Latest Technology News

Towards the end of last week, Microsoft confirmed an issue that stemmed from a flawed Microsoft Defender for Endpoint ASR rule that results in the deletion of app shortcuts from the Start menu, desktop and taskbar.

The company issued an update to prevent the problem from arising again, but said that there was no alternative but to manually recreate any shortcuts that had been lost. Now though Microsoft has released a PowerShell script that will automatically recreate some -- but not all -- deleted shortcuts. The company has also released a trio of advanced hunting queries (AHQs) to help with the issue.

Today, the Linux community is treated to yet another new distribution version. An ISO of MX Linux 21.3, the third point release in the "Wildflower" series, can be downloaded here immediately with your choice of Xfce, KDE Plasma, or Fluxbox.

Most notably, the operating system (which is based on Debian 11.6 "Bullseye") has Linux kernel 6.0 available (in addition to 5.10). The Xfce variant of MX 21.3 now uses version 4.18 of the desktop environment, which is the latest and greatest. Obviously, many packages and applications have been updated too.

It’s no exaggeration to say that data drives business today. Organizations are literally flooded with data on all fronts, particularly as they accelerate their digital transformation and cloud migration. As data proliferates, it’s increasingly difficult to manage. That’s where metadata comes in. Though metadata is often described as "data about data," it’s actually much more than that.

Metadata is generated whenever data is ingested, accessed by users, moved around an organization, integrated or augmented with data from other sources, profiled or cleaned and analyzed. All this information creates the context for other data elements, providing a complete picture of the data. This holistic view makes it possible to organize and locate data, to understand what it means and to maximize its value.

If you are a Tweetbot user who found yourself unable to access Twitter, you're not alone. Tweetbot, along with various other third-party Twitter clients stopped working on Thursday, it seems as though this is the result of an intentional block by Twitter.

Although the company has yet to say anything to either confirm or deny that third-party access to the Twitter API has been blocked, it is something that has been confirmed in leaked internal communication from Twitter engineers. One says: "third-party app suspensions are intentional".

In a future update to Chrome, Google will give users the option of having extensions enabled or disabled on a site-by site basis.

This is an option that some browser extensions -- notably ad-blockers -- feature as standard, but the update will expand this so it applies to all add-ons. With a few clicks it will be possible to quickly disable all extensions for a particular site for the purposes of compatibility, privacy or performance.

Users of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint have been experiencing what has been described as a "weird issue" that not only caused shortcuts to be deleted from the Start menu, desktop and taskbar, but also led to issues with Office apps.

The problem was traced to a flawed Microsoft Defender for Endpoint ASR (attack surface reduction) rule, and while Microsoft has now released a fix, this is not without problems of its own. Users are being warned that any shortcuts that have disappeared will need to be manually recreated.

The writing has been on the wall for Groove Music for quite some time now, with Microsoft having resurrected Media Player as a replacement in Windows 11.

Now, as expected, the company is doing the same for Windows 10 users. Microsoft is bringing the same Media Player app found in Windows 11 to the older operating system, migrating users away from the Groove Music app.

The current cost of living crisis is having a global impact, with Covid and events like the war in Ukraine playing a significant role. In the UK, Brexit has further contributed to slowing economic growth. It all points to people spending less as they become more cautious with their money. Consumers are feeling the pinch of the highest prices they've seen in a generation, with energy bills soaring, food costs rising, and mortgage interest rates reaching 15-year highs. 

As a result, inflation hit a 40-year high of 11.1 percent last November, and while it is too early to predict its future direction, it is currently having a dramatic effect on people and businesses. And, inflation is not the only challenge facing businesses. Supply chain and labor shortages are also significantly impacting eCommerce stores, contributing to higher manufacturing costs and fewer products in production. 

David Ringstrom coined the phrase "Either you work Excel, or it works you!" after observing how many users carry out tasks inefficiently.

In this book, Exploring Microsoft Excel's Hidden Treasures, you’ll learn how to get more done with less effort. This book will enable you to create resilient spreadsheets that are easy for others to use as well, while incorporating spreadsheet disaster preparedness techniques.

Open banking first began to roll out in 2018, following the introduction of the PSD2 legislation in the UK, but five years on new research finds that most consumers still don't understand what it is, and the vast majority don't believe that it's safe.

The study from NTT DATA shows 58 percent of UK consumers still don't understand what open banking is, while just 16 percent believe that it's completely safe.

Five-hundred-and-twenty-five in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft released several Windows 11 preview builds this week that introduce a new developer-related Task Manager feature and other changes. Security updates have been released on Tuesday, the last for Windows 7 and 8.1, as both reached end of support on the day.

When threat actors evaluate a company's attack surface, they're not thinking in terms of organizational silos. They're probing for the right combination of vulnerabilities, misconfigurations and identity privileges.

It follows that security organizations shouldn't be operating in silos either. Defenders risk playing into the hands of attackers as organizations struggle with reactive and siloed security programs. Having a sprawl of point tools generates heaps of fragmented data but offers few insights.

Microsoft has been gradually evolving Windows 11, and the insider builds are where much of the innovation is to be found. But even for eager users who install the latest builds as soon as they are available, sometimes a little extra legwork is needed.

And this is true of two hidden search features -- one for the taskbar and one for the Start menu. These secret options can only be enabled using a special third party tool, and they give a very interesting glimpse into what Microsoft has planned for Windows 11 in the future.

They have been a very long time coming, but there are finally Apple TV and Apple Music apps available for Windows 11, meaning that PC users now have an alternative to the web versions of the services.

Both apps are listed as being "preview" versions -- essentially betas -- so what you see now is not necessarily the finished product. Apple has also launched a preview of the Apple Devices app, which can be used to manage iPhones and iPads from Windows 11.

Earlier today, System76 announced its AMD-powered Pangolin Linux laptop is getting a significant redesign. The computer comes with either Ubuntu Linux 22.04 LTS or the Ubuntu-based Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS. The laptop has a 144Hz 15.6-inch matte display with a max resolution of 1080p.

The refreshed notebook now comes equipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 6800 processor and 32GB of RAM (LPDDR5 @ 6400 MHz). You can configure the computer with up to 16TB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe solid state storage. You get three USB 3.2 Gen 1 (Type-A) ports and a single USB 3.2 Gen 2 (Type-C) port.