Paint has been part of the Windows operating system since its release in 1985 and is known for its simplicity and basic artistic results.

Paint’s successor, Paint 3D, will still be available.

The list was issued as part of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, which rolls out in the autumn.

Microsoft says that features on the list will be either removed from Windows 10 or “not in active development and might be removed in future releases”.

Other features facing the axe include the Outlook Express email client, which is replaced with the built-in Mail app, and the Reader app, which will be integrated into Microsoft Edge.

The BBC has contacted Microsoft for comment.

RIP Paint

People have expressed disappointment at the news on social media, with many tweeting “RIP” messages.

Welsh YouTuber Chaotic described Paint as “the greatest thing to have ever existed” – perhaps with tongue in cheek.

The artist known as Jim’ll Paint It uses the program to create artwork on outlandish themes, commissioned by strangers. He has nearly 700,000 followers on Facebook.

“Paint hasn’t been all that since they messed about with it anyway. I’m running XP on a virtual machine because it’s the best one,” he tweeted.

“They should just release the source and make it public domain,” tweeted games developer Mike Dailly, creator of Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto.

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Source: BBC

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Battery capacities are usually measured in Milliamps Hour (mAh). It is commonly used to measure the energy capacity of a battery. In general, the more the mAh, the longer the battery capacity or battery life.

Because of the challenge of batteries not lasting long, many OEMs have started producing bigger battery capacity batteries for their phones so that users can get much more from their phones.

However, there is also a dangerous trend among some OEMs who instead of producing bigger battery capacity are hoodwinking the unsuspecting customers by declaring a fake battery capacity when the real capacity is much lower.

Personally speaking, that is one of the most annoying things that can happen to a customer because I have been a victim of buying a fake battery for my phone.

The solution therefore lies in identifying and differentiating between an original and fake battery.

Last week, I did a personal investigation, trying to see which of the brands might be declaring a fake battery capacity. The investigation was done using 3 brands and I found a rather shocking fact. I collected three battery samples from itel Mobile, X-TIGI and Kimfly.

As you can see on the battery casing below, they all had their claimed battery capacity which are 1500mAh, 4000mAh and 2100mAh respectively.

However, knowing full well from my many researches that the true battery capacities are always printed on the main battery case and not the battery paper, I ripped down the battery papers of the 3 aforementioned brands. The result was quite telling.

I found the true battery capacities for two of the brands to be different from what was printed on their battery papers.

While itel Mobile was true with their claim of 1500mAh, both X-TIGI and Kimfly were not. The real battery capacity of X-TIGTI and Kimfly were 1900mAH and 1000mAH respectively instead of their acclaimed 4100mAH and 2100mAH.

Having been a victim of fake battery before, I must say brands that mislead their customers and the general public should be sanctioned by the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON). How can someone buy a phone with a claimed battery capacity of 4100mAh, which ordinary should last over 24 hours only for the person to realise that the phone is just 1900mAh and cannot last for long?

I am not a fan of itel but I must commend itel mobile and all other brands who are honest with their claims about their battery capacity. It is better to tell the world that your phone is 2000mAh and it is true than for brands to say their phone is 5000mAh when the actual capacity is less than 2300mAh.

Below are some other tips to identify fake battery capacities from the real ones.

Tip 1: Rip down the battery paper. If no printed numbers are found on the battery, the phone is probably a fake one.

Tip 2: If you find the printed numbers after ripping down the battery paper, check the real battery capacity and compare it with the claimed and labeled capacity to identify whether the phone is genuine or fake.

Tip 3: Compare the battery weight or volume of two phones which labeled the same capacity. The one with less weight is probably a fake one.

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By: Jonas Nyabor

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The bot was announced onstage at F8, Facebook’s annual developer conference taking place April 18-19 in San Jose, California.

In 2016, Western Union was used to move $80 billion around the world.

