The Dell XPS 13 Plus has a heck of a lot in common with the XPS 13 — but its audience is very, very different.

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge

The problem with ‘next-gen’ gadgets

A new set of Windows bugs and fixes

For the past few weeks, it seems like Windows bugs and issues are occupying a dedicated and significant section of our Microsoft Weekly articles, and this week is no different.

We'll start off with a Windows 10 issue which rose from the latest Patch Tuesday update and causes a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) with the error code "0xc000021a" on some systems due to a mismatch between HIDPARSE system files (hidparse.sys) in two different system directories. Although there is a workaround for now, it seems like we will have to wait until next month's Patch Tuesday update for a more permanent fix.

Fortunately, the rest of the section related to bugs in Microsoft software is about fixes being made available for them. Android 13 recently broke the Intune enrollment process for Samsung devices, but it has now been patched. Some user actions are required though so do read the instructions here.

Additionally, Microsoft has resolved an Outlook on Windows bug where multiple calendars would display incorrect meetings and timeslots. Interestingly, a potential reason that caused the issue was a low screen DPI.

Next up, Network Adapter issues in Hyper-V hosts managed by Software Defined Networking (SDN) configured System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) in Windows Server 2022 have been squashed as well. And new versions of Intel drivers for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth have also been made available to resolve problems related to streaming glitches, degraded downlink, and stability in Windows 10 and Windows 11.

A Bing fine

Microsoft's Bing search engine finally got some attention this week, but some of it probably wasn't what it wanted. Basically, the Redmond tech giant has been slapped with a €60 million fine by the French data protection agency, CNIL, for not offering an opt-out for cookies in Bing. It has also been asked to include consent for ad fraud detection cookies but the company has indicated apprehension at this requirement, saying that these types of cookies "shouldn’t require consent by those intending to defraud others."

In a bit of more positive news, Microsoft has partnered with the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to provide satellite imagery for its Santa tracker this year. The 3D version of the tracker powered by the satellite imagery provided by Bing Maps API is now live on the dedicated portal here.

Teams and Excel updates

Microsoft also shared some updates regarding new Teams and Excel features. When it comes to the former, the company is working on an "enhanced visual layout" for the desktop client that should make app engagement and discovery easier. This will apparently be enabled via a flyout UI, but implementation details have not been disclosed yet, given that the feature is not due until February 2023.

The Redmond tech giant also shared a list of all the capabilities that it added to Excel during this month. Highlights include Formula Suggestions, Formula Fill, an enhanced IMAGE function, and a new shortcut to launch the Power Query editor.

Finally, if you are still using Basic Authentication in Exchange Online, your time's almost up. Microsoft will start permanently disabling this method in favor of Modern Authentication (OAuth 2.0) next month for lots of protocols including MAPI, RPC, Offline Address Book (OAB), Exchange Web Services (EWS), POP, IMAP, Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), and Remote PowerShell. SMTP AUTH is unaffected but Microsoft doesn't recommend using Basic Auth for that either.

Git gud

On the gaming side of things, we have a few interesting items. A group of 10 gamers has sued Microsoft over its proposed $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. It is pertinent to note that three of them game exclusively on PlayStation. It is yet to be seen if their arguments for denying the acquisition hold any weight in court.

Meanwhile, some recent testing has revealed some pretty decent advantages of utilizing DirectStorage in Windows 11 games. That said, additional effort from developers is needed to leverage the benefits of the technology. As such, mass adoption of the APIs is still under question.

What will make Microsoft happier though is that High on Life is a massive Xbox Game Pass hit. The title has broken several records on the service including it being the biggest launch of 2022, the biggest third-party game launch of all time, as well as the biggest single-player only game launch on the service since its debut.

Lastly, if you're on the lookout for holiday sales, check out the Xbox Countdown Sale and this Weekend's PC Game Deals, curated by our News Editor Pulasthi Ariyasinghe.

Under the spotlight

If you are using Windows 11 but are not happy with some of the design choices, our resident News Reporter Taras Buria may have a couple of guides that may interest you. For example, if you are using a stable build of Windows 11 version 22H2, you can follow these instructions to revert to the old Search button.

And if you're using a preview build of Windows 11 and have an inexplicable desire to use stickers on your Windows 11 desktop through a secret method, Taras has you covered there too.

But if you're a gamer and do not care for these shenanigans, sound off about what gaming capabilities you want in Windows 11 here.

Lastly, do not forget to check out forum member Adam Bottjen's latest Tech Tip Tuesday article which talks about the process to audit sites to whom you have granted notification access.

Logging off

Our most interesting news item of the week relates to Meta settling a class-action lawsuit concerning the 2018 Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal for $725 million. This amount is the most that Meta has ever agreed to pay to resolve a private class-action lawsuit and is also the largest financial restitution in a data privacy class-action to date. While awareness of the scandal which exposed the private data of millions of Facebook users brought along many benefits such as increased scrutiny of big tech, better laws, and heavy fines, Meta has made no admission of wrongdoing in the matter as part of the settlement agreement.

Microsoft Weekly: More Windows issues and fixes, a Bing fine, and Teams updates

 

Blu-rays never quite managed to usurp DVDs entirely. Recent estimates, based on data gathered by Nielsen VideoScan and MediaPlayNews, suggest that as of Q2 2022, DVDs still controlled 51.4 percent of market share compared to 48.6 percent for Blu-rays. And no matter which format has the biggest slice, the physical media pie is shrinking. So, if your Blu-ray player has gone from your home theater centerpiece to a dust-gathering ornament, one clever hacker knows just what to do with it.

 

As spotted by Hackster.io this week, a YouTuber named Doctor Volt recently detailed their two-part journey of turning a Samsung BD-J5900 Blu-ray player into a laser-scanning microscope.

 

One of the laser-scanning microscope's primary advantages over optical ones is that the latter maxes out at 1,500 times magnification, as noted by Gizmodo. Doctor Volt says they aren't sure of the magnification of their DY microscope but told a commenter that "it can resolve structures of roundabout 5 micrometers."

 

Doctor Volt's hack was doable because Blu-ray players and laser-scanning microscopes work in similar fashions. As a quick simplification, Blu-ray players beam lasers onto Blu-ray discs, and depending on how strongly the light is reflected back onto the player's optical pickup unit, its sensors can read either a 1 or 0.

 

But because the sensors in the optical pickup unit are actually not binary and can measure varied amounts of reflected light, Blu-ray players are inauspicious candidates for makeshift laser-scanning microscopes.

 

As explained by Hackster.io, "By running that same process and recording each intensity measurement, one can create an image of the surface of whatever the laser scans. The resolution is a function of the physical movement of the laser as it scans."

 

Doctor Volt used various parts from the Samsung Blu-ray player, including a laser diode, stepper motor to move the laser, its optical pickup unit, and focus coil, for their project. They also had to create additional plastic parts for a scanning bed.

 

According to Doctor Volt, the microscope creates images using 16,129 measurements, creating a 127×127-pixel image, which the hacker scaled to 512×512 in the image below.

 

Of course, Doctor Volt's microscope isn't nearly as powerful as commercial offerings in a lab. But considering those can cost tens of thousands of dollars, while Doctor Volt's required an aging gadget you may have in your home or can find used for cheap, we'd say Doctor Volt did alright.

 

The YouTuber isn't the first to repurpose a Blu-ray player to get a magnified view. In April, professors from the University of Connecticut published the paper "Blood-Coated Sensor for High-Throughput Ptychographic Cytometry on a Blu-ray Disc" in ACS Publications. They used a modified Blu-ray player and a blood-coated image sensor to obtain "high-quality images of biological samples," as UConn's announcement put it. UConn Technology Commercialization Services filed a provisional patent around the findings.

 

Doctor Volt shared directions for turning your Blu-ray player into a laser-scanning microscope on Hackster.io.

 

And you can watch the DIYers' full video, which includes more on the building process and additional images taken by the microscope below.

 

 

Blu-ray player gathering dust? Turn it into a laser-scanning microscope

AMD introduced Navi 24 on desktops too in the form of the RX 6500 XT and RX 6400. These are budget offerings and come with 4gigs of VRAM which is simply not enough to compensate for the low PCIe bandwidth in the case that the VRAM buffer is exceeded. And exceeding the 4GB VRAM is relatively easy for 2022-23 AAA games where textures and other assets gobble it up fairly easily. While AMD has since launched an 8GB 6500 XT as well, its availability is a big question mark.

Now after the RX 6500 XT and the RX 6400, AMD could soon be releasing another card in the Navi 24 family in the form of the RX 6300. Support for the new GPU has been added to TechPowerUp(TPU) GPU-Z in the latest 2.52.0 version. Alongside the AMD RX 6300, several new Nvidia GPUs have also been listed.

