Latest Technology News

It's three weeks since Windows 11 started to roll out, and now Microsoft is starting its push to encourage people who can upgrade to do just that.

Part of this drive is delivering the PC Health Check app to Windows 10 machine, giving users a quick way to check whether they can upgrade to Windows 11 or not. The app is being pushed out as part of the KB5005463 update and the rollout is likely to irritate as the automatic update essentially forces the Windows 11 compatibility checker onto people.

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Solid state drives are obviously the future of computing, while hard disk drives are the past, right? Sort of. Despite being destined for the history books, HDDs are still a major part of the present. Why? Even though they are slower and have moving parts, HDDs still remain the better value from a cost per gigabyte perspective. SSDs will get there eventually, but for now, hard drives continue to live on.

If you are in the market for a portable hard disk drive (a 2.5-inch HDD in a USB enclosure), Silicon Power has new model that may interest you. Called "Armor A66," it is notable for being very rugged. Not only does it offer both drop and water protection, but it has a rubber USB-A cap to protect the connector. The removable USB-A to USB-A cable even conveniently attaches to the drive body when not in use to keep it from getting lost.

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The transition to PCIe Gen4 is in full effect, with more and more computers and motherboards having the new standard. Whether or not a user truly needs the benefits of PCIe 4.0 is debatable, but it is still cool regardless. After all, it is important to continually push boundaries.

One of the best aspects of PCIe 4.0 is faster solid state drives. For instance, today, Kingston launches its latest such SSD. Called "KC3000," this PCIe 4.0 NVMe is insanely fast -- it will surely delight both gamers and computer enthusiasts alike.

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Data exfiltration remains a significant threat and despite large investments in security tools, organizations are not confident they can stop it according to a new report.

The survey of 255 cybersecurity professionals, conducted by Osterman for data privacy and security company BlackFog, finds 62 percent lack confidence in the ability of their security tools to prevent data exfiltration.

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"Did you hear that? It’s probably nothing; I’ll go check." According to leading expert Chucky, this is a mistake too many people make. The best thing to do during this next week is to stay relatively safe in your home and tune into various modern-day sources to get your entertainment. 

It’s a great time to have various digital media services to get in the proper mood to send your kids out to soap mean Mr. Wilson’s windows, and then beg neighbors for food the very next night. 

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The importance of data has increased exponentially in recent years, for businesses of all sizes. But there are increasing challenges too, posed by privacy regulation, alternative data and more.

We spoke to Or Lenchner, CEO of Bright Data to find out more about the key role of data in the enterprise and how businesses can use it effectively.

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We're used to waiting around five months for updates to the popular home theater software, but today -- a mere two weeks after Kodi 19.2 rolled out -- Kodi 19.3 is here.

The developers identified some challenges with the Xbox release and rather than just rolling out a fix for that they decided to address issues found across other platforms and, in their own words, "go for it" and issue a point release.

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Cloud's meteoric rise to become the dominant system for IT infrastructure has only been accelerated by the pandemic. The capacity of the cloud to rapidly run workloads with flexibility and scale is something that is rarely matched by onsite IT infrastructure; a capability that has become more essential during the pandemic induced changes to working patterns and business operations. Indeed, according to Flexera’s 2021 State of the Cloud Report, 90 percent of firms slightly or significantly increased their cloud usage due to the pandemic.

As cloud services’ dominance looks set to continue, businesses are utilizing cloud platforms to drive innovation in emerging technologies. Businesses can now scale up their operations in areas like artificial intelligence with ease, allowing them to tap into fluctuating customer desires so as to deliver tangible value to the business. 

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One of the headline features of Windows 11 that Microsoft promoted ahead of launch is Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA) -- in short, support for Android apps. It is only a few days since the feature was made available, but there are numerous limitations. In addition to only being available to Windows Insiders participating in the Beta Channel in the US, users are forced to obtain their apps from the Amazon App Store.

In the real world, of course, practically no one uses the Amazon App Store; Google Play is where the action (and a full quota of apps) is to be found. Now, someone has managed to hack something together that makes it possible to access Google Play and install Android apps from this store in Windows 11. You will need, among other things, access to Ubuntu or another Linux distro.

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When Microsoft announced plans to remove Hot Reload from the upcoming release of .NET 6 there was outcry. Developers have been able to use to feature to edit he source code of a running app, seeing immediate effects and saving huge amounts of time.

After being battered with complaints, particularly from the open-source community, Microsoft has reversed its decision and the functionality will be re-enabled ahead of general availability of .NET 6.

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2021 has proven itself to be a big year for mobile apps, and for iOS the approaching changes are even more substantial. A long-awaited update is coming to the App Store, namely the introduction of an A/B testing tool that allows developers to directly test different treatments of their product page on App Store Connect. 

Although A/B testing has been available for developers on the Google Play Store through Google Play Experiments since May of 2015, Apple has continuously fallen short in offering a similar feature that allows for convenient testing. Instead, developers on the iOS App Store rely on deploying new builds to compare metrics before and after, utilizing third-party testing, or using conversion optimization via Apple Search Ads creative sets. This is all changing with the introduction of Custom Product Pages and Product Page Optimization.

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Ubuntu 22.04 won't be released in stable form until 2022. To be more precise, it will be officially available in April of that year. After all, that is what the 22.04 indicates -- a two digit year followed by a two digit month.

Of course, before the official release, there will be a Beta and other pre-release versions. If you like living on the edge, however, you can actually download and install Ubuntu Linux 22.04 immediately. Yes, folks, daily builds (very early versions) of the upcoming operating system are available starting today.

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Twitter and other social platforms have long been accused of having a liberal bias, censoring conservative voices, and being biased in favor of left-wing ideologies. But a new study shows that -- at least in the case of Twitter -- the reverse is true.

Having conducted an in-depth analysis into the effects of machine learning and recommendation algorithms, Twitter found that it is right-leaning news outlets that benefit from the greatest amplification. The question is "why?".

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Development of PowerShell continues apace, and Microsoft has just pushed out a new release candidate with a fairly lengthy changelog.

PowerShell 7.2.0 RC1 is available for Windows, macOS and Linux, and over the coming days and weeks it will undergoing further testing and refinement before it is marked as being a final release. The release candidate includes various changes and fixes including using a newer version of .NET and addressing an RPM packaging issue.

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So, you bought a laptop that only has USB-C ports and now you are regretting it, eh? Yeah, I totally get it -- it's no fun having to buy dongles and adapters to connect your favorite accessories and devices. Even Apple learned its lesson and brought "legacy" ports back to the newest MacBook Pro. Thankfully, there are multiport adapters on the market that can transform a single USB-C port into several useful ports.

Today, Satechi launches its latest such product. Called "USB-C Hybrid Multiport Adapter," the portable dock offers HDMI, dual USB-A, and USB-C pass-through power delivery. But wait, what makes it a hybrid device as the name implies? Ah, that is the coolest aspect -- the adapter also serves as an M.2 solid state enclosure! Unfortunately, only SATA SSDs (such as this one) are compatible -- NVMe drives will not work. Other potential downsides? The adapter does not offer an Ethernet port or an SD card reader.

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