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POCO -- a sub-brand of Xiaomi Inc. -- is not a well-known name in the USA, but in China and other parts of the world, it is quite popular with Android enthusiasts. The young Chinese brand is synonymous with affordable smartphones that have impressive features. This is important, as it allows regular people to buy respectable Android devices without breaking the bank. Sadly, companies such as Samsung, are pricing their devices well out of reach of the common man. Quite frankly, even if you can afford it, spending more than $1,000 for a smartphone is rather foolish.

With all of that said, today, POCO unveils its latest affordable Android smartphone. Called "X3 NFC," it comes loaded with killer features such as a massive 5,160mAh battery with 33W fast charging. It is optimized for gaming with a special GPU and advanced cooling. Despite being a "mid-range" phone, it has a very impressive display with 120Hz refresh and a 240Hz touch sampling. The POCO X3 NFC even has a quad-camera array (with flash), so it should take impressive photos. And yes, it has a 3.5mm headphone port too! Sadly, all is not perfect -- it does not support 5G.

Earlier in the year, Intel announced that it had completed software validations on fixes for a series of security flaws affecting many of its processors discovered a couple of years ago. Now Microsoft, in conjunction with the chip-maker, released microcode updates for Windows 10 to fix these issues.

The four problems are connected to the now-infamous Spectre and Meltdown flaws from 2018. They relate to problems with the speculative execution function of many chips, and could allow for sensitive data to leak.

It's a little over a month since Linus Torvalds announced the release of version 5.8 of the Linux kernel -- something he previously described as "one of our biggest releases of all time".

But despite the fact that Linux kernel 5.8 was released so recently, VirtualBox has already been updated to include support for it. This means that the virtualization software can be used to run distros like Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla), which is powered by version 5.8 of the kernel. The software can also run under distros based on the newest kernel.

Microsoft has launched a new open source app for Windows 10 which has been designed to help users create and share animated content. The company says that the primary target for these animations is small, third-party LED panels but Microsoft Expressive Pixels can also be used to turn creations into animated GIFs which can be used in a variety of ways online.

While animations can be as simple or as complex as you like, the tools you're presented with in the app serve to make the entire creation process as easy as possible. It does not really matter if you have never used an animation tool previously, as Microsoft Expressive Pixels works very much like a standard image editing tool, albeit it one that lets you easily build up a series of frames into a looping  animation.

Microsoft has released a new non-security update for Windows 10 version 2004. KB4571744 for Windows 10 May 2020 Update was previously delayed, and it is designed for testing purposes; it will be included in a future cumulative update.

But what is notable about the KB4571744 update is the sheer number of issues it fixes. Among the problems the update addresses are issues with blurry screens, problems with Windows Update itself, and it also fixes an issues that resulted in SSDs being defragmented too frequently.

Four-hundred-and-two 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.

Microsoft announced this week that it is bringing the Direct Storage API to Windows 10 to boost game loading times significantly on devices with supported NVMe storage solutions.

The shortcomings of password security are well known. Indeed the death of passwords has been predicted for a long time but they still cling on.

There are a number of alternative authentication methods available, but confusion still reigns about the pros and cons of different approaches. To help cut through the mass of information, identity management company Beyond Identity has put together an infographic looking at alternative authentication methods and the security each provides.

If you want to learn how to use Linux and level up your career but are pressed for time, Learn Linux in 5 Days, from the Linux Training Academy, offers the perfect solution.

In this ebook, you will learn the most important concepts and commands, and be guided step-by-step through several practical and real-world examples. As new concepts, commands, or jargon are encountered they are explained in plain language, making it easy to understand. The most important material is condensed into five sections, each designed to be consumed in a day.

There are many Linux distributions nowadays, but sometimes it feels like Ubuntu gets all the attention. Don't get me wrong, Ubuntu is worthy of its praise -- it is a great operating system. Still, why can't other distros shine sometimes? Companies that sell Linux-based computers, like Dell and System76, offer Ubuntu on their Linux computers, but what about Fedora?

Well, if you are a big Fedora fan like me, I have some seriously amazing news. Popular computer-maker Lenovo has started selling a Fedora variant of its ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8 laptop (Windows 10 is an option too). The 14-inch notebook is thin, light, and gorgeous. A ThinkPad running Fedora? It looks like Christmas came early this year...

This upcoming Monday is Labor Day in the USA. It is a national holiday designed to celebrate the hard work of America's laborers. Many will have off from work on this day, but sadly, not everyone will.

Besides getting off from work, another big aspect of Labor Day is sales. Yes, many retailers offer discounts on products as a Labor Day promotion. This year, popular gaming company HyperX is offering some nice deals on several of its products.

Encrypting your data can be very important -- particularly for businesses that deal with sensitive information and trade secrets. However, working with encrypted media isn't always a walk in the park. Quite frankly, the concept of encrypting and decrypting a drive can be very confusing for some end users. And so, out of convenience, encryption is sometimes skipped -- tragic but understandable.

Thankfully, thanks to things like biometrics, working with encrypted drives can be easier, although that isn't always ideal for an IT department looking to work with many users and drives. Hell, with remote work exploding, it may not be possible to set up an employee's fingerprint. To simplify things, Western Digital has developed a new platform called "ArmorLock" that allows users to lock and unlock a drive using their smartphone (Bluetooth and an app). IT departments can easily set up the drive and authorize users before shipping it out to them. Today, under its "G-Technology" brand, Western Digital launches its first-ever drive to use the platform -- the ArmorLock encrypted NVMe SSD

Concern about deepfakes is on the rise and earlier this week Microsoft announced its own video authentication tool ahead of the US elections.

To help counter the threat from increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks, including the use of deepfakes, biometric authentication company iProov is also launching its own Security Operations Centre (iSOC).

It seems like it has been a little while since Microsoft made any significant changes to PowerToys for Windows 10, but now the company has pushed out a pair of new releases.

For people who want to stick with the more stable releases, there is PowerToys v0.21.1 which is largely about bug fixes and addressing stability issues. For anyone looking for new PowerToys utilities, however, there is the "experimental" version 0.22.0 which features a new 'Video conference global mute' tool.

Cybercriminals in 2019 managed to expose more than 165 million records of confidential data across 1,365 known breaches.

But how do they get in, how long do they stay and what are they there for? The answers to these questions are in the 2020 Compromise Flashcard produced by compromise assessment company Lumu.

During the pandemic, video conferencing app Zoom found itself at the center of several security and privacy issues. In response it has boosted its security program, including aggregating reports from Bugcrowd.

But what's driving organizations like Zoom choose crowdsourced security approaches? We spoke to Ashish Gupta, CEO of Bugcrowd to find out.