Latest Technology News

The UK's GCHQ -- like its US counterpart the NSA -- is an agency traditionally shrouded in secrecy. Tasked with the job of spying on all and sundry in the name of intelligence gathering, the agency has just joined Twitter, greeting other users with an unoriginal "Hello, world".

With the concerns about privacy and security that blew up in the wake of Edward Snowden's NSA surveillance revelation, spy agencies around the world have been on a mission to boost their public image. GCHQ -- complete with the blue tick reserved for verified accounts -- will use Twitter to "provide news, updates, and opinions".

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If your files have been scrambled by malware then a decrypter may be able to save the day -- but you’ll need to find it, first. Emsisoft has announced its own Decrypter page, a single source where you’re able to browse and download any of the company’s 14 free decrypters.

The page provides clues to help you find out exactly which type of ransomware might have infected your PC.

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If you're a fan of keeping notes and lists then you really have two main choices -- Evernote and Microsoft's OneNote. Both can be good methods of keeping track of things. For instance, keep a tab open in your browser to add items to a grocery list as you think of them, then arrive at the store and the list is on your phone.

Now Evernote is teaming up with another powerhouse in business, Google. The company is announcing that it will work with the search giant's cloud storage service, Drive.

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While Microsoft has gone to great lengths to make it as easy as possible to upgrade from Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 to Windows 10, purists will always prefer to opt for a clean installation. For seasoned Windows users, performing a clean install of Windows 10 is easy enough, but that's not true for everyone.

Acknowledging the fact that clean installations are not a piece of cake for all, Microsoft is beavering away on a new tool to simplify the process. Windows Insiders will be able to try it out before anyone else, and give feedback to help shape the final product.

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Businesses are under increasing pressure to improve their customer experiences and make more effective use of their digital communication channels.

Yet new research from apps, data development and integration company Progress shows that 62 percent of respondents believe their business is in denial about the need to transform digitally.

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By the end of 2016, Google aims to switch Chrome users away from Flash in favor of HTML5. The writing has been on the wall for Flash for some time now, with a seemingly endless torrent of security issues pushing increasing numbers of people toward HTML5.

Google says that by Q4 2016, it wants to make HTML5 the primary user experience. Flash support will still be built into the browser, but it will be disabled by default. Ten sites, however, will be given a year's reprieve.

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The $5 Raspberry Pi is a great little computer, although it’s generally rather hard to get hold of as demand has easily outstripped supply, and manufacture was temporarily put on hold when focus switched to producing the new Raspberry Pi 3.

Today, however, the Raspberry Pi Zero is back in stock. There are roughly 30,000 new Zeros available to buy now, with thousands more being made every day. The diminutive device has also had a much-requested "missing" feature added.

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Security researchers from Talos have written a bunch of fancy words on their blog here, which basically say 7-Zip has a couple of serious security flaws.

Everyone’s up in arms about it, too.

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Apple this week invested $1 billion in Xiaoju Kuaizhi Inc. -- known as Didi -- by far the dominant car-hailing service in China with 300 million customers. While Apple has long admitted being interested in car technology and has deals to put Apple technology into many car lines, this particular investment seems to have been a surprise to most everyone. Analysts and pundits are seeing the investment as a way for Apple to get automotive metadata or even to please the Chinese government. I think it’s more than that. I think it is a potential answer to Apple’s huge problem of foreign cash and a grab for leadership in what may well be the second automotive age.

Apple has about $200 billion in offshore investments. That number is continuing to grow yet making very little return compared to Apple’s phone and computer businesses. As I’ve written before Apple has been very good at leveraging its cash to get better terms from suppliers but that game isn’t going to be getting any better (or worse) and the cash continues to pile up.

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In a little over two weeks, new rules will come into play that pose something of a threat to people who like to install open source firmware on their routers. The Federal Communications Commission is implementing guidelines designed to prevent users from modifying their routers in such a way that would make them operate outside of their licensed frequency range and interfere with other devices.

Many router manufacturers have opted for the easy way out, and decided to simply completely block (or continue to block) the installation of third party, open source firmware. Not so with Linksys. The company has been working with Marvell and the makers of OpenWrt to ensure that the Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS) setting cannot be disabled so that users can still install and use open source firmware.

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The Pirate Bay is no stranger to court cases, and the site has just lost another one in Sweden. A Swedish court has ruled that the torrent site's thepiratebay.se and piratebay.se domain names must be handed over to the state.

The two domains have been confiscated after a judge at the Court of Appeal decided that they were being used to (gasp!) commit crimes under the Copyright Act.

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When Microsoft first introduced the idea of 'promoted apps' to the Windows 10 Start menu, it was decried by many as little more than pushing ads at users. If you found yourself among those upset by the appearance of links to apps you may have a vague interest in, things could be about to get a whole lot worse.

Later this summer Microsoft is releasing a major update to Windows 10 in the form of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. In July the update will be released to the masses -- although Insiders have the chance to try it out in the meantime -- and Microsoft has plans for more ads; the number of spaces for 'promoted apps' in the Start menu is set to double from five to ten.

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Blisk is a Chromium-based browser optimized for web developers.

Point the program at your site and it’s displayed in both regular desktop and a mobile device view.

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Out of the blue, Microsoft has announced that Project Spark is closing down. The Xbox One experiment which made it possible for just about anyone to create and publish games is to be killed off "after much consideration".

The service will be completely offline by 12 August meaning that after this date it will no longer be possible to upload or download content. Microsoft stopped development of Project Spark last year, but users had hoped that it would just be left to its own devices; this sunset announcement means that this is no longer the case.

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Microsoft is following in Google's footsteps and cleaning up the ads that can be displayed on its network. After Google announced that AdWords could no longer be used to push payday loans, Microsoft has decided to ban ads for computer support services from Bing.

What's interesting here is that Microsoft has taken an incredibly hard line and issued a complete blanket ban on all technical support ads -- no exceptions. The aim is to weed out fake support ads and scams, but it will also impact on legitimate services.

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