By Varun Mirchandani Anthropic now charges extra for using Claude with OpenClaw, moving third-party access to pay-as-you-go and sparking backlash from power users.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Varun Mirchandani Perplexity faces a lawsuit alleging its incognito mode shared user data with Google and Meta, raising serious concerns about AI chat privacy.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Ana Maria Constantin The pitch is seductive in its simplicity: AI needs more power than terrestrial grids can supply, so move the data centres into orbit, where the sun never sets and the electricity is free. SpaceX, Blue Origin, and a growing constellation of startups are now racing to make that vision real. The problem, according to the […] This story continues at The Next Web

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By Alina Maria Stan Six months after renegotiating the contract that once barred it from independently pursuing frontier AI, Microsoft has released three in-house models that directly challenge the partner it spent $13 billion cultivating. MAI-Transcribe-1, MAI-Voice-1, and MAI-Image-2 are now available in Microsoft Foundry, and they do not carry OpenAI’s name anywhere on the label. The models are […] This story continues at The Next Web

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By Shikhar Mehrotra Two announcements, one clear direction: Anthropic wants Claude embedded in how you work. Microsoft 365 connectors arrive on all plans, and computer use finally reaches Windows users this week.

Source:: Digital Trends

When Daniel Rhyne pleaded guilty on April 1 to having launched an insider extortion attack against his then-employer, authorities enumerated the techniques he used, including unauthorized remote desktop sessions, deletion of network administrator accounts, changing of passwords, and scheduling unauthorized tasks on the domain controller. 

After he shut down key systems and accounts, he sent a note to employees in which he claimed to have deleted all backups, and threatened to continue shutting down servers unless he was given bitcoin worth roughly $750,000.

But what consultants and analysts found most concerning is how commonplace and routine were the techniques he used. In other words, standard security procedures should have blocked almost all of them.

Preventive actions missing

Enterprise insider threats are hardly new, but consultants and analysts said that many enterprises don’t take every preventive move that they can, and should, because the IT staff resists, seeing the efforts as excessive monitoring of their activities, and something that also slows down their work.

Cybersecurity consultant Brian Levine, executive director of FormerGov, said, “what makes the case interesting was how boringly predictable the attack path was.”

Levine noted that backups need to always be immutable. “Nobody in the company should be able to delete or modify or encrypt the backup for a set period of time,” he said. He also stressed that the principle of least privilege needs to be applied to workers whose jobs change for any reason. 

Critically, he argued that the use of various tools should be instantly flagged as concerning. “Instrument Task Scheduler, PsExec, PsPasswd, and net user are high‑risk signals. These are the insider’s equivalent of lockpicks,” he said. “They should generate behavioral alerts when used at scale, off‑hours, or from unusual hosts.”

Levine also suggested extensive system monitoring. “If someone is RDP’ing into a domain controller at 7:48 a.m. and creating 16 scheduled tasks, you should have a video‑like audit trail.”

Paul Furtado, a distinguished VP analyst at Gartner, said he encourages clients to make sure that no single admin can cause this kind of damage. 

“Create a tiered administration model with fragmented authority. This rotates ownership of crown jewel processes, even among senior engineers and administrators,” Furtado advised. IT should also include “a break-glass admin credential stored in hardware security modules or digital vaults [that are] only to be used via testing drills and in case of emergency.”

Added Flavio Villanustre, CISO for the LexisNexis Risk Solutions Group, “the same accounts used to administer their networks [in the Rhyne case] seemed to be able to irreversibly destroy their backups too, which is an indication that strong segregation of duties was not in place.”

Rhyne now faces considerable jail time. US Justice Department filings said, “the extortion charge to which Rhyne pleaded guilty carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, and the intentional damage to a protected computer violation to which Rhyne pleaded guilty carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.”

Source:: Computer World

Students who use AI tools extensively may struggle with knowledge retention, according to new research.

Brazilian social scientist Andre Barcaui looked at two groups of students, one using ChatGPT as a study aid and the other using more traditional methods, before giving them a surprise test after 45 days. He found that those who had depended on AI scored an average of 57.5 percent on a knowledge retention test, compared to an average of 68.5 percent for those who had studied traditionally.

