Google reveals why it killed NFC Smart Lock in Android

It recently came to light that Google had killed off NFC Smart Lock in Android -- without telling anyone. Now the company has come clean about just why the feature was given the chop. Google says that "in the case of NFC unlock, we've seen extremely low usage," adding that there are now many more ways of unlocking Android devices. But while Google points to features such as On-Body detection, fingerprint scanning and Trusted Places, fans of the missing feature say that none of these are comparable. See also: PSA: Google quietly discontinues NFC Smart Unlock without explanation Andrew Brennan… [Continue Reading]

Microsoft explains why Edge has so few extensions a year down the line

It's now a little more than a year since Microsoft first brought extensions to Edge. After so long you would expect the selection of addons to be overwhelming -- but that's far from being the case. In all, there are only 70-odd Edge extensions available, and Microsoft has been moved to explain why. In a blog post, the company almost apologetically explains that it is "building a thoughtfully curated ecosystem," citing concern over quality and a fear of diminishing the user experience. What some might describe as "slow," Microsoft refers to as a "purposefully metered approach" to new extensions, and… [Continue Reading]

Paint.NET hits version 4.0.18 and arrives in the Microsoft Store... for a price

Fans of the image editing tool Paint.NET have two big pieces of news to digest. While this is only a minor version number bump, Paint.NET 4.0.18 improves startup times by around 25 percent as well as improving portable mode and introducing per-user plugins. But perhaps the biggest news -- as promised a few months ago -- is that Paint.NET is now in the Microsoft Store. While many people will welcome the arrival of the app in the Store, the fact that a price tag has been slapped on it will come as a surprise -- and a disappointment -- to… [Continue Reading]

Ransomware is reaching 'epidemic levels'

Ransomware has been named as one of the most pressing threats to society by officers at Europol. The force has released a new report which claims that ransomware is reaching "epidemic" levels, eclipsing other areas of cybercrime such as data breaches, pornography and card fraud. Europol's records found that more than two billion records linked to EU citizens had been affected by ransomware during the last twelve months "The last year has been exceptional, given the size and the type and the range of the attacks that we've seen," Europol director Rob Wainwright said revealing the report. "Growing sophistication in the cybercrime community,… [Continue Reading]

Doogee BL7000 is an affordable smartphone with a huge battery and nice hardware [Review]

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Doogee seems to be on fire; the outfit, which is several orders of magnitude smaller than bigger names like Lenovo, Huawei, Oppo and Xiaomi, has been pushing out new models like there’s no tomorrow. The vendor embraced a niche approach with the S-series (for secure), the BL series, the Mix (bezel-less), the Shoot series (for photography aficionados) and a few more. After the Doogee Mix and the Doogee T5 and just before we review the S60 rugged smartphone, we’re taking a look at the BL7000 with the first two letters meaning "Battery Life" and 7000 representing the battery capacity (in mAh). The phone… [Continue Reading]

Kodi: EFF says courts should reject 'abusive' lawsuits against add-on distributors

The war against copyright infringement has always been a difficult one for rights holders. Aside from the scale of the problem, there are multiple platforms that make illegal downloads, streams, and sharing possible. For many years, the main target for anti-piracy bodies was BitTorrent, but in recent months a new number one enemy has surfaced in the form of Kodi, and in particular various companies and addons associated with the media center software. While in Europe and the UK, sellers of "fully loaded" media center boxes seem to be the primary focus for Kodi-related lawsuits, in Canada and the US,… [Continue Reading]

Blockchain's usefulness extends beyond the financial market

Blockchain technology is a key disruption enabler of established and, most importantly, trusted broker industries -- financial services being the biggest and most lucrative trusted broker service in the world. Trillions of pounds are moved around the archaic global financial system every day and billions of businesses and private individuals are serviced by companies that make up the vast industry. Still heavily reliant on manual processes, though dressed in a digital façade, finance system productivity is anchored with process delays, ever-rising expenses and is a relentless target for crime and fraud. In an attempt to solve these ever-growing issues, blockchain, originally… [Continue Reading]

Mozilla updates Firefox Privacy Notice with greater detail, transparency and prominence

Mozilla has announced an update to Firefox's Privacy Notice which aims to better inform users about what data is collected and why. As well as making its privacy policies more understandable, Mozilla is also trying to ensure that more people actually see them. For new installations, the Privacy Notice is automatically displayed in a tab. But it's the layout and accessibility of the updated document that's the real change. See also: Apple launches new privacy page and reveals all about Face ID Apple now collects data from Safari using differential privacy to identify problem websites Privacy: With iOS 11 and… [Continue Reading]

