Latest Technology News

The Xbox One is no longer new, but Windows 10 still has that shiny feel. The two were made to go together, along with Windows Phone, in an effort to bring a more unified feel to the platform. You may or may not think Microsoft succeeded in this, but the effort was there.

Now the company is enhancing the beta for its Xbox Windows 10 app with a nod towards social sharing features that allow the user to bring more friends to the fun and games.

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Mozilla is starting an open source-supporting award program with an initial allocation of $1 million. The company has long been a proponent of open source software, and now wants to give something back to the community on which it so heavily relies.

The Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) is described as a way of both giving back to the community, but also giving forward to up and coming projects that could benefit others. A key feature of the program is a focus on improving the security of open source software, and Mozilla is looking to identify up to ten projects to help fund by the middle of December.

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This is one of the easiest reviews to write—and the shortest, too. If you own an Android or iOS device, buy the new Chromecast. Nothing more needs to be said, but I am obliged because you do want to know why. Right?

Google opened up the streaming stick category with launch of the original Chromecast, in July 2013. Release of its successor, on Sept. 29, 2015, makes an already compelling platform better. I see two benefits that matter: WiFi AC support and the hanging dongle design. Wireless update primps the device for faster routers, like Google's own OnHub. The other is more crucial. Some people needing or wanting to plug into one of a TV's rear HDMI ports may find the original Chromecast won't fit. The new design, puck hanging from HDMI cable, solves that problem.

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The release of iOS 9 meant a lot of things to a lot a people. For Tor it means that the privacy-focused browser will finally be able to make its way to iPhones around the world. No particular timetable has been set out, but an iOS version of the anonymizing browser is on the cards.

In fact, it is more than just the Tor browser that's on the way -- "there are a bunch of pieces in the works", according to developer Nathan Freitas. Bringing Tor tools to iOS 9 will bring Apple's mobile devices in line with Android, and it's all thanks to new capabilities in the latest version of the operating system.

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Facebook and privacy are not words you tend to find together in the same sentence -- at least not in a positive sense. Just a few days ago, the social network announced that all public posts were to be made searchable -- although it wasn't really billed as such.

You might not be entirely happy with this. While you may now be careful that you only share posts with your friends, a huge number of historic posts have now been made searchable. If you'd prefer to keep your content private, now is the time to act.

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A new piece of research has raised further worries about data breaches, and specifically, the perception gap between the number of businesses who believe they’ve experienced a breach, and the actual numbers of data breaches occurring.

The research in question is the new Breach Confidence Index from Ilex International, an identity and access management company, which is based on a survey by YouGov that questioned just over 500 IT decision-makers in the UK.

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Set up Windows for a dual-monitor system and your mouse cursor should move smoothly from one display to the next.

This brings real advantages, but you may also notice a few issues, because the cursor doesn’t just stop at the edge of the screen any more. It’s all too easy to move to a scroll bar, or some other control at the far side of one display, and find your mouse cursor overshoots to the other screen.

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If you want to earn more money than your friends, consider a career in tech. Median gross annual earnings for tech specialists in 2014 were £36,600, new figures published this week by Tech Partnership show.

This is more than one third (35 percent) higher than the level for all full-time employees, a follow-up press release reads.

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It is a few months since Microsoft announced that SSH support was on its way to Windows. The absence of this feature has baffled and frustrated many users for years, and Microsoft admitted that it was one of the most frequently requested features of the PowerShell team.

The project comes after Microsoft decided to get involved in the OpenSSH community. Based on a previous NoMachine port, the Windows port is now in sync with OpenSSH 7.1. It means that secure, remote management of Linux machines from Windows is much easier.

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Chinese president Xi Jinping, and the British prime minister David Cameron, signed an agreement saying the two countries won’t hack and steal each other’s secrets.

A similar agreement was signed between China and the US, just a day before a Chinese cyber-attack against the States.

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Many iPhone users were upset to find that battery life was rather shorter than expected. Fingers of suspicion started to point to the iOS Facebook app, and now the social network has released a fix as well as revealing that poor coding was to blame.

The latest version of the Facebook app goes some way to putting things right, but it is unlikely to be a complete fix. Facebook says it "found a few key issues and have identified additional improvements" in the app, but only "some of which" made it into the latest update. Something the company is keen to stress is that the Location History feature is not responsible, and provides details about two other factors contributing to battery drain.

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If you are the sort of person who can't see the forest for the trees then Microsoft's new Surface Book is not for you. This much is clear after reading Brian Fagioli's article on why you shouldn't get the device. My colleague pays so much attention to certain details that he fails to see how Surface Book can be a great option for plenty of shoppers in the premium segment -- because those are the folks Microsoft is targeting, not the average Joe who takes issue with the $1,499 starting price.

Yes, Surface Book is a costly affair. But, it is also a unique proposition in today's market, which offers plenty of value for the money, something that cannot be said about most of its apparent rivals. So, without further ado, if you can afford Surface Book, here are five great reasons why you should get it.

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Botnets are not a new problem, but they remain a key part of the cyber criminal's armoury. The Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG), a global industry forum dedicated to promoting best practices in cyber security, has issued its first report looking at the level of botnet infection. Based on information provided by ISPs covering over 43 million subscribers in the US and Europe it concludes that around one percent of consumers are infected by a bot. The good news is that notification rates are high with between 94 and 99.82 percent of those infected being notified of the problem by their ISP.

Even on those numbers botnets are a major problem. We spoke to Ken Simpson CEO of outbound traffic security company MailChannels and co-chair of M3AAWG's Botnet Subcommittee to find out about how botnets and spam have become big business.

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Microsoft has just released its Q1 FY2016 (Q3 CY2015) earnings report, posting revenue of $20.4 billion, operating income of $5.8 billion, net income of $4.6 billion and earnings per share of $0.57 (all GAAP figures). The software giant's numbers beat analysts' expectations, which has added around 10 percent to its stock price in after-hours trading. Here are the highlights of the software giant's quarter.

Microsoft has divided its earnings in three categories, namely Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing. The good news comes from Intelligent Cloud, where revenue is up by eight percent, while the bad news is in More Personal Computing, where the poor performance of Lumia and Surface devices lead to a 17 percent decrease in revenue, year-over-year.

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Let’s be honest here, Windows 10 was released a little prematurely. There are inconsistencies throughout, Microsoft Edge is an unfinished mess, and then there are the bugs…

Microsoft has been issuing updates on a fairly regular basis to try and fix various problems with the operating system, but we know from the enduring popularity of troubleshooting articles we’ve published previously, that there are plenty of Windows 10 users who are still having problems with the new OS. With that in mind, here are some more solutions to common problems.

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