releases its new report on the state of DDoS around the globe, which basically says things are only getting worse.

The reasons are still the same -- DDoS attacks are simple to launch, cheap and easy to obtain, for anyone "with a grievance and an internet connection".

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College sports is big business -- television, radio, merchandise, etc. While many Americans are fans of professional sports such as the NFL and NBA, not every state has such a team. What every state in the union does have, however, are college athletic programs. Believe it or not, in places like Florida where there are plenty of pro teams, many folks are more wild for the Gators or Seminoles than the Dolphins or Heat.

Today, Twitter announces a media partnership with the Silver Chalice-owned company "Campus Insiders". This deal will bring the live video steaming of more than 300 collegiate sporting events to the social network, bolstering its existing offerings.

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Intel has certainly made progress on its restructuring initiative to focus on the cloud and the internet of things (IoT), but these key businesses have failed to deliver significant enough growth to boost slowing chip sales.

The company reports revenue of $13.5 billion for Q2 2016, which is a three percent increase from the previous year. However, profit for the latest quarter is down by more than half (51 percent) to $1.3 billion, which is primarily a result of high restructuring costs of $1.4 billion.

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Pokémon Go has proved almost unbelievably popular, and like any app that gains a huge following, malicious versions of the app soon appeared. The game has been in the headlines after hackers knocked gaming servers offline, but there have also been major privacy concerns.

Now there could be a nightmare brewing for developer Niantic Labs in Germany, where consumer advocates say the game violates the country's consumer and privacy laws. Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZBV) says the company needs to make sweeping changes to a raft of clauses in the app's terms of use in order to avoid further action.

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Even though US authorities have taken down KickassTorrents and managed to get owner Artem Vaulin arrested in Poland, the most popular BitTorrent website in the world is now back in the game.

KickassTorrents is alive and well through two working mirrors which have been set up by supporters to ensure that fans can continue to enjoy the content distributed through the website. In the wake of these events, it would seem that it's business as usual in BitTorrent land.

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Run a "setup.exe" on your PC and there’s no way to tell what might happen next. Will it install adware, hundreds of system files, maybe just a single executable? Who knows?

InnoEx is a free portable tool which can display the contents of some setup files, without having to install them first.

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An equivalent to Android’s Stagefright vulnerability has recently been spotted on iOS and OS X devices. It has since been patched, and security experts from Sophos are urging all Apple users to patch up as fast as they can to protect themselves from the serious flaw.

For those who are unfamiliar with it, Stagefright (in its multiple version) allowed a hacker to take over a victim’s Android smartphone by sending a message with an image or a video file. Long story short, it had something to do with the way Android managed images, and pretty much every Android version you can think of was vulnerable (many of them may still be).

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