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Oct 02, 2023
For longtime tech industry watchers, the US Department of Justice's antitrust suit against Google feels like déjà vu all over again. Many of the charges in the suit have almost eerie echoes to those levied against Microsoft in 1998.
Both claim the targets used their monopoly power illegally — in Google's case, to maintain its market dominance in search; in Microsoft's case, to use Windows to squash competitors. In both cases, the very core of both companies was being attacked.
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Oct 02, 2023
The FTC's latest antitrust lawsuit accuses Amazon of using a web of anticompetitive strategies to maintain a monopoly, cut potential rivals off at the knees and generally make the market less friendly to consumers, but the process of getting a result will be complicated.
The complaint asks the court for "structural relief," which could entail court-ordered restructuring of the company that would break parts of its business into separate entities. The suit is one of several of its kind in the news in recent weeks, taking its place alongside two different antitrust cases filed by the Department of Justice against Google, the first of which is currently being tried in federal district court in D.C.
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Sep 29, 2023
Heads-up, Apple-in-the-enterprise admins. One of the biggest annual events for Apple IT professionals, Jamf Nation User Conference, rolled around this week in Austin, TX.
Led by new CEO John Strosahl, the company offered up a range of announcements, improvements, and insights from third-party presenters, including Cisco CIO Fletcher Previn. Michael Covington, Jamf vice president of portfolio strategy, discussed the advance of the Mac into the enterprise space, and stressed how his company's solutions help provide the kind of digital business stability — even for remote enterprises — that businesses need today.
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Sep 29, 2023
Meta focused on bringing mixed reality to the masses at its Connect developer conference this week, rolling out its Meta Quest 3 headset with an emphasis on entertainment and gaming. But the company sees potential uses in the workplace, too. In particular, the Quest 3 headset's "pass-through" feature is designed to blend physical and digital environments.
"Meta Quest 3 will unlock new possibilities and let businesses reimagine the world at work with a combination of mixed reality capabilities, powerful specs, and enhanced ergonomics," Jamie Keane, Meta's director of product management, said during a presentation at the Meta Connect event Wednesday.
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Sep 29, 2023
Facebook parent Meta this week rolled out plans for various chatbots for US consumers that are embedded into specific applications, including WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram.
The new Meta AI bot, currently in beta, is powered by various iterations of Meta's Llama 2 large language model (LLM). The difference between Meta's LLM and OpenAI's GPT 4 — the LLM behind ChatGPT — appears to be customization for application-specific purposes.
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Sep 29, 2023
While France's competition watchdog did not confirm the identity of the entity being investigated, it said that the raids were conducted in the graphics cards sector.
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Sep 29, 2023
While France's competition watchdog did not confirm the identity of the entity being investigated, it said that the raids were conducted in the graphics cards sector.
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Sep 28, 2023
Two months after the US Federal Trade Commission stopped proceedings to block Microsoft's $69 billion dollar acquisition of gaming studio Activision Blizzard, the federal agency has revived its challenge.
In a filing issued Wednesday, the FTC set a new schedule for hearings to be held in front of an administrative law judge in what amounts to an in-house trial at the government agency. The renewed legal challenge comes after the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) reversed its own earlier decision to block the ruling, releasing a statement on September 22 that indicated that concessions made by Microsoft would be enough for the regulator to approve the deal.
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Sep 28, 2023
Days after EU industry chief Thierry Breton told Apple CEO Tim Cook in no uncertain terms that the company will be forced to open its ecosystem to competition, European browser company Vivaldi introduced its first browser for iOS. So, I spoke with Vivaldi CEO Jon von Tetzchner to discuss the context around the release.
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Sep 28, 2023
Wi-Fi 6 promised performance to match a wired network, and now we're beginning to see the first Wi-Fi 7 products hit the market with promises of performance on par with optical networks. That makes it not only an alternative for wired networks, but potentially a higher performing replacement — with solid improvements in security, latency, and bandwidth.
If you can get optical performance from a wireless network, doesn't it make more sense to deploy it when you have bandwidth constraints than pay for a fiber connection?
This kind of bandwidth could really change our desktop priorities.
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Sep 28, 2023
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the form of natural-language processing technology has taken the world by storm, with organizations large and small rushing to pilot it in a bid to find new efficiencies and automate tasks.
Tech giants Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are all offering cloud-based genAI technologies or baking them into their business apps for users, with global spending on AI by companies expected to reach $301 billion by 2026, according to IDC.
But genAI tools consume a lot of computational resources, primarily for training up the large language models (LLMs) that underpin the likes of OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard. As the use of genAI increases, so too does the strain on the hardware used to run those models, which are the information storehouses for natural language processing.
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Sep 28, 2023
Alphabet-owned Google is working on blocking user conversations with its new Bard generative AI assistant from being indexed on its Search platform or showing up as results.
"Bard allows people to share chats, if they choose. We also don't intend for these shared chats to be indexed by Google Search. We're working on blocking them from being indexed now," Google's Search Liaison account posted on Twitter, now X.
The internet search giant was responding to an SEO Consultant who pointed out on Twitter that user conversations with Bard were being indexed on Google Search.
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Sep 27, 2023
The latest operating system for Macs, macOS Sonoma, is available now. Most Mac experts seem to be focused on the introduction of widgets, better screensavers, and much improved support for games, but there are some really useful productivity-boosting tools for enterprise pros packed inside.
Here's some to get you started:
Command-Space gains new powers
The most powerful keyboard combination on the Mac gets even more invincible in Sonoma. The operating system has improved its support for quick actions from within Spotlight. To do so, it uses machine intelligence in the form of data detectors. This means that when you type phone numbers, email addresses, dates, or times into the search bar, you'll be offered quick actions, such as calling the number, sending an email, creating contacts or calendar events.
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Sep 27, 2023
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed a lawsuit against Amazon, alleging that the company has been engaging in a number of "interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategies to illegally maintain its monopoly power."
In the complaint, the FTC and 17 state attorneys general claim that Amazon's actions have prevented its rivals and sellers from lowering prices, leading to a decrease in quality for shoppers, sellers being overcharged, innovation being stifled, and Amazon's market competitors prevented from fairly competing against the company.
Amazon hasn't violated the law because of its size but rather because its exclusionary conduct prevents current competitors from growing and new ones from emerging, the FTC alleges. It claims Amazon's anticompetitive conduct has occurred in both its online shopping market that serves buyers, and its online marketplace that serves sellers.
