Adobe Flash and other programs can be a security problem. There's a reason the company releases regular updates. It's advisable to install them, as it likely means you're vulnerable if you don't. Perhaps the biggest offender is Flash, which powers many things on the web.

Now Adobe is quietly testing a beta version of Flash 19. It is currently a Labs project, but anyone can grab a copy if they'd like to try it out.

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There have been countless stories about the activities of the NSA and the revelations by Edward Snowden continue. A new batch of documents leaked by the former NSA contractor show that GCHQ ran a program called Karma Police that was used to "build a web-browsing profile for every visible user on the internet".

If that sounds a little sinister, that's because it is. You would think that we might have become hardened to this sort of thing, but it is still comes as a slight surprise to learn of the extent of surveillance that has been taking place. The UK government has been building profiles of web users around the world based on their browsing histories (news, porn, social networking, and so on), monitoring email and Skype communication and more for the last seven years.

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The Internet.org project from Facebook has not been without controversy. Created with the aim of getting everyone in the world online, the program has been widely criticized and many partners pulled out. Now a rebranding has been unveiled for the mobile app and website.

With the launch of the Internet.org Platform, Facebook has taken the opportunity to rename the portal through which people can access a range of free services. Changing the name to Free Basics by Facebook is described as a way "to better distinguish the Internet.org initiative from the programs and services we’re providing", but it's hard not to think that it is also an attempt to move away from the controversy of Internet.org, and it comes ahead of serious push into India.

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Heard of Facebook Notes? No? It's something that has been around for a while, and provides away to write longer posts, but for some reason it has been largely ignored by Facebook users. The latest update could mean that's about to change.

Seemingly looking to take on the likes of Medium and Blogger, Facebook Notes has been treated to a facelift that makes posts more attractive and introduces new customization options. While Notes used to be (understandably, to some extent) all about the text, now graphics and formatting are given greater prominence.

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Next month the Buffalo Bills take on the Jacksonville Jaguars, but they do so while both being "on the road". The game will be played in London, England, and is the one of two matches set for that destination, as the Dolphins and Jets will clash there later this season as well.

Want to see the game? You can do so multiple ways. Yahoo is bringing you all of the action from every touchdown to every sack. The search and content company announces today that it will have a "Destination" for all the information and action.

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I can't confirm Bloomberg's report that the the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department allegedly are beginning a joint investigation into Google's Android licensing agreements. But I can explain what it means. Striping to the bones, from an antitrust perspective, there are two pivot points: Monopoly position and exclusive contracts. Then there is the broader regulatory agenda: Correcting (or preventing future) consumer harm.

Globally, Android is unquestionably a monopoly in the market for smartphones. However, its dominance in the United States is comparably muted by competition from iPhone. Based on smartphone subscribers, Android's share was 51.4 percent for the three months ending July 31, 2015, according to comScore. iOS ranked second with 44.2 percent. By cell phone manufacturer, Apple leads the market, with the same share, followed by Samsung (27.3 percent). Android is leading but declining—down 0.8 points, while iOS is up 1.1 points, from April to July.

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Samsung’s delayed payments service is a hit in South Korea, with $30 million (£19 million) or 1.5 million transactions in the first month alone. The company also confirmed it is on schedule with its launch in the United States, after a few delays.

The uptake is smaller than it could be, since Samsung Pay is only available on a set few devices. Using the payments service is also quite revolutionary compared to Apple Pay or Android Pay, as it doesn’t require a contactless card reader.

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Among the new features added to Apple’s new iPhone 6s is 4K (3840 x 2160) video recording at 30fps. The super-sized iPhone 6 Plus adds optical image stabilization to the mix -- sadly missing from the smaller 6s -- which makes it a potentially great device to film high quality movies on (even if you aren’t able to watch them back in 4K on either your phone or the new Apple TV).

To show off the new phone’s potential as a film making tool, Apple approached RYOT Films and asked them to shoot a short movie in 4K entirely on the iPhone 6s Plus, and the finished result is now available to watch for free on YouTube.

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There's been a lot of talk lately about ad-blocking thanks to iOS 9. It's a tough call, given that some users don't want to see ads, but the sites they visit wouldn't exist without those ads -- block them and the sites go away, eventually. That makes for quite a conundrum, and Mozilla is trying sort it out. The Firefox maker refers to it more benignly as "content blocking".

Mozilla hasn't quite figured this all out and it is looking for users to help with the puzzle. The organization isn't interested in what the problem is, but is focusing more on why users choose to do this by utilizing blocking agents.

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A longtime reader and good friend of mine sent me a link this week to a CNBC story about the loss of fingerprint records in the Office of Personnel Management hack I have written about before. It’s just one more nail in the coffin of a doltish bureaucracy that -- you know I’m speaking the truth here -- will probably result in those doltish bureaucrats getting even more power, even more data, and ultimately losing those data, too.

So the story says they lost the fingerprint records of 5.6 million people! Game over.

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Fake Apple stores selling genuine Apple products are popping up around China like mushrooms after the rain.

According to a Reuters report, Apple only has one official store in Shenzhen and five authorized dealers in the area, but China’s southern boomtown has more than 30 stores selling these products.

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Perhaps Konami wasn’t that insane when it announced it’s almost entirely switching to the mobile platform, and Nintendo also might be onto something with its announcement that it’s creating a couple of mobile games.

According to a report by the NPD Group, mobile is the number one platform for gaming, overpassing even the PC. The report called Kids and Gaming 2015 offered insights into what platforms children ages 2-17 play the most.

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Cloud technology specialist NewVoiceMedia has released the results of a survey showing that customers using its cloud services are growing at 13 times the international average.

The study carried out in July 2015, based on the publicly available revenue data of a sample of 300 UK and US businesses from the last two years, showed that NewVoiceMedia cloud users increased revenues by an average of 44 percent in the last financial year, compared with global economic growth of 3.5 percent.

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

A bunch of quality apps have been released this week including the massive MMORGP Order & Chaos 2, the cad app Wedge, and the excellent jump and run Soppy's Adventure.

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Having to enter a password to unlock your Mac is recommended practice, as it helps keep your private data safe. But it is also annoying, especially if you are the security conscious type, who uses a longer, more complex password. So what can you do to make things easy, without exposing your Mac?

Well, if you have an iPhone or iPad that is equipped with Touch ID, or even an Apple Watch, you should take a look at MacLock. It lets you use your fingerprint to unlock your Mac. Here's how it works.

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