News written by James Delahunty (November, 2017)

ProtonMail, the encrypted e-mail service, has now unveiled ProtonMail Contacts, which provides zero-access encryption for contact information.

Zero-access encryption means that the protected contact fields are encrypted in such a way that only you are able to decrypt and read them, not even ProtonMail can read them. While you can't encrypt the e-mail address of a contact (since ProtonMail needs to know where to send the email) you can encrypt other fields such as Address, Phone Number and Notes.

The goal of this feature is to provide another level of security for journalists and others who need to keep the identity of acquaintances (e.g. sources) as secret as possible while still being able to contact them.

In additional, digital signatures are utilizes to verify the integrity of contacts data, including the e-mail address. Verified fields are denoted with a tick. If verification fails (e.g. due to tampering), a very prominent red-background warning will display.

More information: ProtonMail

U.S. international trade body has prohibited Comcast Corp from importing types of set-top boxes in a patent dispute with Rovi Corp (now TiVo).

The ITC has prohibited the import and sale of Rovi's Xfinity X1 set-top box models that specifically violate two patents. It does not apply to legacy hardware that does not.

"Today's Commission Opinion reinforces the need for Comcast to take the necessary licenses to our IP," Rovi said in response to the commission's findings.

Comcast has confirmed it will appeal the body's decision. The ban could be overturned by U.S. President Donald Trump during the Presidential Review period.

Source: Reuters News Agency

Uber has fired two employees after a breach of user data was covered up last year, Dara Khosrowshahi has revealed to the public.

Khosrowshahi recently replaced co-founder Travis Kalanick as CEO at the ride-sharing giant. In a blog post, he said that the October 2016 data breach had only been revealed to him recently, and that two employees whose job it was to respond appropriatelky to a data breach have been fired as a result.

The names and driver's license numbers of around 600,000 drivers in the United States were stolen in the breach, along with some personal information of 57 million Uber users around the world which includes names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers.

The breach happened after hackers gained access to proptietary information stored on the GitHub service, which was then used to access Uber information held by a cloud-storage provider. For the record, GitHub has confirmed that its security was not breached as part of the incident.

Uber has not found any evidence of fraud or misuse tied to the incident so far, but is providing affected drivers with free credit monitoring and identity theft protection.

Uber drivers can get more information here, while Uber riders can seek information here.

Microsoft's Skype video-phone call and messaging service has disappeared from Apple's App Store in China, as well as stores for Android.

Apple confirmed to the Reuters news agency that the removal was down to the demands of Chinese authorites.

"We have been notified by the Ministry of Public Security that a number of voice over internet protocol apps do not comply with local law, therefore these apps have been removed from the App Store in China," a spokeswoman for Apple, said. "These apps remain available in all other markets where they do business."

While Google Play is not available in China at all, other app stores that cater to Android devices also removed the Skype application presumably for the same reason.

The incident is the latest setback for foreign tech companies in China, where the countries Great Firewall of censorship has caused considerable tension between the communist government and the tech industry.

WhatsApp, Facebook's encrypted messaging service, has also had recent outages in China.

Mozilla has released Firefox Quantum across platforms with a new slick UI and an overhauled core engine, providing for a speedier and lighter experience.

It's twice as fast as Firefox from six months ago, or at least Mozilla claims, and when we tested it out we noticed significant improvements under the new Photon UI, including when switching between large numbers of open tabs. Browsing was also noticeable smoother. Quantum is also less of a memory hog.

The improved experience comes from a multitude of improvements under the hood, such as the new CSS engine, Stylo, that takes better advantage of today's hardware with multiple cores that are optimized for low power consumption.

Firefox has also changed the default search provider to Google in the United States and Canada. The decision was put down to a "focus on user experience and performance," but of course Firefox still comes with more than 60 search providers pre-installed, covering 90+ languages.

You can download Mozilla Firefox v57.0 (64-bit here) from AfterDawn or the Mozilla homepage.

Bitcoin peaked at an all-time high of over $7000 on Thursday, following an exciting week for the cryptocurrency.

CME Group, the largest derivatives exchange operator in the world, announced that it would launch a Bitcoin futures product before the end of 2017. This news drove the surging cryptocurrency to an all time high of $6,450 on Wednesday. Today, Bitcoin soared again, jumping over $7000 on the Bitstamp exchange. Bitcoin has seen seven-fold price increase this year, doubling since September.

Back in August, the BitCoin Cash spin-off had prompted fears that it would disrupt the persistent rise of the cryptocurrency, but instead its price had risen sharply compared to the USD.

Bitcoin is growing in popularity around the world too. Coinbase, which can be used to trade BitCoin, gets between 35,000 and 50,000 new users per day. It is also in the news more often, most recently due to the interest in Bitcoin on the Korean peninsula as tensions mount.

Source: >Reuters

Xbox One owners can now install an Amazon Prime Video app on the Xbox One family of consoles, including the upcoming Xbox One X.

Amazon Prime Video provides exclusive access to popular content including The Grand Tour, American Gods, Mozart in the Jungle and Transparent. Prime Video also has content available in 4K UHD resolution, which is supported by the Xbox One S and Xbox One X.

Amazon Prime Video is available in more than 200 countries around the world. Existing subscribers only need to visit the Microsoft Store to download the Prime Video app.

For others, visit PrimeVideo.com for more information.

The world's largest social network sees profits soaring in the third quarter driven by a large increase in ad revenue.

In the three months to the end of September, Facebook brought in more than $10.1 billion in advertising revenue. Overall, revenue was up year-on-year by 47 percent to $10.3 billion. Profits jumped 80 percent compared to the same period of last year, reaching $4.7 billion.

However, an increasing focus on security and integrity of the platform will impact future profits, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He told investors that Facebook is attempting to eradicate "false news", hate speech and bullying on its platform, which will be a considerable investment.

The social network has more than 2.07 billion users as of the end of September.

It is currently facing the scrutiny of lawmakers in the United States who are eyeing more regulation in the area to prevent propaganda from being used as a tool to influence elections. Facebook has reported that over 150 million people may seen some Russian propaganda efforts on its platform.

Zuckerbeg had previously described the hypothesis that fake news on Facebook had influenced the result of the U.S. Presidential electon as "pretty crazy".

Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond return to Amazon Prime Video in The Grand Tour Season 2 next month.

The Amazon Prime Video exclusive comes back to screens on December 8. The first episode of The Grand Tour broke Amazon Prime Video's previous records in the days after it landed on the platform beginning November 18, 2016.

Earlier this year, a short teaser trailer for Season 2 was released. However, both Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson had some difficult times in 2017, with the former being involved in a vehicle accident and latter being hospitalized for a life-threating case of pneumonia.

Another trailer was released by Amazon today giving us a taste of what is to come with Season 2.

Some TV viewers in the UK are having signal problems due to atmospheric conditions, according to Freeview.

Freeview allows TV viewers to pick up TV signals in the UK using antennae. Yesterday, viewers started reporting problems with signal. One consequence for many users was the inability to watch The Great British Bake Off final because of the disruption. Freeview responded to the affected viewers today, urging them not to attempt retuning to alleviate the issue.

We're aware that high air pressure is currently affecting TV and radio signals for some viewers in England and Wales. We're unable to prevent or remedy this. We recommend that you do not retune your equipment as reception will return to normal once the weather changes.

TV and radio signals can be affected by atmospheric conditions, including high air pressure (which brings fine weather), heavy rain or snow.