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  • Are Twitter Employees Snooping Through Your DMs? Undercover Video Raises Concern Over User Privacy

    Are Twitter Employees Snooping Through Your DMs? Undercover Video Raises Concern Over User Privacy

    Twitter is going on the offensive; adamantly stating that the company is not reading users’ direct messages.

    The denial comes on the heels of allegations raised that Twitter employs hundreds of people tasked with reading account holders private messages.

    Project Veritas Makes Disturbing Claims

    Project Veritas recently posted footage that allegedly features Twitter engineers who claim that the company has hundreds of employees that look at users personal data, including “d**k pics” and “all your sex messages.”

    The undercover footage features four Twitter engineers—Clay Haynes, Conrado Miranda, Mihai Alexandru Florea, and Pranay Singh. Haynes and Singh claimed that teams of Twitter employees have access to account holders’ data and that all the private photos and sensitive messages sent by users are all stored on company servers. Singh, a Direct Messaging Engineer for Twitter, even said that data shared by Twitter users are analyzed and sold.

    One of these engineers even appears to say that the company can even give account information to the Department of Justice President on Donald Trump, including direct messages and any deleted tweets.

    Twitter Denies Reading DMs

    Twitter was quick to deny these allegations. A company spokesperson for the company has told Buzzfeed News that Twitter does not “proactively review DMs. Period.” The representative further stated that while there’s a select group of employees that do have access to users’ personal data, it’s “for legitimate work purposes,” and that they have strict guidelines in place for those employees.

    Twitter’s response to the Project Veritas videos was corroborated by a former employee who said that while the clips were “technically accurate to a degree,” the engineers’ claims were an exaggeration made by “drunk idiots.” The ex-employee also added that personnel with access to private data are those tasked to check claims of abuse by Twitter users.

    With regards to Project Veritas’ claims that Twitter can forward any personal information, the company states that it does not share any of its users’ personal information with law enforcement unless there’s a valid legal request. In its biannual transparency report, Twitter revealed the legal requests it has received and responded to from January 1 to June 30, 2017.

    Twitter also lambasted Project Veritas for its deplorable tactics in obtaining the footage and how it was edited to portray the company in a negative light.

    Project Veritas is no stranger to controversy. The company has been derided for utilizing unethical and underhanded methods in its investigations of issues. Most recently, the project received flak for attempting to discredit the Washington Post by trying to trick the paper into publishing a fake story about Roy Moore.  

    [Featured image via YouTube]

  • Nvidia Says Its New Patch is Immune to Recently Discovered Spectre Bug

    Nvidia Says Its New Patch is Immune to Recently Discovered Spectre Bug

    Last week, Nvidia ran into some problems with the recently revealed “Meltdown” and “Spectre” bugs. When the manufacturer announced that it would be releasing a new patch to address the memory-related vulnerabilities, some outlets misinterpreted the statement as an indirect admission that perhaps, even its GPU might be vulnerable.

    For those who might be wondering what Spectre and Meltdown are,  here’s a brief explanation:

    Just days after the explosive New Year celebration, the entire computing world received an even more explosive revelation—everyone’s been sitting on top of a security flaw that has existed for more than two decades.

    On January 3, Meltdown and Spectre, two security vulnerabilities present in every computer, tablet and even smartphones since 1995, were finally revealed to the world. Before you go ahead and unplugged all your computing devices, just take a deep breath and relax; everything is being taken care of. Patches are being deployed and the vulnerabilities should soon become a thing of the past.

    If you have to blame someone, blame it on our need to have our computers run faster. In 1995, manufacturers developed the idea of executing certain computer processes ahead of time, even before users inputted their choice. This process was termed “speculative execution.”  For example, if you frequently visit a particular website that requires login credentials, your computer would guess that you would want to enter your password and begin loading the necessary files. This, of course, boosts computing speed as your PC will be correct about your intentions most of the time. The problem starts when the user inputs a choice different from what the computer had predicted. The computer then has to throw away the useless data into the cache memory.

    This would not have been a problem back in those days when PCs were usually stand-alone. These days, however, everything is connected and, with this interconnectivity, researchers were actually able to prove that someone connected to the system could actually take a peak at the contents of those rejected data. While it may not necessarily contain sensitive information, there is that chance that it may indeed contain personal data like credit card numbers.

