ExtraTorrent Takes on ‘Leeching’ Proxy Sites

ExtraTorrent has taken steps to block unofficial proxy sites from "stealing" traffic and thus, their revenue. This will also help to keep users safe from rogue sites that may cause other kinds of harm. Of course, ExtraTorrent users are still welcome to use any of the official proxies to bypass ISP blockades.

In many countries arount the world, ISPs have been ordered to block pirates sites.

While these measures are somewhat effective, they also triggered the developments of proxy sites. These proxies allow people to access the blocked sites and effectively bypass the restrictions.

The copyright holders are obviously not happy with these workarounds. What’s less known, however, is that many operators of the original pirate sites would rather like to see them go as well.

At least, the proxy sites which they are not running themselves.

This is also true for ExtraTorrent, one of the largest torrent indexes on the Internet. The site operates several proxies of its own, such as Extra.to, but a lot of traffic goes to unofficial proxies as well.

Starting a few days ago, the torrent site changed the way its site content is loaded, hoping to make these proxies unusable.

“ExtraTorrent has built in protection against proxies who are stealing our traffic,” ExtraTorrent operator SaM tells TorrentFreak.

“So, no one can steal ExtraTorrent content again. Our traffic will be protected and our users will be safe from any harm they may get for accessing ET through any of those proxies,” SaM adds.

Part of the site’s content is now encrypted and will be decoded by users’ browsers through JavaScript. This makes it harder for proxies to serve their content directly. Instead, many of these sites will show an error message instead.

This proxy shows an error

Official proxies will still work as usual, of course, but ExtraTorrent wants to block all leeching proxies that “steal” traffic and revenue.

“90 percent of the proxies are not working correctly anymore, and if some proxies are still working they will be dead soon,” SaM says.

While several proxies are indeed unusable now, others may have found some sort of bypass since they are still working. Then again, that’s not really a surprise as circumventing blockades is the core business of these sites.

On the Trail of Cybercriminals

Future of IT: When a company is under attack, how to find the computer records of officials? In cyberspace as in the physical world, the survey is based on evidence gathered on the ground and on a good knowledge of the criminal environment.

Why is it important to you?

To understand how investigators do to track down criminals who use digital tools.

During an IT attack, in parallel with backup operations to protect its information system, its data and its ecosystem (customers, suppliers, partners, employees can be impacted), can a company find who is behind this Attack? Alone, the answer is no.

With even help, Laurence Dine, head of Verizon's EMEA team for incident response, warned at the outset: "It is very difficult to attribute a specific attack to a specific actor or group . Like the clues left on a classic crime scene, look at the tools that were used, the shape taken by the attack and its time scale. "

For him, the first step is to remain calm and describe precisely what has happened, not only to their internal security teams and private actors who will manage the crisis, but also "to the police and local institutions that Can help them, but also, even on condition of anonymity, to other members of their industry. Sharing information can stop criminal attacks, as cybercriminals also share their information. "

From the index ...

Like any police investigation, the stalking begins by securing the scene of the crime and finding the clues. "The person who gets attacked must be able to collect different information, by going his network equipment. And retrieving information from the activity logs of its servers, "explains Laurent Péquore, technical manager of F5. "In some cases, customers have probes listening to what is happening on their networks, and can record on the fly a number of information: how the attack was made, how the application was used, The server, which vulnerabilities have been exploited. From these elements, we will go up the chain. Even if it is not 100% reliable, information remains crucial: the IP addresses used.

"It is used to identify the attacker. With it, one can ask the operators where the attack comes from. On the contrary, for Carl Herberger, vice president for security at Radware, do not rely on the IP address: "I can easily falsify an IP address, and give it the appearance I want. The IP address itself is not very revealing. He prefers to attach himself to the imprints left by the attack and which make it its unique character. "It is necessary to identify the devices used by the attacker not only by their IP address, but by their attributes (type of device, version of installed software, etc.).

There are unique identifiers to be found on compromised devices (a software signature, or the way the devices communicate with the outside world and the client) which makes it possible to find the programs used. From this information you can determine what type of botnets was used, and in some cases go back to who is at the origin of the attack. "

... to the identification of the suspects.

