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EU member states and the European Parliament failed to agree on changes that would have softened the bloc’s AI Act and pushed back its toughest enforcement deadlines.

The talks ran for about 12 hours on Tuesday and ended without an agreement, Reuters reported, citing a Cypriot official who said it had not been possible to reach a deal with Parliament. Cyprus holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council, which negotiates on behalf of member states. According to the report, the talks broke down over the insistence by some member states and lawmakers that industries already covered by sectoral safety rules be left out of the AI legislation.

Tuesday’s session was the last political trilogue on the Digital Omnibus on AI scheduled before formal adoption, according to the European Parliament’s legislative tracker. Talks will resume in May, and if no deal is reached before August 2, the AI Act’s high-risk obligations will apply that day as originally drafted.

The European Parliament’s co-rapporteurs on the file, Arba Kokalari and Michael McNamara, were scheduled to brief journalists in Strasbourg on Wednesday on the negotiations to update EU rules, but the briefing was cancelled at the last moment.

Neither of the rapporteurs’ offices immediately responded to a request for comment. The Cypriot presidency press service also did not respond by the deadline.

Why were the deadlines to be pushed back

The Digital Omnibus on AI, which the trilogue was meant to finalise, was proposed by the European Commission on November 19 last year. The Commission framed it as part of a wider effort to simplify the EU’s digital rulebook for businesses, in response to the Draghi report on EU competitiveness.

Both the Council and the Parliament had agreed before trilogue that the deadlines should be pushed back. The Council, in its March 13 negotiating mandate, proposed new dates of “2 December 2027 for stand-alone high-risk AI systems, and 2 August 2028 for high-risk AI systems embedded in products.” Parliament voted to adopt the same dates on Mar. 26 by 569 votes to 45, with 23 abstentions.

The deadlines were pushed back because the technical standards that companies need to demonstrate compliance with are not ready. Communications from CEN-CENELEC’s Joint Technical Committee 21, which is drafting the standards, suggest the full set may not be available before December 2026, according to a client note from law firm Morrison Foerster.

What Council and Parliament could not agree on was an exemption Parliament wanted for AI used in products that already fall under EU safety rules, such as machinery, toys, and medical devices, the report added.

The exemption “faced limited enthusiasm in the Council, with different compromise proposals being discussed,” the Center for Democracy and Technology Europe said in its April bulletin.

Consumer, medical, and academic groups have opposed the exemption. Forty such organisations warned in an open letter earlier this month that the proposals “still risk reopening core elements of this framework, crucially weakening the AI Act.”

For affected industries, the case for the exemption is the cumulative compliance burden, said Neil Shah, vice president for research and partner at Counterpoint Research. “In already highly regulated industries such as medical, an additional AI regulation further increases compliance and headaches for the enterprises,” he said. “Complying with both physical and digital safety is important, but there has to be a way to reduce the compliance burden and be answerable to a single regulatory authority.”

What happens next

CIOs should treat August 2 as a hard deadline regardless of what happens in May, Shah said. “I believe CIOs are in a tough spot right now. They should be prepared, irrespective of the regulatory limbo, and treat this summer as a hard deadline. If it gets delayed, then it’s a bonus and if not, then it would be a regulatory risk.”

If lawmakers fail to land a deal before August 2, the high-risk obligations apply as drafted, regardless of whether harmonised standards or national enforcement authorities are ready. Patchy readiness across member states does not reduce the risk for businesses, said Enza Iannopollo, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester.

“It’s obvious that if the authorities responsible for enforcing the rules are not in place, there won’t be enforcement, despite the deadlines,” she said. “But Member States can accelerate that process and put those authorities in place rather quickly. Some countries have already named them. The risk is that businesses lose track of developments across each Member State and find themselves exposed to regulatory scrutiny and fines.”

Other parts of the AI Act will keep moving on their original schedule. The prohibitions on unacceptable-risk AI have applied since February 2025. The general-purpose AI rules came into force in August 2025. The transparency obligations under Article 50, including disclosure for chatbot interactions and labelling of deepfakes, are set to apply from August 2.

For CIOs, Iannopollo said, the underlying compliance work continues regardless of trilogue politics. “Waiting is not an option. CIOs must start building the foundations of AI governance and compliance,” she said. “If they are not inventorying their AI use cases, assessing risks in light (also) of the EU AI Act’s risk categorisation, and defining risk management measures, they risk not only fines. They risk reputational damage and the inability to effectively scale their AI initiatives.”

The Cypriot presidency runs until June 30, after which Ireland takes over.

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Every security team has a version of the same story. The quarter ends with hundreds of vulnerabilities closed. The dashboards are bursting with green. Then someone in a leadership meeting asks: "So, are we actually safer now?" Crickets. The room goes quiet because an honest answer requires context – which is something that patch counts and CVSS scores were never designed to provide. Exposure

Every security team has a version of the same story. The quarter ends with hundreds of vulnerabilities closed. The dashboards are bursting with green. Then someone in a leadership meeting asks: "So, are we actually safer now?" Crickets. The room goes quiet because an honest answer requires context – which is something that patch counts and CVSS scores were never designed to provide. Exposure The Hacker Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

It has been a bad six weeks for security firm Checkmarx. Over the past 40 days, it has been the victim of at least one supply-chain attack that delivered malware to customers on two separate occasions. Now it has been hit by a ransomware attack from prolific fame-seeking hackers.

