TL;DR: H&R Block Tax Software Deluxe + State 2024 for Windows/Mac helps you file your taxes and maximize deductions, and it’s just $39.99 on PC/Mac.

There’s plenty to be excited about when building a business. Filing your taxes is more of a chore. If you want to make the process less stressful and max out your deductions, H&R Block Deluxe can help.

This powerful tax software lets you file both federal and state taxes online with ease. It also comes with free audit support and a massive library of 13,000 tax articles. Through February 11, you can get it for just $39.99 over at TechRepublic Academy.

April might feel a long way off, but April 15 will come around sooner than you think. That’s the last day to file your taxes unless you fancy a big bill. According to the IRS, the process requires 13 hours of work in total — the best part of two whole working days.

H&R Block Deluxe allows you to spend your time on something more productive. Available on PC and Mac, the software shows you how to claim 350 credits and deductions through step-by-step tutorials. That means fewer hours spent reading PDF documents written in legalese.

You also have that huge library of articles for reference, along with FAQs and tips from expert accountants. If you need to pause while preparing your filings, you can easily save your work and start where you left off. Once you have run the numbers, H&R Block Deluxe gives you five federal e-files and unlimited federal prep.

Previously used TurboTax? No problem. You can import all your data to H&R Block Deluxe with a couple of clicks.

It’s easy to see how the software has earned glowing reviews. Earning 5 out of 5 stars on BestBuy and 4.5 on Amazon’s Choice, it shows it’s one of the best tax filing software on the market right now.

Order today to get this H&R Block Tax Software Deluxe + State 2024 for Windows/Mac for just $39.99, saving $20 on the regular price.

Prices and availability are subject to change.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 is already shaping up to be a beast of a GPU, given the specs unveiled at CES 2025, but if a new report is correct, it could have been even more of a monster.

A well-regarded rumor miller, HXL, shared a post on the Chinese hardware forum ChipHell that claims to show the PCB for an early prototype RTX 5090, along with some rather eye-watering specs well beyond those for the production model RTX 5090 due out next week.

It was an opportunity too good for Meta to ignore: On January 19, TikTok, one of its biggest social media rivals, was set to go dark across the United States when a new national security law went into effect. In the days and weeks before the ban, as millions of Americans were scrambling to find a suitable alternative to TikTok, Meta found ways to promote Instagram and Facebook as the answer. The tech giant made a flurry of design tweaks, rolled out new features, and ran advertisements that all positioned its platforms—and especially its video product, Reels—as direct competitors to TikTok.

Instagram has scaled back its in-app shopping initiatives in recent years, but on Friday, Meta showed off a new feature that appears to be directly ripped from TikTok Shop, TikTok’s widely successful ecommerce platform. In a promotional video, two shopping creators working for Meta explained how influencers can now “more prominently display” products they are marketing in Reels. Instead of putting an Amazon or Walmart link in the comments, they can add a banner directing viewers to click on the item at the bottom of their videos—just like how it works on TikTok Shop.

Some of Meta’s other efforts were just as pointed. Right before TikTok stopped working for roughly 14 hours on Saturday, some people reported that among the last things they saw on the platform were sponsored posts for Instagram. “Unsurprisingly, as TikTok goes down tonight, Meta is flooding my FYP with ads for Instagram,” one person said in a Bluesky post, referring to TikTok’s AI-powered For You Page feed. “In my last hour of TikTok I saw ads for instagram,” another person said on Threads.

TikTok’s Ad Library, a transparency tool that allows anyone to search what paid campaigns are running on the platform, shows that Meta ran dozens of sponsored videos about Instagram and Reels in January that were collectively viewed by millions of users. But the tool includes data from only a select number of countries—mostly in Europe—and doesn’t cover what ads TikTok users may have seen in the United States. Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

On Facebook, a number of people reported seeing a different promotion appear on their news feeds last week, encouraging them to link their TikTok accounts to their Facebook pages. “Build your social presence across apps by showing your TikTok profile link and follower count on your Facebook Page,” one version of the message read.