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Sep 27, 2023
On the same day that the US Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon for using anticompetitive and unfair strategies to maintain monopoly power in the online retail sector, Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of services, spent hours a few blocks away at the E. Barrett Prettyman US District Court House as a reluctant prosecution witness in the antitrust trial of Google.
The US Justice Department (DOJ) has accused Google of monopolizing the search engine market through exclusive deals to become the default search engine for device manufacturers and software companies. The feds say that Google's nearly 90% share of the search engine market hands it an unfair competitive advantage that makes it impossible for rivals to compete.
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Sep 27, 2023
At a time when the US and China are embroiled in a chip war, the former has assured South Korean chipmakers, including Samsung and SK Hynix, that it is planning to extend a waiver that enables these firms to manufacture chips in China.
"We understand the concerns that companies have and we'll do everything that we can to make sure that companies are able to continue to conduct their business," US Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves was quoted saying by the Yonhap News Agency, during his two-day visit to Seoul to attend bilateral cooperation talks between the two nations.
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Sep 27, 2023
The funny thing about owning a Google Pixel phone is that you never know what interesting new treasures might be making their way into your world at any given moment.
Most mere mortals never notice, but Google's constantly sending out software updates to its Pixel products — not just new Android versions but also under-the-hood Pixel-specific feature rollouts along with platform-wide Android improvements provided through a variety of Play-Store-based system-level components.
It's one of Android's most interesting advantages over that other smartphone platform, even if Google doesn't do much in terms of making ordinary people aware of it.
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Sep 27, 2023
"It just works." That's the mantra Steve Jobs applied to the Mac every chance he got. But it's a sentence that could never be applied to Windows, a 38-year-old operating system long bedeviled by bugs, Blue Screens of Death, unexplained crashes and slowdowns, and illogical design at every turn.
Over the years, Microsoft has slowly improved it, made it sleeker, faster, and more reliable, and designed a more welcoming and simpler interface. Today, Windows 11 is a modern-looking operating system that's generally fast, reliable, and straightforward to use. Almost all the time, if you want to get it to do something, it will comply.
But it is still Windows. Doing some things like creating a new user account isn't straightforward. And if you want to dig deep and do more complex things, you could end up lost in the dark recesses of the primal Control Panel, or worse, trying to troubleshoot drivers in the dreaded Device Manager.
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Sep 26, 2023
A Windows launch isn't the end a process — it's really just the beginning. As with Windows 10, Microsoft continually works on improving Windows 11 by fixing bugs, releasing security patches, and occasionally adding new features.
In this story we summarize what you need to know about each update released to the public for the most recent version of Windows 11. For each build, we've included the date of its release and a link to Microsoft's announcement about it. The most recent updates appear first.
The easiest way to install updates is via Windows Update. Not sure how? See "How to handle Windows 10 and 11 updates" for full instructions. Note that Windows 11 version 22H2 is being released as a phased rollout and may not be available to you in Windows Update yet.
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Sep 26, 2023
Every business is a digital business, and it's widely known that to truly realize the efficiencies of digital transformation, traditional departmental siloes must be broken down. As above, so below, and IT admins aren't immune to change as different fiefdoms merge.
During last week's JNUC event, I caught up with Michael Covington, Jamf vice president of portfolio strategy, to discuss these transformations and the extent to which Apple benefits.
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Sep 26, 2023
Atlassian has announced a host of new capabilities across its Jira Software and Jira Work Management platform to help reduce silos between technical and non-technical teams.
Two years ago, Atlassian launched Jira Work Management, bringing Jira capabilities to all enterprise business teams and enabling non-technical departments like marketing, HR, finance, and design to easily connect their work with that of their technical counterparts.
"Software development teams don't just achieve a level of impact all by themselves," said Megan Cook, head of product for Jira Software.
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Sep 26, 2023
Thinking back to the era of Windows 3.0, 3.1, and Windows for Workgroups, I dimly recall that printer drivers could be especially troublesome. Happily, with Windows 95 through Windows 7, printer problems didn't register much on my radar. But in the wake of upgrading my network to Windows 10 a few years back, I noticed an uptick in printer problems. On the other hand, Windows 11 seems rock solid where printing comes into the picture.
If printing is a cause for concern with your Windows setup, you may be relieved to know that all problems I've encountered have been easy to diagnose and fix, providing you know what steps to take to figure out what's up. I hope this how-to will help readers zip through detection and diagnosis and proceed more quickly to the usual cures for printing ills.
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Sep 25, 2023
A job posting from Microsoft, for a qualified nuclear technology program manager, indicates that the company is planning to integrate small nuclear reactors into its power systems for data centers.
The software giant is already working with at least one third-party nuclear energy provider in an effort to reduce its carbon footprint. The ad, though, signals an effort to make nuclear energy an important part of its energy strategy.
The posting said that the new nuclear expert "will maintain a clear and adaptable roadmap for the technology's integration," and have "experience in the energy industry and a deep understanding of nuclear technologies and regulatory affairs."
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Sep 25, 2023
The UK's Competition and Market's Authority (CMA) has declared that Microsoft has addressed the concerns it had about the software giant's $68.7 billion acquisition of gaming studio Activision Blizzard, clearing the way for the deal to go ahead.
In April, the CMA blocked Microsoft from making the acquisition over concerns the deal could "alter the future of the fast-growing cloud gaming market, leading to reduced innovation and less choice for UK gamers over the years to come."
Although Microsoft had submitted a proposal to address some of its concerns before the CMA reached its decision in April, that proposal ultimately contained a number of significant shortcomings. These included a failure to sufficiently open up to providers who might wish to offer versions of games on PC operating systems other than Windows, and not taking into consideration different cloud gaming service business models.
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Sep 25, 2023
Forrester Research, in a recent pull-no-punches blog post, called out cybersecurity vendors for not merely telling IT executives things that are not true, but for being so clueless about enterprise IT that they actually believe their own bogus hype.
This raises a thorny issue. Even when vendors don't understand business tech needs, IT directors and C-suite leaders certainly should. So why does vendor spin work with an audience that knows better? The most likely answer: lying and exaggerating is so ludicrously common for so many vendors — especially the big tech companies — that it's impossible to ding any one vendor for lying.
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Sep 25, 2023
Amazon has agreed to invest up to $4 billion in AI firm Anthropic, giving the e-commerce and public cloud giant a minor ownership stake in the vendor.