BlackBerry is on the road to recovery

Rumors of BlackBerry's death may have been somewhat premature. The company just revealed its latest financial results, showing significant profits. The former smartphone giant posted a stronger-than-expected second quarter, after, according to BlackBerry, its "complete transformation to a software company." The company reported a Q2 profit of $19 million, with its shares rising seven percent in Thursday premarket trading. Analysts expected BlackBerry to "break even" on revenue. "We achieved historical highs in total software and services revenue and gross margin, as well as the highest non-GAAP operating margin in over five years, reflecting our complete transformation to a software company,"… [Continue Reading]

Great news for Android: Linux kernel Long Term Support triples to 6 years

As Android is based on Linux, the existing two-year lifecycle for Long Term Support (LTS) kernels is restrictively short. But, during a presentation about Android's Project Treble, Google's Iliyan Malchev announced that this is going to -- appropriately -- treble to six years. This will address what has become a serious issue for chip-makers. During the production process, they need to pick the most recent LTS kernel to work with to ensure longevity, but the length of time it takes to design and produce chips means that much of the two years of support is used up by the time… [Continue Reading]

Microsoft releases refreshed preview of 'Skype for Linux' for Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and more

Skype is an important communication service thanks to its cross-compatibility. There are clients for Mac, Windows, Android, iOS, and even desktop Linux. It may not offer the best user experience, but it is passable, making it a solid choice for those that need to keep in touch across long distances. Today, Microsoft releases a refreshed preview of Skype for Linux. There are both DEB and RPM packages available, making it easy to install on, say, Ubuntu, Debian, or Fedora. In fact, I successfully installed it on Pop!_OS earlier today. Believe it or not, the new interface is quite nice, making… [Continue Reading]

The FCC wants Apple to enable the iPhone's non-existent FM radio

In the wake of big storms recently, the National Association of Broadcasters and the FCC has piled the pressure on Apple to enable the FM radio in iPhones so they might be used for emergency broadcasts. FCC chairman Ajit Pai went as far as issuing a statement saying that "Apple is the one major phone manufacturer that has resisted" enabling FM chips in its phones. There's just one problem, as Apple points out. The iPhone simply doesn't have an FM chip to enable. A spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters said: "Broadcasters are providing information on how to evacuate… [Continue Reading]

Strategies for dramatically cutting public cloud costs [Q&A]

IT teams are increasingly moving to the public cloud for its supposed low cost and high agility. However, once implemented in their environments, people are finding public cloud to be expensive and fairly complex to manage. We spoke to Andrew Hillier, CTO of cloud optimization analytics service provider Densify, who is all too familiar with the struggles that IT organizations face as their public cloud costs rise through the roof. Read on for his insights into strategies that organizations can implement when looking to reduce cost, risk and complexity in the public cloud. BN: Many organizations today are finding issues… [Continue Reading]

Synology's new DS418play NAS lets you stream two 4K videos simultaneously

Synology has expanded the DS418 line with the introduction of the new DS418play. The NAS, which joins the DS418 and DS418j in the consumer-oriented four-bay range, is optimized for multimedia content. The claim to fame of the DS418play is that it can transcode up to two channels of H.265 or H.264 4K content at the same time, which basically means that you will be able to stream two 4K videos at the same time on a smartphone and tablet using the NAS' processing power. "Mobile devices supporting 4K video recording are becoming increasingly popular. However, since 4K video clips are… [Continue Reading]

Failed updates leave Mac computers at risk from targeted attacks on firmware

The Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) has steadily replaced BIOS in recent years as means of booting and controlling hardware devices. Mac systems have used EFI since 2006 but an analysis by Duo Labs, the research arm of Duo Security, of more than 73,000 Mac systems finds that in many cases the EFI is not receiving security updates, leaving users vulnerable to attacks. In 2015 Apple began to bundle software and firmware updates in order to ensure systems had the most current firmware security. Duo Labs' analysis looked at the updates released in the last three years and compared the actual… [Continue Reading]

Edifier e235 Luna E -- solid sound meets deep-sea vibe [Review]

For people who have invested in a large screen TV with a view to enjoying a home cinema experience, one of the most common complaints is the quality of the built-in speakers. The latest flat-screen TVs lack the big wooden cabinets of old for sound to resonate around in and so the audio quality from their on-board speakers tends to be a bit weedy. Most therefore look to add a soundbar or external speaker system to improve the experience. Edifier is a company that always seems to manage to produce interestingly styled speakers at the same time as delivering decent sound… [Continue Reading]

Macrium Reflect Free 7.1 adds Hyper-V support, now licensed for commercial use

Paramount Software (UK) Ltd has released Macrium Reflect Free Edition 7.1, a major new release of its disk imaging backup tool for Windows. Macrium Reflect 7.1 adds three headline features: integrated viBoot2 providing instant virtualization of Macrium backup images, Task Scheduler 2.0 API use for compatibility with the latest versions of Windows 10, and finally a license for use in a business as well as a non-commercial environment. Macrium Reflect Free is our go-to image-based backup utility. Version 6 added support for differential images to reduce backup sizes, and we’re pleased to report this feature remains in place in this… [Continue Reading]