Given the timing, “this feels a bit passive aggressive,” one user wrote on X along with a screenshot of the banner. “Facebook is trolling users by suggesting we add our TikTok accounts to our Facebook pages,” joked another person.

The prompt appears to be connected to a feature Meta launched last month that allows users to display their YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram handles and follower counts on Facebook. However, the banner that people reported seeing in recent days mentioned only TikTok by name. The feature makes it easier for creators’ followers on other platforms to find and follow them on Facebook.

A plan to build a system of data centers for artificial intelligence has been revealed in a White House press conference, with Masayoshi Son, Sam Altman, and Larry Ellison joining Donald Trump to announce The Stargate Project. Their companies, Softbank, OpenAI, and Oracle (respectively), along with MGX are listed as “initial equity funders” for $500 billion in investments over the next four years, “building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States.”

According to a statement from OpenAI, “Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, and OpenAI” are the initial tech partners, with a buildout “currently underway” starting in Texas as other sites across the country are evaluated. It also says that “Oracle, NVIDIA, and OpenAI will closely collaborate to build and operate this computing system.”

Separately, Microsoft announced an update to its partnership with OpenAI, saying that the key elements of their deal remain in place through 2030, covering “our access to OpenAI’s IP, our revenue sharing arrangements and our exclusivity on OpenAI’s APIs all continuing forward.”

In a press conference announcing the project, which has been rumored since early last year, Son and Altman spoke directly to Trump, insisting that the project only happened because of his election victory.

With data centers expected to consume as much as 12% of electricity in the U.S. by 2028, it’s no surprise that tech companies are looking for power no matter the source, whether it be nuclear, renewables, or something else entirely. But solar produces a very different type of electric current from a nuclear plant, and integrating various power sources can be challenging.

“We’ve got about 90 gigawatts [of data centers] globally in 2023, and that’s going to increase to over 185 gigawatts by 2028, so it’s only just around the corner,” Gary Lawrence, CEO of Amperesand, told TechCrunch.

Today’s equipment, the transformers that convert power from one format to another, are up to the task, but Amperesand is betting that its technology can do it better and more efficiently.

At its core, Amperesand’s technology replaces the iron cores that define old transformers with silicon carbide. Existing transformers follow the same basic design that has worked well for over a century, but they have their shortcomings. For one, they aren’t good at regulating surges and dips in voltage or frequency. Plus, they have to be tailored to the specific format of electricity they’re looking to transform.

Solid-state transformers made with silicon carbide promise to change that. “The solid-state transformer platform is multi-port by design, it’s modular,” said Brian Dow, Amperesand’s new chief product officer. 

“We can make different AC phases, AC to AC, AC to DC. You can natively integrate DC sources like photovoltaic [solar] and batteries. You can integrate with turbines, small modular reactors. And you can basically seamlessly transition between them, so if the grid has an issue, you can back up but also you can come back online.” 

Amperesand is in the process of raising a Series A round after it landed a $12.5 million seed round last year, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. “We’ve just kicked off a Series A, and it’s moving really quickly,” said Phil Inagaki, managing partner at Temasek’s Xora Innovations. The company is targeting EV charging and grid applications in addition to data centers, and the solid-state nature of the technology makes it easier to control with software. It demonstrated a 6 megawatt transformer last year.

Xora incubated Amperesand, and Inagaki led the company through its initial formation. Recently, with some funding and a firm strategy in place, he handed the reins to a new leadership team, including Lawrence, Dow, and Tommy Joyner, the company’s new chief technology officer. 

The Singapore-based startup is also in the process of opening an office here in the U.S. to be closer to the massive market and to tap local talent. Dow and Joyner, for example, both did stints at Tesla and Generac.

“The U.S. is still where there’s amazing talent that we can capture,” Inagaki said. “We have some in Singapore, but we won’t be able to scale that quickly. So definitely, that talent angle was a big factor.”