The technical part does not do everything, it also requires a good knowledge of the environment. As Carl Herberger explains: "The human side is a very important part of computer post-attack investigation work. There are many intelligence services, both private (including those belonging to one's own company) and the public, who will look for what might be the motives: a group of hacktivists uses such types of tools, such criminal cartels Specialized in this type of attack, etc. "Matthew Webster, security researcher at Secure Works, explains:" We spend a lot of time listening to the malicious groups, to know which tool is used by which criminals.

More advanced attacks may have specific tools, or even developed only for that purpose, but criminals motivated by financial profit will couple ready-made tools such as ransomware or banking Trojans. We use a behavioral approach to detect criminal activity. And if the same suspicious behavior is reused in another attack, it is possible to find out who is hiding behind by analyzing his mistakes. "

As in a classic police investigation. With one difference, computerized attacks deal with legal boundaries, and police and judicial cooperation from one state to another is not always possible or quick to implement.

Is Let’s Encrypt the Largest Certificate Authority on the Web ?

By the time you read this,  will have issued its 12 millionth certificate, of which 6 million are active and unexpired. With these milestones, Let’s Encrypt now appears to us to be the the Internet’s largest certificate authority—but a recent analysis by W3Techs said we were only the third largest. So in this post we investigate: how big is Let’s Encrypt, really?

What are certificate authorities, and how do you measure their size?

Certificate authorities (CAs) issue and maintain digital certificates that help web users and their browsers know they’re actually talking to the site they intended to. This is crucial to secure, HTTPS-encrypted communication, as these certificates verify the association between an HTTPS site and a crypographic public key. A CA provides the owner of a website with a signed certificate that web visitors can independently verify. The certificate tells a user’s browser software, “If you use this key to set up secure communications with this website, no one can intercept those communications.” Without such an introduction, browsers can succumb to traffic interception, modification and eavesdropping; even if they used encryption, they wouldn’t be sure if they were talking directly to a site as opposed to a man-in-the-middle attacker.1

Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated, open CA founded by EFF, Mozilla, and the University of Michigan, with Cisco and Akamai as founding sponsors. But is it the largest CA? It turns out this could mean several things: issuing the most public certificates, issuing the most active public certificates, protecting the most Internet connections or sites, or any of a host of other possible metrics. In this post we’ll walk through a couple of ways to measure this, and the limitations and caveats that comes with those measurements.

The numbers

At present, Let’s Encrypt has issued 6 million unexpired certificates for either 4 or 10 million domains, depending on how you count.

On this chart, “certificates active,” in orange, represents the number of certificates that have been issued and are not yet expired. 2

Some of these un-expired certificates are duplicates, with more than one certificate covering one domain name. Others are the opposite, covering many domain names under one certificate.3 So it's probably more accurate to look at the number of distinct domains covered by unexpired certs. “Fully-qualified domains active” in red shows the number of different names among non-expired certificates. For example, www.eff.org and supporters.eff.org are treated as two different names. This metric can overcount sites; while most people would say that eff.org and www.eff.org are the same website, they count as two different names here.

Finally, “Registered domains active” in green counts the number of different top-level domain names among non-expired certificates. In this case, supporters.eff.org and www.eff.org would be counted as one name. This metric may undercount different sites, because pages under the same top-level domain still may be run by different people with different content—for example, different WordPress blogs hosted under wordpress.com.

Counting by number of certs: 3rd largest, or largest?

Our friends at W3Techs Web Technology Surveys recently released a blog post analyzing the CA market and putting Let’s Encrypt in third place among certificate providers.

When we looked closely at these numbers, however, we found that W3Techs was not looking at the entire certificate market; its analysis took into account only the top 10,000,000 most popular websites (as ranked by Alexa). This is important because Let’s Encrypt (below shown as “IdenTrust,” because of the root Let’s Encrypt uses) is commonly used by smaller, less popular, low-traffic sites rather than big, popular ones. For that reason, W3Tech’s third-place ranking that relied on the biggest, most popular sites on the web enormously undercounted Let’s Encrypt’s overall market share. The smaller sites that we primarily serve are exactly the sites that W3Techs (and other analyses of top Alexa-ranked sites) are least likely to count.