Although an entry-level gaming graphics card is certainly welcomed as we haven't had any decent options since the AMD RX 550 and GT 1030 GDDR5, it is rumored that the AMD Radeon RX 6300 will only pack 2GB of VRAM which means it could be a higher-clocked version of the RX 6300M mobile GPU. If true, the 6300 will arguably be the worst card AMD or Nvidia will have launched in recent memory as the 4GB VRAM is already not enough due to the low PCIe bus width. On the other hand, a 4GB RX 6300 will be a lot better overall and the GPU could actually be decent for something of this caliber.

The latest GPU-Z also adds support for Nvidia's RTX 4070 Ti, RTX 3080 Ti 20GB variant, RTX 3070 Ti (GA102), RTX 3050 (GA107), among others. You can download TechPowerUp GPU-Z 2.52.0 version here.

TPU seemingly confirms AMD RX 6300, Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti, 3080 Ti 20GB, and more

Now finally after eight years, Intel has finally managed to beat AMD in this as Asus' in-house overclocker, Elmor, and overclocking specialist SkatterBencher, were able to break 9GHz, 9008.82 MHz to be precise, on an Intel Core i9-13900K CPU. This was done on an Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Apex motherboard using Liquid Helium cooling. However, Intel did gimp the chip to only use its performance cores (P-cores), and hyperthreading was disabled as well.

Here are the specs of the OC bench:

• Intel Core™ i9-13900K
• Asus ROG MAXIMUS Z790 APEX
• 32GB DDR5-5600 CL46 RAM
• Kinston A400 120GB SSD
• Windows 7 64-bit

Intel shared this video on its YouTube channel:

While the i9-13900K is the current fastest mainstream Intel CPU, the company is likely to release the highly binned Core i9-13900KS sometime soon. The KS variants basically run at full turbo mode right out of the box and are built to offer enthusiasts the fastest clocks all the time.

Via: HWBOT

Thanks to Asus, Intel finally manages to break AMD's overclocking record

The new 16-gigabit (Gb) DRAM chips from Samsung will benefit all platforms utilizing the DDR5 standard. However, the company highlights improvements specifically for AMD. The official press-release claims those chips are "optimized and validated" for the latest AMD Zen platforms with DDR5 support (Zen4 and AM5 socket).

Switching to a newer 12nm technological process allows Samsung to push the speeds up to 7.2Gbps (roughly translates into processing two 32GB UHD movies in just one second) while consuming up to 23% less than the "previous DRAM." The updated memory will use a new high-k material with increased cell capacity and improved "critical circuit characteristics." Samsung also brags about the industry's highest die density, which increases wafer productivity by 20%.

Samsung promises to utilize the new 12nm DDR5 DRAM chips in a wide range of market segments, so expect faster and more efficient RAM in all sorts of computers and servers. You can learn more in the official press release.

Samsung announces industry-first 12nm DDR5 memory with optimizations for AMD

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) said on Tuesday the practice broke copyright law.

It is common in the UK for people who don't live together to share their streaming service passwords, despite this typically being against terms of service agreements.

Netflix has never indicated it would take any legal action in such cases.

The IPO told the BBC it was both a criminal and civil matter.

"There are a range of provisions in criminal and civil law which may be applicable in the case of password sharing where the intent is to allow a user to access copyright-protected works without payment," it said.

"These provisions may include breach of contractual terms, fraud or secondary copyright infringement, depending on the circumstances.

"Where these provisions are provided in civil law, it would be up to the service provider to take action through the courts if required."

There is no evidence to suggest any of the major streaming video operators in the UK would do this.

Netflix said it wanted to "make it easy" for people borrowing others' accounts to set up their own, to transfer their profile into a new account, as well as to create "sub-accounts" for people to pay extra for family or friends.

It said it would start rolling out these features "more broadly" in early 2023.

The BBC has also approached streaming service operators Amazon and Disney for comment.

Scale of the problem

On Tuesday, the IPO published guidance on avoiding piracy and counterfeit goods online.

In the guidance, it called piracy a "major issue for the entertainment and creative industries" and gave examples of actions, such as password sharing, which it said broke copyright law.

Research firm Digital i told the Guardian in April 2022 it estimated more than a quarter of UK Netflix subscribers - around four million - were sharing their passwords.

The following month, then-Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries revealed she was one of them.

"My mum has access to my account, the kids do. I have Netflix but there are four other people who can use my Netflix account in different parts of the country," she told the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

When Netflix was growing in the UK, the streaming service joked in a tweet about password sharing being commonplace between friends and family.

    Love is sharing a password.
    — Netflix (@netflix) March 10, 2017

Since then user growth has stalled and Netflix has tried to crack down on the practice worldwide, which is against its terms of service - but it has never taken legal action.

Instead, it has introduced new price tiers to make the service seem more appealing, such as the £4.99 ad-supported price point introduced in the UK in November.

Criminal action

One interesting part of the IPO's response is the reference to criminal law - suggesting that people could theoretically face prosecution from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for password sharing.

The CPS did not rule this out.

A spokesperson told the BBC: "Any decision to charge someone for sharing passwords for streaming services would be looked at on a case-by-case basis, with due consideration of the individual context and facts of each case.

"As with all cases, if they are referred to the CPS by an investigator for a charging decision, our duty is to bring prosecutions where there is sufficient evidence to do so and when a prosecution is required in the public interest."

In other words, before the CPS could take action, there would first need to be a police investigation.

There is no evidence to suggest any police forces in the UK would open an investigation into someone for sharing their password to a streaming service.

Source

The lawsuit in question has been filed by 10 U.S. gamers, three of whom play exclusively on PlayStation consoles. It is important to note that this is not a class-action lawsuit and that it names only Microsoft as the defendant in the case, not Activision Blizzard.

The 45-page document argues that if the acquisition is allowed to proceed, it would have a lot of negative effects on the industry as a whole. These include reduced competition, higher prices, less creativity, decreased output, and Activision games being locked to Microsoft's own platforms. Excerpts from the lawsuit have been quoted below:

The proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft poses a substantial threat to the Plaintiffs, and to the public at large, in that the proposed acquisition may substantially lessen competition in each of the relevant product markets, and may cause loss to the Plaintiffs, and the public at large, in the form of higher prices, less innovation, less creativity, less consumer choice, decreased output, and other potential anticompetitive effects, which deprive the Plaintiffs, and the public at large, of the salutary benefits of competition. The proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft may also substantially reduce competition in the labor market for video game labor talent.

Employees in the video game industry may have substantially less choice among employers, and Microsoft may have outsized market power in hiring and retaining employees in the video gaming field, which requires specialized talent. [...] Concentration in the market may further limit employees’ negotiating power and ability to change employers for improved working environments and compensation.

Activision Blizzard is one of Microsoft’s primary competitors for top talent in the gaming content industry. The proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft may reduce the competition for talent in this field. The merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard will irreparably harm competition because Microsoft is acquiring, and thereby eliminating one of only a few significant rivals of gaming content creation. The current and future competition between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard will be irretrievably lost. If Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is allowed to commence, Microsoft may have far-outsized market power in several key gaming markets, including the labor market, which will allow Microsoft to further inhibit competition.

The plaintiffs have demanded that Microsoft and Activision's acquisition contract should be declared null and void, and that they should be permanently restricted from going in this direction ever again. They have also required Microsoft to pay for the cost of the lawsuit, including a "reasonable" attorney's fee. It remains to be seen if the lawsuit will hold up in court.

Source: Lawsuit document via Reuters, Bloomberg

Group of gamers sue Microsoft over $69 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition

As we have previously reported, Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton announced via a recent blog post that 100,000 units would be making their way into the supply chain, and that the in the latter-half of 2023 we can expect stock levels to return to pre-pandemic normality. That said, the supply chain shortage has impacted the normal cadence of Raspberry Pi releases, and according to Upton in an interview with Christopher Barnatt from Explaining Computers it means we sadly won't be seeing a Raspberry Pi 5 in 2023.

In the interview, Explaining Computers host Barnatt asks Upton about the future of the Raspberry Pi and if there are new models on the horizon. Upton then talks about how the past couple of years have been "weird" (pandemic and global chip shortage) and it has disrupted the cadence of Raspberry Pi development and release. Upton states that "the platform [Raspberry Pi 4] has been around longer than any Raspberry Pi platform has been around before, I think.".

At 29 minutes and 30 seconds Upton breaks the bad news, "Don't expect a Pi 5 next year [2023]" Upton then expands and explains that 2023 is a "recovery year". The recovery year is there to help Raspberry Pi and the technology industry recover from the double-punch of a pandemic and a global chip shortage which has caused a slowdown across the world. 

