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The Windows 10 Anniversary Update – the largest update to the PC operating system since its big revamp in 2015 – began rolling out to consumers on Tuesday. More than 350m devices have been upgraded since Windows 10 was released in a Microsoft campaign that bombarded computer owners with invitations to get the new version for free, pushed it out to computers automatically and installed it without users realising. The Anniversary Update sees Microsoft’s virtual assistant Cortana become more central, being used as part of any search, while a new feature called Windows Ink enables users to annotate on their screens more freely, and across different apps, with a styl…

The creators of Pokémon Go have responded to criticism from fans after a recent update to the app crippled or removed a number of popular features. The latest version of the app, released this weekend, removed a (partly broken) pokémon-tracking tool, as well as a battery-saving mode and support for third-party pokémon maps. The game's developers have given a number of reasons for these changes, saying that the tracking feature was "confusing" and that third-party apps interfered with the company's ability to "maintain quality of service" and bring the game to new markets. Basically, too many unofficial apps were putting undue stress on the game's servers. "We have re…

In 2015, the two SySS employees Matthias Deeg and Gerhard Klostermeier started a research project about the security of modern wireless desktop sets using AES encryption, as there was no publicly available data concerning... Read more about Wireless keyboards and mice vulnerable on Lunarsoft. View the full article

Microsoft's year-long offer of a free upgrade to Windows 10 has now finished, albeit with a couple of loopholes still to be closed. Since the deal was launched last year there are now more than 350 million devices running the new operating system, mostly thanks to the offer. It's not especially surprising that users have quicker to upgrade to Windows 10 than earlier versions: Microsoft was giving it away for free, after all. Microsoft's offer was, to an extent, bowing to the inevitable: since the rise of the smartphone with regular free mobile OS upgrades, consumers increasingly expect to get new desktop OS upgrades for free (indeed, Mac users have done sin…

Networking hardware vendor TP-Link today admitted violating US radio frequency rules by selling routers that could operate at power levels higher than their approved limits. In a settlement with the Federal Communications Commission, TP-Link agreed to pay a $200,000 fine, comply with the rules going forward, and to let customers install open source firmware on routers. The open source requirement is a unique one, as it isn't directly related to TP-Link's violation. Moreover, FCC rules don't require router makers to allow loading of third-party, open source firmware. In fact, recent changes to FCC rules made it more difficult for router makers to allow open source sof…

In 2015, the two SySS employees Matthias Deeg and Gerhard Klostermeier started a research project about the security of modern wireless desktop sets using AES encryption, as there was no publicly available data concerning security issues in current wireless mice and keyboards. Thus, the two IT security consultants have been analyzing modern wireless desktop sets with AES encryption of the manufacturers Microsoft, Cherry, Logitech, Fujitsu, and Perixx for security vulnerabilities during the last couple of months. Up to now, several and partly critical security vulnerabilities have been found and were reported to affected manufacturers in the course of the SySS re…

Chat logs from WhatsApp linger on your phone even after you’ve deleted them, according to new research published by iOS expert Jonathan Zdziarski. Forensic traces of chats linger on the phone even after a user archives or deletes them, Zdziarski found, and could be accessed by someone with physical access to the device or by law enforcement issuing a warrant to Apple for iCloud backups. Although the data is deleted from the app, it is not overwritten in the SQLite library and therefore remains on the phone. “I installed the app and started a few different threads,” Zdziarski wrote in a blog post. “I then archived some, cleared, some, and deleted some threads. I …

A year after Microsoft introduced its free upgrade offer to Windows 10 for PCs running Windows 7 or Windows 8, the company finally put an end to this year-long opportunity last Friday. Microsoft’s significant upgrade push didn’t avoid some controversy during the past year, as many users complained that its Windows 10 upgrade prompts have been too aggressive and confusing, but there is no denying that the Windows 10 launch has been an overall success for the company. On June 29, the Redmond giant announced that Windows 10 was already running on 350 million devices (including PCs, phones, Xbox One gaming consoles and more), which was 50 million more devices than the pr…

