Microsoft, BlackRock to launch $30 billion fund for AI infrastructure
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Reuters ^
| 9/17/2024 | Harshita Mary Varghese
BlackRock and Microsoft plan to launch a more than $30 billion fund to invest in artificial intelligence infrastructure to build data centers and energy projects, the companies said on Tuesday. AI models, especially those used for deep learning and large-scale data processing, require substantial computational power, leading to higher energy consumption. The
computing requirements for AI have dictated that tech companies string together thousands of chips in clusters to achieve the necessary amount of data crunching power, leading to a surge in the demand for these specialized data centers....
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What Microsoft’s Borking of Grub Says About Redmond’s ‘Love’ of Linux
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FOSS Force ^
| 27 August 2024 | Christine Hall
Last week it became clear to me that although Microsoft has “loved” Linux for more than a decade now, that love still doesn’t extend to the Linux desktop.This realization came to me as I read news of a Windows security update that borked Grub, the open-source boot loader that’s used by most
Linux distributions and which is used to load Windows in dual-boot situations.After the Windows update was applied, an untold number of Windows’ dual booters were unable to boot Linux, but instead were served the scary and cryptic error message: “Something has gone seriously wrong.”According to Ars Technica, the...
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Techie Told 'Bill Gates' Excel Is Rubbish – and the Microsoft Boss Had it Fixed in 48 Hours
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The Register ^
| Fri 9 Aug 2024 | Simon Sharwood
I'm a Mac. I'm a PC. You're both annoying meOn Call The Register knows that tech support is a vocation that induces frustration, which is why each Friday we offer a new edition of On Call – the reader-contributed column that details real-life support stories so you can at least enjoy misery
in company. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Brad" who told us about his first tech support job, for a grocery retailer based in a major US city. Brad spent most of his time at the company's biggest store, but a few times a week was...
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Iran accelerating cyber activity that appears meant to influence US election, Microsoft says
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NY Post ^
| 8/09/24 | Ass Press via NY Post
Iran is ramping up online activity that appears intended to influence the upcoming US election, in one case targeting a presidential campaign with an email phishing attack, Microsoft said Friday. Iranian actors also have spent recent months creating fake news sites and impersonating activists, laying the groundwork to stoke division and potentially
sway American voters this fall, especially in swing states, the technology giant found. The findings in Microsoft’s newest threat intelligence report show how Iran, which has been active in recent US campaign cycles, is evolving its tactics for another election that’s likely to have global implications. The report...
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'Flirty' Bill Gates was like a 'kid in a candy store' and Microsoft BANNED young interns from being alone with him as the REAL reason for the multi-billionaire's marriage breakdown is revealed
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UK Daily Mail ^
| August 2 2024 | Dan Bates
Bill Gates was like a 'kid in a candy store' with young pretty Microsoft interns, so much so that they were banned from being alone with him, an upcoming book claims. Intimate
details of the billionaire's relationships with women are set to be exposed by New York Times journalist Anupreeta Das, who writes that Gates' infidelity left his wife Melinda 'seething for a long time.' Bill’s calendar would allegedly include blocks of time which were for unexplained reasons, and his security staff were once overhauled by Melinda because she felt they were ‘enabling’ him.
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After CrowdStrike Computer Catastrophe, Will Kamala-Microsoft Alliance Inflict Blue Screen of Death on Free Speech?
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Revolver News ^
| July 26, 2024
It is a testament to how utterly extraordinary the past couple weeks have been that the Microsoft-CrowdStrike computer catastrophe was not even the second most important story in the news cycle. On
Friday, July 19th, the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike implemented a botched update that crashed Microsoft devices on which it was installed, ultimately inflicting the dreaded “blue screen of death” on over 8.5 million devices worldwide. Banks, businesses, hospitals, and airlines were hit particularly hard, and to this day, some of these institutions are having difficulty restoring functionality to their systems. Video compilations such as the one below offer arresting...
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Microsoft releases recovery tool to help repair Windows machines hit by CrowdStrike issue
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The Verge ^
| JULY 21, 2024 | By Tom Warren
IT admins now have a quicker way to get machines up and running again after CrowdStrike’s faulty update. Microsoft
has released a recovery tool that’s designed to help IT admins repair Windows machines that were impacted by CrowdStrike’s faulty update that crashed 8.5 million Windows devices on Friday. The tool creates a bootable USB drive that IT admins can use to help quickly recover impacted machines. While CrowdStrike has issued an update to fix its software that led to millions of Blue Screen of Death errors, not all machines are able to automatically receive that fix. Some IT admins have...
