Eliana Willis

Lance Whitney/ZDNETMicrosoft is pushing its new Outlook app onto Windows 10 whether you want it or not.In a message sent to Microsoft 365 subscribers via the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, the company said that the new Outlook will be preinstalled on Windows 10 computers with the optional January 28, 2025, release and the February 11, 2025, security update.Once installed, the new Outlook app will replace the existing Mail and Calendar apps. After the installation, the new app will launch even if you click on the Start menu shortcuts for the older Mail and Calendar programs. Fortunately, the new Outlook will not replace the classic Outlook that comes with Microsoft 365 or Office 365 — at least not yet.Also: How to upgrade an ‘incompatible’ Windows 10 PC to Windows 11: Two ways”New Outlook exists as an installed app on the device,” Microsoft said in its message. “For instance, it can be found in the Apps section of the Start Menu. It does not replace existing (classic) Outlook or change any configurations / user defaults. Both (classic) Outlook and New Outlook for Windows can run side by side.”Though you cannot block the new Outlook from being force-installed on your Windows 10 system, you can remove it after the fact. Microsoft even provides a support page with the necessary steps for hiding or uninstalling the app if you do not want to use it individually or within your organization.The forced installation in Windows 10 is just the latest move in the gradual migration to the new Outlook. In 2022, Microsoft started testing the new version before officially rolling it out to commercial users in 2024. The new app is already preinstalled on new Windows 11 devices and versions of Windows 11 with the 23H2 update. More

Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images Following the disbanding and reinstating of OpenAI’s robotics department over the past years and reports of OpenAI building its own robot, a series of new job listings on the robotics team suggest the company is finally ready to leap into hardware.  Also: I tried an AI wristband that listens to you 24/7 – […] More

ZDNETOpen-source approaches continue to show promise in democratizing artificial intelligence (AI).NovaSky’s Sky-T1-32B-PreviewOn Friday, the NovaSky research team at UC Berkeley released a new reasoning model, Sky-T1-32B-Preview, that performs comparably to OpenAI’s o1-preview — only it’s open source and was built in just 19 hours for under $450 using eight Nvidia H100 GPUs.Also: The best open-source AI models: All your free-to-use options explainedThe team developed Sky-T1 by fine-tuning Alibaba’s Qwen2.5-32-Instruct and trained it on data generated with QwQ-32B-Preview, another open-source model comparable to o1-preview. Using synthetic training data can help lower costs.”We curate the data mixture to cover diverse domains that require reasoning, and a reject sampling procedure to improve the data quality. We then rewrite QwQ traces with GPT-4o-mini into a well-formatted version, inspired by Still-2, to improve data quality and ease parsing,” the team says of their data preparation process in the blog. More

ZDNETI’ve been around Linux long enough that the second I see an app or a desktop that looks even remotely like what I used in the early days, I get a warm, fuzzy sensation in my chest.OK, maybe that’s a slight bit of hyperbole, but at least it makes me smile.Don’t get me wrong, I much prefer modern-looking desktops (with all the eye candy, thank you very much), but my early years with Linux were something special, and I don’t mind revisiting them one bit.Also: 5 lightweight Linux distributions with very low system requirements4MLinux is a feature-oriented, lightweight Linux distribution that can make old computers feel new again. The 4 M’s stand for Maintenance, Multimedia, Miniserver, and Mystery. What does that mean? Simple: 4MLinux can serve as a rescue CD (Maintenance), has full support for tons of multimedia files (Multimedia), and can be used as a server for FSP, FTP, HTTP, NBD, NFS, NTP, rlogin, SSH, Telnet, and TFTP (Miniserver). As to that “Mystery” piece, there’s actually an entry in the desktop menu labeled as such, and it contains a number of fun games you can play.But is 4MLinux a viable option for you?Let me break it down.What is 4MLinux really like?Imagine taking an old Linux distribution and giving it just enough of a facelift that it can be easily considered by those who’ve used Linux but don’t like the idea of an über-modern desktop or need to revive an aging computer.Now, imagine that the distribution’s desktop is a combination of Pantheon and Enlightenment, thanks to Joe’s Window Manager. There is a twist with 4MLinux.Also: 10 Linux apps I always install first – and you should tooDo you know how most Linux distributions simplify the process of installing applications with a package manager and a GUI frontend? Well, 4MLinux takes a decidedly different approach by way of Extensions.If you open the desktop menu (which you can access by clicking anywhere on the desktop or clicking the icon at the top left of the display), you’ll see an entry labeled “Extensions.” Click on Extensions, and you’ll see a few sub-menus, such as Office, NetApps, and MediaApps. Click on any one of those entries, and you’ll see related apps listed. Let’s say you want to install LibreOffice. Click on that entry in Extensions > Office, and then, when prompted, type y. The installation will begin and end, taking roughly 1-2 minutes. More

<!–> ZDNET’s key takeaways A Shine Turbine kit, which includes that turbine, stand, guy lines and pegs costs $399, while the essentials kit, which adds a few more bits such as a wind speed meter, costs $488. The kit includes everything you need to turn wind into electrical energy, and the turbine features a 12,000 […] More

ZDNETHave you ever experienced a problem with your operating system — one that was self-inflicted? You might have misconfigured something, only to find that whatever you did caused a cascade failure of other services or apps.When that happens, you might not even remember what you did to cause the problem. Maybe it was a config file in /etc, which is often the case.Also: 10 Linux apps I always install first – and you should tooWhat if I told you there’s an app to restore your Linux distribution to a working state, and it’s easy to use?That app is called Timeshift. It creates restore points you can use to return your computer to a working state.Before I continue, it’s important to note that Timeshift is not a backup tool. Rather, it’s an application to help you recover from self-inflicted situations where you need to get your system back up and running.Let’s install Timeshift and see how it’s used.How to install TimeshiftWhat you’ll need: The only things you’ll need for this are a running instance of Linux and a user with sudo privileges. More

ZDNETIf you’re displaced by the devastating Los Angeles wildfires, Spectrum is offering free Wi-Fi to help you stay connected.Also: The best travel VPNsIn the midst of power outages and cell tower loss, it’s getting difficult for many people to contact loved ones or to do necessary things online. More than 100,000 people have been evacuated, nearly as many are on standby to evacuate, and more than a million people are without power.Free internet accessLast week, Spectrum opened 35,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in Los Angeles to the public, providing free internet access to anyone that needs it. The hotspots cover a large portion of the city, and you can find them in places like restaurants, parks, cafes, retail stores, city streets, and more. In most locations, you should even be able to access the internet in your vehicle outside.Also: How to use public Wi-Fi safelyThese networks are already free for Spectrum customers, but non-customers usually need to pay a small fee. Users who have taken advantage of the service report being online in seconds with good speeds. More

<!–> ZDNET’s key takeaways The Creative Aurvana Ace Mimi earbuds are available now for $129 on Creative’s official site. With rich, dynamic bass, well-blended mids, and crisp highs, these earbuds are a perfect match for any type of music you can feed them. The LE audio feature on these earbuds can cause brief disconnects, but […] More