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Gmail AI Inbox is expanding to paid Google Workspace accounts. Learn what IT admins can control, how rollout works, and what users should verify.

The post Gmail AI Inbox Reaches Workspace: What IT Admins Can Control appeared first on TechRepublic.

• Mayor Zohran Mamdani has urged New Yorkers to push back against AI
• He says there has been a 'complete abdication of federal law' when it comes to regulating the technology
• Mamdani has banned AI use in some schools in New York and has banned AI from being used to generate images on property listings

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has urged city residents to push back against the doom and gloom feelings around AI, telling them that “Nothing has to be.”

Speaking at The People’s AI Assembly, hosted by the AI Now Institute in Webster Hall, Manhattan, Mamdani noted there has been a “reckless adoption of technology without any kind of a reckoning with the limitations of that technology.”

“There’s a creep that comes with this, and there’s an intent to overwhelm that leaves people feeling as if there is simply no option,” Mamdani said.

“Reckless adoption of technology”

Federal regulations on AI are few and far between, and are failing to keep pace with the technology, prompting widespread worry that AI will replace jobs and harm education for both New Yorkers and people around the world.

Mamdani’s comment centers around how AI technology is being relentlessly pushed into products, services, education, and elsewhere with people having very little say in how it is used.

Schools were a particular sticking point for the conversation on AI. Mamdani recently introduced a ban on AI use in elementary and middle schools after the technology began creeping its way into classrooms. Actress and activist Ilana Glazer, interviewing Mamdani, said, “It just makes me nervous. It feels so non-consensual, as though…this has to be in schools. It wasn’t two years ago. Why does it have to be in schools?”

AI is also having an impact on schools in other ways. Speaking on the reckless adoption of AI, Mamdani referenced the US military’s use of an AI targeting tool that was involved in a strike on a school in Iran earlier this year that killed over 150 people including at least 123 children. A subsequent Pentagon investigation found that overreliance on AI tools was a factor in the deadly strike.

President Trump has pushed forward with an AI at any cost rhetoric framed as an arms race against China, with the President arguing that any attempts to regulate AI could cost the US its lead. “There is this desire to speak about [AI] as if it is infallible, as if it cannot be questioned, as if the only people who can regulate it are the ones who are currently developing it,” Mamdani said.

“What it really is, is an attempt to escape any kind of accountability at any level, without also jeopardizing the potential valuation from an IPO.”

Anthropic is set to enter the public markets before the end of 2026, with OpenAI looking to make the same move in 2027. Both companies have been involved in hacking incidents where AI agents undergoing testing have escaped sandboxes and breached other companies. These incidents have been labelled as ‘rogue’ behavior, despite evidence from investigations suggesting the AI agents were behaving exactly as intended.

The use of the word ‘rogue’ has also been questioned by experts, with Tenable Field CTO Bernard Montel saying the use of the word “muddies the public policy debate by distracting regulators from enforcing strict legal liability for flawed software deployments.”

Despite these events, little movement has been made to introduce regulations, which Mamdani labelled as a “complete abdication of federal law.”

“As we are looking at what comes after this federal administration, there has to be a very different kind of framework in how we think about AI, talk about AI, the accountability we’re willing to bring forward when it comes to that,” he said.

ViceForge Gamer Pro finds wins, eliminations, and clutch plays in your footage, then exports polished clips.

The post Turn Raw Gameplay Into Shareable Clips With This $50 AI Editor appeared first on TechRepublic.

The White House AI task force has begun a 120-day review of cybersecurity, biosecurity and oversight, with potential implications for businesses and developers.

The post White House Begins 120-Day AI Safety Review Amid Growing Security Concerns appeared first on TechRepublic.

• A new location-sharing upgrade for Google Messages has been spotted
• You'll be able to add different map layers, including live traffic
• It's not clear how long it will be before the feature is enabled for everyone

While Google has added plenty of new features and refinements to its Google Messages app in recent months and years, it still lags behind competitors such as WhatsApp when it comes to certain facets of the app — like sharing your location with other people.

