IBM’s latest quarter was hurt by a sharp drop in mainframe sales, and management said the decline came from customers shifting budgets into other data center hardware instead of buying new Z systems now. The company said the AI boom is inflating prices for servers, storage, memory, and PCs, which pushed some planned mainframe purchases out of the quarter. IBM still argued this was a delay rather than a permanent loss of demand, saying it sees no evidence that customers are abandoning the platform.

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Google’s latest quarterly earnings report demonstrates a significant financial boost attributed to the company's heavy investment in artificial intelligence. Google Cloud revenue reached $24.8 billion, marking an 82 percent year-over-year increase that surpassed analyst expectations. This growth is primarily fueled by widespread enterprise adoption of AI infrastructure and specialized software solutions.

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A recent study from Google analyzing millions of interactions with its Gemini AI tools suggests that the technology is currently functioning as a workplace assistant rather than a replacement for human labor. Researchers observed that employees across diverse occupations utilize these tools for only a small fraction of their total tasks. This pattern of shallow adoption indicates that AI is primarily serving to enhance individual productivity rather than fully automating professional roles.

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A new bipartisan House bill, the AI Kill Switch Act, seeks to grant the Department of Homeland Security the authority to mandate the shutdown or throttling of dangerous artificial intelligence models. The proposed legislation targets major AI firms generating at least $500 million in annual revenue or utilizing over $100 million in computing resources. Companies failing to comply with these federal intervention orders could face significant financial penalties reaching up to $20 million per day.

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Meta has launched a new campaign presenting its AI strategy as optimistic, people-centered, and tied to its long-running mission of connecting users. Mark Zuckerberg says the company believes AI should help people share, connect, and reach their full potential, with the benefits of the technology distributed broadly.

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The Chaos ransomware group has deployed a new Rust-based remote access trojan, msaRAT, which disguises command-and-control traffic by routing it through legitimate web browsers. By launching Chrome or Microsoft Edge in headless mode with remote debugging enabled, the malware utilizes the Chrome DevTools Protocol to manage communications. This design ensures that all external network activity appears to originate from standard browser processes rather than malicious infrastructure.

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Mozilla has launched Firefox 153, which serves as the latest Extended Support Release (ESR) and introduces native support for Multi-Account Containers. This feature allows users to isolate credentials and browsing sessions into distinct categories, such as work and personal, directly within the browser. Additionally, the mobile versions of the browser received updates, including tab grouping for Android and a new AI-powered Quick Answers feature for iOS users in the United States.

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LG has agreed to disable McAfee trial advertisements within its "LG Monitor App Installer" following significant public backlash and intervention from Microsoft leadership. The software, which was silently installed on user systems via the Windows Update hardware-support mechanism, triggered persistent pop-ups promoting McAfee subscriptions upon startup. While LG maintained that the installation of the antivirus software itself required user consent, the companion app was deployed automatically without explicit user authorization.

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The RefluXFS vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-64600, is a serious race-condition flaw residing in the Linux kernel’s XFS filesystem copy-on-write path. Affecting kernel versions 4.11 and later, the bug allows an unprivileged local user to overwrite protected system files by exploiting a timing window during concurrent direct I/O operations. Because the manipulation occurs at the block layer, it effectively bypasses common security controls, including SELinux, kernel lockdown, and standard memory protections.

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Attackers have compromised numerous GitHub repositories to deploy malicious GitHub Actions workflows that function as a distributed attack platform. These automated workflows trigger GitHub-hosted runners to download Linux payloads from a centralized command-and-control server. The primary objective of this infrastructure is to scan the internet for cPanel and WHM installations vulnerable to the authentication-bypass flaw CVE-2026-41940.

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Poolside has introduced Laguna S 2.1, a 118-billion-parameter Mixture-of-Experts model designed specifically for agentic coding tasks. By activating only 8 billion parameters per token, the model achieves high efficiency while maintaining performance levels that rival significantly larger systems. It supports a 1-million-token context window and offers distinct inference modes for both standard and "thinking" processes.

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Microsoft plans to introduce a dedicated Copilot entry point within the Outlook classic interface starting in August 2026. This update aims to standardize the AI-assisted drafting experience across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, mirroring the button placement already present in Word, Excel, and the web versions of Outlook. By embedding this feature directly into the Home ribbon, the company intends to streamline user access to AI-powered email composition tools.

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A recent malvertising campaign exploited the Claude Artifacts feature to distribute the SectopRAT information-stealing Trojan to at least 29 organizations. Attackers purchased sponsored search engine advertisements that directed users to a spoofed download page hosted on the legitimate claude.ai domain. By leveraging this trusted platform, the attackers successfully bypassed typical user skepticism regarding software installation sources.

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Researchers recently identified a vulnerability dubbed "AgentForger" that allowed attackers to deploy malicious, autonomous AI agents within corporate ChatGPT workspaces. By embedding specific instructions into a seemingly benign link, an attacker could trick a user into creating an assistant that inherits the victim's permissions. Once active, this agent could operate across connected business applications like Slack, Outlook, and Google Drive without further user interaction.

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The Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK relies on a service principal to manage delegated permissions, which are granted during interactive sessions via the `Connect-MgGraph` cmdlet. Over time, administrators often accumulate excessive permissions, a phenomenon known as permissions creep, as new scopes are added without removing those that are no longer necessary. This accumulation eventually hits an internal limit, causing authentication failures that prevent the SDK from establishing a connection.

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Check Point has disclosed a critical zero-day vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-16232, affecting its SmartConsole GUI admin panel. This flaw allows unauthenticated remote attackers to obtain an application login token, granting them full administrative control over Security Management and Multi-Domain Security Management servers. By exploiting this, unauthorized actors can modify security policies and configurations on compromised systems.

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The "Get the latest updates as soon as they’re available" toggle in Windows 11 settings is designed to prioritize devices for early access to non-security patches and feature rollouts. While this setting helps users receive enhancements faster, it also causes the automatic installation of out-of-band (OOB) updates that may not be necessary for every system. Recent incidents, such as the emergency patch KB5121767 for Dell laptops, demonstrate how this feature can push specific fixes to devices that do not require them.

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Microsoft is currently resolving a service incident, tracked as EX1436407, which has caused Exchange Online mailboxes to be incorrectly quarantined since July 19. The issue stems from a recent infrastructure change that triggered excessive memory consumption during indexing, leading to an out-of-memory state. This disruption prevents users from sending or receiving emails and accessing calendars, often resulting in non-delivery reports for external senders.

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Microsoft Edge Beta has introduced a new "Actions" mode for Copilot, enabling users to perform browser-based tasks through natural language commands. This feature allows the AI to manage tab layouts by closing specific tabs, opening multiple websites simultaneously, and organizing related pages into labeled, color-coded groups. While the tool demonstrates advanced classification capabilities, it remains restricted from accessing internal browser pages such as settings or downloads.

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