Microsoft wants Windows Update to handle all apps

An accused movie pirate, Steven Hale, who stole over 1,000 Blu-ray discs and DVDs while employed at a DVD manufacturing company, struck a plea deal this week to reduce his sentence after the FBI alleged his piracy cost studios millions. Arrested in March, Hale was accused of bypassing encryption to leak pre-release movies, including popular titles like Spider-Man: No Way Home, which reportedly led to tens of millions in losses for studios. His plea deal...

YouTube Shorts is currently beta testing the integration of Google Lens, allowing users to search for information about elements within short-form videos. Viewers can access this feature by pausing a video and selecting Lens from the menu, enabling them to tap or highlight parts of the clip for visual search results overlaying the content. During this test phase, advertisements won't appear in the search results, and the Lens functionality is not available for Shorts with...

Amazon has established a new ZeroOne team, led by Xbox cofounder J Allard, aimed at creating “breakthrough” devices, including a smart home product. Allard, who previously worked on the original Xbox and other Microsoft projects, joined Amazon to focus on innovative ideas in late 2024, with job listings indicating roles for applied science and product marketing related to this initiative. Although Amazon has a strong presence in smart home tech, the timeline for ZeroOne's product...

YouTube Integration of Google Lens YouTube announced on Thursday that it will integrate Google Lens into YouTube Shorts in the coming weeks. This feature will allow viewers to search for information about what they see while watching Shorts, enhancing their experience. For instance, if a viewer is interested in a location featured in a Short, they can easily use Google Lens to find more details about it. Full Article

Arizona State University researchers, led by Subbarao Kambhampati, challenge the characterization of AI language models' intermediate text generation as "reasoning," arguing that this anthropomorphization fosters misconceptions about their functioning. Their analysis of models like DeepSeek's R1 reveals that these systems can produce lengthy intermediate outputs that mimic human scratch work without genuine reasoning, and even perform better when trained on semantically meaningless data. The study cautions against interpreting these outputs as valid reasoning, as it...

The DragonForce ransomware group compromised a Managed Service Provider's (MSP) SimpleHelp remote monitoring and management (RMM) tool, using it to exfiltrate data and deploy ransomware on multiple endpoints. The attackers are believed to have exploited three security vulnerabilities in SimpleHelp, specifically CVE-2024-57727, CVE-2024-57728, and CVE-2024-57726. This incident highlights the ongoing risks associated with MSPs and the importance of addressing security flaws in remote management tools to prevent such attacks. Full Article