This is something that's essential for social meet-ups, keeping tabs on the kids, planning journey times, and more besides, and hidden code spotted by Android Authority suggests that location sharing in Google Messages is about to get a significant upgrade.

This is code that's present but not yet enabled in the latest beta version of Google Messages for Android, but the Android Authority team was able to get it working. It adds several map types and a map details option, when you choose to share your location.

Currently, you can only show a map in the default Google Maps style when location sharing in Google Messages, but the new options would let you switch to satellite or terrain views instead, as well as overlaying live traffic information on top.

Benefits to users

Sharing your location in Google Messages (Image credit: Future)

The satellite view would make it easier to find someone in relation to a landmark or a feature or the landscape, for example, while the terrain view would give you a better idea of how simple (or otherwise) it might be to reach someone in a remote area.

Then there's the traffic view — say if the roads were blocked up around a person you're trying to pick up in a car, you could get them to walk and come and meet you, rather than getting stuck in a traffic jam unnecessarily.

Most of the time I do tend to default to WhatsApp when it comes to letting people know where I am, because everyone's got the app and it's straightforward to use. You can also set time limits on location sharing, something which Google Messages doesn't have.

If improvements like this continue, I might switch to Google Messages for locations instead — at least for those people on Android. There's still work to do, but the feature only arrived earlier this year, so it's encouraging to see upgrades on the way already.

• Garmin's Connect IQ store has seen an 'enormous influx' of new submissions
• These include apps and watch faces, and are causing a big backlog as developers struggle to get their submissions reviewed
• It's likely AI is to blame, as the sudden wave of submissions 'was never a problem in the past'

If you wear one of the best Garmin watches, you might have used the Garmin Connect IQ store to download an app like Spotify or Komoot, a new free or paid watch face (even a Pokémon-branded one), or a fun community-made complication like the Walk with Frodo app. However, downloading stuff from the Connect IQ store in future may involve sifting through thousands of low-quality, AI-generated submissions.

Watch face and app developers are complaining on Garmin's forums about delays in submission review: while the process typically takes 1-2 days, according to some devs, the process is now taking up to 13 days.

Garmin Connect IQ moderator/representative Brandon posted directly to one thread, stating: "This is not due to a bug — we have gotten an enormous influx of app submissions in the last month, with no signs of slowing down, and are working through approvals as quickly as we can.

"This was never a problem in the past, except perhaps delays because of a long holiday weekend (e.g. Christmas)."

(Image credit: Future)

The fact this glut of submissions is a sudden problem or new phenomenon points to one thing only — AI. Garmin Connect IQ has likely been flooded with vibe-coded or AI-generated products designed to make a quick buck by flooding the digital marketplace.

One Garmin user said in response to Brandon: "You need to limit the upload frequency for each developer; those poorly made AI-generated watch faces will consume everything."

Another said: "I have observed this trend worsening significantly as well. The Connect IQ Store is increasingly flooded with low-effort, repetitive submissions that hurt discoverability, degrade user trust, and crowd out well-crafted apps."

While this is bad for developers (who get charged $100 annually to sell apps on the Connect IQ store) it's also bad for Garmin users. We'll now have to wade through a sea of AI slop watch faces in order to get to faces and apps created the old-fashioned way — with human-led, thought-out complications developed and designed by real Garmin users.

It's just one more example of digital merchants being reduced to dealing with an avalanche of AI slop submissions, just like other app stores, and almost every other breed of online storefronts for digital products. We reported as far back as 2023 that AI-generated e-books were flooding Kindle Unlimited, making it difficult for users to find new books, and the problem has only gotten worse with time. The same will likely happen to the Connect IQ store.

I've reached out to Garmin for comment on the situation, and will update this article if I get any response. In the meantime, if you're a Connect IQ user and you've noticed the change, let us know in the comments below.

