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New macOS Sonoma update is reportedly taking down printers as well as USB hubs
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Not content with playing havoc with USB hubs in some scenarios, it appears the latest update for macOS Sonoma is also a troublemaker for printers, too.

Indeed, according to various reports online as flagged up by Apple Insider, the macOS Sonoma 14.4 update is breaking printers in some cases. In other cases, there appears to be a more limited impact, in that the printer still works, but selecting page sizes doesn’t.

It seems Sonoma 14.4 is either stripping out, or messing up, printer drivers in Apple’s operating system, rendering the devices non-functional, at least for the time being in many of these reported cases.

There are users complaining about printer functionality going very wonky on Reddit and Apple’s support forums – however, there does appear to be a solution.

Namely, as stated in the above Apple post, you need to head to System Settings, and ‘Privacy & Security’ and then ‘Full Disk Access’ to grant full disk access to ‘com.microsoft.dlp’ – and that might sort the issue.

This isn’t guaranteed, mind, but there are a number of users giving the thumbs-up and saying this move did get their printer (or printers) working in macOS again.

Analysis: A cocktail of possible causes?

Seemingly the issue pertains to Microsoft Defender (which is what the above disk access change relates to), and/or JAMF mobile device management software, and possibly some other factors. It’s difficult to know exactly what, but the most prominent commonality seems to be Defender.

The good news is that this doesn’t seem to be affecting too many macOS Sonoma 14.4 users, as while there are a number of reports, they aren’t too widespread. And they appear to relate to particular configurations, too, mainly in office scenarios.

Given that, hopefully your average user at home isn’t seeing this problem – or only in rare cases. In short, you’re probably pretty unlucky if you hit this snag outside of a business network setting – but it seems that there are isolated incidents of this occuring with individual Macs.

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Windows 11’s Snipping Tool could get new powers for taking screenshots – but is Microsoft in danger of overcomplicating things?
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Windows 11’s Snipping Tool is set to get a handy feature to embellish screenshots, or at least it seems that way.

Leaker PhantomOfEarth discovered the new abilities in the app by tinkering with bits and pieces in version 11.2312.33.0 of Snipping Tool. As you can see in the tweet below, the functionality allows the user to draw shapes (and fill them with color) and lines.

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That means you can highlight parts of screenshots by pointing with arrows – for an instructional step-by-step tutorial you’ve made with screen grabs, for example – or add different shapes as needed.

Note that this is not in testing yet, because as noted, the leaker needed to play with the app’s configuration to get it going. However, the hidden functionality does seem to be working fine, more or less, so it’s likely that a rollout to Windows 11 testers isn’t far off.

Analysis: A feature drive with core apps

While you could furnish your screenshots from Snipping Tool with these kinds of extras simply by opening the image in Paint, it’s handy to have this feature on tap to directly work on a grab without needing to go to a second app.

Building out some of the basic Windows 11 apps is very much becoming a theme for Microsoft of late. For example, recently Snipping Tool has been testing a ‘combined capture bar’ (for easily switching between capturing screenshots or video clips), and the ability to lift text straight from screenshots which is really nifty in some scenarios.

Elsewhere, core apps like Paint and Notepad are getting an infusion of AI (with Cocreator and a rumored Cowriter addition), and there’s been a lot of work in other respects with Notepad such as adding tabs.

We think these initiatives are a good line of attack for Microsoft, although there are always folks who believe that simple apps like Snipping Tool or Notepad should be kept basic, and advanced functionality is in danger of cluttering up these streamlined utilities. We get where that sentiment comes from, but we don’t think Microsoft is pushing those boundaries yet.

Via Windows Central

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Students take note: Windows 11 update reportedly has a bug that’s taking down Wi-Fi at universities
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Windows 11 just received a new cumulative update, but apparently Microsoft’s round of patching for December introduces a big problem for some students.

Windows Latest highlights reports from a number of students who are readers of the tech site – and universities themselves – about patch KB5033375 breaking Wi-Fi networks on campus.

