AI agents surge into big business with scant oversight, leaving governance, security and trust frameworks struggling to keep pace. Read...

Language learning platform Preply secures $150 million to boost AI tools and global growth, valuing the business at $1.2 billion. Read...

TL;DR: A Microsoft Office lifetime license now only costs $99.97 (reg. $249.99). Microsoft 365 subscriptions cost $99.99 per year at their absolute cheapest, and that’s a price you’re never done paying. If you want a way out, Microsoft is now allowing you to get a Microsoft Office 2024 lifetime license that works for Mac or PC, and it’s even on sale. Instead of paying $99.99 every year, you can get a Microsoft Office lifetime license for $99.97 (reg. $249.99). This version of Office comes with Word Excel PowerPoint Outlook OneNote The license links to your Microsoft account, and you have seven days after purchase to redeem your code. Once you activate and install Office, you keep using it as long as your computer meets the supported Windows or macOS versions, with updates included. Office 2024 improves on older versions of Office with faster performance, especially in Excel, where large worksheets and multiple open files are more responsive. Excel also adds dynamic arrays and AI-supported data tools that can help you work with tables and visualize trends more clearly. Word now has Focus Mode and Smart Compose, and improved research tools that help with sources and citations. PowerPoint can now record presentations with video, voice, and closed captions, which is useful for online classes and remote work. Outlook adds a stronger accessibility checker and better protection. Right now, it’s only $99.97 to get a Microsoft Office 2024 Lifetime License for Mac or PC. Sale ends soon. Microsoft Office 2024 Home & Business for Mac or PC Lifetime LicenseSee Deal StackSocial prices subject to change. Read...

The app was due to be banned in the US a year ago if its Chinese owner hadn`t sold its business in America. Read...

Dairy giant Fonterra expects to complete the sale of its consumer business in the first quarter of this year. Read...

The latest KB5074109 update for Windows 11 causes the classic Outlook app to crash and lose emails, and there’s a risk of data loss if PST or OST files are stored on cloud-backed storage! You can read more about it on this Microsoft support page. If classic Outlook crashes due to the issue caused by update KB5074109, you must close the email program via Task Manager and restart it. This may result in sent emails not appearing in the Sent Items folder. Microsoft writes: After installing Windows updates released on or after January 13, 2026 (KB5074109), some applications might become unresponsive or experience unexpected errors when opening files from or saving files to cloud-backed storage, such as OneDrive or Dropbox. For example, in some configurations of Outlook that store PST files on OneDrive, Outlook might become unresponsive and fail to reopen unless its process is terminated in Task Manager, or the system is restarted. In addition, sent emails might not appear in the Sent Items folder, and previously downloaded might be downloaded again. Elsewhere, Microsoft also writes: After Windows updates on January 13, 2026 users with Outlook POP account profiles and profiles with PST files report that Outlook hangs and does not exit properly. This issue may occur for any Outlook profile that has PSTs stored on OneDrive. Symptoms reported include: Outlook hangs and shows “Not Responding.” Inability to reopen Outlook without ending its process in Task Manager or restarting the computer. Emails not appearing in the Sent Items folder despite being sent. Outlook redownloading emails. Affected platforms: Windows 11, version 25H2; Windows 11, version 24H2; Windows 11, version 23H2; Windows 10, version 22H2; Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021; Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2019 Windows Server 2025; Windows Server, version 23H2; Windows Server 2022; Windows Server 2019 Until a fix is available, please use webmail. The other workarounds may be complicated. Microsoft’s offered workaround According to BleepingComputer, Microsoft has shared the following advice for affected users: If this problem occurs, please contact the application developer to find out about possible alternative methods for accessing the files. For Outlook-specific scenarios, moving the PST files from OneDrive should resolve the issue. Instructions can be found here. In addition, email accounts can still be accessed via webmail, provided this is supported by your email provider. Businesses and IT administrators who need urgent help resolving the issue should contact Microsoft Business Support. Microsoft is working on a patch for the Outlook issue. Until it’s released, you will need to use the workaround described by Microsoft. Update KB5074109 is the first Windows 11 patch of 2026 and it’s already wreaking havoc on many Windows 11 computers. We’ve reported on the issues in this update, including PCs no longer shutting down, black screen crashes, and File Explorer ignoring some settings. Read...

