Having music or other audio playing during a video call can be distracting for attendees and embarrassing for users which is why Microsoft added a noise suppression feature to its video conferencing software earlier this year.
This feature is now enabled by default for most users and as a result, any background noise is automatically removed during meetings in Microsoft Teams.
While you may want music and other background noise to be removed from your speeches and presentations, this isn't always the case which is why Microsoft also created a high-fidelity music mode. When enabled, this mode streams the sound from your laptop or PC including all background sounds in high quality.
Enabling high-fidelity mode
According to a new post in the Microsoft 365 Roadmap, the software giant has developed a new machine learning-based music detector that can let users know whenever music is detected.
Once this feature rolls out in January of 2022, Teams users will see a notification at the bottom of their screen which reads “Music is detected and may be suppressed. Enable High fidelity mode to make sure everyone clearly hears your music” alongside a button to enable high fidelity mode as well as another button to dismiss the notification altogether.
While you still may not want background music to be heard during important business meetings, this feature could be useful for those giving music or even dance lessons over Teams.
Every few years, an Apple product that's not confirmed by the company, builds momentum in rumor and speculation until it’s impossible to avoid.
The iPad had it when it was rumored to be called the iSlate in 2009, while the Apple Watch was thought to be a next-generation iPod nano around 2013. The Apple headset that’s going to introduce VR and AR to its customers is the latest in these rumors of what could be launching next from Apple.
Augmented and Virtual Reality has seen huge improvements in recent years, with companies such as Oculus and Valve refining the experience and offering storefronts where you can play a variety of VR games.
But Apple has a chance to redesign its ecosystem to adapt to VR and AR in interesting ways that have not been attempted before.
A VR iTrooper
(Image credit: Future)
It’s not clear whether this rumored headset will both feature AR or VR features, or whether there are two headsets that will cater to each instead. But Apple has a way of adapting its apps into other devices while not compromising on features, while making them unique to the device in question.
With many operating systems ending with ‘OS’, we suspect that rOS, to stand for reality could be a good candidate for the software that the headset will run on, as it works for both VR and AR.
In previous years Apple lays down the groundwork for what’s coming, such as the iPhone for the iPad, or 3D Touch appearing in the Apple Watch and then seeing it debut in the iPhone. With this in mind, Siri could be a big hint towards what it’s planning for the headset.
Earlier this month, an Apple Music Voice Plan was released, where you can control your music only by Siri for $ 4.99 / £4.99 / AU$ 4.99 a month.
This plan could be a great fit for the headset, as you don’t need to use anything tangible to navigate your music, only through Siri. Browsing the App Store or choosing another app to use through Siri could be an intuitive way to use the headset without having to use controllers similar to the Meta Quest 2.
Spatial Audio, a feature in Apple Music again where you can turn your head and the sound will feel as though it's coming from one specific place, could also work well for the headset.
But when it comes to games, this is where the controllers would be a must and an inspiration for developers.
A VR App Store
Apps in VR are only beginning to diverge from giving short experiences like Beat Saber, to communication and accessibility such as what META is announcing for the metaverse and avatars. Seeing FaceTime VR or AppleTV+ VR is a tantalizing thought, but developers could transform the apps they already have available, into being made into a native VR headset app.
Apps like CARROT and TikTok could benefit from what the headset may offer, especially if widgets also make their debut.
What about AR?
Then there’s the aspect of AR. Augmented Reality allows you to have certain bits of digital information in a normal lens. Imagine a pair of glasses that has a section of the lens where it shows live information, such as a widget or push notifications.
This is something we’re already seeing in some apps, especially the Measure app. Others such as IKEA can allow you to place furniture in the camera’s viewfinder on the iPhone, to see if it fits your room.
There’s no reason why this headset could have both by switching modes. Seeing live widgets in a corner of a lens as you walk around your house is a tempting prospect, as it saves you from checking your phone from your pocket, or glancing at your Apple Watch.
WWDC in 2022 could showcase what developers could do with the headset, and with Apple’s Silicon chips showcasing how much power they can achieve with far less power consumption than an Intel and AMD CPU, we could see the first-generation headset feature impressive battery life for an app store that could show what AR and VR could do in the Apple eco-system.
If you bought something on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, maybe a little Christmas present, you definitely weren't alone in 2021. Millions of people took advantage of the sales bonanza this year, receiving big deals on loads of things in return.
To help make sense of how huge the occasions are, TechRadar Pro commissioned a survey one OnePulse, which asked 500 respondents some questions about the festivities.
Amazon is the winner and it's not even close
According to our survey, carried out by OnePulse, of the 500 respondents a whopping 34.6% bought items from Amazon, the largest group, followed by those who did not participate (33.4%), bought from a high street retailer (14.6%), or bought from Wish, Aliexpress, Shein, or elsewhere (17.4%).
In terms of sourcing the deals, respondents were more divided: 29% went straight to the store (on or offline); 22.6% used Google; 11% used promotional emails; 8.4% used WhatsApp; 6.4% used Facebook and/or Twitter; and the remaining 22.4% did something else entirely.
But were all of the deals worth it? 30.6% were either very or somewhat happy; 30.4% were ambivalent; 22.4% were either very or somewhat unhappy; and 16.6% had no opinion at all.
