Latest Technology News

Microsoft president Brad Smith has called on government to regulate facial recognition technology, citing concerns that it is open to abuse. While he acknowledges that technology company have a role to play, he that it is down to elected representatives to put rules in place.

Using a terrible analogy ("All tools can be used for good or ill. Even a broom can be used to sweep the floor or hit someone over the head.") Smith points out that while facial recognition technology is undeniably useful, there is also potential for it to be "misused and abused by private companies and public authorities alike". He wants government to do something about it.

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When you spend a few hundred dollars on a phone, you expect it to last you a while. But if you splashed out on an iPhone 6 there's a very high change that you've experienced some sort of problem with your handset.

A report shows that the iPhone 6 is by far Apple's least reliable handset, with a staggering 22 percent of them suffering failures. The iPhone 6S isn't far behind, and for Android users, Samsung handsets fare poorly too.

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It’s no secret that Microsoft wants you to use its Edge browser in Windows 10. It’s tried a lot of ways to persuade users to switch from Chrome, Firefox or other browsers, including advertising Edge in Windows and even recently made a change to a Redstone 5 Insider preview so that links clicked in Windows Mail opened directly in the browser.

Windows 10 users will be aware that Edge is already the default browser for certain links and actions. If you run a web search using the Cortana search box, for example, the results -- provided by Bing -- will open in Edge. But a handy program can redirect these links to whatever browser you have set up as the default.

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While summer has only just started, it is already time to start thinking about Back-to-School shopping. Yeah, sorry to bum you out, students. But hey, you don't want to return to school or university without a capable laptop, do you? Come on, isn't it fun convincing your parents you need a new computer for "studying and research?"

If you are looking for a good deal on a laptop, whether for school or any other purpose, Acer has a pretty sweet deal going on Amazon. All of its computers with integrated Alexa are $50 off. In addition, you will receive a free Echo Dot. How cool is that? Best of all, this offer is immediate -- you do not have to wait for Prime Day!

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

Microsoft released two new builds of the upcoming Windows 10 Redstone 5 that it plans to rollout later this year to the stable channel.

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From now until September 25, Apple is running a Back to School promotion, and there are some great offers for students.

If you qualify, you can bag yourself a free pair of Beats headphones or earphones when you buy a Mac or iPad Pro -- including the Powerbeats3 Wireless in new Beats Pop Collection colors. There are also special deals on accessories and AppleCare.

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Microsoft has launched a free version of Teams, the company's collaborative chat tool. Teams has pitted itself against the likes of Slack since it first appeared, but the arrival of a free edition makes it a viable alternative.

As this is a free product, it should come as no surprise that there are limitations. However, the free edition of Microsoft Team can still be used by up to 300 people -- the same as the Essentials and Premium versions -- which should be enough to cater for most small to medium sized businesses.

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If you haven't heard, YouTube TV experienced an ill-timed outage yesterday. Well, I suppose there is never a good time for a service disruption, but still, this was during a rather important sporting event. What game was it? The big World Cup match between England and Croatia. I'm not a fan of soccer, but I can understand how having your TV service disrupted during such a major game could be annoying. If it was during the World Series or Super Bowl, I'd be rather upset.

YouTube TV apologized profusely on Twitter, and ultimately, the service was restored long before the match was over. In other words, subscribers were able to experience England's crushing defeat. If you weren't satisfied with the apology, YouTube TV is offering something that should make up for the inconvenience -- a free week of service.

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Malwarebytes already offers a decent security app for Android, but the company has never had a version for iOS -- until now.

While iPhone and iPad users are less at risk from malware than their Android counterparts, thanks to Apple’s walled-garden, they aren’t necessarily completely safe -- the threat of spam calls, scam websites, fraudulent texts and bad ads remains.

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With every new privacy scandal that erupts across the digital landscape, we smartphone users and digital nomads must ask ourselves the same question: Have we reached diminishing returns on the usefulness of modern technology? It seems sometimes like every new convenience arrives with a litany of security concerns attached.

The latest news to strike a blow to our expectations of digital privacy is that smartphone apps appear to have been taking screenshots of users' devices and records of their keystrokes without their knowledge.

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Apple is making huge news today with the refresh of its wildly popular MacBook Pro laptops. The portable computers are more powerful than ever and feature a quieter keyboard. In addition, the company will be selling an optional eGPU made by Blackmagic that will transform the notebooks into graphical powerhouses.

MacBook Pro computers are very well-made, but they are quite expensive too. Even if you buy the Apple Care protection plan, it is a wise idea to invest in a case or bag for it too. Today, the iPhone-maker releases new leather sleeves that should protect both the 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pro laptops from scratches and dents. As you can imagine, since it is an official Apple product, it is rather pricey.

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TagHelpers are introduced in ASP.NET Core MVC as a new way of writing server-side code that renders HTML tags (elements), that is much closer to the HTML format than to Razor.  TagHelpers represent a mechanism to add server-side processing to a regular HTML tag, which in many ways is very similar to Angular or React directives.

Compared to Razor, the code is way cleaner, there is no context-switching and no need to use @ escape sequence like in Razor.

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As well as refreshing its MacBook Pro line-up, Apple today started to sell the $699 Blackmagic eGPU. This 8GB external GPU features a Radeon Pro 580 to bring more graphic horsepower to laptop users.

The aim is to bring desktop-level power to laptop users when they are working on graphic-intensive projects. At a shade under $700, it's not a cheap piece of hardware, but it also doubles up as something of a docking station.

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Traditional signature-based antivirus solutions struggle to cope with the pace of change in today's malware world. But while enterprises have had access to sophisticated machine learning solutions for a while these have largely been denied to consumers.

Now though Cylance is launching an AI-based antivirus solution aimed at the domestic internet user.

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There's growing interest in biometric security solutions as passwords are increasingly seen as outmoded and at risk from phishing and other attacks.

Biometric solutions provider ID R&D is launching a new version of its voice biometric security solution, IDVoice. Enhancements to the product allow it to deliver what is claimed to be the industry's fastest and most accurate text-independent biometric verification.

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