We all know that Microsoft makes some of the best digital tools for business. But signing up for multiple subscriptions is not super appealing when you’re trying to stick to a strict budget.

The solution? Grab the All-in-One Microsoft Office Pro 2021 and Windows 11 Pro Bundle. This deal includes lifetime licenses for both products, and you can get it today for only $54.97 via TechRepublic Academy.

A few years ago, Microsoft tried to get everyone to sign up for Office 365. This cloud-based service is only available as a subscription. This is great for reducing startup costs, but it can be expensive in the long run.

In contrast, Microsoft Office Pro 2021 for Windows is available on a lifetime license with a one-time purchase. That means lifetime access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Teams, Publisher and Access — including future updates. That means you can craft documents, analyze data, create amazing presentations and much more.

With this bundle, you also get Windows 11 Pro. This version of the desktop OS comes with a raft of useful business features, particularly regarding security and device management. These include BitLocker device encryption, better remote desktop options and group policy settings.

Put together, Microsoft Office Pro 2021 and Windows 11 Pro make quite an upgrade for any professional workflow. The former received a review score of 4.5 out of 5 stars from PCMag, and the latter has 4.4 stars on Amazon.

Get The All-in-One Microsoft Office Pro 2021 for Windows: Lifetime License + Windows 11 Pro bundle for just $54.97 (reg. $418) through Feb. 2, 2025.

Prices and availability are subject to change.

• Microsoft is testing AI-powered search for Windows 11 on Copilot+ PCs.
• The new feature lets users find local files using casual language.
• Microsoft is also testing AI-powered ‘Click to Do’ rewriting tools.

Microsoft is testing an AI-powered search feature for Windows 11 that promises to end the days of organizing and naming your files well to find them later. Currently only available to testers with Copilot+ PCs, this new search tool uses semantic indexing to locate files with a conversational twist.

So, instead of wracking your brain for precise filenames, you can now type casual queries like, “Where’s that presentation I made last week?” With any luck, the AI will find it.

Alexandr Wang, the CEO of Scale AI, has taken out a full-page ad in The Washington Post asking the Trump administration to invest more in AI.

Wang, who attended Trump’s inauguration on Monday like many other tech CEOs, posted a copy of the ad on X, which reads “Dear President Trump: America must win the AI War.”

In the full letter published online, Wang explains that the US should take five broad steps to win what he considers an “AI war” against China. 

Scale, whose core business is data labeling and processing for AI projects at large organizations, was valued at $13.8 billion last year.

Wang wants the U.S. government to emulate tech giants by spending more on data and compute. He also recommends the U.S. review its own regulations to ensure there’s plenty of AI-related jobs in the future.

Wang further calls for making federal agencies “AI-ready” by 2027, launching an “aggressive” plan for cheap electricity that can be consumed by AI-centric data centers, and offered ideas on how to implement some AI safety measures.

Scale could benefit from at least some of these recommendations, like a surge in U.S. government spending on data. Scale already counts the U.S. government as a customer and is reportedly part of plans for a U.S. defense startup consortium.

More friendly regulations and encouraging AI-related jobs could help Scale as well, as it relies heavily on contract workers, a few of whom have recently filed lawsuits alleging they are misclassified.

Wang, however, has framed the recommendations as part of an effort to keep the U.S. ahead of China in AI. “We are in a new kind of technological arms race,” his letter states. “The Chinese government is investing in AI at an unprecedented pace.”

Chinese models like DeepSeek have been getting attention for their strong performance on certain industry benchmarks. Wang’s letter says China is now catching up to the U.S. after being at least a year behind, comments echoed by other AI leaders. 

But Wang’s framing of US-China AI competition as a “war” has raised concern from some. 

“This is a horrible framing – we are not at war. We are all in this together and if we make AI development into a war we are likely to all die,” posted Emmett Shear, the ex-Twitch CEO who was briefly OpenAI’s CEO in 2023.