Upton explains "What would really be a disaster would be if we tried to introduce some kind of Raspberry Pi 5 product" Upton provides a scenario akin to that of the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, launched midway through the pandemic. It has been relatively unobtainium since release. 

Upton said he is very concerned about the consequences "if we introduced a Raspberry Pi 5 product and it couldn't ramp properly because of constraints, or if we introduced some Raspberry Pi 5 product and it somehow cannibalized some supply chain element." Upton then explains how cannibalization could impact the recovery of Raspberry Pi 4 and the 3 / 3+ and that Raspberry Pi has to be "ginger" as they move forward with its recovery. 

"The good news is the second half of next year, 2024 onwards, some of those things start to abate. And that's the point where we can start to think about what might be a sensible Raspberry Pi 5 platform," Upton said. 

Upton talks about how in the years since the Raspberry Pi 4 was released, it has seen performance upgrades, largely down to bumping the stock 1.5 GHz CPU speed to 1.8 GHz which was first implemented in the Raspberry Pi 400 and its impressive keyboard heatsink. The Pi 4 has also seen many software improvements and energy optimizations (the Pi 4 was notable for running rather warm in the early days) in its protracted history.

The normal cadence of Raspberry Pi releases is that we see a new "model B" every three to four years. But the global chip shortage has added an additional delay, with the Raspberry Pi 5 now likely seeing a 2024 release date. At five years this would mark the longest gap between Raspberry Pi releases in the almost 11 year history of the product.

We've reached out to Upton for further comment and will update this story with any additional information we gather. 

Source

Elon Musk started looking for a new Twitter CEO before polling the site’s users

Rochko also discussed the now-reversed bans on sharing links to Mastodon in his blog. Last week, Mastodon's Twitter account was suspended after it shared a link to the newly registered Mastodon account of @ElonJet, an account broadcasting public flight path data of Elon Musk’s private jet. Concurrently, Twitter accounts of multiple journalists whom Musk accused of posting his "exact, real-time location" were suspended. Mastodon even received reports saying users were unable to tweet links to any Mastodon servers, including those unrelated to the @ElonJet account.

"This is a stark reminder that centralized platforms can impose arbitrary and unfair limits on what you can and can’t say while holding your social graph hostage," Rochko stated. "At Mastodon, we believe that there doesn’t have to be a middleman between you and your audience and that journalists and government institutions especially should not have to rely on a private platform to reach the public."

He also says that Mastodon's free and open-source software enables anyone to run a social media platform entirely on their own infrastructure and under their own control. "Not only does this allow organizations like the German government or the European Commission to run their own Mastodon servers where they publish important information that gets distributed to thousands of their followers across many different Mastodon servers, but it also gives you the freedom to choose a social media provider the same way you would choose a telephone, internet, or e-mail provider, and to move from one to the other while retaining your followers."

Mastodon is not the only social media platform seeing massive growth. According to marketing intelligence firm SensorTower, Tumblr recently saw its adoption surge by 96% in the US and 77% worldwide. Hive also reached one million users about a month ago.

Rochko says that he is optimistic about the future of Mastodon. "Understanding that freedom of the press is absolutely essential for a functional democracy, we are excited to see Mastodon grow and become a household name in newsrooms across the world." He concludes by saying that he and his team are committed to improving their software to face the challenges that come with rapid growth and increasing demand.

Mastodon has amassed 2.5 million active users since Elon Musk took over Twitter

The US has commenced the development of a new intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) hypersonic vehicle, seen by some analysts as the successor to the vaunted SR-71 Blackbird spy plane of Cold War fame.

Last week, The Warzone reported that the US Air Force had awarded Leidos a contract with a US$334 million price ceiling aimed at “delivering a larger class air-breathing hypersonic system capable of executing multiple missions with a standardized payload interface, providing a significant technological advancement and future capability,” as stated in the contract quoted in the report.

It also notes that Leidos shall do work at the Wright-Patterson Air Base and other potential testing sites and is expected to be completed by October 2028 as part of the classified Mayhem program.

The report mentions that the aircraft will be capable of multiple missions, including delivering area effect, unitary payloads, or ISR missions. Furthermore, it says the hypersonic vehicle will be powered by a turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) powerplant scheme.

In a TBCC design, scramjets are used for supersonic or hypersonic flight. Still, these only work well at high speeds, traditionally needing an initial boost from rockets to achieve the required airspeed to function. Using jet engines to provide the initial boost would allow such an aircraft to take off from conventional runways and reach the necessary airspeed for its scramjets to kick in.

However, The Warzone mentions that much is still unknown about the Mayhem project. For example, it is unknown whether the vehicle type will be expendable or reusable as it is being described as somewhere between a hypersonic missile and a full-on hypersonic aircraft.

Despite this ambiguity, it is plausible that the Mayhem project aims to deliver a successor to the Cold War SR-71 spy plane.

In a January 2022 article in 19fortyfive.com, Ethen Lieser mentions that Lockheed Martin has been giving hints about the development of the SR-72 spy plane, which is envisioned to fly at Mach 6 to allow ISR operations over enemy territory before their air defenses could even react.

“The SR-72 is envisioned as an unmanned, reusable hypersonic ISR and strike aircraft capable of Mach 6 flight, or nearly double the speed of its predecessor, the SR-71 Blackbird. NASA is funding the validation of a previous Lockheed study that found that speeds up to Mach 7 could be achieved with a dual-mode engine that combines turbine and ramjet technologies,” the 1945 article said.

Graphic: 1945 / Twitter

While satellites and drones may have primarily replaced spy planes since the end of the Cold War, the emergence of anti-satellite and cyberwarfare capabilities may have renewed interest in stealth supersonic manned spy aircraft.

In a July 2013 Foreign Policy article, John Reed notes that evolving threats to space assets have forced the US to re-evaluate the need for manned airborne ISR spy aircraft.

He wrote then that while the US has operated many new spy planes over decades of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency in the Middle East, the planes are slow, propeller-driven, not stealthy and unsuited for penetrating heavily defended airspace.

As such, there may be renewed US appreciation of spy planes in today’s international environment characterized by great power competition. If so, US defense branches aren’t clearly in agreement about the role of spy planes.

In an August 2020 article for Forbes, David Axe mentions that the US Army and Air Force are at odds about the usefulness of spy planes in a great power conflict.

Axe says that while the US Army deploys the non-stealth Airborne Reconnaissance and Target Exploitation Multi-Mission System (ARTEMIS) spy planes to monitor China’s naval forces in the Pacific and Russia’s forces in Ukraine at standoff distances, the US Air Force is in the process of divesting itself of all non-stealth spy planes due to vulnerability concerns in a near-peer conflict. 

The ARTEMIS, powerful as its ground-sensing radars may be, is limited to flying over friendly or permissive airspace, scanning the peripheries of China and Russia’s territories, and lacks the capability to penetrate their vast landmasses, which gives them their strategic depth.

Thus, there may still be a need for a stealthy, high-altitude supersonic spy plane that can enter and exit heavily defended airspace, which may be hazardous to even the latest stealth aircraft.

In a July 2022 Sandboxx article, Alex Hollings mentions that most nations operate radar systems that can detect stealth aircraft, such as the F-22 and F-35, and that the former lacks the means to target these aircraft. In simpler terms, this means dated air defense radars can detect stealth aircraft but shooting them down is another matter.

Similarly, Dave Majumdar writes in a July 2014 USNI News article that China and Russian radars are on track to detect the F-22 and F-35 and that the proliferation of these radars poses serious questions about the survivability of stealth aircraft. Hence, there may be renewed need for a supersonic spy aircraft like the SR-71.

In a July 2020 CNN article, Jacopo Prisco says that the guiding philosophy behind the Mach 3+ SR-71 is to have a spy plane that can fly at the edge of the atmosphere beyond the range of Soviet air defenses, fly faster than a missile and be barely visible to radar.

An SR-71 spy plane. Image: Wikipedia

Prisco notes that when an adversary detects the aircraft and fires a missile, it is already on its way out of the area. He also notes that no aircraft were lost to enemy fire due to the SR-71’s unique capabilities.

Prisco says that the SR-71 was designed before the invention of real-time data links, so it needed to take pictures on film and then return to base for the photos to be developed and analyzed. Although the SR-71 was retired in 1999 due to the advent of drones and spy satellites, the Global War on Terror provided brief incentive for the aircraft’s revival. 