Apparently, this isn’t happening to everyone by any means, but it is a serious glitch for some of those running Windows 11 who aren’t getting internet on their own laptop. As Brunel University London (UK), one of the affected unis, informs us, this isn’t happening with official university hardware, but BYOD notebooks (possibly because admins have already side-stepped the issue, perhaps?).

One theory from a system admin at a university, as Windows Latest points out, is that there may be a compatibility issue at play here (involving the Qualcomm QCA61x4a wireless adapter, and maybe others).

Another establishment to warn its students about the December update is the University of New Haven (Connecticut, US), which advises: “A recent Windows update released on 12/12/2023 has caused users to not be able to connect to the wireless networks. This update is known as KB5033375.”

Other reports are present on Reddit, with students in European countries being affected, and the issue seemingly pertaining to other Qualcomm wireless adapters.

Analysis: Update removal seems to be the only way forward, for now

In fairness to the December update, it does contain some useful fixes, including the solution to a longstanding problem with File Explorer randomly popping up on the desktop.

However, if you’re at university, any potential plus points here are likely to be outweighed by the danger of not being able to get on Wi-Fi, which is a nasty problem indeed.

A commonality here seems to be Qualcomm components, and the above mentioned Qualcomm QCA61x4a wireless adapter is a commonly used piece of hardware seen in notebooks such as the Microsoft Surface Laptop 3, Lenovo Yoga models, and many other laptops besides.

This problem also affects some business users, but for students, the only realistic way of resolving the bug is to uninstall the update, as the universities in question are recommending. (To do this, go to Windows Update in Settings, and click to view the Update History – that shows all the updates installed, and you can remove KB5033375 from here).

Hopefully Microsoft is looking into this one, and we’ve contacted the software giant to check if there’s an investigation underway. We’ll update this article if we hear anything back as to what’s going on here.

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Forget ChatGPT – NExT-GPT can read and generate audio and video prompts, taking generative AI to the next level
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2023 has felt like a year dedicated to artificial intelligence and its ever-expanding capabilities, but the era of pure text output is already losing steam. The AI scene might be dominated by giants like ChatGPT and Google Bard, but a new large language model (LLM), NExT-GPT, is here to shake things up – offering the full bounty of text, image, audio, and video output. 

NExT-GPT is the brainchild of researchers from the National University of Singapore and Tsinghua University. Pitched as an ‘any-to-any’ system, NExT-GPT can accept inputs in different formats and deliver responses according to the desired output in video, audio, image, and text responses. This means that you can put in a text prompt and NExT-GPT can process that prompt into a video, or you can give it an image and have that converted to an audio output. 

ChatGPT has only just announced the capability to ‘see, hear and speak’ which is similar to what NExT-GPT is offering – but ChatGPT is going for a more mobile-friendly version of this kind of feature, and is yet to introduce video capabilities. 

We’ve seen a lot of ChatGPT alternatives and rivals pop up over the past year, but NExT-GPT is one of the few LLMs we’ve seen so far that can match the text-based output of ChatGPT but also provide outputs beyond what OpenAI’s popular chatbot can currently do. You can head over to the GitHub page or the demo page to try it out for yourself. 

So, what is it like?

I’ve fiddled around with NExT-GPT on the demo site and I have to say I’m impressed, but not blown away. Of course, this is not a polished product that has the advantages of public feedback, multiple updates, and so on – but it is still very good. 

I asked it to turn a photo of my cat Miso into an image of him as a librarian, and I was pretty happy with the result. It may not be at the same level of quality as established image generators like Midjourney or Stable Diffusion, but it was still an undeniably very cute picture.

Cat in a library wearing glasses

This is probably one of the least cursed images I’ve personally generated using AI. (Image credit: Future VIA NExT-GPT)

I also tested out the video and audio features, but that didn't go quite as well as the image generation. The videos that were generated were again not awful, but did have the very obvious ‘made by AI’ look that comes with a lot of generated images and videos, with everything looking a little distorted and wonky. It was uncanny. 