How the Trump administration responds remains to be seen. So far, President Trump’s main action on AI has been to revoke his predecessor’s Executive Order on AI, which created guidance for companies to help correct flaws and biases in their models. 

Security researchers at French firm Sekoia detected a new phishing-as-a-service kit targeting Microsoft 365 accounts in December 2024, the company announced on Jan. 16.

The kit, called Sneaky 2FA, was distributed through Telegram by the threat actor service Sneaky Log. It is associated with about 100 domains and has been active since at least October 2024.

Sneaky 2FA is an adversary-in-the-middle attack, meaning it intercepts information sent between two devices: in this case, a device with Microsoft 365 and a phishing server. Sneaky 2FA falls under the class of business email compromise attacks.

“The cybercriminal ecosystem associated with AiTM phishing and Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks is continuously evolving, with threat actors opportunistically migrating from one PhaaS platform to another, supposedly based on the quality of the phishing service and the competitive price,” Sekoia analysts Quentin Bourgue and Grégoire Clermont wrote in the firm’s analysis of the attack.

How does the Sneaky 2FA phishing-as-a-service kit work?

Sneaky Log sells access to the phishing kit through a chatbot on Telegram. Once the customer pays, Sneaky Log provides access to the Sneaky 2FA source code. Sneaky Log uses compromised WordPress websites and other domains to host the pages that trigger the phishing kit.

The scam involves showing a fake Microsoft authentication page to the potential victim. Sneaky 2FA then shows a Cloudflare Turnstile page with a “Verify you are human” prompt box.

If the victim provides their account information, their email and password will go to the phishing server. Sneaky Log’s server detects the available 2FA method(s) for the Microsoft 365 account and prompts the user to follow them.

The user will be redirected to a real Office365 URL, but the phishing server can now access the user’s account through the Microsoft 365 API.

If the visitor to the phishing site is a bot, cloud provider, proxy, VPN, originated from a data center, or uses an IP address “associated with known abuse,” the page redirects to a Microsoft-related Wikipedia entry. Security research team TRAC Labs detected a similar technique in December 2024 in a phishing scheme they named WikiKit.

Sneaky Log’s kit shares some source code with another phishing kit found by risk platform company Group-1B in September 2023, Sekoia noted. That kit was associated with a threat actor called W3LL.

Sneaky Log sells Sneaky 2FA for $200 monthly, paid in cryptocurrency. Sekoia said this is slightly cheaper than kits Sneaky Log’s fellow criminal competitors offer.

SEE: Multifactor authentication and spam filters can reduce phishing, but employees who understand social engineering techniques are the first line of defense.

How to detect and mitigate Sneaky 2FA

The activities associated with Sneaky 2FA can be detected in a user’s Microsoft 365 audit log, said Sekoia.

In particular, security researchers looking into a phishing attempt might see different hardcoded User-Agent strings for the HTTP requests in each step of the authentication flow. This would be unlikely if the user authentication steps were benign.

Sekoia published a Sigma detection rule that “looks for a Login:login event with a Safari on iOS User-Agent, and a Login:resume event with an Edge on Windows User-Agent, both having the same correlation ID, and happening within 10 minutes.”

Security professionals can remind employees to avoid interacting with suspicious emails, including those that sound urgent or frightening. Sekoia discovered Sneaky 2FA within a malicious email attachment titled “Final Lien Waiver.pdf,” containing a QR code. The URL embedded in the QR code led to a compromised page.

Other recent phishing attempts target Microsoft

Microsoft’s ubiquity makes it a rich hunting ground for threat actors, whether they run attacks directly or sell phishing-as-a-service tools.

In 2023, Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence team disclosed a phishing kit targeting services like Office or Outlook. Later in the same year, Proofpoint pulled the mask off ExilProxy, a phishing kit that could bypass two-factor authentication.

In October 2024, Check Point warned users of Microsoft products against sophisticated mimics trying to steal account information.