    In response to the security vulnerabilities, Nvidia decided to update the driver software of its GPUs. However, Nvidia’s move was misunderstood and some even took it as an admission that even its GPUs could be vulnerable as well.

    To address the misconceptions about its products, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang clarified the company’s position during the Q & A portion at a press conference on Wednesday. “Our GPUs are immune, they’re not affected by these security issues,” Huang asserts. “What we did is we released driver updates to patch the CPU security vulnerability.”

    As Huang explains it, the patches are basically similar in nature to the patches provided by other tech companies and not an indication that its hardware is particularly vulnerable. “We are patching the CPU vulnerability the same way that Amazon, the same way that SAP, the same way that Microsoft, etc is patching because we have software as well,” he said.

    Summing it up, Huang declared, “I am absolutely certain that our GPU is not affected.”

    Just what level of threat do those vulnerabilities expose regular users of the internet? According to UPROXX, the general public should not be too worried about it. For starters, those vulnerabilities are very hard to exploit. In addition, there is really no indication that there were security issues that resulted in any exploitation. When you come to think of it, it even took those experts more than two decades to realize that the flaws existed.

    Everything should be fine as long as you run the fixes being prepared by various tech companies.

    [Featured image via Nvidia]

  • Intel CEO Updates Industry on Recent Security Issues – Watch Brian Krzanich CES Keynote

    Intel CEO Updates Industry on Recent Security Issues – Watch Brian Krzanich CES Keynote

    At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Intel CEO Brian Krzanich provided an update on important security issues currently facing Intel customers. He focused specifically on a recent security research study.

    “Today is a day when we all come together to celebrate the lifeblood of our amazing industry – and that’s really about innovation. But before we start, I want to take a moment to thank the industry for coming together for another purpose – to address the recent security research findings reported as “Meltdown” and “Spectre.”
    “The collaboration among so many companies to address this industry-wide issue across several different processor architectures has been truly remarkable. Security is job number one for Intel and our industry. So, the primary focus of our decisions and our discussions have been to keep our customer’s data safe.

    “As of now, we have not received any information that these exploits have been used to obtain customer data. And we are working tirelessly on these issues to ensure it stays that way. The best thing you can do to make sure your data remains safe is to apply any updates from your operating system vendor and system manufacturer as soon as they become available.

    “For our processors, products introduced in the past five years, Intel expects to issue updates for more than 90 percent of them within a week and the remaining by the end of January. We believe the performance impact of these updates is highly workload-dependent. As a result, we expect some workloads may have a larger impact than others, so we will continue working with the industry to minimize the impact on those workloads over time.

    “When we come together like this, there are endless possibilities. And I’d like to share some of those possibilities now with you. So, if you’ll indulge me, I’d love nothing more than to simply put my phone away and take this evening to truly celebrate innovation with you.”

    Watch Brian Krzanich’s full keynote below:

  • Is Microsoft Edge Better Than Google Chrome?

    Is Microsoft Edge Better Than Google Chrome?

    If you value your internet browser’s speed and security, you might have to ditch your current one. There’s a new kid on the block, one that claims to be even faster and more secure than the world’s leading browser, Google Chrome.

    Currently, the Chrome browser is a lot more popular than its rivals, controlling 58 percent market share. However, Microsoft plans to knock Chrome off its perch with a bold new claim for its Edge browser. The company started its assault on New Year’s Eve by releasing two new ads highlighting Windows 10 Edge’s superiority over Google Chrome in terms of speed, security, and battery efficiency.

    The 30-second ads claimed that “Microsoft Edge is up to 48 percent faster than Google Chrome” and also “The faster way to get things done on the web.”

    Microsoft also claims that its Edge browser is even safer than the Google Chrome. In the ad, the company points out that “Microsoft Edge blocks 18 percent more phishing sites than Google Chrome,” adding that using Edge is  “The safer way to get things done on the web.”

    Apparently, Edge is better on battery life too.