The streak of misfortunes started on March 19 with the supply-chain attack of Trivy, a widely used vulnerability scanner. The attackers behind the breach first breached the Trivy GitHub account and then used their access to push malware to Trivy users, one of which was Checkmarx. The pushed malware scoured infected machines for repository tokens, SSH keys, and other credentials.

Both a target and delivery mechanism

Four days later, Checkmarx’s GitHub account was compromised and began pushing malware to the security firm’s users. The company contained and remediated the breach and replaced the malware with the legitimate apps. Or so Checkmarx thought.

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Sometimes, the hardest part about getting stuff done is simply remembering what you have to do — and when.

And ironically, lots of the tools that exist to help us juggle our endless array of incoming tasks only seem to make it even more overwhelming. Truly, it doesn’t take much for the very act of managing your tasks — or maybe even just figuring out the best way to do it — to become a chore in and of itself.

Like many perpetually perplexed plebeians, I’ve exerted far too much energy on the impossible-seeming task of finding a system for tracking tasks that (a) actually works — and (b) doesn’t feel like a burden of its own. I’ve gone through more tasks and reminders systems than any sane person should ever encounter in a lifetime.

And lemme tell ya: At long last, I’ve encountered one that’s the perfect blend of simplicity and power.

It’s a brand new, off-the-beaten-path Android app you probably haven’t heard of but that absolutely should be on your radar. It’s both easier and more effective to use than most of the big-name tasks apps out there right now — and it almost, dare I say, even makes managing your to-dos enjoyable instead of exhausting.

Lemme show ya how it works.

[Keep the knowledge coming with my free Android Intelligence newsletter — three new things to try every Friday and my Android Notification Power-Pack as a special welcome bonus!] 

A new gold standard for Android reminders

My fellow memory-challenged marsupial, allow me to introduce you to the amusingly named Ruff Reminders.

Ruff Reminders is an Android-first creation that’s only been in the Play Store for a matter of hours now —  though I’ve had the opportunity to use it during its development for the past couple of months, as it’s progressed from a, well, rough framework into a polished and well-rounded place for storing all of your tasks both personal and professional and ensuring you never forget anything.

If the Ruff name sounds familiar, by the way, you might be thinking of the similarly themed Ruff Writing app — which puts a simple scrolling scratchpad right on your home screen for on-the-fly thought storing. I’ve featured it as one of my must-have Android widgets for some time now.

Ruff Reminders comes from the same source — an indie Android app developer named Bardi Golriz — and it exists as a perfect companion to its sibling’s scratchpad concept.

So let’s get into it: When you first open up Ruff Reminders, you’re greeted with a simple screen showing you the current day and a prompt to add any new reminders you need into the mix. The idea is that your focus belongs on the here and now — and starting with what you need to do today is the best way to actually get your tasks accomplished.

Ruff Reminders always starts you with a view of your tasks for the current day.

JR Raphael, Foundry

Creating a new task is as easy as tapping the “quick entry” prompt toward the top of the screen and typing. You can also use the plus icon in the lower-right corner of the screen for a more elaborate and detail-oriented task creation mechanism — and that’s where some of Ruff Reminders’ most impressive powers come into play.

To wit: For any task you create, you can schedule yourself a reminder for…

• A specific date and time
• A dynamic date or time — as in every Monday, every weekend, the first day of each month, and so on
• And (drumroll, please…) a specific location — if, say, you want to be reminded about something when you get to the office, when you get home, or maybe even when you walk into a particular store or business

You can set all sorts of different reminders, including ones based on your physical location.

JR Raphael, Foundry

That last one in particular is a true treat to see. Like many Android-appreciating animals, I’ve been irked by Google’s ongoing retirement of location-based reminders all across the platform — first within the old Google Assistant system and then more recently within Google Keep as well. Ruff Reminders handily fills that void while offering a whole lot of other enticing extras that Assistant and Keep never provided.

For instance: For any location-based reminder, Ruff Reminders gives you the option to have a task pop up when you reach whatever location you specify either within a certain specific timeframe or anytime — and to have that reminder exist only once or as a recurring thing, every time you come or go from the location in question.

On that latter point, you can also set the reminder to trigger when you arrive at your chosen location or when you leave it — and you can choose exactly how wide of a radius the app uses to identify the spot — both of which add a whole other layer of flexibility and potential usefulness into the feature.

Ruff Reminders’ location reminders are especially versatile and powerful.

JR Raphael, Foundry

And all of that is still just the start.

