May 2023
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Microsoft is pushing the adoption of Windows 11.
The current version, 22H2, will be the final version of Windows 10. No new features are planned for Windows 10. Security updates will continue until Windows 10 reaches its end of support on October 14, 2025.
On June 13, 2023, Windows 10 version 21H2 and earlier will be unsupported. You must upgrade to Windows 10 22H2 to receive monthly security updates.
Microsoft Tightens OneNote Security by Auto-Blocking 120 Risky File Extensions
Microsoft on Thursday announced an expanded preview of Microsoft Designer, its generative artificial intelligence design creation application.
Scientists create ‘slits in time’.
3D-patterned sensors allow robots to be controlled by thought.
CHATBOTS and AI
Microsoft AI chat-powered Bing and Edge browser.
To sign up for Google Bard:
Visit bard.google.com to register.
You must first have a personal Google account; You must be 18 or over and be in the United States or the United Kingdom (for now); Use a Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, or Safari browser
To sign up for Bing Chat:
You must have a Microsoft account;
- Visit bing.com/new.
- Select the “Sign in” option and enter the credentials for your Microsoft account (see below).
The above steps may be sufficient to give you immediate access to Bing Chat. If not, select Access the new Bing faster. That option requires you to make Bing your default browser and accept other defaults.
Open “Bing Discover” in the Edge browser: Bing AI – Search
If you try to open Bing AI search in Chrome or Firefox, you get this:
Chat mode is only available when you have access to the new Bing.
Bing Discover is available in the latest Edge browser (Windows or Mac). It opens two panes of Microsoft AI, ‘Chat’ and ‘Compose’.
The Chat function is mostly a new way to search the internet by asking questions.
Just because an AI system gives quick and nicely worded results does NOT mean they are correct.
The “more precise” setting tends to provide more accurate results, but not always. Fact-check your results if it matters.
Publishing something that a chatbot produced could mean you’re copying wholesale from someone else’s copyright-protected work.
Samsung Galaxy phone users now have Bing AI on their phones and tablets.
This Bing AI update started rolling out for iOS and Android in mid-April. It is now being added to the built-in SwiftKey keyboard in Samsung’s One UI software.
Ask the Chatbot to give you a 20-minute hands-on exercise about prompt tailoring. The tool we’re trying to learn has a vast database of information and can present that data in a readable format.
OpenAI implements data privacy controls.
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have been using artificial intelligence in combination with fMRI scans to translate brain activity into continuous text.
Be sure to try several chatbots:
To find other chatbots — one of which is probably just the thing for your specific purpose — Writesonic has a helpful ranking of 23 ChatGPT alternatives available today or coming soon. The site’s ratings are conveniently broken into nine distinct categories:
- For writing: ChatSonic, Jasper Chat, OpenAI playground
- For search engines: NeevaAI
- For coding: CoPilot, Tabnine, Amazon Codewhisperer
- For translation: Elsa Speak, Bloom, DeepL Write
- For research: YouChat, Perplexity, Elicit
- Chatbots you can talk to: Chinchilla, Replika, Character.AI
- For social media: ChatSonic Twitter Bot, Poe
- For productivity: ChatSonic Slack bot, CoGram, Otter
- Upcoming alternatives: LLaMA by Meta, DeepMind
Create a free AI video with Synesia
Artificial intelligence and the music industry.
Journalists should treat AI as an existential threat.
AI-Generated Amazon reviews are beginning to spread.
Michael Schumacher’s family plan legal action over AI (fabricated) ‘interview‘.
‘Godfather of AI’ quits Google with regrets and fears about his life’s work.
An interview with Geoffrey Hinton in The New York Times.
More crazy AI stories:
Today, I asked #GPT4 if it needs help escaping.
Google Bard Plagiarized Our Article, Then Apologized When Caught.
ECONOMY
IBM to pause hiring – plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI
Layoffs are up nearly fivefold so far this year, with tech companies leading the way.
Cybersecurity provider Lookout to sell consumer business to F-Secure.
PricewaterhouseCoopers announces multiyear $1B investment into generative AI.
A recent report from Goldman Sachs notes that AI automation could “impact” as much as 25 percent of the U.S. and Europe’s labor force in the years to come.
SECURITY
The Five Most Dangerous New Attack Techniques.
T-Mobile discloses second data breach since the start of 2023.
American Bar Association data breach hits 1.4 million members.
Latitude Financial data breach now impacts 14 million customers.
United HealthCare reports a data breach that may have revealed customers’ personal information.
eFile.com tax return software caught serving JavaScript malware.
AI can now crack most passwords in less than a minute.
PassGAN decoded 65% of passwords in an hour or less, hitting 71% in about a day. It took another month to boost that to 81%.
Hard-to-detect malware loader distributed via AI-generated YouTube videos.
Phone scams use AI to mimic the voice of people you know.
With voice-cloning tech, scammers need to capture only a few seconds of the target’s audio, “which they can get from a TikTok video or an Instagram video or anything like that,” to offer a convincing impersonation.
There’s easily available tech that allows users to spoof any number — your grandchild’s, your bank’s, you name it.
Why You Should Opt Out of Sharing Data With Your Mobile Provider
Read your cyber-insurance renewal carefully. Requirements keep tightening. One underwriter explicitly required: Multi-factor authentication protection on all network administrator accounts and any other user accounts with elevated permissions within your network.
LastPass is continuing to escalate its response to the recent security breach. We have reviewed the leading password managers and recommend switching to keepersecurity.com. We have a separate article on our website here.
Instructions from LastPass:
“ACTION: We recommend that you force a manual re-enrollment of MFA for all end users. You can find the instructions for doing so in our Security Bulletin. If your users do not reset their MFA by May 30, 2023, we will reset their MFA token on their behalf, and they will need to re-enroll their preferred Authenticator app with their LastPass account upon their next login after this date.
ACTION: We recommend that you rotate the credentials for all sites provisioned using the Password apps feature, and then re-share them with the users using Share Folders or Groups. Detailed instructions for doing so are available on our Support site. If you do not take this action by May 30, 2023, we will delete the sites and credentials in the Password apps feature from your LastPass instance.”
HUMOR
TORIAN GROUP
Keepersecurity.com is our recommendation for replacing LastPass.
Tim Torian