Sofia Elizabella Wyciślik-Wilson

Don't get too excited. Actually, don’t get excited at all. To say thanks for taking the trouble to download a multi-gigabyte image, going to the hassle of setting up a virtual machine or installing a new operating system on a spare computer, for providing feedback on the embryonic Windows 10 Technical Preview, Microsoft has a gift for members of the Windows Insider Program. Three wallpapers.

Yes, you did read that correctly. Three. Wallpapers. Available at resolutions from 1280×1024 all the way up to 4K, the theme linking each of the images is the construction of Windows 10. Microsoft seems to think that a Windows Insider might want to "show your pride about helping us build Windows 10", so the wallpapers give a chance to herald your Insider status to passers-by.

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As concerns about online surveillance mount, more and more people are seeking ways to protect their identities and disguise their online activities. Services such as Tor are increasingly popular as surfers look for ways to maintain their privacy. Facebook even recently got in on the act, providing users concerned about their privacy with a secure .onion address through which to access the site.

While the likes of Tor are often turned to as a means of bolstering security and privacy, there is also a darker side -- the dark net, the dark web -- which is used for more nefarious activities. One site that rose to notoriety was Silk Road, an anonymous online marketplace where just about anything could be bought. Last year, the FBI closed the service, but Silk Road 2.0 soon sprang up out of the ashes. This has now also come to an end as the FBI once again shut down the marketplace with the help of Europol and Eurojust in a coordinated clampdown on the darker side of the web.

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As a web user it's very easy to feel like just another cog in the financial machine. Visit just about any website and you'll encounter ads. These generate revenue that's needed to pay for developers, writers, servers and so on, but the likes of YouTube, which rely on user-generated content, can quickly generate large profits thanks to the costs to revenue margins. Now video streaming service Hang w/ is bucking the trend and sharing profits with its users.

The platform exists as an iOS and Android app, and enables users to broadcast to users around the world as well as conducting video chats. It has managed to earn itself celebrity endorsement from the likes of Cheech and Chong (oh, yes), 50 Cent, Soulja Boy, Timbaland, and Ultimate Poker, and has helped to drive 22 million downloads for major shareholder MEDL Mobile. Recognizing the fact that it is users creating content, Hang w/ now shares 25 percent of its advertising revenue with users.

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Three months ago I reached the end of my tether. I'm lucky enough to live in one of the most beautiful and unspoilt parts of the UK (it nearly wasn’t part of the UK had the Scottish referendum on independence taken a different turn), but there's one problem: truly awful broadband. There is a 'choice' of one broadband provider who is capable of trickling sub 0.5Mbps connections into houses in the area -- and that's on a good day.

One Twitter rant later, a few emails exchanged with Satellite Internet led to the arrival of two installers to get me set up with a 20Mbps satellite connection. My initial impressions were great. The internet worked as it should for the first time in months. But my fear was that this was just a honeymoon period. So what’s the story nearly three months down the line -- what is it like to live with a satellite internet connection? Were my initial concerns about data usage well-founded?

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A new update has been rolled out to WhatsApp that lets users see when the person they are talking to reads a message. The check marks that appear next to messages to indicate that a message has been successfully sent and successfully delivered now have a third indicator mode. A double blue check mark means that the message has been read.

WhatsApp took the messaging world by storm when it first appeared on the scene. Despite having been found to be one of the most insecure messaging tools out there, it remains incredibly popular with around 600 million monthly users. WhatsApp's impact was such that Facebook parted with $19 billion to buy it, and this month the service celebrates its fifth birthday.

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Secure communication is something we all crave online, particularly after Edward Snowden's NSA revelations increased public interest in privacy and security. With dozens of messaging tools to choose from, many claiming to be ultra-secure, it can be difficult to know which one to choose and which one to trust. Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has published its Secure Messaging Scorecard which rates a number of apps and services according to the level of security they offer.

It's a fairly exhaustive list that includes numerous well-known names, as well as several more niche products. What is concerning, however, is that many of the most popular tools -- WhatsApp, Yahoo Messenger, Skype, SnapChat, and Facebook chat -- received very low ratings for failing to protect users and their communication data.

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The head of GCHQ, the UK's equivalent of the NSA, says that the Edward Snowden leaks have helped terrorist organizations such as ISIS who have taken to the web to spread propaganda. Writing in the Financial Times, Robert Hannigan points out that ISIS is the first terrorist group whose members have grown up on the internet. He says that the group has made use of "messaging and social media services such as Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp, and a language their peers understand" and that the security tools that have popped up post-Snowden makes the work of GCHQ in tracking communication much harder.

This might not come as a surprise, but something else that Hannigan says is likely to raise eyebrows. His assertion that "privacy has never been an absolute right" goes against the grain of what many web users believe, but he suggests that the challenges facing governments and intelligence agencies in fighting back against terrorists can "only be met with greater co-operation from technology companies".