Facebook Messenger is the latest modern means of payment to come to Western Union. More than 60 percent of all Western Union digital money transfer transactions globally are initiated via a mobile device, a company spokesperson told VentureBeat.

Western Union enters the market two months after its competitor TransferWise launched its Facebook Messenger bot for international money transfers. And RemitRadar, a bot that shares exchange rates from popular money transfer services, has been featured in the bot recommendation area in Messenger.

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Source: Venturebeat

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Google claims Symantec has done a poor job of using standard tools, called certificates, that check the identity of thousands of websites.

It will change its Chrome browser to stop recognising some Symantec certificates, causing problems for people who visit sites using them.

Symantec said Google’s claims were “exaggerated” and “irresponsible”.

The row concerns identity checks known as “security certificates”, which underlie the HTTPS system that ensures data is encrypted as it travels to and from a website.

Symantec is one of the biggest issuers of basic security certificates as well as their extended versions, which are supposed to give users more confidence in the security of a site.

‘Strong objection’

Google alleges that Symantec has not done enough to ensure that these basic and extended certificates are being issued correctly. It claims to have evidence that over the past few years 30,000 certificates are suspect.

In a bid to tackle the problem, Google said it would change the way many versions of Chrome display information derived from Symantec certificates. This could mean many users get warnings that sites are insecure or are blocked from visiting them.

In response, Symantec said it “strongly objected” to the way Google had acted, saying its decision was “unexpected”.

Its statement added that Google’s statements about the way it issues certificates was “exaggerated and misleading”. It threw doubt on the claim that 30,000 certificates had been issued incorrectly and said only 127 had been identified as wrongly issued.

Symantec said it had taken “extensive remediation measures” to improve the way it issued certificates and noted that many other certificate issuers had not gone as far.

It queried why it had been “singled out” by Google when other certificate issuers were also at fault.

“We are open to discussing the matter with Google in an effort to resolve the situation in the shared interests of our joint customers and partners,” it concluded.

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Source: BBC

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Mark Vartanyan, 29, developed and distributed the Citadel Trojan, which lets criminals steal bank account details and hold files to ransom.

US prosecutors said it had infected about 11 million computers worldwide.

He pleaded guilty to one count of computer fraud, in a court in Atlanta, after being extradited from Norway.

Launched in 2011, Citadel was marketed on invitation-only, Russian-language internet forums used by cybercriminals.

Its users had targeted the computer networks of major financial and government institutions around the world, prosecutors said.

‘Illicit functionality’

Vartanyan admitted to the “development, improvement, maintenance and distribution” of Citadel between 2012 and 2014 while living in Ukraine and Norway.

Operating under the alias Kolypto, he uploaded “numerous electronic files” that consisted of Citadel malware, components, updates and patches, as well as customer information.

Earlier in March, David LeValley, special agent at the FBI Atlanta Office, said Vartanyan’s arrest removed “a significant player” from the resources available to cybercriminals.

“We must continue to impose real costs on criminals who believe they are protected by geographic boundaries and can prey on the American people,” he said.

Vartanyan agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for a reduced prison term. He will be sentenced in June.

In September 2015, a US court sentenced Russian citizen Dimitry Belorossov to four years and six months in prison after he admitted distributing and installing Citadel on to computers.

The Department of Justice said its investigation into the creator of Citadel continued.

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Source: BBC

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In a letter describing the plan, he said algorithms would eventually be able to spot terrorism, violence, bullying and even prevent suicide.

He admitted Facebook had previously made mistakes in the content it had removed from the website.

But he said it would take years for the necessary algorithms to be developed.

The announcement has been welcomed by an internet safety charity, which had previously been critical of the way the social network had handled posts depicting extreme violence.

Errors

In his 5,500-word letter discussing the future of Facebook, Mr Zuckerberg said it was impossible to review the billions of posts and messages that appeared on the platform every day.

“The complexity of the issues we’ve seen has outstripped our existing processes for governing the community,” he said.