    While Microsoft has not exactly explained how it arrived at these two conclusions, it is possible that it may have based its statements on tests done by cybersecurity firm NSS Labs back in October of 2017. Based on the result of NSS Labs’ tests, Microsoft Edge showed the strongest browsing security by blocking 92.3 percent of phishing sites. Meanwhile, Google Chrome managed to block only 74.5 of the sites while Mozilla Firefox had a 61.1 percent block rate.

    At the moment, Google has not yet released a statement in response to Microsoft claims.

    [Featured image via YouTube]

  • Google Chrome 63 Ramps Up Security with Site Isolation

    Google Chrome 63 Ramps Up Security with Site Isolation

    Google’s campaign to convince more businesses to turn away from Microsoft’s Windows 10 Edge and onto its side has intensified with the release of Chrome 63. Google is confident that it’s new security feature, site isolation, will have more companies migrating to them.

    Better Security with Site Isolation

    Chrome’s new security feature will enable enterprise admins to configure the browser to render content for each page in its own dedicated process, keeping it isolated from other pages. The feature can also be customized so only specific webpages on a preset list will be kept separate.

    Site isolation is designed to stop malicious attacks that take advantage of vulnerabilities during the renderer process. The security measure kicks in during rendering because this is usually the point at which dangerous code is run in order to steal key data and information.

    In a statement, Google explained that keeping each page isolated provides stronger security. The company also suggests that this feature is best used for pages that require a log-in and carries sensitive content. Google also emphasized that this new security feature will result in significant memory usage on computers. Using site isolation can lead to memory use increase of about 10 to 20 percent.

    TLS 1.3 Rollout

    Chrome 63 will also introduce TLS 1.3 for Gmail. The Transport Layer Security feature is a protocol that permits more secure communication on the internet. Google explained that the previous version, which became the standard protocol way back in 2008, was in serious need of a revamp. TLS 1.3 is reportedly swifter and more secure.

    A larger rollout is set to be scheduled next year and while users are not expected to feel or see any major impact, Google warned administrators that not all systems will be interoperable with the new protocol. System admins are advised to check the company’s feedback forum for more information.

  • Here’s How Google Is Improving Gmail Security

    Here’s How Google Is Improving Gmail Security

    Google has made security a priority with Gmail early this year. Last month, the company announced changes to keep users safe including a broken lock icon display on messages when a user receives a message from or is about to send one to a person whose email service doesn’t support TLS encryption.

    Also part of the February update was a question mark displayed on a sender’s profile/avatar if the user gets a message that can’t be authenticated.

    Earlier this month, Google introduced improve data loss prevention features for enterprise customers using Gmail. This included optical character recognition for better scanning of attachments and the addition of new predefined content detectors.

    Google also launched two new detection parameters to give its largest Work customers better control over DLP policies, minimize false positives, and “take action commensurate with the level of perceived risk.” There is a count parameter and a confidence parameter. The former lets customers set up different DLP policies based on whether a message contains individual or bulk PII. The latter lets customers tighten or loosen detection criteria for the most commonly used detectors.

    On Thursday, Google announced partnerships with Comcast, Microsoft, and Yahoo to submit a draft IETF specification for “SMTP Strict Transport Security.” As the company describes, this is a new proposed standard that enables companies to ensure mail is only delivered through encrypted channels, and furthermore that encryption failures are reported for analysis.

    Google is also extending its “Safe Browsing” feature, which is already enabled in several of its products, to give Gmail users warnings if they click links Google has identified as potentially dangerous. This is being applied when Gmail is used in different web browsers and email apps.

    warning

    Finally, Google is launching a new full-page warning about state-sponsored attacks and how to stay safe from them.

    new warning

    Google notes that a very small percentage of users will ever see these (mainly activists, journalists, policy-makers, etc.), but those who do may see them instead of the existing warnings or in addition to them.

    Images via Google

  • Microsoft Announces Skype Universal Windows Platform App Preview for Windows 10

    Microsoft Announces Skype Universal Windows Platform App Preview for Windows 10

    Microsoft announced that in the coming weeks, it will release the initial version of the Skype Universal Windows Platform Preview app to Windows Insiders.

    This was created after collecting and analyzing feedback from the consumer preview of Skype Integration for Windows 10. The company says it learned a lot from that preview, and that informed the new preview app.