Founded by former senior members of Microsoft-backed OpenAI in 2021, Anthropic is the company behind Claude, an AI assistant that the company decided to train on constitutional AI, in contrast to other models.
Amazon will initially be investing $1.25 billion in the company, with the option to increase that to a total of $4 billion in the future. In February, Amazon Web Services rival Google invested $300 million in the company.
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Sep 25, 2023
In February, travel and expense management company Navan (formerly TripActions) chose to go all-in on generative AI technology for a myriad of business and customer assistance uses.
The Palo Alto, CA company turned to ChatGPT from OpenAI and coding assistance tools from GitHub Copilot to write, test, and fix code; the decision has boosted Navan's operational efficiency and reduced overhead costs.
GenAI tools have also been used to build a conversational experience for the company's client virtual assistant, Ava. Ava, a travel and expense chatbot assistant, offers customers answers to questions and a conversational booking experience. It can also offer data to business travelers, such as company travel spend, volume, and granular carbon emissions details.
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Sep 22, 2023
Disclosure: Intel is a client of the author.
At Intel's Innovation conference this past week, the company highlighted the next generation of Windows PCs, clearly anticipating Microsoft's genAI Copilot tool, which can write documents for you, create presentations from comments, and automate much of what annoys everyone about Outlook. Intel offered up a number of interesting scenarios about this new class of hardware — due in December — that has the potential to transform work and entertainment.
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Sep 22, 2023
Disclosure: Intel is a client of the author.
At Intel's Innovation conference this past week, the company highlighted the next generation of Windows PCs, clearly anticipating Microsoft's genAI Copilot tool, which can write documents for you, create presentations from comments, and automate much of what annoys everyone about Outlook. Intel offered up a number of interesting scenarios about this new class of hardware — due in December — that has the potential to transform work and entertainment.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 22, 2023
The future of Windows AI. That's what we've been hearing, and now Microsoft has shown us exactly what that looks like. If the future of Windows is AI, that's because it's like any other Microsoft product — the future of every Microsoft product involves AI and a Copilot.
That's the vision. AI everywhere. But the AI is your copilot, both figuratively and literally. Microsoft's message is that there is one Copilot, and it will integrate into every Microsoft product — including Windows. But Copilot isn't where the AI features end.
Here's what I learned at Microsoft's big event in New York City on Thursday. (For full disclosure: Microsoft provided a Lyft to the event from my hotel, coffee, and a light lunch. The coffee was fine.)
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Sep 22, 2023
The future of Windows AI. That's what we've been hearing, and now Microsoft has shown us exactly what that looks like. If the future of Windows is AI, that's because it's like any other Microsoft product — the future of every Microsoft product involves AI and a Copilot.
That's the vision. AI everywhere. But the AI is your copilot, both figuratively and literally. Microsoft's message is that there is one Copilot, and it will integrate into every Microsoft product — including Windows. But Copilot isn't where the AI features end.
Here's what I learned at Microsoft's big event in New York City yesterday. (For full disclosure: Microsoft provided a Lyft to the event from my hotel, coffee, and a light lunch. The coffee was fine.)
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 22, 2023
If you're reading this column, odds are, you don't have a lot of iPhone envy.
Believe me, I'm right there with ya. But much as we may enjoy the (ahem) greener pastures here in the land o' Googley matters, every now and then, Apple does come up with a genuinely interesting idea for its iPhone devotees.
And amidst all the magical and revolutionary blathering at last week's iPhone 15 event, one such intriguing addition made its way to the surface. It's a new "Action button" that sits on the side of the iPhone 15 Pro, exclusively, and is able to summon a single specific command of the phone-owner's choosing.
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Sep 22, 2023
US copyright law has yet to catch up to the numerous challenges posed by the wildfire adoption of generative AI, and the first real movement on major legal questions is likely to come from upcoming trials.
One of those key questions is the copyright status of works generated by artificial intelligence — for example, whether a Midjourney image that the system generated in response to a user prompt is protected by copyright, and, if so, who owns that copyright.
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Sep 21, 2023
Microsoft's M365 Copilot will be made generally available to business customers beginning Nov. 1, the company announced Thursday.
Microsoft first unveiled plans to embed the generative AI assistant into its M365 collaboration and productivity apps — including Outlook, Teams, Excel, and PowerPoint — earlier this year. The M365 Copilot, built using gen AI models codeveloped with OpenAI, can automate tasks and create content, potentially saving users time and enhancing productivity.
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Sep 21, 2023
Workflow management software provider ServiceNow has embedded a chatbot for assisting customers with most of its products.
ServiceNow's new Now Assist tool is an expansion to its AI-powered Now Platform, and is available in its Vancouver software release for IT Service Management (ITSM), Customer Service Management (CSM), HR Service Delivery (HRSD), and Creator workflow application.
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Sep 21, 2023
The EU Chips Act has officially come into force today, putting in place a comprehensive set of measures to shore up the European Union's semiconductor supply chain resilience and reach its target to double its current global market share to 20% in 2030.
The act is made of three pillars, the first of which is a Chips for Europe Initiative, a program that aims to bridge the gap between research and innovation by promoting advanced semiconductor technologies by European businesses.
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Sep 21, 2023
Mac adoption in the enterprise isn't just about giving employees hardware options, according to Cisco CIO Fletcher Previn. It's a business imperative — and many companies agree.
Previn spoke at this week's Jamf Nation User Conference (JNUC), where he explained that migrating to Apple hardware boosts productivity, enhances security, and can trim ownership costs. And he has the evidence to back the claim up.
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Sep 21, 2023
If we're gonna have an honest discussion about email, we need to get a few tough truths out of the way first. Think of 'em as ground rules for the conversation we're about to embark on:
Email is atrocious. It's a soul-sucking hell-hole that steals hours of your day and never lets up.
Most modern email tools fail to create a fully effective framework for navigating the deluge of email we busy professionals find ourselves facing on a daily basis — a truly inspired system for taming the madness and keeping our inboxes organized (ideally while keeping our sanity at least somewhat intact).
Email is also unavoidable, and when handled properly, it can be an absolute asset for practically any business or professional purpose.
Now, if you don't agree with any of those points, let me save you some time: This article isn't for you.
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Sep 20, 2023
Four years after it started life as a white paper, the UK government's controversial Online Safety Bill has finally passed through Parliament and is set to become law in the coming weeks.
