Latest Technology News

Facebook has faced accusations of interfering with the headlines that appear in Trending Topics, censoring conservative stories. While admitting to a left wing bias in Silicon Valley, the social network has denied supressing the appearance of right wing news.

However, leaked internal documents show that there is a very structured and controlled process in place that sees employees -- rather than algorithms -- influencing the news that Facebook users see. The documents reveal that there is an editorial team in place, with stories being ranked and promoted by hand. Perhaps just as worrying is the revelation that a very small number of news sources are used by Facebook.

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Monitor Power Saver is a lightweight tool which can disable monitors automatically or on demand, saving energy and extending battery life. The surprisingly small download -- barely 100KB -- unzips to a single executable which runs on Windows XP or later.

Double-clicking its system tray icon displays a simple tabbed interface with various options.

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New research from Gartner suggests that the worldwide server virtualization market is very close to reaching its peak.

In 2016, the x86 server virtualization market is expected to reach $5.6 billion. This is an increase of 5.7 percent compared to 2015. However, this growth is not attributed to new software licenses which have declined for the first time in more than a decade. Instead this increased growth has been driven by maintenance revenue which is a clear indication of how the software market has begun to rapidly mature.

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The security firm Wandera SmartWire Labs has released a new report detailing how many popular business apps used by large enterprises leak data and present a multitude of security risks.

The company assessed the threats that exist on popular business apps and how they could be potentially damaging to large companies in Europe, the US and Asia. Wandera’s report was able to shed light on 10 apps, widely used by enterprise employees, that failed to employ secure data storage and protect information that could personally identify users.

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Publishers are set to lose $27 billion by 2020 thanks to ad blockers such as AdBlock Plus, a new report by Juniper Research says. Keeping in mind that the digital advertising spending worldwide sits at $197.48 billion (expected to grow to $252bn by 2018) according to Statista, that means ad blockers will account for almost 10 per cent of total digital advertising market.

Ouch.

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Even though I own an iPhone, I am not an Apple "fanboy". I use both Linux and Windows on the desktop, and embrace most of Google's services. Quite frankly, if Google pulled its offerings from iOS, I would probably switch to Android. In other words, I am deeply entrenched in the search giant's ecosystem.

Today, Google releases a new keyboard for the iPhone. Called "Gboard", it drastically improves the typing experience on Apple's smartphone in many ways, including "Glide Typing", emoji search, and animated GIF search to name a few. If you own an iPhone, stop what you are doing and install it now. Trust me, folks.

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No matter if we are talking about Windows PCs or MacBooks running OS X, the browser that you use can have a major impact on your laptop's battery life. Tests suggest that if you want the best results you should stick to the default browser, Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge on Windows, and Safari on OS X.

But, with Opera 39 soon to be released, Opera Software is basically claiming that the new version of its browser is far superior to any of its rivals. The trick is to activate the new power saving mode, which is available when you run on battery power.

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The average permanent salary of an IT professional in the UK has increased to a record high of around £40,000 per year, according to statistics from CV Screen.

The recruitment firm’s analysis shows that London earns the most in all of UK, with an average salary that is 14 percent above the national average. The rise in the national average salary, which marks as the highest average wage for the industry, represents a two percent increase over the last three years.

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Mozilla is fighting to force the FBI to disclose details of a vulnerability in the Tor web browser. The company fears that the same vulnerability could affect Firefox, and wants to have a chance to patch it before details are made public.

The vulnerability was exploited by FBI agents to home in on a teacher who was accessing child pornography. Using a "network investigative technique", the FBI was able to identify the man from Vancouver, but Mozilla is concerned that it could also be used by bad actors.

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Proof of concept (PoC) is a basic demonstration that showcases an idea in order to illustrate its scalability and profit potential. There is a misconception that if the design, idea or development needed for the final product will work, that is, then there is no need for a proof of concept. This is the first wrong assumption startup founders often make.

The next is not truly understanding what their PoC goes to prove, and how their proof of concept can be the gateway to their first round of funding.

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Running applications in containers is increasingly popular, but whilst it offers benefits in terms of the flexibility to run apps anywhere, it raises fresh challenges for keeping them secure.

A new set of automated capabilities that defend against active threats targeting container environments is being launched by security solutions company Twistlock. Twistlock Runtime is fully automated and designed to detect and stop sophisticated runtime attacks -- including APTs and zero-day exploits.

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File Converter is a lightweight tool for converting video, audio and image files from Explorer’s right-click menu. There’s no system tray icon to get in your way, no bulky interface to navigate. Just right-click your selected files in Explorer, click File Converter > To… (destination format) and watch as the files are converted.

File format support isn’t as wide as many other tools, but the program covers all the basics, and a little more (video > animated GIF).

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It’s become more common than not in recent years to experience a security breach -- whether it’s your company records or your personal social media accounts, data on the web today is not as safe as it once was.

Often, people think that because their personal information is protected with a strong password, it’s enough to ward off hackers and cybercriminals. This, however, couldn’t be further from the truth. Let’s learn why.

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In recent years Google has started to tighten up on the products that can be promoted through its services. After cracking down on porn, the latest victims of the ban hammer are payday loans and other high interest finance services.

Starting July 13, it will no longer be possible to advertise such products through AdWords. Ads for loans with repayment deadlines of under two months are now outlawed, as are ads for loans with high interest rates.

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Data archiving is a practical way to rein in rampant data growth. It is also an excellent option for the users to keep their primary storage "clean". Additionally, data archiving helps improve the overall performance and efficiency of the backup/recovery environments.  In the event of disaster or even just everyday tasks, the appropriate archiving mechanism will offer a quick and complete way to access one's data as effortlessly as possible.

Archiving is one of the most financially responsible approaches to take from the operations side of your IT house. Ultimately, by investing in a data archiving structure, costs are significantly reduced with respect to both storage and data protection.

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