Throughout the various generations of Windows released by Microsoft over the years, only a few set of features have remained constant in all versions. One such feature is the widely-known game of Solitaire, which was in the early days of computers the world’s most popular time-killer, either a work or at home.

If you have switched from a Windows computers, or are just interested in playing the original version of Solitaire on mobile platforms, then you should be excited to learn that Microsoft has recently announced that the Solitaire Collection will be coming on both Android and iOS.

Any Windows version until Windows 10 always included to staple games, Solitaire and Spider Solitaire. These games are also included in the newest Windows, but just in a different application known as Solitaire collection. The new app includes both versions of the original games as well as a few other variants.

Unknown to Microsoft, the company made history back in 1990 when they introduced Solitaire as a pre-installed app on the Windows 3.0. Its purpose was to give users an entertaining way to practice basic tasks in the current form of graphical the user interface, which was unfamiliar to a lot of people back then.

The company hopes to build on the phenomenon that Solitaire proved to be on Windows computers and still is with 119 million people having played the game on the last two versions of Windows, with a promotional release on mobile.

The Solitaire Collection for Android and iOS includes three other game types besides the classic and Spider version. These are FreeCell, Tripeaks, and Pyramid. The standard version of the game bundle is free. However, the premium edition will feature a free one month trial period. After which, you have to pay $1.99 every month to enjoy the game without ads, as well as to receive double coin rewards used in daily challenges and game boosts.

It wouldn’t be a current mobile game without micro-transactions which range from $0.99 up to $9.99. Although there are many other different iterations of Solitaire already available on both platforms made by a variety of developers, Microsoft only counts its version as the world’s number one Solitaire game.

Image source: Google Play Store

Steam users can now vote their favorite games to become nominees for the first edition of the Steam Awards. The voting period coincides with the Steam Autumn Sale which is running from November 23 to Nov. 29.

Anyone with a steam account, new or old, can now cast their vote for whatever game they want for the eight different available final categories of the Steam Awards. Steam has decided that poke a bit of fun at awards in general. In an attempt to replace prestige and honor with humor, Steam has some of the most unique categories, drastically different from what you can expect from a standard award show for video games.

One of the most mediatized awards show is the Game Awards, which takes place in December. It features conventional categories like action-adventure, first-person shooter, and other. In order to avoid become another run of the mill awards show, Steam has decided on the following categories: Test of Time, which awards game based on how well they survived the test of time. The nominees should be games that players return to even though they’re old and new games are constantly released.

Another category is the “I’m Not Crying, There’s Something in My Eye” which recognizes the games that made players cry the most. The “ Just 5 More Minutes” category will feature games considered to be the most compelling and even addictive as they bring players to neglecting their other real life responsibilities.

Other quirky and unique awards include the “Whoooaaaa, dude!” which acknowledges games that are likely to blow a player’s mind. The “Game Within a Game” category will include games which feature the best mini-games inside the main title. “I Thought This Game Was Cool Before It Won an Award” recognizes the best games that aren’t widely known, such as indie games.

One of the strangest categories among the already unconventional ones must be the “Best Use of a Farm Animal” which is quite self-explanatory. Finally, Steam also implemented a “We Didn’t Think of Everything” award where gamers can come up with their own category.

To nominate a game for a specific category, you have to search the game and press the “Nominate this game for an award button.” The final winners from each category will be revealed in December.

Image credit: Steam

Fake news and the dangers it poses to both people’s everyday lives as well as deciding who to vote are clear as it allows readers to act on a fictional reality. However, if you expected that students in middle school and above who are more tech-savvy than other generations wouldn’t be susceptible to fake news, well new study shows exactly the contrary.

Researchers from Stanford University questioned around more than 8,700 students from different ages groups about whether a specific news article they showed was a real and credible piece of information or just a fake one meant to misinform readers.

The study began with testing middle school students and found that a large majority of around 82 percent of them could not tell the difference between obvious fake and real news. The study also showed that middle schoolers couldn’t distinguish between a sponsored content post and a real news story based on their source. Around two-thirds of interviewed middle schoolers found no issue with a bank’s executive post about financial preparedness.

