Microsoft at one point had considered buying Slack, according to reports, but instead decided to launch its own Slack collaboration competitor, Microsoft Teams, starting with a beta in 2016. Late last year, Microsoft software-as-a-service rival Salesforce ended up buying Slack for nearly $28 billion. Microsoft has made Teams available as part of its Microsoft 365/Office 365 plans for no additional cost. According to Reuters, the European regulators are asking whether bundled products give companies access to data that could increase their market power in both markets and whether bundling makes it more difficult to compete....

FastestVPN offers a smart, user-friendly service for all of your devices, including Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, your router, and even your Smart TV. It uses more than 200 high-speed servers around the world, all with military-grade 256-bit AES encryption. And you get unlimited switches between them, as well as unlimited bandwidth for the simultaneous use of your 10 devices. An ad blocker is included for your convenience, and FastestVPN’s strict no-logging policy ensures no one will have access to your personal data....

A joint advisory by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and other agencies warns that the Karakurt data-extortion group is trying to extort millions from victims across North America and Europe. Known ransom demands have ranged from $25,000 to $13,000,000 in Bitcoin, with Karakurt setting a one-week deadline to pay before they publish the stolen information. The advisory doesn’t detail how many victims have paid the ransoms....

Criminal marketplace Marketo claimed to have 4GB of data from Fujitsu last month and began marketing it widely. At the time, Fujitsu said it was investigating a potential breach and told ZDNet that “details of the source of this information, including whether it comes from our systems or environment, are unknown.” Marketo claimed to have confidential customer information, company data, budget data, reports and other company documents, including project information....

Review: MacBook Pro M1: Apple amazes with its first Silicon MacBook Pro It’s not just the best ultraportable MacBook I’ve used, it’s the best ultraportable laptop I’ve ever used, no matter the platform. And here’s how you can save a whopping $150 off the price!

Are you tired of seeing the “lack of storage message” on your phone? Or of not being able to transfer files between different operating systems? Then you can appreciate how much simpler it would be to use a flash drive as a go-between. Even your devices have different port types, a flash drive with multiple built-in ports solves that problem nicely. This 4-in-1 drive offers a roomy 64GB of fast flash storage for your files, and it has USB-C, micro-USB, USB 3....

The VeloCore comes with over 100 resistance settings, so you can get your cardio workout in or build up your distance biking from the comfort of your home. For those that want to add in an arm routine, the bike also places two dumbbells on the side to add an extra pump to your routine. Or, you can use the specialized lean mode to strengthen your arms and core, and you can use the six different handlebar positions, too....

Smartwatches can be lifesavers and their technology is constantly improving. But some of their most essential functions require being close to or connected to a smartphone, which can be a major drawback for a large segment of the population that is most in need of being monitored. So if you or a loved one requires a standalone cutting-edge medical alert device, a LutiBand Smartwatch may be just what you need....

With this lifetime subscription, you’ll have access to lessons that can teach you eight languages: Spanish, French, Italian, German, Russian, English, Estonian, and Finnish. Speakly is 10 times more affordable than other brands of language classes, yet it is still the fastest way to learn a new language thanks to the way it uses technology to determine the most statistically relevant vocabulary and real-world situations. Speakly combines science with computational algorithms so that it can teach you 4....

If you’ve been planning a long-awaited vacation, you’ll definitely want to take enough photos and videos to reminisce about your trip in the future. Sure, you’ll probably use your phone camera, but it’s hard to beat a tiny drone that captures stunning footage from unique angles. Although many drones can be heavy and unwieldy, the Copernicus Mini Drone folds up into a compact rectangle to fit in the palm of your hand, making it so easy to store and carry, which is crucial if you want to travel with it....

Technology has advanced to the point where we can take amazing photos on cameras and breathtaking videos with our phones. However, those files consume ever-increasing storage, and deleting your favorite images or important files is never fun. Similarly, if you find that your laptop, phone, or tablet has been running slower lately, you might not need to upgrade to a newer model; your hard drives may simply be filled to the brim....

Travel is almost back to normal again, and remote work is more widespread than ever, so you can work from pretty much anywhere you choose, not just from your home. Of course, you’ll need to put together the right kinds of services and equipment, and a great lightweight laptop should be a top priority. Those models can be pretty expensive, though, which means this refurbished Apple MacBook Air is a great bargain....

But over the years everything changed. Windows (with and without an X) made it all a matter of pointing and clicking and pointing and clicking and pointing and clicking. It was easy to get lost, and easier still to make an error and not notice that you’d forgotten to select a file or choose the correct value. It’s impossible to quantify how much time I lost switching from dialog box to dialog box and from window to window....

The version 2.0 round of MLPerf training results showed Google taking the top scores in terms of lowest amount of time to train a neural network on four tasks for commercially available systems: image recognition, object detection, one test for small and one for large images, and the BERT natural language processing model. Nvidia took the top honors for the other four of the eight tests, for its commercially available systems: image segmentation, speech recognition, recommendation systems, and solving the reinforcement learning task of playing Go on the “mini Go” dataset....

Over the past year, Google Workspace app Docs has gained new collaboration features like @mentions that aim to modernize productivity software. But as ZDNet’s Jonathan Greig noted in January, hackers were exploiting the feature by adding @mentions in Docs that trigger an email to the target’s inbox. In that attack, the commenter mentions the target with an @ and then an email is automatically sent to the target’s inbox. The email arrives from Google with the full comment as well as potentially malicious links and text....

Google Cloud infrastructure VP and GM Sachin Gupta said the changes reflect the cloud infrastructure investments the company has made over recent years. “They are also designed to better align with how other leading cloud providers charge for similar products, so customers can more easily compare services between leading cloud providers,” Gupta said in a blog post. He added the changes would give customers “more choice in how they pay for what they use alongside new, flexible SKUs with new product options and capabilities”....

The new ad format has launched in the US and aims to help car sellers reach potential buyers more easily via Search from a smartphone. Google plans to roll the format out in more countries soon. Google launched the ad format at the National Automobile Dealers Association last week. Google commissioned research firm Kantar for its 2021 GearShift study and found that 16% of new car buyers bought their car online, up from 1% three years ago....

Google revealed details about code review pushback in its study “The Pushback Effects of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Age in Code Review”, published in computer industry journal Communications of the ACM. The study looked at the day-to-day experiences of traditionally underrepresented engineers in tech. SEE: Software skills will get you far, but you don’t have to be a coder to make it big in tech The study found that “excess pushback” costs Google more than 1,000 extra engineer hours every day, or around 4% of the estimated time engineers spend on responding to reviewer comments....

The size of the gift card is the same regardless of whether you buy the cheapest 128GB model or the more expensive 256GB and 512GB phones. While technically the “discount” you’re getting is a higher percentage with the 128GB models, at the end of the day get the right Pixel 7 for you. The same deal for the Pixel 7 Pro is available at Best Buy if you’d prefer a $200 Best Buy gift card....

Unattended Project Reminder, a part of Google Cloud’s Active Assist, could be useful in reducing security risks by finding those old initiatives, such as a prototyping project, that no longer require network access, cloud resources, or supported APIs. Google has developed the feature through 2021 as part of a prototype aimed at cleaning up internal projects that were unattended. See: Google’s new cloud computing tool helps you pick the greenest data centers....