The bill aims to keep websites and different types of internet-based services free of illegal and harmful material while defending freedom of expression. It applies to search engines; internet services that host user-generated content, such as social media platforms; online forums; some online games; and sites that publish or display pornographic content.
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Sep 20, 2023
Sales of augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) headsets continue to decline sharply due to weak economic conditions and aging product lines, according to IDC. But upcoming device launches from vendors such as Meta and Apple could help drive a rebound later this year and into 2024, the analyst firm predicts.
Global shipments for AR/VR devices fell 46% year on year in the second quarter of 2023, according to IDC's latest Worldwide Quarterly Augmented and Virtual Reality Headset Tracker, with commercial shipments falling in line with the overall market (44.4%). This amounts to the fourth successive quarterly decline in shipments, and follows another steep drop-off in the first quarter (54.4% year on year, according to IDC figures from June).
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Sep 20, 2023
Imagine running fleets of iPhones that alert you when unexpected security-related incidents take place, or when otherwise legitimate service requests arrive from devices at an unexpected time or location. Imagine management and security software that not only identified these kinds of anomalies but gave you useful advice to help remediate the problem.
This, and more, is the kind of protection Jamf hopes to deliver using generative AI tools.
Generative IT for Apple admins
Jamf believes generative AI can be a big benefit to tech support and IT admin, and talked about its efforts at the end of an extensive Jamf Nation User Conference (JNUC) keynote. Akash Kamath, the company's senior vice president, engineering, explained that just as the Mac made computing personal, genAI makes AI personal.
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Sep 20, 2023
Google's Pixel Fold and Pixel Tablet may not look like siblings, but the two 2023 flagship Android offerings actually have a surprising amount in common.
And i's not just that they're the first Pixel devices in their respective categories of folding phones and tablets, either. Nope: When you use the two products side by side, you quickly realize that they share plenty of DNA within the evolved Android setup they showcase and the overall user experience they provide. And that extends all the way to their relatively unusual unlocking mechanisms.
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Sep 20, 2023
Manufacturing firms are already investing in a range of technologies that could serve as the building blocks for the industrial "metaverse," but the end of goal of fully interconnected, immersive environments is likely to take longer to realize.
The metaverse concept has been used in recent years primarily to describe the development of a 3D internet, referring to virtual environments used mostly — so far — for entertainment. The concept has gained traction in the industrial sector specifically, where it's used as an umbrella term for various existing technologies that can be combined to digitally replicate real-world objects and processes.
The idea is that accurate simulations of factory equipment, for example, would allow manufacturing and other industrial firms to optimize operations without disruption, improve collaboration for staff and external partners, and enhance frontline employee training. As with the consumer vision of a 3D internet, the industrial metaverse concept is a work in progress.
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Sep 19, 2023
Google today announced it is embedding its conversational,Bard chatbot into many of its most popular apps, allowing users to get human-like responses to questions, summarize Gmail messages, and search Google Docs and Youtube.
Bard is in heated competition with other top generative AI technologies, including OpenAI's ChatGPT and Microsoft's Bing conversational AI tool (which is also based on ChatGPT). Microsoft has added ChatGPT functionality to its suite of Microsoft 365 business productivity and collaboration apps through its own Copilot chatbot assistant.
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Sep 19, 2023
Google has once again sought to overturn a €2.4 billion ($2.6 billlion) fine imposed by the European Union in 2017 after it found the company had violated antitrust rules by using its dominant position in the search engine market to illegally promote its comparison shopping service.
Google originally appealed the fine the ruling in the General Court — the EU's lower court — in 2021, but the decision was upheld. The company has now again sought to challenge the fine, this time in Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), arguing that the EU had failed to demonstrate how its practices were anticompetitive.
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Sep 19, 2023
Work management software company Smartsheet unveiled its next-generation platform today, debuting features designed to provide users with new generative-AI powered capabilities at scale.
Work in the Smartsheet platform centers around "sheets" that contain information relating to a particular project or projects, within which users can include a variety of details such as a description, status, due dates, and which workers have been assigned to complete a task.
"Our goal is to make our platform not only powerful, but intuitive, beautiful, and delightful to use. And with this announcement, we're giving customers more and better ways to visualize their work in Smartsheet," said Ben Canning, senior vice president of products at Smartsheet, during a press conference. The company is taking a very practical approach to AI, he said.
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Sep 19, 2023
Now in its 14th year, the world's biggest event for IT admins who manage Apple hardware, the Jamf Nation User Conference kicks off today in Austin, Texas with Apple-related insights from Cisco, Google, Microsoft, and other big names in tech management and integration.
MacPaw, Okta, Mac Stadium, and many other important vendors in the space are also on tap at the hybrid show.
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Sep 19, 2023
Companies are increasingly using role reassignments as a strategy to sidestep expensive layoffs, according to some tech industry experts. But they see it as generally short-sighted and likely to do a company more harm than good.
As with last year's 'quiet quitting' trend, quiet cutting appears to be a concept originally coined in the media — in this case, by The New York Times. The practice involves reassigning workers to roles that don't align with their career goals to achieve workforce reduction by voluntary attrition — allowing companies to avoid paying costly severance packages or unemployment benefits.
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Sep 18, 2023
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has warned about the potential risks of artificial intelligence in its newly published review into AI foundation models.
Foundation models are AI systems that have been trained on massive, unlabeled data sets. They underpin large language models — like OpenAI's GPT-4 and Google's PaLM — for generative AI applications like ChatGPT, and can be used for a wide range of tasks, such as translating text and analyzing medical images.
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Sep 18, 2023
Apple once again appears to have upsold the world to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, and while demand once again exceeded supply when orders began Friday, somewhere in Cupertino the bubbly was likely flowing as the company's initial stockpile of the iPhone Pro Max sold out in minutes.
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Sep 18, 2023
Google's dominance in the search arena has given rise to two major antitrust lawsuits from the U.S. government, which allege that the company has manipulated the market to maintain that dominance, to the exclusion of its competitors and the detriment of the public at large.
The first lawsuit, targeting Google's search business, kicked off last week, and a second trial against the tech giant, focusing on advertising, is scheduled for next year.
The cases heavily echo the turn-of-the-century Microsoft antitrust case in several respects, not least of which is the fact that Google faces the possibility of being broken up by regulators if it is unsuccessful in its legal battles.