He highlighted the removal of videos related to the Black Lives Matter movement and the historical napalm girl photograph from Vietnam as “errors” in the existing process.

Facebook was also criticised in 2014, following reports that one of the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby spoke online about murdering a soldier, months before the attack.

“We are researching systems that can read text and look at photos and videos to understand if anything dangerous may be happening.

“This is still very early in development, but we have started to have it look at some content, and it already generates about one third of all reports to the team that reviews content.”

He said AI promised to identify problematic material more quickly than humans and could also “identify risks that nobody would have flagged at all, including terrorists planning attacks using private channels”.

“Right now, we’re starting to explore ways to use AI to tell the difference between news stories about terrorism and actual terrorist propaganda.”

Personal filtering

Mr Zuckerberg said his ultimate aim was to allow people to post largely whatever they liked, within the law, with algorithms detecting what had been uploaded.

Users would then be able to filter their news feed to remove the types of post they did not want to see.

“Where is your line on nudity? On violence? On graphic content? On profanity? What you decide will be your personal settings,” he explained.

“For those who don’t make a decision, the default will be whatever the majority of people in your region selected, like a referendum.

“It’s worth noting that major advances in AI are required to understand text, photos and videos to judge whether they contain hate speech, graphic violence, sexually explicit content, and more.

“At our current pace of research, we hope to begin handling some of these cases in 2017, but others will not be possible for many years.”

The plan was welcomed by the Family Online Safety Institute, a member of Facebook’s own safety advisory board. The charity had previously criticised the social network for allowing beheading videos to be seen without any warning on its site.

“This letter further demonstrates that Facebook has been responsive to concerns and is working hard to prevent and respond to abuse and inappropriate material on the platform,” said Jennifer Hanley, Fosi’s vice president of legal and policy.

“I also really like the ability for users to customise their own experiences with these developments. It’s important to give users power over their online experiences, and additional tools and controls will be helpful.”

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Source: BBC

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Prosecutors are expected to decide based on the hearing whether they will seek an arrest warrant for Mr Lee.

The firm is accused of giving donations to non-profit foundations run by a confidante of President Park Geun-hye in exchange for political favours.

“I will once again tell the truth,” Mr Lee told reporters before the hearing.

The Samsung chief had already been questioned with several other company executives in January but a subsequent court ruling decided there wasinsufficient grounds for an arrest.

Yet during the past weeks investigators reviewed the case and decided there were new aspects that required further questioning.

The claims against the company revolve around a merger between the electronics giant’s construction arm, Samsung C&T, and an affiliate firm, Cheil Industries.

The prosecution alleges that Samsung gave 2.8m euros ($3.1m; £2.5m) to a company co-owned by Park confidante Choi Soon-sil and her daughter, in return for political support for the deal.

The scandal led to President Park being impeached last December.

Lee Jae-yong, also known as Jay Y. Lee, first gave evidence in front of a parliamentary hearing in December last year. Since January he has been treated as an official suspect in the case.

At the parliamentary hearing, Samsung admitted giving a total of 20.4bn won (£16m; $17.46m) to the two foundations, but denied seeking favours in return.

And Mr Lee also confirmed the firm gave a horse and money to help the equestrian career of Ms Choi’s daughter, Chung Yoo-ra, something he said he now regretted.

Mr Lee is currently vice-chairman of Samsung Electronics. But since his father, Lee Kun-hee, suffered a heart attack in 2014, he is considered de facto boss of the entire Samsung Group conglomerate.

Politicians voted on 9 December to impeach President Park over the scandal – a decision South Korea’s constitutional court has six months to uphold or overturn.

Until then she remains formally president but stripped of her powers, which are handed to the prime minister, a presidential appointee.

Ms Choi is on trial for charges including corruption and coercion.

Ms Park’s position began to unravel in October last year when details of her friendship with Ms Choi began to emerge.