    “The integration enabled us to give people the fastest path to what they want to do with Skype,” a blog post from the Skype Team says. “We took advantage of the mobile paradigm with one app per task, such as the Phone app, Maps app, and so on. With this in mind, we released built-in, task oriented apps. This approach worked well in research: people saw value in single mode apps that promised a lighter weight and speedier path from intent to completion.”

    “But what we also learned from this feedback is that as the screen size gets bigger—large tablets, 2 in 1s and PCs for example—and you begin to use the apps, expectations shift and people want to limit app clutter,” it adds. “And like that, you once again want an app that lets you do anything you want within the comfort of one window. This is why we are introducing the Skype Universal Windows Platform app.”

    The look and feel have been simplified, and redundant menus have been eliminated. Global menus are now in a single Settings menu, and Skype says contextual menus will appear in upcoming releases.

    The feature list for the current release looks like this:

    – Sign in with your Microsoft Account and link a Skype ID
    – Show and change your availability
    – See a list of your existing Skype contacts
    – Initiate a chat with anyone in your contact list
    – See that the other person is typing
    – Logout
    – Make one-to-one voice and video calls and send messages
    – Personalize your experience with emoticons and Mojis
    – Send photos
    – See notifications for incoming calls and messages outside of the app
    – Participate in existing group chats

    Read the blog post for more about what to expect from upcoming releases. You can also find more in the FAQ document here.

    Image via Skype

  • Google Makes Slew Of Major Cloud Platform Announcements

    Google Makes Slew Of Major Cloud Platform Announcements

    At its Google Cloud Platform conference GCP Next 16, Google made a slew of announcements including partnerships with Splunk, BMC, and Tenable, the introduction of Stackdriver, machine learning advancements, and enterprise feature enhancements.

    Stackdriver is a unified monitoring, logging, and diagnostics service for Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, and combinations of both.

    “Stackdriver is the first service to include rich dashboards, uptime monitoring, alerting, log analysis, tracing, error reporting and production debugging, across GCP and AWS, in a single, unified offering,” says product manager Dan Belcher. “This combination significantly reduces the time that teams spend finding and fixing issues in production.”

    “Google Stackdriver, our integrated cloud monitoring and logging service, makes IT ops across Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Amazon Web Services (AWS) much easier,” Google says. “Going a step further, we’re integrating with Splunk, BMC and Tenable to significantly expand the IT ops, security and compliance capabilities available to GCP customers. Integration with rich third-party ops solutions is important for customers, and we know that many of you are already using these tools to manage hybrid operations in private and public clouds. With that in mind, these partnerships are focused on delivering: Easy configurable integration of Cloud Platform with partners; [and] New and complementary capabilities, specifically around Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and compliance reporting.”

    Among the results of Google’s machine learning efforts is the new Cloud Speech API, which gives you the same technology that powers voice search and voice typing for any app.

    New Cloud Platform enterprise enhancements include audit logging, IAM roles, customer supplied encryption keys, and improved flexibility of both cross-cloud interconnect and intra-cloud network segmentation options.

    This is all hardly scratching the surface of what Google announced today. They basically wrote a book about all the announcements, so I’d advise you to head over to the Cloud Platform blog for more on all of this (and more).

    Earlier this week, Google announced new regions for Cloud Platform.

    Image via Google

  • Google Drive for Android Gains 2 New Helpful Features

    Google Drive for Android Gains 2 New Helpful Features

    Google announced a new update for its Google Drive Android app, which should help users in the organization and productivity departments.

    There are two new feature: reverse sort and the ability to instantly edit with apps.

    “We’ve heard feedback that you want more flexibility in how files are sorted,” Google says. “We’re adding the popular request to allow reverse sorting. Simply tap the sort column at the top of Drive to swap the sort order.

    “If you have an editor app installed on your device, you can now jump into the editor directly from the file preview in Google Drive,” the company explains. “This is great if you want to make changes on the fly and have those changes saved back to Google Drive. Some common editor apps include Google Photos, Google Docs, and more.”

    The update is launching on both the rapid and scheduled releases with all end users getting access. The full roll-out should take one to three days.