Although the ability to tell fake news apart from real news improves with age, researchers found that at the high school level it wasn’t a drastic improvement. However, the results varied with the type of post they were asked to identify. For example, 40 percent of questioned high-school students thought that the region near the Fukushima power plant in Japan was toxic after seeing just a photo with not source or location attribution of a deformed daisy featuring a title about the Japanese area.

Although this seems an improvement over the capacity of middle schoolers, not even all college students were able to identify fake news completely. Researchers think that most people are more focused on the appearance of legitimacy of a post or article rather than the quality of its information. For example, students thought that by adding a photo to a Twitter post, makes it more credible without any reference to the actual validity of its content.

New surveys found that 88 percent of people up to the age of 18 get their news from social media, with an overall 62 percent of US adults. Although tech companies have started to take measures against fake news, the true solution only lies with better education.

Have you ever fallen prey to fake news?

Image source: Pixabay

Anyone with long commutes during their day knows the pleasure of using a pair of headphones to listen to your favorite music while you traverse the often loud and noisy city. However, listening to music loud enough on your headphones can block any outside sounds. This type of sensory deprivation is dangerous as sounds often provided warnings of dangers.

Doppler Labs, an audio startup company, is addressing this situation by developing a pair of wireless earbuds called Here One that, besides streaming music, can augment the sounds of the environment you are in. Although the earbuds were previously announced in June and were scheduled to ship in November, Doppler Labs have decided to push their launch date until February 2017.

Some of the situations the earbuds are uniquely designed to address is listening to music while walking down the street but still being able to hear the sounds of an incoming car. Another example is when you’re at a sporting event, the Here One earbuds provide you with reduced crowd noise while focusing the field action and also streaming stats about the match and the players.

Thanks to the innovative functionality of the earbuds, Doppler Labs has established partnerships with various companies and institutions for unique content and features like getting a custom audio commentary when going to the Philharmonic, or your own travel guide when visiting the San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts. Other partnerships involve the New York Mets, JetBlue, Coachella, Cleveland Cavaliers, and others to come.

According to Noah Kraft, the CEO of Doppler Labs, although they wished the earbuds could have been delivered as scheduled, especially so considering that Apple sold millions of jack-less iPhone 7s, the company still has to perform a validation build on a mass market scale.

Doppler labs will probably miss out on a lot of product sales if they don’t launch before the holidays. However, they could risk losing even more if the product was not up to the promised standards. Additionally, this extra time also gives the company time to add new features to the earbuds by forming even more partnerships with different organizations to that users can enjoy a unique experience.

Are you planning on buying the wireless earbuds from Doppler Labs?

Image credit: Doppler Labs

Netflix has become one of the major video content streaming services on the market thanks to its combination of quality original content and a large database of third-party shows and movies. After becoming available in a large number of countries around the world, the next big step for the company is to popularize 4K streaming.

This goal may be easier said than done, at least in the current conditions which severely limits the number of users who can use the new feature. Netflix initially launched its 4K streaming service back in 2014 for specific TVs and streaming boxes such as Roku, Nvidia Shield, and Amazon Fire TV. Many users were left asking about a PC release, which Netflix mostly avoided to release due to DRM and piracy concerns issued by TV networks and Hollywood studios.

Now, Netflix has announced that their 4K streaming service is finally coming to Windows 10 computers. However, only users with computers that feature the seventh generation Kaby Lake processors from Intel as well as a 4K monitor will be able to enjoy the feature. Only this generation of processors have the required hardware decoding support for the 4K codec, 10-bit HEVC, used by Netflix 4K streaming.

Additionally, in order to address the concerns of networks and studios executives, Microsoft has implemented a hardware-based DRM measure called PlayReady 3.0.  Users are required to have a dedicated decoding hardware either on their GPU or their CPU, which prevents the video stream from being recorded in various software or through an external capture device.

If these measures weren’t enough, users will only be able to stream 4K content from Netflix only in Microsoft’s Windows 10 browser Edge, as it is the only one that supports the PlayReady DRM at this point. Edge will be required even if you are one of the select users who manage to fulfill all the conditions implemented by Microsoft and Netflix.

However, out of all the restrictions and DRM conditions that need to be fulfilled, the most restrictive must be the fact that Intel’s seventh generation of Kaby Lake processors are not widely available yet, not to mention their price. As such, Netflix 4K streaming on PC still remains a niche feature which will take a while to see a broad adoption.