They included revelations that the president had allowed her old friend – who holds no government role – to edit political speeches.

Since then, hundreds of thousands of protestors have gathered every weekend in Seoul to demand Ms Park stands down.

Ms Park denies wrongdoing but has apologised for the way she managed her relationship with Ms Choi, who also denies committing criminal offences.

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Source: BBC

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Andy Rubin, who left Google more than two years ago after selling his startup to the search giant in 2005, is starting Essential, a consumer hardware company that aims to tie multiple devices together, according to a report Friday by Bloomberg. Rubin will serve as CEO.

The highlight of Essential’s suite of hardware products is a high-end smartphone with a large screen and no bezel, according to the report. It’s meant to compete against the iPhone and premium Android phones. The idea is that the devices will be able get new hardware updates to keep them from getting stale.

A representative for Rubin declined to comment.

Essential represents a return to the mobile business for Rubin, an industry he helped pioneer. When he started Android more than a decade ago, Apple had yet to release its iPhone and most of the world was still using flip and feature phones, with little or no access to the internet. Today, Android powers almost nine out of every 10 of the world’s smartphones. It’s also one of the most integral parts of Google’s future.

Rubin’s new company, which is still just in prototype mode, also seeks to address one of consumers’ biggest frustrations as the nascent smart home industry tries to drag itself into the mainstream: getting several disparate devices to work with each other.

Silicon Valley has already taken big steps to try and get regular people to buy into the vision of a home that does things for you. Amazon’s Echo, powered by its voice assistant Alexa, is a surprise hit. Rubin’s former employer followed suit with its own smart home hub, called Google Home, late last year.

In 2014, Rubin left Google, where he had been leading the company’s robotics division. (Since his departure, that group was disbanded.) Six months later, he announced his new company, Playground Global, a firm that nurtures young hardware startups. Essential is Rubin’s first return to a true entrepreneur role since Android.

For the company, Rubin has brought on executives with pedigrees from Google, Apple and Samsung, according to Bloomberg.

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Source: CNET

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The error on Friday caused the social network to show a memorial banner on user profiles for people who were still alive.

Users posted status updates to reassure friends and family they were not dead, despite Facebook’s message.

“This was a terrible error that we have now fixed,” a Facebook spokesperson said. “We are very sorry that this happened.”

The message, intended for “memorialised profiles”, erroneously appeared on the profile pages of a large number of users – including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

“We hope people who love Mark will find comfort in the things other share to remember and celebrate his life,” the banner on his page read.

Both technology reporters and Facebook users, however, saw a humorous side to the story.

“Why Is Facebook Saying I’m Dead?” asked the New York Times’ Katie Rogers. “At first, I was indignant. I was definitely not dead. (Was I? It had been a long week.)”

“Facebook is capping one of the longest weeks in American history by telling everyone that they are dead,” quipped The Verge, a technology website, in reference to the presidential election.

The memorial feature was introduced by Facebook in 2015 after a number of high-profile cases where family wanted to access the social accounts of deceased loved ones.

User can opt to have their account turn into a memorial page upon their death, where Facebook contacts can leave message and share memories.

An alternative option is to have your account deleted after your death.

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Source: BBC

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Vine let people share six-second-long video clips that played on a loop.

Twitter did not give a reason for the closure, but earlier on Thursday it announced it was cutting 9% of its workforce following slow growth of the social network.

“In the coming months we’ll be discontinuing the [Vine] mobile app,” the company said in a blog.

Twitter acquired Vine before it had officially launched in 2012.

It has since integrated a separate video facility into Twitter’s main platform. It also acquired and launched the livestreaming app Periscope.

“Nothing is happening to the apps, website or your Vines today,” the blog added.

“You’ll be able to access and download your Vines. We’ll be keeping the website online because we think it’s important to still be able to watch all the incredible Vines that have been made.”

It added that users would be notified before it made any changes to the Vine app or website.

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Source: BBC

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