With the options, users can make sure that their messages are “noticed and given the attention they deserve”, the company said in a statement…reports Asian Lite News
Microsoft Teams, which allow users to view Live Captions within meetings, will soon support switching a profanity filter on or off with a toggle.
According to Windows Central, the feature is on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap and could be available as early as May 2023, though this is subject to change.
“With the newly introduced toggle for turn on/off profanity filtering, users will now be able to control whether they want to continue to leverage the profanity filtering capability provided out of box, or, if they want to see every word as-is,” according to the company.
Moreover, the report said that when the toggle for filtering Live Captions becomes available, it will be an option on Microsoft Teams for Windows and Mac. It should also be accessible to a wide range of clients, including government tenants, the report added.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has introduced new “set delivery” options in Teams, with which users can now mark their messages as important or urgent.
With the options, users can make sure that their messages are “noticed and given the attention they deserve”, the company said in a statement.
Navigate to the “Mark as important” button which is present beneath the compose box and select either the “Important” or “Urgent” option depending on the level of attention the message requires.
A visitor poses for a photo with Microsoft's logo at Microsoft's corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington State, the United States, Sept. 19, 2015. (Xinhua/Yang Lei/IANS)
Microsoft said it is committed to providing long-term equal access to Call of Duty to other gaming platforms, “bringing more choice to more players and more competition to the gaming market”….reports Asian Lite News
Microsoft President Brad Smith on Tuesday announced that the tech giant has signed a binding, 10-year contract with Japanese gaming giant Nintendo to bring Xbox games including Call of Duty (CoD) to Nintendo’s gamers.
The announcement came ahead of a hearing in the European Union (EU) where Microsoft will argue its case with regulators to give its $69 billion acquisition of Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard a green signal.
“We’ve now signed a binding 10-year contract to bring Xbox games to Nintendo’s gamers. This is just part of our commitment to bring Xbox games and Activision titles like Call of Duty to more players on more platforms,” Smith tweeted.
The Call of Duty game will be available to Nintendo players the same day as Xbox, with full feature and content parity, “so they can experience Call of Duty just as Xbox and PlayStation gamers enjoy Call of Duty”.
Microsoft said it is committed to providing long-term equal access to Call of Duty to other gaming platforms, “bringing more choice to more players and more competition to the gaming market”.
The EU hearing this week is expected to be attended by representatives from Microsoft including Brad Smith and Xbox head Phil Spencer, as well as Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, and Sony’s Jim Ryan.
Earlier this month, Microsoft formally received an antitrust warning from the European Union over its bid to acquire Activision Blizzard.
According to a report in Politico citing sources, the notice mentioned that EU officials “laid out the reasons why the deal could threaten fair competition on the video game market”.
A Microsoft spokesperson said that they are committed to solutions and finding a path forward for this deal. “We are listening carefully to the European Commission’s concerns and are confident we can address them,” the company spokesperson had said.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has also sued tech giant Microsoft from acquiring leading video game developer Activision Blizzard.
Cloud will be foundational to scaling India's digital journey: Satya Nadella
The company may make an announcement in March, highlighting how quickly Microsoft wants to reinvent search and its productivity apps through its OpenAI investments…reports Asian Lite News
Microsoft is reportedly planning to demonstrate its new Prometheus model to its core productivity apps such as Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
In the coming weeks, Microsoft will detail its productivity plans for integrating OpenAI’s language AI technology and its AI Model.
The company may make an announcement in March, highlighting how quickly Microsoft wants to reinvent search and its productivity apps through its OpenAI investments.
Previous reports indicated that the GPT models were being tested in Outlook to improve search results, along with features like suggesting replies to emails and Word document integration to improve writing.
Moreover, the report said that the tech giant is moving quickly with this integration mainly because of Google.
brighter brain.(Photo:Pixabay.com)
Microsoft had planned to launch its new Bing AI in late February, but moved the date up to this week, just as Google was preparing to make its own announcements, the report mentioned.
Earlier this week, Microsoft introduced its new Bing powered by “next-generation” ChatGPT artificial intelligence (AI), and also updated its Edge browser with new AI capabilities.
The AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge browser are now available for preview at Bing.com, to “deliver better search, more complete answers, a new chat experience and the ability to generate content”.
Google workers slam Bard AI’s rushed announcement
Google employees have reportedly criticised the company’s leadership, particularly, CEO Sundar Pichai, for how it handled the announcement of its ChatGPT competitor “Bard” this week, calling the announcement “rushed”, and “botched”.
Employees criticised the Bard announcement on the popular internal forum Memegen, calling it “rushed,” “botched,” and “un-Googley.”
“Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic. Please return to taking a long-term outlook,” read one meme that included a serious picture of Pichai.
New Delhi, Dec 04 (ANI): File Picture of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Google Sundar Pichai as he has been appointed as the CEO of Google’s parent firm Alphabet Inc on Tuesday. (ANI Photo)
The post received many upvotes from employees, said the report.
Another meme reads: “Rushing Bard to market in a panic validated the market’s fear about us”.
Moreover, on Twitter, people began pointing out that an ad for Bard offered an incorrect description of a telescope used to take the first pictures of a planet outside our solar system, the report mentioned.
“Unfortunately a simple google search would tell us that JWST actually did not “take the very first picture of a planet outside of our own solar system” and this is literally in the ad for Bard so I wouldn’t trust it yet,” a user tweeted.
Earlier this week, Google competitor Microsoft introduced its new Bing powered by “next-generation” ChatGPT artificial intelligence (AI) and also updated its Edge browser with new AI capabilities.
ChatGPT gets passing score in US medical licensing exam
Microsoft’s AI chatbot ChatGPT can score at or around the approximately 60 per cent passing threshold for the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE), with responses that make coherent, internal sense and contain frequent insights, according to a study.
ChatGPT is designed to generate human-like writing by predicting upcoming word sequences. Unlike most chatbots, ChatGPT cannot search the internet. Instead, it generates text using word relationships predicted by its internal processes.
In the study, published in the open-access journal PLOS Digital Health, Tiffany Kung, Victor Tseng, and colleagues at AnsibleHealth tested ChatGPT’s performance on the USMLE.
Taken by medical students and physicians-in-training, the USMLE assesses knowledge spanning most medical disciplines, ranging from biochemistry, to diagnostic reasoning, to bioethics.
After screening to remove image-based questions, the authors tested the software on 350 of the 376 public questions available from the June 2022 USMLE release.
After indeterminate responses were removed, ChatGPT scored between 52.4 per cent and 75 per cent across the three USMLE exams.
The passing threshold each year is approximately 60 per cent.
ChatGPT also demonstrated 94.6 per cent concordance across all its responses and produced at least one significant insight (something that was new, non-obvious, and clinically valid) for 88.9 per cent of its responses.
Notably, ChatGPT exceeded the performance of PubMedGPT, a counterpart model trained exclusively on biomedical domain literature, which scored 50.8 per cent on an older dataset of USMLE-style questions.
“Reaching the passing score for this notoriously difficult expert exam, and doing so without any human reinforcement, marks a notable milestone in clinical AI maturation,” said the authors.
“ChatGPT contributed substantially to the writing of our manuscript. We interacted with ChatGPT much like a colleague, asking it to synthesise, simplify, and offer counterpoints to drafts in progress. All of the co-authors valued ChatGPT’s input,” said Kung.
These data centres form an integral part of Microsoft’s goal of strengthening its cloud infrastructure to serve Azure’s customers in India and worldwide…reports Asian Lite News
Software giant Microsoft plans to expand their data centre investment in Hyderabad by setting up three more data centres, the Telangana government announced on Thursday.
Microsoft had last year announced its first captive data centre investment of three campuses. While the earlier investment commitment entailed three data centres in Hyderabad, each with an IT capacity of at least 100 MW, Microsoft now targets to reach 6 total data centres in Telangana with each data centre serving 100 MW of IT load on average, the government said.
These data centres form an integral part of Microsoft’s goal of strengthening its cloud infrastructure to serve Azure’s customers in India and worldwide. All 6 data centres are estimated to be deployed phase-wise in the next 10-15 years.
