Software & Apps - Page 14

An exclusive report posted earlier this month by CSO detailed a deal between CrowdStrike and Action1 to purchase the cloud-based patch management and vulnerability remediation company for nearly $1 billion.

Now, a new report has claimed that deal has fallen a part following Action1 declining the acquisition offer by CrowdStrike. The new report by CSO states Action1 has decided to stay independent to keep full control of the company in an effort to not let dilution impact the brand's "ability to innovate."

Mike Walters, president and CEO of Action1 comment on the collapse of the deal, saying that one of the main reasons why Action1 declined the offer was over "customer trust", which presented itself after emails leaked about a potential acquisition by CrowdStrike was in the works.

VideoProc Converter AI is an excellent choice for your video-related tasks. It packs real video processing power including AI enhancement capabilities and audio/video production features with Full Hardware Acceleration speed. It's incredibly easy to use. But is it safe to use or is it worth it?

Here's a full overview of VideoProc Converter AI, exploring every aspect of the program. Keep reading.

VideoProc Converter AI is a one-stop AI-powered video and image enhancement toolbox for superior image quality and processing speed. It features three AI modules for video/image enhancement and several tools for video processing.

The GPU-Z team has just released v2.6.0 of its legendary software, with added support for new graphics and GPU architectures. You can download GPU-Z v2.6.0 right here (9.7MB download).

This isn't a big game-changing release of GPU-Z, but rather it includes support for multiple variants of NVIDIA's current-gen Ada Lovelace-powered GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs, as well as Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite, correct AMD Zen 5 processor temperatures, and so much more.

AMD's new Zen 5-based CPUs get correct temperatures with GPU-Z 2.6.0, which includes the Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" laptop CPUs, and the Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" desktop CPUs. On the Intel side of things, there's support for Raptor Lake-U and Meteor Lake's Arc-based GPU. The team at TechPowerUp have also provided support for GPUs based on Arm64 and Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X series processors inside of Copilot+ laptops.

Windows 11's update for August is reportedly slowing down some PCs, and in other cases it's failing to install, plus for gamers it's interfering with Valorant's anti-cheat system.

Windows updates failing to install is hardly a new phenomenon - it happens more often than it should - and Windows Latest flags up that there are various complaints from Windows 11 users about patch KB5041585 refusing to play ball.

The tech site observes that it has received complaints from readers about being unable to install the cumulative update, and there are posts in Microsoft's Feedback Hub too.

Microsoft has been pushing Windows 10 users to adopt Windows 11 since the new operating system was released in 2021, but the Redmond company has been hitting the marketing campaign especially hard since it announced Windows 10 support will be ending in October, 2025.

Windows 10 is still by a large margin the world's most popular operating system, according to data from Statcounter, and since the end-of-support announcement, Microsoft has been rolling out new advertisements in Windows 10 to push users over to Windows 11. Some of these advertisements came in the form of full-screen ads. Additionally, Microsoft has begun integrating more advertisements within Windows 10, which has caused many users to express negative feedback about the changes.

Microsoft has now officially recognized this feedback from both Windows 10 and 11 users, writing, "To honor our user's feedback, these invitations will no longer begin with the April 2024 monthly security update. We will share a new timeline in the coming months." Microsoft initially planned on rolling out these full-screen advertisements for Windows 11 to more swaths of Windows 10 users, but Redmon conceded in a Microsoft 365 advisory post that it will pause Windows 11 ads for managed Windows 10 devices.

It was only a few days ago that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro signed a 10-day ban on Elon Musk's social media platform X, formerly Twitter, over the platform breaking many of the country's regulations.

The ban severed access to X for local residents. According to Maduro's speech, which CNBC translated, the reasoning is that the social media platform violated "all of the rules" of the nation's telecommunications regulator. Maduro said X is "inciting hatred, fascism, civil war, death and confrontations among Venezuelans." According to the nation, the temporary ban will give the platform time to respond to the changes.

Following the ban and other threats of banning the popular messaging app WhatsApp, VPN demand is surging across Venezuela, according to new research from vpnMentor. According to the cybersecurity and research lab, VPN demand has skyrocketed by more than 494% following X being officially blocked, with the demand surging on Thursday after the order went through by Venezuela's National Telecommunications Commission.

Elon Musk has sat down for a historic interview with former US President Donald Trump, as the interview has marked the biggest the platform has seen so far.

The recent interview dominated X, formerly known as Twitter, and throughout the conversation, listeners reached around 1 million. The surprisingly lengthy conversation covered numerous topics and would be more easily consumed in 1-hour long segments, which Musk recommended following the conclusion of the interview. Musk has since taken to his personal account to share some stats on the Spaces post, with the Tesla CEO sharing a post by the official X account stating the Spaces post received 73 million views between 7:47 PM and 10:47 PM ET.