By other metrics, Let’s Encrypt is in fact the CA that has issued the most certificates and protected the most sites. This ranking from the Censys project looks at all known certificates that are valid, unexpired, and would be accepted by browsers at the moment of the query:

But this first-place ranking requires some caveats. The rankings above include data from Certificate Transparency, an open-source effort to monitor and audit TLS/SSL certificates. This data may include certificates that were never deployed in practice or are no longer actively in use. So, if someone gets a Let’s Encrypt certificate but then doesn’t actually use it, it still contributes to Let’s Encrypt’s first-place spot in the chart above.

This dataset may also include duplicates. For example, a webmaster new to TLS/SSL certificates may accidentally run a Let’s Encrypt client like Certbot five times in a row and get the same certificate every time. This will show up in the chart above as five different certificates, even though that webmaster is probably only using one. Of course, this is counteracted by the fact that many other certificates cover multiple domains at once.

Lastly, there are categories of certificates that aren’t being counted here. This ranking covers only publicly trusted certificates (as opposed to self-signed ones, or those signed by private CAs not trusted by browsers by default) for domain names (as opposed to, for example, S/MIME certificates for email addresses, of which there are a huge and largely unmeasured number).

Valuable contributions regardless of numbers

The biggest caveats in the two rankings above—whether the dataset takes into account less popular sites (which makes the W3Techs numbers very pessimistic about Let’s Encrypt), and the possibility of unused or duplicate certificates (which may make our own numbers optimistic)—illustrate Let’s Encrypt’s valuable contributions to encryption efforts regardless of numbers or rankings.

As the difference between the two datasets shows, Let's Encrypt has been adopted more by smaller sites than by larger ones—often personal blogs or by the sites of small businesses and associations. That means that, compared to other CAs, we protect fewer of the most famous and most popular Internet sites, and apparently also a smaller fraction of all web browsing activity. But that's fine by us.

One of the ways Let's Encrypt has been helping to secure the web is by making it easy and affordable for sites that have never had certs before to turn on secure HTTPS connections, and for software systems to start enabling HTTPS automatically and by default. Our free certificates may be more likely to be left unused than expensive certificates, and less expert webmasters may accidentally duplicate certificates—but that’s part of making HTTPS integration available to more webmasters across a range of resource and skill levels. Statistics suggest that most of our growth has come not at the expense of other CAs, but from giving previously unencrypted sites their first-ever certificates.

Rankings also fail to capture the communities that a CA like Let’s Encrypt can serve. A large share of Let’s Encrypt certificates have been issued to major hosting companies and platforms, including: Automattic, the web development corporation behind WordPress.com; Shopify, an e-commerce platform; and OVH, a European ISP. And they are not alone. Dozens of web hosting providers and companies have made the commitment to use Let’s Encrypt to automatically protect their customer sites with HTTPS.

We are committed to supporting more companies and communities who want to make this move. Learn more about Let’s Encrypt and how to use the web’s largest CA here.

Microsoft Surface Book review

I’ve always wanted Microsoft to build a laptop.

Some days I’ll be seated on my couch, other days I’ll be seated on the floor of a convention center or press event, so I need a laptop that just works and won’t annoy me when I’m in the middle of writing an article. The Surface line (from the RT right through to the Surface Pro 3) has always been a compromised mixture of tablet and laptop. They’ve never really worked well in my lap, the trackpad and keyboards weren’t as good as a laptop, and battery life hasn’t been ideal for a portable machine. I could use them fine at home on my desk, but every time I took them on the road with me I just ended up irritated because they weren’t real laptops.

Microsoft now thinks it has an answer, and it’s calling it the Surface Book.

