Latest news

In a clear example of irony, Mozilla has pulled four add-ons from popular security firms for violating policies on data collection.

The add-ons are developed by Avast and AVG, who are among the most popular providers of consumer-level security products across platforms. Mozilla removed two add-ons from each firm that protected consumers from dangerous websites and also from scams and other undesirable activity.

Starting in October, Adblock Plus developer Wladimir Palant detailed how the add-ons in question were excessively vacuuming up data from the browsers they were installed on. Far from just collecting data about websites visited, the add-ons went further to collection information on search history, and behavioral information including how long was spent on a webpage, what users had clicked on, the number of open tabs, and even when they switched tabs.

Such detailed information violates Mozilla's policies and it pulled the four add-ons from its store after it was notified of them on December 2. Opera followed suit shortly afterward.

The add-ons are likely to return sooner rather than later. ZDNet reported that Avast is already working with Mozilla to bring its add-ons to compliance.

The service will ask new users for their date of birth when creating a new account, it has confirmed.

Instagram has no plans to retroactively seek the date of birth of its vast millions of existing users, feeling it may be intrusive to do so. On a blog post explaining the change, Instagram cited a desire to provide age-appropriate experiences for its users.

"Asking for this information will help prevent underage people from joining Instagram, help us keep young people safer and enable more age-appropriate experiences overall," the blog post explains.

"We will use the birthday information you share with us to create more tailored experiences, such as education around account controls and recommended privacy settings for young people."

Instagram will not be attempting to verify the date of birth provided by new users, however. Age verification is a topic that is increasingly at the forefront of public discussion about digital services and their effects on young users. Within the industry itself, there is a debate on how exactly age verification can be successfully implemented, though regulators would certainly like to see it implemented.

Nowadays pictures get taken in vast quantities and are published olnine routinely (social media, instant messaging, etc.). Sometimes the picture that you captured on your phone doesn't just seem good enough and you need to edit it; crop, change colors, and add special effects. Or, you may want to create a totally new image using multiple pictures, effects, etc.

In all of these cases you need a proper photo editing software.

Many popular photo editing suites are commercial, but luckily there are amazing free options on the market too. So, we built a list of - in our opinion - the five best free photo editing software for Windows:

1. Gimp

Gimp is considered by the world to be the best free photo editing software - and it's not a huge shock. The main reason Gimp is the best is the varied range of tools.

Gimp's tools and features range is enormous: from layers to different kinds of effects, everything's on Gimp and for free without ads.

In our article series, we're digging into AfterDawn's news archive and looking what happened exactly 20 years ago. This article series also celebrates AfterDawn's 20th anniversary.

So, we're digging into our news archive and trying to figure out what was hot and what was not, back in November, 1999 when our site was only four months old. I'd like to remind you, our readers, that back then, AfterDawn was strictly focused on digital audio and video technologies and reporting events in those genres. More generic "all about tech" arrived to our site much later.

New file sharing software pop up almost daily

As Napster has grabbed the headlines across the world, competitors appear on almost daily basis to take a slice of the growing file sharing business. Legal or not, there's a goldrush among software developers those days, hoping that somehow, file sharing would be deemed legal and one of the players would emerge out of the wars as the winner.

In our news back in November, 1999, we covered several software releases related to file sharing software. One of the strongest players back then was CuteMX. Software itself didn't live for very long, as the developers decided to call it quits after Napster's troubles with the law started to grow. But for a very short time, back then, it was considered as the top contender to Napster - superior technically in many ways.

Valve's Steam Controller is to become a part of gaming history as the company confirms it is manufacturing no more units.

Valve first introduced the initial Steam Controller to the world in September 2013, as part of its Steam Machine initiative. It was a different controller than most gamers were used to. Instead of the common-place thumbsticks, it sports clickable trackpads that deliver haptic feedback. It also features fourteen separate buttons.

It's odd-looking design and unconventional feel did earn it some scorn from gamers, but that didn't stop it amassing its own following. This is due to the fact that it is one of the most customizable gamepads available, and thousands of gamers uploaded their own custom configs for their game libraries on Steam.

If you haven't used one and would like to own a piece of gaming history, you can buy it for a limited time for $5, if you are willing to pay the full shipping cost. Valve confirmed to The Verge that this is the last of the supply and there will be no more. It will be on sale until December 3, presumably only if stocks last.

You can find it at store.steampowered.com.

Twitter has backtracked on plans to remove inactive accounts after users pleaded with the social network not to delete accounts of people who have passed away.

The service was planning to do some house cleaning by removing inactive Twitter accounts, starting on December 12. Accounts that could be removed would have to be inactive for at least six months. Twitter had assured users that there will be no mass purge on December 12, rather the removal of inactive accounts would be spread out.

