Try Microsoft Paint 3D now -- no need to wait for Windows 10 Creators Update!
At yesterday's event in New York, Microsoft revealed Windows 10 Creators Update. Due to launch in the spring of 2017, this next update to Windows 10 sees Microsoft shifting some of its focus to 3D.
Earlier in the year we learned about the updated Paint app thanks to a leak, but now Microsoft has decided to make a preview version of the app available for anyone to try out. In order to test out Paint 3D Preview you will need to be a Windows Insider with Build 14800 or greater installed, and then you can try out the 3D capabilities of the app for yourself.
Emoji are works of modern art
The headline is not a personal opinion -- it's the view of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Just around the corner from Trump Tower, MoMA is home to works by the likes of Dali, Lichtenstein and Warhol. Now they have been joined by the original emoji designs from the 1990s.
The 176 emoji are the handiwork of Shigetaka Kurita, and the "12 x 12 pixel humble masterpieces" are now on display alongside the works of other great artists. Emoji changed the landscape of communication, and their addition to MoMA recognizes this.
Open source Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit democratizes AI and deep learning
Like many technology companies, Microsoft is pinning a lot on AI -- including the areas of speech and image recognition. To help speed up development, and to enable others to start working on their own projects, the company has released an updated, open source version of the Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit.
This is a deep learning toolkit, previously known as the Computational Network Toolkit (CNTK), and it's available for anyone to use completely free of charge. The toolkit has applications far beyond speech recognition, and it has already been used in Bing, and the latest version includes support for Python and C++.
Vodafone hit with record fine for 'serious and sustained' breaches of consumer protection rules
The world's second-largest mobile operator, Vodafone, has been handed a £4.76 million ($5.60 million) fine by industry regulator Ofcom. The fine -- the largest ever for a telecoms company -- was a result of Vodafone's "serious and sustained" failings.
The company failed to top-up customers' accounts when they bought credit, and failed to act quickly enough to rectify the problem. The failings cost customers £150,000, and it is now going to cost Vodafone £3.7 million; the remaining £925,000 of the fine is for failures with complaint handling.
Oops! Apple leaks photo of new MacBook Pro with OLED Magic Toolbar
The release of macOS 10.12.1 was a fairly unremarkable affair... apart from one thing. In addition to the expected fixes and changes, hidden in the code are images relating to Apple Pay that appear to show off the new MacBook Pro -- the updated model that's not due to be announced until the upcoming event on 27 October.
The images are very revealing too, showing off a few surprises that Apple would probably have liked to have kept secret until the big day. Gone are the function keys at the top of the keyboard, replaced instead by a touch sensitive OLED panel presumed to be called the Magic Toolbar. There's also -- it appears -- built in support for Touch ID, and a few other changes.
Entire Game of Thrones season 7 plot leaks to Reddit
The internet has posed a serious problem for movie and television studios for many years now. Usually it is pirated copies of movies and shows that are cause for concern, but for the likes of the Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, it's the dreaded spoiler that needs to be tamed.
Spoilers tend to be a problem on Facebook and other social media the night after a big show has aired, as those yet to watch the show don’t want to have the plot ruined. In the case of season 7 of Game of Thrones however -- not due to air until the middle of next year -- the problem is that the entire plot has leaked to Reddit.
Rowhammer memory attack can root Android phones in seconds
Smartphones from LG, Samsung and Motorola are all vulnerable to an attack that makes it possible to gain root access in a matter of seconds. Known as Rowhammer, the attack works using a bit flipping technique that exploits a vulnerability in the design of RAM chips.
Because the attack takes advantage of a physical aspect of design, it is going to be difficult to quickly devise a fix. In the meantime, millions of smartphones are at risk of compromise in what could be as large an issue as the recently-discovered Dirty COW bug -- and there's an app you can use to check if you are at risk.
How to disable new tab article suggestions in Chrome 54 for Android
If you've updated Chrome on your Android smartphone to version 54, you may have noticed an annoyance. When you open a new tab, Google has now decided to spam users with "article suggestions". These -- you will be pleased to hear -- can be banished.
