Software

Although Microsoft's former CEO, Steve Ballmer, called it a few years ago nothing less than "a cancer," Linux is now at the core of an IoT solution that comes from Redmond. Azure Sphere includes microcontrollers, a cloud-based security service, and an operating system that includes a custom Linux kernel.

Three “clues” have been unearthed that all seemingly point toward the development of Watch Dogs 3. Watch Dogs was released by Ubisoft in 2014 and was a huge commercial success. The sequel landed in 2016 and also received favorable reviews. Unsurprisingly, Ubisoft has not commented on the rumors in regard to a possible third title in the series.

Law enforcement agencies in the US and UK have accused Russia of attempting to hack routers on a global scale. The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has released an alert today entitled “Russian State-Sponsored Cyber Actors Targeting Network Infrastructure Devices.” Apparently, millions of network devices have been targeted.

British tabloid newspaper The Daily Star has reported that Sony may be planning to discontinue the PlayStation Vita handheld game console, possibly this year. The device was launched in 2011, and although it’s believed it has sold 10 to 15 million units, it just hasn’t managed to keep up with the fierce competition from Nintendo.

Introduced with the OxygenOS Open Beta all the way back in January, the new gesture-based navigation system for the OnePlus 5T is now available for everyone thanks to the OxygenOS 5.1.0 update. Once this feature is enabled, the navigation buttons are hidden, and the user needs to swipe the display for Home, Back, and Recent Apps.

A study by Tech.pinion has shown Facebook's ever-dwindling fortunes in the eyes of the public. According to the study, 17% of the population has deleted the app from their smartphones since the details of the recent privacy violation case were brought to light a few weeks ago. A further 9% has deactivated their accounts altogether.

The Android 8.1 Oreo OTA update for the Razer Phone has started its rollout earlier today. Its list of features includes multiple optimizations, an improved visual layout, as well as the latest security patches and bug fixes. The update rolls out in stages and all Razer Phone users should get the new firmware within the coming weeks.

Although the stable Android Oreo firmware for the Nokia 3 smartphone brings a faster boot time, autofill, picture-in-picture mode, Instant Apps, Google Play Protect, and the April security patch, it also takes away a feature that was present in the latest beta, namely the Night Light mode.

The upcoming Gmail design update aims to bring the desktop user experience closer to that provided by the email service on mobile devices. The list of features currently being tested includes smart replies, snooze, a new sidebar, as well as a special mode that stops email recipients from forwarding certain emails.

Sega has announced its classic adventure games Shenmue and Shenmue II will be made available for the PC sometime this year. Shenmue was originally released for the Dreamcast console in 1999, with a sequel coming out shortly afterwards, in 2001. A further sequel, which received over US$6 million in funding through a Kickstarter project, is also expected later on this year.

The Japanese video-game developer Sega has unveiled a Mega Drive Mini console at the recent Sega Fes 2018 event. The original Sega Mega Drive (known as the Genesis in North America) was released in Japan in 1988, and it ended up being immensely popular with over 30 million consoles sold worldwide. The micro-console is expected to be released later this year.

Xiaomi has a terrible history with releasing kernel sources—a direct violation of the General Public License. The company looks to have seen the light, with a company spokesperson declaring that devices will now have their sources released to the public, albeit with a slight caveat.

A report from Kotaku about the video-game company Hangar 13 has mentioned the development of a new BioShock game. BioShock Infinite was the last release in the popular series from 2K Games, and that title came out in 2013. There has been no official announcement about the game yet, which is apparently codenamed “Parkside.”

Less than a month since it managed to reach 200 million users within a 30-day period, Telegram Messenger has to take a serious blow as the Russian authorities decide to ban its use in the country. The reason for this decision is the company's unwillingness to provide the keys required by the Federal Security Service to decrypt the users' messages.

Artists, designers, and editors with Surface Pro 4's can now enjoy full on-screen controls when using a Surface Dial on their Surface device. The Surface Dial provides basic functionality for all Bluetooth 4.0 LE equipped Windows 10 devices, but only the Surface Studio, Surface Book 2, Surface Pro 2017, and Surface Pro 4 provide the full experience.

