July 2016

PC Tasks Optimizer is a free software program for Windows devices that assists users in disabling unneeded Windows tasks.

The Windows Task Scheduler is a core part of the Windows operating system. It consists basically of a list of scheduled tasks that are executed when certain events occur. These events may for instance be on system start.

While all Windows users may manage tasks using the Task Scheduler, doing so requires some understanding of tasks and quite a bit of research.

Private Internet Access announced today to all its customers via email that it made the decision to shut down all of the company's Russian servers.

The VPN provider, who operates servers in dozens of countries, cites a new Russian law that makes it mandatory for providers to log all Internet traffic for up to a year as the prime reason.

Additionally, Private Internet Access mentions that some of the company's servers were seized by Russian authorities recently without "notice or any type of due process".

Vivaldi released a new snapshot of the upcoming Vivaldi 1.3 web browser that brings along with it WebRTC Leak protection, additional mouse gestures, and improved hibernation support on Linux.

WebRTC, Web Real-Time Communication, is a relatively new feature of modern browsers used for real-time communication services without use if plugins.

Common WebRTC applications include chat, voice calling and P2P file sharing among other things. While certainly handy for Internet users who make use of it, it is of little use to those who don't.

The upcoming Android N (Nougat) operating system ships with a security change that will prevent ransomware attacks from succeeding that target the unlock password.

Ransomware is not only a problem on desktop computer systems but also increasingly problematic on mobile devices.

Depending on what users do on the mobile device, it may be easy to have it infected with a ransomware variant.

Typically, this involves downloading apps from outside of the Google Play store.

Rambox is a free open-source cross-platform messaging and email frontend for the desktop that provides you with access to more than 20 different services out of the box.

Messaging applications are everywhere. On your smartphone, on the Web, and as desktop programs. While some services provide you with tools to run them on any device you use, others are only available on certain device types or operating systems.

Twitch.tv is a popular destination to watch live streams of various video game and related broadcasts. Most Internet users tune in using a web browser, and that is working fine most of the time.

Twitch used to use Flash exclusively on the site but has since then started to integrate HTML5 video streams on the site as well.

Midnight (Night Mode) is a free application for Android devices to reduce the screen brightness automatically or manually.

Bright screens can be a problem, especially late at night, early in the morning or in places where it is dark.

It does not really matter if you are staring at a computer monitor, television screen or smartphone display.

Netmonitor is a browser extension for Google Chrome and other Chromium browsers that highlights background requests web pages made after loading.

Google Chrome, and other browsers for the matter, displays a loading indicator only on initial page load.

Once a page has loaded completely, it won't highlight if a page makes additional requests, at least not on the frontend of the browser.

While you may be able to see requests made after page load using the browser's own network monitor, it is not practical to have it open all the time for that.

Yahoo announced yesterday that it launched four bots for Facebook Messenger that users of the messaging application can interact with.

The bots, exclusively available for Android and iOS versions of Facebook Messenger, bring finance, news, weather and, ehm, monkeys, to Facebook Messenger.