In a July 2022 article for The Warzone, Stephen Walker notes that the L-52M datalink upgrades to the SR-71 could have kept it relevant, but lack of support from the US Air Force leadership, high operating costs, competition from spy satellites and the U-2 spy plane, and the dismantling of the last SR-71 trainer aircraft in 2003 conclusively ended the type’s service.

However, the rise of China and the resurgence of Russia as near-peer competitors underscored the need for a spy aircraft along the lines of an improved SR-71 that relies on altitude and extreme speed to evade enemy defenses for ISR missions. 

Source

Often, a doctor’s writing can be illegible. So, an assistive technology that has the ability to transform such handwritten medical notes into easily readable texts with a bit of help from humans such as pharmacists is desirable.

For this reason, the search giant announced that it is working with pharmacists to hammer out a solution for the problem experienced in reading the prescription – an instruction written by a medical practitioner that authorizes a patient to be issued with a medicine or treatment. The announcement was made 8th annual Google for India event.

Google already has the technology to interpret a text from images but what makes it difficult to read a prescription is its unstructured format in shorthand. It’s full of clues that only specialists like pharmacists can decipher. However, the new machine-learning model from Google that’s based on state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence claims that it can identify and even highlight medicines within handwritten prescriptions.

In a prototype, a Google executive demonstrated how any individual could simply take a picture of the prescription and upload it to Google Lens app to process the information and highlight the medicines mentioned in notes.

Source

The US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) last week moved Chinese NAND flash memory maker Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (YMTC) from its “Unverified List” to its “Entity List”, the Biden administration’s latest punitive move against a major Chinese technology company.  

In the words of the BIS, those who qualify for the Entity List “have been involved, are involved, or pose a significant risk of being or becoming involved in activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy of the United States.”

Sales of semiconductor production equipment, electronic design automation software and other products to YMTC will now be subject to “stringent license requirements” that cover exports not only from the US but of products made in other countries using US technology.

Entities on the Commerce Department’s Unverified List are subject to export restrictions until the BIS either verifies their bona fides or decides to move them to the Entities List. YMTC was added to the Unverified List last October.

NAND flash is one of the two main types of semiconductor memory; the other is DRAM. Invented by Toshiba engineer Fujio Masuoka in 1987, it is now used in memory cards, USB drives, solid state drives (SSDs), personal computers, servers, data centers and cell phones.

NAND flash memory chips are a high-tech, high-volume commodity. Most of them are made by Samsung Electronics and SK hynix of South Korea, Japan’s Kioxia (formerly part of Toshiba) and Micron Technology of the US. American chipmaker Intel agreed to sell its NAND flash business to SK hynix in 2020.

NAND flash chips were originally single-layer, but in order to achieve higher storage capacity, several chips were stacked in the same package. Then, in 2013, Samsung introduced the first 3D NAND, which had 24 layers of storage cells on one chip. The entire industry took the same route, introducing 32-, 64-, 96- and 128-layer devices one after another.

An employee of Samsung Electronics shows a 30-nanometer 64-gigabit NAND flash memory device. Photo: AFP / Kim Jae-hwan

As a newcomer to the industry, YMTC skipped this transition. Founded in Wuhan in 2016, it started with 32-layer 3D NAND and burst upon the scene two years later when it introduced its patented “Xtacking” architecture and a 64-layer device at the Flash Memory Summit held in Santa Clara, California, in 2018. For this, it received one of two awards for Most Innovative Flash Memory Start-up Company.

Xtacking is a unique architecture in which the logic circuits that handle data transfer and other peripheral circuitry are built on one silicon wafer, which is then bonded to a second wafer holding the memory storage cells. YMTC claims that this reduces product development time and shortens the manufacturing cycle while permitting smaller die size and higher bit density.

Other companies fabricate 3D NAND on single wafers. In 2020, YMTC launched commercial 64-layer 3D NAND products and announced that it had developed 128-layer technology. In September 2021, the integrated circuit teardown experts at TechInsights found 128-layer 3D NAND from YMTC in an Asgard Memory SSD, indicating that the Chinese company had almost caught up with the rest of the industry.

Some outside observers believe that Xtacking is an unsustainably expensive approach that will require ongoing subsidies from the Chinese government. Earlier this month, industry analyst Jim Handy of Objective Analysis told EE Times: “I have always wondered how something built on two wafers can compete against something with the same die size built on a single wafer. Given that YMTC doesn’t need to be profitable, that may work for a while.”

Not surprisingly, YMTC vice president of research and development Hongbin Zhu has a different view. Delivering a keynote address at the 2022 Flash Memory Summit held in August, he said that Xtacking is now mass production capable and cost competitive, has good performance and is reliable, and that it is an extendable platform for future innovation. Xtacking 3.0, the latest version of the architecture, received one of ten awards for Most Innovative Memory Technology.

Zhu has spent more than 20 years in semiconductor R&D with a focus on process, equipment and materials development, and process integration. He holds a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Arizona and more than 100 patents. His presentation can be viewed here.

In October 2021, Xperi Holding Corp, which advertises itself as “an American technology company that licenses technology and intellectual property in areas such as mobile computing, communications, memory and data storage, and three-dimensional integrated circuit technologies, among others,” licensed its “foundational portfolio” of semiconductor bonding technology to YMTC.

This technology, according to Xperi, “…is a key enabling technology for current and future generations of high performance, high-capacity 3D NAND flash memory.”

YMTC’s patented “Xtacking” NAND chipmaking technique. Image: Twitter / TechInsights

Specifically, it “enables the disaggregation of the memory array and logic circuitry allowing the optimal wafer process node to be used for each.” Which is to say, it is ideally suited to YMTC’s Xtacking architecture.

In March 2022, it was reported that Apple was evaluating YMTC’s 3D NAND flash memory for possible use in iPhones sold in China. It was also reported that YMTC was offering prices 20% lower than those of its competitors. By October, its 128-layer devices had reportedly been certified but not yet used in production.

In November, TechInsights found Xtacking 232-layer 3D NAND flash memory in an SSD from Hikvision, which was put on the Entity List in 2019. According to TechInsights, this was “the first 200+ layer 3D NAND Flash solution on the market, putting YMTC ahead of Samsung, Micron [and others]… And although the (now former) market leaders are all working at the 200+ layer generation, YTMC is the first we’ve seen in production.”

TechInsights was duly impressed: “What YMTC has accomplished has been nothing short of amazing. Not only have they leap-frogged the biggest semiconductor companies in the world, but they did also it despite being headquartered in Wuhan, often facing crippling lockdowns during a worldwide pandemic. So, although the chips might seem to be stacked against them given today’s geo-political challenges, they certainly shouldn’t be ruled out.”

However, China-bashing politicians in the US were outraged. In September, the office of Senator Marco Rubio issued a statement saying:

“Earlier this month, Apple publicly acknowledged that it is considering procuring NAND memory chips for future iPhones from Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC), a state-owned company with extensive links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its armed wing, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
 
“US Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Mark Warner (D-VA), vice chairman and chairman of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, sent a letter to US director of National Intelligence Avril Haines calling for a public analysis and review of YMTC and the risks it presents to US national security. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) also signed the letter.”

After YMTC was put on the Unverified List in early October, Apple dropped its plans to source 3D NAND from YMTC.

Last week, when it became apparent that YMTC would be placed on the Entity List, Schumer said, “The Biden administration needed to act swiftly to prevent YMTC from gaining even an inch of a military or economic advantage.”

Semiconductor industry analysts estimate that YMTC now has about 5% of the NAND flash memory market, with some of them earlier predicting it would soon come to dominate the market.

Now some of them are writing that YMTC will be crippled by sanctions, with the company likely to find it difficult to operate without US-made equipment and probably impossible in future to license more US technology.

A YMTC worker examines a semiconductor wafer before the company was put on a US ‘Entity List’. Photo: YMTC

Significantly, Entity List restrictions cover 128-layer 3D NAND. YMTC already has it in production, apparently at a volume and quality acceptable to Apple, but will find it more difficult to produce without support from etch equipment maker Lam Research, inspection equipment maker KLA and other US suppliers.

Ramping up production of Xtacking 232-layer chips is likely to be delayed long enough for YMTC’s competitors to fend off the challenge.

Micron, which announced mass production of 232-layer NAND flash memory last July, is now advertising what it claims to be the world’s first SSD incorporating that device. Samsung started mass production of 236-layer chips in November. SK hynix plans to launch a 238-layer device next year. Kioxia aims to introduce a 200+ layer device in 2024.

All these companies have vastly greater production capacity than YMTC, no problem buying the latest chip-making equipment and the ability to develop their own version of Xtacking if that should prove to be the most efficient way to produce future generations of 3D NAND flash memory.

On the other hand, the Chinese market for NAND flash memory is large and the Chinese government will help YMTC take full advantage of it.

