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• Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff claims Microsoft did "horrible things" to Slack before its acquisition
• Benioff accused Microsoft of running its own playbook
• The OpenAI partnership could be turning into a competition

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has criticized Microsoft's history with Slack, warning it may repeat its anticompetitive tactics used against the online collaboration platform in its partnership with OpenAI.

Benioff declared Microsoft had done "horrible things" to Slack before Salesforce acquired it in 2020, referring to a "playbook" of things it could reopen to the detriment of OpenAI.

Slack submitted a complaint against Microsoft for its bundling of Teams into the Microsoft 365 suite – which was undone in 2024 – but that clearly hasn't stopped Benioff from wanting to get the last word.

Salesforce's fight with Microsoft continues

Speaking to SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin in a recent video podcast, Benioff explained: "You can see the horrible things that Microsoft did to Slack before we bought it."

"That was pretty bad and they were running their playbook and did a lot of dark stuff," he added... "That playbook should get ripped up and thrown away."

Benioff also drew parallel to Microsoft's behavior during the 1990s browser wards with Netscape.

He described Microsoft as a "company that wants to own it all, control it all," accusing Nadella's company of snapping up startups and executing its own playbook.

Microsoft's billions of dollars in investment into OpenAI put it in a good place for a partnership to use its GPT models, but more recently, a change to the partnership saw reduced exclusivity rights for Microsoft, which has also allegedly been exploring using different models to power Microsoft 365 Copilot – an unconfirmed move at this stage.

"In the case of OpenAI, a partnership is gonna become a competition," Benioff said.

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Set eight for Disney Lorcana is called Reign of Jafar, and it has some amazing cards in it. We've got 3 new ones to show you.

I recently had the opportunity to review the flagship model in the Epson’s new ‘Premium Residential’ Q Series of projectors, the QL7000. I had plenty to say in my Epson QL7000 review, but the highlight was undoubtedly its unmatched brightness.

You see, projectors generally provide low brightness compared to the best TVs, and any ambient room light will lessen the dynamic range of pictures, blunting the impact of highlights and raising black levels so that shadows end up lacking detail.

For most owners of the best projectors, watching a movie, TV news and sports means dimming the lights or darkening the room completely.

Home theater enthusiasts go to great lengths to create ‘blackout’ conditions for viewing, painting rooms a dark gray and adding treatments to walls and windows to prevent any stray light from reducing the contrast of the projected image.

Pricier examples of the best 4K projectors such as the JVC DLA-NZ800 and Sony Bravia Projector 8 top out at a relatively modest 2,700 lumens brightness.

The Epson QL7000, in contrast, has a specified 10,000 lumens brightness, a level that you typically see in professional projectors used for large entertainment venues.

Yes, the QL7000 is the brightest projector I’ve ever tested, and by a significant margin, with its projected image easily viewed in daylight. So surely it's a home run, right?

The benefits – and limits – of brightness

The Epson QL7000 (Image credit: Future)

As I noted in my review, “Even when watching in a bright room with light streaming in from windows, the crisp, clear 4K image beamed by the QL7000 had a true window-on-reality quality.”

That’s not something I’ve ever come close to being able to say about any other projector I’ve tested, and the QL7000’s stunning brightness made watching the NBA basketball playoffs on the big screen an incredible treat.

Bright as it may be, the Epson QL7000's black levels and shadow detail came up short in my testing. Although the projector’s powerful brightness elevated its contrast ratio to 68,000:1 (with its laser light output set to 30%) – a great result – shadows lacked the inky quality you can get from top home theater projectors, and that ultimately made movie watching less satisfying than sports viewing.

I haven’t personally reviewed the JVC DLA-NZ800 projector mentioned above. But I have seen it, plus its even more expensive NZ900 big brother demonstrated at trade shows, and the deep, well-defined shadows both models deliver set a very high home theater projector bar.

In TechRadar’s JVC NZ800 review, this section struck me as particularly apt: “Moving on to HDR, the NZ800 proves to be a stellar performer, delivering all the specular highlights of the sun-bleached desert landscapes of Dune Part Two, pulling out every detail in shadows during the nighttime action of The Crow, and reproducing the rich and saturated colours of La La Land, helping to replicate the Technicolor musicals to which it pays homage.”

Of course, if you were to watch those same movies on the NZ800 in a bright room rather than the fully optimized, blacked-out conditions I experienced it in, the picture would quickly lose the powerful contrast that brought out detail in blacks, and made La La Land’s colorful costumes pop on the screen. And sports? Forget it.

Picking nits Image 1 of 2

JVC DLA-NZ800 (Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 2

Sony Bravia Projector 8 (Image credit: Future)

Brightness isn’t everything when it comes to picture quality – contrast and black detail are equally important.