There's more than one reason that you might want to get rid of these suggestions, not least of which is that the feature involves Google keeping an eye on the sites you visit to come up with the suggestions. But the feature also replaces the far more useful bookmarks, and this is going to be enough to tip many users over the edge. Here's how to disable article suggestions.
New Sway Democracy app wants to help you choose between Trump and Clinton
You've probably noticed that there's an election just around the corner. As Trump and Clinton battle it out there have been accusations that Russia is trying to interfere with the result, Julian Assange has been cut off from the internet to prevent him meddling, and Google has released a fact checker to help separate political fact from fiction.
There's no denying that this is one of the most important US elections ever, and the balance of power could be tipped by an important demographic -- millennials. With this in mind, a new app aims to help educate younger voters so no matter who they vote for, they are doing so in an informed way. Enter Sway Democracy.
Children are at risk from online predators as UK government fails to implement sexual grooming laws
The UK government has failed to implement promised laws that would help to protect vulnerable children from online predators in England and Wales. Back in 2014, the then-Prime Minister David Cameron said he would introduce a new criminal offense of sexual communication with a child, effectively ensnaring paedolphiles.
The law would help to reduce the problem of "grooming", the practice of luring in a child and gaining their trust with a view to later abusing that trust. Cameron's announcement more than 18 months ago was welcomed as it eliminated a legal loophole, but now children's charities are unhappy that laws that could prevent sex abuse have not been written onto the statute.
Google's updated privacy policy means personally identifiable ad tracking is now go, go, go!
That Google encroaches on user privacy is not a startling revelation by any stretch of the imagination. But a recent change to the company's Privacy Policy means that information from DoubleClick ads can now be used to identify individuals and track them online.
The changes to the policy have not been hidden -- the details and alterations are visible in an archived copy of the document -- but it has not been advertised either. The implications of the change are huge. Since purchasing DoubleClick back in 2007, Google kept identifiable user data separate from anonymized ad tracking. This is no longer the case.
Falling pound forces Microsoft to raise software and cloud prices
The post-Brexit fallout continues. The UK has already seen price hikes from a number of countries across a range of sectors, and the latest announcement comes from Microsoft.
The technology giant warns that starting in January 2017, prices of enterprise software and cloud services will rise for anyone paying in pounds sterling. The UK's decision to leave the EU has seen the value of the pound plummet, and Microsoft is going to increase prices by up to 22 percent to make up for this.
Serious Dirty COW bug leaves millions of Linux users vulnerable to attack
A vulnerability discovered in the Linux kernel has been present for nine years, and users are being advised to seek out and install a patch as soon as they possibly can. Dubbed Dirty COW, the bug is a privilege escalation vulnerability which can be found in just about every Linux distro out there.
Discovered by security expert Phil Oester, Dirty COW is described as one of the most serious bugs of its type ever found in Linux. Assigned the code CVE-2016-5195, there is evidence that the vulnerability has been exploited and a website set up to alert people to the problem advises that the "security community should deploy honeypots that entrap attackers and to alert about exploitation attempts".
76 percent of all Windows 10 users have installed Windows 10 Anniversary Update
Even after a staggered roll out of Windows 10 Anniversary Update, Microsoft has managed to push the major operating system update to more than three-quarters of Windows 10 users.
The latest figures from AdDuplex show that uptake of Windows 10 Anniversary Update has accelerated dramatically. The latest version of Windows 10 is now installed on no less than 76.6 percent of Windows 10 PCs.
Amnesty International ranks message apps according to privacy -- Facebook wins!
Despite a desire to be more connected than ever before, people are simultaneously more concerned than ever about their security and privacy. This is certainly true when it comes to messaging tools, and the privacy features offered by a particular app or service can be what sways your decision to use it one way or the other.
Justice group Amnesty International has spent some time analyzing the privacy and encryption found in a number of popular messaging tools and compiled results in a ranked list. The findings make for interesting reading, not least because Facebook is ranked the most highly.
Sofia Elizabella's Bio
Sofia Wyciślik-Wilson is a queer, transgender journalist based in Poland. She has been writing about technology for more than two decades, and after years working for magazines, her writing moved online. She is fueled by literature, music, nature, and vegetables. You can find her on Bluesky and Mastodon. If you like what you read, you can Buy her a Coffee!
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