Best Internet Promotions of March - CNET

Get a little something extra when you sign up with a new internet service provider. You deserve it.

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Latest Tech News

As of late, Google Chrome has been getting plenty of updates and quality-of-life changes. And now it seems Google is taking a page from Microsoft Edge’s book with a new upcoming feature.

As revealed by Reddit user Leopeva64-2 and reported on by MSPowerUser, Google Chrome is set to get a new feature that lets users close a tab by double-clicking on it, which is an especially useful feature when there are too many tabs open. The reason is that when too many tabs are open, the ‘X’ button is no longer visible, meaning that you normally would have to click on the tab directly. But with the double-tap method, it makes closing excessive tabs much easier and faster.

Just like in Edge, this option will most likely have an option to toggle on and off in the browser settings. If this feature ends up being fully developed, Chrome Canary — a beta version of Chrome mainly targeted at developers, passionate tech users, and browser enthusiasts — would most likely be testing it first, followed by Chrome Stable users.

Google Chrome has been stepping it up

The quick close tab feature is one of several that Google has been introducing to its Chrome browser. Lately, the tech giant has been focused on making sweeping changes that target Apple iOS. For instance, it seems that Google’s Chromium engineers are testing the Blink browser engine on iOS devices instead of Apple’s WebKit engine, which is most likely preparing for a point in the future that would allow it to power Chrome with the Blink engine.

And in an upcoming update for Chrome, Google promises to improve battery usage by matching Safari’s level of energy efficiency for simple web browsing tasks. And combined with the newly introduced Energy Saver mode, it should allow for Chrome to exceed Apple’s own battery life predictions.

Finally, Google is working on a new feature that would allow those who use the best Google Chrome extensions to enable and disable extensions on a per-site basis. This is an especially useful feature since it can help users prevent security and privacy issues like e-commerce extensions tracking browsing activity or certain extensions affecting some sites’ performance.

With all these improvements coming to Chrome, it’s truly being shaped into the best web browser out there, which would ensure that the stranglehold it has on the browser market isn’t challenged.

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Latest Gadgets News

TikTok said on Wednesday it is developing a tool that will allow parents to prevent their teens from viewing content containing certain words or hashtags on the short-form video app, as the embattled company looks to shore up its public image. TikTok, owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, is facing renewed scrutiny worldwide over its proximity to the Chinese govern...

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Save Up to 46% On Smart Devices at Amazon and Upgrade Your Home on a Budget - CNET

Snag smart plugs, security cameras, locks and more at a serious discount.

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Sling TV Blue Bumps Price by $5 for Some, Adds ABC - CNET

Sling TV Blue subscribers in these five markets will see a price hike today.

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Latest Tech News

A Microsoft study has emphasized the new pressure facing CFOs and their teams as they struggle to balance strategic innovation with their company’s financial goals and long-term financial health.

The report explores the effects of the pandemic which changed the role of CFOs, who went from fiscal planning to driving innovation amid global economic uncertainty, to the point that 79% of finance leaders believe they must play a significant role in business innovation to meet future needs.

Key to success is the successful deployment of technology, which Microsoft explored in a complementary blog post.

CFO job role expanding

More than eight in 10 (82%) of finance leaders recognize the importance of artificial intelligence and other automation technology to support their organization’s goals, which can help decrease human workload and free up time to focus on things that require specific skills and concentration.

Data, for example, can be an expansive environment that needs to be boiled down to presentable information in order to recognize trends, predict future performance, and refine other areas of business. Despite this, Microsoft reckons that 8%% of financial leaders feel overwhelmed by their organization’s data.

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Alongside exploring AI tools to support data management, Microsoft is keen to push its new Dynamics 365 Finance business performance analytics feature that’s designed to centralize data from more than one business workstream into an easy-to-use interface.

As we look toward the future, Microsoft wants to take even more of the workload off finance teams, seeking to replace it with low-code solutions that has saved it 977 annual hours of manual labor and $25 million.

