Microsoft promises to stop nagging you, Twitter refuses to help governments spy on you, Twitter rants just got easier, China bans videos of people eating bananas, and Battlefield 1 takes place during World War I.

Windows Will Soon Stop Nagging You

As we reported on Friday (May 6), you now have less than three months to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. After July 29, Windows 10 will cost you $119, unless Microsoft does a complete about-turn and extends the free offer. Either way, it looks like the nag-screen is finally going away.

If you're not familiar with the Windows 10 nag-screen then you're either not using Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, or you followed our guide to getting rid of it and have banished it from your memory. The rest of us have suffered as our PCs have virtually begged us to upgrade to Windows 10 at any and every opportunity.

However, in a statement issued to WinBeta, Microsoft promised an end to the suffering, saying:

"Details are still being finalized, but on July 29th the Get Windows 10 app that facilitates the easy upgrade to Windows 10 will be disabled and eventually removed from PCs worldwide. Just as it took time to ramp up and roll out the Get Windows 10 app, it will take time to ramp it down."

To be honest I am probably going to upgrade to Windows 10 before the free offer to do so disappears. And you may feel the same way. However, it's nice to know that even if we end up not upgrading, for whatever reason, we can finally wave goodbye to that annoying nag-screen.

Twitter Stops Spies From Spying

Twitter has blocked US spy agencies from spying on its users using Dataminr. Dataminr is a company which analyzes every public tweet posted to Twitter, sending out alerts about terrorist attacks, political uprisings, and the like. Dataminr sells this data to clients, but Twitter is adamant it shouldn't sell this data to governmental authorities.

Twitter owns a 5 percent stake in Dataminr, and, as a result, allows the company to access its real-time stream of public tweets. However, according to the Wall Street Journal, Twitter has now used this leverage to stop Dataminr providing data to government agencies, thereby distancing itself from organizations the general public are increasingly uneasy about.

This hasn't been officially announced, with the WSJ instead relying on the ambiguous "people familiar with the matter". Twitter issued a statement saying this "data is largely public and the U.S. government may review public accounts on its own, like any user could." In other words, Twitter is saying, "You can do what you want, but we're not going to help you do it".

Tweetbot Makes Tweetstorms Easy

Tweetbot for iOS has been updated to Version 4.3, and this new version adds a feature called Topics. This new feature makes it much easier to engage in a Twitter rant, also known as a Tweetstorm, or live-tweet events. Because manually stringing together multiple 140-character tweets can be a chore.

Twitter has lots of things going for it, but the adherence to the 140-character limit for individual tweets makes it difficult to use for anything serious. Most sensible people merely express their feelings on another medium, such as Medium, and then link to that post on Twitter. But not everybody.

Some go on Tweetstorms, which comprise multiple tweets which need to be read together and in order to make any sense. Which means manually replying to yourself, or using the same hashtag time and time again. Now, Tweetbot 4 does all of the hard work for you, letting you concentrate on the actual words you're writing.

China Bans Banana-Eating Videos

As part of its effort to crack down on "inappropriate and erotic" online content, China has banned citizens from live-streaming themselves eating bananas. Live-streaming sites are increasingly popular in China, but the authorities fear that some of the content people are watching "harms social morality".

While it's entirely possible to eat a banana suggestively, it's also possible to just eat a banana. And as one user on Weibo said, this ban is unlikely to work out, as, "They will all start eating cucumbers, and if that's no good, yams". According to BBC News, live-streamers are also banned from "wearing stockings and suspenders".

Battlefield Tackles World War I

And finally, EA has released the trailer for Battlefield 1, the latest game in the Battlefield series. And it's a truly magnificent trailer full of amazing visuals. However, the main talking point of Battlefield 1 is its setting… the battlefields of World War I, which took place between 1914 and 1918.

This is the first time the Battlefield series has tackled the Great War, and it stands in stark contrast to the new Call of Duty game, Infinite Warfare, which takes place in the future and (partly) in space. Which makes the decision of which big FPS title to buy this year a lot easier.

Your Views on Today’s Tech News

Are you glad to see the end of the Windows 10 nag-screen? Are you pleased to see Twitter stopping the government from spying on you? Have you ever gone on a Tweetstorm? Is China right to ban videos of people eating bananas? What do you think of the trailer for Battlefield 1?

Let us know your thoughts on the Tech News of the day by posting to the comments section below. Because a healthy discussion is always welcome.

Tech News Digest is a daily column paring the technology news of the day down into bite-sized chunks that are easy to read and perfect for sharing.