Today's topics include the official release of Red Hat’s OpenStack Platform 10, Google’s release of eight formerly secret national security letters demanding hand the government user data, The introduction of a modernized Malwarebytes 3.0 anti-malware package, how Expedia's Skype bots will allow customers use intelligent agents to help book travel reservations.

Red Hat announced the official release of its OpenStack Platform 10 on Dec. 15, providing users with the option for up to five years of support. The new Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10 release is based on the upstream open-source OpenStack Newton milestone that debuted on Oct. 6.

The new support model is important for Red Hat's enterprise and service provider customers as it offers the promise of a longer term stable deployment of OpenStack than had previously been possible.

Radhesh Balakrishnan, general manager, OpenStack at Red Hat explained that for versions prior to Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10, customers will still be supported for up to three years, with no other changes.

Google released eight lightly-redacted National Security Letters this week, giving citizens a look at the formerly ultra-secret documents that the U.S. government uses to demand access to personal data accounts in terrorism and criminal investigations.

The eight letters requested information about specific email addresses or, in one case, the account information for two users. One letter requested information on the owners of 11 different Gmail accounts. Any information that could identify specific email accounts, telephone numbers or personal identities have been blacked out.

Google and other technology companies have fought to provide users with more information about the types of government requests that the companies have had to respond.

Their efforts have helped cast light on a federal power that has little oversight, Andrew Crocker, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told eWEEK.

There is a growing set of security industry people who are becoming more and more vocal about conventional antivirus software, saying that most of it is obsolete and ineffective.

Yet, Malwarebytes, which provides what it claims to be advanced malware prevention and remediation, recently released Malwarebytes 3.0. It is something the company calls a "next-generation replacement for antivirus ware.”

Malwarebytes' flagship product combines advanced heuristic threat detection with signature-less technologies to detect and stop a cyber-attack before damage occurs.

For Skype users, putting together a travel itinerary on Expedia may soon feel like chatting with a live travel agent. In a week studded with artificial intelligence (AI) announcements from Microsoft, the company gave a early peek at what the Skype Bot ecosystem will look like in 2017.

Skype Bots made their debut in late March during this year's Build developer conference as part of a push by the software giant to usher in an era of conversational intelligence.

Using the Microsoft Bot Framework and the company's AI-enabled cloud services slate, developers can deliver personalized service using bots. Instead of calling a customer support number or filling out web forms, users can converse with these intelligent agents to get their questions answered or issues resolved and in some cases, complete entire transactions.