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Sep 18, 2023
ChatGPT, Claude, Bard, and other public-facing generative AI chatbots based on large language models (LLMs) are nice enough, but they're general-purpose and not well integrated into enterprise workflows. Employees either have to go to a separate app, or companies have to spend time and effort adding the functionality to their applications via application programming interfaces. Plus, in order to use ChatGPT and other genAI chatbots well, employees have to learn prompt engineering.
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Sep 18, 2023
Though technology companies announced massive layoffs last year, 2023 has been much worse. Layoffs have far outpaced last year's cuts, as tech giants including Amazon,Cisco, Facebook parent company Meta, Microsoft, Google, IBM, SAP, and Salesforce — as well as many smaller companies — announce sweeping job cuts.
The problem: Big Tech went on a hiring binge during the pandemic when lockdowns sparked a tech buying spree to support remote work and an uptick in e-commerce, and now they face revenue declines.
Continuing supply chain issues, inflation, and the war in Ukraine are also having an impact on both business and consumer spending, leading to fears of recession.
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Sep 15, 2023
Microsoft released 59 updates in its September Patch Tuesday release, with critical patches for Microsoft Office and Visual Studio, and continued the trend of including non-Microsoft applications in its update cycle. (Notepad is a notable addition, with Autodesk returning with a revised bulletin.) We've made "Patch Now" recommendations for Microsoft development platforms (Visual Studio) and Microsoft Word.
Unfortunately, updates for Microsoft Exchange Server have also returned, requiring server reboots this time, too.
The team at Readiness has created this infographic outlining the risks associated with each of the September updates.
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Sep 15, 2023
Low-code software company Airtable announced its second round of job cuts in nine months, laying off around 237 people, or approximately 27% of the company.
The cuts are part of a plan to focus the company on winning large enterprise clients and getting spending under control, CEO Howie Liu told Forbes, which first reported the layoffs. They follow job cuts made by the company in December 2022 that saw 254 people laid off.
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Sep 15, 2023
What's up with the iPhone radiation story? On the eve of Apple's big iPhone 15 reveal, France demanded the company remove iPhone 12 from sale in that country because it said the product radiates too much.
Now that demand seems to be spreading across Europe.
What's happening here?
The story so far
ANFR, the French agency that regulates these things, claims that certain iPhone 12 models emit unacceptable levels of electromagnetic radiation. The regulator subsequently ordered Apple to halt all sales of that model as of Sept. 12, pending a fix. Apple denied the claim, citing numerous radiation studies of its own, and now promises a software patch to bring the device into line with French regulations. But questions are now being asked across the EU, with Italy, Germany, and Belgium demanding a similar software patch.
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Sep 15, 2023
Amazon has launched a new generative AI tool that creates copy listings for users selling items on the company's e-commerce platform.
Designed to simplify the selling process, the new tool reduces the need for sellers to enter many pieces of specific product data when generating product descriptions. Instead, users can now enter a brief description of the product they are listing for sale - Amazon said this can be a few words or sentences - and the tool will generate the necessary copy, which sellers can then review and refine before uploading their item to the Amazon catalog.
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Sep 15, 2023
These days, a relatively clean and uncomplicated Windows 10 or 11 system disk might be home to more than 250,000 files and 90,000 folders. A more complex, application-heavy system disk might contain between half a million and a million files. My Windows 11 production PC has over 970K files and 275K folders, for example. That's a lot of stuff!
Indeed, all those files need not necessarily be kept around. That's why it's a good idea to practice regular disk hygiene. This is exactly what is explained and explored here, with plenty of examples and screen shots to illustrate the cleanup process. Best of all, the tools that help you tidy up won't cost you a dime.
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Sep 14, 2023
The iPhone has come a long way since its arrival in 2007.
First iPhone
The Evolution of the iPhone The Original iPhone" width="1200" height="800" data-imageid="100771460" data-license="IDG"/ IDG / Apple
After months of rumors and speculation, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone on Jan. 9, 2007. The device, which didn't actually go on sale until June, started at $499 for a 4GB model, $599 for the 8GB version (with a two-year contract). It offered a 3.5-in. screen, a 2-megapixel camera and won plaudits for the then-new multitouch features. Critics, however, said the phone was too expensive to do well in the market. (See iPhone launch story.)
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Sep 14, 2023
The year's most hotly anticipated initial public offering (IPO) in tech opened at the starting bell this morning, with ARM Holdings' (ARM) stock beginning the day on Nasdaq at $51 per share. That's the cost per share for the 10% of the company (95.5 million shares) Softbank is putting up for auction so far, aiming for a roughly $54 billion valuation on the stock.
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Sep 14, 2023
The European Union is reportedly planning to move forward with a formal complaint against the way Microsoft sells Teams, even though the company publicly announced in August it would start unbundling the collaboration app from Office and Microsoft 365 packages in Europe.
Under the proposed plan, Microsoft would separate out Teams and sell its 365 application suites to customers within in the EU for a discounted annual rate, starting October 1.
"These changes … are designed to address two concerns that are central to the Commission's investigation: that customers should be able to choose a business suite without Teams at a price less than those with Teams included; and that we should do more to make interoperability easier between rival communication and collaboration solutions and Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites," Microsoft said in a blog post announcing the changes.
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Sep 14, 2023
Smartphones are arguably more powerful than PCs. Consider that the iPhone 12, at 11 teraflops, outperformed the Cray 2 supercomputer by over 5000 times. And that's a now-three-year-old phone.
Even Samsung argues that modern smartphones are more powerful than PCs. Even if that isn't true for high-end PCs, the performance of the two classes of devices is very close between top-end smartphones and high-volume PCs with integrated graphics.
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Sep 14, 2023
Large language models (LLMs) often appear to be in a fight to claim the title of largest and most powerful, but many organizations eyeing there use are beginning to realize big isn't always better.
The adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools is on a steep incline. Organizations plan to invest 10% to 15% more on AI initiatives over the next year and a half compared to calendar year 2022, according to an IDC survey of more than 2,000 IT and line-of-business decision makers.
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Sep 14, 2023
In yet another incident of an outage this year for Microsoft 365, enterprises using the company's North American infrastructure for running Teams faced disruption on Wednesday evening, resulting in delay in sending or receiving messages over the productivity application.
"We're investigating an incident affecting Microsoft Teams. Users may encounter delays or failures sending and receiving messages. For more details, please see TM675041 on the Service Health Dashboard in the admin center," the company posted on Twitter, now rebranded as X.