• Microsoft unveils Guardian Agents to monitor, constrain, and manage risks posed by autonomous AI agents
• New controls dynamically adjust agent permissions, behavior, and access based on changing risk levels
• Company warns “agentic insiders” require continuous AI-driven oversight beyond traditional security controls

AI fans, your vocabulary is about to become two phrases richer: Agentic Insider, and Guardian Agent. These are the two phrases Microsoft used while announcing a swathe of new tools and features to help businesses secure their operations running AI agents.

A new Microsoft blog, published by Microsoft's Corporate VP for Identity and Network Access, Nadim Abdo, argues that agents, while not inherently malicious, can make mistakes or be manipulated and compromised.

Since they need to be granted relatively extensive permissions in order to be able to work properly, it creates the sort of risk that can prove disastrous if not properly handled.

Agentic Overwatch

Abdo also added that AI agents doing their master's bidding cannot be trusted with their own security.

"Satya Nadella, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft, recently described the trust architecture this new era requires: we must separate the supply of intelligence from the authority over it," Abdo writes.

"We should not ask a model to be its own security authority. The controls that determine what it can access, what actions it can take, and whether it should continue operating must sit outside the model, where the model cannot bypass or tamper with them."

So, oversight is the keyword here. But AI agents move at machine speed, something no human can match, and therefore humans are not properly equipped for the job. Instead, separate AI agents need to be introduced to keep their juniors in check. Earlier, Microsoft introduced Project Perception and the Microsoft cyber stack, to help organizations defend with agents.

Project Perception is an AI-powered cybersecurity system designed to coordinate specialized AI agents that analyze security data, identify vulnerabilities, and investigate different threats. The system uses three types of agents: red agents that probe for weaknesses, blue agents that investigate potential threats, and green agents that implement corrections and fixes.

Now, Microsoft says it is extending the project to secure “the agentic insider”. They’re calling it - Guardian Agent.

“Guardian Agents help security teams operate continuously, at machine speed and scale, while sensors, context, and actuators across the cyber stack help understand changing agent risk and continuously adapt protection in response,” Abdo explained. “Project Perception and Microsoft Agent 365 share signals, context, and a unified registry giving IT and security teams a consistent view of agents and risk, with the controls each needs.”

Drill sergeant

Abdo says Guardian Agents build on a security principle where non-deterministic intelligence needs to be surrounded with deterministic controls, independent evidence, and containment boundaries.

These controls are divided into seven aspects - identity, permissions, data, endpoints, network, cloud, and runtime - and these have four responsibilities: to know which agent exists, who owns them and why, and what they’re doing; to contain what each agents can access and do before it acts; to protect the data, tools, runtime, resources, and systems the agent uses; and to adapt protection continuously as behavior, context, and risk change.

In other words, the AI needs to be the drill sergeant for the drones, adapting to changes in real-time to make sure they’re doing good work and not going rogue.

Microsoft also said it is expanding discovery to 35 additional types of local agents, including Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, and GitHub Copilot. It also announced extending Microsoft Entra Agent ID with identity types for additional agent patterns, including both local and previously unknown agents discovered through security sensors.

With “Dynamic Permissions” and “Dynamic Agent Risk”, Microsoft wants to give businesses tighter control over what AI agents can access and do, while keeping tabs on their behavior and risk levels. Dynamic Permissions limit agents to the access they need for a specific task, while Dynamic Agent Risk checks for potential threats.

Dynamic Conditional Access can then respond to rising risks by restricting permissions, blocking certain operations, or asking for human approval. In more extreme scenarios, an agent can be stopped and isolated.

You don't need a bulky desktop tower to get a powerful Windows 11 Pro device. The Getorli GT106 mini PC is currently priced at $450 (was $500) at Amazon, and combines an eight-core AMD Ryzen 7 processor, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 1TB SSD in a compact design. For the price and specs, our managing editor has dubbed this "the best mini PC under $500."