However, concerns were raised immediately that accounts belong to users who have died would be included in the deletions. Some users took to Twitter to plead with the firm to reconsider, often admitting to visiting the accounts of dead relatives and friends from time to time.

Hi @Twitter, please consider the possibility of memorialising accounts. I often refer back to my late partners tweets as a reminder of Dean's thoughts & feelings & the memories we've shared. Don't remove accounts before sorting this, please. https://t.co/qd6TYW9Ode

-- Adam (@adamadzp) November 26, 2019

Owners of new Chromebooks can redeem three months free Disney+ streaming if they activate the Chromebook within a limited time frame.

Google is pushing Chromebooks ahead of the busy holiday season. It is offering three months of free Disney+ streaming access to users who buy (or receive) a brand new Chromebook during the holidays. To be eligible for the offer, you must activate a new Chromebook between November 25 and January 31.

After that, you must visit a dedicated page to redeem the offer on Google's website.

Disney+ typically costs $6.99 per month. It provides access to a library of around 500 films and over 3,500 TV show episodes from the company's extensive catalog.

The service already has had more than ten million sign-ups since it launched.

In one of those "WHAT?" decisions, Google has removed one of the most popular torrent client, LibreTorrent from its Android app store.

LibreTorrent has become extremely popular among Android users simply bacuse it doesn't use aggressive advertising and it simple works as should. So, as the app has a good reputation, it has sparked tons of copycats in Google Play store, with name variations created from LibreTorrent's official name. Typically, those clones use 3rd party torrent code and come bundled with massive pile of aggressive advertising, creating a bad user experience.

One would imagine that Google would clean its store by kicking out the copycats?

Nope. Instead, Google has decided to remove the official LibreTorrent from its store.

After this rather surprising move, the developer of the app filed an appeal to get his app listed back to the Play store. Google, however, refused to do so, stating that "We don't allow apps that spam users or Google Play, such as apps that are duplicative and low-quality".

Good reasoning. Only problem with that is the fact that it applies to all the LibreTorrent clones, not to the official product itself. Only way for the author to get the app listed again would be to change its name and add it as a completely new app to the Play Store - losing the millions of downloads, reviews and the name recognition of the app. The very name recognition that caused the mess in the first place.

Elon Musk took the stage last week to announce their long-awaited pickup truck. The Cybertruck, as he calls it, was finally unveiled, and it was exactly what Musk promised.

The Cyberpunk and Blade Runner themed angular all metal beast was undoubtedly one of the most questionable designs in a vehicle ever.

Obviously the design has been the primary debate for the past few days, but the trucks specs are definitely good. So is the pricing.

While pre-orders aren't ready yet, since the production is yet to begin. However, in a very Tesla way, you can post a small deposit to reserve a spot in the pre-order pipeline.

This time around the deposit is only $100 and its refundable, which might explain in large part how many have actually reserved their pre-order spot.

Musk has been occasionally updating us over the past few days on Twitter, and last night he posted a simple tweet indicating that over 200 000 people have posted their deposit.

This is a massive amount of people showing interest in the futuristic truck, especially after such a divided, even harsh response to the truck's design.

One has to still remember that Ford sells more than a million F-150 trucks each year, and a $100 deposit does not a $40 000 purchase make.

It was kinda inevitable, really. TV series piracy is booming again, thanks to a one TV series that is availabke only in handful of countries.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this one out. Star Wars universe has always been extrenely popular - and in recent years, even more so. In fact, the final movie in the original movie series is set to hit the movie theaters in December, 2019. Then, you create a first live action, made-for-adults TV series to the Star Wars universe, with massive budget. Series gets extremely good ratings in IMDB (pilot has the average of 9.3/10 and two other episodes have also average around 8.5/10).

Only legal way to watch the series is recently launched Disney+ service.

And Disney+ service is only available in five countries in the world.

What happens? You have a massive amount of people who are eager to watch the show, no matter what.

So, even those people who kinda dropped the whole torrenting business half a decade ago or so - when Netflix et al finally arrived to most countries, providing a legal way to binge-watch movies and TV shows - are back into the piracy game again. Disney+ is currently available only in United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand.

Electronic cigarettes, or vaping as the kids call it, has grown in popularity immensely in the past decade or so. It has largely grown out of people wanting to get rid of traditional cigarettes for a healthier option, but it also differs in terms of technology.

Vaping involves a technology that uses usually electricity to turn liquid into inhalable vapor. This combined with the fact that everything is nowadays intermingled with smartphones, you expect there to be vaping apps too, right?

