When news broke that the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani had been killed in a drone strike ordered by Donald Trump, the value of Bitcoin jumped by 5 percent.

With tensions between Iran and the US now at an all-time high, the price surge is expected to continue. This is the belief of Nigel Green, the CEO and founder of deVere Group, one of the world’s largest independent financial services and advisory organizations, who says that the cryptocurrency is increasingly seen as being as safe as gold.

Continue reading →

When Microsoft was awarded the controversial $10 billion JEDI contract by the US Department of Defense, many people voiced surprise -- including rival bidder Amazon.

Now Jeff Bezos' company is heading to court, claiming that the process of choosing who to assign the contract to was biased. But these claims have been denied, with the Department of Defense saying there was no outside influence involved in the decision.

Continue reading →

Adobe is in the process of closing down services in Venezuela in line with US sanctions. Back in August, president Trump barred pretty much all trade with the country (Executive Order 13884).

Adobe's compliance with the sanctions means that Venezuelans will soon lose access to products such as Photoshop and -- more importantly -- have only until October 28 to save their files before they are deleted and accounts are closed.

Continue reading →

Windows 7 is certainly rather long in the tooth now, but it is still very widely used. As such, despite the general end of support coming in January, Microsoft has committed to keep Windows 7-based voted machine secure.

The company say that it will "provide free security updates for federally certified voting systems running Windows 7 through the 2020 elections, even after Microsoft ends Windows 7 support". Given the problematic nature of recent Windows 10 updates, this may come as little comfort as the Trump 2020 campaign continues.

Continue reading →

Donald Trump has been using the threat of tariffs as a way to force companies to produce goods within the US rather than manufacturing them abroad cheaply and importing them.

Now US trade regulators have now approved exemptions for the Mac Pro, with the possibility of wider implications. Apple had requested a total of 15 exemptions, and according to a public docket published by the US Trade Representative and a Federal Register notice, 10 of these have been approved.

Continue reading →

At a weekend meeting with Donald Trump, Tim Cook made a "compelling" argument for Apple to be exempt from tariffs.

Cook is said to have argued if Apple was forced to pay tariffs, it made it difficult to compete with other companies, such as Samsung. Trump acknowledged that it was "tough" for Apple to be paying tariffs on its China-made products when Samsung was not subject to them, but made no indication that exemption for Apple was on the cards.

Continue reading →

Donald Trump's love of Twitter is legendary and often ridiculed; it is also the source of frequent controversy.

The US president is huge fan of ranting, raving and venting steam in tweet storms, but his famed love of sycophants also comes to the fore. Many people who have responded to his tweets critically have found themselves blocked. Now the US Court of Appeal says this is a violation of their First Amendment rights.

Continue reading →

Donald Trump may have a bug up his ass over Huawei, but anti-Chinese propaganda aside, consumers around the world love the company's devices. Huawei's laptops, smartphones, and tablets are well-received by both professional reviewers and consumers. There should be no mystery how Huawei achieves such praise -- its products are elegant, well built, and not overly priced. The P30 Pro might be the best Android smartphone on the market.

With Android in particular, Huawei is not only providing an excellent customer experience through hardware, but with OS updates too. In fact, the company is celebrating an impressive milestone -- more than 80 million Huawei device users are now on Android 9.0 Pie. Technically, it is EMUI 9, which is Android plus Huawei's improvements. This puts many other device makers, such as Samsung and LG to shame.

Continue reading →

The White House has launched a new tool that enables people to report the fact that they have been kicked off the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

The tool is aimed at people who have had their social media presence curtailed and "suspect political bias" is involved. Anyone who feels aggrieved is invited to "share your story with President Trump".

Continue reading →

With the US government shutdown in its third week, President Trump continues to try to convince both his own party and the Democrats to agree to fund one of his campaign promises -- a wall on the southern border.

So far, the shutdown has seen national parks and more left unstaffed, and today is the first payday on which hundreds of thousands of federal workers will not receive a paycheck. Another side effect of the shutdown is that numerous government websites are offline as their TLS certificates have expired, and no one is available to renew them.

Continue reading →

President Trump's partial shutdown of the US government is now well into its second week, with little sign of the impasse over funding for a wall on the southern border coming to an end. Large numbers of government employees are already feeling the pinch due to a lack of pay checks, and the impact is on the verge of spreading further.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced that it will suspend "most operations" at midday on Thursday, January 3 "in the event of a continued partial lapse in federal government funding".

Continue reading →

Donald Trump has imposed import tariffs of $200 billion on Chinese goods brought into the US, with the threat of even more on the way.

The tariffs have been blamed on China's "unfair policies and practices", but despite the president's pleas for Apple to shift production from China to the US, the Apple Watch will be exempt from the 10 percent import tax. Also exempt are Apple's AirPods and a range of other technology products.

Continue reading →

President Trump proposed tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese products -- and there is the threat of a further $267 billion-- has caused Apple to write to the US Trade Representative to point out that this would lead to increased productions costs for many of its products.

Responding to this, Trump said that the company could avoid Chinese import tariffs by switching production to the US. Referring to his suggestion as "exciting", the president said that Apple should start building new factories in America.

Continue reading →

Donald Trump has accused Google of rigging its search results so that "good news" about the president is drowned out by unfavorable stories from the "Fake News Media".

Using his preferred medium of Twitter, he alleged that 96 percent of search results for "Trump News" were from the "National Left-Wing Media", something he described as "very dangerous". Google denied these  accusations of political bias, saying searching results are controlled by constantly-updated algorithms.

Continue reading →

Out of the blue today, Donald Trump took to his favorite medium of Twitter to complain that the company was "shadow banning" prominent Republicans -- and it wasn't long before Donald Trump Jr sided with his father.

The allegations stem from a Vice article that suggested Twitter was limiting the visibility of searches for key Republican figures -- something Twitter denies. The company says that a bug is to blame and it is actively working on addressing it.

Continue reading →