Few technologies are as controversial as ad blocking. While users love them for their ability to enjoy the web undisturbed, advertisers consider them the death of the commercial internet. Now, the makers of Chromium, the basis for Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi and soon Edge, have announced drastic changes. And if patron Google / Alphabet gets their way, there will be tough times ahead for ad blocking.
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Last week, US president Donald Trump signed an executive order with far-reaching implications, effectively declaring a national emergency. Everyone immediately suspected this decree to be primarily targeted towards China and Huawei, as there had been accusations beforehand. But the White House was quick to deny any such claims, stating the order wasn't targeted at any particular country or company. A week later, Alphabet, Google's parent company, terminated all business relations with Huawei. What a surprise. Read on to learn what this means for owners of Huawei cellphones and what the emergency is really about.
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The European parliament recently voted on a major reform of EU copyright law. Henceforth, new laws are supposed to provide better IP protection for copyright owners. Upload filters are particularly controversial, as they'll analyze, and potentially block, videos, songs and images during the upload process, if they deem them in violation of intellectual property rights. All over the world, copyright owners, like movie makers, musicians and authors, have been following the discussion and now feel their finest hour has come. But what are upload filters, how do they work - and why are they so controversial?
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Imagine your PC or laptop had a port with a myriad of connection options and lots of raw power but you didn't even know it existed! That's what many computer owners must feel like these days. Purchasing a computer usually involves a welter of technical terms that are hard to sort out. And honestly, whose interest would spike if, along with disk size, RAM, processor and graphics card, the term Thunderbolt was suddenly thrown around? What is almost considered old hat in the Apple world is still a rarity among Windows users.
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Every month, several thousand apps are published. Most target a niche market, many are clones of existing popular programs, seldom does a new app make a splash these days. When WhatsApp launched, ten years ago, it got barely noticed and messengers were still considered PC-only. For text messages, there was SMS, for everything else, there were phone calls. Read on to learn why Facebook's rejection really got the app off the ground and why 2019 will be a decisive year for WhatsApp!
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