Two hours after its first post, the company determined that the problem affecting Teams was specific to some users served through affected infrastructure in North America.
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Sep 14, 2023
Google-parent Alphabet late on Wednesday let go of hundreds of employees from its recruiting team in continuation of its efforts to operate more efficiently as macroeconomic uncertainty looms.
The company, which faces stiff competition from Microsoft, AWS, IBM, and Oracle in the field of generative AI and artificial intelligence, is looking to trade non-technical roles for engineering and technical talent.
"As we've said, we continue to invest in top engineering and technical talent while also meaningfully slowing the pace of our overall hiring," a Google spokesperson said in an email statement.
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Sep 13, 2023
As part of its commitment to AI R&D, the UK has announced the development of a new supercomputer and research facility to be housed at the University of Bristol.
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Sep 13, 2023
While the move to USB-C might mean bigger businesses will end up with a host of older Lightning accessories and cables to drop into the landfill over the next year or two (take that, EU), Apple will still sell 150 million of the new iPhones over the next year, according to Francisco Jeronimo, vice president for data and analytics, devices at IDC.
Here's a rundown of some other considerations enterprises might keep in mind following Apple's iPhone launch.
Apple's international price decisions
While iPhone prices remained the same in the US, Apple raised some prices in some key markets, including in China, India, and Japan. In China, while the base model prices stayed the same, the cost of higher-capacity models climbed, while in India, the Pro models saw the steepest price hikes.
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Sep 13, 2023
The most significant tech antitrust trial of the 21st century thus far kicked off in US federal court Tuesday with the Department of Justice and 14 co-plaintiff states squaring off against the search engine giant. The DOJ accuses Google of unlawfully monopolizing the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising in the via anticompetitive and exclusionary practices.
During opening arguments, Kenneth Dintzer, deputy director in the DOJ's civil division, said, "This case is about the future of the internet, whether the Google search engine will ever face meaningful competition to protect that future." At the heart of the government's case is Google's use of contracts to maintain what Dintzer contends is a "default status" market share that tops 89% in the search engine market and 74% in the search ads business.
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Sep 13, 2023
Adobe on Wednesday announced the commercial release of Firefly, a suite of generative AI models that are natively integrated throughout Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Generative Fill and Generative Expand in Photoshop, and Generative Recolor in Illustrator.
Firefly, which was released in Beta in May, provides AI-powered image creation and editing for enterprise users that the company says are safe for commercial use. The AI model on offer from Adobe has been trained on stock images owned by the company, public domain content, and other openly licensed or non-copyright material.
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Sep 13, 2023
Ask most Android enthusiasts for their thoughts on the eternal "iPhone vs. Android" debate, and you're bound to hear some comically common conclusions:
Android is more advanced and ambitious, both in its software and especially in its hardware (hello, folding phones!).
Android is more customizable and conducive to productivity, thanks to all the ways it lets you take total control of your virtual environment and make it work the way you want.
The iPhone is bland, old-fashioned, and boring in comparison.
Apple's iOS platform certainly has its advantages, but it's tough to deny that Android is the more modern, powerful, and adventurous option (a juxtaposition expressed admirably in this recent video analysis by the ever-balanced Marques Brownlee).
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Sep 13, 2023
Microsoft has a surprising and powerful new competitor in its attempt to dominate the generative AI market - OpenAI, the company behind Microsoft's genAI products, in which Microsoft has invested $13 billion, and whose technology is the sole reason Microsoft has taken the lead in genAI.
That competition began in late August, when OpenAI launched ChatGPT Enterprise. The company claims "offers enterprise-grade security and privacy, unlimited higher-speed GPT-4 access, longer context windows for processing longer inputs, advanced data analysis capabilities, customization options, and much more." And, according to OpenAI, the tool is "an AI assistant for work that helps with any task, is customized for your organization, and that protects your company data."
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Sep 12, 2023
Office 365 and Microsoft 365 subscribers get more frequent software updates than those who have purchased Office without a subscription, which means subscribers have access to the latest features, security patches, and bug fixes. But it can be hard to keep track of the changes in each update and know when they're available. We're doing this for you, so you don't have to.
Following are summaries of the updates to Office 365/Microsoft 365 for Windows, with the latest releases shown first. We'll add info about new updates as they're rolled out.
Note: This story covers updates released to regular Office 365/Microsoft 365 for Windows subscribers. If you're a member of Microsoft's Office Insider preview program or want to get a sneak peek at upcoming features, see the company's "Release notes for Office for Windows Desktop (Beta builds)" page.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 12, 2023
So all the speculation was largely on target.
At its big Tuesday event, not only did Apple unveil its new iPhone 15 and 15 Pro line-ups, but it stressed environmental bona fides and its efforts toward becoming carbon neutral by 2030. It also introduced the Apple Watch Series 9, an Apple Watch Ultra 2, and offered noteworthy commitments regarding its future corporate environmental responsibility.
In other news, iOS 17, iPadOS 17, watchOS 10, tvOS 17, and HomePod 17 will be available as free updates on Sept. 18; macOS Sonoma ships a little later, on Sept. 26.And as expected, Apple's iPhones, watches, and AirPods Pro will be among the first of its mobile products to be equipped with USB-C, in line with EU regulation. EarPods will also migrate to USB-C.
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Sep 12, 2023
The launch of a major Windows 10 update isn't the end of a process — it's really just the beginning. As soon as one of Microsoft's feature updates (such as Windows 10 version 22H2) is released, the company quickly gets to work on improving it by fixing bugs, releasing security patches, and occasionally adding new features.
In this story we summarize what you need to know about each update released to the public for the most recent versions of Windows 10 — versions 22H2 and 21H2. (Microsoft releases updates for those two versions together.) For each build, we've included the date of its initial release and a link to Microsoft's announcement about it. The most recent updates appear first.
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Sep 12, 2023
Global business spending on collaboration software — including videoconferencing apps, team chat, email, and more — reached $33.9 billion in 2022, according to a recent IDC report. It was the seventh consecutive year of double-digit growth, up 14.6% compared to the 2021.
But that figure amounted to slower year-on-year growth compared to IDC data from the preceding two years (28.4% YoY growth in 2021, and 32.9% in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid shift to hybrid and remote work).
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Sep 12, 2023
With Apple spending a lot of money on generative AI and machine learning models, is it time for us to start prepping for Siri 2.0?