Of course, you don’t have to limit yourself to Microsoft’s offerings, and there are plenty of other options out there including the best accounting software for small businesses.

• Here’s all the best hybrid working tech you need for your company

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How to See Venus and Jupiter Cozy Up in the Night Sky This Week - CNET

The two planets will be closest on March 1.

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Something we never thought we’d see happen has, in fact, happened. In the latest update to its Phone Link app for Windows, the tech giant is bringing support to the Apple iPhone - most notably, iMessage for Windows 11.

According to Microsoft’s official blog and reported by The Verge, the Phone Link app works by mirroring your phone on your PC for notifications, phone calls, and messages. With this update, iPhone users can now connect their devices to a Windows laptop or PC, send messages through iMessage, make and receive calls, and get notifications through Windows 11.

In an interview with The Verge, Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s head of consumer marketing, explains how it works. “We send the messages back and forth via Bluetooth, Apple I think in turn sends those as iMessage once it gets onto their system.” 

As impressive as this sounds, there are some setbacks involved.

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Users won’t be able to see the full message history, only ones sent or received through Phone Link. You also won’t see any blue or green chat bubbles since the system can’t tell between a regular text message and an iMessage one. Still, this is a surprising and big step in the right direction, one that could open up even more features and support in the future like photos integration. 

If you’re interested in testing this feature, Microsoft will begin beta testing with a small percentage of Windows Insiders who are in the Dev, Beta, and Release Preview channels. “We will increase the availability of the preview to more Insiders over time and based on feedback we receive with this first set of Insiders,” according to the official blog post.

This new update also comes with several other features like AI Bing and chat-powered searches on the taskbar, a screen recording feature, better touch optimizations, and more.

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Latest Tech News

2023 could very well be the biggest year ever for cybercriminals, new figures have claimed.

According to SonicWall’s latest figures, cybercrime is on the rise across the board, but trends are slowly shifting which is something IT security teams should keep in mind. More precisely, hackers are opting for a “slow and low” approach, keeping stealthy while trying to achieve financially-motivated goals.

That being said, the company found that the total malware volume was up 2% in 2022, after three straight years of decline.

Ransomware up in volume

Overall, the entire European continent saw increased levels of malware (10%+), with Ukraine suffering a record 25.6 million attempts. Certain countries, such as the UK (-13%) and Germany (-28%) fared quite well last year. Across the pond, the U.S. experienced 9% lower malware volume, compared to 2021.

Ransomware, arguably one of the most popular attack vectors out there, saw a global decline of 21%, but total volume that surpassed that of 2017, 2018, 2019, and 202. In particular, total ransomware in Q4 (154.9 million) was the highest since Q3 2021.

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But trends seem to be shifting towards IoT malware, whose global volume rose by 87% in 2022, totaling 112 million hits last year. Cryptojacking - hijacking an endpoint to mine cryptocurrency - is yet to show signs of abating, as well. It rose 43% globally last year, which is the most SonicWall threat researchers recorded in a single year. The retail and financial industries were hit the heaviest, with 2810% and 352% increases, respectively.

“The past year reinforced the need for cybersecurity in every industry and every facet of business, as threat actors targeted anything and everything, from education to retail to finance,” said SonicWall President and CEO Bob VanKirk. “While organizations face an increasing number of real-world obstacles with macroeconomic pressures and continued geopolitical strife, threat actors are shifting attack strategies at an alarming rate.” 

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Best Credit Cards for Online Shopping in February 2023 - CNET

These credit cards offer the best rewards rates for your online shopping.

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Latest Tech News

The upcoming LG G3 OLED uses a Micro Lens Array panel in order to boost brightness, the company has confirmed to TechRadar. It’s rare for LG Electronics to ever confirm what sort of OLED panel it’s using, and it had been extremely cagey about what was in the G3, but the company explained that some sizes (explained below) of the G3 will use so-called '3rd-gen OLED' panels from LG Display – the latter is the part of LG that actually makes OLED screens (its panels are used in almost all the best OLED TVs), and operates separately to LG Electronics, which makes the TVs.