The recent DCI (Digital Cinema Initiatives, a motion picture and theater industry trade group) HDR specification calls for theater projection systems to provide a peak brightness of 300 nits. That level is substantially less than what the Epson QL7000 is capable of (I measured 1,005 nits on a 10% white HDR pattern in Natural mode with 100% laser light output setting, and 1,340 nits in Dynamic mode).

If a movie theater projection system were to meet the DCI specification (many don’t), it would provide around the same peak brightness as top home theater projectors from Sony and JVC. So, even with a projector designed for home, you’re getting an equally bright, and in many cases brighter, image than what you get in a movie theater.

But brightness isn’t everything when it comes to picture quality – contrast and black detail are equally important.

In an optimized home theater setting, fastidiously controlling the environment allows for the light emanating from the projector to be the only source of light hitting the screen, which maximizes black levels and perceived contrast.

This gives home projectors another leg up on theater projection systems, where contrast is necessarily limited by the mandatory lighted exit signs located near the front of the room.

The Epson QL7000's super-bright picture makes it an impressive projector that's uniquely suited for daytime viewing of sports. However, for movie fans, contrast and shadow detail are arguably of greater value when it comes to getting the best overall picture quality.

And, given the right viewing conditions, even a projector with an average brightness level can get you pretty close to perfection.

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Microsoft says the new AI agents can find and change settings for users when given a natural language command.

In Syria's large Druze minority, a belief in reincarnation binds the community together.

(Image credit: Emily Garthwaite for NPR)

The only thing missing from Wordle's status as a cultural institution was a day devoted to it, and now we have that, too.

Welcome to Wordle Day, or May 6, to be precise. Why today? "Because Wordle uses five letters with six guesses to find a secret word, we thought May 6 would be the perfect date to celebrate the game that has sparked a joyful daily routine for so many people across the globe," said New York Times Wordle Editor Tracy Bennett.

Okay, that makes some self-serving sense, and who are we to argue with that logic when most of us are hooked on daily plays of the word game that asks us to figure out a five-letter word in six tries?

If you have any questions about Wordle's popularity or why it deserves a day, look at these stats. According to the NYT, there have been, to date, 5.3 billion Wordle game plays. A massive 2.8 million people use the same starter word every day.

Wordle' is certainly an institution here, where our daily Wordle today column provides some hints then walks you through how we solved it. I hope you don't read those posts before trying to solve the puzzle on your own, but you do you.

Wordle Golf Game score sheet (Image credit: The New York Times)

Wordle is also a competitive sport. In my house, my wife and I end each evening completing several puzzles, including Wordle, Connections, Strands, and Quordle (the only non-NYT game).

Wordle is invariably our first stop, and, yes, there is a competition to see who can solve it in the fewest tries. So, it should come as no surprise that to celebrate this totally made-up day, The New York Times introduced Wordle Golf.

This is not another word game (thank goodness, I can't take on any more). Instead, it's a reimaginging of the standard Wordle competition into a golf game format.

As with golf, there are 18 holes...or, er...puzzles. You can play against seven other players (or more if you, I guess, print out more Wordle Golf sheets).

Each game is scored similarly to a golf game, meaning you want the lowest score (more strokes in golf raise your score and are generally considered a bad thing).

The scoring system for Wordle Golf breaks down like this:

• 6 points for a guess on the sixth try
• 5 points for a "Bogey" or fifth attempt guess.
• A guess in four is "Par" and worth 4 points,
• Three is worth 3 points and considered a "Birdie"
• 2 guesses is worth 2 points and a rare "Eagle"
• 1 is the miracle of a "Hole in one" and worth 1.

In theory, you can spend most of May playing Wordle Golf, but it does mean that no one should skip a day.

It's a silly game, but probably less difficult and frustrating than 18 holes on a real golf course.

Who knows, if you're a real Wordle pro, this might be just the kind of challenge you've been waiting for. Let's just hope there's not another "CORER". That was the word, according to The New York Times, that broke 5.6 million streaks.

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• Nvidia’s DOCA Argus promises real-time protection for AI compute environments
• The system runs off-host to detect and respond without performance impact
• Cisco and Nvidia are working to secure scalable AI infrastructure deployments

Nvidia is extending its AI ambitions into cybersecurity with the launch of DOCA Argus, a new software framework aimed at protecting AI infrastructure in real time.

Part of Nvidia’s DOCA software platform, Argus runs on its BlueField networking hardware to detect and respond to threats as they happen, without relying on traditional host-based security tools.

“Cyber defenders need robust tools to effectively protect AI factories, which serve as the foundation for agentic reasoning,” said David Reber, chief security officer at Nvidia. “The DOCA Argus framework delivers real-time security insights to enable autonomous detection and response - equipping defenders with a data advantage through actionable intelligence.”

Built to work with existing enterprise security setups

Argus is designed to operate independently of the system it monitors, avoiding integration into the host OS.