Having lost Apple as a customer, the company will turn to Xiaomi and other Chinese smartphone makers, which account for more than a third of the global market. Whatever YMTC can make, it can likely sell in China.

The next Flash Memory Summit is scheduled for August 2023. It will be interesting to see if YMTC participates and if it does, what its representatives will have to say after being placed on the Entity List.

Source

UPDATE 9:30 p.m. ET: Just kidding? The help center post on the linking policy is now producing a 404 error (here's a cached version(Opens in a new window) from the Wayback Machine), while the initial tweets from Twitter Support have been deleted. Twitter Safety also just posted a poll asking people if the company should roll out a policy it already announced.

Earlier, amid pushback on the linking ban from all sides, Elon Musk tweeted: "Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again."

He also posted a separate poll(Opens in a new window) asking if he should step down as head of Twitter. "Yes" is currently winning there, but there are nine more hours to vote. Some speculated the poll is just a ruse and that Musk has already selected a new CEO, as he said he would(Opens in a new window). Tonight, however, he tweeted: "No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor."

Original Story:
With much of the world focused on the World Cup final this afternoon, Twitter announced that it will ban links to rival social networks.

"We will no longer allow free promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter," Twitter Support tweeted(Opens in a new window) this afternoon, adding: "Specifically, we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames for the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post."

Twitter doesn't say how it will determine if an account was created "solely" to promote another service. But in a help center post(Opens in a new window) on the change, Twitter elaborated on content that will run afoul of this new rule, including:

•     “follow me @username on Instagram”

•     “username@mastodon.social”

•     “check out my profile on Facebook - facebook.com/username”

Efforts to bypass this rule—"e.g. URL cloaking, plaintext obfuscation...is in violation of this policy," Twitter says. "This includes, but is not limited to, spelling out 'dot' for social media platforms that use '.' in the names to avoid URL creation, or sharing screenshots of your handle on a prohibited social media platform."

Twitter says it will "still allow cross-posting content from any social media platform," without any futher explanation, as well as "paid advertisement/promotion for any of the prohibited social media platforms."

Those who violate the policy will face "a number of actions" for a first offense or isolated incident, "ranging from requiring deletion of one or more Tweets to temporarily locking account(s). Any subsequent offenses will result in permanent suspension."

If the offending links are included in someone's bio or account name, "we will temporarily suspend your account and require changes to your profile to no longer be in violation. Subsequent violations may result in permanent suspension."

That would, of course, affect the Twitter accounts of the rival social media platforms. Facebook's Twitter account(Opens in a new window), for example, currently links to facebook.com/liftblackvoices(Opens in a new window) in its bio, while Instagram's Twitter bio(Opens in a new window) links to its help center. Both accounts obviously link out to Facebook and Twitter URLs in their feeds, too.

Jack Dorsey, meanwhile, has been tweeting links to Nostr after calling for a more open alternative to social networks like Twitter. There's no word on if Twitter plans to suspend its co-founder and former CEO. (On Twitter, Dorsey responded "Why?" to Twitter's initial tweet about the ban, adding(Opens in a new window) "doesn’t make sense" in response to a tweet about Twitter banning Nostr promotion.)

On Twitter, Musk says that “casually sharing occasional links is fine, but no more relentless advertising of competitors for free, which is absurd in the extreme.” But neither he nor Twitter explain what “relentless” or “casually” mean in this context. And since Twitter says the platform will remove “content that contains links or usernames” for the social networks it has singled out, the new policy is causing confusion, to say the least.

Post founder Noam Bardin declined to comment on the ban, though he tweeted that Post users "can post any link" they want.

On Twitter, Mastodon said: “As a company from eastern Germany, we know that building a wall to try and keep people from leaving isn't a good idea.” Facebook responded succinctly with an emoji:

PCMag also reached out to Truth Social and Tribel, and will update this story if they respond. Notably, TikTok is not on the list of banned platforms.

The move comes as Musk has been tangling with reporters over their coverage of his bid to ban the @ElonJet account, which tracks the whereabouts of the CEO's private jet using publicly available data. Twitter recently put in place a ban on posting people's real-time location and subsequently suspended several journalists for posting links to or mentioning the @ElonJet accounts on other platforms, like Facebook and Mastodon.

Those suspensions were lifted this weekend, though Mashable's Matt Binder(Opens in a new window) says on Mastodon that he is once again locked out. The Washington Post's Taylor Lorenz also says(Opens in a new window) she's been permanently banned with little explanation.

The bans are all the more notable given that Elon Musk claims to have acquired Twitter in the name of free speech. "This is a battle for the future of civilization. If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead," Musk tweeted on Nov. 28.

It's unclear how quick Twitter will be to remove or suspend accounts; much of its staff has been decimated by recent layoffs and terminations since Musk took control of the social network.

Source

Searching for buried treasure isn’t easy. It can be a painstaking, even frustrating, process. It is common to sift through the proverbial sand for hours and hours and rarely hit the jackpot. However, with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, researchers are getting a taste of these often elusive bounties.

A “deep dive” for buried treasure into one of Webb’s iconic First Images, the Cosmic Cliffs, has revealed a hotbed of young stars in a particularly elusive stage of development. Close analysis of data from a specific wavelength of light, only captured by Webb, is now opening new doors to intriguing finds.

Webb Space Telescope Unveils Young Stars in Early Stages of Formation

Scientists taking a “deep dive” into one of Webb’s iconic first images have discovered dozens of energetic jets and outflows from young stars previously hidden by dust clouds. The discovery marks the beginning of a new era of investigating how stars like our Sun form, and how the radiation from nearby massive stars might affect the development of planets.

The Cosmic Cliffs, a region at the edge of a gigantic, gaseous cavity within the star cluster NGC 3324, has long intrigued astronomers as a hotbed for star formation. While well-studied by the Hubble Space Telescope, many details of star formation in NGC 3324 remain hidden at visible-light wavelengths. Webb is perfectly primed to tease out these long-sought-after details since it is built to detect jets and outflows seen only in the infrared at high resolution. Webb’s capabilities also allow researchers to track the movement of other features previously captured by Hubble.

Recently, by analyzing data from a specific wavelength of infrared light (4.7 microns), astronomers discovered two dozen previously unknown outflows from extremely young stars revealed by molecular hydrogen. Webb’s observations uncovered a gallery of objects ranging from small fountains to burbling behemoths that extend light-years from the forming stars. Many of these protostars are poised to become low mass stars, like our Sun.

“What Webb gives us is a snapshot in time to see just how much star formation is going on in what may be a more typical corner of the universe that we haven’t been able to see before,” said astronomer Megan Reiter of Rice University in Houston, Texas, who led the study.

Molecular hydrogen is a vital ingredient for making new stars and an excellent tracer of the early stages of their formation. As young stars gather material from the gas and dust that surround them, most also eject a fraction of that material back out again from their polar regions in jets and outflows. These jets then act like a snowplow, bulldozing into the surrounding environment. Visible in Webb’s observations is the molecular hydrogen getting swept up and excited by these jets.

“Jets like these are signposts for the most exciting part of the star formation process. We only see them during a brief window of time when the protostar is actively accreting,” explained co-author Nathan Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Previous observations of jets and outflows looked mostly at nearby regions and more evolved objects that are already detectable in the visual wavelengths seen by Hubble. The unparalleled sensitivity of Webb allows observations of more distant regions, while its infrared optimization probes into the dust-sampling younger stages. Together this provides astronomers with an unprecedented view into environments that resemble the birthplace of our solar system.

“It opens the door for what’s going to be possible in terms of looking at these populations of newborn stars in fairly typical environments of the universe that have been invisible up until the James Webb Space Telescope,” added Reiter. “Now we know where to look next to explore what variables are important for the formation of Sun-like stars.”

This period of very early star formation is especially difficult to capture because, for each individual star, it’s a relatively fleeting event – just a few thousand to 10,000 years amid a multi-million-year process of star formation.

“In the image first released in July (see image above), you see hints of this activity, but these jets are only visible when you embark on that deep dive – dissecting data from each of the different filters and analyzing each area alone,” shared team member Jon Morse of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “It’s like finding buried treasure.”

In analyzing the new Webb observations, astronomers are also gaining insights into how active these star-forming regions are, even in a relatively short time span. By comparing the position of previously known outflows in this region caught by Webb, to archival data by Hubble from 16 years ago (see image above), the scientists were able to track the speed and direction in which the jets are moving.

This science was conducted on observations collected as part of Webb’s Early Release Observations Program. The paper was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in December 2022.

Source

With much of the world focused on the World Cup final this afternoon, Twitter announced that it will ban links to rival social networks.