• Best for: Home offices, multitasking, multi-monitor workstations, media centers, and anyone who wants a compact system for everyday computing and lighter gaming.

• What we like: Alongside the Ryzen 7 chip and fast DDR5 memory, the mini PC also has integrated AMD Radeon 780M graphics and can drive up to four 4K monitors at a time via HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4, and two USB4 connections.

Today's best mini PC deal

GT106 Mini PC: was $499.99 now $449.99
This compact desktop features an eight-core Ryzen 7 H255 processor, Radeon 780M graphics, 16GB DDR5 memory, 1TB PCIe SSD, dual USB4 ports, quad 4K display support, Wi-Fi 6, and Ethernet.View Deal

Why we recommend it

The Getorli GT106 is powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 H255 processor with eight cores and 16 threads, running at up to 4.9GHz. There's also 16GB of DDR5 RAM, which comes installed as a single module, leaving the second slot available for an upgrade. For storage there's a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, and a second M.2 slot, with support for up to 4TB capacity.

Alongside Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3, you get dual 2.5Gb Ethernet ports and two 40Gbps USB4 ports for connecting fast external storage and other peripherals.

It comes with Windows 11 Pro installed, and Getorli includes a VESA mounting bracket so you can tuck the device behind a compatible monitor.

For more of our favorites, we've tested the best mini PCs you can buy.

Price context & historical value

The Getorli GT106 is $50 below its usual $499.99 price. That's a 10% discount, bringing the mini PC below the $450 mark. I've seen it retail for as low as $404.99 in the past, however. But so long as it flies easily under the $500 mark, it's a great buy.

Should you buy it?

✅ Buy the Getorli GT106 if...

You want a small Windows 11 Pro mini PC with a Ryzen 7 processor, 16GB DDR5, and 1TB SSD. It's a useful option if you need several monitors or want to connect fast external drives via USB4.

❌ Skip the Getorli GT106 if...

You need a more powerful device. It ships with a single 16GB DDR5 module, which means it initially operates in single-channel memory mode, which can reduce integrated graphics performance.

• Shop all mini PCs and Amazon

• Rockstar Games has been working on Grand Theft Auto 6 for 11 years, as the artists needed to plan out the map first
• The game's roads are much narrower and denser than GTA 5's, which created "ripple effects," according to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier
• Schreier says head of development Aaron Garbut told him, "All these things sort of come [back] to bite you later"

Rockstar Games has reportedly been working on Grand Theft Auto 6 much longer than realized, since the studio needed to plan out the game's ambitious map first.

That's according to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, who shared more details about his visit to Rockstar North in a YouTube video after releasing his behind-the-scenes GTA 6 article.

While it's common knowledge that full-scale development of GTA 6 began around 2018 and was originally planned to be made alongside Red Dead Redemption 2, pre-production on the game actually began much earlier.

"Something that I learned while talking to those folks [the developers at Rockstar North] is that there are a few artists at Rockstar who have actually been working on GTA 6 for more than 11 years since 2015, if not earlier," Schreier said. "2015 is when Rockstar started kind of planning out GTA 6 in the sense that it was conversations before like before that."

Schreier explained that the game's massive map, which is twice as big as GTA 5's world and more densely populated and interactive, was a priority for the studio and the first thing it planned.

"2015 is when they started going to Miami, actually starting working on the map of the game, which is always the first thing that Rockstar does on these big open-world games as they start planning out the map first," Schreier said.

He added that gradually over the next couple of years, top leadership then mobilized everyone to work on Red Dead Redemption 2, as the game needed a lot of help due to its ambitious systems. However, a few artists continued work on GTA 6's map.

Aaron Garbut, art director, current head of development and co-studio head at Rockstar North, also told him that "the roads are significantly narrower in GTA 6 than they were in GTA 5," which fans may have noticed in the trailers.

