What's New

James Wagner, Google Chrome Extensions Platform Product Manager, announced yesterday that Google decided to ban cryptocurrency mining extensions in the company's Chrome Web Store.

VeraCrypt 1.22 is a new version of the popular cross-platform encryption software that parent company Idrassi established as the primary unofficial successor of the encryption software TrueCrypt.

TrueCrypt development ended under mysterious circumstances in 2014. The developers published a message on the project's website and as part of setup that stated that TrueCrypt was not secure to use.

Microsoft released Windows 10 in 2015 and there were clear indicators back then that Windows 10 was a work in progress, something that Microsoft released to make people forget about Windows 8.

Windows 10 changed Windows dramatically. Microsoft established Windows as a Service which limited the support period of any version of Windows 10 to 18 months without updates, integrated lots of cloud features and Telemetry in the operating system.

The Tor Project launched Tor Messenger back in 2015 as a beta with the aim to improve the security of instant messaging communication services and user privacy.

Based on Instantbird, an instant messenger that relied on code and technologies developed by Mozilla, Tor Messenger allowed users to use various protocols supported by Instantbird including Facebook Chat, Google Talk, XMPP, IRC or Jabber.

Tor Messenger sent data over the Tor network and enforced one-on-one conversation encryption using Off-the-Record messaging.

DonationCoder is a unique site on the Internet that was created back in 2005. It was designed as a place for programmers to share developed software and to support development through donations and not shareware sales, by advertising or other means.

DNS over HTTPS is a relatively new feature to improve the privacy, security and connection reliability of DNS look-ups; the feature is currently in draft status and tested by companies such as Google, Cloudflare or Mozilla.

DNS resolves play an important part on today's Internet; domain names that you enter in your browser's address bar need to be linked to IP addresses, and that is what DNS is used for.

These DNS look-ups happen automatically and often without any form of encryption or protection from prying eyes or tampering.

The search engine Ixquick.eu will start to redirect to the search engine Startpage.com later today.

The privacy-focused search engines are maintained by the privately owned Dutch company Surfboard Holdings B.V. One of the company's main goals is to deliver "the most relevant search results under the largest possible umbrella of privacy" to users.

Cloudflare announced the launch of its new public DNS service 1.1.1.1 on April 1, 2018. The company promised in the announcement that 1.1.1.1 would offer faster speeds and better privacy than other public DNS systems provided by companies such as Google, Yandex or Cisco. Let us find out if the promises hold up to a closer inspection of the service.

Google announced plans on Friday to shut down the company's URL shortening service Goo.gl starting April 13, 2018.

Google won't change or disable existing links; all existing links will continue to redirect to the link target.

The Best of Windows Entertainment Pack was released by Microsoft back in 1995 for Windows and in 2001 by third-party publishers to the Game Boy Color.

Microsoft released a total of four Windows Entertainment Pack packages for Windows that it sold as standalone game packages for Windows.

Each pack included seven or eight games; some of the games were classic Windows games such as Minesweeper or FreeCell, others popular games at the time such as Tetris or Taipei (which later become Mahjong Titans and Microsoft Mahjong).

Solomon Hykes, the founder of the major container company Docker, announced on March 28, that he will be stepping down from daily operations within the company, via blog post .

LogMeIn, parent company of LastPass, announced today that it will shut down the cross-browser bookmark synchronization service Xmarks on May 1, 2018.

Xmarks launched its service at a time when browsers did not support native synchronization functionality, let alone syncing data between different browsers.

We reviewed the service back in 2009 for the first time and the rocky pass in the years that followed. The creators wanted to shut down the service back in 2010 but LastPass, makers of the password manager, stepped in and acquired Xmarks in the same year.

I'm a gigantic fan of RPG games. I love a good gripping storyline, that draws you in with great character depth and a deep and intriguing plot. Neverwinter Nights was an absolutely stellar game in my opinion, and it boasted quite the awesome online community as well.

Thankfully, it’s just been released in an enhanced edition on Steam as well as all the expansion packs, by developer Beamdog, with complete support for penguin users!

Krita is a well known digital painting program, available for Windows Mac and Linux, but is primarily known for its Linux side.

On March 22, Krita 4.0 was released, which features some pretty big (and in my opinion, overdue) changes.

Installation

AppCompatibilityView is a new application by one of our favorite developers Nir Sofer of Nirsoft that lists all Windows programs in its interface that run with non-standard compatibility settings.

Windows users and administrators may use the compatibility mode of the operating system to run applications in a compatibility context. Designed for programs that are not (fully) compatible with newer versions of Windows, programs run with compatibility settings may work as intended.