Additionally, during that same period, there were 4 million posts about the conversation, which generated a total of 998 million views. Musk wrote in the sharing of the X post that the "Combined views of the conversation with @realDonaldTrump and subsequent discussion by other accounts now ~1 billion" . The conversation between the SpaceX CEO and Trump was delayed by 40 minutes as a "massive" DDOS attack hit the social media platform. It eventually went live with less bandwidth than what Musk was testing for earlier in the day.

Windows 11 could get a change to the Start menu which would make it easier to deal with your apps, rather than having them in a long list that you're forced to scroll through.

In case you didn't guess, we're talking about the All Apps section of the Start menu in Windows 11, which is currently laid out in a clunky list format - but all that could change if clues in testing are anything to go by.

You may recall that Microsoft is testing a grid layout instead of the current scroll-athon of a list, and also that a new category view was spotted in testing quite recently.

The CrowdStrike outage knocked out approximately 8.5 million Windows machines around the world, some of which were running critical infrastructure such as emergency services, hospitals, and airports.

The outage was caused by a faulty driver update that was rolled out to CrowdStrike's cybersecurity software. The update resulted in an estimated 8.5 million Windows machines being thrown into boot loops that called for physical intervention to be fixed. The fix, being relatively simple, was the cherry on top of the scenario as all an individual would need to do is boot the machine into Windows Recovery Mode / Safe Mode and delete some files from the CrowdStrike's install folder.

However, this was a nightmare for IT people responsible for thousands of machines. The outage cost Delta approximately $500 million, and the estimated 8.5 million Windows machines that were taken down is an estimation based on CrowdStrike customers that have opted into crash reports, which means it's at least 8.5 million, not total.

Microsoft introduced Paint 3D in 2017 as part of a creator-focused update to its Windows 10 operating system. Representing a modern take on the Microsoft Paint app that dates back to 1985, the inclusion of new 2D and 3D image editing and creation features built on the basic functionality of MS Paint by adding much-needed support for layers within a revamped UI.

When it comes to the original Paint app, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. MS Paint has been around since Windows 1.0, receiving minor updates and new features. However, with the arrival of the generative AI boom and Paint getting AI-powered image generation features, alongside smart updates like one-click background removal, it seems that Microsoft no longer sees the need for Paint 3D to exist.

From November 4, 2024, users can no longer download the Paint 3D app from the Microsoft Store, and it will no longer be updated.

Ad blockers are some of the most-used software on the internet, and especially considering how easy it is to download an ad blocker Chrome extension; it's usually one of the first things people download when firing up a new system.

However, Google isn't a fan of these ad blockers, which is no surprise considering the owner of the world's largest search engine makes a large chunk of its money through advertising. Google Chrome is the world's most popular web browser, and a new update to the browser's policy is soon going to severe its connection with one of the most popular ad blockers, uBlock Origin.

According to reports, uBlock Origin has more than 30 million users on Chrome, and Google moving to Chrome's extension support to Manifest V3 will kill support for uBlock Origin. The creator of the popular ad blocker has rolled out a V3-compliant version of the tool uBlock Origin Lite, which features some ad blocking filters, but not as many as the original version.

Reddit is preparing to release new monetization methods for the millions of users on its platform, according to the company's CEO, Steven Huffman, who described many new changes coming to the social platform.

Huffman said during the earnings call that Reddit is working on a way users of the platform will be able to earn money, and that this method will be released later this year. More specifically, Huffman said that Reddit's new monetization method will "empower our users to create and earn money on the platform this year" and that more details will be released in the "coming quarters."

This wasn't the only change mentioned by Huffman, as the CEO said officials have been looking at revolutionizing Reddit search, as behind the scenes, they are testing "new search result pages powered by AI to summarize and recommend content, helping users dive deeper." Huffman was asked how Reddit plans on maintaining its unique online culture while also rolling out new features to the platform. Huffman said that in his experience as CEO, adding new ways of using Reddit won't destroy what makes Reddit a popular platform.

NVIDIA rolled out the beta for its NVIDIA App back in February, and since the company has been listening to the community feedback and working on a bunch of new features for GeForce owners to enjoy.

The Green Team has taken to its blog on its website to announce a new update for the Beta app that combines NVIDIA Control Panel and the GeForce Experience App into one, and according to NVIDIA the new update adds a new Display section that allows users to change the resolution, refresh rate and orientation of their connected display. Along with other customizable features such as G-Sync, Surround, custom resolutions, and more.

Additionally, there is a new Video section that adds RTX Video Enhancements and customization sliders for RTX Video HDR. For those that don't know, RTX Video HDR automatically converts any Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) video within a browser or compatible application into HDR videos through the use of AI. Furthermore, NVIDIA has added RTX Super Resolution, and ChatRTX, which enables users to personalize a GPT large language model with their own content.

