What's New

December 2024 saw an unprecedented surge in ransomware attacks, registering 574 incidents—the highest monthly total recorded since 2021. This spike came as shocking news, particularly as December typically experiences a decline in cyber activity due to the holiday season. According to the latest Threat Pulse report from the cybersecurity firm NCC Group, this trend underscores the evolving and increasingly aggressive nature of ransomware threats.

As TikTok finds itself in a legal limbo in the United States, ByteDance is making significant strides in artificial intelligence (AI), unveiling a series of innovative projects that could reshape the tech landscape. Among these, UI-TARS stands out as a notable open-source AI agent, reminiscent of Anthropic's 'Computer Use' system.

In a significant security alert, cybersecurity firm CloudSek has unveiled a sophisticated phishing campaign linked to the Lumma Stealer malware, targeting Windows users.

Google released the first beta version of this year's Android release, Android 16, today. With Android 16 nearing completion, it is a good time to look at the major changes of the new mobile operating system.

Perplexity, the AI conversational search engine, is making a significant leap into the mobile arena with the integration of Perplexity Assistant in its free Android app.

The latest version of the Vivaldi web browser is now available. Vivaldi 7.1 adds several personalization options to the browser. It also makes some changes to the default search engines, downloads, and several other areas.

The new version is available already. While it will be downloaded and installed automatically on most systems, its installation can also be run manually. All you need to do for this is to open Vivaldi and select Menu > Help > Check for Updates.

The Wine team has announced the release of Wine 10.0, with several important improvements to enable Windows applications to run seamlessly on Linux systems. The latest version comes with over 6,000 changes across the board.

Samsung has officially launched its highly anticipated Galaxy S25 series. Here is a quick overview of the new flagship smartphones: the Galaxy S25, S25+, and S25 Ultra.

Anthropic's Claude AI is set to receive significant updates that could reshape user interactions with the chatbot. The company has revealed its plans to introduce a two-way voice mode.

Apple is set to launch iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3 and macOS Sequoia 15.3, and it will enable Apple Intelligence by default. Users who don't want to access the AI features will need to turn them off manually from the settings post-installation.

Microsoft is implementing a significant change to its account authentication system starting February 2025. Under the new system, users stay signed in across sessions unless they sign out explicitly.

To better understand the change, it is necessary to look at how sign ins are handled currently by Microsoft. When you sign in to a Microsoft account in a web browser, a "stay signed in" prompt is displayed after you provide username, password, and the optional two-factor authentication verification.

Samsung has officially confirmed that One UI 7, its latest software based on Android 15, is set to be launched in the first quarter of 2025.

Netflix is once again increasing the monthly prices of its subscription plans across multiple countries, including the US, Canada, Argentina, and Portugal. The price adjustments are already in effect for new subscribers, and will apply during the next billing cycle for existing customers.

The first update of 2025 for the open source encryption software VeraCrypt is now available. VeraCrypt 1.26.18 is a security update that is also introducing a number of fixes and other changes, including dropped support for 32-bit versions of Windows.

The details:

OpenAI has rolled out some new customization features for ChatGPT, enhancing the way users interact with the AI chatbot. Available in the browser version and on Windows desktop, these updates allow individuals to dictate how ChatGPT responds, making interactions feel more personal and tailored.