The world around us is changing rapidly, from a prehistoric physical environment 50,000 years ago to a digital world of the future, signs of which are here with us today.

As a result, many aspects of our lives are becoming increasingly digital, and soon virtually everything in our business and personal lives will be represented by ones and zeros, bits and bytes. The digital world is no longer a fantasy, it is reality.

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Malware analysis normally starts with logging the executables launched on a system: opening this document, launches that application, fires up some scripting tool, which downloads and runs the actual threat (or something like that).

You could use something like Process Monitor to record what happens, but analyzing the logs will take time, and the malware might delete key files before you can inspect them.

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One-hundred and sixty-nine in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps and games released for Windows 8.x and Windows 10 in the past seven days.

The best application of the week award goes to the Microsoft Garage project Plumbago. It is a digital notebook that lets you draw and write using a digital pen.

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Cybercrime is big business, netting $445 billion in annual profits according to the United Nations. To combat it enterprises need to be able to detect risks and have the tools to prevent attacks.

Check Point Software and IBM Security have announced an expanded alliance which will allow the two companies to share threat intelligence, as well as a broad set of product integrations and expanded investment across IBM's consulting and managed security services.

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As pointed out on Twitter, and reported by TechCrunch, Apple made a little tweak to its website’s CSS code to prevent people misreading the tagline for its latest operating system, OS X El Capitan.

The line should say, "There’s more to love with every click", but the word "click" looked a lot like an entirely different, and ruder word.

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Oooohhh, things are about to get really interesting in the cyber-security world. Kaspersky Lab has just declared war on the infamous hacking collective Lazarus Group, and it’s bringing its friends to the fight.

Together with Novetta and "other industry partners", Kaspersky Lab has announced the formation of Operation Blockbuster targeted at disrupting the activity of the Lazarus Group.

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Training for that big marathon? You have a lot of work to do and plenty of long training runs in your future, but it can be done, it just takes some ambition and fortitude. But those long training runs? It's good to have some company to keep you going. Since a partner isn't always possible, music can be your next best option.

In running, the Runkeeper app comes in handy for tracking your workout and music can be supplied from a good streaming service such as Spotify. Now the two are teaming up to keep you moving out there.

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The ongoing dispute between the FBI and Apple is absolutely chilling. It shakes me to my core to think our government wants to force a company to write code under the guise of anti-terrorism. Quite frankly, the oft-argued opinion that supporting Apple in this regard is anti-American is not only wrong, but insulting. My soul still aches from 9/11, and I love America, but I also support Tim Cook and the company's fight to protect our civil liberties.

But forget my opinion -- major tech companies, such as Google and Microsoft, are standing up and pledging support for their competitor, Apple. Now, open source darling, Mozilla, is voicing its support too. Taking it a step further, however, the Firefox-maker is also proposing basic principles for government surveillance -- sort of like a bill of rights for encryption and surveillance.

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Getting developers to create apps for Windows 10 Mobile is very much a chicken and egg scenario. Developers are hesitant to dedicate resources to a platform with such few users, while users don't want to use a platform with no apps.

To try and alleviate this app problem, Microsoft came up with a scheme called "Bridges", to help developers easily port their Android and iOS apps to Windows. Today, sadly, Microsoft is killing the Windows Bridge for Android. With the iOS bridge being the final exciting "Bridge" attraction, Windows 10 Mobile consumers should probably just buy an iPhone instead. Right?

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The Acceptable Ads program from Adblock Plus has proved slightly controversial. The company behind the ad blocking tool, Eyeo, has already revealed a little about how it makes money from the program -- despite the fact that no money changes hands in most whitelisting cases -- and today it has opened up further about how it makes its money.

Whilst recognizing that people do want to block ads, Eyeo is also aware that sites do need to benefit from ad revenue -- hence Acceptable Ads, non-intrusive ads that it is hoped are less irritating and therefore easier to stomach. But Eyeo itself also wants to make money. How does it decide which company to charge for Acceptable Ads whitelisting, and what to charge? If you're expecting full transparency, you might be disappointed, but we are given a glimpse into how the financial side of things works.

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Microsoft will join Apple against the FBI and U.S. Justice Department, filing a friend-of-court—or amicus—brief in a case going to court tomorrow. The government wants Apple to create a special version of iOS, referred to by critics as FBIOS, to break into an iPhone 5c security feature. The device manufacturer argues that compliance would set a precedent that would give law enforcement carte blanche with other mobile devices.

Brad Smith, Microsoft's chief legal counsel, says the company "wholeheartedly supports Apple"—a statement that eradicates any potential confusion caused by cofounder Bill Gates. In an interview with Financial Times two days ago, Gates supported the government's demands. I responded, calling his position a "catastrophic occurrence that demands current chief executive Satya Nadella's official response. There needs to be clear policy about government backdoors and the position with respect to the San Bernardino shooting iPhone". The company's position is now unequivocally clear—presuming the legal filing fits with "wholeheartedly".

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Swedish music streaming service Spotify has decided to transport its entire product onto Google’s cloud. The news was confirmed on the Spotify blog.

In the blog post, written by the company's vice-president of engineering and infrastructure, Nicholas Harteau, it was explained how Spotify decided for the move as it could no longer scale fast enough to meet the demand.

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We are just past the half way point at Mobile World Congress 2016, which has so far given us smartphones, tablets and Internet of Things solutions in abundance from some of the industries biggest players.

If you haven’t been paying attention for the last couple of days, here’s a quick round up of some of the big stories you might have missed.

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Buying a monitor can be quite the daunting affair. Not only are there many styles to choose from, but various resolutions too. While 4K monitors are all the rage, some operating systems, such as Windows 10 and some Linux distros, are not optimized for higher resolutions. Text and icons will appear small, and increasing sizes in the OS can cause some programs to display blurry text. In my experience, only OS X scales well to high res monitors.

Keeping that in mind, it is understandable if you are willing to put up with those concerns, as images, movies and games can be absolutely gorgeous on high-resolution screens. Today, Philips announces a beast of a monitor -- 34 inches, curved, with a resolution of 3440 x 1440. While less than 4K, this resolution offers a very wide view.

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Picture a standard subway ride during rush hour. The car, of course, is crammed full. Some of those subway riders are pleasant commuters, and some are subway villains like pickpockets and purse-snatchers. Now imagine someone has invented a private subway that quickly and efficiently connects you and other pleasant commuters to the subway station in your neighborhood. You don’t have to deal with slowdowns, unexpected stops, or any of the risks associated with being lumped in with the aforementioned subway villains.

Now stop imagining, because someone has invented such a blissful sort of system. It’s just that instead of being a form of transportation it’s a method of directing legitimate human traffic to a website while it’s being protected from a DDoS attack. Not the best news for your commute, but great news for your website.

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