August 2017

Opera Software announced the decision to discontinue Opera Max, an application for Android designed to save bandwidth and improve privacy today.

The company launched Opera Max back in 2013; first in the US as a beta version, and then a couple months later in the European Union and other parts of the world.

Smart multi-homed name resolution is a DNS related feature that Microsoft introduced in Windows 8 and implemented in Windows 10 as well.

The feature is designed to speed up DNS resolution on a device running Windows 8 or newer by sending DNS requests across all available network adapters. Microsoft refined the feature in Windows 10 as it selects the information that is returned the fastest automatically.

While the feature makes sense from a performance point of view, it introduces an issue from a privacy one.

Dr.Web LiveDisk is a free tool for system administrators and users alike to restore non-booting Windows computer systems.

The program has been designed specifically for situations where malware attacks, or the disinfection, cause Windows devices from booting properly.

The system repair software is offered an ISO image that you can burn to a blank CD or DVD, and as a version for USB Flash drives.

The latter needs to be run -- it is an executable file -- to start the process of installing the application on a connected USB Flash drive.

Easylist is a popular adblocking list that is used by browser extensions to block advertisement on websites visited in the browser.

As the name suggests already, EasyList is just a list of domain names that websites are blocked from making connections to. So, instead of contacting an ad server to download an ad from it, the connection is blocked.

EasyList is hosted on GitHub, and as such all of the lists that are maintained by the project are accessible by anyone.

Twitch announced on August 10, 2017 that the company has released the Twitch Desktop application final for Windows and Mac PCs.

The company released a beta version of the Twitch app in early 2017, and has been working on the final version of the desktop app ever since.

If you are using Firefox Nightly right now, you may have noticed that the latest update of the web browser disabled all legacy add-ons.

Firefox Nightly is the first version of the Firefox web browser that hit version 57, the version of Firefox that drops support for so-called legacy add-ons in favor of WebExtensions.

If your Firefox browser updated to version 55.0 recently, you may have noticed the new "Page Shot" icon in the browser's toolbar.

This icon powers the native screenshot capturing functionality of Firefox. It is being rolled out to users gradually which means that you may not see the icon yet in the browser's toolbar.

This does not mean however that the Firefox screenshot tool is not already available, as you may enable it in the browser to make use of it. Firefox users who see it already but have no use for it may disable it on the other hand.

Microsoft announced Windows 10 Pro for Workstations today, a new edition of the company's Windows 10 operating system aimed at high-end tasks and applications.

Windows 10 Pro for Workstations comes with a set of new features and expanded hardware support.

ELSA Speak: Reduce your accent is a free application for Android (and iOS) that assists you in improving your English pronunciation.

ELSA, which stands for English Language Speech Assistant coaches non-native speakers in improving their (American) English.

The app is free to try but limited. The first two lessons of each training group are free, the remaining ones are unlocked when you subscribe. A free 7-day trial is available that unlocks all lessons during that time period. Pro accounts are available for €31,99 yearly, €9,49 quarterly, or €4,19 monthly.

Win10Clean is an open source program for Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system that provides you with quick access to common tweaks and options to remove installed Windows apps and programs.

The program comes with functionality that you find in many Windows 10 privacy applications as well, but it has not been designed specifically for that purpose by its developer.