Gawker Media Chief Executive Nick Denton filed for personal bankruptcy protection on Monday, according to court documents that name his largest creditor as Hulk Hogan, a former professional wrestler who won a $140 million court judgment against the news website over a sex tape it posted. Denton listed assets of $10 million to $50 million and liabilities of $100 million to $500 million in his Chapter 11 petition filed at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Earlier on Monday, he tweeted that he wanted to protect colleagues from a "vendetta" by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who funded Hogan's Florida lawsuit. Gawker Media filed for…

Seeing as another major round of updates to Windows 10 is about to take place next week it only makes sense to see some fear-inducing articles. In fairness, the articles themselves aren't that bad (see PC World) as the content mostly explains away the so-called controversy. Nonetheless in the age of "I only read the headline" things like "You can't turn off Cortana in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update" with the fine print "...but you can lessen her awareness" does a disservice to the community. Normally, I ignore such articles as in June we wrote a detailed guide called "How to turn off Cortana and stop personal data gathering in Windows 10". That guide mostly a…

The U.S.’s most popular third-party presidential candidate says he would “consider” pardoning the highest profile convicts of computer-related crimes in the country, including Chelsea Manning, Ross Ulbricht, and Jeremy Hammond. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, a former governor of New Mexico, also reiterated his possible willingness to pardon Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency analyst who gave a cache of agency documents to journalists in 2013. Snowden currently resides in Russia, which granted him temporary asylum after the U.S. charged him with violating the Espionage Act. “Having actually served as a governor and administered the power to …

Facebook Inc.’s future cash flows and results could suffer a major blow if it loses a battle over new U.S. tax liabilities related to the transfer of its global operations to Ireland in 2010. The Internal Revenue Service delivered a notice of deficiency to the social media giant Wednesday for $3 billion to $5 billion, plus interest and penalties, based on the agency’s audit of Facebook’s transfer pricing, the company said in a regulatory filing Thursday. Facebook, which plans to challenge the notice in federal tax court, said its balance sheet could suffer if it’s held liable. Facebook said in the filing that the liability “could have a material adverse impact” …

The real test for any new technology is how quickly it gets picked up by the adult industry. As porn embraces virtual reality, what does that mean for the rest of us? Talking about virtual reality is a bit like “dancing” about “architecture;” we lack the vocabulary to do it properly, and you have to experience it to understand. That quickly becomes evident when watching someone try it out for the first time. People are invariably blown away — they gasp, they laugh, and they usually can’t help reaching out their hands to touch things that aren’t really there. “I’ve been introducing a lot of people to VR over the past few months, and that first experience is incre…

Unbranded Firefox versions are created specifically for developers to test their add-ons in without having to get development versions signed. Mozilla introduced add-on signing some time ago and will make it a requirement without override in Stable and Beta starting with Firefox 48. Firefox Stable and Beta versions cannot override add-on signing anymore which means that users cannot install unsigned add-ons in those browser versions. A switch was provided up until now to bypass this, but it will be removed with the release of Firefox 48. Firefox ESR, Developer and Nightly editions ship with the override so that unsigned add-ons can be installed. This p…

Google has taken additional measures to strengthen its data encryption by implementing HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS). While most of Google's data is already encrypted, Google's utilization of HSTS goes a step further by preventing users from mistakenly heading to HTTP URLs by converting potentially unsafe HTTP URLs into more secure HTTPS URLs. For instance, you might accidentally type in a URL without protocols and find yourself redirected to an unsafe destination. HSTS help curb those issues, especially among less internet-savvy users. View the full article

It's just two days until July 29th, the last day that you can get the Windows 10 upgrade free from Microsoft. The free offer is currently available to Windows 7 and Windows 8 users. The upgrade process is simple, though a bit time consuming. It can take a few hours for the entire upgrade process. However, if you do the upgrade process through Windows Update you will have the latest version - 1511 10586.494 - which is current until August 2nd when the Anniversary Update is scheduled to arrive. Your Windows key will be converted to a Windows 10 key through Digital Entitlement. In the future you can either use your Windows 10 key or Windows 7/8 key to reinstall Windows …

Netflix and Comcast will be available on the same cable box later this year, but Netflix video will still count against Comcast data caps. Netflix's deal to get its online video on Comcast's X1 set-top boxes alongside traditional cable TV channels was reported earlier this month by Recode, with the companies saying they "have much work to do before the service will be available to consumers later this year." The deal raised questions about whether Netflix would be exempt from Comcast data caps, but it has already been decided. A Comcast spokesperson answered "yes" when asked if Netflix will continue counting against data caps after being integrated into Comcast cable…