    This is just the latest in a series of improvements Google has made to Google Drive and associated apps since the new year. Other recent improvements include:

    – new organizational features

    – new file sharing control for Google Apps admins

    – new notifications settings

    – voice improvements

    – new business templates

    Images via Google

  • Google Photos Gets Even Better With Smart Albums

    Google Photos Gets Even Better With Smart Albums

    Google Photos has proven quite popular since Google dropped the Google+ element and created it as a standalone app. Much of the cool factor was already there as the Google+ incarnation. This includes things like “auto-awesome,” which automatically enhance photos in different ways, and instant upload.

    Now, Google Photos is getting smarter albums.

    “Starting today, after an event or trip, Google Photos will suggest a new album for you, curated with just your best shots,” explains product manager Francois de Halleux. “It’ll also add maps to show how far you traveled and location pins to remember where you went—because it’s not always easy to recall the late-night diner you hit on your road trip, or which campsite you pitched the tent in when arriving after dark.”

    “You can add text captions to the album to describe the view from the small hill huge mountain you climbed, and turn on collaboration to let others add their own photos,” he adds. “Or if you want to create one yourself, any existing album can now be customized with maps, location pins, and text. Voilà: You have a beautiful album ready to share.”

    The new albums are rolling out on Android, iOS, and the web starting today.

    Image via Google

  • Google Just Renamed The Chromecast App

    Google Just Renamed The Chromecast App

    Google announced that it has renamed the Chromecast app to fit better with its strategy of providing cast technology across more device. When the app was first launched, the Chromecast name made sense because Chromecast was the only device that utilized it at the time, and Google had to do so some branding around that device, which has since proven pretty popular.

    Since Chromecast was released, however, more devices have emerged to use Google Cast, including speakers, Android TVs, game consoles, etc.

    Now, the app is simply called the Google Cast app. The updated app is rolling out this week on both Android and iOS.

    Along with this announcement, Google announced support from the new VIZIO SmartCat P-Series displays and VIZIO soundbars and speakers.

    “The P-series now comes with Google Cast built in, which means you can use your smartphone or tablet as your remote to cast your favorite entertainment directly to the big screen,” says product manager Adam Champy. “Simply tap the Cast button from apps like Netflix to watch Daredevil, YouTube to stream daredevil stunts, or Google Play Music to get pumped for your own stunts. You can also mirror any website from the Chrome browser on your laptop. So whether you’re planning your next vacation and looking through flights and hotels with the family, or want to share a video from your last epic trip, just look for the Google Cast extension in the corner of your desktop browser.”

    “The P-Series also supports casting Ultra HD (up to 4K) and Dolby Vision High Dynamic Range content (bright, clear colors!),” Champy adds. “Included with every P-series is VIZIO’s 6” Android tablet remote, a tablet that lives in the living room and can cast all your favorite content.”

    Image via Google

  • Google Adds Regions To Cloud Platform

    Google Adds Regions To Cloud Platform

    Google announced that it will add two new regions to Cloud Platform later this year. These are a U.S. Western region in Oregon and an East Asia region in (Tokyo) Japan.

    These will actually just be the first two of over 10 additional regions the company will be adding to its network through next year. Product manager Varun Sakalkar says in a blog post:

    We’re opening these new regions to help Cloud Platform customers deploy services and applications nearer to their own customers, for lower latency and greater responsiveness. With these new regions, even more applications become candidates to run on Cloud Platform, and get the benefits of Google-level scale and industry leading price/performance.

    The Japan region will be in beta for at least a month. You can fill out this survey to sign up for the beta, and we’ll notify you as soon as it’s ready. If you’re interested in Oregon, please fill out this survey to be notified.

    Last year, they opened a new U.S. east coast region in South Carolina. Google notes that each region has multiple availability zones.

    Image via Google

  • Amazon Launches Cloud Drive Unlimited Storage in Canada

    Amazon Launches Cloud Drive Unlimited Storage in Canada

    Amazon announced the launch of unlimited storage with Amazon Cloud Drive to customers in Canada. They’re offering two storage plans including unlimited storage and unlimited photos.

    The former plan is $59.99 per year, and the latter is $11.99 per year. Both plans come with free 3-month trials.

