Latest Technology News

Another week, another new future Windows 10 build for Insiders to test.

Build 19555.1001 isn’t the most exciting of new releases, but if does offer a number of important fixes, including one that could result in the Start menu and apps not opening.

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Avast has been facing growing criticism following an investigation by Motherboard and PCMag that revealed the company’s free antivirus software was harvesting user data and selling it onto marketers.

In a bid to appease users, Avast published a blog post explaining why it was collecting user data, and announced that going forward this collection would be opt-in, but that the company would continue to sell the data via its analytics subsidiary Jumpshot. Throughout the post the security firm insisted that collected data was fully "de-identified", despite the fact that Motherboard and PCMag’s investigation showed how it could be linked back to an individual.

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Images for use in development projects need to be correctly labeled to be of use. But adding labels is a task that can involve many hours of work by human analysts painstakingly applying manual labels to images, time that could be better spent on other, more creative, tasks.

In order to streamline the labelling process IBM has created a new automated labeling tool for the open source Cloud Annotations project that uses AI to 'auto-label' images and thus speed up the process.

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Emojis are the greatest thing to happen to written communication since the invention of the printing press. Not only does it help people to better express their emotions when sending text messages and emails, but it allows them to properly represent their identities. Nowadays, people can proudly choose their gender, for instance, and emojis reflect humanity's evolution on this subject through diversity.

For example, later this year, we will get 117 new emojis, many of which support evolved thinking towards gender. For instance, we will get images of mustached men in wedding veils, showing that women aren't the only ones that can wear a dress on their wedding day. The world will also get a more "woke" Santa Claus -- a gender-neutral person named "Mx. Claus." After all, why does male Santa Claus get to be the hero of Christmas while his female wife Mrs. Claus has to stay home? Mx. Claus will teach the youth that any gender can deliver gifts!

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Businesses are collecting more data than ever, but ensuring that employees have easy and reliable access to information they need for their jobs can prove difficult.

Now though Kloud.io has raised $4 million in seed funding for its spreadsheet-based application that enables financial analysts to directly access data from multiple sources, such as Salesforce, Oracle, Netsuite, and hundreds more.

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Two days ago we reported how a joint investigation by Motherboard and PCMag discovered that Avast's free antivirus software was harvesting user data and selling it onto marketers in a way that could be linked back to an individual.

Following the inevitable backlash, Avast has responded, defending its data gathering and attempting to justify the practice of selling it on, while continuing to insist that the data is fully "de-identified".

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Today, there is some great news for the Linux community -- OpenMandriva Lx 4.1 is RC now available! Yes, there is a new version of the KDE-focused Linux distribution.

Before you get too excited, please know that RC stands for "Release Candidate." What does that mean? Well, it should be more stable than an Alpha or Beta, but it is still pre-release software. Essentially, with an RC, the developers are proposing that this version could be stable enough to become "final" or "gold."

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The Document Foundation has unveiled LibreOffice 6.4 64-bit and LibreOffice 6.4 32-bit, its popular open-source office suite for Windows, Mac and Linux.

LibreOffice 6.4 is a major point release -- the last in the 6.x product line -- and comes with the promise of improved performance along with several new universal features and the usual mix of minor changes and improvements to individual applications within the suite.

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Microsoft may have dropped Windows 7 like a hot stone, but that doesn't mean everyone is. Recognizing the fact that large numbers of people are going to continue using the aged operating system, most antivirus firms are going to continue to offer support.

Support from the likes of AVG, Avira, Kaspersky and Trend Micro for at least two years is great news for those concerned about the security of sticking with Windows 7. Of course, this doesn't mean that the operating system is entirely safe to use now that it has reached end of life, but with the right software installed, hangers-on can secure their systems somewhat.

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Modern businesses have large numbers of documents, many of which contain information that is commercially sensitive. But poor file management, incorrect permissions and uncontrolled sharing can put that information at risk.

The unstructured nature of this data makes it notoriously difficult to keep track of. Now though California-based Concentric is launching a new solution to allow enterprises to identify and protect these documents.

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If you prefer to access your email through a desktop client, then Thunderbird is one of the better choices. However, the future of the open source tool has been a little rocky in recent years after the Mozilla Corporation decided to stop supporting it.

However, there’s a lot of love for Thunderbird out there, and it’s managed to survive, and even grow thanks to user donations. And now the email client has found a new home.

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Online fraud has gained in sophistication in recent years. As consumers have moved to using mobile devices and have come to expect a consistent shopping experience across platforms,  so the fraudsters have never been far behind.

We spoke to Michael Reitblat, co-founder and CEO of eCommerce fraud prevention specialist Forter, which recently published its latest Fraud Attack Index, to find out more about the fraud landscape and how businesses can protect themselves.

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The latest update to iOS will please anyone with privacy concerns. iOS 13.3.1 gives iPhone owners the chance to toggle the location-tracking U1 Ultra Wideband chip on and off -- something Apple promised a couple of months ago.

There was controversy when security experts discovered that the chip meant iPhones were periodically tracking people's location even when location services were disabled. Now it is possible to ensure that such tracking cannot be carried out.

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Microsoft has issued an optional update for Windows 10 versions 1903 and 1909. Among other things, the update fixes Explorer problems introduced by the November 2019 Update.

The same update is available for both version of Windows 10 because, as Microsoft explains, both "1903 and 1909 share a common core operating system and an identical set of system files". While the update, KB4532695, includes a number of fixes, it is the addressing of Explorer issues that will be most welcomed.

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With attackers often targeting individuals and their credentials to gain unauthorized access to accounts, people are increasingly at the center of security.

This is one of the conclusions of a new report from identity solutions provider Okta which finds that when deploying security tools a third of businesses start with a tool focused on protecting their people, as opposed to devices, infrastructure, and networks.

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