John Lister

Question site "Quora" has become the latest high-profile hacking victim, with details of more than 100 million users breached. Fortunately, the implications likely won't be as serious as some previous hacks. The site lets users post questions and ... then get answers from other users. A voting system means more helpful answers from its community means the best answers float to the top. Quora says its systems were accessed without authorization and that it discovered the breach on November 30, 2018. It says the exposed information included account information such as name, email address ... (view more)

Sources close to Microsoft suggest that the company may ditch its Edge browser as the default option in Windows 10. Its replacement would run on the same underlying code as Google's Chrome. While Edge has failed to win the hearts of most users, it ... appears the main reason behind the move is that site developers are tired of having to do extra work to make their sites work on the browser. The most recent statistics show Chrome dominating the browser market, being used on more than 70 per cent of computers, compared with just four percent running Edge. Given that Edge is the default option on ... (view more)

A hygiene company says the average smartphone is "seven times dirtier" than a toilet seat. People using them in bathrooms could be the cause. The company says it swabbed 50 phones with a device that lights up spots on a surface housing live ... bacteria. On average it found 1,479 such spots on a phone, compared with 220 on a toilet seat. Not all phones are equally icky however. Phones with a wipe-clean plastic covers had slightly fewer bacteria spots than the average handset. The worst offender was a phone in a leather case that doubled as a wallet and had nearly 17 times as many bacteria spots ... (view more)

Security researchers have warned that nearly half of all phishing sites falsely display the browser padlock symbol commonly associated with secure websites. It's a reminder that the browser padlock symbol only covers one aspect of security. Most ... major browsers display the padlock symbol when a website uses a technology, most commonly Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), to encrypt data as it passes between the user's computer and the website, or vice versa. Such sites have an address starting "https://" rather than "http://". The purpose of the padlock symbol is to indicate to the user that the ... (view more)

Microsoft has confirmed two more bugs with the seemingly-cursed Windows 10 Update. Neither are the end of the world, but it continues to raise questions about the testing process. The first problem is with setting programs to be the default option ... when opening particular file types. While not the most exciting feature, it's one of those little things that make life much easier: without it, users have to either manually select the program they want to open every time they click on a file, or open the program itself and then open the file from there. All Microsoft will confirm at this point is ... (view more)

A seven-year-old case into Apple app pricing is heading to the Supreme Court. It's a technical case that centers on the percentage Apple takes from every iPhone or iPad app sale. The case isn't about the royalty itself, which is 30 percent of every ... sale through the iTunes store. Various legal and technical measures mean that's the only way developers can distribute iOS apps, so there's no way around paying the royalty. Instead, the legal question is whether or not consumers have the right to take legal action against Apple over the system. Such lawsuits, of which several have been proposed, ... (view more)

Microsoft has announced several steps towards a world without passwords. It not so much a revolution at this stage, compared to a few measures towards convenience. The changes involve the way people login to Microsoft services such as the online ... edition of Office, Skype, Edge browser and the Xbox Live gaming service (on PCs) - all of which work via a single Microsoft account. Microsoft is building on "Windows Hello," an existing system for logging into a Windows 10 PC using a PIN code, facial recognition or a fingerprint reader, rather than relying on a password. Physical Keys An ... (view more)

A Florida court has ruled that "Facebook friends" don't count as real friendships. The decision followed claims that it was not possible for a judge to be unbiased, especially if he was a Facebook friend with an attorney in the same case. The ruling ... came from the Florida Supreme Court, which upheld previous rulings from lower courts. Both rejected claims that having a "Facebook friend" relationship between the aforementioned parties may result in not having a fair and impartial trial. The argument for the judge being potentially biased was based largely on advise given by ... (view more)

Some users of Apple's iCloud software will be unable to get the latest Windows 10 update right now. It's an example of Microsoft blocking the update rather than causing problems with specific applications. iCloud is the online backup and sync tool ... for Apple devices such as iPhones and iPads. It's aimed at people who have iOS mobile devices but also use a Windows PC. iCloud lets users access Apple services and data such as their email, photos and calendar on both the mobile device and computer. Unfortunately iCloud is the victim of yet another glitch in the October update of Windows 10, one of ... (view more)

Microsoft has begun rolling out the October 2018 update for Windows 10 for a second time. It doesn't take a much of a look at the calendar to reveal that things went very badly . The release is one of the twice-yearly updates that replace the old ... model of having small updates every month and then a completely new edition of Windows every few years. The October update had a variety of problems including: Key document folders being irretrievable deleted in some cases if they weren't stored in the default disk location. Some computers being completely silenced after the update rolled out an ... (view more)