    “With the unlimited plans, customers no longer need to worry about how much storage is needed to keep their content safe and secure—they can choose either the Unlimited Storage Plan or Unlimited Photos Plan and only pay one flat fee per year,” the company says. “All their content is securely stored and available for download at their original size and resolution, so memories are protected for a lifetime.”

    “Most people have a lifetime of birthdays, vacations, holidays, and everyday moments stored across numerous devices. And, they don’t know how many gigabytes of storage they need to back all of them up,” says Josh Petersen, Director of Amazon Cloud Drive. “With the two new plans we are introducing today, customers don’t need to worry about storage space—they now have an affordable, secure solution to store unlimited amounts of photos, videos, movies, music, and files in one convenient place.”

    The new plans are available starting today.

  • Apple Unveils iPhone SE, New iPad Pro

    Apple Unveils iPhone SE, New iPad Pro

    Apple held its big event on Monday, making several announcements. Among these were the iPhone SE and the new 9.7-inch iPad Pro.

    The new phone has a four-inch display, an aluminum design, and new matte-chamfered edges, a color-matched stainless steel Apple logo, and four metallic finishes.

    The device has the same 64-bit A9 chip offered in iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, longer battery life, faster wireless, a 12-megapixel iSight camera with Apple’s Live Photos feature and 4K video, and Touch ID with Apple Pay.

    Apple SVP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller said, “iPhone SE is an exciting new idea — we started with a beloved, iconic design and reinvented it from the inside out. The result is the most beautiful and powerful phone with a four-inch display in the world. iPhone SE is packed with a stunning four-inch Retina display, advanced 64-bit A9 chip with M9 motion co-processor, longer battery life, 12-megapixel iSight camera with True Tone flash, Live Photos, 4K video, faster LTE and Wi-Fi, and Touch ID with Apple Pay. Everyone who wants a smaller phone is going to love iPhone SE.”

    The device will be available in gray, silver, old, and rose gold metallic finishes in 16GB and 64GB models starting at $399 in the US.

    iphone-se

    You’ll be able to order one on March 24 with availability coming March 31 if you live in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Singapore, the UK, US Virgin Islands or the US.

    The new 9.7-inch iPad Pro weighs a pound, and features a new pro Retina display with improved brightness and color, lower reflectivity, Night Shift mode, and new True Tone display technology, which dynamically adjusts white balance.

    The device has a 64-bit A9X chip, a four-speaker audio system, a 12-megapixel iSight camera supporting Live Photos and 4K video, a 5-megapixel FaceTime HD camera, and faster wireless technologies. The device supports Apple Pencil and a new Smart Keyboard cover.

    “iPad Pro is a new generation of iPad that is indispensable and immersive, enabling people to be more productive and more creative. It’s incredibly fast, extremely portable, and completely natural to use with your fingers, Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard. And now it comes in two sizes,” said Schiller. “The 9.7-inch iPad Pro has a new Retina display with True Tone technology, four-speaker audio system, blazing fast A9X chip, 12-megapixel iSight camera, 5-megapixel FaceTime HD camera, faster wireless, and support for Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard. It is the ultimate upgrade for existing iPad users and replacement for PC users.”

    The 9.7-inch iPad Pro comes in silver, gray, gold, and rose gold. It starts at $599 (US) for the 32GB with Wi-Fi model and $729 for the 32GB Wi-Fi + Cellular model. Both are also available in 128GB and 256GB capacities. The latter is the highest of any iOS device.

    ipad-pro

    The 9.7-inch iPad Pro will be available to order on March 24. It will be in Apple Retail stores on Thursday, March 31, in Australia, Canada, China (Wi-Fi models only), France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Singapore, the UK, US Virgin Islands and the US.

    Images via Apple

  • Microsoft Edge Browser To Get Porting Tool For Chrome Extensions

    Microsoft Edge Browser To Get Porting Tool For Chrome Extensions

    Last week, Microsoft announced the first set of browser extensions for Microsoft Edge. They’re now available via the Windows Insider Program.

    The initial extensions include: Microsoft Translator, Mouse Gestures, and Reddit Enhancement Suite.

