John Lister

TikTok is under formal investigation for allegedly deliberately making its service addictive. It's the first test of how laws banning such behavior will operate. The Chinese-owned video company is controversial on both sides of the Atlantic. In the ... US, many federal and state agencies ban employees from using TikTok over security concerns, with Montana even attempting to ban it from the state altogether. (Source: guardian.com ) Now the European Commission says it has enough evidence from a preliminary investigation to move to formal proceedings against the company. It involves several alleged ... (view more)

Microsoft has fixed two bugs which bypassed Windows security measures. Both were actively exploited before the fix, making it vital to install the updates. The fixes come in this month's "Patch Tuesday" update, the main monthly security update that ... Microsoft officially calls the "B update". It should download and install without further action for anyone with automatic updates switched on, but may need a reboot to complete. Both bugs affect most supported versions of Windows, including 10, 11 and Windows Server. Microsoft rates the two bugs as "important" and "moderate" respectively, though ... (view more)

Phone screens that fold in half may soon be yesterday's news. Two smartphone giants are both reportedly working on triple foldable phones. Huawei and Samsung have both previously filed patents for relevant technology. Now reports suggest Samsung ... will release a model later this year while Huawei may beat it to the punch with a release somewhere between April and June. The reports have been fuelled partly by orders placed with component manufacturers in Taiwan. (Source: pandaily.com ) While Huawei may be first to market, Samsung would have a major advantage in the US market. That's because the ... (view more)

A fake app pretending to be from password manager LastPass not only made it into the Apple App Store but had a five star rating. It's arguably among the worst possible types of bogus app to bypass Apple's usually strict vetting process. LastPass is ... one of the best known password manager tools. It lets users store their passwords in an encrypted vault, accessible only with a master password. The service can also generate secure passwords. The company's name is based on the idea that the master password is the last password the user will ever need to create or remember. The big catch, of course ... (view more)

Reports that 3 million "smart" toothbrushes were hacked and weaponized turn out to be misleading at best. It appears to have been a mistranslation or misunderstanding. The reports first surfaced last week in Switzerland and involved toothbrushes ... supposedly running the Java computer language. They were said to have been hacked and used for a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that caused huge disruption and financial costs to a targeted business. Not every element of the story is as completely ridiculous as it might seem. "Smart" toothbrushes do exist, with connections to smartphone ... (view more)

Google has shown bogus ads for a scam website at the top of its results page according to a consumer group. The ads had somehow bypassed checks designed to make sure only legitimate businesses appear in the "sponsored" section of the results. These ... results, labeled as sponsored, appear at the top of the rankings. They come above the "organic" results which are based on Google's algorithm that takes into account factors such as the relevance of a page to the search term, the authority and expertise of the creator, and whether people who click on the result quickly return to the search results ... (view more)

Researchers in China have found a way to make flexible computer memory using liquid metal. It could one day revolutionize the physical design of computer devices. Anyone who has handled either internal computer RAM or a flash memory device will know ... that bending them even slightly would not end well. That's partly because the electronics is housed on often-brittle plastics, but partly because those electronics need to be flat and inflexible themselves. In very simple terms, RAM uses flat, two-dimensional electronic grids. Each point where a horizontal and vertical line crosses is a cell that ... (view more)

Users have reported Microsoft Edge opening up and displaying tabs they'd just had open in Chrome. The most generous reading is that a "helpful" feature is triggering by mistake. Users have been extremely confused to start up their computer and not ... only find Edge open unexpectedly, but that it had replicated the sites they'd been using on Chrome. The Verge's Tom Warren noted he didn't even realize it was Edge running at first until he investigated why he was logged out on several of the open sites. The mystery isn't how this is happening but rather why it is happening. Edge has several ... (view more)

If you still have the skills for Windows 3.11, you may have been a candidate for a recent job ad in Germany. It appears the role, using the 30-year-old system, has been filled. The vacancy was advertised by national railway company Deutsche Bahn. ... The successful candidate would be assigned to Siemens, which is responsible for the rail tech division for the train control system. The role would involve keeping old systems operational so that train drivers could get real time information about equipment. The Register notes that although Windows 3.11's release in November 1993 is almost ... (view more)

Windows 10 devices are set to become insecure next year unless users pay an extra fee. But with warnings of 240 million devices "going to landfill", it remains possible Microsoft will blink at the last moment. That Windows 10 reaches the end of its ... support period on October 14, 2025 is no secret: it's long been on Microsoft's support calendar and is in line with the company's policy of 10 years support. From that date, Microsoft will no longer issue free security updates. As happened with Windows 7, Microsoft will offer a paid update service for people in "circumstances that could prevent you ... (view more)