Bitcoin’s price rocketed for a short period on April 12, soaring from US$6,852 to US$7,834 in the space of barely two hours. The virtual currency’s value has been dropping consistently since December 2017, when it enjoyed record prices of over US$19,000. The latest close for the famous digital coin was US$7,819.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has held its annual award ceremony for the video-game industry. The 2018 event was a great success for Nintendo, which took home three prizes, and for the dark fantasy action game Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, which scooped up five of the prestigious awards. The Best Game category was won by What Remains of Edith Finch.

LG has announced the establishment of a new "Software Update Center" at its R&D facility in Korea. The new department will focus solely on delivering timely updates to its Android devices across all of its global markets.

With the promise of all-day battery life, always-on LTE, and smartphone-like standby and resume, the first Windows 10 on ARM devices are here. Windows 10 on ARM may be great feat of engineering, but it does come with limitations unique to it, impacting what one can and cannot get out of an ARM-powered PC. Windows 10 on ARM is still in its infancy and, in its current manifestation, is better worth skipping for future refinements.

The American video-game developer behind Destiny 2, Bungie, has announced the release date for the second expansion to the online first-person shooter. Warmind will be released on May 8, at the same time as the start of Season Three of the game, and a reveal stream on Twitch will begin on April 24. Destiny 2 was released in September 2017 and the first expansion, Curse of Osiris, was released shortly afterwards.

The well-known video-game tracking website Steam Spy will be shutting down after Valve announced changes to Steam’s privacy settings. The specific change that has affected Steam Spy’s operations is the default hiding of a user’s game library. Steam Spy scraped data from public profiles on the software distribution platform to estimate overall game sales.

A new trailer has been released for Overkill’s The Walking Dead and it certainly looks impressive. The cinematic clip focuses on Maya, who will be one of the playable characters in the game. Overkill Software announced the title back in 2014 and it was originally scheduled to appear in 2016. The current release date for the first-person shooter is fall 2018.

Three South Korean video-game developers have been severely punished by the country’s Fair Trade Commission in regard to the use of loot boxes in some of their games. Nexon, Netmarble, and NextFloor are the companies facing fines totaling the equivalent of US$945,000. The fines were imposed because of an apparent lack of information offered by the firms involved.

A bug in Google Chrome is causing the inbuilt antivirus scanner in the browser to initiate scans during startup causing delays in launching the program. While Google will be addressing this bug in a future patch, the only workaround right now is to clear the download history to prevent the scan from occurring at launch.

Microsoft has released the source code for the original Windows File Manager that debuted nearly 28 years ago in Windows 3.0. The source code has been modified a bit to make it compatible with modern Windows versions and can be downloaded via GitHub and compiled using Visual Studio 2015 and above.

The Fermi microarchitecture was first released 8 years ago, and was used in the 400, 500, 600 series on desktop and mobile, as well as the 700 and 800 series mobile cards. Nvidia has now stopped support for these GPUs, with a full list of affected cards in the article.

Xiaomi has released Nougat kernel sourced for the Redmi Note 5 Pro. This will be yet another device that Xiaomi has released sources for over the past few months, which could be an indication of a change in the company's stance on community development.

Facebook will allow users to delete/unsend their messages soon. This "feature" was unlikely to be released anytime soon but the company has promised to do so after it was revealed that company executives have had the ability to unsend messages in their private conversations for a while now.

As part of a feature upgrade to Outlook.com and OneDrive, Microsoft is adding security and privacy features to help users protect their synced files and sent emails. These include password protected sharing, optional end-to-end email encryption, attachment encryption, and forwarding-prevention measures.

Ransomware has the ability to cause a lot of problems for those who aren't prepared. Businesses and students can lose days or weeks worth of work, and consumers can find years worth of treasured photos are no longer accessible. People are bad at doing regular backups, and that's why ransomware protection is an important feature for storage and syncing products.

The Blackberry Priv has received yet another update. The company officially ended support for the device a few months ago but promised that patches would be sent out in the event of a vulnerability being found. This appears to be one of such events.

For a limited time Paradox Interactive is offering Crusader Kings II for free (yours to keep). CK2 is a grand strategy game set in medieval Europe where players use warfare, assassinations, and strategic marriages to attempt to build a dynasty that spans over hundreds of years.

PC game retail joins peripherals, laptops, and smartphones in Razer's product line up as they diversify their portfolio. The store sells legitimate keys that can be redeemed on other platforms such as Valve's Steam and Ubisoft's Uplay. There is a strong focus on rewards/loyalty points with access to exclusives and discounts on Razer hardware acting as draw cards.