    Microsoft’s Jacob Rossi took to Twitter (via Windows Central) to say that the company is working on a tool to port Chrome extensions to Edge, so that should open users of Microsoft’s browser up to many more options.

    Microsoft’s own preview extensions are available with build 14291, just released to the Fast ring. To add an extension, download it, select Run from the download notification, select More and then Extensions, and select Load extension. Then, choose the extension folder, and select Select folder.

    Image via Microsoft

  • GoDaddy Launches Cloud Servers

    GoDaddy Launches Cloud Servers

    GoDaddy just announced the global availability of its new Cloud Servers product.

    “Designed to help the underserved market of individual developers, tech entrepreneurs and IT professionals, the scalable Cloud platform offers a pay as you go utility billing model to meet the needs of a unique customer base: developers who build solutions for small businesses worldwide,” a spokesperson for the company tells WebProNews.

    “Providing a distinct competitive advantage against hosting-only providers, Cloud Servers: is integrated with a suite of GoDaddy products, including domain names; will be powered by a partnership with Bitnami, meaning one-click optimized installation for app solutions like WordPress, Drupal, Odoo and Magento; is built on OpenStack in line with GoDaddy’s commitment to open source technology; [and] offers the highest level of stability and security,” the spokesperson adds.

    Cloud Servers customers get full access to various public facing APIs. You can automatically backup your data without downtime to keep user data and configuration covered. They’re guaranteeing 99.9% uptime.

    User servers can be kept in constant contact with each other with private networking maintaining secure communication and protocols, GodDaddy says. You can assign permanent IPs and multiple IP addresses to a single server with as many available as needed.

    Supported distributions include: Ubuntu 14.04, CentOS 6 & 7, Fedora 23, Debian 8, FreeBSD, CoreOS and Arch Linux.

    At launch, Cloud Servers are only in U.S. datacenters.

  • Microsoft Edge Browser Gets Extensions (In Preview)

    Microsoft Edge Browser Gets Extensions (In Preview)

    Microsoft announced the first set of browser extensions for Microsoft Edge. They’re now availble in preview via the Windows Insider Program.

    Build 14291 was just released to the Fast ring, and the extensions are included. The initial extensions include: Microsoft Translator, Mouse Gestures, and Reddit Enhancement Suite.

    To add an extension, download it, select Run from the download notification, select More and then Extensions, and select Load extension. Then, choose the extension folder, and select Select folder.

    “In keeping with our commitment to an interoperable web, we’re participating in the W3C Browser Extension Community Group’s efforts to define standardized extension APIs based on familiar web technologies,” the Edge team says in a blog post. “Today, we’re previewing our first step towards that goal.”

    “This release supports a selection of preview extensions that have been validated by our team to work with the current set of supported APIs,” it adds. “Some planned APIs are not yet supported, but will be coming in future previews. We’ll share additional examples of extensions with future releases.”

    You can check out the extensions page here.

    Image via YouTube

  • Microsoft Upgrades Existing Windows Phone 8.1 Devices to Windows 10 Mobile

    Microsoft Upgrades Existing Windows Phone 8.1 Devices to Windows 10 Mobile

    Microsoft announce that it is now beginning the roll-out of Windows 10 Mobile to select Windows Phone 8.1 devices.

    The list of supported devices for this include: Lumia 1520, 930, 640, 640XL, 730, 735, 830, 532, 535, 540, 635 1GB, 636 1GB, 638 1GB, 430, 435, BLU Win HD w510u, BLU Win HD LTE x150q, and MCJ Madosma Q501.

    This list could grow in time.

    “This list includes a limited set of Windows Phone 8.1 devices and does not include some devices that are currently running Windows 10 Mobile in the Windows 10 Mobile Insider program,” notes Microsoft’s Micahel Fortin. “As Windows 10 delivers significant new innovations, many older devices are not able to successfully upgrade without an impact on the customer experience. Our goal is to only offer the Windows 10 upgrade to devices that we are confident can continue to deliver a good customer experience.”

    “Consistent with our approach to the Windows 10 PC upgrade, we are focused on delivering a high quality experience for our customers,” he says. “The Windows 10 Upgrade Advisor app can be downloaded from the Windows Store to see if the upgrade is available for your device.”