"We will no longer allow free promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter," Twitter Support tweeted(Opens in a new window) this afternoon, adding: "Specifically, we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames for the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post."

In a help center post(Opens in a new window) on the change, Twitter elaborated on content that will run afoul of this new rule, including:

•     “follow me @username on Instagram”

•     “username@mastodon.social”

•     “check out my profile on Facebook - facebook.com/username”

Efforts to bypass this rule—"e.g. URL cloaking, plaintext obfuscation...is in violation of this policy," Twitter says. "This includes, but is not limited to, spelling out 'dot' for social media platforms that use '.' in the names to avoid URL creation, or sharing screenshots of your handle on a prohibited social media platform."

Twitter says it will "still allow cross-posting content from any social media platform," as well as "paid advertisement/promotion for any of the prohibited social media platforms."

Those who violate the policy will face "a number of actions" for a first offense or isolated incident, "ranging from requiring deletion of one or more Tweets to temporarily locking account(s). Any subsequent offenses will result in permanent suspension."

If the offending links are included in someone's bio or account name, "we will temporarily suspend your account and require changes to your profile to no longer be in violation. Subsequent violations may result in permanent suspension."

That would, of course, affect the Twitter accounts of the rival social media platforms. Facebook's Twitter account(Opens in a new window), for example, currently links to facebook.com/liftblackvoices(Opens in a new window) in its bio, while Instagram's Twitter bio(Opens in a new window) links to its help center. Both accounts obviously link out to Facebook and Twitter URLs in their feeds, too.

Jack Dorsey, meanwhile, has been tweeting links to Nostr after calling for a more open alternative to social networks like Twitter. There's no word on if Twitter plans to suspend its co-founder and former CEO. (On Twitter, Dorsey responded "Why?" to Twitter's initial tweet about the ban, adding(Opens in a new window) "doesn’t make sense" in response to a tweet about Twitter banning Nostr promotion.)

Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, has not yet commented on the change, as he's currently at the World Cup final game.

Post founder Noam Bardin declined to comment on the ban, though he tweeted that Post users "can post any link" they want. PCMag also reached out to Meta, Mastodon, Truth Social, and Tribel, and will update this story if they respond. Notably, TikTok is not on the list of banned platforms.

Source

All modern processors are made with billions of transistors. The more the transistors, the more the processor power and speed. This increase in transistors is only possible with their size decreasing over the years.

A couple of years ago, 7nm based chips were common. Now, 5nm based CPUs and GPUs are entering the market. Going forward, 3nm chips are going to become common.

In microchip production, there is no bigger name in the world than Taiwan based TSMC. Almost all big processor companies in the world, except Intel and Samsung (mostly), gives contract to TSMC to make chips and it delivers with the latest of technology.

TSMC is currently busy with it’s 3nm tech, with an upgrade called N3E, that is an enhanced version of 3nm, expected to release in the second half of 2023.

As transistors become smaller, making them becomes harder. Intel for example will not go from 4nm to 2nm directly. It will move from 4nm, to 3nm to 2nm. Then comes an entirely new naming scheme. Where the process tech will not be measured in nm (nanometer) but in a (angstrom). Simply put, 10a or 10 angstrom means 1nm. So, Intel is not going to jump from 2nm to 1nm. It will go from 2nm (20a) to 18a and forward. We should expect something similar from TSMC too.

While it’s true that the actual nm size and their density between microchip manufacturing companies differ a lot, they give us a fair idea. It looks like TSMC is again racing ahead in the latest tech, with 1nm factory coming up in a few years.

TSMC 1nm Processors To Release In 2028

Taiwan based United Daily News reports (translated), thanks to @harukaze5719 for sharing, that TSMC’s 1nm plant is going to break ground in the middle of the year 2026. The report further states that the trial production of these 1nm chips are expected to start in 2027. The mass production is expected to start by 2028.

The article further mentions that while TSMC has no official timeline set for the 1nm production, TSMC’s CEO is already answered some questions about it in a closed door meeting. TSMC’s CEO Liu Deyin talked about where he was thinking the location of the 1nm should be and whether the Taiwanese government will have enough electricity for it five years later. Those who are unaware, microchip production requires high amount of uninterrupted electricity and a huge amount of clean water, about 100 liters per silicon wafer.

Later, Taiwanese government leaders went to the factory and forwarded the plans of its expansion to Taiwan’s National Science Council executives, with detailed designs to be prepared by August 2023 and pre-manufacturing work to start by 2024. The expansion of the factory is expected to start by 2026.

This is where things get confusing, though. The factory expansion is expected to start by 2026, yet the article mentions it’s “groundbreaking” to happen by the same mid-year. If indeed that works out, then first trial chips by 2027 and mass production by 2028 is a possibility.

Outcome And Likelihood

As mentioned earlier, making smaller transistors is not an easy task. Sometimes there’s a problem in a specific nm process, causing delays. Sometimes what happens is that output of good quality wafers in a process is less, causing a big decrease in production quantity and also financial losses to the parties involved. So things actually happening on time is something that cannot be guaranteed.

For example, reports suggest that TSMC’s 3NE process is slower than expected. While the delay isn’t big, it’s expected to come in the second half of 2023. Even there, it’s not guaranteed.

Even the 1nm process is expected to come in 2028 at the earliest. So whether TSMC does get a hold on their new factory on time and whether they deliver them from 2028 is to be seen.

TSMC’s 1nm Processors To Enter Mass Production In 2028

Apple’s reportedly working on several monitors — including an updated Pro Display XDR

Windows bugs

As has been the case for the past few weeks, we learned about a lot of new bugs across various versions of Windows, along with their respective fixes, where available.

We'll start with some good news. A bug making the Task Manager unreadable on custom themes in Windows 11 version 22H2 has now been squashed by Microsoft. This fix has been offered via the latest Patch Tuesday update for the OS under KB5021255. In a similar vein, VMware has also rolled out an update to Workstation Pro and Workstation Player to fix the "unsupported processor" error when installing Windows 11 or Windows Server 2022.

Switching gears a bit, Microsoft admitted that it pushed a buggy update to Windows 11 version 22H2 and Windows 10 version 22H2 a few days ago. The update was previously available only to version 21H2 of Windows 11 and Windows 10 when bugs had been discovered. Microsoft has now acknowledged its mistake but a permanent patch for the issues is still in the works.

We also found out that the latest Patch Tuesday release has broken the creation workflow for new Network Adapters on Hyper-V hosts managed by Software Defined Networking (SDN) configured System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) in Windows Server 2019 and 2022. Once again, a fix is in the works but temporary workarounds have been issued.

Continuing down this news stream, Microsoft has rolled out an additional fix for the file copy kernel bug. However, it's currently only available as a preview in Dev Channel build 25267. The company has also noted that it has fixed Direct Access connectivity issues plaguing Windows 11 and Windows 10. A patch for those affected by gaming performance issues on Windows 11 is now generally available too.

However, a new bug that popped up yesterday has icons on the Taskbar flickering, the Taskbar becoming unresponsive, and certain apps freezing. Microsoft has initiated Known Issue Rollback (KIR) but a more permanent solution is apparently still being worked on.

Windows 11's next "Moment" and Patch Tuesday

We heard rumblings this week that Microsoft is planning to roll out the "Moment 3" Windows 11 update containing new features sometime in May 2023. However, before you get all excited, do note that Moment 2 hasn't even been flighted yet. As such, not much else is known about this release. And while it doesn't mean much anymore, it seems like development for the Zinc semester has kicked off as well.

But let's return to the present for now. This week was Patch Tuesday week and received updates for all support versions of Windows. Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 netted KB5021291 and KB5021294 respectively, fixing a memory leak and a Daylight Savings Time (DST) issue. Meanwhile, Windows 10's KB5021233 resolved a problem with the Camera app but also introduced a few known issues. Finally, Windows 11 received KB5021234 (21H2) and KB5021255 (22H2) with a very lengthy changelog of new features and issues.

There was a Dev Channel release in this week too. Build 25267 is the final build in this channel for this year and it brings improved to the Taskbar, System Tray, File Explorer, a redesigned Windows Firewall dialog box, and more, along with several new issues, obviously. As is usually the case, a Windows Server release with the same build number was also rolled out, along with a preview of Windows Server Datacenter: Azure Edition. Windows 11 Beta Channel builds 22621.1037 and 22623.1037 with Voice Access improvements were made available too.

Lastly, if you're still using Windows 10 version 21H1 for some reason, it's time to upgrade as soon as possible as this particular version of the OS has reached end of support. And if you're an IT admin managing Windows update deployments, you may want to check out the latest Intune features which allow flexible configuration of feature updates and expedited quality updates.

