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Also: Best Windows 10 laptop in 2021 Unsurprisingly, given how hard Microsoft has been beating the hybrid work drum over the past year, the company is positioning Windows 11 better suited for a hybrid world than previous Windows releases. Officials played up how the new UI will help customers be more productive in both work and personal endeavors. It’s also probably a shock to no one that Microsoft is claiming Windows 11 is the most secure Windows version to date and is a “zero-trust-ready” operating system....

Microsoft also is unveiling a new virtualization partnership with iDirect, which is a satellite provider, as well as additional goespatial and data analytics partnerships with ESRI, Blackshark and Orbital Insight as part of today’s milestone updates. Azure Space isn’t just for companies in the space industry. It’s meant to appeal to companies in public and private industry customers in the agriculture, energy, telecommunications, and government markets. It’s also meant for any customer with remote-access and bandwidth needs....

In a blog post, Microsoft president Brad Smith said it was coordinating its efforts to protect users in Ukraine with the Ukrainian government, the European Union, European nations, the US government, NATO, and the United Nations. “Several hours before the launch of missiles or movement of tanks on February 24, Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) detected a new round of offensive and destructive cyberattacks directed against Ukraine’s digital infrastructure. We immediately advised the Ukrainian government about the situation, including our identification of the use of a new malware package (which we denominated FoxBlade), and provided technical advice on steps to prevent the malware’s success,” Smith said....

Smith said in April that Microsoft would look for ways to remedy the partner concerns it deemed valid. After European antitrust regulators began digging into partner and customer complaints, Microsoft agreed to look into the matter. Bloomberg subsequently published a report citing customers who were none too happy about the new licensing rules. In today’s blog post, Smith said he and other senior Microsoft business leaders had meetings with CEOs of two European providers, plus additional meetings with companies in various European countries....

The patches released address common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) in: Microsoft Windows and Windows Components; Azure; Office and Office Components; SysInternals; Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based); SharePoint Server; and the .NET framework. The one exploited CVE disclosed on Patch Tuesday impacts the Windows SmartScreen Security Feature. To exploit it, an attacker could craft a malicious file that would evade Mark of the Web (MOTW) defenses. When you download a file from the internet, Windows adds the zone identifier, or MOTW, to the file....

AAD is central to Microsoft’s identity and security services and its ‘join’ feature for controlling device access is now coming to its Windows 365 Cloud PC – the managed PC service it launched last summer for $20 to $162 per user per month for compute, memory and storage. AAD’s Join feature for has been “by far” the most requested feature by users of Windows 365 Enterprise, according to Microsoft. It acts as a device-joining bridge from the cloud-based Azure AD for organizations that use the on-premise variant of Active Directory....

With Build 22581, Beta channel Insiders now can test Live Captions, Start folders, the redesigned Task Manager, tablet-optimized taskbar, and more. Not every single feature that is has been introduced to the Dev channel necessarily will be in the new Beta channel test builds. A quick refresher on Microsoft terminology: The Dev channel is considered the experimental ring where features that are introduced may or may never ship. The Dev Channel builds are not tied to any specific Windows release....

The shift to Teams and video collaboration has a raft of implications that affect everything from your home network’s performance through to the mobile devices and PCs we use – and how meeting etiquette has evolved. Microsoft has been working to evolve Teams as its average monthly user base grows, from 145 million a year ago to 270 million today. In Febuary 2022, the company rolled out improvements to its Teams Companion Mode for iOS, which lets users tap a smartphone to engage with a Teams meeting while also using Teams on the desktop or Microsoft Teams Rooms....

Teams Premium is now generally available and Microsoft has revealed that the AI features it’s getting – such as an intelligent recap of meetings – are powered by OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 series of large language models that are behind OpenAI’s hit chatbot ChatGPT and are available to developers via Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service APIs. “Teams Premium brings the latest technologies, including Large Language Models powered by OpenAI’s GPT-3.5, to make meetings more intelligent, personalized, and protected—whether it’s one-on-one, large meetings, virtual appointments, or webinars,” Microsoft says in an announcement....