It’s been a busy week for the Google Maps team. As we reported earlier today, the Google Maps apps are getting a Wi-Fi-only mode and the team is also bringing more crowdsourcing tools to the mobile apps. The company kept the biggest announcement for today, though: Google Maps on iOS, Android and the web is getting a new and cleaner look with a more subtle color scheme. The idea behind the new look for the maps is to remove clutter. As Google notes, the team removed road outlines, for example, and also improved the typography on the maps so it’s easier to read street names, points of interest and transit stations. At the same time, the team also decided to try a …

Thanks to some digging around in the inner workings of Twitter’s video website Vine, white hat hacker avicoder was able to download the entire source code to the popular service. As he was looking at various ways to breach the website’s security, he found an interesting domain that could recreate a local version of Vine. There are a lot of things hidden in a website’s source code that makes it vulnerable to attacks. Luckily, avicoder has helped fix multiple Twitter bugs in the past and wasn’t looking to do any harm. View the full article

Cellular data can be expensive and Wi-Fi is often free. Thankfully it seems Google Maps will soon work on just Wi-Fi. Google has yet to announce this option. Users are reporting the additional mode is found in the settings of Google Maps and replaces the “Offline areas” option. Once activated, Google Maps will load the majority of the data through Wi-Fi signals, though, as a warning notifies users, a small amount of cellular data might still be consumed. Without an official announcement from Google, it’s unclear how this new option is different from the app’s offline area mode — though one can hope that the new option is superior. With a constant cellular connec…

Facebook admitted it briefly blocked links to Wikileaks files containing internal Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails. The block seems to be the result of another algorithm accident that may have incorrectly determined the links to be malicious or spam. Facebook Chief Security Officer says the company has fixed the error, after receiving heavy criticism from WikiLeaks. This isn’t the first time Facebook has accidentally blocked high profile news events on the platform. Earlier this month, Facebook briefly removed video showing Philando Castile dying, covered in blood, moments after being shot by a police officer. Prior to that, the company admitted to rem…

After months of leaks and speculation, Verizon Communications Inc. has emerged as the most likely buyer of Yahoo! Inc. The deal, which may be announced in the next few days according to people familiar with the matter, will likely bring to an end the tumultuous reign of Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer, who tried and failed to re-invent Yahoo as an independent company. If finalized, the nation’s largest wireless carrier would add the iconic web pioneer and its millions of daily users to a growing stable of media properties. Verizon is discussing a price close to $5 billion for Yahoo’s core internet business, one of the people said. While the deal doesn’t in…

By default, on Windows, Firefox is a 32-bit application. This means that it is limited to using at most 4 GiB of memory, even on machines that have more than 4 GiB of physical memory (RAM). In fact, depending on the OS configuration, the limit may be as low as 2 GiB. Now, 2–4 GiB might sound like a lot of memory, but it’s not that unusual for power users to use that much. This includes: users with many (dozens or even hundreds) of tabs open; users with many (dozens) of extensions; users of memory-hungry web sites and web apps; and users who do all of the above! Furthermore, in practice it’s not possible to totally fill …

The European Commission is preparing a software source code security audit on two software solutions, Apache HTTP server and Keepass, a password manager. The source code will be analysed and tested for potential security problems, and the results will be shared with the software developers. The audits will start in the coming weeks. The security test is the next phase in the pilot project, involving the IT departments of both the Commission and the European Parliament. The choice for Apache HTTP Server and Keepass is the result of a public survey. Between 17 June and 8 July, the EU-FOSSA project asked the public to help select the most-appropriate software solut…

Today, EFF joined a broad coalition of other public interest groups at Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi's office in San Francisco, to present her with a petition carrying an incredible 209,419 signatures with a request to oppose the introduction of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) during the post-election "lame duck" session of Congress. And with your help, we succeeded! In a letter that she handed us at our meeting, Leader Pelosi wrote: Thank you, Leader Pelosi, for standing up for users to block this undemocratic, anti-user deal. Combined with the stated opposition to the TPP of both presidential candidates, and the likelihood that other House Democrats will fo…