Google is changing the URL of its search engine for billions of people
Google is making a huge change to the most famous and widely used search engine in the world. And it is the global nature of Google search, and the internet in general, which is at the heart of the change.
For a very long time, Google has used different URLs for its search engine in different countries -- google.co.uk in the UK, google.es in Spain, for instance. But no more. The company has announced that different country code top-level domain names (ccTLD) are no longer needed and will not be used.
How agentic AI takes GenAI to the next level [Q&A]
Agentic AI has been in the news quite a bit of late, but how should enterprises expect it to impact their organizations?
We spoke to Mike Finley, CTO of AnswerRocket, to discuss Agentic AI's benefits, use cases and more.
Enhancing data security in an AI-driven era
For many years, the IT community has consistently emphasized the inherent value and significance of data. Data is one of the greatest resources within a business, even referred to as an organization’s crown jewels, and as a result, has become a vital part of business’ security strategies.
However, as the global interconnectivity of technology continues to grow, securing data and its integrity has become one of the most complex parts of cybersecurity. The driving factor behind this increasing complexity is the broadening use of generative AI (GenAI) and large language models (LLMs), for which training data has largely become the world’s publicly available data.
Ditch Windows 11 and switch to Fedora Linux 42
It’s raining Linux distributions! Earlier today, we told you about the release of Manjaro 25. And now, Fedora Linux 42 has officially arrived. If you’ve been looking for a fast, polished, and privacy-respecting replacement for Windows 11, this open source operating system could be the one.
This new Fedora release gives users a powerful and flexible desktop experience across multiple editions and devices. Whether you prefer GNOME or KDE, use x86 or Apple Silicon, or just want to ditch Microsoft’s operating system entirely, Fedora 42 definitely has something to offer.
Sling upgrades DVR, damages usability
If you watch TV over the internet these days -- and lots of people do -- you’ve got a plethora of choices like YouTube, Hulu, Fubo, and Sling. The last one is my personal pick. It’s generally been pretty good. The firm offered 200 hours of cloud DVR service, which was always fine, at least for me.
Recently, Sling upgraded that amount from 200 hours to unlimited, which sounded great -- on the surface. Unfortunately, it came with a bunch of problems.
Stylish Windows 11 replacement Nitrux is about to solve a big app headache for users
Nitrux, which is one of our favorite Linux-based Windows 11 alternatives, is rolling out a major upgrade to how users manage software on the system. The move, which is aimed at improving reliability and user control, replaces two aging tools -- the NX Software Center and the zap CLI -- with a new, purpose-built system called NX AppHub.
For those unfamiliar, Nitrux doesn’t use a traditional package manager like apt or rpm. Instead, it focuses on AppImages, which are self-contained applications that run independently of system libraries. Although this approach avoids dependency issues, it previously came with a rather major downside -- apps were often outdated or pulled from unreliable sources. That’s where NX AppHub comes in.
Microsoft vulnerabilities hit a record high in 2024
The latest annual Microsoft Vulnerabilities Report from BeyondTrust, reveals a record-breaking number of reported vulnerabilities last year.
Total vulnerabilities reached an all-time high of 1,360 in 2024, an 11 percent increase from the previous record of 1,292 in 2022. Elevation of Privilege (EoP) vulnerabilities comprised 40 percent of all those reported.
Browser extensions leave enterprises open to attack
Despite being present on virtually every employee's browser, extensions and plug-ins are rarely monitored by security teams or controlled by IT and a new report shows that could be leaving enterprises at risk.
The study from LayerX Security combines statistics from real-life usage data from enterprise users, with data available from public extension stores to reveal how organizations and employees interact with extensions, the associated risks and security blind spots.
Less than a third of companies consistently meet compliance standards
New research shows that only 29 percent of all organizations say their compliance programs consistently meet internal and external standards.
The report from Swimlane reveals that fragmented workflows, manual evidence gathering and poor collaboration between security and governance, risk and compliance (GRC) teams are leaving organizations vulnerable to audit failures, regulatory penalties and security gaps.
Manjaro Linux 25 now available for download
Great news, folks -- the developers of Manjaro have officially launched version 25 of the popular Linux distribution. Codenamed “Zetar,” this release delivers updated desktop environments, new features aimed at improving performance and usability, and expanded hardware support through the latest Linux kernel.
The GNOME edition now ships with version 48 of the desktop environment, a release first introduced in March 2025. One of the key features is notification stacking, which organizes alerts from the same app into expandable groups. GNOME 48 also includes dynamic triple buffering, a technology aimed at delivering smoother animations and reducing skipped frames.
Microsoft says that Windows 11 24H2 now plays nicely with wallpaper customization applications
Microsoft is starting the process of lifting a compatibility hold that was preventing some Windows 11 users from updating to Windows 11 24H2.
The block has been in place since September, stopping users with certain unnamed wallpaper customization applications from installing the latest version of the operating system. Microsoft has still not provided a list of the apps that it has, until now, considered troublesome, but says that it will “gradually remove this safeguard hold”.
AI makes bots easier to deploy and harder to detect
Automated bot traffic surpassed human-generated traffic for the first time in a decade last year, making up 51 percent of all web traffic. This shift is largely attributed to the rise of AI and Large Language Models (LLMs), which have simplified the creation and scaling of bots for malicious purposes.
The latest Imperva Bad Bot Report from Thales shows cybercriminals are increasingly leveraging these technologies to create and deploy malicious bots which now account for 37 percent of all internet traffic -- a significant increase from 32 percent in 2023.
Those scary-looking 0x80070643 -- ERROR_INSTALL_FAILURE messages? Just ignore them, says Microsoft
Oh, look! It’s another update from Microsoft with weird or unwanted side effects. This time around it is the KB5057588 update, which is an update to the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE).
Sysadmins are being freaked out by the appearance of an error message that reads 0x80070643 -- ERROR_INSTALL_FAILURE. Time to panic? Nope! Microsoft says to just ignore it.
TP-Link becomes a CVE Numbering Authority to improve cybersecurity
As someone who uses and loves TP-Link products (including its affordable routers and smart home devices) I’m truly elated to see the company taking cybersecurity more seriously. You see, the company has officially joined the CVE Numbering Authorities (CNAs), meaning it can now assign CVE IDs to security flaws found in its own products.
Here’s why it matters, folks: CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) are used to track publicly known cybersecurity issues. By becoming a CNA, TP-Link gains the power to document and disclose vulnerabilities faster and more transparently. That’s a win for both the company and the people who rely on its devices every day (such as yours truly).
Ubisoft makes Chroma colorblind tool open source for all developers
After years of internal use, Ubisoft has open-sourced Chroma -- a real-time colorblind simulation tool. This accessibility software is designed to help developers better serve the 300 million people around the world who live with color vision deficiencies.
Originally developed in 2021 by Ubisoft’s Quality Control team in India, Chroma allows developers to simulate how a game looks to people with various forms of colorblindness -- all without slowing down performance. It works on both single- and dual-screen setups, runs with customizable overlays, and responds to hotkeys for easy toggling during gameplay.
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