Tag: headlines

Uber Rival Grab Said Raising $1.5 Billion in New Funding Round

Grab, Uber Technologies Inc.’s largest rival in Southeast Asia, plans to raise more than $1.5 billion in a new funding round backed by SoftBank Group Corp., people familiar with the matter said. SoftBank is pledging about $1 billion in the ride-sharing company backed by Tiger Global Management and GGV Capital, the people said, asking not to be named because the matter is private. It wasn’t clear if the money was coming from the Japanese company itself or its yet-to-close SoftBank Vision Fund. Grab’s financing could be a record for Southeast…

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Cyber crime is fastest growing economic crime

Dianne Jacobs

Cyber crime is perceived as the fastest growing fraud risk (40%), followed by bribery and corruption (36%)around the globe. The UK has seen a double-digit rise in economic crime against corporates in the past two years, with 55% of organisations affected up 11% since 2014 and well above the US (38%) and China (28%). Globally, the economic crime rate has remained largely static at 36%, according to the survey of more than 6,000 respondents in 115 countries. The survey found that 60 % of economic crime in the UK was…

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Xbox Live will soon allow custom profile pics

Dianne Jacobs

Microsoft plans to allow Xbox One gamers to upload and set custom gamerpics in the near future, the company’s Major Nelson announced today via a new post on his official blog. No longer will users be limited to an avatar or game-related snapshot. That’s among the changes and new features outlined in a blog post from Major Nelson. Users will be able to choose a custom gamer pic directly from the console, a Windows 10 PC, or a smartphone, so they have plenty of avenues for picking the image you…

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ISPs argue Web history isn’t “sensitive” they should be able to sell it

Internet providers are continuing to argue that they should be free to share and sell users’ web history without permission because it isn’t “sensitive information.” “Web browsing and app usage history are not ‘sensitive information,’” CTIA said in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission yesterday. CTIA is the main lobbyist group representing mobile broadband providers such as AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA, and Sprint. The disagreement is around whether internet providers should be treated differently than web companies, like Facebook and Google. Internet providers argue that it’s unfair that the…

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Nokia Owns The Alcatel Brand Till 2024

Dianne Jacobs

Ever since Nokia acquired Alcatel-Lucent back in 2015, the situation about the “Alcatel” brand remained unclear, at least for the end users. Back in 2004, Alcatel and Chinese electronics manufacturer TCL Communication created a joint venture for the production of Alcatel-branded mobile phones. In less than a year after founding, TCL Communication purchased Alcatel’s stake and became the sole owner of the newly founded company, But what happened with the Alcatel brand? Who actually owns it? The Alcatel brand was licensed by Alcatel-Lucent to TCL for mobile phones and devices and this license expires at the…

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Google kills off the Captcha Feature

The online tests to check whether you’re a human or a robot  have been a necessary evil, but Google is finally killing them off in their current form. For some time now, Captcha has served as the primary way of telling humans and robots apart on the internet. It made sure that the person looking to access a website was actually a human being – ensuring that robots couldn’t be used to send spam or flood a website with requests. However, the technologies have become more complex and robots have…

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FCC halts regulations to protect data security

Many people realize Web services like Facebook or Google are monitoring their activities and security is not guaranteed, but companies also collect data in less obvious ways. Large websites and smaller businesses running smartphone apps do everything they can to collect information to tailor advertising or sell it to third parties interested in doing the same. The Federal Communications Commission in the United states FCC has been pushing through rules requiring internet service providers to disclose in plain language how consumer data is collected, how it’s shared with third parties…

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Microsoft will soon block the installing of desktop apps on windows 10

Microsoft is currently testing a new functionality in Windows 10 that prevents you from installing any desktop apps – unless they come from the official store. The latest Windows Insider preview build of Windows 10 includes options to only allow apps from the Windows Store, but the feature appears to be set as allowing apps from anywhere to install by default. It could be a useful feature to enable on a family PC to prevent rogue desktop apps from being installed. MSPoweruser reports the feature will notify users with a warning…

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YouTube launches its own streaming TV service

YouTube is finally drawing back the curtain on its latest play for entertainment industry domination, a live  Youtube TV service. The offering will mix live-streams of broadcast and cable television programming with the wealth of online video found on YouTube. It’s the latest in a surge of over-the-top (OTT) services trying to woo consumers who never bought into traditional cable television. Distinct from YouTube Red, the new service, YouTube TV, which has been in the works for years at Google’s internet video behemoth, has quietly been inking contracts with media…

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Google leaks Microsoft’s Internet Explorer bug

Google has disclosed a still-active vulnerability in the Edge and Internet explorer browsers that Microsoft apparently ignored for more than three months. The Internet explorer bug was reported to Microsoft by a Google engineer and given 90 days to eliminate the error. The flaw was leaked as Microsoft failed to comply with the appointed timeframe. The flaw fundamentally allows ill-intended individuals to build websites that cause the browsers to spontaneously crash and  to take control of your browser in certain cases, BBC reports. The flaw has to do with the way…

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