Well there's an app for it, in fact tons of them. However, Apple's recent decision has purged all of them from the App Store.

This is due to the fact that recently some deaths and other health issues have been connected, however loosely, to vaping. Not too long ago China banned the selling of electronic cigarettes online.

While that might not be because of realistic health concerns, who knows what kind of market control idea is really behind it, Apple seems to believe there's a reason to discourage vaping. In fact, the company had halted the submit process for vaping apps already June.

To go a step further, now they are all gone from the App Store.

According to Apple, the removal decision has been made with help of CDC as well American Heart Association who've determined that vaping has resulted lung injuries.

Google's try at a gaming platform is right around the corner. Stadia is set to release tomorrow to the public.

The search giant has confirmed previously that the games you'll see in the streaming game service aren't going to be the same games you play on traditional consoles or PC. In fact, they aren't even ports of those games.

While it's certainly exciting that Stadia offers if not exclusive, at least games that are ground up built for the platform, the question remains, how are they going to acquire enough games to keep the platform lively.

Google has previously promised around a dozen games at start. However, we've got some good news for those of you ready to rock you brand new Stadia controller. The company has added another 10 launch titles, nearly doubling the game selection.

The new games include: Attack on Titan: Final Battle 2, Farming Simulator 2019, Final Fantasy XV, Football Manager 2020, Grid 2019, Metro Exodus, NBA 2K20, Rage 2, Trials Rising, and Wolfenstein: Youngblood.

As you can see from the list above as well as the full list of launch titles below, there are some interesting triple A titles from big publishers. There's still ways to go for Stadia, as 22 games is not going to keep people playing for long.

Facebook who owns the extremely popular messaging app WhatsApp has announced that they have found a potentially very dangerous security problem with WhatsApp.

Issue is related to video playback within the WhatsApp software and namely, to a buffer overflow problem related to MP4 videos. Malicious party can send a specially crafted MP4 video file to the recipient and hijack the phone, without user even knowing about it.

The video itself would play just fine, but in the background, the specially crafted MP4 file could open the phone operating system for hackers to run their own code on the phone. Such malicious code can be pretty much anything: mining cryptocurrency for the criminals, sending out millions of spam emails to other recipients, to be part of a denial-of-service attacks against other services, etc.

The bug is related to parsing the elementary stream metadata of MP4 video files.

There's a patched version of WhatsApp available for Android, iPhone and Windows Phone users.

Affected versions:

• Android versions prior to 2.19.274
• iOS versions prior to 2.19.100
• Enterprise Client versions prior to 2.25.3
• Windows Phone versions before and including 2.18.368

So, head to your phone's app store immediately and update your WhatsApp right away!

Tesla's success with electric vehicles shouldn't be a surprise to anyone at this point. Traditional automakers have been concocting their own recipes for years now to beat Tesla at its own game, but no challenger has yet been really worthy.

Even the recently announced Porsche Taycan Turbo S isn't going to cut it, after all with all its impressive performance and Porsche prestige it is nearly $200,000.

One is waiting for a proper competitor in the sub-$50,000 segment from the likes of Volkswagen or Toyota. Or Ford.

Indeed, Ford is now ready to announced its sporty electric vehicle. Mustang Mach-E seems to be the most direct competitor to Tesla from a old-school car giant.

The official release party is held in couple of days but we've got some leaked imagery of the futuristic Mustang.

MachEForum managed to acquire screenshots from the official website that was launched pre-maturely and pulled after the leak.

While it's undeniably a Ford, and a Mustang, there are some changes in the design which could be considered EV features. There's no grill up front since there's no engine to cool down, and there are no exhausts because it doesn't pollute – no at least in the similar fashion as gas cars.

Google has today started the rollout for its Rich Communication Service messaging feature on Android. RCS allows rich messaging on Android's default Messages app, including pictures and read receipts among other things, not unlike Apple's iMessage.

The company has been trying to work with carriers and partners to bring the feature to Android. However, now Google has decided to bypass some of the slow-moving machinery to implement it themselves.

The feature should come to all handsets in the U.S. shortly. The rollout has already began and you might be seeing a new popup window in Messages to suggest about the new chat features.

RCH uses Wi-Fi or cellular data connection to send rich messages in the SMS app. It allows sharing of higher quality images, including those precious meme gifs, as well as videos, and has support for read receipts and shows when the recipient is writing.

If you are among the first to find yourself with the new feature, you can enable it following the instructions of the popup window.

Currently the RCS is only available in France, Mexico, the U.S., and the U.K., but more countries are surely soon to join. Google said that U.S. customers should receive the feature broadly by the end of the year.