Remembering — and beyond

Once you have tasks created, Ruff Reminders really does work to make sure you remember ’em. In addition to setting all of your own preferred reminder patterns for each new task you create, you can tell the app to always nudge you about still-pending tasks for the present day at specific times as well as to keep “chasing” you with more prominent alarms — even multiple alarms, if you want — for items you haven’t finished.

All of those options exist within the dog-shaped Ruff icon in the lower-left corner of the screen:

width="1024" height="919" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px">Ruff’s “nudges” and “chases” add in even more flexibility and reliability with making sure you never forget anything important.

JR Raphael, Foundry

Once you’ve started a task, one tap on its line tells Ruff Reminders that it’s in progress and marks it accordingly. Another tap starts a full-screen timer (for any length you choose) to help you actually focus on the task. And pressing and holding the task marks it as finished.

You can also double-tap to reset an item’s status, if such a need ever arises.

Marking a task as in progress (left) exposes the option to begin a full-screen focus timer (right), if you want.

JR Raphael, Foundry

If something does still manage to slip by without getting completed, it’ll move down to the app’s command bar, at the bottom of the screen — where it shows up inside a red box with the number of unfinished past tasks front and center.

The Ruff Reminders command bar shows you how many missed tasks are still active and pending.

JR Raphael, Foundry

You can always tap that box to revisit and reschedule any missed tasks — or you can find any past task via the app’s swipe-up-from-the-bottom search system. But even more helpful are the ongoing reminders the app will keep bringing front and center whenever you tell it to keep chasing you about any particular item.

Tapping the double up arrows on a missed task moves it right back into your current “today” view.

JR Raphael, Foundry

What else? Let’s see — for any items you set as “ongoing,” Ruff will create a persistent notification so you can easily see what’s lingering on your list. And as you’d expect for any serious Android productivity app, Ruff Reminders has a widget that lets you look at all your tasks for the current day and add new tasks right then and there, on your home screen, without ever having to open anything up.

Between Ruff Reminders’ persistent notification of ongoing tasks and its home screen widget showing today’s tasks, you’ve got no shortage of ways to keep important stuff front and center.

JR Raphael, Foundry

For the true productivity-obsessed power-user nerds among us, Ruff Reminders also has a whole host of step-saving gestures built into its interface. Like all of the app’s more advanced options, you absolutely don’t have to mess with ’em if you don’t want to — but if you’re the type of person who likes learning shortcuts and flying around your phone with taps and swipes, you’ll be delighted by all the possibilities this unlocks. 

The more you use it, the more thoughtful and useful little touches you keep discovering — again, if and only if you want to explore those types of options.

Gestures galore await for the shortcut adorers among us.

JR Raphael, Foundry

What’s most interesting to me about Ruff Reminders is the space it fills between the everything-style, intensive-need to-do apps out there — things like Todoist or even all-purpose productivity tools like Notion, which are great for the right type of purpose and person but can be overwhelming overkill for more casual task tracking — and the super-simple, at times too-limited apps like Google Keep, which are fine for basic info-dumping but lacking in more powerful task management and reminder magic.

Ruff Reminders manages to be both simple and effective — an often overlooked middle-ground for those of us who want to track tasks and remember stuff in a way that goes beyond the most barebones basic approach but that doesn’t require an entire intricate platform to do it.

Oh, and as far as privacy goes, Ruff Reminder’s policy on that front is also refreshingly simple: It doesn’t collect or process any personally identifiable information. Period.

The app doesn’t have ads, either. Instead, it allows you to use its most fundamental setup for free and offers a paid subscription for its full set of features — three bucks a month or $20 per year, at the moment, with the latter price set to bump up to $30 after a while. (That pricing does also vary by country, so the rates will be slightly lower in certain parts of the world.)

For now, all you’ve gotta do is try it out and see if it works as well for you as it has been for me.

And if you need a helping hand to remind you, I know just the app to get the job done.

Increase your Android intelligence quotient with my free Android Intelligence newsletter — three new things to try every Friday and my free Android Notification Power-Pack today.

cPanel has released security updates to address a security issue impacting various authentication paths that could allow an attacker to obtain access to the control panel software. The problem affects all currently supported versions of cPanel and WebHost Manager (WHM), according to an alert published by WebPros on Tuesday. It does not have an official identifier. The issue has been addressed in

cPanel has released security updates to address a security issue impacting various authentication paths that could allow an attacker to obtain access to the control panel software. The problem affects all currently supported versions of cPanel and WebHost Manager (WHM), according to an alert published by WebPros on Tuesday. It does not have an official identifier. The issue has been addressed in Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday added two security flaws impacting ConnectWise ScreenConnect and Microsoft Windows to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerabilities are listed below - CVE-2024-1708 (CVSS score: 8.4) - A path traversal vulnerability in  ConnectWise ScreenConnect

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday added two security flaws impacting ConnectWise ScreenConnect and Microsoft Windows to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerabilities are listed below - CVE-2024-1708 (CVSS score: 8.4) - A path traversal vulnerability in  ConnectWise ScreenConnect Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]