The third annual edition of Amazon Prime Day sale is finally here, with the best deals being accessed by Prime members in more than a dozen countries. Prime Day is one marketing tactics of Amazon to entice users spend more money and time on the website.

Experts think this year’s Prime Day will bring some good deals. Last year, a research firm found that Prime Day sales were 77 percent cheaper than those on Black Friday. However, few Prime Day deals were truly alluring. Review sites found last year that just 64 deals out of 8,000 were worth the money and effort.

Amazon is expected to unveil large discounts for its devices such as Echo home devices, e-readers, and digital-TV streaming sticks. In 2016, The Echo was on sale for $129.99, at a $50 discount. Kindles also sold like hot cakes last year, while TV sticks were the best sellers.

This Year’s Prime Day Tips:

For this year, here are some quick tips on how to benefit of the deals:

You should know that placing an order via a voice-activated Amazon device can lead to extra savings like the Echo additional discounts.

The e-commerce giant has already started rolling out some deals on pre-Prime Day. For instance, you can get discounts to music, audio books and e-books, and many more ahead of Prime Days’ official start.

Moreover, Prime Day lasts longer than a day as it starts at 9 p.m. on Monday and ends at 3 a.m. on Wednesday.

You can go to the Wirecutter for live updates of the best deals on Twitter and its website. New York Magazine promised to come with an updated list too.

What’s more you can go on a shopping spree and give something to charity too. So, go to smile.amazon.com and choose a charity. The website will direct a percentage of the final price to the charity of your choice.

And one last tip: countless research found that doing things leads to greater sense of fulfillment than owning things. So, postpone buying that TV set, and purchase a plane ticket for a vacation instead.
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On Thursday, Microsoft announced it would lay off quite a big number of its employees, confirming previous rumors which indicated many people would remain unemployed. The company is planning to cut around 10 percent of its sale force from all over the world.

Microsoft wants to focus on selling cloud-computing services

Microsoft is known to have around 50,000 employees in the sales field, so it would that 5,000 people are at risk to be affected by the layoff. In fact, other reports don’t find the situation so drastic, and say their sources indicate a number of only 3,000 dismissed employees. Even so, there are quite a lot of people involved.

Microsoft declared this massive layoff was the result of a reorganization in the company, which would affect the sales force directly. The company is planning to perform a restructuring among these employees, and direct the remaining staff towards the sale and promotion of services based on cloud computing.

Not only the sales department will be affected

This means that the organizing of the sales force will be modified. However, this will impact employees from departments like legal or finance. The good news for them is that this will be the only round of restructuring and layoffs. Even so, there are quite a lot of people who need to be concerned.

This move comes one year after Kevin Turner, the company’s Chief Operating Officer, resigned. After that, Microsoft decided to support their new businesses, Office 365 and Azure, so they needed special preparations among their work force.

Microsoft didn’t reveal if it is going to offer any kind of compensation to those employees affected by the layoff, or if this restructuring comes at any costs. However, on Thursday, the company’s stock decreased by less than 1 percent, and reached $68.
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Experts ruled that a massive cyber-attack that first hit Ukraine and from there spread to Russia, Europe, Australia, and parts of the U.S. was not originally intended to be a ransomware attack.

Cyber security experts found that the software that locks the users’ devices is in fact wiping sectors of the hard drive, making information completely irrecuperable. Experts at Kaspersky Lab think that the developers of the said malware disguised the software as ransomware to catch the media’s attention.

However, at its core, the malware is a “wiper,” or a piece of software that overwrites parts of the disk instead of encrypting them like a ransomware usually does. So, even if you pay to have your computer unlocked, you won’t get your information back as it was completely erased.

Hackers Weren’t After the Money

Experts also found that hackers purposely made it hard for the victims to recover their data. In a first move, they said they would accept payments in a Bitcoin wallet. However, when someone expects to receive large sums of money, they usually use multiple Bitcoin accounts.

In addition, they forced victims to send an email with a string of letters that they had to manually type in if they wanted their devices back. That email address, though, doesn’t even exist.

Researchers noted that users will not be able to get their data back even if they make the payment. While some experts disagree that the malware was built as a “wiper” since it only wipes two dozen sectors of a disk which are originally left empty at any standard Windows installation, most experts agree that the attack was never about making money. Ukrainian cybersecurity experts believe that the attack was conducted by state-sponsored agents, and the likely culprit is Russia.

Image Source: encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com

In May, Facebook issued a report where it stated the social media platform had reached 1.94 billion active users per month. This month’s report shows how the number of users increased, and exceeded 2 billion. To celebrate this, Facebook is planning to show users appreciation by displaying special videos and making everything for them to have the best experience.

Facebook and its smaller apps exceeded one billion users

Mark Zuckerberg himself spread the news of Facebook reaching 2 billion monthly users, and revealed the company would continue to promote growth and to reach the high expectations. So far, the platform and its other smaller apps seem to satisfy users, who use their services in high numbers.

Messenger has already exceeded the 1-billion figure, having little over 1.2 billion people who constantly use it, and WhatsApp is not far behind. As a comparison, Twitter has a much smaller user-base, namely 328 million per month. Instagram is on a higher rank, but still hasn’t reached 1 billion users.

Sending appreciation to Facebook users to strengthen community ties

Guillermo Spiller, Facebook’s product manager, revealed that, every day, over 175 million people on average sent love reactions to posts, while more than 800 million sent likes. Also, every month, more than 1 billion people used Groups.

Therefore, the company wants to celebrate this milestone by showing appreciation to all users. The platform wouldn’t have been where it is today if it weren’t for the people, so it will release personalized videos, together with its new statement – bringing the world closer together.

Apart from custom videos, each user will receive a thank you card whenever they send a love react, wish happy birthday to a friend, or create a group. They do this since the platform sees all these actions as vital in building communities and strengthening the relations between people.
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