Cybersecurity is paramount in a world that is only becoming more digitized, and one of the biggest cloud hosting players in the game, Amazon Web Services (AWS), has revealed how it keeps its services clean of malicious domains.

The hosting arm of Amazon took to its blog to detail its industry-leading security system called Mithra, which the company explains uses an internal neural network graph model that assigns a trustworthiness score to a domain. This score enables AWS to aggregate a list of high-quality domains and low-quality domains, which can then be provided to third parties. This system is capable of evaluating up to 200 trillion DNS requests in 24 hours, and detecting 182,000 malicious domains per day.

Very similar to the Iron Dome, which is an Israeli mobile all-weather air defense system designed to shoot down incoming missiles, Mithra's massive neural network is constantly updated with malicious domain names, preventing them from accessing the network. Additionally, Mithra can send its security information to third parties for further evaluation.

Microsoft is currently pushing as many Windows 10 users as it possibly can to Windows 11 ahead of the announced end-of-support date in October 2025.

Microsoft announced it was ending support for Windows 10, the world's most popular operating system, in October 2025, which means the popular operating system will no longer receive security updates and support from Redmond. The announcement has caused the slow migration of millions of Windows 10 users over to Windows 11, but Windows 11 adoption isn't happening as fast as previous operating system generations.

It was only in July that Statcounter reported Windows 10 still doubles the market share of Windows 11, with Windows 10 commanding 65% and Windows 11 taking up 29.75%. Now, Statcounter has published new numbers that show Windows 10 has decreased to 64.99%, and Windows 11 has, for the first time, broken the 30% mark with 30.83% market share.

Windows 11 could see Copilot coming to the Start menu in some form, if a clue spotted in preview builds of the operating system is anything to go on.

Windows Latest, the source of a good many leaks related to Windows 11, has been doing some digging in previews of the incoming 24H2 update, and uncovered some hidden code.

Specifically, the tech site found a 'CotextualCopilotActionsOnStartRecommended' string which suggests that, well, Copilot could be integrated in the Start menu in some way.

The CEO of Delta Air Lines, Ed Bastian has said during an interview on Wednesday the global CrowdStrike outage cost the company half a billion dollars in lost revenue, as the company was forced to cancel thousands of flights and put travelers up in hotels.

The global CrowdStrike catastrophe is still unfolding. We are just now hearing the first estimations of how much revenue was lost as a result of millions of Windows PCs being thrown into blue screen of death boot loops. For those who don't know, CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company, pushed out a faulty update to its security software, which is downloaded on millions of Windows machines around the world.

The faulty driver update triggered an error within the kernel, or before the PC boots to the user mode of Windows, leading to infinite blue screens of death. It was only recently that a cloud monitoring and insurance company estimated the global loss of revenue as a result of the outage to be $15 billion. That same insurance company estimated an $830 million loss for airlines.

Microsoft has actually removed adverts from something in Windows 11, albeit it's likely an app you've forgotten about - namely Skype.

If you recall, when Windows 11 was released (in 2021), Skype was dropped as a default (pre-installed) app from the roster (replaced by Microsoft Teams instead). However, the Skype client is still available for Windows 11 (and is still happily chugging along on other platforms), you just have to download it from the Microsoft Store.

Wherever you use Skype, the good news is that with a new preview build for testers, all the adverts have been banished from the app.

Following the tragic CrowdStrike outage that converted approximately 8.5 million Windows machines into devices that continuously flash the notorious blue screen of death, Google has confirmed it was responsible for Chrome Password Manager temporarily breaking.

Between potentially millions of Intel CPUs being faulty, AMD's new CPUs having problems, CrowdStrike updates nuking millions of Windows machines around the globe that results in airports being held up, and billions of dollars in lost revenue, it really does feel the technology industry is breaking at the seams. And to throw more fuel on the bad news fire, Google has confirmed its responsible for Password Manager on the Chrome browser being faulty.

While password manager being disabled certainly isn't as critical as the CrowdStrike outage that brought down various infrastructures around the world, the user base that was affected was comparable, and perhaps comedically it was only Windows users that were affected. According to Google, the glitch happened last week and lasted 18 hours, which was the time it took engineers to officially sign off on the fix.

Windows 11 has a neat little feature hidden away that has just been discovered, and it's all about making it far easier to accomplish a semi-regular chore - namely dealing with a misbehaving app.

Tom's Hardware spotted that a new option is in Windows 11 - though it may have been introduced some time back - to force-close an unresponsive app just by right-clicking it in the taskbar.

Before now, having to deal with a frozen app involved heading to the Task Manager, hunting through the list of running processes, finding the offender, and then force-closing it here via the 'end task' option.