TL;DR: 1min.AI bundles top AI models and creation tools into one platform—and this lifetime plan costs just $74.97 through January 31. AI tools are everywhere now—but using them efficiently is a different story. Most people end up bouncing between chatbots, image generators, writing tools, and video apps, each with its own subscription. 1min.AI Advanced Business Plan takes a simpler approach by consolidating all of that into a single dashboard and letting you pay once. For $74.97 through January 31, you get lifetime access to a multi-model AI platform powered by names you already recognize, including GPT-4o, Claude 3, Gemini Pro, Llama, Mistral, and Cohere. Different models excel at different tasks, and 1min.AI lets you switch between them without extra costs or logins. The platform covers a wide range of real-world work. There are writing and SEO tools for blogs, rewrites, summaries, and brand voice. Image tools handle everything from generation and background removal to upscaling and 3D visuals. You can interact with PDFs, translate documents, and generate presentations. There’s also a full suite of audio and video tools, including text-to-speech, voice cloning, captions, YouTube summaries, and text-to-video creation. Weekly updates mean the tool keeps evolving. For creators, marketers, and teams looking to work faster, 1min.AI offers a practical way to get more done. Lifetime access to the 1min.AI Advanced Business Plan is just $74.97 (MSRP $540) through January 31. 1min.AI Advanced Business Plan Lifetime SubscriptionSee Deal StackSocial prices subject to change. Read...

Despite talk of a deal over Greenland, it will be hard for US allies to return to business as usual, writes the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent. Read...

A Wellington man says his business lost money after its Instagram and Facebook accounts were banned. Read...