This created a more realistic depiction of a fictional Los Angeles, and less like a racing game with wider spaces to zip through like GTA 5. However, Rockstar's goal of making GTA 6's map have narrower roads and denser traffic from the beginning presented some technical challenges, or what Schreier called "ripple effects."

Garbut told Schreier, "All these things sort of come [back] to bite you later," because narrow, denser roads meant the team had to implement more surrounding buildings, and artists have worked on the concept for 11 years.

GTA 6 launches in under one month, on November 19, for PS5, Xbox Series X, and Series S. Rockstar recently released the cinematic GTA 6 launch trailer, which offers a deeper look into the game's story. Elsewhere, a new report claims the PC version could launch in early 2027.

Sharp packs 24 subjects into five-minute lessons with quizzes, streaks, and XP so learning fits a busy day.

The post Swap Doomscrolling for 5-Minute Lessons With This $50 Learning App appeared first on TechRepublic.

The iPhone Duo has a 4,883mAh battery. See how it compares with Samsung, Google, Motorola, and other premium phones.

The post iPhone Duo Battery Revealed: How It Compares to Samsung, Google, and More appeared first on TechRepublic.

The Justice Department has charged 28 people in California with voting crimes as Election Day nears. And, TikTok staff raised child safety concerns with executives, who failed to act, court records show.

(Image credit: Imen Ben Youssef / Hans Lucas)

CNET is partnering with sister sites PCMag, Mashable, ZDNET and others on an all-new app with news, reviews and videos. Our trusted expertise is a free download away.

The updated agent also can tell you if it’s going to rain and maybe you shouldn’t book that outdoor table.

Research on past recessions suggests downturns can accelerate automation. That raises the specter of a double whammy for workers.

It’s the year of window cams, and Baseus has my favorite model yet. Here’s why renters and second-story homes should consider it.

The new Kindle Colorsoft brings updated hardware and optional page-turn accessories, while Kobo Libra Colour offers built-in buttons and stylus support for less.

The post Kindle Colorsoft vs Kobo Libra Colour: Which E-Reader Should You Buy? appeared first on TechRepublic.

Kindle Scribe combines ebook reading with handwritten notes, while reMarkable Paper Pure focuses on writing and document workflows. We compare features, costs, and usability.

The post Kindle Scribe vs reMarkable Paper Pure: Which Should You Buy? appeared first on TechRepublic.

• Enterprises are being forced into software upgrades that they can't really get out of, report finds
• 91% have upgraded hardware in the past three years just to maintain software
• Enterprise protection legislation and software support obligations could be the answer

Legacy tech has become something of a hot topic in recent years with AI, but while hardware and data foundations have been core to the discussion around artificial intelligence, a new Origina report has revealed that around one-third of enterprise IT budgets are being earmarked for software upgrades.

The report found that 28% of large enterprise IT budgets are being spent on vendor-driven changes that they would not have otherwise chosen in a trend the company's calling a 'software tax'.

But more than just consuming budgets, software changes are also impacting worker time and leading to potentially lost productivity as a result.

Software upgrades cost more than you might think

"That's not a one-off cost, it's a recurring drag on capacity, and every year it repeats is a year those people aren't working on the initiatives that actually differentiate the business," former Liberty Mutual CIO James McGlennon and Origina board member James McGlennon explained.

More than four in five (84%) report that senior engineering staff always or often spend time dealing with vendor-driven software changes, taking them away from more meaningful work that they're employed to do. A similar number (80%) also reported that leaving a major software vendor could lead to widespread disruption within their business, ultimately forcing them to stay with that software vendor and enforcing vendor lock-in – with exit costs and migration technicalities to blame.

More than three-quarters now agree their software vendor dictates the timing and terms of changes, not them (78%), and that they have very little negotiating power (76%).