Image source: Wikimedia

If you want to avoid an extremely crowded place during your night out, then Google’s newest feature is the perfect tool for the situation. The company previously introduced the Popular Times update to their search engine which shows users how crowded a locale is, be it a bar, a restaurant or coffee shop at any time of the week. Google is improving that feature with a real-time tracker so you can avoid wasting precious time waiting for a table.

The Popular Time update was released last year in July. When you look for a restaurant on Google, besides the standard information provided by clicking its title on the search engine or on Google Maps, users were also able to see how busy the restaurant was on a day-by-day basis throughout the week.

The feature was useful when trying to set some plans for the near future while avoiding overcrowded places. However, the feature didn’t provide specific information about the number of people at a specific time. As such, it wasn’t particularly useful when deciding about a place at the last minute.

With their newest improvement to the feature, users are now able to see real-time and specific information about how crowded a place really is at any point during the day and night. This information can be found in the Popular Times widget which appears when you look for a bar or restaurant in either Google Search or Google Maps.

Google is able to provide real-time information about popular places by using anonymous location data as well as searches. Previously, the feature could not predict a surge in clients based on a special event at the locale or anything near it. However, it remained an efficient tool to figure out what are your best chances to avoid crowded times. The real-time data only improves upon this aspect and it will probably benefit busy people who like to schedule every minute of their day the most.

At the time of the writing, the feature is not available yet. However, you can expect it to go live in the next few hours. It’s important to remember to remember that the real-time information will be provided for locales with enough clients who provide Google with the data to establish patterns and a client count.

Image source: Google

Nokia, once an established name in the cellphone industry has become almost unknown in the current smartphone market. However, it seems that the company is planning a comeback in 2017 as it has confirmed that will present new Nokia smartphones at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017.

Nokia cellphones were praised as being very reliable and innovative. The company’s improvements on standard cell phone design, simplifying the user interface while emphasizing good signal and voice quality is what propelled Nokia to the top of the industry.

Unfortunately, more and more competitors were able to outpace Nokia, especially so in the smartphone age. This situation has continued almost to the point where the once famous company did not have one smartphone on the shelves of stores.

Nokia was eventually bought by Microsoft in 2014, and by May 2016 its phone business was sold to Foxconn for $30 million. Somehow, despite a situation that seemed to be the end of Nokia, the company is planning to unveil a new smartphone brand next year. The information comes from a leak of a slide from a presentation Nokia held for investors on November 15, in Barcelona, Spain.

At the forefront of their comeback, we might find the rumored Nokia D1C. After a few leaks on several sites, the D1C is reported to feature a Full HD screen, a 13-megapixel front camera with an 8-megapixel sensor on the back of the phone. It will be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor and 3 GB of RAM.

Although no other details are known about the upcoming Nokia smartphones, we’re bound to find out more information as MWC comes ever closer. Additionally, it seems that the newly formed company, HMD, will take the helm of the production of the smartphones. HMD plans to spend $500 million in global marketing campaign over the next three years in order to put the Nokia name back on the map. The core of the Nokia company will only serve to oversee the production of the phones and maintain their status as owner of various patents.

What do you think about Nokia’s comeback? Did you have a Nokia phone or are you planning on buying any of the new Nokia smartphones?

Image source: Pixabay

Smartphones are able to record large amounts of data about your activity including your call history. A new report shows that Apple started saving your call logs in the iCloud for some time now, without properly informing iPhone users. This allows them to easily share your private information with government agencies if they are requested to do so.

A software forensics company based in Russia, Elcomsoft have revealed that their new Phone Breaker software is able to retrieve a smartphone’s user personal call history data which was saved on iCloud. Additionally, the report also reveals that Apple has also been saving FaceTime logs. More specifically, Apple records to the iCloud detailed information such as phone numbers, the dates and times of each call you made or received, their durations. They can even keep data about your ignored or missed calls.

This situation is what most privacy experts have warned against. If Apple decides to share your personal information with government authorities, then they could easily do so thanks to their large databases of each user’s call history of up to four months. There no specific options to disable this function without directly disabling the iCloud Drive service.