An alternative to File Explorer... and other app updates

"Files App", which won the 2022 Microsoft Store award for best file management capabilities, received a couple of major updates this week. The first migrated the app from Universal Windows Platform (UWP) to Windows App SDK with rounded corners, Windows 11-style grids, new layouts, menu items, and more. Meanwhile, the other update introduced a "fake mica" theme to further make the design more consistent with Windows 11. The good news is that all of these features are available in the Windows 10 version of the app too which means that you can take advantage of Windows 11 aesthetics on an older OS as well.

Elsewhere, there were tons of updates for other apps too. We'll start off with Microsoft Teams where Microsoft is working on AI-powered file sharing and automatic lowering of (digital) hands in a meeting. A couple of capabilities that have been made available right now are Multi-Question Polls to gather a broader range of feedback and new touch and Whiteboard experiences on Teams Rooms for Android. In addition, a preview of Teams Premium with a 30-day free trial has been launched. It's basically an add-on to Teams with more personalization, AI functionality, and security features built-in. When it becomes generally available early next year, it will cost $10/user/month.

With all these updates on the Teams front, you'd think that Microsoft doesn't care for Skype anymore. But you'd be completely wrong. For some reason, Skype has received an update that adds real-time translation with your "TruVoice" personal voice. What's more is that the Redmond tech firm has announced a major Skype redesign that aims to introduce a more "delightful and fun" experience.

Coming over to Microsoft Edge, we found out that the browser will receive an update on February 14, 2023 that will permanently disable Internet Explorer. However, this will again be a staggered process and the actual mandatory axing will happen with June 2023's Patch Tuesday updates. In related news, the final Edge Dev update for this year introduced improvements to the Sidebar while a recent Canary update began offering 15GB of free data through the Edge VPN rather than the previous limit of 1GB. While we are talking about browser updates, it's also worth highlighting that Firefox 108 is now out with Windows 11 Efficiency Mode support, PDF forms improvements, and more.

Some native Windows apps received updates too. The new Windows Media Player introduced first on Windows 11 is now available for Windows 10 Release Preview Channel users as well. It features a modern interface with improved keyboard shortcuts and assistive technologies. Similarly, Quick Assist has been updated on older Windows versions Microsoft has promised to continue supporting it moving forward. And the updated Widgets design is now being rolled out to all Windows 11 users too.

Meanwhile, other smaller updates include the discontinuation of the Microsoft Authenticator app on Apple Watch next month, version 2211 of Windows Admin Center, Soundscape going open-source, and Android 13 in Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA) Preview. Finally, you may notice that the OneDrive app on Windows 11 has been redesigned, check out all the changes here.

Git gud

We don't have a ton of gaming news this time around but what we do have is indication that Microsoft is more intent on pitching Windows 11 as the go-to gaming platform rather than Xbox, at least in India. At a recent tech event in the country, Microsoft highlighted the gaming capabilities of Windows 11 while crickets chirped at its Xbox booth.

Over on the deals side though, the Xbox Series S is down to $239 during this holiday season. In the same space in digital gaming, Max Payne and Watch Dogs headline this week's Deals with Gold, while Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Dragon Ball The Breakers, and WWE 2K22 are on offer in this week's Free Play Days promotion. Similarly, Games with Gold is hosting Bladed Fury as its latest addition. You might also find it interesting to know that COD: MWII is having a free multiplayer event on Xbox this weekend and you don't even need Xbox Live Gold to partake.

Lastly, don't forget to check out this weekend's PC Game Deals, handpicked by our News Editor Pulasthi Ariyasinghe.

Dev Channel

• Microsoft has purchased a 4% stake in the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), as LSEG plans migration to Azure

• Microsoft's AutoRXN software can simulate a chemical reaction at 30x acceleration

• Microsoft will kick off the phased rollout of EU Data Boundary for cloud from January 1

• Crypto mining on Microsoft's online services without its express permission has been banned

• Microsoft's exFAT will get a massive performance boost on Linux, thanks to Sony

   

Under the spotlight

Following up from his piece a couple of weeks ago about five great features and improvements coming soon to Windows 11, News Reporter Taras Buria went in the opposite direction a few days ago and shared his thoughts on the five not-so-good changes coming to the OS.

Taras also penned a guide on how to enable hidden themes in Windows 11, original designed for educational environments.

Meanwhile, forum member Adam Bottjen authored a nifty Tech Tip Tuesday guide explaining how to use Wi-Fi calling when you're in an area with poor reception.

Finally, News Editor Pulasthi Ariyasinghe reviewed High On Life, from the creators of Rick and Morty, talking about he was surprised by the surprisingly deep combat and the overall humorous tone of the game. You can read his thoughts here.

Logging off

Our most interesting but somewhat scary news item of this week relates to a proof-of-concept (POC) which demonstrated how some anti-virus solutions could be tricked into permanently deleting your files, including those belonging to the system. Microsoft has already acknowledged the issue and patched the vulnerability in Defender and so have Avast, AVG, and Trend Micro with their respective products. Some like CrowdStrike, McAfee, and BitDefender are seemingly immune to this particular exploit.

Microsoft Weekly: Bugs, Windows 11's next "Moment", and an alternate File Explorer

It may seem obvious, to most people outside Silicon Valley, that Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter has been an unmitigated disaster.

In less than two months since taking over, Mr. Musk has fired more than half of Twitter’s staff, scared away many of its major advertisers, made (and unmade) a series of ill-advised changes to its verification program, angered regulators and politicians with erratic and offensive tweets, declared a short-lived war on Apple, greenlit a bizarre “Twitter Files” exposé, stopped paying rent on Twitter’s offices, and falsely accused the company’s former head of trust and safety of supporting pedophilia. His personal fortune has shrunk by billions of dollars, and he was booed at a Dave Chappelle show.

It’s not, by almost any measure, going well for him. And yet, one group is still firmly in Mr. Musk’s corner: Bosses.

In recent weeks, many tech executives, founders and investors have expressed their admiration for Mr. Musk, even as the billionaire has flailed at Twitter.

Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix, praised Mr. Musk at a New York Times DealBook conference late last month, calling him “the bravest, most creative person on the planet.”

Gavin Baker, a private equity investor, recently claimed that a lot of venture-funded chief executives were “inspired by Elon.”

And several partners at Andreessen Horowitz, the influential venture capital firm, have tweeted similar encomia to Mr. Musk’s management style.

Some of the elite cheerleading probably boils down to class solidarity, or naked financial self-interest. (Andreessen Horowitz, for example, invested $400 million in Mr. Musk’s Twitter takeover.) And some of it may reflect leftover good will from Mr. Musk’s successes at Tesla and SpaceX.

But as I’ve called around to C-suite executives and influential investors in Silicon Valley over the past few weeks, I’ve been surprised by how many are rooting for Mr. Musk — even if they won’t admit to it publicly.

Mr. Musk’s defenders point out that Twitter hasn’t collapsed or gone offline despite losing thousands of employees, as some critics predicted it would. They see his harsh management style as a necessary corrective, and they believe he will ultimately be rewarded for cutting costs and laying down the law.

“He says the things many C.E.O.s wish they could say, and then he actually does them,” said Roy Bahat, a venture capitalist with Bloomberg Beta.

Mr. Bahat, who has criticized some of Mr. Musk’s moves, characterized his Twitter tenure as a “living natural experiment” — a divisive but illuminating window into what other executives might be able to get away with, if they tried.

“He’s giving people a lot more knowledge of what’s possible,” he said.

Tech elites don’t simply support Mr. Musk because they like him personally or because they agree with his anti-woke political crusades. (Although a number do.)

Rather, they view him as the standard-bearer of an emergent worldview they hope catches on more broadly in Silicon Valley.

The writer John Ganz has called this worldview “bossism” — a belief that the people who build and run important tech companies have ceded too much power to the entitled, lazy, overly woke people who work for them and need to start clawing it back.

In Mr. Ganz’s telling, Silicon Valley’s leading proponents of bossism — including Mr. Musk and the financiers Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel — are seizing an opportunity to tug the tech industry’s culture sharply to the right, taking leftist workers and worker-sympathizers down a peg while reinstating themselves and their fellow bosses to their rightful places atop the totem pole.

Some Musk sympathizers do view things in such stark, politicized terms. The writer and crypto founder Antonio García Martínez, for example, has hailed Mr. Musk’s Twitter takeover as “a revolt by entrepreneurial capital” against the “ESG grifters” and “Skittles-hair people” who populate the rank and file at companies like Twitter.