LG has been showing the G3 off at recent events, and the headline news is that the TV looks set to match or even exceed the (perhaps briefly) world's-best brightness of the Samsung S95C, which we measured during the testing time of our early hands-on Samsung S95C review. 

The 55, 65, and 77-inch versions of the G3 appear to use a Micro Lens Array panel (though not the 83-incher) – these are the only sizes of 4K screen that LG Display produces with the technology in. LG recently shared these impressive real-world measurement figures with us for the G3:

First, a caveat: the figures above were taken by LG, not TechRadar. However, we expect the 10% and 100% figures to be close to the figures that we'll get when we test the set, because that's the kind of test we run.

That HDR Vivid reading of over 2,040 nits is pretty unrealistic for real-world viewing scenarios (who is spending this much on a TV and then watching in a weird mode?), but the 1,470 nits for a 10% window in HDR Cinema  (meaning a white block takes up 10% of the screen, in a mode suitable for movie lovers) is right in line with what we measured in the same kind of tests with the Samsung S95C – we got 1,374 nits there.

These numbers, and the presence of an MLA panel ensure the G3 should be able to compete with the Philips OLED+908 and the Panasonic MZ2000 – both of which use Micro Lens Array tech.

The contrast on the LG G3 is next-level stuff – we've seen it in person. (Image credit: Future)

Micro machines

If you’ve not heard of Micro Lens Array before, it’s a new technology that’s set to radically boost the brightness of OLED TVs. MLA uses billions (yes, with a b) of minuscule convex lenses that are placed over the pixels of an OLED panel to boost brightness up to 150% over traditional OLED screens. 

The LG G3 OLED uses Brightness Booster Max tech coupled with ‘META’: a software brightness-boosting algorithm. This is absolutely latest-gen stuff, never-before-seen in TVs until now, and the LG G3 will be the first on the market with it this year. (Sadly, the LG C3 won't get this technology.)

The presence of Micro Lens Array isn’t the G3’s only noteworthy new feature, though. Processing improvements include AI Super Upscaling to reduce noise when upscaling content; an improved Tone Mapping Pro feature that now analyzes the picture in 20,000 different zones to improve contrast handling; and an HDR Expression Enhancer that adjusts contrast differently depending on whether the part being processed is in the background or foreground of a picture. 

The screen of the G3 OLED gets a further boost with the addition of Super Anti Reflective coating, which LG claims reduces reflections around 25% compared to last year’s LG C2 OLED. This is likely the same technology that impressed us so much in the Philips OLED+908, because it's part of the OLED panel – you may see it referred to as 'Vanta Black' elsewhere.

There are also improvements on the audio front. The G3’s sound calibration is now optimised to the specific content you’re watching, with its speakers sporting 9.1.2 virtual sound thanks to AI Sound Pro, and then adjusting depending on whether it's an action movie, quiet drama, and so on. There’s also an Auto Balance Control feature that balances high and low sounds to better fit the TV’s speakers. 

As with other new LG TVs in 2023, the G3 OLED will partly support Disney Plus’ IMAX Enhanced Audio format, as well as support for DTS/DTS: X, though it will only pass these through to one of the best soundbars – it can't handle these formats itself.

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Data stolen from top gaming publisher Activision by hackers has now appeared for download on a popular dark web forum.

The breach, which occurred in December 2022, was confirmed by the videogame publisher several days ago. Now, it looks as if the worst case scenario has become reality.

The data, which the hackers claim was stolen from Activision's instance of the content delivery network (CDN) Azure, apparently includes nearly 20,000 records of employee details, including full names, email addresses, phone numbers and office addresses.  

Contradicting reports

Rather than being sold for a price, the data here is being offered for free to all users of the forum, in the form of a text file. Threat finders FalconFeedsio were the first to report the post on Twitter.

