That groan you hear is users’ reaction to Recall going back into Windows

That groan you hear is users’ reaction to Recall going back into Windows

Security and privacy advocates are girding themselves for another uphill battle against Recall, the AI tool rolling out in Windows 11 that will screenshot, index, and store everything a user does every three seconds. When Recall was first introduced in May 2024, security practitioners roundly castigated it for creating a gold mine for malicious insiders,…

Has Apple’s Siri learned there is no ‘I’ in team?

Has Apple’s Siri learned there is no ‘I’ in team?

Apple Intelligence might already have become a slightly tarnished brand — a modern-day repeat of the Apple Maps mess — but the company won’t give up on it without a fight; the word’s out that it now intends to rollout the contextual Siri features it promised at WWDC 2024 this fall. If it achieves this, it does at least mean the…

Researcher uncovers dozens of sketchy Chrome extensions with 4 million installs

Researcher uncovers dozens of sketchy Chrome extensions with 4 million installs

Google is hosting dozens of extensions in its Chrome Web Store that perform suspicious actions on the more than 4 million devices that have installed it and that the developer has taken pains to carefully conceal. The extensions, which so far number at least 35, use the same code patterns, connect to some of the…

Google to offer its Workspace suite to the US government at a 71% discount

Google to offer its Workspace suite to the US government at a 71% discount

In a move that could reshape public-sector IT procurement, Google has entered into a landmark agreement with the US General Services Administration (GSA), offering its Workspace productivity suite to all federal agencies at discounts of up to 71%. Effective through September 30, 2025, this pricing applies across agencies regardless of size or volume and includes…

Researchers concerned to find AI models hiding their true “reasoning” processes

Researchers concerned to find AI models hiding their true “reasoning” processes

Remember when teachers demanded that you “show your work” in school? Some fancy new AI models promise to do exactly that, but new research suggests that they sometimes hide their actual methods while fabricating elaborate explanations instead. New research from Anthropic—creator of the ChatGPT-like Claude AI assistant—examines simulated reasoning (SR) models like DeepSeek’s R1, and…

OpenAI’s GPT helps spammers send blast of 80,000 messages that bypassed filters

OpenAI’s GPT helps spammers send blast of 80,000 messages that bypassed filters

Spammers used OpenAI to generate messages that were unique to each recipient, allowing them to bypass spam-detection filters and blast unwanted messages to more than 80,000 websites in four months, researchers said Wednesday. The finding, documented in a post published by security firm SentinelOne’s SentinelLabs, underscores the double-edged sword wielded by large language models. The…

After months of user complaints, Anthropic debuts new $200/month AI plan

After months of user complaints, Anthropic debuts new $200/month AI plan

On Wednesday, Anthropic introduced a new $100- to $200-per-month subscription tier called Claude Max that offers expanded usage limits for its Claude AI assistant. The new plan arrives after many existing Claude subscribers complained of hitting rate limits frequently. “The top request from our most active users has been expanded Claude access,” wrote Anthropic in…

Leaked messages expose trade secrets of prolific Black Basta ransomware group

Leaked messages expose trade secrets of prolific Black Basta ransomware group

A leak of 190,000 chat messages traded among members of the Black Basta ransomware group shows that it’s a highly structured and mostly efficient organization staffed by personnel with expertise in various specialities, including exploit development, infrastructure optimization, social engineering, and more. The trove of records was first posted to file-sharing site MEGA. The messages,…

Carmack defends AI tools after Quake fan calls Microsoft AI demo “disgusting”

Carmack defends AI tools after Quake fan calls Microsoft AI demo “disgusting”

On Monday, John Carmack, co-creator of id Software’s Quake franchise, defended Microsoft’s recent AI-generated Quake II demo against criticism from a fan about the technology’s impact on industry jobs, calling it “impressive research work.” Last Friday, Microsoft released a new playable tech demo of a generative AI game engine called WHAMM (World and Human Action…

Meta’s surprise Llama 4 drop exposes the gap between AI ambition and reality

Meta’s surprise Llama 4 drop exposes the gap between AI ambition and reality

On Saturday, Meta released its newest Llama 4 multimodal AI models in a surprise weekend move that caught some AI experts off guard. The announcement touted Llama 4 Scout and Llama 4 Maverick as major advancements, with Meta claiming top performance in their categories and an enormous 10 million token context window for Scout. But…