Microsoft claims it’s the “ultimate laptop” that’s designed to go head-to-head with Apple’s MacBook Pro and premium Windows laptops. While the Surface Book is primarily a laptop, it’s also a tablet thanks to a display that detaches into something like a digital clipboard. Starting at $1,499, the Surface Book is clearly priced at the high-end of the laptop market, and the 1TB of storage model tops out at $3,199. That’s a lot of money to spend on a computer. I want a Surface that works like a laptop, has a great trackpad and keyboard, and actually lasts me a working day.

Since Microsoft is calling this a laptop, let’s judge it first as a laptop.

Looking at the Surface Book for the first time, it’s easy to compare it to the MacBook Pro. There’s a big trackpad, nice key spacing on the keyboard, and an overall sleek combination of black and silver. All of this resembles a MacBook Pro, but Microsoft isn’t exactly copying Apple here. Just as it did with the Surface Pro 3, Microsoft has picked magnesium for the materials on the Surface Book. It’s almost soft to touch, and it doesn’t feel as cold and harsh as the aluminum on a MacBook. Microsoft is going for premium here, and it’s pretty clear it’s aiming for those tempted by Apple’s well-designed hardware.

I’ve found opening up the Surface Book requires two hands because it’s magnetically sealed together to ensure nothing moves around while you’re carrying it. That’s not because the tablet portion will ever fall off, but more to protect the hinge. Once open, the Surface Book’s 13.5-inch display is the slightly odd centerpiece. I say slightly odd, because it looks a little tall and unconventional at first. That’s because Microsoft has picked a 3:2 aspect ratio instead of the wide 16:9 or 16:10 ratios found on most laptops.

MICROSOFT HAS DONE A GREAT JOB ON THE KEYBOARD AND TRACKPAD

It took me a couple of days to really get used to it, and it reminded me of using Google’s Chromebook Pixel. Watching movies isn’t ideal on the Surface Book because you get letterboxing, but reading web pages is a joy because of all the additional vertical space. I spend a lot of time reading content on the web, so I’ve fallen in love with this oddly shaped display. I’ve also fallen in love with the color reproduction and the viewing angles. Colors really pop, and blacks don’t wash out at all thanks to the 1700:1 contrast ratio. Windows 10 is designed with a dark theme, and it looks great on this beautiful display.

Microsoft has paid a lot of attention to the trackpad and keyboard on the Surface Book, which is exactly what you’d expect from a premium laptop. I’ve always found the trackpad on the Surface Pro 3 to be a little fiddly and too small, but the Surface Book is the complete opposite. It’s a big glass surface that feels just like a MacBook trackpad to me. Scrolling is smooth around Windows, but I’ve noticed some stuttering in both Chrome and Edge. Google’s Chrome trackpad scrolling is always terrible on every Windows laptop I’ve used, but bad Microsoft Edge scrolling is new to me. Microsoft tells me it has an update coming to address both the Chrome and Edge scrolling issues, and hopefully the company can make scrolling there as smooth as it is in the rest of Windows.

Typing on the Surface Book is a weird experience at first. There’s not very much key travel, so the keyboard feels a little hard. It took a few hours of typing to get used to it, and now when I switch back to other laptops their keyboards feel mushy in comparison. The Surface Book’s keyboard spacing is pretty ideal, and I wish other laptop makers would pay as much attention to getting the keys just right. I really can’t fault Microsoft’s keyboard here. After years of making great keyboards for desktop PCs, it has done a good job with its first real laptop keyboard.

Microsoft has opted for premium laptop specs inside the Surface Book. On the base model I’ve been testing, there’s 8GB of RAM paired with Intel’s latest Core i5 processor, and it’s fast. Basic web browsing, a little bit of Photoshop, and regular desktop apps all perform well. I’ve also been testing a 16GB of RAM model equipped with a Core i7 processor. I haven’t noticed any drastic changes between the two models for my basic work needs, but in gaming the Core i7 model benefits from the Nvidia GPU installed in the base. Drivers aren’t supplied directly from Nvidia yet, so it’s difficult to measure performance fully, but my old Steam collection of games runs well. This should be enough to cover most games on basic settings, which is unusual for most convertible machines.