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The initial hack was achieved via an SMS phishing campaign - AKA smishing - to which an HR employee at the firm fell victim, giving away company credentials that allowed for access to its endpoints.

In confirming the breach, an Activision spokesperson told BleepingComputer that "no sensitive employee data" was accessed, although cybersecurity researchers vx-underground, who uncovered the incident, found this to be untrue, as they were privy to the stolen data and messages posted by the hackers on Activision’s Slack workspaces that showed otherwise.

Now the hacker's forum post appears to confirm this beyond doubt. Activision is yet to respond in light of their actions.

Other data stolen in the hack included that related to upcoming games, although Activision said this was not sensitive and at best only related to marketing materials already in the public domain.

Activision also assured that player and customer data remains safe and was not included in the hack. Since no mention of this was made in the hacker's post, it seems as if this is indeed true. 

The free availability of employee data could mean the future bombardment of employees with other malicious campaigns, such as further phishing attacks and identity theft.

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Latest Tech News

Telus has confirmed it recently discovered a database being sold on the dark web that apparently contained employee contact information as well as other sensitive data. 

The comms giant is currently investigating the matter to see how big the potential breach is, but preliminary reports suggest that no corporate or retail customer data was taken. 

Still, whoever buys the database could wreak serious havoc.

SIM swapping API

The company confirmed the news in a statement to The Register: "We are investigating claims that a small amount of data related to internal Telus source code and select Telus team members' information has appeared on the dark web," Telus spokesperson Richard Gilhooley said.

"We can confirm that to this point our investigation, which we launched as soon as we were made aware of the incident, has not identified any corporate or retail customer data."

So what data was taken? As per the ad posted on BreachForums, the attacker is selling 76,000 unique employee emails, and “internal information” on the employees pulled from the company’s API. Only one entity can purchase the database, for a sum subsequently agreed upon. 

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However in another, seperate post, the publication found the same threat actor offering the entire email database for $7,000, and a payroll database (counting 770 staff members, including high-ranking individuals) for $6,000. 

Perhaps more interestingly, the hacker is also selling Telus’ entire private source code and GitHub repositories, including the SIM swap API, for $50,000. 

This one, experts agree, is particularly worrying. Speaking to The Register, Emsisoft threat analyst Brett Callow explained how the buyer could use the data to run dangerous SIM-swapping attacks: by transferring the phone number associated with an account to a SIM card in their possession, the attackers would be able to bypass multi-factor authentication and other one-time security codes, to gain access to even most protected accounts. 

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A Planet Without Google Search - CNET

Could chatbot search usher in the next era of the internet?

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Microsoft may be adding a new customization option in an upcoming Windows 11 update – one that could address a feature that a good amount of users find annoying.

According to Twitter user @PhantomOfEarth and reported on by MSPowerUser, the Windows 11 Dev Insider build 25300 contains three strings that make turning off the date and time on the system tray on the right side of the Taskbar an option. Those strings are ‘Hide taskbar clock,’ ‘Hide time and date in the system tray,’ and ‘Turn this on to hide your time and date information in the corner of your taskbar.’ Most likely the setting will be located on the Taskbar, as other settings that configure it are located there. 

However, this is all still mere conjecture at this point. Finding these strings inside the build doesn't guarantee implementation. And even if it was confirmed the feature would be coming to Windows 11, we still don’t have a release date.

What does this mean for Windows 11?

Personally, I find the date and time on the Taskbar one of the most standard and useful features on the OS. It’s extremely convenient to simply glance to the right and see the exact time of day, especially when absorbed in other projects that would otherwise interfere with my concept of time.

However, having more customization options is never a bad thing and, considering it now, Windows 11 is long overdue for some overhauls in that regard. Another feature that could be useful is the ability to display multiple time zones on the Taskbar –handy for work environments that require communication and teamwork between staffers around the world.

There are plenty of other features Microsoft could test out, and if this one does drop and becomes popular, that hopefully means even more options in the future.

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