This makes it invisible to attackers and avoids slowing down the system it protects. It works across containerized and multi-tenant environments, including deployments using Nvidia NIM microservices.

Nvidia says Argus uses memory forensics to detect threats up to 1,000 times faster than existing agentless solutions. Because it doesn’t run on the host, it won’t impact performance.

The system is built to work with existing enterprise security setups like SIEM, SOAR, and XDR platforms.

Cisco is working with Nvidia to create a Secure AI Factory using this architecture.

“Now is the time for enterprises to be driving forward with AI, but the key to unlocking innovative use cases and enabling broad adoption is safety and security,” said Jeetu Patel, executive vice president and chief product officer at Cisco.

DOCA Argus is part of Nvidia’s broader cybersecurity AI platform, which includes BlueField hardware and the Morpheus AI framework. The goal is to improve visibility and threat response across AI infrastructure.

Argus is trained using Nvidia’s internal security data, with the aim of reducing false alerts and focusing only on real threats. This, the company says, will help security teams avoid alert fatigue and act faster

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The memo weakens President Trump's argument for invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants.

(Image credit: Salvadoran government handout)

After a thrilling first encounter in Spain, these two giants of European football reconvene at San Siro.

As more than a billion Catholics around the world await the election of a new pope, all eyes will be on the Sistine Chapel, where 133 cardinals will begin the secretive process known as a conclave.

(Image credit: Dimitar Dilkoff)

The World Food Programme, a U.N. agency and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, is facing cuts in its budget that experts are describing as "unprecedented."

(Image credit: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images)

A class action suit alleges that Apple undercut subscriptions and in-app purchases by refusing to comply with a court injunction.

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Google says Gemini 2.5 Pro is particularly good at coding web apps, as it vies with rivals for leaderboard bragging rights.

• Around 600 threat actors are using Darcula, experts warn
• They have managed to steal more than 800,000 credit card details in less than a year
• Mobile devices are prime targets for phishing nowadays

Darcula, an infamous Phishing-as-a-Service (PhaaS) kit, has helped hundreds of its users steal almost a million credit cards in roughly half a year’s time, cybersecurity researchers have said.

Analysts from NRK, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Le Monde, and Norwegian security firm Mnemonic have been drilling deep into Darcula, which in just seven months between 2023 and 2024 served some 600 operators.

The hackers were able to generate 13 million clicks on malicious links sent via text messages to targets worldwide - and as a result, were able to steal 884,000 credit cards.

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It uses zero-knowledge encryption and offers features like two-factor authentication, dark web monitoring, secure file storage, and breach alerts to protect against cyber threats.

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Generative AI threats

Apparently, Darcula is focused on mobile platforms - Android and iOS, and uses 20,000 domains and can easily spoof well-known brands.

It stands out from other similar platforms by using RCS and iMessage instead of the usual SMS, making its attacks more effective.

To make matters worse, Darcula allows its users to auto-generate phishing kits for almost any conceivable brand, convert credit cards to virtual cards, and with the help of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), they can create phishing messages in almost any language and on almost any topic.

Darcula’s operators seem to be Chinese in origin, since most communication is done in closed Telegram groups and in Chinese language. The researchers also observed SIM farms and hardware setups which allow the operators to offer mass text messages and credit card processing through terminals.

A September 2024 report from security researchers Zimperium argued four in five (82%) of all phishing sites today target mobile devices, since they are generally weaker and more often unmanaged compared to desktop and laptop computers.

Defending against phishing, however, hasn't changed much. It still revolves around common sense, being skeptical of all incoming messages, especially those with a sense of urgency, or unexpected attachments.

Clicking on links in emails and SMS messages, particularly those hidden behind a placeholder or a URL shortener, is also risky.

Via BleepingComputer

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I've been lucky enough to travel a lot in 2025, and on every journey I have had one constant companion: my AR glasses.

These aren't the interactive AR specs Snap, Meta, and Google are promising – the likes of Meta Orion. No, these are AR glasses which connect to a compatible phone, laptop or handheld to virtually suspend your screen in space in front of you.

They transport you into a personal movie theater of sorts, with a giant virtual screen only you can see, and are perfect whether you’re flying away on vacation or catching a train for your morning commute.

Which should you buy? Well, here’s my personal recommendation…

Keeping it Xreal

My current glasses of choice are the Xreal One specs, which I combine with the Xreal Beam Pro, and a pair of noise-cancelling headphones.

This is what the screen looks like through the Xreal glasses (Image credit: Xreal)

You can read more in my dedicated Xreal One review, but long story short the glasses offer top-notch visuals while the Beam Pro is a handy Android-powered smartphone-like you can connect the glasses to.

The Beam Pro is the star of the show, thanks to its ability to access a plethora of popular streaming services that I can download content from ahead of time. Plus, it acts as a handy alternative to my smartphone, but one which I don't mind completely draining the charge from.