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Microsoft Lays Off DEI Team Just Days after Global IT Outage: ‘No Longer Business Critical’
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Daily Fetched ^
| JULY 22, 2024 | Jason Walsh
Multi-trillion-dollar tech company Microsoft has laid off an entire team dedicated explicitly to DEI in the wake of the recent global IT outage. The
news comes just days after Microsoft estimated that 8.5m computers were disabled by the global IT outage caused by a “glitch” from security company CrowdStrike. The BBC reported: The fall out from the IT glitch has been enormous and was already one of the worst cyber-incidents in history. The number given by Microsoft means it is probably the largest ever cyber-event, eclipsing all previous hacks and outages. The closest to this is the WannaCry cyber-attack in...
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Government holds emergency Cobra meeting after Microsoft outage sparks global chaos with planes and trains grounded, GPs in mayhem, shops closed, football tickets cancelled and TV channels offline
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The Mirror US ^
| July 29, 2024 | Jessica Gibb and Scarlett O'Toole
A Microsoft global outage has wreaked havoc across America, locking countless individuals out of their bank accounts, causing hospital cancelations and even grounding flights. The
notorious Blue Screen of Death is popping up everywhere, from banks to supermarkets and media outlets, causing widespread panic and confusion. All United, Delta and American Airlines flights were grounded amid the chaos. Microsoft has issued a statement on the issue. “Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions,” Microsoft said on X this morning. “We still expect that users will continue to see gradual relief as we continue...
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News Summary Intelligence Report 7/19/2024 Newsdump Friday*Trump Talks With Zelensky*Secret Service Director Will Testify Before House Committee*Worldwide IT Disruption Involving Crowdstrike In Microsoft Windows*
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Nextrush Free ^
| 7/19/2024 | Nextrush/Self
Russian air defenses downing... The notion that Iran could produce materials needed for a nuclear weapon in 'one or two weeks'... The man who tried to kill President Trump flew a drone over the site... Democrat US Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio joining the list of Democrats calling for Joe Biden to
step aside... The Biden Administration setting a goal for the federal government to eliminate single-use plastic... Donald Trump speaking with Ukraine's President... Tunisian President Kais Saied, who has ruled with wide ranging powers since July of 2021, wants re-election... In Kenya President William Ruto announcing 11 cabinet appointments......
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Microsoft lays off its DEI team as fired staff complain diversity ideals were 'no longer business-critical'
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UK Daily Mail ^
| July 16, 2024 | Will Potter
Microsoft sparked internal revolt after it fired its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) team, leading the program's leader to slam the company's 'changing business needs.' The
tech giant's move was exposed in an email obtained by Business Insider, which appears to show the DEI internal team leader criticizing the fact diversity was 'no longer business critical.' Microsoft joins a number of tech companies in walking back DEI commitments that were made in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, including Google, Meta and Zoom. It is unclear how many employees were laid off, and Microsoft did not...
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Google and Microsoft now each consume more power than some fairly big countries
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Tech Radar ^
| 7/15/2024 | Craig Hale
Big Tech consumes more than many countries.. Tech giants Google and Microsoft each consumed 24 TWh each of electricity during 2023, surpassing the consumption of more than 100 countries, new research has claimed. Analysis
by Michael Thomas, shared on X, claims both Google and Microsoft consumed the same amount of energy as Azerbaijan, which has an estimated GDP of $78.7 billion. Google’s 2023 revenue stood at $307.4 billion, and Microsoft’s at $211.9 billion. The massive energy usage underscores the substantial environmental impact of these companies. But it also serves as a reminder of their sheer scale, and the positive impact...
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Microsoft laid off a DEI team, and its lead wrote an internal email blasting how DEI is 'no longer business critical'
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Business insider ^
| 15th July 2024 | Ashley Stewart
After Microsoft laid off an internal team focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion, a team leader blasted the company for a lack of investment in these efforts. "True
systems-change work associated with DEI programs everywhere are no longer business critical or smart as they were in 2020," a leader of the team wrote in an email sent to thousands of employees, which was viewed by Business Insider. The email states the team was eliminated due to "changing business needs" as of July 1. It's unclear how many employees were affected. Many technology companies, including Microsoft, made commitments to improve diversity...
