Latest Technology News

A serious security vulnerability has been discovered in Chrome, forcing Google to push out an emergency update to the browser. Affecting the Windows, Mac and Linux versions of Chrome, the high severity vulnerability is being tracked as CVE-2021-21148.

Described as a "heap buffer overflow in V8", it is being actively exploited in the wild, although few details of the exploit are available. Because of the severity of the vulnerability, Google has released a fix and is urging everyone to install it.

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Remember Bufferbloat? It’s a subject I was among the first to write about a decade ago, starting with a prediction column just like this one in 2011. The problem at the time was that every video or audio application -- the big bandwidth consumers -- was trying to solve performance issues through pre-buffering. You’d launch Netflix (just one example -- they all did it) and it would pause for a few seconds filling a huge buffer intended to smooth-out any playing glitches. Except performance didn’t improve and in fact got worse because of buffers buffering buffers. These extra buffers were defeating TCP/IP’s own flow control mechanisms, often leading to total failure of the connection. Jim Gettys from Bell Labs called it Bufferbloat, then Jim and Dave Taht spent the next three years or so fixing the problem, or so they thought.

Well Bufferbloat is back.

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Microsoft has changed the status of both Windows 10 version 2004 and version 1909, marking them as being ready for "broad deployment".

In the case of Windows 10 version 1909 (or Windows 10 November 2019 Update), the company says it is "designated ready for broad deployment for all users via Windows Update". For Windows 10 version 2004 (aka Windows 10 May 2020 Update), however, the status has been updated to indicate that it is merely "designated for broad deployment". And there is a reason for the difference between the two.

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

The next feature update for Windows 10, version 21H1, may have a later release date than expected, as it could be released in May or June.

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New and updated privacy legislation is being launched around the world and a key component of these acts is breach notification requirements, which mean a business is required to notify individuals when their information falls into the hands of an attacker.

We spoke to Ralph Nickl, founder and CEO of Canopy Software to find out what what enterprises and consumers need to know about these laws and the challenges that compliance brings.

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Large desktop computers are so unsightly. Nowadays, consumers seem happier to purchase a laptop or diminutive desktop. I recently bought a M1 Mac mini, and it is amazing to see how much power is packed into such a small body. It's a computer I recommend to anyone that likes macOS.

Unfortunately, the new M1 Mac mini cannot run Windows, but if you prefer Microsoft's operating system, there is no shortage of tiny desktops that run the OS. For instance, Intel's diminutive NUC machines are quite nice. Of course, Intel is not the only company focusing on small PCs. Another manufacturer, Minisforum, has been delighting customers with its little machines too. Today, that company launches two new models -- the Deskmini U850 and U820.

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There’s a serious cloud skills gap at enterprises around the world, and it’s growing broader as time goes on. The move to the cloud has been around for a number of years, but COVID-19 accelerated it noticeably.

The pandemic forced millions of employees to work from home, requiring cloud-based tools and connections to support smooth communication and collaboration from a distance. At the same time, fears of infection drove consumer adoption of digital interactions like mobile banking, online shopping, and app-based food delivery. Without embracing the cloud, businesses can’t develop the digital services their customers demand and will struggle to support streamlined remote working, but the gap between demand and supply is enormous.

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The Internet Archive is unquestionably one of the most useful sites on the web. The Wayback Machine makes it possible to find snapshots of most websites at any given point in their history, and the archive itself is also home to a wealth of books, magazines, games, software, movies and more.

You probably don’t give too much thought (or any thought for that matter) to the day-to-day running of the archive, but it relies on a long-term support server distribution of Ubuntu Linux and everything on its servers (with the possible exception of the JP2 compression library) is free and open-source software.

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In a new study, 82 percent of respondents cite too many redundant or routine tasks as their most critical IT challenge, but 91 percent agree that automating routine manual tasks by introducing Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) can provide significant benefits across the enterprise.

The Autonomous Enterprise survey from Digitate shows 65 percent say lacking a proactive ability to predict, identify, and detect system issues is a major challenge.

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A new survey of over 9,500 developers, of whom 4,400 actively participate in open source, finds that 54 percent of respondents feel that individuals should be paid for their open source work.

In fact the study from developer cloud company DigitalOcean finds that only 14 percent of respondents are currently paid for their open source contributions.

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Developers are playing a key role in helping enterprises meet their digital transformation goals despite facing significant challenges from COVID-19 according to new research from Couchbase.

The survey of 450 European and US senior IT decision makers finds 92 percent of respondents believe that DevOps could have a revolutionary impact on their digital transformation efforts, while 63 percent say that the flexibility to change their goals when needed has been helpful in meeting their digital transformation goals.

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A few days ago, we reported that Microsoft was going to be revealing what's next for Microsoft 365 and Teams.

Today, it's been as good as its word, taking the wraps off Microsoft Viva, a new Microsoft 365-powered platform that brings together communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights -- from anywhere you work.

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Cybersecurity and risk management company RSA is launching Detect AI, a cloud-native advanced analytics and machine learning solution that provides rapid detection and actionable insights on data captured by the RSA NetWitness Platform.

It employs cloud-scale processing for behavior analytics and uses unsupervised machine-learning to allow it to detect and respond to threats without manual oversight.

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For many organizations, knowing whether to choose a consultant or contractor, and understanding the difference, can be a puzzling task. There are many similarities between the two, however there are vast differences that enable organizations to achieve different end results.

The key is to understand how the roles differ, advantages and limitations of each, in order to make an informed decision. This will help an organization to better reach its business objectives. They need to ask themselves whether they would benefit from the high-impact expertise of a consultant or a long-term solution with a contractor? 

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Disclosed vulnerabilities in industrial control systems (ICS) increased 335 percent in the second half of 2020 compared to the first half.

A new report from Claroty also shows that in the same period 71 percent of ICS vulnerabilities disclosed were remotely exploitable through network attack vectors.

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