When Google rolled out Gemini side panels for Gmail and its other Workspace apps, it revealed that its generative AI chatbot will also be able to offer contextual smart replies for its email service in the future. Now, the company has officially released that feature. Smart replies have existed in Gmail since 2017, giving you a quick, albeit impersonal, way to respond to messages, even if you're in a hurry or on the go. These machine-generated responses are pretty limited, though, and they're often just one liners to tell the recipient that you understand what they're saying or that you agree with whatever they're suggesting. 

The new Gemini-generated smart replies take the full content of the email thread into consideration. While you may still have to edit them a bit if you want them to be as close to something you'd write as possible, they are more detailed and more personable. When you get the feature, you'll see several response options at the bottom of your screen when you reply through the Gmail app. Just hover over each of them to get a detailed preview before choosing one that you think makes for the best response. 

You'll get access to the feature if you have a Gemini Business, Enterprise, Education or Education Premium add-on, or if you have a Google One AI Premium subscription. Google says it could take up to 15 days before you see Gemini's smart replies in your app — just make sure you've ticked on "Smart features and personalization" in your Gmail app's Settings page. 

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has slapped Meta with a $101.5 million (€91 million) fine after wrapping up an investigation into a security breach in 2019, wherein the company mistakenly stored users' passwords in plain text. Meta's original announcement only talked about how it found some user passwords stored in plain text on its servers in January that year. But a month later, it updated its announcement to reveal that millions of Instagram passwords were also stored in easily readable format. 

While Meta didn't say how many accounts were affected, a senior employee told Krebs on Security back then that the incident involved up to 600 million passwords. Some of the passwords had been stored in easily readable format in the company's servers since 2012. They were also reportedly searchable by over 20,000 Facebook employees, though the DPC has clarified in its decision that they were at least not made available to external parties. 

The DPC found that Meta violated several GDPR rules related to the breach. It determined that the company failed to "notify the DPC of a personal data breach concerning storage of user passwords in plaintext" without undue delay and failed to "document personal data breaches concerning the storage of user passwords in plaintext." It also said that Meta violated the GDPR by not using appropriate technical measures to ensure the security of users' passwords against unauthorized processing. 

"It is widely accepted that user passwords should not be stored in plaintext, considering the risks of abuse that arise from persons accessing such data. It must be borne in mind, that the passwords the subject of consideration in this case, are particularly sensitive, as they would enable access to users’ social media accounts," DPC's Deputy Commissioner, Graham Doyle, said in a statement. 

The DPC has also given the company a reprimand in addition to the penalty. We may know more about what that means for Meta exactly when the commission publishes its full final decision and other related information in the future.

Intel says it has determined four scenarios that could lead to voltage stability issues in its Core 13th and 14th-gen processors, and it has released another new update to address the issue. Its customers have been having issues with those processors since 2022, but it was only in July this year that the company figured out that their instability problems were caused by elevated operating voltage. The company explained back then that microcode algorithms have been sending incorrect voltage requests to its processors. Microcodes, or machine codes, are sets of hardware-level instructions. Intel promised in the same announcement to release microcode patches to address the "root cause of exposure to elevated voltages."

In its new post on its community page, Intel enumerated the four scenarios that could cause voltage instability, starting with the motherboard's power delivery settings exceeding its power guidance. Another scenario is that a microcode algorithm had been allowing its processors to operate at higher performance states even at high temperatures. The company already released a microcode patch for this back in June. The third scenario involves another microcode algorithm requesting high voltages at a frequency and duration which can trigger the issue. Intel had also released a patch for this in August. 

The latest microcode patch it has released, codenamed 0x12B, addresses the fourth scenario. Apparently, the processors could make elevated core voltage requests during light activity or while the computer is idle. Intel has distributed this patch to motherboard manufacturers, since it has to be loaded as a BIOS update. The company is already working with its partners, but it could still take several weeks for the manufacturers to roll out the fix to its products. 

The voltage stability issues plaguing Intel's Core 13th and 14th-gen processors have been causing computers to crash and fail completely. And based on previous reports, installing the patches Intel has released will not fix PCs that have already started showing symptoms of the problem. Shortly after announcing that it had determined why its processors were failing, Intel extended their warranties by two years so that customers can get theirs replaced. That was very much welcome, seeing as even PCs that work well at first could start showing issues and give out in the end.