Category: Featured

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Intel’s Thunderbolt 3 is royalty free as USB 4

Fulfilling its 2017 promise to make Thunderbolt 3 royalty-free, Intel has given the specification for its high-speed interconnect to the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the industry group that develops the USB specification. The USB-IF has taken the spec and will use it to form the basis of USB4, the next iteration of USB following USB 3.2. Thunderbolt 3 not only doubles the bandwidth of...

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Windows 7 being exploited due to critical Chrome bug

Google security officials are advising Windows users to ensure they’re using the latest version 10 of the Microsoft operating system to protect themselves against a “serious” unpatched vulnerability that attackers have been actively exploiting in the wild. Unidentified attackers have been combining an exploit for the unpatched local privilege escalation in Windows with one for a separate security flaw in the Chrome browser that...

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Google urges users to update Chrome immediately

Google is urging users to update Chrome across all platforms after a critical vulnerability was discovered and patched. The vulnerability exploits a security flaw known as CVE-2019-5786. The security flaw is a memory management issue in Chrome’s FileReader which gives hackers the opportunity to inject and execute malicious code. Security researchers at Google and Microsoft have observed attackers using a combination of a patched...

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Apple no longer refuses to fix iPhones with third-party batteries

Apple has reportedly updated the rules of its strict repair program to be a bit more lenient toward iPhones with aftermarket batteries. Internal company documents reportedly instruct its Genius Bars and Apple Authorized Service Providers to repair iPhones with third-party batteries, something that the iPhone maker has never allowed before. The change was first spotted by iGeneration, and MacRumors reportedly obtained the documents from...

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Mozilla blocks Facebook trackers and other privacy invaders

When Facebook users learned last March about Facebook trackers and that the social media giant had given their sensitive information to political-data firm Cambridge Analytica, Mozilla (parent company of the security-focused browser Firefox) reacted fast: Within eight hours, the product team had built a browser extension called the Facebook Container. The plug-in, now the most popular browser extension Mozilla has ever built (1.5 million...

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USB 3.2 will make the current USB branding even worse

USB 3.2, which doubles the maximum speed of a USB connection to 20Gb/s, is likely to materialize in systems later this year. In preparation for this, the USB-IF—the industry group that together develops the various USB specifications—has announced the branding and naming that the new revision is going to use, and… it’s awful. USB 3.0 was straightforward enough. A USB 3.0 connection ran at...

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Firefox to introduce CryptoMining and Fingerprint Blocking

In numerous Mozilla bug tickets that were recently updated, Mozilla is getting closer to adding cryptomining and fingerprinting blocking to their Firefox browser. In May 2018 it was revealed that Mozilla was planning on blocking cryptominers and fingerprinters starting in Firefox 63. Firefox 63 has come and gone and now Firefox 65 is here, but unfortunately those features were never fully added to the browser. A series...

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iOS 12.2 will limit Web apps’ access to iPhone’s sensors

The beta for iOS 12.2 contains a change to mobile Safari that could have implications for the advertising and marketing worlds, as well as for Web-based augmented or virtual reality more generally. In the beta, a toggle labeled “Motion & Orientation Access” exists in the Safari privacy settings panel. This toggle determines whether sites visited in the mobile Safari browser will be able to...

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Google Chrome will block ad-blockers

Google engineers have proposed changes to the open-source Chromium browser that will break content-blocking extensions, including various ad blockers. Adblock Plus will most likely not be affected, though similar third-party plugins will, for reasons we will explain. The drafted changes will also limit the capabilities available to extension developers, ostensibly for the sake of speed and safety. Chromium forms the central core of Google...

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Google G Suite costs 20% more than Office 365

Google yesterday announced that it is increasing the price of G Suite by 20 percent. This is the first time Google is increasing the price of its productivity suite since its launch. G Suite Basic Edition will increase by $1 (from $5 to $6 per user/month) and G Suite Business Edition will increase by $2 (from $10 to $12 per user/month). Pricing for G...