The really unique and interesting part of the Surface Book is the new fulcrum hinge. It snakes around the base and display of the Surface Book, and it looks awesome, like something out of an Alien movie. It has individual notches that extend to let you adjust the screen angle, and they sound like they’re unpeeling as you fold it out. While the hinge isn’t infinitely adjustable, it has enough viewing angles to cater for my desk and lap usage.

Because this is also a tablet, it makes this new hinge a little compromised. The hinge isn’t resistive enough like a regular laptop, so it bounces and wobbles a little if you’re typing in your lap or you touch the display while you’re using it as a laptop. A lot of 2-in-1 Windows laptops have the same problem, and even though Microsoft has probably done the best job yet, it’s not perfect. It feels a little top-heavy sometimes, and I’ve noticed this more in my lap at weird angles than on a desk. Most of the weight is traditionally in the base of a laptop, with little in the display, but the Surface Book has balanced this as best it can with the fulcrum hinge.

THE SURFACE BOOK GAP IS AN UGLY PROBLEM

The problem with the hinge is that it also reveals the main weakness of the Surface Book. If you close the Book down, the display doesn’t sit flush with the keyboard, leaving an unsightly gap. It also makes the Surface Book a lot bulkier than a regular laptop. Dust, hair, and all sorts of other nastiness from my bag now gets regularly deposited onto the Surface Book keyboard because of this gap. It’s ugly, but it’s a compromise that allows Microsoft’s laptop to also convert into a tablet.

Microsoft has built a little button on the keyboard that unlocks the screen from the base. It’s like one of those crazy buttons you press to enter a secret room, and it lets you pull off the display and use it as a giant tablet. Microsoft has built an entire PC into this display that doubles as a touch screen and supports a stylus. While the base unit and display combine into a laptop that’s not exactly lightweight at 3.34 pounds, the tablet section feels manageable at 1.6 pounds.

Because of the 3:2 aspect ratio, it really feels like you’re holding a piece of paper (except, of course, for the weight). I think that’s exactly how Microsoft designed this, and why the company keeps calling it a "digital clipboard." The only time I’ve used it in this mode is literally to take notes, because using it as a tablet to play games and watch movies is a little awkward without a kickstand or case to prop it up. You can reattach the base the opposite way around to create a stand, but I never did that because it turns it into an even more bulky tablet.

The new Surface Pen is greatly improved thanks to a more resistive tip, but there’s still a slight lag that will irritate artists who want to draw on this professionally. It’s fine for note taking though, and there's even an eraser on the top now. You can even hold the button down to activate Cortana, but I found it didn't always detect my voice very well. The Surface Pen also snaps magnetically to the side. That’s better than a pen loop, but it still always falls off in my bag.

While the tablet is a fully functional PC when detached, the base is more than just a keyboard and trackpad. There are two USB ports, a full SD card reader, a mini DisplayPort, and an additional Nvidia GPU on some models. It’s a battery dock for the tablet. Once you’re done using it as a tablet, you can simply dock the Surface Book back in and it stays coupled together with magnets and a "muscle wire" lock that secures it firmly in place. It’s a clever piece of engineering, but it relies on battery power to activate. You can remove the display when it’s powered off, but if you drain the battery, you’ll have to wait until it’s at least 10 percent before you can undock it again.

Windows 10 also does a good job of switching between a touch-friendly mode and one more suited to a keyboard and mouse, especially if you enable it to do so automatically. There’s still a lack of good touch apps for Windows 10, but I like the idea of switching between using a laptop and straight into a tablet. It’s pretty seamless and apps snap back to their positions when you revert to laptop mode, so you can carry on working without issue. I’ve found that Windows 10 still doesn’t make enough use of the pen — I just can’t fit it into my regular workflow. I tried to write an email with just the pen to send a note to someone, and it doesn’t even activate a drawing mode. I tried to send a OneNote page instead and that failed. Microsoft is really advertising this as a clipboard, but Windows 10 isn’t ready to let everyone just use a stylus and take notes everywhere as it’s still a limited experience.