In many instances, enterprise customers don't even feel that an upgrade was totally necessary. Nearly all (91%) had retired fully functional hardware within the past three years just to comply with software vendor support deadlines. While Origina doesn't specifically state it, Windows 10's end of support is likely a large factor in this statistic.

Looking ahead, most (91%) support legislation to provider greater protection for enterprise customers, and four in five (82%) support software support obligations similar to what the EU has introduced for hardware repairability.

• A vulnerability in NordVPN's Windows app allowed local attackers to stop unprotected system services.
• The flaw, officially tracked as CVE-2026-106030, does not affect NordVPN version 8.12.0.0 or later
• Experts label the bug "clumsy," but the actual impact on users is minimal, requiring a device to already be compromised by malware.

Nord Security has rolled out an important security update for its Windows application to address a vulnerability that could allow a hacker to stop unprotected Windows services.

The flaw allowed a local, low-privileged attacker to act as a trusted process. From there, they could potentially stop unprotected Windows services or change their startup types to manual, leading to a denial of service for those specific applications.

When a top-tier provider, frequently ranked as the best VPN on the market, flags a security patch of this nature, it naturally turns heads. However, cybersecurity experts stress that while the coding error shouldn't have happened, the real-world danger to users is incredibly low.

The issue, officially tracked as CVE-2026-106030, was responsibly reported to CERT Polska by IT Security Expert Marcin Ressel. NordVPN appears to have fixed the vulnerability in version 8.12.0.0, and users are simply advised to ensure their app is fully up to date.

How the vulnerability works

(Image credit: NordVPN)

To understand the bug, you have to look at how Windows applications talk to each other using a feature called "named pipes."

According to an intelligence brief published by Mallory, the vulnerability allowed an attacker to connect to a specific NordVPN named pipe and invoke methods to stop services or change their start types without proper authorization.

Mike Williams, Technical Editor at TechRadar, explains the core of the issue: "Named pipes are a common means for Windows processes to communicate with each other. One process might send a message to another asking it to carry out some task."

Because this communication channel is incredibly powerful, it is a frequent target for threat actors. "Because named pipes are so sensitive, hackers often try to abuse them, to run these tasks without permission," Williams notes. "That means it's important to secure them, and make sure that only messages from legitimate processes are accepted. Any good developer knows this: it's a fundamental aspect of using named pipes."

Unfortunately, the NordVPN Windows app, specifically versions earlier than 8.12, fell short of this standard. "NordVPN has failed to do that, which makes this a clumsy bug. It should never have happened," Williams adds.

Why the real-world impact is minimal

While the technical details of the flaw, which carries a CVSS v4 base severity score of 6.8, sound alarming, the practical implications for the average user are far less dramatic.

In a LinkedIn post, the researcher who discovered the flaw, Marcin Ressel, described it as "a local privilege escalation with limited impact" that he found while "playing around with NordVPN for Windows."

Crucially, this exploit can't shut down critical, system-protected security services. Built-in defenses like Windows Defender and processes guarded by Windows Tamper Protection are entirely immune to this specific attack.

"There's no impact on the VPN itself, and you would have to have malware running on your PC to even cause the issue"

Mike Williams, Technical Editor

"But the impact of the bug is very small," Williams clarifies. "All an attacker can do is change the status of non-critical Windows services. That is, it can't turn off Windows Defender, but maybe it could disable something related to media playback. But even if it did that, it's only flipped a Windows setting, and once you understood the cause, you could just flip it back."

Furthermore, this vulnerability cannot be triggered remotely over the internet. An attacker would already need to have a local foothold on your machine to exploit it. There has also been no active exploitation of this flaw reported in the wild.

"In other words, there's no impact on the VPN itself, and you would have to have malware running on your PC to even cause the issue," Williams concludes. "(And if there's malware running on your device then you've much bigger problems than this.)"

If you are running NordVPN on Windows, your best defense is simple: open the app and confirm you are running version 8.12.0.0 or later.