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Palestinians say Microsoft unfairly closing their accounts
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BBC ^
| 12th July 2024 | Mohamed Shalaby and Joe Tidy
Palestinians living abroad have accused Microsoft of closing their email accounts without warning - cutting them off from crucial online services. They
say it has left them unable to access bank accounts and job offers - and stopped them using Skype, which Microsoft owns, to contact relatives in war-torn Gaza. Microsoft says they violated its terms of service - a claim they dispute. "They killed my life online," said Eiad Hametto, who lives in Saudi Arabia. "They’ve suspended my email account that I’ve had for nearly 20 years - It was connected to all my work," he told the BBC....
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A comprehensive list of 2024 tech company layoffs: rom major layoffs at Tesla, Google, Amazon and Microsoft to small fintech startups and apps
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Tech Crunch ^
| 06/05/2024 | Cody Corrall Alyssa Stringer
The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following
significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the first months of 2024. Smaller-sized startups have also seen a fair amount of cuts, and in some cases, have shut down operations altogether.By tracking these layoffs, we’re able to understand the impact on innovation across companies large and small. We’re also able to see the potential impact of businesses embracing...
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Bing’s API is down, taking Microsoft Copilot, DuckDuckGo and ChatGPT’s web search feature down too
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Tech Crunch ^
| May 23, 2024 | Roman Dillet
Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, isn’t working properly right now. At
first, we noticed it wasn’t possible to perform a web search at all. Now it seems search results are loading properly. But this outage also appears to still be affecting Bing’s application programming interface (API), which means that other services that rely on Bing aren’t working properly. For instance, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia, two alternative search engines that rely on Bing’s search results, aren’t returning any search results right now. Microsoft Copilot isn’t loading either. ChatGPT Plus subscribers, who have the ability to perform web searches, also get an error when...
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Elon Musk Suggests Shifting 'Consumer Desktops To Linux' As Satya Nadella Promotes Microsoft's New Windows AI Feature 'Recall' With Photographic Memory
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MSN ^
| 5/21/24
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has once again targeted Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) after a clip of Satya Nadella surfaced on social media talking about new AI capabilities in Windows PCs. What Happened: In an interview with Wall Street Journal which was made public on Monday, Nadella spoke about new AI capabilities
of Microsoft’s Copilot+PCs with Qualcomm chips and AI Windows. One of the features was “Recall,” which enables Windows to take constant screenshots of the user’s screen and use a generative AI model to process the data, making it searchable. The clip from the video was shared by a...
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Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs have built-in generative AI capabilities
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Times of India ^
| 5/21/24 | Abhinav Kaustubh
Microsoft has unveiled a new category of Windows PCs called Copilot+ at a special event held at their campus in Redmond, Washington. These PCs are designed to handle more AI tasks locally, thanks to powerful hardware that includes dedicated neural processing units (NPUs) capable of at least 45 trillion operations per second
(TOPS). Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella introduced the Copilot+ PCs, calling them "the fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs ever built." The company has partnered with major PC manufacturers like Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer, ASUS, and Samsung, as well as chipmakers Qualcomm, Intel, and AMD to bring these devices to...
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Microsoft’s AI chatbot will ‘recall’ everything you do on a PC
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AP ^
REDMOND, Wash. (AP) — Microsoft wants laptop users to get so comfortable with its artificial intelligence chatbot that it will remember everything you’re doing on your computer and help figure out what you want to do next.The software giant on Monday revealed a new class of AI-imbued personal computers as it confronts
heightened competition from Big Tech rivals in pitching generative AI technology that can compose documents, make images and serve as a lifelike personal assistant at work or home.
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News Summary-Intelligence Report 5/16/2024 Newsdump Thursday*Biden Administration Deems Marijuana Less Dangerous*Microsoft Moving Out Of China*Putin Visit To China
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Nextrush Free ^
| 5/16/2024 | Nextrush/Self
A woman and a child killed in a Ukrainian drone attack near the southwestern city of Belgorod... Russia expelling the British defense attaché in Moscow... South Africa pushing its case against Israel at the International Criminal Court. Israel accused of "genocide"... The Russian Aerospace Forces in Syria attacking three jihadist bases... The
Biden Administration Justice Department deeming marijuana to be a less dangerous drug... Walmart with strong numbers in its first quarter comparable sales rising 3.8 percent... During his corruption trial in federal court New Jersey Democrat Senator Bob Menendez disclosing that his wife... A new Fox News poll puts...
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