It’s worth noting here that I’ve run into a number of software issues with the Surface Book. I experienced blue screens on the machine nearly every day. Microsoft tells me this is related to the SSD, and that the company has a fix in place for retail units. I’ve also experienced problems with the trackpad gestures and scrolling failing after I’ve used it in tablet mode and reattached the keyboard. Microsoft’s docking app to control the detaching of the tablet also occasionally crashes. I’ve also been unable to test Windows Hello, a feature that lets you log in with just your face, on the Surface Book as the drivers aren’t ready yet. Together with the software crashes, it feels like Microsoft might be rushing to get the Surface Book ready in time.

BATTERY LIFE IS INSANELY GOOD

Battery life is one of the key parts of a laptop for me. While the tablet portion should last around 4 hours, Microsoft claims up to 12 hours if you’re using it as a regular laptop. It’s not lying. During our own Verge battery test running in Chrome we found the Surface Book lasted nearly 13 hours for the base model without the additional GPU. It’s incredibly rare for a Windows laptop to have great battery life, and I’m amazed it lasts me a full working day. With a mix of usage outside of just surfing the web, I’ve found it lasts around 7 hours. That’s watching HD movies, using Photoshop, and surfing the web with Twitter open all day. It takes around 2 hours to charge the tablet itself, and around 4 or 5 hours to charge both. Because the keyboard and tablet both use the same Surface connector, you can use a single cable to do both, or just charge them combined in the regular laptop mode.

Is the Surface really the ultimate laptop that Microsoft claims it is? Nearly. I say that because sometimes I’m using the Surface Book and I just wish Microsoft had made a pure laptop. The display wobble can be irritating, and the weird gap when it’s closed means I have to clean the Surface Book every day. If Microsoft can fix the hinge in future versions and make it a lot less bulky then this could be great. It has a beautiful display, amazing battery life, and the keyboard and trackpad feel great. But even though that’s everything I want in a laptop, the accommodations Microsoft made to enable the tablet end up making the laptop experience less than ideal.

I rarely used it as a tablet, partly because Windows 10 really doesn’t make enough use of the stylus to make it feel natural, but also because most of my work requires a keyboard. I suspect that’s the same for most people buying a laptop. The lack of Windows 10 tablet apps means I still reach for an iPad or even a large phone if I want a tablet experience, and until that situation improves it’s still really hard to buy into this whole hybrid concept. I really like it as an idea, but right now it’s just that: an idea. It feels like the Surface Book has a detachable display because Microsoft needs it to be different, not because you actually need to remove it. Having a removable display doesn’t make this the "ultimate laptop."

Microsoft can clearly make a laptop that competes with the MacBook Pro with all the best ingredients, but it just needs to find a better recipe to combine all its innovative hardware. The Surface Book is seriously impressive, and as a hybrid it’s probably the best out there.

If Microsoft had just made a laptop, I suspect I'd be calling it the best Windows laptop out there, but it didn't. While it's great Microsoft is pushing the idea of a tablet and a laptop hybrid constantly, I'm still hunting for the perfect mix of hardware that really shows this is the future.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update: the 10 best new features

In just a few short days, Microsoft will be celebrating Windows 10’s first birthday. It has been a busy year that has seen a number of Windows 10 updates with new features and improvements, but the biggest one is arriving on August 2nd. Microsoft’s free Anniversary Update to Windows 10 includes some highly requested features, but overall it’s full of minor additions that really make the OS feel a lot more polished. I’ve been testing Windows 10’s Anniversary Update for months now, and I’ve witnessed it progress to a point where it’s ready for the masses. Here are the 10 best new features coming to Windows.

WINDOWS INK

Windows Ink is without a doubt the best part of the Anniversary Update. When I reviewed the Surface Book, I found it irritating and surprising that ink support in Windows 10 was so limited. Windows Ink improves things a lot. It’s essentially a central location to find built-in or third-party apps that work with your stylus. You can use the new sticky notes to note down reminders, and they’ll even transform into true reminders as Cortana understands what you write.

