PC Pro July 2020

WHEN I SET up a quick poll on Twitter to settle, for the final time, which was the best decade out of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, PC Pro reader Michael Dear tweeted back (tongue in cheek, I suspect) to suggest that all I was asking was which decade people grew up in. Perhaps. And while the poll ended in a dead heat between the 1980s and 1990s, I’m going to cast the deciding vote for the decade of my own youth: the 1980s. As Michael points out, I’m biased. But, come on, does any other decade really compare? I’m not just talking about the music, the films and the creation of Countdown here: I’m talking about the computers. Who can gaze back at the Spectrum, the Commodore 64 and…

CLOUDFLARE HAS BEEN slammed by ISPs over a campaign that publicly shames providers that haven’t implemented a little-known protocol that improves the routing security of web traffic. The content delivery network took aim at ISPs and other web players that have yet to reinforce the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing system. BGP guides traffic around the web with a security tool that aims to prevent traffic from being hijacked. The Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) tool in question is seen as a likely industry standard, but Cloudflare’s tactics have been lambasted as heavy-handed policing of the internet. “I’ve heard them called the self-appointed internet police and this looks like how they are acting here,” said Alex Bloor, a network expert with UK ISP Andrews & Arnold. “These are guys that really should know…

1 Concern as police seek doorbell data Surveillance critics have raised alarm over plans by Swindon Borough Council and Wiltshire Police to create a database of homes in the area with doorbell cameras, such as Amazon’s Ring devices. Amazon already works with police in the US, but the project, which asks camera owners to inform the police that they can provide footage for particular locations, is believed to be a UK first. 2 Conspiracy activists hamper 5G rollout The UK’s tentative rollout of 5G mobile networks faced mounting challenges from protesters as conspiracy theories over health risks continued to drown out science. The protests against 5G radio signals have moved from peaceful to violent, with activists setting fire to masts and crippling services in their local area. 3 Researchers uncover backdoors in Android apps Google…

reMarkable 2 In a world of black mirrors, the reMarkable 2 stands out as something different: a 4.7mm-thick notepad with an E Ink display designed to replace pen and paper. The first reMarkable launched in 2017 to mixed reviews, partly due to under-specced hardware. The company appears to have addressed some of these issues, with an improved dual-core 1.2 GHz ARM processor for example. It has also upgraded the textured 10.3in monochrome display with a 1,404 x 1,872 resolution and the stylus is designed so that inputs feel tactile, like pencil on paper. Written notes can be converted into text and the E Ink helps maintain battery life, with reMarkable claiming two weeks of normal use without a charge. Other new features include a web clipper extension for Chrome that downloads web content to…

PAYPAL HAS BEEN blasted by customers who have fallen victim to hack attacks and say that they’v been unable to contact the firm to secure breached accounts. The issue came to light after a reader contacted PC Pro to report that his account had been hacked, with five transactions made without his consent, and PayPal unwilling to refund the money. “My PayPal account was hacked on or before 10 March and, between then and 15 March, five fraudulent transactions were made, purchasing tickets from Trainline,” Guy Meakin told us. “Notifications for none of these transactions were emailed to me, which would have been normal so there’s clearly an issue,” he said. “I initially complained to PayPal and they rejected my claims because the ‘payments were not unauthorised’, but PayPal seems to have…

ALL OF US at PC Pro were saddened to hear of the death of Jack Schofield, the veteran technology journalist who had written for this magazine many times over the years. Jack started writing about technology before many of today’s journalists were even born, most famously for The Guardian where he penned the Ask Jack column. That column was indicative of Jack’s personality: scrupulously thorough, knowledgeable and ever-genial. Jack was the closest thing British tech journalism had to a father figure. He’d occasionally pop into the PC Pro office, pull up a chair and dispense a titbit of tech gossip or a word of advice. At breaks in press conferences, you could look for the plume of smoke rising from Jack’s pipe, pop over and ask what Jack had made of the…