Overall, there’s a lot of potential for this LLM to fill the audio and video gaps within big AI names like OpenAI and Google. I do hope that as NExT-GPT gets better and better, we’ll be able to see a higher quality of outputs and make some excellent home movies out of our cats seamlessly in no time. 

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Microsoft unveils Turing Bletchley v3: The AI model taking Bing to the next level
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Microsoft is working hard towards proving the 'intelligence' part in artificial intelligence, and has just revealed the latest version of its Turing Bletchley series of machine intelligence models, Turing Bletchley v3.

As explained in an official blog post, Turing Bletchley v3 is a multilingual vision-language foundation model, and will be integrated into many existing Microsoft products. If the name of this model sounds scary, don’t worry – let’s break it down. 

The ‘multilingual' part is self-explanatory – the model helps Microsoft products function better in a range of languages, currently standing at more than ninety. The ‘vision-language' part means that the model has image processing and language capabilities simultaneously, which is why this kind of model is known as ‘multimodal’. Finally, the ‘foundation model’ part refers to the conceptual and technical structure of the actual model. 

The first version of this multimodal model was launched in November 2021, and in 2022, Microsoft started testing the latest version – v3. Turing Bletchley v3 is pretty impressive because making a model that can “understand” one type of input (say, text or images) is already a big undertaking. This model combines both text and image processing to, in the case of Bing, improve search results. 

Incorporating neural networks 

The Turing Bletchley v3 model makes use of the concept of neural networks, which is a way of programming a machine that mimics a human brain. These neural networks allow it to make connections in the following manner, as described by Microsoft itself: 

“Given an image and a caption describing the image, some words in the caption are masked. A neural network is then trained to predict the hidden words conditioned on both the image and the text. The task can also be flipped to mask out pixels instead of words.”

The model is trained over and over in this way, not unlike how we learn. The model is also continuously monitored and improved by Microsoft developers. 

Where else the new model is being used

Bing Search isn’t the only product that’s been revamped with Turing Bletchley v3. It’s also being used for content moderation in Microsoft’s Xbox Live game service. The model helps the Xbox moderation team to identify inappropriate and harmful content uploaded by Xbox users to their profiles. 

Content moderation is a massive job scale-wise and often mentally exhausting, so any assistance that helps moderators actually have to see less upsetting content is a big win in my eyes. I can see Turing Bletchley v3 being deployed in content moderation for Bing Search in a similar manner.

This sounds like a significant improvement for Bing Search. The AI-aided heat is on, especially between Microsoft and Google. Recently, Microsoft brought Bing AI to Google Chrome, and now it’s coming for image search. I don’t see how Google doesn’t see this as direct competition in the most direct manner. Google still enjoys the greatest popularity both in terms of browser and search volume, but nothing is set in stone. Your move, Google. 

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LinkedIn is taking on Zoom and Microsoft Teams with a new audio and video events platform
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In order to get users to spend more time on its professional social network, LinkedIn is preparing to launch a new virtual events platform for both audio and video.

As reported by TechCrunch, the company's new events platform will allow creators and organizations to list, host and market interactive virtual events.

LinkedIn actually began looking into events before the pandemic began with the launch of its Events hub back in 2019. However, as more people started working from home, the company added online polls and video events to provide remote workers with access to events. 

Now though with its new virtual events platform, LinkedIn will start out with an audio-only product similar to Clubhouse that will launch in beta this month followed by a video version that will be available in the spring.

Audio and video events

When LinkedIn's new events platform launches in beta later this month, organizers won't have to rely on other third-party software as it will include all of the tools needed to run interactive content from end-to-end.

Hosts will be able to record and run their events straight from LinkedIn as the new platform will include tools for online attendees and hosts to have live conversations  and moderate discussions. However, attendees will also be able to communicate with one another both during and after an event has ended. Promoting these events will be a cinch as well as organizers can do so on LinkedIn.

The platform will start off by targeting individual creators who already rely on the professional social network to connect with a wider audience and cover topics such as career development and recruitment.