But while some tech C.E.O.s might blame a sleeper cell of gender-studies majors for their problems, many of Mr. Musk’s elite fans adhere to a more straightforward, business-school kind of bossism. They admire him for ruling Twitter with an iron fist and making the kinds of moves that tech executives have resisted for fear of alienating workers — cutting jobs, stripping away perks, punishing internal dissenters, resisting diversity and inclusion efforts, and forcing employees back to the office.

These bossists believe that for the past decade or so, a booming tech industry and a talent shortage forced many C.E.O.s to make unreasonable concessions. They spoiled workers with perks like lavish meals and kombucha on tap. They agreed to use workplace chat apps like Slack, which flattened office hierarchies and gave junior workers a way to directly challenge leadership. They bent over backward to give in to worker demands — D.E.I. workshops, flexible remote work policies, company wellness days — to keep them happy and prevent them from jumping ship to a competitor.

Then, Elon Musk showed up at Twitter, and refused to do any of that. Instead of trying to ingratiate himself with Twitter’s workers, Mr. Musk fired many of them and dared the rest to quit — forcing them to attest that they were “extremely hard core” if they wanted to keep their jobs. He had done some of this before at his other companies. But at Twitter, he did it all out in the open, using his Twitter account as a cudgel to keep workers in line.

Twitter’s former leaders, steeped in the conciliatory style of boom-time management, had allowed for an atmosphere of open debate and discussion — one of the company’s core values was “communicate fearlessly to build trust” — but Mr. Musk replaced that with a culture of absolute fealty. He dressed down Twitter employees in public, and fired any who dared to criticize him. He was especially dismissive of the company’s diversity and inclusion efforts — mocking an old “Stay Woke” T-shirt found in a Twitter closet and disbanding the company’s employee resource groups (including groups for Black, L.G.B.T.Q. and female employees).

For many people, Mr. Musk’s moves seemed like a case study in how not to manage a company. But for some Silicon Valley elites, they were a lightning bolt — a long-awaited answer to the question, “What if we just treated workers … worse?”

Bosses may not agree with every move Mr. Musk makes, but many of them think he’s right on the big-picture stuff. Tech companies are bloated and unproductive. Woke H.R. departments have gone too far. Workers should stop being activists and focus on doing their jobs.

Mr. Musk is not the first tech leader to air these views. Companies like Coinbase, Kraken and Basecamp have all tried to limit employee activism in recent years, with debatable results. (More recently, Meta barred workers from discussing “disruptive” topics like abortion and gun rights on workplace forums.)

What’s different now is the backdrop. For the first time in nearly two decades, economic pressures have cut into the tech industry’s profits and companies that once spared no expense to keep workers happy are trimming their sails and conducting layoffs. Executives with sagging stock prices are declaring themselves “wartime C.E.O.s,” and workers who could have credibly threatened to leave their jobs for cushier ones a year ago are now hanging on for dear life.

All of this has shifted leverage away from workers and toward bosses.

“When a job market loosens, the attention that management places on employee desires — whether workplace perks or better D.E.I. — can wane, simply because they have less need to offer those things to recruit or retain,” said Margaret O’Mara, a history professor at the University of Washington who has written about Silicon Valley’s labor culture.

In other words, Mr. Musk has picked the right time to start a management revolution. Now, the question is: How many bosses will follow him into the fire?

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Once a VR true believer, a “wearied” John Carmack leaves Meta

Imply Data Inc. claims that after paying invoices totaling about $4.4 million under a contract for proprietary software services that runs until 2024, Twitter didn’t pay its Nov. 30 quarterly bill and “disclaimed any obligation to pay any future invoices,” according to the complaint filed in San Francisco state court. Imply estimated its damages at more than $8 million.

Just a week ago, Twitter was sued by a private jet provider for refusing to pay about $200,000 for two flights taken by it former chief marketing officer as Musk was preparing to close his $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform.

It’s been a tumultuous time for the company under Musk’s leadership, with mass layoffs, an exodus of advertisers and departures from the platform by high-profile users as well as suspensions of journalists critical of Musk. As bills have mounted, Musk has asked staff to renegotiate prices with vendors and suppliers, threatening to throw around the weight of his other companies if things don’t go his way, Bloomberg Businessweek reported this week

Imply, which was founded in 2015 and is based in Burlingame, California, said its lawsuit marks an “egregious example” of Twitter’s refusal to pay what it owes other companies “without good cause.”

In the suit, Imply said that prior to Musk’s arrival, Twitter paid the software company more than $10 million over four years and “has always been very pleased with Imply’s product and its related maintenance and support services.” A decision was made in mid-2021 to extend their contract another three years.

Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The case is Imply Data Inc. v. Twitter Inc., CGC-22-603473, California Superior Court, San Francisco County.

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Mastodon is divided into groups, called servers, based on many topics including the UK, snooker, and security.

Twitter has blocked links to some of the largest servers which users would join, including the most popular "social" channel.

And Twitter is also stopping users from adding links to their Mastodon account in their bios - calling them "malware".

There is absolutely no evidence to support the suggestion that Mastodon contains malware - malicious software that can harm your device.

Mastodon said it gained hundreds of thousands of users in November, with some Twitter users seeking alternative platforms.

The same result occurs if the link is posted in the location or website field

The BBC has been unable to post links to the most popular mastodon.social server, as well as more than 10 others - including a server for journalists and another for people in the UK.

But not all links to Mastodon have been blocked, and there are ways around it.

The BBC's technology editor Zoe Kleinman was able to successfully tweet a reference to her Mastodon account - zsk@mastodonapp.uk - because it is not a clickable link.

A subsequent attempt to turn the reference into a clickable link to her Mastodon page cannot be posted to Twitter.

It is not clear how many Mastodon servers have been blocked on Twitter, or why.

Users attempting to post links to blocked servers will receive an error message instead, which says: "We can't complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful."

As well as blocking certain links to Mastodon, Twitter has taken action against its rival's main account.

The Twitter account @joinmastodon, which advertised the site and its features, was unexpectedly suspended on Thursday alongside those of several notable journalists covering Twitter owner Elon Musk.

This has led the EU to threaten Mr Musk with sanctions, with commissioner Vera Jourova warning that the EU's Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom.

"Elon Musk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon," she tweeted.

A Twitter spokeswoman told tech website The Verge that the journalists' ban was related to the live sharing of location data.

This came after Mr Musk vowed to sue the owner of a Twitter account that tracked his private jet. This account has also been suspended.

While no reason has been given for the Mastodon suspension, there is a coincidence in timing - in the few hours beforehand, @joinmastodon shared a link showing where the person tracking Mr Musk's jet can be found on the rival social media site.

Screenshot captured from the Internet Archive, just a few hours before the page was suspended

Will Moy, chief executive at fact-checking charity Full Fact, said he knew of "no reason" for there to be "a general block on Mastodon".

"It is concerning that a vitally important social media company like Twitter appears to be making erratic and unaccountable decisions that affect what we can all see and share online," he said.

"If we're serious about defending our democracy and recognising the powerful influence that social media can have in shaping our democratic debate, we have to be serious about holding that power to account."

The BBC has approached Twitter and Mastodon for comment.

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The European Union is threatening to sanction Twitter after Elon Musk abruptly suspended several journalists from the platform on Thursday night.

“News about arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter is worrying,” tweeted(Opens in a new window) Věra Jourová, the EU's vice president for values and transparency.

The suspensions could violate European law. In her tweet, Jourová pointed out that the EU’s Digital Services Act and Media Freedom Act(Opens in a new window) are designed to protect freedom of speech and media independence. “@ElonMusk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon."

Germany’s foreign ministry also weighed in on the suspensions. “Freedom of the press cannot be switched on and off as you will. As of today, the journalists below can no longer follow, comment or criticize us. So we have a problem @Twitter," the agency wrote on Twitter.

The warnings are ironic since Musk acquired Twitter ostensibly to protect free speech on the platform. And the threat of regulation comes when the EU has already been demanding that Musk follow European requirements on social media platforms.

Last month, European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton listed the various ways Twitter will need to regulate itself in order to comply with EU rules. This includes investing in content moderation—which Musk has worked to scale back since taking over the company—while also ensuring freedom of speech.

However, Musk says the suspensions against the journalists will be temporary, potentially lasting only seven days. He shut down the accounts, he says, because the journalists were “doxxing” his real-time location by linking or posting screenshots of @ElonJet, a service that aggregated publicly available information to track the take-off and landing locations of Musk's personal jet.

The day before, Musk permanently suspended the @ElonJet account, even though he previously said he wouldn’t in order to protect free speech. He’s since changed his mind, claiming a stalker had followed a car carrying one of his children, and put in place a ban on sharing people's real-time location info via Twitter.

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