Before Google released its Chrome browser, Firefox felt pretty good about their arrangement.  They got a handsome reward in exchange for making Google.com their default search engine.  It was a win-win.

These days though, Firefox's position is a bit more precious.

Microsoft has been having some "issues" of late.  It's April Windows 10 rollout had to be delayed on account of some mysterious BSOD ("Blue Screen of Death") issues. This month's rollout is plagued by similar problems, trading the BSOD issues for problems with both "Hey Cortana" and Google's Chrome browser.

At this year's F8 Developer's conference, Facebook announced a raft of changes and updates it will be rolling out later this year.  Some are fun, others practical, but they're all interesting.  Here are the highlights:

Get Ready for "FaceDate"

This announcement is interesting.

The Department of Health and Human services has issued a warning to healthcare providers to be on high alert for the SamSam strain of ransomware, which has been used to attack eight different health care entities so far this year.

SamSam made its first appearance in 2016 and is seeing increasingly widespread use so far this year.

Twitter shot itself in the foot recently but is working hard to get out in front of the problem.  According to a recent blog post, the company experienced an issue with its hashing routine - a process which masks user passwords, making them virtually impossible to crack.

Apple promised that its iTunes app would be available on the Microsoft Store by the end of 2017.  The announcement was greeted with enthusiasm, but unfortunately, the company didn't meet their own deadline. They cited the need for more time to build a more robust user experience for Windows users.

The on-again, off-again talks about a merger between T-Mobile and Sprint is definitely back on, with T-Mobile planning to buy Sprint for a staggering $26 billion.

The deal has been in the works since before Trump was elected President. It died quietly when it became clear that the Obama administration would not allow the deal to go forward, due to concerns that it would leave the US with only three telecom providers, which could harm consumers.

Thanks to researchers Daan Keuper and Thijs Alkemade (who work at the Dutch cyber-security firm Computest), newly produced Golf GTE and Audi A3 vehicles are a little bit safer, and a lot less vulnerable to remote hacks.

The duo found that by taking advantage of these vehicles' WiFi connection, they could access the cars' IVI, (in-vehicle infotainment system) and from there, gain access to other systems as well.

Score one for the good guys, but with hesitation. Unfortunately, in today's fast-moving digital world, even a victory doesn't mean the end of a problem.

Recently, a pair of researchers (Tomi Tuominen and Timo Hirvonen of F-Secure) released information about a new hack they had discovered.

After more than two decades in the business, Apple is officially going to stop selling routers.  The writing has been on the wall for a while now, since the company's "AirPort" family of products hasn't received a significant update in more than five years.