General Tech

Over the years, digital assistants have become an integral part of the smartphone experience, with Siri often being the most popular. Unfortunately for Apple, while Siri does continue to dominate, usage does appear to be dropping significantly according to new research. Verto, an app analytics company has released a report …

When someone mentions the idea of a smart home, what images come to mind? Do you picture a house controlled by robots – or maybe a futuristic building that resembles a strange spaceship? There are lots of preconceived notions about what the modern smart home actually entails, but they’re almost …

Samsung hit a bump in the road last year with the Galaxy Note 7 but the company appears to have well and truly recovered following the launch of the Galaxy S8. This week, Samsung announced its profit forecasts for Q2 2017, showing record-breaking numbers. Samsung currently forecasts its quarterly profit …

This week, AlphaCool has introduced two new products, the AlphaCord Sleeve, and new Eiskamm Cable Combs, both of which can help you keep your cables looking tidy and unique with different colour schemes. The AlphaCord is perfect for ‘shrinkless sleeving', with opaque (Paracord) fabric. The only downside to individually sleeved …

Back in June, the European Commission ruled against Google in an antitrust case surrounding the search engine's ‘Shopping' site. According to the commission, Google promoted its own services on the shopping page, harming competition and resulting in a massive €2.42 billion fine. However, this wasn't the only antitrust case out …

Update (06/07/17): Today, Microsoft confirmed that it would be going through another round of restructuring, meaning thousands of job cuts will be made. In a statement sent out today, a Microsoft spokesperson said that the company is “implementing changes to better serve” its customers and partners. While the company did …

Over the last couple of years, John McAfee has been embroiled in a lawsuit with Intel over his right to use his own name. The rights issue crept up after McAfee anti-virus was sold to Intel for billions, essentially giving Intel ownership of the McAfee name as far as security …

Samsung has been making moves in the smart-home area for a while now, most notably with a smart fridge, featuring a large touch screen display and the new Bixby assistant for Galaxy smartphones. Now Samsung appears to be looking to expand into another area- smart speakers, in order to compete …

Over the last year, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding Apple's tax payments here in Europe. The company based its EU HQ in Ireland and benefitted from lower corporation tax, which the European Commission objected to, handing down a €13 billion fine. The Irish government is siding with …

Earlier this year, 4K Netflix streaming finally started making its way to PCs, in part due to Kaby Lake and its support for HEVC decoding. Fortunately for those not planning to make the jump to Kaby Lake, 4K Netflix streaming is now expanding to more systems, with UHD streaming support …

Way back in 2014, Microsoft was planning to expand its Surface tablet line with the launch of a Surface Mini. The tiny tablet was supposed to launch alongside the Surface Pro 3 that year but just a few weeks before the scheduled unveiling, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and former Nokia …

It looks like things between Toshiba and Western Digital are about to get ugly. Last week, we learned that WD was unhappy with Toshiba's efforts to sell its share of a NAND flash factory in Japan and now, Toshiba is firing back with a massive £835 million lawsuit, accusing Western …

Despite being a general media platform, Kodi has become synonymous with piracy, prompting investigations from many official bodies. While many measures have been put in place to combat piracy, FACT plans to target individual users of illegal apps as well as sellers and developers. 2017 has seen a major crackdown …

Over the last several years, Google has been battling it out with the European Commission in court over various antitrust allegations. One of the first antitrust cases to be levied at Google surrounded the company's ‘Shopping' search engine, with the EU claiming Google skews results and causes harm to competitors. …

Seven years ago, the European Commission hit Intel with a massive €1.06 billion fine, after ruling that the company had been trying to stifle AMD's own chip business. Since the fine came through, Intel has been working its way through an appeals process and after its most recent attempt in …

Futuremark, the company behind the widely used PCMark, 3DMark and VRMark benchmarking tools has now released PCMark 10 for all users. This is an updated version of the benchmarking tool for Windows 10, featuring new and improved workloads all wrapped up in a faster, more user-friendly application. Previously, only PCMark …

Update: It looks like yesterday's Europe-wide Skype outage has mostly been resolved. While there are still some lingering issues for some while the service returns to normal, everything should be in place by the end of today. So what caused this latest Skype outage? Well one group is claiming that …

Over the last few months, we have been hearing more and more details surround Microsoft's work with Qualcomm to bring Windows 10 to ARM CPUs. This all came to a head this month when it was announced that PCs running Windows 10 and the Snapdragon 835 SoC would be released …

It looks like Microsoft is going to have to fend off a new antitrust complaint in Europe. This time around, Kaspersky Lab is filing a complaint against Microsoft claiming that the company is using its dominant position in the OS market with Windows to push its own anti-virus software over …

Over the last several years, Google has been battling it out with the European Commission in court over various antitrust allegations. One of the first antitrust cases to be levied at Google surrounded the company's ‘Shopping' search engine, with the EU claiming Google skews results and causes harm to competitors. …

It hasn't been long since Palmer Luckey officially left Oculus but it looks like he has been keeping himself busy since then. Rather than trying to jump back into the virtual reality industry though, Luckey has opted to form a brand new startup company, which will be working on surveillance …

Over the last few months, Denuvo has been consistently making headlines for one reason or another. First Resident Evil VII was cracked in record time, then the software was accused of impacting the performance of recently released indie game ‘RIME', which was also cracked in record time, causing the developer …

Synology this week has announced that it would be launching an extended warranty in 27 additional countries, covering 52 countries in total. The extended warranty adds an extra two years of coverage to several Synology DiskStation systems, giving buyers additional peace of mind. With today's extension, buyers in the UK, …

Over the last few years, Samsung has been experimenting with different display technologies, including foldable and rollable OLED displays. This week, the company has added another emerging technology to its roster, stretchable OLED displays, with enough elasticity to bend in two directions. We first heard about this new display last …

Back in August, Microsoft acquired the live streaming service known as Beam, which came with a few distinct benefits over Twitch, with support for higher quality streams being the main selling point. Unfortunately, it looks like Microsoft couldn't get the rights to use the Beam brand globally, so the service …

Around two years ago, former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler made the decision to put new ‘net neutrality' rules into place. This essentially meant that Internet would be treated as a utility, meaning companies like Time Warner couldn't throttle your connection based on what sites and services you were using. Unfortunately, …

This week, the European Commission is fining Facebook £94.1 million, after concluding that the company gave ‘misleading' information during an investigation into its acquisition of WhatsApp in 2014. The EC initially began vetting the acquisition deal between Facebook and WhatsApp on anti-competitive grounds. During the Commission's investigation, Facebook made filings …

Just a few weeks ago, a hacker managed to get their hands on the majority of Netflix's fifth season of Orange is the New Black and promptly demanded ransom money to keep it off the web. Now this week, Disney appears to have found itself in a very similar situation, …

The dispute between Apple and Qualcomm is continuing to get uglier, with the chip maker now going after Apple's supply chain in court. Qualcomm has already filed a countersuit against Apple itself but now, the company is also going after four of the companies Apple uses to supply components for …

After 25 long years of success, the mp3 file format has officially been discontinued this week. The music format first hit the big time during the heyday of the iPod and rival mp3 players. Since then however, the format has slowly been replaced by formats like AAC, which offer superior …