Digital twins and Azure IoT are only the tip of Microsoft’s metaverse technology stack. Microsoft officials are carving out a strategy where everything from Azure Maps and the Power Platform, to Azure Synapse Analytics and Azure AI plus Autonomous Systems, could play a role in helping customers create and use their own business metaverses.

Microsoft boosted Viva with its Microsoft acquisition of OKR vendor ally.io in 2021 to enable Viva Goals, which is one of five modules in the Viva employee experience suite. Viva runs on top of Teams, and also includes Viva Learn, Viva Topics, and Viva Connections. Microsoft in September announced it was adding new integration points in Viva Goals, including an enhanced Teams app that allows users to check in and collaborate on OKRs....

Security researchers have discovered numerous modules used by the attack group, which Microsoft calls Nobelium. The US and UK in April officially blamed the attack on the hacking unit of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), which are also known as APT29, Cozy Bear, and The Dukes. Microsoft in March uncovered the GoldMax, GoldFinder, and Sibot components from Nobelium, building on other malware from the group including Sunburst/Solarigate, Teardrop and Sunspot....

If you have any technology-related worries – from your kids being glued to their phone, to the influence of the Chinese government and the role of technology in the 2016 and 2020 US elections – the authors of Monster: A Tough Love Letter On Taming the Machines that Rule our Jobs, Lives, and Future are worried about it too. And if you weren’t already concerned, they’ll tell you why you should be....

Also: Here’s everything Apple announced during its ‘Far Out’ event Where did Apple miss the mark? I don’t hike, I don’t dive, and I almost never find myself without either a cell or Wi-Fi signal, let alone in the middle of the wilderness. I’m betting the majority of you could say the same. I try to stay active, but that typically involves a treadmill or bike ride around the paved, lakeside path near my house....

As a result, around two-thirds of employees said it was “extremely” or “somewhat” likely they’ll leave their employer within the next year because there aren’t enough opportunities for skills development (64%) or career advancement (66%), or because there’s no way for them to transition to a different job or a new career path (65%). Also: These three tech skills could help recession-proof your career, say bosses Looking ahead to 2023, 89% of employees said they were highly motivated to advance their skills, with 80% of employees attributing this newfound motivation to the pandemic....

The Moto G200 is currently available in the UK and Europe, and will launch in Latin America, but no plans have yet been announced for the US or Australia. The build is the usual Moto plastic, but the backplate still looks rather good. It has a nice opaque sheen and an original and very smart moulding around the triple camera array. The camera lenses protrude significantly, and a pair of curved, horizontal lips around them take advantage of that fact with a clever design feature....

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a product like the Nanoleaf 4D TV Smarter Kit. The kit includes a Screen Mirror Camera that you direct at your TV screen to monitor the colors displayed. The Smart Addressable Lightstrip will then match the colors to create an immersive experience. Also: CES 2023 tech you can actually buy now Nanoleaf’s Sync+ technology sends color commands to the strips along with the rest of your Nanoleaf lights in the room....

In 2002, NASA’s Office of Biological and Physical Research funded research that studied whether specific pieces of DNA, known as microsatellites, could record radiation damage over time. The findings showed that some microsatellites are more susceptible to radiation damage. They accumulate radiation damage and can, therefore, be used as an accurate indicator of an individual’s exposure levels over time, according to NASA. “The goal was to develop a method to measure a personalized radiation exposure using microsatellites as the indicator, or marker,” said Jeff Bacher, the senior scientist with Promega Corporation who led the study....

Commencement of work on the legislation, called Trusted Digital Identity Bill 2021, follows the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) spending years developing Australia’s the Trusted Digital Identity Framework (TDIF), which eventually led to myGovID – developed by the Australian Taxation Office – and an equivalent identity service from Australia Post going live in 2019. While the federal government already has the TDIF in place, it is only applicable to federal government entities – it cannot be applied to states and territories or to the private sector, which is why the federal government has commenced work on this legislation....