    Microsoft provides an Upgrade Advisor app for upgrading here.

    Twitter announced the launch of a new Windows 10 for Mobile app on Wednesday.

    Image via Microsoft

  • Yahoo Mail Gets Enhanced Link Previews

    Yahoo Mail Gets Enhanced Link Previews

    Yahoo Mail announced new enhanced link previews that a spokesperson for Yahoo says “transform the typical blue link into a visual, informative card that gives email recipients a snapshot of the content right in their email.”

    “With link previews, you can now play video and audio right in the email, and share the link directly to your social networks,” they said. “We’ve also improved the underlying technology to produce a richer preview with price, movie title, article author and more.”

    With the new previews, you can control the size and location to select where the preview fits best in the email (inline with text or at the bottom).

    Any link preview you receive in an email can be shared on Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter with the share button at the top of the preview image.

    Yahoo talks about the new previews in a blog post here.

    Last week, Yahoo announced that people can now sign up for a new Yahoo Mail account using an existing email address and without having to create a new Yahoo address.

    Images via Yahoo

  • Google Compute Engine Gains Regional Instance Groups

    Google Compute Engine Gains Regional Instance Groups

    Google announced the addition of a new feature for Google Compute Engine Autoscaler and Managed Instant Groups called Regional Instance Groups, which enables region-specific control when scaling compute resources.

    As the company notes, this is important for those that need high availability.

    The feature lets you set up infrastructure that automatically spreads VM instances across three zones of the region while keeping the spread equal as you change group size.

    “Now, with region-specific control, in the rare event of a bad build, network issues or zone failure, you’re better protected against losing your service,” says product manager Jerzy Foryciarz. “Since your VM instances are equally spread across three zones, two-thirds of them will not be impacted. On top of that, when you’re using Autoscaler, it will notice increased traffic in other zones and adjust their number accordingly. After the faulty zone goes back to normal, the load will be rebalanced to use all three zones again.”

    “Setup is easy,” Foryciarz adds. “If you choose to use regional configuration, simply select Multi-Zone group while creating a Managed Instance Group. At this point, your choice of locations are regions and the scope of your Managed Instance Group and Autoscaler becomes regional.”

    According to Google, simplification of configurations allowing for higher availability has been one of the top requested features for Google Compute Engine Autoscaler and Manage Instance Groups since general availability was announced in September.

    Images via Google

  • AWS Database Migration Service Available to All

    AWS Database Migration Service Available to All

    Amazon announced that over 1,000 databases have migrated to Amazon Web Services since January 1, and that the AWS Database Migration Service is now available to all customers.

    AWS Database Migration Service is a managed service that lets customers migrate Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL databases from on-premises datacenters to AWS with “virtually no” downtime.

    Of the 1,000+ databases migrated, Amazon says many also used the AWS Schema Conversion Tool to switch database engines.

    “Customers migrating their databases to the cloud have faced a difficult choice: either take their database out of service while they copy the data (losing revenue and traffic in the process), or purchase migration tools that typically cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Amazon said. “The AWS Database Migration Service solves this problem by reducing the complexity, cost, and downtime of database migration, making it possible for customers to migrate terabyte-sized on-premises Oracle, SQL Server, and open source databases to the Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) or to a database running on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for as little as $3/TB and with virtually no downtime.”

    “Hundreds of customers moved more than a thousand of their on-premises databases to Amazon Aurora, other Amazon RDS engines, or databases running on Amazon EC2 during the preview of the AWS Database Migration Service,” said Hal Berenson, Vice President, Relational Database Services for AWS. “Customers repeatedly told us they wanted help moving their on-premises databases to AWS, and also moving to more open database engine options, but the response to the AWS Database Migration Service has been even stronger than we expected. In the preview, one-third of the database migrations used the AWS Database Migration Service to not only move databases to the AWS Cloud, but also to switch database engines in the process.”

    With the migration service, customers pay an hourly fee, and according to the company, set-up only takes ten minutes.

    The service can be accessed from the AWS Management Console. It’s available in the US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), US West (N. California), EU (Ireland), EU (Frankfurt), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), and Asia Pacific (Tokyo) regions now. In the coming months, it will be available in additional regions.

    Image via Amazon