Google proposes equality-boosting emoji showing professional women
Google workers feel that emoji could be used to promote gender equality. A quartet of employees have put forward a new set of emoji that portray women in a number of different professional roles such as technology engineer, mechanic, and farmer.
In a bid to balance things out a little, the emoji proposal sees women portrayed in more roles than ever before, including those traditionally thought of as being male-dominated. A set of 13 new emoji have been submitted to the Unicode Consortium for consideration. They may later be added to the official emoji set.
Microsoft shows Windows 10's growth accelerating, but all is not as it seems
At the start of every month, NetMarketShare publishes the usage share for all of the desktop operating systems, including Windows 10. The operating system has been growing at a steady, if rather unexciting rate, gaining around 1 percentage point a month, including in April.
Despite Microsoft aggressively pushing Windows 10 onto as many systems as possible, the monthly trend shows growth is slowing. But hold on a minute! Microsoft today releases its own figures, and they show not only does the operating system have a much, much larger share than NetMarketShare reports, but growth is skyrocketing!
Facebook panders to European privacy concerns by stripping facial recognition from Moments app
Facebook has rolled out its photo-sharing app Moments around the world, and users in Europe have been treated to a modified version. Specifically, the European version of the app lacks the facial recognition feature that allows for automatic tagging of people.
In many ways, Facebook has been forced to release a degraded version of Moments to its EU audience because of the varying privacy laws that exist in different countries. The hobbled app will not attempt to identify individuals in photos, but will group together images that "appear to include the same face".
Android devices suffer higher failure rates than iOS
People have become increasingly reliant on smartphones and as a result they have become less tolerant of poor performance and device problems.
Blancco Technology Group has released a report based on the latest results from its SmartChk diagnostic platform, showing higher failure rates in Android devices than in iOS ones, and revealing some interesting trends.
GitHub's gift to paying developers -- unlimited private repositories
Today GitHub changes its pricing structure for both individual developers and organizations. As well as simplifying pricing, the change also sees the introduction of unlimited private repositories, representing a real term financial saving.
The new pricing means that developers now just have two options to choose from: individual accounts for $7 per month, or organization accounts for $9 per user per month (or $25 per month for the first five users).
Outdated Internet Explorer versions still run on many business PCs
Businesses around the world don’t really enjoy updating their software, security researchers from Duo Security have found, exposing themselves, and their organization to risks of cyber-attacks, phishing, scams and malware.
Researchers looked at a sample of two million Windows devices used by businesses around the world and found that almost a quarter, and that’s 500,000 devices, are using an outdated and unsupported version of Internet Explorer.
Microsoft releases Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14342 -- here's what's new
Windows Insiders now have a new build to test, as Microsoft just released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14342 to Fast Ring. As always, users can expect a significant number of improvements and bug fixes to be included, but also some known issues to be present.
One of the biggest changes is related to Wi-Fi Sense. Because it has not been very popular with Windows 10 users, Microsoft is not dropping its biggest feature -- the ability to share Wi-Fi networks with contacts. Wi-Fi Sense will still be available in upcoming builds, though with limited functionality.
WhatsApp says "what's up?" to Windows and Mac
Back in the day, I remember AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ being all the rage for messaging. For a while, MSN and Yahoo! Messenger were popular with the young folks too. Nowadays it seems to be Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, which is a bit weird, because Facebook owns the latter -- hopefully they merge eventually.
One of the frustrating things about WhatsApp, however, is that it does not have a desktop client, instead being web and mobile only. Well, now this changes. Today, the messaging solution gets an official client for both Windows and OS X -- sorry Linux desktop users. At least that aforementioned web version is available.
Microsoft brings unlocked frame rates, FreeSync and G-Sync to UWP games with Windows 10 update
Gamers can be a demanding bunch, and in many regards Windows 10 has been something of a disappointment as a gaming platform. While Microsoft has used Windows 10 to merge the worlds of PC and Xbox One gaming, Universal Windows Platform (UWP) games have been somewhat crippled by crappy frame rates.
Today this changes. Microsoft is pushing out an update that allows developers to take advantage of unlocked frame rates in UWP titles just as they can with Win32 games. In addition to ramping up frame rates, the update means that developers will also be able to take advantage of AMD's FreeSync and NVIDIA's G-Sync technologies.
Microsoft rolls out a cumulative update for Windows 10 that might cause your PC to run 'abnormally slow'
There’s a big Anniversary Update coming to Windows 10 in July and, in preparation for that, Windows Insiders have been receiving regular new builds packed with new features and improvements.
If you aren’t part of the Insider Preview program, and you’re running the standard version of Windows, there’s a cumulative update available today that will update your OS build to 10586.318. Unfortunately, some people are reporting it’s causing serious slowdowns.
Few businesses have an Internet of Things implementation
According to research released by Computing, only eight percent of IT decision makers believe that the Internet of Things (IoT) will be of no consequence to their organizations.
However over half (54 percent) of the respondents believe that IoT is ready to make its mainstream debut, despite their own organizations currently not having plans to adopt the technology. This corresponds with the 23 percent of IT decision makers who believe that the implementation of IoT is currently happening or will happen in the near future, although only 15 percent of them are actively involved with it at present.
Samsung unveils class-leading EVO Plus 256GB microSD card
For a while there was a scary trend of Android manufacturers shying away from expandable storage. Thankfully, consumer demand largely reversed that course. Many of the newest flagships, such as the HTC 10 and Samsung Galaxy S7, are embracing microSD cards. The versatile card format is utilized in many other types of devices too.
Today, Samsung announces the class-leading EVO Plus 256GB MicroSD Card. If you recently bought SanDisk's 200GB card, you no longer have the largest. With that said, the price tag for this 256GB card is rather high -- more than double SanDisk's 200GB offering.
Amazon announces Video Direct in an effort to compete with Google's YouTube
Despite competition from the likes of Vimeo, YouTube has remained at the top of the heap for streaming videos, mostly because of content that comes from its users. While it's hard to see it being toppled anytime soon, it will have a new rival trying to do just that.
Amazon, which already runs its Prime Video service filled with TV shows and movies, is expanding its footprint, adding user content.
Facebook admits there is a left wing bias in Silicon Valley
Facebook may be insisting that its news curators are not suppressing right-wing stories, but a senior executive is willing to admit that Silicon Valley as a whole is rather left-leaning.
Alex Schultz, vice president of growth at the social network, says: "There is definitely a left-wing bias to any company based in San Francisco". He made the comments at an LGBT discrimination conference, joking that "a Republican may be the most at-risk diversity at Facebook".
India has mobile forensic tools to hack into iPhones
The case of the FBI seeking to force Apple to provide backdoor access to the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone focused attention on security and encryption once again. The agency may have been able to gain access to the phone with help from a third party, but the Indian government has gone one better.
Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has revealed that the government has a tool that can be used to gain access to, among other devices, Apple's iPhone. This is not to say that a tool has been created that bypasses encryption, rather that a method for getting past the lockscreen has been developed.
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