Saturday night's fight between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor is set to be the most pirated sporting event in history. In the US, it's Showtime that will be airing the fight as a pay-per-view event, but links to live streams are already popping up online ahead of August 26th's event.

The broadcaster has already taken pre-emptive court action to kill a number of pirate streams but it is -- predictably -- turning in to a game of whack-a-mole, and once the fight kicks off it will be near-impossible to close new streams that have popped up and stop people watching for free.

Continue reading →

Some online events unite people -- such as the recent solar eclipse which was streamed online by millions of people unable to see the spectacle in person. Another uniting event occurs when a major website goes down... like Facebook.

If you've tried to visit the social network today, you may well have found that the site doesn't load. "Is Facebook down?" you may ask, and you're not alone.

Continue reading →

Verizon, Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies have managed to exceed the Gigabit speed barrier over LTE.

Together the companies were able to reach download speeds of 1.07 Gbps during an Ericsson lab trial using the Qualcomm Snapdragon X20 LTE Modem which is the first modem to support Category 18 LTE speeds.

Continue reading →

Facebook's Safety Check feature has been around for some time now, giving people the chance to use the social network to let friends and family know they're OK in the event of a natural disaster or other catastrophe.

It is Facebook that decides which events warrant activation of Safety Check, and until now it has also been down to the site to advertise the feature to users so they can either mark themselves safe, or check up on others -- but this is about to change.

Continue reading →

Facebook won't -- usually -- hand over your private messages to anyone after you die. The social network has used a new blogging series called Hard Questions to reveal just how it handles deaths of its users.

The site's director of global policy management, Monika Bickert, says that Facebook aims to not only be sensitive, but also to respect the wishes of the deceased. After death, accounts are memorialized by default, but everyone is also free to create a "legacy contact" who will be able to mange their account in the event of their death. But Facebook is, it says, also keen to protect the privacy of survivors.

Continue reading →

As any Facebook user will know, clickbait is rife on the social network. A very common technique used to drive traffic to ad-laden websites is to embed fake play buttons in images, or post videos that are actually static images.

Facebook is clamping down on these practices in a bid to tidy up users' newsfeeds and avoid people being transported to "low quality websites" set up by spammers.

Continue reading →

On Monday August 21, people across the US will have the chance to witness a total solar eclipse. While there is a great deal of excitement about the phenomenon, viewers need to be careful to use special eclipse glasses (not just sunglasses) or some form of projection technique to avoid serious eye damage.

But perhaps the safest option is to watch the eclipse on your computer screen or mobile. Twitter has teamed up with the Weather Channel to provide a live stream, so even if you're not in the path of totality, there's no need to miss out.

Continue reading →

Following the violence that took place in Charlottesville last weekend, technology companies have done everything they can to distance themselves from neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other right-wing groups. It led to numerous companies dropping right-wing sites such as The Daily Stormer, which was ultimately pushed to the dark web.

Digital rights group the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) -- well-known for speaking out about privacy and legal issues -- has criticized the ban on neo-Nazi sites and groups saying it poses a threat to free expression online. Google, GoDaddy, Cloudflare, Reddit and Facebook are just a handful of technology companies to have banned The Daily Stormer, but EFF says that "no one -- not the government and not private commercial enterprises -- should decide who gets to speak and who doesn't."

Continue reading →

It has been difficult to avoid talk of Kodi for one reason or another recently, and it's something that's likely to be on the lips of fans of UK football now the 2017/18 Premier League season has started up.

Watching pirated streams of football matches through IPTV providers and other services has long been a popular use for Kodi, and the English Premier League (EPL) has had enough. The organization previously obtained a High Court order blocking illegal streams in real-time, and a more recently obtained injunction extended this ability. With the new season now under way, football fans are discovering that they now need a VPN like IPVanish to get their fix.

Continue reading →

HBO has had something of a rough time of things lately, suffering not only a hack that led to a series of leaks, but also a Game of Thrones leak via a distribution partner. Police in India have now arrested four people in connection with the leak of the episode The Spoils of War.

Shortly after the leak occurred, HBO's distribution partner Star India admitted it was the source of the episode. Now three employees and one former employee of Prime Focus Technology -- a company which processes Game of Thrones ready for streaming on Hotstar -- are being questioned in relation to the leak.

Continue reading →

Looking to compete with the likes of eBay and Craigslist, Facebook's Marketplace serves as a place for people to go to buy and sell locally. Following on from success in the US, UK, Australia and other countries, the social network is expanding the exchange further into Europe.

In total, Facebook's Marketplace is spreading to 17 European countries, meaning that it is now available in a total of 24 countries.

Continue reading →

Despite the age of its Material Design, Google is being surprisingly slow in rolling out the look to its products. While the UI is found pretty much universally in Android apps, the appearance on the desktop is happening at a rather more leisurely pace.

Chrome 59 sees the appearance of Material Design, and now Google is testing the look in the desktop version of Google Calendar. The design is undergoing testing through Google's Trusted Tester program, but images have leaked out giving us a glimpse of what's to come.

Continue reading →

UK payment processor Worldpay is the subject of a £9.3 billion ($12.1 billion) takeover by US rival Vantiv. The merged company will be known simply as Worldpay and will be headquartered in Cincinnati, but run from New York and London.

In the deal, Vantiv is paying £8 billion ($10.4 billion) for Worldpay, plus an additional £1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) to cover debts. It is one of the biggest takeovers of a UK company since the Brexit vote of 2016.

Continue reading →

Facebook has introduced a ban on address cloaking, a technique used to bypass review procedures and display content that violates the social network's policies.

Cloaking is used to disguise the true nature of posts and ads from reviewers, so they will see different contents to real-world users when they click through. Facebook says that it will be working with other companies to find ways to fight cloaking and implement punishments. AI will be called upon to do some of the legwork.

Continue reading →

During its Q3 earnings report, Disney announced plans to launch its own streaming service in 2019. As part of this shift in business, the company will end its distribution agreement with Netflix.

The company also announced that it has agreed to acquire an additional 42 percent stake in BAMTech. The $1.58 billion makes Disney a majority stakeholder and will give it greater control over the ESPN-branded multi-sport video streaming service due to launch in early 2018.

Continue reading →