The Information says Apple has "significantly" increased spending on AI development focused on genAI capabilities within Siri. The report suggests Apple's internal AI research thrust is pushing in three key directions:
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Sep 12, 2023
Last month, I noted that staffers work from home just fine. Yes, I know some companies, including Zoom, demand that employees return to the office after making their fortune with remote work. And Congressional Republicans want to turn back the clock with its SHOW UP Act.
So, what? There will always be moronic managers — ignore them. It would be best to focus on getting the most from your remote workers as quickly as possible.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 12, 2023
While some companies in recent months have been rolling back remote-work policies, Hewlett-Packard (HP) has been reticent to set any in-office mandate — or even informal goals — for its workers.
Various teams have in-office staff meetings, and employees who live close to an office site tend to come in two or three days a week. But HP sees its path to the future of work as enabling employees to have the same experience in the office as at home, thereby enticing workers to come back to their cubicles only for specific reasons, such as in-office collaboration.
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Sep 12, 2023
The largest antitrust action since the turn-of-the-century Microsoft case is headed to trial today, as the federal government and a group of state attorneys general challenge Google's dominance in search.
Google is specifically accused of creating a monopoly through the use of exclusivity contracts with device manufacturers and software providers — deals, in short, that make Google the default search engine for a given device or platform. The overall effect of those numerous deals, according to the government's complaint, has been to artificially deny access to the search engine market to rivals, creating an effective monopoly.
The complaint, which was filed in October 2020 in the federal district court in Washington, D.C., further alleged that the exclusive contracts were used not just to broaden the use of its products, but to explicitly exclude competitors from chipping away at Google's dominant market share in search.
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Sep 11, 2023
Employees in IBM's software division have become the latest tech workers to face a return-to-office mandate, in this case requiring them to be in the office for a minimum of three days a week, starting from today.
Unlike other return to office mandates that have been put in place by Amazon, Google, Meta, and Zoom in recent months, IBM's requirement will affect employees across the globe, rather than just workers who are based in the US.
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Sep 11, 2023
Apple's attempt to build its own 5G modems may have hit some kind of wall as the company has reached a deal with Qualcomm to supply 5G modems for smartphone launches all the way to 2026.
Apple had been expected to begin using its own internally developed 5G modem beginning in 2024. (We had thought the iPhone 15 might be the last iPhone to use a Qualcomm modem, but this no longer appears to be the case.)
"Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Apple Inc. to supply Snapdragon 5G Modem-RF Systems for smartphone launches in 2024, 2025 and 2026," Qualcomm Technologies announced today in a statement. The deal could actually be extended through 2028.
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Sep 11, 2023
Having announced plans in May to build generative AI into its collaboration application, Slack now expects to make its the new features available to select customers as part of a pilot this winter, with a full rollout next year.
The company has been experimenting with the genAI internally for several months to identify the best ways of integrating the technology for collaboration purposes. The initial focus is on three main use cases designed tosave users time by automating certain processes.
One is the ability to summarize conversations that take place in Slack channels and threads.
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Sep 11, 2023
Having announced plans in May to build generative AI into its collaboration application, Slack now expects to make its the new features available to select customers as part of a pilot this winter, with a full rollout next year.
The company has been experimenting with the genAI internally for several months to identify the best ways of integrating the technology for collaboration purposes. The initial focus is on three main use cases designed to save users time by automating certain processes.
One is the ability to summarize conversations that take place in Slack channels and threads.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 08, 2023
The Windows 11 2022 Update has been released, but behind the scenes, Microsoft is constantly working to improve the newest version of Windows. The company frequently rolls out public preview builds to members of its Windows Insider Program, allowing them to test out — and even help shape — upcoming features.
Skip to the builds
The Windows Insider program is divided into four channels:
The Canary Channel (new in March 2023) is where platform changes (such as major updates to the Windows kernel and new APIs) are previewed. These changes are not tied to a particular Windows release and may never ship at all. Little documentation is provided, and builds are likely to be very unstable. This channel is best for highly technical users.
The Dev Channel is where new features are introduced for initial testing, regardless of which Windows release they'll eventually end up in. This channel is best for technical users and developers and builds in it may be unstable and buggy.
In the Beta Channel, you'll get more polished features that will be deployed in the next major Windows release. This channel is best for early adopters, and Microsoft says your feedback in this channel will have the most impact.
The Release Preview Channel typically doesn't see action until shortly before a new feature update is rolled out. It's meant for final testing of an upcoming release and is best for those who want the most stable builds.
The Beta and Release Preview Channels also receive bug-fix builds for the currently shipping version of Windows 11. See "How to preview
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Sep 08, 2023
The US government has reportedly opened a probe into Chinese chips being used in Huawei's latest 5G-enabled smartphone, a move that has raised questions around the effectiveness of President Joe Biden's recent executive orders that were supposed to have tightened export controls on such technology.
The Huawei Mate Pro 60 contains Kirin 9000s chips — 7 nanometer (nm) chips that have been made in China by the partly state-owned Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), according to an analysis published by TechInsights, a semiconductor research and analysis organization.
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Sep 08, 2023
One of the technologies being explored by videoconferencing software vendors involves the use of Deep Fake avatars to present at, or attend, meetings. The avatars allow a presenter to alter their appearance so they always look sharp and to pre-tape their speech for a more professional result. Eventually, the avatar could do the talk from a script generated by artificial intelligence (AI).
Invitees who can't attend could have their avatars take their place and both transcribe and summarize what happened so they can selectively choose what to watch or just read the parts they're interested in. Since neither the presenters nor the attendees would be in attendance — remember, they're all avatars — simply sending out the script and summary of the talk would be a more efficient use of resources.
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Sep 08, 2023
Apple has pushed out an essential security update to defend against yet another attack by an out-of-control mercenary surveillance group.
Like a bad smell, NSO Group has clawed its way back into the spotlight with yet another unprincipled attack against free speech and citizens' rights, as revealed by Citizen Lab. The security researchers found this latest example of a sinister, yet egregious zero-click attack while checking the device of an "Individual employed by a Washington DC-based civil society organization with international offices."
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Sep 08, 2023
Microsoft is promising to defend customers of its Copilot AI assistant against copyright lawsuits, the company said in a statement Thursday.
Customers are worried that outputs from the generative AI assistant could infringe on copyright law, putting them at risk of legal claims, Microsoft said. To address those concerns, the company pledged to "defend the customer" and pay any judgments or settlements incurred as a result of lawsuit.
