Software & Apps News - Page 1

Earlier this year Reddit announced it was making changes to its API that prohibited any scraping of its data without payment. The change resulted in an uproar on the social media platform and then total darkness as subreddits were abandoned to stand in solidarity with third-party app designers who could no longer access Reddit's data unless they paid for it.

Reddit took the same stance against third-party apps with search engines and any other company that was looking to acquire its wealth of data to improve proprietary products. Reports then surfaced about a $60 million annual deal being struck with Google for direct access to Reddit data, along with a similar deal being struck with OpenAI for Reddit posts to appear in responses by the company's chatbots such as ChatGPT.

But now the boot has finally come down as a new report from The Verge reveals Reddit has rolled out an update that prohibits all web crawling, or data gathering, on its website. The change has banned search engines such as Microsoft's Bing, DuckDuckGo, and others from crawling Reddit, meaning Reddit posts will no longer appear as search results within the now banned search engines.

A week ago, CrowdStrike rolled out an update that caused approximately 8.5 million Windows machines worldwide to enter infinite boot loops.

The global IT outage has been described as the largest in history and is being directly compared to the historic Y2K scare. The CrowdStrike outage was a result of a faulty kernel driver update being rolled out CrowdStrike's Falcon Sensor security software, and, unfortunately, the faulty update caused a kernel-level malfunction that required physical intervention for remediation.

The outage affected numerous industries around the globe, such as airlines, supermarkets, telecommunications systems, point-of-sale systems, emergency services, and various other businesses. Now, we are starting to hear the first estimations of the amount of money lost due to Windows machines being down, with cloud monitoring and insurance company Parametrix estimating a fourth of the Fortune 500 companies were affected by the outage.

For quite some time now, some Windows 11 users have been vocal about the seemingly exponential push into "Suggestions" becoming embedded in different regions of the operating system.

Many of these Windows users, including myself for that matter, consider what Microsoft's is calling "Suggestions" as advertisements, and they are seemingly popping up in various places around the operating system. It was only earlier this month that Microsoft stuck with its decision to roll out a new advertisement for Xbox Game Pass within the Start Menu and Settings.

As for the Start Menu update, Microsoft added advertisement placements for Microsoft 365, Xbox Game Pass and OneDrive. These updates are being viewed by many as ways for Microsoft to sell its Windows users on its other products. Luckily, in most cases Redmond allows users to turn off these advertisements, but not always.

Windows has had a hell of a week as last Friday, cybersecurity company CrowdStrike rolled out an update that caused approximately 8.5 million Windows machines to be thrown into infinite boot loops.

While the fault of the global outage that disrupted airlines, banks, telecommunications systems, supermarkets, and point of sale systems lies at the feet of CrowdStrike and not Microsoft, the Redmond company was lumped into the negative wave of press simply because it was their platform the disruption occurred on. Unfortunately, Microsoft has another negative press story that perhaps wouldn't even be discussed if the CrowdStrike meltdown didn't happen.

Microsoft has confirmed a security update for Windows 11 is sending PCs into recovery. The fault was spotted by BleepingComputer, which states the fault affects versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft confirmed this via an update on its Windows release health dashboard where it explained that users may see a "BitLocker recovery screen upon booting your device".

Last Friday, cybersecurity company CrowdStrike issued an update to its kernel-level software that caused approximately 8.5 million Windows PCs to be thrown into infinite blue screen of death boot loops.

The IT outage was global, impacting multiple facets of society, such as point-of-sale systems, hospital services, emergency services, airlines, and various businesses. Unfortunately, for the systems that downloaded the update, the only way to implement a fix was to boot it into Safe Mode and delete the faulty files. This means an individual must be physically present to boot the system into Safe Mode.

Grant Thornton Australia, the Australian arm of one of the world's leading assurance, tax and advisory firms, was hit by the CrowdStrike outage. No less than 100 servers were knocked out of service by the update, and facing an untold number of maintenance hours ahead of them, the IT staff there began work on bringing the servers back online. However, senior systems engineer Rob Woltz and infrastructure manager Ben Watson remembered the utility of barcode scanners.

Windows 11 might get more adverts soon (again), although they could appear in an area of the operating system that you're not too fussed about - or never even visit, perhaps.

Can you guess where this new vehicle for potential adverts - or suggestions, as Microsoft call them - might be? Score a point if you were thinking of the Microsoft Store, as this is where the software giant is making its latest move in the world of promotional activity within Windows 11.

Although we should note that the idea is still in testing - in the Beta channel for Windows Insiders to be precise - it involves suggestions popping up when you search for apps or games in the Microsoft Store.

UPDATE from CrowdStrike 7/24/2024 at 5:22pm CDT: "That claim is false. CrowdStrike did not send gift cards to customers or clients. We did send these to our teammates and partners who have been helping customers through this situation. Uber flagged it as fraud because of high usage rates."

CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company that was responsible for rolling out a faulty driver update to its software that caused 8.5 million Windows machines to enter endless blue screen of death boot loops is now offering customers partners $10 Uber Eats gift cards as a way of saying sorry for the inconvenience.

Reports indicate CrowdStrike is sending out emails to its partners offering a $10 Uber Eats gift card as an apology. Multiple sources have reported receiving these emails from the cybersecurity company, with one source speaking to Tech Crunch and saying CrowdStrike recognizes the "additional work that the July 19 incident has caused" and for that "your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us!"

CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company behind one of, if not the biggest IT outage in history, has explained where it went wrong after pushing out an update to its malware software that nuked a staggering 8.5 million Windows machines.

The update was released last Friday, and approximately 8.5 million Windows machines were thrown into infinite boot loops with blue screens of death, impacting many aspects of everyday society, such as airlines, supermarkets, telecommunications, emergency services, and more. Since then, CrowdStrike has been quiet on how it missed the faults within the driver throughout internal testing, which it has now explained in a new update.

Here's how it works. CrowdStrike's Falcon Sensor, the software that was updated and ultimately led to the global outage, uses what is called "Sensor Content," which is software that defines what Falcon Sensor is capable of. The software is updated with "Rapid Response Content" which is designed to enable the software to detect and collect information on any new threats.

Spotify first announced it was working on implementing a new "HiFi" or lossless audio quality into its product offering stack, providing consumers with an option of listening to high-quality music for a $5 increase in their monthly subscription.

Spotify announced its development on HiFi three years ago, and since then, there hasn't really been much talk about the new service, but the company's CEO Daniel Ek, recently touched on it during an earnings call where he said HiFi will likely be bundled with other Premium-level features, such as AI-powered playlists, additional control of the application, and other unannounced features.

The bundling of these features with HiFi is likely to provide more value to a buyer who will have to pay $20/month to access this deluxe version of the music-streaming platform. Ek said despite HiFi being announced three years ago it's still "in early days" of development. Reports previously estimated the new subscription tier, which would be above the current Premium tier, would be priced around $20 as Ek said this deluxe tier would be approximately "$5 above the current premium tier".

Google has a potential change inbound for Chrome to further help cure the browser of its reputation for resource hogging, whereby it'll detect websites that are draining resources and flag them up to you.

This change is only in testing for Chrome right now, in the Canary builds, as spotted by regular leaker Leopeva64 on X.

As you can see in the animated GIF in the above tweet, Chrome picks up on tabs that are consuming too much in the way of resources. These are brought to your attention in a pop-up panel, and to improve performance, you're offered the chance for Chrome to make them all inactive. You can do so simply by clicking the 'Fix now' button, or alternatively, you can dismiss the warning - or you can individually close some of the offenders, picking and choosing which sites are for the chop.