What's New

A port of the popular blocker uBlock Origin is now officially available for the default Windows 10 web browser Microsoft Edge.

The terms port and officially available require explanation. Port means that this particular release of uBlock Origin has not been created by its original developer but forked.

Google revealed yesterday how it plans to make the shift to prioritizing HTML5 over Flash in the company's Chrome browser.

The company announced previously that it will deprioritize Flash content on the web in favor of HTML5 content.

Microsoft pushed out the new cumulative KB3201845 update for the Windows 10 release channel yesterday that delivers a range of fixes for the operating system.

Note: It seems that the update is not the cause for the connectivity issues, as some users, including Günter Born, experienced the same issue on machines without the update.

Early access and access to beta apps are two options that users have when they use the Google Play store to discover, download and manage Android apps and games.

The main difference between early access and beta apps is the following: beta apps always require a release version of an application or game on Google Play. Early access however that the app or game in question has not been released yet to the public.

A recent password use study by the German Hasso-Plattner-Institute of roughly 1 billion user accounts concluded that 20% of users were reusing passwords. Additionally, 27% of users used password that were nearly identical with other account passwords.

User accounts and passwords are still the dominating method of authentication both locally and online.

If you have bought a computer in recent years, chance is you run a 64-bit version of Windows on it. While Microsoft is still producing 32-bit copies of Windows 10, those are sold and deployed considerably less than 64-bit copies.

Microsoft itself has not released statistics about the distribution of 32-bit and 64-bit Windows systems. If you look at Steam's Hardware Survey, as flawed as it is, you will notice that 64-bit dominates the chart.

Microsoft announced a partnership with Qualcomm today that will bring Windows 10 to devices with ARM processors.

One interesting tidbit of the announcement is that Qualcomm ARM processors will be able to run legacy x86 Windows programs.

This means that this is not another attempt at establishing a special Windows 10 RT version on the market.

Malwarebytes 3.0 is a new product by Malwarebytes, makers of security software that unifies the company's main security products in a single program.

Home users had the choice between three different products for Windows desktop PCs up until now: There was Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit, and Malwarebytes Anti-Ransomware.

Donation Coder hold an event each year called New Apps for the New Year, or short N.A.N.Y, in which coders pledge and release new programs.

What I like particularly is that there is always a wide variety of programs that get released during the event. You get Windows programs and Android apps mostly, but web apps have made an appearance in recent years as well.

All programs and apps are free to download and use, and the majority of Windows apps are portable on top of that.

Microsoft released Windows 10 Build 14986 to the Insider Preview Fast Ring. The new build introduces a massive number of new features, improvements and changes.

First, a word of warning. Since this is a preview build, there are things that may not work properly. It is recommended to run these preview builds on non-production machines. If you have important data on a system, make sure you back up the data before you install the new version.

If you needed another reason not to use Flash anymore, a new security report by Recorded Future may convince you to consider this at the very least.

The company analyzed 141 exploits kits that were available between November 16, 2015 and November 15, 2016.

The main takeaway of the research study is that Adobe Flash vulnerabilities made up six of the top ten chart spots.

Microsoft's director of program management, Windows Enterprise and Security Rob Lefferts, highlighted security related changes and improvements coming to the Windows 10 Creators Update due out in March 2017 recently in a blog post.

Windows 10 is different in many regards to previous versions of Windows. One core difference is that it marks the move from releasing a new version of Windows every three or so years to Windows as a service.

What is meant by that is that Windows will follow the same model that Office 365 and other SAAS products offer. Namely, that there won't be a Windows 11, 12 or One, but only Windows 10 that is constantly updated.

Vivaldi is working on version 1.6 of the web browser currently and pushing out updates to the developer channel regularly that introduce new features.

You have probably come across sites in the past that use the page title to indicate that updates are available.

This is mostly done by social sites such as Twitter or Facebook to indicate new posts or messages.

While you may find these hints useful as they notify you when something happens on a social media site, you may have noticed as well that they may impact the page title negatively.

Google announced today that it has implemented a new updating method called file-by-file patching that reduces the size of app updates on Android by 65% on average.

The company started to use the bsdiff algorithm earlier this year to reduce the size of application updates by 47% on average when compared to the full size of the Android app.