Product manager at LinkedIn, Jake Poses provided further details on the company's philosophy when it comes to its new virtual event platform for audio and video in an interview with TechCrunch, saying:

“Our philosophy is to put the organizers in control. We want to make it easier to host virtual round tables, fireside chats, and more. Some may want the event to be more formal, or less formal. Some might want to communicate with their audience, to open up to the floor. We’re giving professionals interactivity and support.”

We'll likely hear more from LinkedIn once the audio-only portion of its new virtual events platform begins rolling out in beta later this month.

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Via TechCrunch

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NASA is taking Cisco Webex to space
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Lockheed Martin, Amazon and Cisco have announced a new collaboration that will see Cisco Webex and Amazon's Alexa integrated into NASA's Orion spacecraft.

This innovative payload, dubbed Callisto, will fly on board the Orion spacecraft which was built by Lockheed Martin for the US space agency's Artemis 1 uncrewed mission around the Moon. Callisto will use Alexa and Webex to test and demonstrate how commercial technology can be used for deep space voice, video and whiteboarding communications.

According to Lisa Callahan, VP and general manager of Lockheed Martin's Commercial Civil Space division, Callisto will show how these technologies can enable astronauts to be more self-reliant as they explore deep space.

Named after a favorite companion of the Greek goddess Artemis, Callisto features a custom hardware and software integration developed by engineers at all three companies that will allow Alexa to work without an internet connection and Webex to run on a tablet using NASA's Deep Space Network.

Virtual crew experience

As Artemis 1 is an uncrewed mission, Lockheed Martin, Amazon and Cisco have also built a virtual crew experience at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas that will allow operators to interact with Callisto from the Mission Control Center.

Through these remote interactions, Callisto partners and NASA will be able to test and demonstrate how voice and video collaboration technologies can help astronauts improve efficiency and situational awareness during their mission by enabling them to access flight status and telemetry data with the ability to control connected devices onboard Orion.

At the same time, video and audio of these interactions will be transmitted back to Earth throughout the duration of the Artemis 1 mission so that engineers can analyze the performance of onboard systems while also sharing interactions with the public. 

In fact, students, families and space enthusiasts will be able to engage with and virtually “ride along” with the mission on Alexa-enabled devices by saying “Alexa, take me to the Moon” while Webex video collaboration capabilities will provide opportunities for STEM education and remote classroom teaching events.

Artemis 1 is scheduled to launch in the beginning of this year from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida for a multi-week journey around the Moon and back. We'll likely hear more from Cisco and Amazon regarding how their technologies are being used in space once the mission begins.

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Twitter might be taking on Slack by introducing business DMs
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Twitter has announced that it has acquired the business messaging service Quill in a move that could enable it to take on Slack.

After raising around $ 16m in funding, Quill exited beta earlier this year as an alternative to Slack available on Windows, macOS, Linus, Android and iOS.

In a new report, TechCrunch points out that the company was founded by the former creative director of Stripe, Ludwig Pettersson who is well known and admired by many in the startup community.

While neither Twitter nor Quill disclosed the terms of the deal, Quill did put out an announcement in which it informed users of its business messaging service that they will have until December 11 to export their team message data. Surprisingly though, Quill has created a Python script that allows users to transform their data into the CSV format so it can be imported into Slack.

Business DMs

As part of the acquisition, Quill's staff will be joining Twitter's Experience organization to help work on the social network's messaging tools and direct messages while Pettersson will become a product manager reporting to the Conversations team.

Since its launch in 2006, Twitter's direct messages or DMs have grown in popularity as a way to communicate quickly with others online and as a result, many have wondered whether the company would try to turn them into a standalone product or even a paid service for businesses.

Online collaboration tools have become essential for businesses during the pandemic as being able to communicate with co-workers is especially important when working from home. Now that Slack is part of Salesforce, organizations may be looking for an alternative business messaging service and by purchasing Quill, Twitter is in the perfect position to offer its own solution.

We'll have to wait and see what happens as a result of Twitter's Quill acquisition but with a new CEO at the helm who is actively trying to diversify its business, business DMs could be a very real possibility.

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Via TechCrunch

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