This randomized controlled trial showed that unrestricted use of ChatGPT as a study aid can impair long-term knowledge retention, Barcaui said in the conclusion of his paper, ChatGPT as a cognitive crutch: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial on knowledge retention. “Students who learned without AI retained substantially more information after 45 days than those who used ChatGPT.” He pointed out that an 11 percent performance gap was a significant differential.

A survey of around 10,000 teachers by the British National Education Union found other deleterious effects of AI usage. It found that two-thirds of secondary-school teachers (66 per cent) thought pupils’ critical thinking has declined due to AI usage.

The research will dismay those AI enthusiasts who have been promoting AI as an essential tool in education, although some observers have noted that there’s a need to be circumspect as to how it’s being used.

Critics will point out knowledge retention is just one part of education and that in-depth knowledge of AI will be of more help in the workplace.

Source:: Computer World

By Moinak Pal Even Realities has officially launched Even Hub, a new app store and developer platform designed for its G2 smart glasses, marking a significant step in expanding the capabilities of wearable technology. The platform is now live and accessible to all G2 users through the Even Realities app, allowing them to browse and install third-party applications […]

Source:: Digital Trends

By Hisan Kidwai Infinix has quietly but surely been doing some good work in 2026, especially when every other…
The post Infinix GT 50 Pro: Design, Cooling System, and Gaming Features Revealed appeared first on Fossbytes.

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By Manisha Priyadarshini Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses have a growing privacy problem, but blind artist Clarke Reynolds is using them to do something remarkable — run a full marathon guided by strangers from around the world.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Varun Mirchandani ChatGPT is now available on Apple CarPlay via iOS 26.4, offering voice-only AI interactions for safer, hands-free use while driving.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Ana-Maria Stanciuc Built from the same research as Gemini 3, the new family spans a 2B edge model that runs on a Raspberry Pi to a 31B dense model currently ranked third on the Arena AI open-model leaderboard. The Apache 2.0 licence is a significant shift from previous Gemma releases. Google has released Gemma 4, the latest […] This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

Open-source productivity software vendor OnlyOffice has accused the recently launched Euro-Office initiative of licensing term violations and intellectual property theft.

A group of European technology companies including Nextcloud, Ionos, and Proton, announced Euro-Office last week, billed as a sovereign, open-source productivity software suite that’s compatible with Microsoft’s proprietary Office file types.

The software is built on the open-source code base owned by OnlyOffice and distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPL v3).

OnlyOffice said in blog post that those accessing its code under this license are required to abide by conditions, such as retaining OnlyOffice’s branding and “providing proper attribution to the original technology.”

OnlyOffice said that Euro-Office doesn’t meet these conditions, and therefore “any further use of the software is unauthorized and, as such, constitutes an infringement of the copyright holder’s exclusive rights.”

The company also claims it was not contacted about the Euro-Office project prior to launch.

In a separate blog post, Lev Bannov, OnlyOffice CEO, said that the Euro-Office project must “either restore our branding and attributions or roll back all forks of our project, refraining from using our code without proper acknowledgment of OnlyOffice.”

“We firmly assert that the Euro-Office project is currently infringing on our copyright in a deliberate and unacceptable manner,” he said.

OnlyOffice also said that it will suspend its partnership with Nextcloud, one of the Euro-Office project participants, due to the launch, and it accused Nextcloud of attempting to hire its staff and targeting its customers.

Nextcloud offers integration with OnlyOffice’s software within its own software products, such as its Nextcloud Hub. Despite the partnership suspension, OnlyOffice pledged to continue to “support and develop the OnlyOffice connector for Nextcloud” that its customers rely on.

Commenting on OnlyOffice’s copyright infringement claims, a Nextcloud spokesperson said: “As OnlyOffice itself states, its product is open source. Forks are a central component of the open-source ecosystem and are explicitly intended to enable further development, customization, and alternative governance models.”

Nextcloud said the Euro-Office project has “transparently documented its legal reasoning” in a public repository on GitHub. It also claimed this view is “shared by the Free Software Foundation, the custodian of the AGPL and GPL licenses,” and pointed the FSF’s “GPL-compliant reasonable legal notices and author attributions” page.

“The legal situation was also discussed with Bradley M. Kuhn, the creator of the AGPL license, and he supports our legal assessment 100%,” the spokesperson said.