I’ve found the new sketchpad is useful if you simply want to doodle, or draw a guide to something for friends and family. The new virtual ruler seems like such an obvious addition, it’s hard to imagine inking without it. You can use it to draw shapes or just straight lines, and it’s the perfect blend of touch and stylus input. The screen sketch feature is equally useful, as it automatically takes a screen grab and lets you ink all over it and quickly share it. I’ve used this many times to share my notes on a product or picture I’ve seen, and it’s encouraged me to pick up and use a stylus that I haven’t used for months.

THIS IS THE BEST PART OF THE ANNIVERSARY UPDATE

Unfortunately, Windows Ink isn’t the perfect solution for solving all the limitations of pen input in Windows 10. I still can’t use the built-in mail client and immediately start writing handwritten email, and the pen still doesn’t feel like it’s a core part of Windows 10, despite Microsoft’s work to integrate it more into Edge, Cortana, and apps like Maps and Office.

MICROSOFT EDGE EXTENSIONS

If you’re a fan of Chrome extensions, then you’ll be glad to hear that they’re heading to Microsoft’s Edge browser. The Anniversary Update brings support for extensions, and it’s now up to third-party developers to fill the Windows Store with their add-ons. They’re very similar to Chrome extensions, and ones like AdBlock, 1Password, LastPass, and EverNote are already available.

Microsoft has also added in web notifications for Edge, allowing websites to push notifications to the Windows 10 Action Center (notification center). You can also now right-click on the back button to see history of a tab, and right-click a tab to pin it in place. Microsoft is also improving battery life with Edge, and claims it’s up to 70 percent better than some competitors. Overall, Edge still has some odd rendering quirks that makes it feel unfinished, but Microsoft is getting closer to providing a browser on Windows that could convince many to switch from Chrome.

CORTANA IMPROVEMENTS

Microsoft’s digital assistant, Cortana, debuted on Windows 10 last year, and the software maker is bringing it to the lock screen with the Anniversary Update. You’ll be able to ask it to make a note, play music, set a reminder, and lots more without ever logging in. Cortana is also getting a little more intelligent, with the ability to schedule appointments in Outlook or options to send friends a document you were working on a week ago.

I still rarely use Cortana with my voice, and I’d like to see Microsoft focus on an Alfred competitor for Windows that really enhances the power of Cortana and taps into the company’s focus on productivity.

DARK THEME AND UI TWEAKS

I love the new dark theme in Windows 10. Microsoft hadn’t fully completed the Windows 10 UI last year, but it’s starting to look a little more polished now. Most laptop displays and monitors have black bezels, and the continued use of a dark mode across the OS just bleeds naturally into the corners. You can switch on what I call even darker mode in settings, and it will switch built-in apps that typically use a white background over to black.

Microsoft has also tweaked the Windows 10 UI in more ways than just a dark theme. The all apps list is now an integral part of the Start menu, and Live Tiles are now chase-able. This means if you see something like a news story on a Live Tile, you’ll go directly to that news item when you click the Tile instead of simply opening the homepage of an app.

The Action Center (notification center) has also been improved, with badge icons in the task bar that correspond to the number of outstanding notifications. You can also reorganize the number of quick actions in the Action Center, with 14 available to choose from to get easy access to settings like VPN, tablet mode, quiet hours, Wi-Fi, and more. Microsoft has even improved the system clock in Windows by adding a calendar with a full list of your own events.

TABLET MODE LOOKS A LOT MORE LIKE WINDOWS 8 NOW

Elsewhere, if you’re a fan of tablet mode then you can now choose to automatically hide the task bar when you’re using a tablet. This lets apps take full advantage of the screen just like they used to in Windows 8, and Microsoft has also improved the all apps view on the Start screen so it’s full screen and easier to navigate.

SET YOUR TIME ZONE AUTOMATICALLY

I’ve always been jealous of the automatic time zone switching in OS X, and astonished that Microsoft has never added a similar feature to Windows. With the Anniversary Update to Windows 10, it’s finally here. If you’re traveling abroad for vacation then you’ll never have to worry about manually adjusting your PC clock again. It sounds like the most minor feature, but more often than not it’s the small things that add up and make a difference. Microsoft hasn’t enabled the automatic time zone switching by default, so you’ll need to enable it from the settings app.