And when it does run low on juice it has a second USB-C port dedicated to recharging the device even while it's being used for XR experiences.

I also love how small these AR glasses are.

Even when I'm travelling light, with just a single carry-on, I can always find space for the slim glasses’ carry-case and Beam Pro – even if I have to rely on my trouser and jacket pockets as a last resort.

Lastly, these specs feel especially handy for flights, as they allow you to cut yourself off a little more from the aircraft.

The in-flight screen is fine, but can't compete (Image credit: Future / Hamish Hector)

You can still spot flight attendants as they walk past, thanks to the translucent outer lenses, but they make it a little easier to forget you’re flying compared to using the screen on the back of the seat in front of you.

Ideal for more nervous fliers.

Different realities

Of course VR headsets offer many of these benefits too.

For relaxation and entertainment they’re arguably even better, given the higher-resolution displays offered by many of the best VR headsets. However, the overall package of a VR headset is undeniably more inconvenient (as I discovered first-hand), thanks to their bulk and the fact that they’re more power hungry (which can add insult to injury if it not only takes up significant space in your bag, but also runs out of charge before you land).

That's why these entertainment-focused 3-degrees-of-freedom (3DoF) AR glasses are such a winner. They offer many of the same benefits and fewer disadvantages.

You don't need to pick up a pair of Xreal glasses either, if cost is a concern. The RayNeo Air 3S specs, which also feature on our best smart glasses list, are a superb and affordable option.

The RayNeo Air 3S glasses are a solid alternative (Image credit: Future)

So if you want an in-flight entertainment system that boasts a private home cinema-like experience, gives you more freedom over the shows and films you can relax with, is compact and easy to carry with you, and will help you forget you’re on an aircraft you need a pair of AR specs.

I'm never flying again without mine, and you won't want to either.

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Entries for our seventh annual contest for fourth grade podcasters, and middle and high school students are now due Sunday, May 25 at midnight E.T.

• Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky just demoed an early Core 2 Duo watch on his new podcast
• The watch runs Pebble OS, although it's very obviously a prototype and is currently missing key features
• It's on track to ship in July, but Migicovsky warned that US customers will be impacted by tariffs

Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky just unveiled his latest smartwatch, the Core 2 Duo, on the first episode of his new podcast.

At the moment it's still an in-development prototype, and Migicovsky showcased some of its functionality, as well as providing an update on its development, and sharing some disappointing news for US smartwatch fans regarding pricing.

You can see Migicovsky demonstrate the smartwatch prototype, currently being held together with tape at the back, in the video below.

Its low-power e-paper screen and use of buttons to move through menus is reminiscent of some of the best Garmin watches, like the solar Garmin Instinct 3 with a similar black-and-white, memory-in-pixel display reminiscent of old Game Boys.

The use of such a low-power screen reportedly allows the smartwatch to last much longer than its rivals, up to 30 days, which is impressive compared to even the best Apple Watch models' paltry 36 hours.

Watch the podcast here:

While features such as the real-time clock haven't yet been enabled, Pebble OS seems to work well, as Migicovsky uses the four-button system to navigate the device. He also shows off different community-made watch faces, many of them from Pebble's glory days.

"I have a watch face on right now which is just ridiculous, it's an octopus holding an ice cream, " he says. "Whenever I look down at my wrist, I just smile, that's something I really enjoy. I love having a device in my life that makes me feel happy."

Migicovsky also shows how Pebble OS works on-camera, guiding the viewer through how to access features like the smart alarm.

As well as software, he shows off or mentions hardware elements including the silicon strap, which seems very basic, and the charger, which is the same as the old Pebble chargers, except this version is a dongle adapter attached to a keychain, rather than a cable.

Pebble's tariff woes

(Image credit: Core Devices)

In the video, Migicovsky also goes into detail about shipping, stating that despite the watch's part-finished state, his company Core Devices is on track to ship in July.

However, there will be a squeeze for US customers, as the devices will be made (like most consumer tech goods) in China, meaning Donald Trump's tariffs will impact the final price. Fortunately, Migicovsky has a plan.

"For all non-US orders... we're going to ship directly from Asia, so your shipment won't be subject to the US tariffs.

"The US tariffs on China-made smartwatches are 27.5%. Our plan is for Core Devices to bulk-import all the shipments going to the US so we pay a tariff only on the cost to our factory. This means the additional cost for each shipment will be between $10-$25 more."

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Sauk County Sheriff's Office says Audrey Backeberg, now in her 80s, is living outside of Wisconsin. The detective who managed to track her down says she "had her reasons for leaving" in July 1962.

The strikes are the first on the de-facto capital along the Red Sea. About a quarter of a million refugees have fled to the state where Port Sudan resides since the civil war erupted two years ago.

(Image credit: ‎)