If Microsoft is serious about keeping its Windows 10 on ARM dreams alive, it needs to bring support for 64-bit x86-based apps to the platform as soon as possible. A new SDK set to be introduced next month could help make this happen sooner rather than later.

Blizzard Entertainment has announced a launch date for the next World of Warcraft expansion, Battle for Azeroth. The expansion will be released on August 14 and is currently available for pre-order. The standard edition of the latest WoW title is priced at US$49.99 and there is also a digital deluxe edition available for US$69.99.

Massive Entertainment, the Swedish video-game developer behind Tom Clancy’s The Division, may be working on a new battle royale game. It has been reported that the Ubisoft-owned subsidiary has been tasked by the French gaming giant to come up with something in this massively popular genre that could challenge titles such as Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

After big names like Amazon, eBay, and Twitter discontinued their apps for Apple Watch, the time has come for Instagram to do the same. The Instagram app for Apple's wearable will no longer provide a standalone experience once users upgrade to version 39 on iOS, and it will be replaced by various notifications.

There was some excitement among JRPG fans in February when a PC port of Chrono Trigger unexpectedly turned up on Steam. However, that excitement soon turned to exasperation as many gamers complained about the graphics and the user interface. The company behind Chrono Trigger, Square Enix, is aiming to release a series of patches to address the most common issues.

The Chrome Web Store has updated its policy concerning extensions with crypto-mining scripts, outright banning such extensions from the store. Any existing extensions that can be used for mining cryptocurrencies will be removed by the end of June 2018. While the policy will prevent future extensions that are obviously used for crypto-mining, it remains to be seen if this will solve the problem of surreptitious mining scripts hidden in otherwise innocuous extensions.

The S6 was released in April 2015. The device has had its time out in the sun but that is at an end, with Samsung officially ending support for the device. The S6 Edge, S6 Active, and S6 Edge+ also get the same treatment, with the Note 5 set to follow in a few months.

A developer on XDA has devised a means of unlocking bootloaders of the Nokia 2, Nokia 5, Nokia 6, and Nokia 8. While testers have confirmed the fact that it does work, the methods involved may not be the safest.

After a rather long wait, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 phablet owners on T-Mobile can finally enjoy the benefits delivered by the Android Oreo update. Sadly, the release notes page has not been updated by T-Mobile yet, but the update is most likely based on Android 8.0, as it happens with the other Samsung flagships that recently received the update.

Intel takes the guesswork out of game compatibility by testing the most popular games throughout the Core ix series themselves. The most recent additions are the Core i7-8809G and Core i7-8705G with suggested graphical settings on current titles for what Intel deems would be an optimal gaming experience.

If you are looking for a Facebook alternative, then Arbtr might be your thing. Returning to the basics of social networking, this Kickstarter project aims to create an "anti-feed" where users can share a single thing at a time. The project has just been posted and there are 30 days left to meet the US$32,551 goal.

In case you weren’t aware, March 31 is World Backup Day. Today is the day when computer users should no longer procrastinate with that crucial task and take a few moments to backup their data. It might seem like an April Fools’ Day joke, but facts offered by the World Backup Day website show just how important it is to keep a regular backup of your files.

After being around for less than a decade, Google's URL shortener goo.gl — initially used for Feedburner and Google Toolbar — will go down in three stages. Support for it went down yesterday, from April 13 only existing users will be able to create short links, and the service is scheduled to go down for good on March 30, 2019.

Although War Thunder has been around for more than 5 years, today its players can enjoy the experience of a sub commander for the first time. Although the "Silent Thunder" game mode is now only an April Fools' Day joke, it might also become a part of the game in the future, as it happened with last year's modern tanks.

The upcoming Google Pixel 3 flagship is expected to feature a new Pixel Launcher design, but some of the changes have been already discovered inside the APK file of the existing app by a senior member of the popular XDA Developers community. The tech giant is expected to show these changes in May, at this year's Google I/O 2018 developer conference.

Apple has baked a new privacy feature into iOS 11.3, the latest software update for its iPhones and iPads. Following the update, a new icon will appear each time personal information is required to enable a service providing users with a new layer of transparency over how their data is handled.