“We are not opposed to forks — they are a natural and important part of the open-source ecosystem,” said Galina Goduhina, commercial director at OnlyOffice. “However, full compliance requires respecting the licensing terms in their entirety, including preserving required attribution elements such as product logos and branding where applicable, and ensuring accurate representation of the origin of the software.“It also means clearly informing users about what the product is based on, rather than presenting it in a way that could create confusion about authorship. In practical terms, this is about using open-source software responsibly, not rebranding it in a way that obscures its origin or suggests ownership where it does not exist,” Goduhina said.

With regards to OnlyOffice’s announcement to end the partnership, the Nextcloud spokesperson said: “We are disappointed by their choice to end the collaboration because of our contributions to Euro-Office and we hope they will reconsider.”

Euro-Office said on its project’s GitHub page that it chose to fork OnlyOffice’s code base rather than work with the company directly as a “last resort,” because “open collaboration with OnlyOffice was not possible, for a number of reasons.”

Among these reasons, Euro-Office said, are that external contribution to OnlyOffice is “impossible or greatly discouraged,” and that the owners make “controversial decisions” such as the removal of mobile app features.

Euro-Office also claimed OnlyOffice is a Russian company “despite many attempts to hide this,” which has raised customers’ concerns over potential influence or control by the Russian government.

When asked for comment, an OnlyOffice spokesperson pointed to an April 2 blog post that says the owner company, Ascensio System SIA, is headquartered in Latvia and is a subsidiary of OnlyOffice Capital Group, which is registered in Singapore. The post says OnlyOffice’s Russian business segment was sold in 2019, and a fork of OnlyOffice called R7-Office was created for the Russian market. There is currently “no shared codebase, ownership, or ongoing cooperation” between OnlyOffice and R7-Office, according to the post.

The dispute could create uncertainty for organizations considering Euro-Office’s platform, said Dario Maisto, senior analyst at Forrester.

“Offering an enterprise-grade alternative suite to Microsoft and Google in Europe is not just about functionality and sovereignty, but also about offering the same level of reliability that enterprise IT leaders are used to,” he said.

The situation also points to the difficulty in creating a sovereign alternative to established US software vendors that have decades of experience and millions of business customers, he said, despite clear enthusiasm from local vendors.

“The build of an enterprise-ready European sovereign alternative is going to take time,” he said, with European companies potentially opting for “sovereign” (locally hosted) versions of established US-based suites instead, “which may decrease the overall market potential for the European players.”

Related reading:

Euro-Office billed as Europe’s sovereign alternative to Microsoft Office

Global uncertainty is reshaping cloud strategies in Europe

EU looks to bolster its open-source sector to counter US cloud dominance

Source:: Computer World

By Andrew Morrisey Whether you’re planning to buy a new smartphone, tablet, wireless earbuds, or smartwatch, we’ve rounded up the best Google Pixel deals to make shopping easier.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Shimul Sood AI galore, but it’s doing the right things.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Ana-Maria Stanciuc A new quantum algorithm ran a 15-step nonlinear fluid simulation around a solid obstacle on real quantum hardware, the most physically complex publicly documented demonstration of its kind. The technique reduces qubit requirements and circuit depth, bringing industrial CFD applications closer to feasibility. Finnish simulation company Quanscient and quantum middleware developer Haiqu have demonstrated what […] This story continues at The Next Web

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By Hisan Kidwai AiOs, or all-in-one computers, have been around for quite some time. And their promise is simple….
The post Asus VM670KA Review: A Beautiful All-in-One Desktop with Ryzen AI 7 appeared first on Fossbytes.

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By Adarsh Verma Samsung already has its own slim magnetic case for the Galaxy S26 Ultra, so most people…
The post Thinborne Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Case Review: Is It Better Than Samsung’s Slim Magnet Case? appeared first on Fossbytes.

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By Varun Mirchandani Textise is a simple web tool that converts cluttered webpages into clean, text-only versions, making online reading faster and distraction-free.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Alina Maria Stan WhatsApp has notified approximately 200 users, primarily in Italy, that they were tricked into installing a counterfeit version of the messaging app that was actually government spyware. The fake application was built by SIO, an Italian surveillance technology company that develops spyware for law enforcement and intelligence agencies through its subsidiary ASIGINT. WhatsApp said it […] This story continues at The Next Web

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