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Bug or migration strategy for New Outlook, we wonder

Far be from us to suggest Microsoft is trying to force people onto its New Outlook application, but it has admitted Classic Outlook occasionally and mysteriously turns into a system resource hog. It's a SNAFU that may just push folks over the edge to the new app – or to a full alternative.…

OpenAI has released two new AI models that can "think with images" during their reasoning process. The o3 and o4-mini models represent a significant advancement in visual perception, enabling them to manipulate images -- cropping, zooming, and rotating -- as part of their analytical process. Unlike previous models, o3 and o4-mini can agentically use all of ChatGPT's tools, including web search, Python code execution, and image generation. This allows them to tackle multi-faceted problems by selecting appropriate tools based on the task at hand. The models have set new state-of-the-art performance benchmarks across multiple domains. On visual tasks, o3 achieved 86.8% accuracy on MathVista and 78.6% on CharXiv-Reasoning, while o4-mini scored 91.6% on AIME 2024 competitions. In expert evaluations, o3 made 20% fewer major errors than its predecessor on complex real-world tasks. ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Team users will see o3, o4-mini, and o4-mini-high in the model selector starting today, replacing o1, o3â'mini, and o3â'miniâ'high.

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The Trump administration plans to eliminate the IRS' Direct File program, an electronic system for filing tax returns directly to the agency for free, AP reported Wednesday, citing two people familiar with the decision. From the report: The program developed during Joe Biden's presidency was credited by users with making tax filing easy, fast and economical. But Republican lawmakers and commercial tax preparation companies complained it was a waste of taxpayer money because free filing programs already exist, although they are hard to use.

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Is that MI in MI308 going to be Mission Impossible?

World War Fee Turns out Nvidia's not the only chip shop caught in the crossfire of Trump's tit-for-tat trade battle with China.…

Intune policies turn out to be mere suggestions

Microsoft has admitted some users are being offered Windows 11 upgrades despite Intune policies configured otherwise.…

Timing not ideal with Wall Street fearing recession

It's been a little over a year since Adobe abandoned its plans to purchase web-based design tool Figma. Now, the smaller of the two app makers is bucking market uncertainty by filing for an IPO.…

Feds extend vulnerability nerve-center contract at 11th hour

In an 11th-hour reprieve, the US government last night agreed to continue funding the globally used Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) Program.…

Google has announced that it will begin phasing out country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) such as google.ng and google.com.br, redirecting all traffic to google.com. The change comes after improvements in Google's localization capabilities rendered these separate domains unnecessary. Since 2017, Google has provided identical local search experiences whether users visited country-specific domains or google.com. The transition will roll out gradually over the coming months, and users may need to re-establish search preferences during the migration.

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About 18% of songs uploaded to Deezer are fully generated by AI, the French streaming platform said on Wednesday, underscoring the technology's growing use amid copyright risks and concerns about fair payouts to artists. From a report: Deezer said more than 20,000 AI-generated tracks are uploaded on its platform each day, which is nearly twice the number reported four months ago. "AI-generated content continues to flood streaming platforms like Deezer and we see no sign of it slowing down," said Aurelien Herault, the company's innovation chief.

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Two decades have passed since NASA made two spacecraft collide

It is twenty years since NASA's DART mission collided with a satellite after depleting its fuel during a rendezvous attempt.…

Enterprise software optimization is accelerating as companies face potential budget freezes in 2025, according to new research from UBS reviewed by Slashdot. Following discussions with two leading SaaSOps vendors, analysts report that 21% of organizations cut their SaaS spend last year, with a staggering 30% of existing licenses sitting unused. SaaS rationalization efforts are targeting familiar categories: collaboration tools (Zoom, Teams, Slack), project management solutions, and sales engagement platforms. Back-office systems like Workday remain relatively insulated due to their stickiness and pricing leverage, while front-office software faces mixed pressures. "Companies were looking to return to spend growth in 2HF25 from cost cutting but now that might no longer be the case," one CEO told UBS.

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DPP Law is appealing against data watchdog's conclusions

A law firm is appealing against a £60,000 fine from the UK's data watchdog after 32 GB of personal information was stolen from its systems.…

CISA says the U.S. government has extended funding to ensure no continuity issues with the critical Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program. From a report: "The CVE Program is invaluable to cyber community and a priority of CISA," the U.S. cybersecurity agency told BleepingComputer. "Last night, CISA executed the option period on the contract to ensure there will be no lapse in critical CVE services. We appreciate our partners' and stakeholders' patience." The announcement follows a warning from MITRE Vice President Yosry Barsoum that government funding for the CVE and CWE programs was set to expire today, April 16, potentially leading to widespread disruption across the cybersecurity industry. "If a break in service were to occur, we anticipate multiple impacts to CVE, including deterioration of national vulnerability databases and advisories, tool vendors, incident response operations, and all manner of critical infrastructure," Barsoum said.

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More than half of the top privately held AI companies based in the U.S. have at least one immigrant founder, according to an analysis from the Institute for Progress. From the report: The IFP analysis of the top AI-related startups in the Forbes AI 2025 list found that 25 -- or 60% -- of the 42 companies based in the U.S. were founded or co-founded by immigrants. The founders of those companies "hail from 25 countries, with India leading (nine founders), followed by China (eight founders) and then France (three founders). Australia, the U.K., Canada, Israel, Romania, and Chile all have two founders each." Among them is OpenAI -- whose co-founders include Elon Musk, born in South Africa, and Ilya Sutskever, born in Russia -- and Databricks, whose co-founders were born in Iran, Romania and China. The analysis echoes previous findings about the key role foreign-born scientists and engineers have played in the U.S. tech industry and the broader economy.

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Bezos' biz and Google tell regulator higher cost of running Windows Server in their clouds isn't fair

AWS estimates that half of the workloads Microsoft enterprise customers run on Azure would migrate to its own datacenters if only the licensing costs of doing so were not prohibitively high and a competitive deterrent.…

Dutch lithography king sticks to €35B forecast despite investor jitters

Euro tech giant ASML hit its revenue guidance last quarter and still expects the coffers to swell this year, but order bookings are down as Trump's tariff turmoil casts uncertainty over the entire industry.…

Figma has confidentially filed for an IPO with the SEC, marking a major move more than a year after scrapping its $20 billion acquisition deal with Adobe due to regulatory pushback. CNBC reports: Figma's software is popular among designers inside companies who need to collaborate on prototypes for websites and apps. The company was valued at $12.5 billion in a 2024 tender offer. "There are two paths that venture-funded startups go down," Dylan Field, Figma's co-founder and CEO, said in an interview with The Verge last year. "You either get acquired or you go public. And we explored thoroughly the acquisition route." The announcement lands at a precarious moment for the tech IPO market, which has been largely dormant since late 2021. The Trump presidency was expected to revive new offerings due to promises of less burdensome regulations.

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Vintage phishing varietal has improved with age

Russia never stops using proven tactics, and its Cozy Bear, aka APT 29, cyber-spies are once again trying to lure European diplomats into downloading malware with a phony invitation to a lux event.…

Outdated and misinformed legal presumptions at the heart of concerns

Digital forensics in the UK is in need of reform, says one expert, as the deadline to advise the government on computer evidence rules arrives.…

Maybe don't push to production without properly testing first?

Microsoft Teams experienced a file-sharing outage overnight that disrupted collaboration for many users and forced the software biz to roll back a recent backend change.…