According to the Elcomsoft report, the syncing of your call history to the iCloud can happen in real-time, or just in a few hours. The company’s software managed to retrieve information dating back to four months ago.

Although Apple’s actions seem like a violation of your privacy, the company only decided to implement the function for iCloud as an essential aspect of cross-device functionality. It’s doubtful that the company wants to really spy on their users. If it really did want to, then Apple should have given the FBI access to the iPhone of the San Bernardino shooter. Additionally, keeping all your call history data provides a backup point in case you lose your phone.

Nonetheless, users should have the option to choose for themselves if they really want their call history and personal information to be saved on the iCloud. A change in the company’s policy about sharing information with authorities could easily occur in light of new circumstances.

What do you think about Apple saving your call history?

The struggle between security developers and hackers is very likely to never end. However, thanks to a new device called PoisonTap, hackers and actors with ill intents may have gained an upper hand in the ongoing struggle, if they can get the hands on it at least.

Although developers and hackers are at odds with each other, a big part of their jobs involves discovering new ways to hack and access computers. The difference lies in what they do with their knowledge. For example, Samy Kamkar, a very well-known developer as well as a hacker, was created a $5 tool he’s calling Poison Tap. It can be used to access password-protected computers in less than a minute as long as there is a browser running.

According to Kamkar, PoisonTap is built on an extremely cheap Raspberry Pi Zero microcomputer. Anyone can connect it to a computer’s USB port and it will start an automatic process without the need of  the actual owner of the PoisonTap to know anything about how it operates.

Nonetheless, Kamkar has provided a detailed description of the process. When the device is connected to a computer, it emulates a network device and starts attacking all outbound connections just by pretending to be the source of the internet. As such, it manages to trick the computer into sending all of its traffic to the device.

Using this method, hackers can easily steal a user’s cookies from their own computer and use the information from them to log-in to the same sites as them. They don’t even need any password or username information to do it. However, the PoisonTap is unable to access information from websites using HTTPS web encryption.

Nonetheless, according to security experts who reviewed Kamkar’s invention claimed it was a new way to attack and bypass a computer’s security. It manages to exploit the excessive amount of trust Windows and Mac computers allow for network devices. They are designed in such a way that when a network device or anything that appears like one is connected, the computer automatically starts exchanging data with it.

As dangerous as the new hack sounds, you have to know that it has limitations. First of all, it’s not a remote hack. Anyone who gets their hands on a PoisonTap have to get access to your physical computer in order to hack it. Caution in not leaving your computer unsupervised is the best measure against such as hack.

Image source: Wikipedia

SpaceX’s and Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk is one of the leading visionaries of our time having funded or invested in a number of companies and organizations that seek the improvement of our world through accessible technology. Now, he has set his eyes on expanding global internet coverage through a new satellite network.

The number of satellites collectively launched into orbit by various countries and companies since the launch of Sputnik I in 1957, is around a few thousand. However, experts estimate that only around 1,400 are still operational. A new report has revealed that SpaceX is seeking permission to launch another 4,425 satellites in the upcoming years.

The commercial space launch company has recently filed an application at the Federal Communications Commission in which it seeks permission to launch a massive satellite network with the purpose of providing high-speed internet to the entire world.

The filed documents reveal that SpaceX’s satellite system can provide a wide range of communications and broadband services for use across all levels, be It institutional, professional, or commercial. The first phase of the plan involves launching 1,600 satellites. Half of them would be required to improve the internet coverage in countries like the United States and its territories like the Virgin Island and Puerto Rico. The satellites will enable internet bandwidth of up to 1 Gbps per user at a low latency.

In regards to the technical details of the plan, each satellite which will be part of the planned network will weigh around 850 lbs. They will orbit the planet at altitudes ranging from 715 miles up to 820 miles. These satellites are much smaller and lighter than the standard satellites currently used in communications services.

SpaceX plans to deliver the satellite network into orbit using both their Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy rockets. Each satellite will last around 5 to 7 years, a period after which they will start to decay within a year.

Musk previously discussed his ambitious plan to deliver reliable, fast and accessible internet to the planet in January 2015. However, to do so won’t be cheap. The current filing does not include a cost estimate, however, Musk previously stated that the cost might be around $10 billion.

Image source: Flickr