The Copilot Copyright Commitment applies to customers that use the "guardrails and contents" built into its software products, Microsoft said.
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Sep 08, 2023
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently told Amazon employees who refuse to come into the office at least three days a week that "it's probably not going to work out for you" — threatening to fire those employees (or invite them to engage in a "voluntary resignation").
I'm afraid I have to disagree. I predict the edict will instead not work out for Amazon.
Jassy's comments reflect his frustration over non-compliance with his May 1 back-to-office order. And he's not alone. Jassy told employees that virtually all of the other CEOs he's talked to prefer that employees work in the office rather than remotely.
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Sep 08, 2023
We all take notes. Since grade school, we've scribbled down the main points of what we're learning so we can access that information later. Suddenly, the power of note-taking is about to increase 100-fold.
Major existing data-container products such as Box, Dropbox, Notion, and thousands of new tools now use generative AI to let you query your own data.
Google believes this idea is great for note-taking, too. So, the company is working on something called NotebookLM (the LM stands for language model — like a large language model without the dataset being necessarily large). NotebookLM is now a beta, and you can get on the waitlist to try it here.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 07, 2023
Good news for PC users: Windows desktop software isn't going anywhere. In fact, every operating system wants to run it.
A decade ago, the tech media was full of pronouncements that "PCs are dying" at the hands of the iPad. But in 2023, the hot new commodity is Windows desktop software. More and more operating systems are now running Windows desktop apps it once seemed everyone — including Microsoft itself — wanted to leave behind.
At a glance, it's easy to say this is just about Windows business applications, or it's just about PC gaming, or it's just about people wanting to offer access to decades' worth of software on their devices. Itss definitely about all of those things — and more.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 07, 2023
Chinese cloud and social media conglomerate Tencent has announced that its Hunyuan large language model (LLM) will be available for enterprise use, as companies in the country stake their claim as technology industry and generative AI leaders.
"A war of a hundred models has begun," said Tencent's vice president, Jiang Jie, in comments published by Reuters. He noted that by July, there were more than 130 LLMs in China. These include the AI models that were recently unveiled by China's largest search engine, Baidu, and AI software company SenseTime.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 07, 2023
Not to say I'm obsessed with Apple's processors, but MediaTek's latest statement gives us some insight into what new A- and M-series chips from Cupertino may be capable of, and yes, they'll be faster, cooler, and more performant.
MediaTek this morning tried to set its flag for business on news it has successfully developed its first chip using the 3-nanometer process technology TSMC also uses to build chips for Apple.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 07, 2023
Most of the app recommendations I make these days tend to revolve around Android. It's the platform I carry in my pocket, after all, and it's been the primary focus of my writing for something like 7,347 years now.
But while there's certainly something to be said for finding the best apps for one specific flavor of device you rely on, the reality is that most of us don't limit our work to a single platform or type of technology. We have our personal phones of choice, sure, but we also use a computer. Some of us might have one computer in the office at another at home — or maybe even multiple computers in both locations. And that's to say nothing of the tablets and all the devices our colleagues, friends, and family use that need to play nicely with everything we do, too.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 06, 2023
Financial services and small-business software provider Intuit will be rolling out an "Intuit Assist" feature to all of its major product lines, including TurboTax and QuickBooks, building on the development of its own generative AI operating system.
GenOS, as the company calls its new operating system, was unveiled in June and is the basis for the Assist feature, announced Wednesday. Intuit said that its own customer data created a competitive advantage in building GenOS, and that the large language models (LLMs) behind the operating system — which Intuit itself developed — are specialized for solving challenges faced by Intuit's customers, including tax, accounting, marketing and personal finance.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 06, 2023
The UK government has conceded one of the more controversial parts of its Online Safety Bill, stating that the powers granted by the legislation will not be used to scan encrypted messaging apps for harmful content until it can be done in a targeted manner.
Companies will not be required to scan encrypted messages until it is "technically feasible and where technology has been accredited as meeting minimum standards of accuracy in detecting only child sexual abuse and exploitation content," said Stephen Parkinson, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Arts and Heritage, in a planned statement during the bill's third reading in the House of Lords on Wednesday afternoon.
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Sep 06, 2023
If you had any remaining doubt about Apple's long-term plans for processor development, you should note the significance of a newly revealed chip technology deal the company has reached with Arm. The deal extends beyond 2040.
Arm docs reveal Apple deal
News of the deal was included in documents filed by Arm ahead of its $52 billion initial public offering (IPO). "We have entered into a new long-term agreement with Apple that extends beyond 2040, continuing our longstanding relationship of collaboration with Apple and Apples access to the Arm architecture," the SEC filing said.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 06, 2023
Slack is building a work management tool designed to allow users to track team projects directly from the collaboration app.
The "lists" feature, announced Wednesday ahead of parent company Salesforce's Dreamforce event next week, provides functions similar to the likes of Asana and Trello, with the ability to create, assign, and manage individual tasks as part of a larger project.
This can be done via a spreadsheet or kanban-style board layout view, with record cards containing information on related tasks, as well as information about status, due date, and which team member is responsible.
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Sep 06, 2023
The European Commission has published a list of so-called gatekeeper companies that will be regulated by its Digital Markets Act (DMA), simultaneously announcing it will open investigations into the arguments put forward by Microsoft and Apple that claim iMessage and Bing don't meet the threshold for regulation.
The Commission said it had notified Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, Microsoft and Samsung of their gatekeeper status — companies with a market capitalization of at least €75 billion ($81 billion) or sales in Europe of over €7.5 billion, at least 45 million monthly users in the EU. Twenty-two core platforms operated by these companies also fall under the scope of the DMA.
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Sep 06, 2023
AI transcription company Otter.ai on Wednesday launched OtterPilot for Sales, an AI sales assistant that helps employees with non-selling tasks such as note-taking and CRM data entry.
The sales-specific product launches seven months after Otter.ai released OtterPilot, an AI meeting assistant that automatically sends AI-generated meeting notes, including summaries and key meeting points, to participants after a call.
"One cohort of users who we saw using OtterPilot was salespeople," said Sam Liang, co-founder and CEO of Otter.ai. "Sales reps do a lot of calls every day and it's actually a big pain point for them to enter the data [from those calls] into Salesforce. With Otter, AI automates that process so, not only can OtterPilot for Sales listen and take notes at the end of the call, it can automatically pull that information into their CRM."
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