WINDOWS HELLO FOR APPS AND WEBSITES

Windows Hello is one of the best features that Microsoft added to Windows 10. It uses a special camera (usually found on the latest PCs and laptops) to scan your face and let you log into Windows without using a password. It rarely fails for me, and it’s so solid and seamless I have it enabled and use it daily. Microsoft is making Windows Hello even better in the Anniversary Update, with integration into apps and websites.

You won’t need your password for websites if you have a new PC that supports Windows Hello. Just sit there and let it scan your face or your fingerprint, and then you’re in and ready to go.

WINDOWS 10 APPS ON XBOX ONE

The Xbox One is finally getting Windows apps. It feels like a promise that was made years ago, but it’s finally coming true with the Anniversary Update. As Windows 10 now powers the Xbox One, Microsoft will start rolling out an update to its console to provide support for Cortana on Xbox One and the new universal apps.

We’re expecting to see a solid number of new Xbox apps as a result, and a few have already started appearing. Netflix is using a universal app across Windows 10 devices and Xbox One, and Microsoft has started moving its MSN Weather and Groove Music apps across. Most of the apps we’ve seen so far look identical to their Windows 10 counterparts, and developers shouldn’t have to do too much work to adapt for the bigger displays traditionally used with the Xbox One.

BASH IN WINDOWS

Microsoft surprised the developer world when it unveiled bash for Windows earlier this year. If you’re a developer then Bash on Windows 10 is a big deal, for everyone else it’s something you won’t really use. Microsoft is essentially adding the Linux command line to Windows 10, and it’s a great addition for Linux developers that need access to all their tools on Windows. It’s an optional Windows feature you’ll need to go in and enable, but once it’s setup you’ll receive updates if Microsoft tweaks it in the future. It might even help convince some developers to create apps for Microsoft’s platform.

PROJECT TO PC

Microsoft is adding a new "project to PC" option in Windows 10 Anniversary Update. It’s similar to remote desktop, but it allows you to easily find a PC to project to from a phone or another PC. You’ll be able to project what you see on your own display onto another machine, and use its keyboard, mouse, and other peripherals. It seems like a feature that is more suited to the business environment, especially if you want to show a colleague a document but don’t necessarily want to share the contents directly with them.

NEW SKYPE APP

It feels like Windows 10 has so many Skype apps it’s difficult to know which one to choose. While there’s a desktop app and integration into the Messaging app in Windows 10, Microsoft has created a new universal app that’s designed to be the future of Skype on Windows 10. It’s not totally feature complete yet, but for your basic Skype video and audio calls it works well. It launches instantly, and you’ll get notifications for calls and messages straight within Windows 10 whether you have it open or not.

SYNC YOUR PHONE NOTIFICATIONS TO YOUR PC

Alongside Windows Ink, syncing phone notifications to your PC has to be one of the best additions to Windows 10 Anniversary Update. If you have a Windows 10 or Android phone then you’ll be able to use Cortana to sync notifications from all your phone apps up to your PC. You can even reply to messages, dismiss notifications, and quickly send photos from a phone to a PC.

WINDOWS AS A SERVICE

Overall, I’m impressed with Windows 10 Anniversary Update. After just a year, Microsoft has managed to update Windows 10 with a solid amount of new features. This is the exact promise of Windows as a service, and it’s encouraging to see it in action. There are still many bigger things I’d love to see in Windows, but it’s often all these small additions that make for a better operating system overall. I’ve touched on most of the obvious feature additions, but Microsoft has also made a lot of fundamental improvements behind the scenes to better support multiple monitors and DPI scaling, improve battery life, and generally make Windows that bit faster.

Even with Windows 10 Anniversary Update, Windows 10 isn’t complete. This is just the latest update, and more features and changes are coming later this year and beyond. It feels like the big promise of Windows 10 across multiple devices is finally here, and Microsoft is now building on top of what that means.