I’ve reviewed lots of laptops powered by Intel CPUs over the last year, and I’ve had gripes. The Core Ultra Series 2 generation was a branding mess with its mix of Lunar Lake, Arrow Lake, and Meteor Lake architectures. But at CES 2026, Intel turned a corner. Intel Core Ultra Series 3—codenamed Panther Lake—looks like it’s actually a coherent platform to go toe-to-toe with AMD and Qualcomm. Intel seems to have its swagger back, too. Intel had TSMC manufacture its Lunar Lake CPUs last generation, but Intel is now back to manufacturing its own CPUs again. This year, Intel struck a huge deal with Nvidia and the US government became a large shareholder in its operations. Despite recent struggles, the big chipmaker shouldn’t be written off yet. I didn’t have the opportunity to benchmark any of these new Panther Lake-powered machines at CES, so stay tuned for that once we get our hands on review units. But I’m still impressed—and here’s why. Battery life and performance in one Intel’s Lunar Lake was a strange beast. Made by TSMC instead of Intel, it was Intel’s attempt to jump on board the power-efficient laptop revolution, complete with onboard memory that couldn’t be upgraded, a speedy NPU for running overhyped Copilot+ PC AI features, and a surprisingly capable integrated GPU. Mark Hachman / Foundry But Lunar Lake’s big limitation was multithreaded performance. It came far behind Arrow Lake and even Meteor Lake CPUs in our Cinebench and Handbrake benchmarks. That’s why most laptops I reviewed throughout the year eventually went with Arrow Lake or Meteor Lake chips. Yet, while those offered stronger performance, they sacrificed battery life and also ran hotter than Lunar Lake. With Panther Lake, Intel says we should expect more than 50 percent better multithreaded performance over Lunar Lake and Meteor Lake, with 10 percent less power usage than Lunar Lake. Intel also claims that Panther Lake’s performance is similar to Arrow Lake. This time around, it sounds like we’re getting both battery life and solid multithreaded CPU performance in the same hardware package. (Want to dive deeper? Learn more about Panther Lake’s technical details.) New integrated GPUs look impressive Intel has been hard at work on upgrading its integrated graphics over the last few years, and it’s now marketing its new Arc B390 iGPU as being on par with Nvidia’s RTX 4000-series discrete graphics cards. We benchmarked the hardware at CES 2026… and it’s close! With Lunar Lake, Intel delivered seriously impressive integrated Arc graphics—but Lunar Lake wasn’t the place for serious iGPU upgrades. Lunar Lake was focused on battery life and not CPU performance, which meant Intel’s best-performing integrated graphics was paired with a CPU platform that struggled in multithreaded performance. Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake had even worse iGPUs. Benchmarking Intel’s Panther Lake with Cyberpunk 2077.Mark Hachman / Foundry By bringing Intel’s fastest iGPUs together with an even faster CPU, Panther Lake promises to power laptops with impressive gaming performance on integrated graphics. That’s something a few PC manufacturers were eager to tell me about at CES 2026. Intel’s new Core Ultra Series 3 hardware could power PC gaming experiences without a discrete GPU. Companies like HP were showing off demos of PC games running on Intel’s new iGPUs. Competing with AMD in handhelds With Panther Lake, Intel is talking about bringing more competition to the gaming handheld space. Steam Deck-style handheld gaming PCs largely use AMD processors, and there’s speculation that companies like Valve may release hardware with Arm chips in the future. Intel had so much swagger that one executive even talked smack at CES 2026, accusing AMD of “selling ancient silicon” for handhelds. Intel is promising custom Panther Lake hardware for the gaming handheld market—something that could be seriously impressive, considering how good Intel’s integrated graphics are getting. AMD disagreed (naturally), saying Panther Lake would come with a bunch of baggage and be a bad fit for handhelds. We’ll see who’s right after the hardware is released. I’m just excited to see more competition. NPUs that catch up to Windows 11’s minimum specs While lots of PC manufacturers are still eager to talk about Copilot+ PCs and AI laptops, Microsoft looks like it’s moving on from its NPU obsession. Companies like Dell are shifting away from AI laptops, too. The NPUs Intel has been shipping for the last few years have been far below Microsoft’s minimum specs. After Microsoft announced back in May 2024 that Copilot+ PCs would require an NPU with at least 40 TOPS of performance, Intel has mostly been shipping laptop hardware with 13 TOPS NPUs—far short of Microsoft’s minimum target. Only Lunar Lake and now Panther Lake cleared the floor for Copilot+ PC features. Meanwhile, all Qualcomm Snapdragon X hardware met the minimum, and AMD’s Ryzen AI CPUs delivered solid performance on a traditional x86 platform with the NPU specs Microsoft asked for. Matthew Smith / Foundry It’s been a big black eye for Intel that most Intel CPU-powered laptops still don’t meet Microsoft’s minimums for these hyped AI features, over 18 months after Microsoft’s announcement. The good news? Most PC buyers don’t care much about Copilot+ PC features, and Microsoft now appears to be deemphasizing them. But at least Intel has finally caught up to Microsoft’s minimum specs. Renewed focus on manufacturing process Intel’s choice to outsource Lunar Lake manufacturing to TSMC was a huge shift in its priorities. Up until then, the company had always manufactured its CPUs in its own foundries. Intel even threatened to abandon manufacturing going forward. Back in July 2025, Intel said it would give up on its next-generation 14A manufacturing process if it couldn’t find a customer, and some speculated that Intel could abandon its own chip fabrication processes. The US government took a stake in Intel a few weeks later, and I’ve always wondered if that dire announcement to shareholders was a negotiation move. Intel signaled that its US-based manufacturing business was struggling and soon after landed the federal government as a shareholder. Now, Intel’s CEO said at CES 2026 that it’s very excited about investing in its 14A process. It’s a huge shift from how the company was acting just last summer. Panther Lake is the first product built on Intel’s 18A manufacturing process, and Intel is no longer depending on TSMC. Intel is also abandoning some of the weirder decisions of Lunar Lake. For example, Panther Lake no longer has on-package memory. In a world where RAM is driving up the price of PCs, that’s valuable. Will Intel’s “Core Ultra Series 3” be watered down, too? While Intel is cleaning up its naming a bit, I’m a little concerned about one thing: does “Core Ultra Series 3” mean anything this time around? A year ago, “Core Ultra Series 2” meant “Lunar Lake”… until Intel released a bunch of Arrow Lake and Meteor Lake chips with Core Ultra Series 2 branding, muddying the brand. Now, at CES 2026, everyone seemed to be using “Core Ultra Series 3” as a stand-in for “Panther Lake.” But will Intel once again release older architectures with Core Ultra Series 3 branding in the coming year? Will we get another round of rebranded Meteor Lake chips? Or Lunar Lake chips? If so, “Core Ultra Series 3” might not mean anything. Either way, Intel’s hardware platform feels like it’s getting where it needs to be. The company is combining performance with battery life, delivering serious integrated graphics power, making its own CPUs, and no longer issuing dire warnings that it may abandon its future manufacturing processes. I look forward to reviewing Panther Lake-powered PCs because they sound impressive. More competition is always good for PC users. Read...