Starting Jan. 14, 2020, exactly one year from Monday, Microsoft will no longer support Windows 7. That means no more updates or security fixes for the operating system. Microsoft will continue to provide security updates for Windows 7 to business customers that pay for support, according to ZDNet, but not individual users. Read full story here: Microsoft Will Stop Supporting Windows 7 One Year From Today | CNET
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CALGARY — Plunging world oil prices have delivered a Christmas miracle of lower gasoline prices across most of Canada but a fuel price expert says motorists should fill up now because prices are expected to be volatile in 2019. Dan McTeague, a senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy.com, says gasoline prices are at near-18-month lows because of global oil prices that have tumbled over the past two months on worries of an economic downturn, a U.S.-China trading tiff and concerns that members of the OPEC oil cartel won’t live up to…
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If you’ve been meaning to take advantage of Apple’s deal on a replacement iPhone battery, then you’d better hurry. It only has a week left to run. The Cupertino, California-based company slashed the cost of its iPhone battery replacement service after admitting last year that it deliberately slowed down some of its handsets to stabilize performance as the battery ages. But Apple plans to revise the cost upward at the start of 2019. Read full story here: iPhone: Apple’s Cut-Price Battery Offer Only Has A Week Left To Run |…
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Reset the “days since the last Facebook privacy scandal” counter, as Facebook has just revealed a Photo API bug gave app developers too much access to the photos of up to 5.6 million users. The bug allowed apps users had approved to pull their timeline photos to also receive their Facebook Stories, Marketplace photos, and most worryingly, photos they’d uploaded to Facebook but never shared. Facebook says the bug ran for 12 days from September 13th to September 25th. Facebook tells TechCrunch it discovered the breach on September 25th, and…
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The old system of addresses that cities have relied on for hundreds of years just isn’t cutting it any more. Originally intended to help with taxation and policing, the aging way of assigning street numbers to buildings isn’t precise enough for today’s — and tomorrow’s — intelligent services. “For smart cities, there’s a real need to address more specific locations,” Giles Rhys Jones, the chief marketing officer for What3Words, told Digital Trends. What3Words is a London-based startup behind a geocoding location system that’s used by Mercedes-Benz, the United Nations, and…
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The trend of blundering into the void of adopting new tech, damn the consequences, full speed ahead, continues this week. The Telegraph tells us about “a number of UK legal and financial firms” are in talks with a chip company to implant their employees with RFID microchips for security purposes. “One prospective client,” The Telegraph wrote, “which cannot be named, is a major financial services firm with “hundreds of thousands of employees.” Read full story here: More Companies Are Chipping Their Workers Like Pets | Engadget
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Just as the redefinition of the second in 1967 helped to ease communication across the world via technologies like GPS and the internet, experts say the change in the kilogram will be better for technology, retail and health — though it probably won’t change the price of fish much. The kilogram has been defined since 1889 by a shiny piece of platinum-iridium held in Paris. All modern mass measurements are traceable back to it — from micrograms of pharmaceutical medicines to kilos of apples and pears and tonnes of steel or cement.…
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Phishing remains a serious security problem. According to some reports, one in every 101 emails are malicious and most of those use some form of phishing as a primary scamming tactic. Most people are aware of phishing, but we only look out for threats when checking email. Criminals, however, are one step ahead. Security experts say phishing has come full-force to texting, and it carries even more potential danger than it does through email. Read full story here: Smishing: A New Security Threat The Targets Smartphones By Text Message | Digital…
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“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” It was an argument we heard a lot in the years following Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s famous claim that privacy was no longer a social norm. A lot has changed in the eight years since. The web has evolved, new tools make it easier to protect our privacy online, and scandals with social networks and other online entities have made privacy itself a hot topic once again. Read full story here: In A Data Driven Tomorrow, Does Privacy Need To Survive the…
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A week after announcing a similar deal in Europe, ChargePoint has unveiled a new “roaming partnership” with FLO to allow electric vehicle drivers to use both charging networks across North America with “a seamless charging experience.” Earlier this month, Chargepoint and EVBox launched a similar partnership for the European market. Now they have reached a deal with FLO, which is the leading electric car charging network operator in Canada. Read full story here: Electric Car Drivers Can Now ‘Roam’ In The US And Canada On ChargePoint And FLO Charging Networks | Electrek
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