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Working in conjunction with Google, Canonical is launching a public beta of Ubuntu for Google Cloud Platform. These are part of the Certified Public Cloud (CPC) programme which means that the cloud versions of Ubuntu will be updated just about as quickly as the regular ground-tethered versions. Images for Utopic Unicorn, TrustyTahr, and Precise Pangolin releases are now available on Google Compute Engine.

The Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, 12.04 LTS releases benefit from the regular five years of maintenance and security updates, while 14.10 has a shorter shelf-life. Taking Ubuntu to the cloud serves as an alternative to the likes of Azure for anyone looking to venture into cloud platforms without breaking the bank.

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A lot of wearable devices have accompanying smartphones. The Apple Watch has the iPhone 6, Galaxy Gear ties in with a number of Samsung Galaxy handsets, while the Motorola Moto 360 marries happily to just about any Android phone. Falling into the same works-with-anything camp is the recently announced Microsoft Band.

With a newly launched wearable, you'd think Microsoft would be keen to push it as much as possible. So when the company decided to bundle a wrist-worn device with the new Lumia 830, which do you think it opted for. Yeah... the Fitbit Flex...

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Having a web presence means that companies are open to greater scrutiny than ever before. Post-NSA there was huge interest in learning just how much data the likes of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft had shared with the government and its agencies, and the next target for attention has been the racial and gender make-up of these same companies.

We have already seen diversity reports from Twitter and Apple, and now Amazon has thrown its hat into the ring. The Diversity Report's figures show that -- perhaps unsurprisingly -- the company is dominated by white men, particularly in the higher positions. But while the numbers and graphs tell one story, the photographs released by Amazon to accompany the report try to tell a rather different tale.

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Currently being referred to as something "unique but familiar", Mozilla has a new browser on the way. Based on Firefox, the new web browser has been designed specifically with developers in mind. In a post of the Mozilla Blog, the company explains that the up-coming browser will include built in tools such as WebIDE and the Firefox Tools Adapter.

The browser is due to launch on 10 November and comes after Mozilla looked at Firefox "through a completely new filter to put developers' interests first". The idea of an "independent web" is also being pushed, and Mozilla has commandeered the #ChooseIndependent and #fx10 hashtags to celebrate Firefox's tenth birthday.

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There is now great interest in the level of governmental interference that takes place into online activity. Edward Snowden told the world about what the NSA was up to and there are now numerous websites dealing with the revelation that he made. One such site is The Intercept, and it has just published the secret manuals that are supplied to governments who want to use a suite of specialist tools to monitor web users' activities.

Sub-titled "the hacking suite for governmental interception", RCS 9 (or Remote Control System) is a suite of tools from Hacking Team. The Italian security and surveillance company is responsible for providing hacking and monitoring guides and software to a list of countries including Colombia, Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia. RCS itself is "a solution designed to evade encryption" -- the sort of encryption put in place by Google.

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When he's not busy fronting Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor has plenty of solo music projects to work on, as well as countless collaborations with other artists. Talking to Billboard about -- amongst other things -- his upcoming fiftieth birthday, Reznor revealed that he is currently working with Apple on a music venture of some sort. He was unable to give much in the way of detail but we do know that it is "in the world" of music delivery.

Apple is famously secretive about yet-to-be-released products and services, so the fact that Reznor is being tight-lipped at this stage is not surprising. Throughout the course of the Billboard interview he makes several references to music streaming, and it's fairly safe to assume that the up-coming service is in this area.

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For those who are concerned about their privacy post-Snowden, there are various ways to boost online privacy such as using the anonymizing Tor browser. Browsing the internet anonymously is something that scares the authorities -- there were reports just a couple of months ago that Comcast was threatening to cut off customers who chose to use Tor -- but now Facebook has opened up to the idea.

The social network -- often criticized for its own privacy policies -- has lifted its bans on using Tor, and has created a secure URL (https://facebookcorewwwi.onion/). This can be used to visit Facebook using any Tor-enabled browser and adds a few extra layers of protection for those looking to stay secure. While the idea of anonymity on Facebook may seem oxymoronic, there is a degree of logic.

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The sexuality of people in the public often comes in for scrutiny. Whether we're talking about Michael Stipe coming out at the same time as REM released Monster, Morrissey using Autobiography to give a beautifully tender glimpse into the loves of his life, Ellen DeGeneres revealing her sexual preferences to Oprah Winfrey, or any one of countless other celebrities who chooses to make their sexuality public, where those in the limelight fit onto the sexual spectrum has long been -- and will undoubtedly continue to be -- of endless interest to people.

Writing in Bloomberg Businessweek, Apple CEO Tim Cook, entirely unprompted, has said that he is gay. For many people this will come as no surprise, for most it will be of no consequence, some will take exception to it. But what's interesting is that, in 2014, a man (or woman, for that matter) proclaiming their sexuality, is news. Tim Cook is currently the top trending topic on Twitter.

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