by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Large Enterprise, Markets, Technology
San Francisco : In its vision to empower its employees with modern devices, Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled Surface Pro with LTE Advanced that will begin shipping to business customers in December.
“We are at the edge of a major technology shift towards more intelligent computing – one fueled by the rise of data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning,” the company said in a blog post.
“We are bringing even greater mobility to our Surface Pro line by making Surface Pro with LTE Advanced available to business customers beginning December 2017,” it added.
According to The Verge, Microsoft’s Surface Pro with LTE Advanced will include an Intel Core i5 processor and a Qualcomm Snapdragon X16 modem.
Microsoft is using this LTE chipset, with 20 LTE bands, to ensure that anyone can buy this model of Surface Pro and have LTE work in any country around the world.
The base model will include an Intel Core i5 processor, 4 GB RAM, and 128 GB of SSD storage and will be priced at $1,149.
Microsoft is also offering an 8GB of RAM model with 256GB of SSD storage for $1,449.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Business, Markets, Medium Enterprise, Technology
San Francisco : Putting to rest the concerns surrounding the viability of Kinect, Microsoft has finally stopped manufacturing the depth camera and microphone accessory which debuted in 2010, media reported.
Microsoft’s Kinect for Xbox 360 became the fastest-selling consumer device back in 2011.
In the years since its debut on Xbox 360, Kinect started becoming popular among hackers looking to create experiences that tracked body movement and sensed depth, The Verge reported on Wednesday.
Microsoft even tried to bring Kinect even more mainstream with the Xbox One, but the pricing and features failed to live up to expectations, the report said.
However, despite its failure in the market, the research and hardware that went into building Kinect has helped Microsoft advance its products elsewhere.
“HoloLens uses many of the Kinect technologies for depth-sensing, and many laptops now ship with Windows Hello cameras that use the learnings of Kinect to recognise people’s faces,” the report said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Technology
San Francisco : Microsoft’s Windows security team has discovered a remote security flaw in Google Chrome that can be exploited by hackers.
“Our discovery of ‘CVE-2017-5121’ indicates that it is possible to find remotely exploitable vulnerabilities in modern browsers. Chrome’s relative lack of remote code execution (RCE) mitigations means the path from memory corruption bug to exploit can be a short one,” wrote Jordan Rabet, member of the Microsoft Offensive Security Research team, in a blog post late on Thursday.
“Chrome’s process for servicing vulnerabilities can result in the public disclosure of details for security flaws before fixes are pushed to customers,” Rabet added.
According to an Engadget report on Friday, Google immediately posted the fix for the remote flaw on GitHub.
“While the fix for this issue doesn’t out the vulnerability, according to Microsoft, that hasn’t always been the case. Microsoft believes that a fix should be applied before they are public knowledge,” the report added.
The Microssoft-Google rivalry over security flaws in their products is not new.
Last year, Google disclosed a major Windows bug before Microsoft was ready to patch it.
“It irritated the company so much that Windows chief Terry Myerson authored a blog post criticising Google for not disclosing security vulnerabilities responsibly,” The Verge reported.
After testing the latest Windows 10 “Fall Creators Update” over the past six months, Microsoft has now released the latest edition to secure over 500 million Windows 10 devices globally, starting with new machines first.
Microsoft wants users to keep their software up to date in order to avoid another series of deadly cyber attacks such as WannaCrypt that impacted worldwide PCs that were running an outdated Microsoft software.
Two new ransomware families like “WannaCrypt” and “Petya” targeted dated Windows operating systems and created havoc across the world, including at some places in India.
Now, with the official rollout of Windows 10 “Fall Creators” update, Microsoft wants to stay one step ahead in identifying and preventing security threats.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Technology
San Francisco : After testing the latest Windows 10 “Fall Creators Update” over the past six months, Microsoft has released the latest edition to secure over 500 million Windows 10 devices globally, starting with new machines first.
“For the best experience, we recommend you wait until Windows 10 is automatically offered to your device. You don’t have to do anything to get the update; it will roll out automatically to you through ‘Windows Update’ if you’ve chosen to have updates installed automatically on your device,” Microsoft wrote in a blog post late on Tuesday.
Also known as “Windows 10 Version 1709”, this iteration of Windows 10 brings changes to the overall design and usability of Windows 10.
The company has added a number of new features to improve Microsoft’s digital assistant Cortana, Edge (a web browser developed by Microsoft and included in Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile and Xbox One) and Photos (which is an image viewer, video clip editor, image organiser, photo editor and photo sharing app included with the Windows 8 and Windows 10 OS).
The new update also makes the OS more secure and includes Mixed Reality (MR) support.
Users who do not want to wait for the update to roll out automatically can manually check for updates on PC.
However, it will only work if the device is eligible to get the “Fall Creators Update” as part of the initial roll out phase.
Alternatively, the user can manually get the update via the Software Download Site, the company added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Marketing Basics, Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Technology
San Francisco : Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft have teamed up to launch an open-source and deep learning interface ‘Gluon’ that will help developers to deploy machine learning models across several platforms.
According to a report in ZDNet, the interface would give developers a place where they can prototype, build, train and deploy machine learning models.
“Today’s reality is that building and training machine learning models requires a great deal of heavy lifting and specialised expertise,” Swami Sivasubramanian, Vice President of Amazon AI was quoted as saying.
“We created the Gluon interface so building neural networks and training models can be as easy as building an app,” Sivasubramanian added.
The companies claim that ‘Gluon’ is a concise, easy-to- understand programming interface compared to other offerings, and it gives developers a chance to quickly prototype and experiment with neural network models without sacrificing performance.
“We believe it is important for the industry to work together and pool resources to build technology that benefits the broader community,” added Eric Boyd, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft AI and Research.
“Machine learning has the ability to transform the way we work, interact and communicate. To make this happen we need to put the right tools in the right hands and the ‘Gluon’ interface is a step in this direction,” Boyd added.
In August, Microsoft and Amazon came to an agreement wherein Cortana users would have access to Alexa and vice-versa.
According to a report in the New York Times, the two rival tech firms were reportedly coordinating behind the scenes for the past year to make artificial intelligent assistants Alexa and Cortana communicate with each other.
The partnership will allow people to summon Cortana using Alexa, and vice versa, by the end of the year.
In simpler words, someone using an Alexa device will have to say “Alexa, open Cortana” to get to talk to Microsoft’s digital assistant, and someone using Cortana will have to say “Cortana, open Alexa” to talk to Amazon’s.
—IANS