Casey Ellis, CTO at Bugcrowd, outlines how international relations have deteriorated into a new sort of Cold War, with espionage playing out in the cyber-domain. Threatpost
LogMeIn has revealed its intentions to spin off the popular password manager and security tool LastPass as a standalone company.
The company's password manager is used by over 30m users and 85k businesses worldwide and is set for strong and sustained growth going forward as both consumers and businesses continue to prioritize password security.
By establishing LastPass as a standalone business, LogMeIn plans to increase investment in its customer experience, go-to-market functions and engineering to accelerate its growth in password management, Single Sign-On (SSO) and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA).
Chief executive officer of LogMeIn, Bill Wagner provided further details behind the reasoning to spin off LastPass in a press release, saying:
“The substantial scale of LastPass, its tremendous growth, and its market leading position and brand makes it a perfect candidate to seize new opportunities as its own standalone company. Today's announcement also reflects our strategic priority to strengthen and invest in our flexible work enablement portfolio across unified communications and collaboration and IT management and support. We believe that LogMeIn is well positioned to continue to deliver strong results and capitalize on the tremendous opportunity in today’s virtual environment.”
Spinning off LastPass
According to LogMeIn, the significant majority of LastPass' business is represented by corporate customers which makes sense given how password management has become a business imperative for organizations of all sizes.
At the same time, the shift to working from home during the pandemic has fueled the adoption of new accounts and applications with 50 percent of those surveyed in the company's 2021 Psychology of Passwords report saying that they now use twice the number of accounts today compared to pre-pandemic levels.
LastPass employs a zero-knowledge security model which empowers end users to generate, secure and share credentials seamlessly while also monitoring their personal information on the Dark Web. By reducing the number of credentials users need to remember through simplified access with SSO and passwordless MFA, LastPass further improves security for businesses.
We'll likely hear more regarding LastPass becoming a standalone company next year when LogMeIn's plans go into effect.
The latest version of Mozilla Firefox is including a welcome security upgrade that the company hopes can keep its browser safe from code-based attacks.
Available now, the desktop and mobile editions of Firefox 95 will come with RLBox technology, which looks to prevent and limit any damage caused by code security flaws or bugs.
The “novel sandboxing tool” will look to make Firefox the most secure browser option around, the company claims.
Firefox security
RLBox was developed by Mozilla alongside researchers at the University of California San Diego and the University of Texas.
The tool uses WebAssembly to isolate potentially buggy code, ensuring no possible infections or flaws are able to launch or execute without the user knowing.
Mozilla notes that although all major browsers, including Firefox, run web content in their own sandboxed process, hackers often chain together two vulnerabilities to break through -one to compromise the sandboxed process containing the malicious site, and another to escape the sandbox.
This has previously meant having to hoist subcomponents of a browser into a separate process, but this has some limitations – which is where RLBox comes in.
“Rather than hoisting the code into a separate process, we instead compile it into WebAssembly and then compile that WebAssembly into native code,” Mozilla says.
Although not suitable for every component, Mozilla says it is working on expanding the reach of RLBox as much as it can – including to other browsers. The company shipped a prototype to its Mac and Linux users to test in 2020, showing it can operate effectively across different operating systems.
“RLBox is a big win for us on several fronts: it protects our users from accidental defects as well as supply-chain attacks, and it reduces the need for us to scramble when such issues are disclosed upstream,” Mozilla's Bobby Holley wrote in a blog post announcing the news.
“This technology opens up new opportunities beyond what’s been possible with traditional process-based sandboxing, and we look forward to expanding its usage and (hopefully) seeing it adopted in other browsers and software projects.”
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New data suggests Microsoft Edge is slowly beginning to lure users away from Google Chrome, which has had a stranglehold on the web browser market for years now.
According to the latest figures from Statcounter, the Microsoft Edge market share exceeded 4% for the first time ever in November, cementing the browser’s place as the world’s third most popular service (behind only Safari and Chrome).
The only major browser to lose market share last month, meanwhile, was Google Chrome, which is now responsible for 64.04% of web activity, down from a peak of 65.27% in the summer.
Microsoft Edge vs. Google Chrome
Of course, the gap between Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome remains massive, and the latter won’t fall from the top spot any time soon.
However, Microsoft will nonetheless be encouraged by the performance of its new flagship browser, with which it hopes to regain a foothold in the browser market after the infamous decline of Internet Explorer (which was once used by 95% of netizens).
Since the new Chromium-based Edge went live last year, its growth has been fueled in large part by the retirement of Edge Legacy and Internet Explorer, whose users Microsoft carefully funnelled towards its new service. To maintain this rate of growth, however, the company is tasked with figuring out how to lure people away from the likes of Firefox, Safari and Chrome.
The company has also delivered a consistent stream of new features for the browser, ranging from new Microsoft 365 integrations to tools designed to help users save money in the run-up to Christmas.
After overtaking Mozilla’s browser in the rankings for the first time in July, Edge now appears to be successfully padding out its user base with converts from Chrome. Admittedly, progress is slow, but the signs are positive for Microsoft.
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A new trojan called Android.Cynos.7.origin, designed to collect Android users’ device data and phone numbers, was found in 190 games installed on over 9M Android devices.
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