The upcoming projects were discussed by the officials of the state government and Microsoft at the Microsoft Cafe at Davos. State Information Technology Minister K.T. Rama Rao, and Principal Secretary, IT Jayesh Ranjan had discussions with Microsoft’s President, Asia, Ahmed Mazhar.
Telangana had earlier signed an MoU with Microsoft to enable several activities such as skilling, internship programmes, and cloud adoption. As part of Telangana’s cloud adoption, Telangana is working with Microsoft Azure and others to ensure citizen services have the best of infrastructure as part of its tech stack.
“Microsoft and Hyderabad have had a very long-term mutually beneficial relationship and I am very happy to learn that Microsoft will expand in Telangana with such huge digital infrastructure projects. I look forward to seeing Microsoft continue to grow in the state,” Rama Rao ssaid.
Mazhar noted that Hyderabad is one of their most important markets across the world and they continued to invest in the city. “The data centre projects we will deploy in Telangana are some of the fully-owned data centre projects in India by Microsoft. Apart from data centres, we will work with the government to identify special projects and support them in implementing them,” he said.
Microsoft currently has more than 220,000 employees, and this round of layoffs affects around 5 per cent of its workforce…reports Asian Lite News
Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella on Wednesday said that the company will be “making changes that will result in the reduction of our overall workforce by 10,000 jobs through the end of FY23 Q3 (third quarter)”.
Microsoft currently has more than 220,000 employees, and this round of layoffs affects around 5 per cent of its workforce.
Some employees will be notified on Wednesday, but the entire 10,000 layoffs should be completed by the end of March, Nadella said.
In a blog post, Nadella said that it is important to note that “while we are eliminating roles in some areas, we will continue to hire in key strategic areas”.
“We know this is a challenging time for each person impacted. The senior leadership team and I are committed that as we go through this process, we will do so in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible,” said the Microsoft CEO.
The company had laid off around 1,000 employees late last year.
Nadella said that organisations in every industry and geography exercise caution as some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one.
“We will align our cost structure with our revenue and where we see customer demand,” he said.
He said that Microsoft is “taking a $1.2 billion charge in Q2 related to severance costs, changes to our hardware portfolio, and the cost of lease consolidation as we create higher density across our workspaces”.
“We will treat our people with dignity and respect, and act transparently. These decisions are difficult, but necessary. They are especially difficult because they impact people and people’s lives – our colleagues and friends,” said the Indian-origin Microsoft CEO.
“The US-benefit-eligible employees will receive a variety of benefits, including above-market severance pay, continuing healthcare coverage for six months, continued vesting of stock awards for six months, career transition services, and 60 days’ notice prior to termination, regardless of whether such notice is legally required,” he announced.
Benefits for employees outside the US will align with the employment laws in each country.
Microsoft is set to announce its fiscal 2023 second quarter earnings on January 25.
The tech giant joins Amazon and Meta in massive tech layoffs amid the deepening funding winter amid global uncertainties.
Through ‘Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub’, space-tech startup founders in India will have free access to the tech tools, and resources they need to build and run their business…reports Asian Lite News
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Microsoft on Thursday announced a collaboration to fuel the growth of space technology startups in the country.
Through this tie-up, the space tech startups identified by ISRO will be on-boarded onto the aMicrosoft for Startups Founders Hub’ platform, that supports startups at every stage of their journey-from idea to unicorn.
“ISRO’s collaboration with Microsoft will greatly benefit space tech startups in their analysis and processing of vast amounts of satellite data for various applications, using cutting-edge methods like AI, Machine Learning and Deep Learning,” said S Somanath, Chairman, ISRO.
Through ‘Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub’, space-tech startup founders in India will have free access to the tech tools, and resources they need to build and run their business.
This includes technical support to build and scale on Azure, best-in-class developer and productivity tools including GitHub Enterprise, Visual Studio Enterprise and Microsoft 365 and access to smart analytics with Power BI and Dynamics 365.
“Through our technology tools, platforms and mentorship opportunities, we are deeply committed to empowering space tech startups in the country to drive cutting edge innovation and accelerate scientific discovery,” said Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India.
Microsoft will also provide mentoring support to space tech entrepreneurs in areas ranging from space engineering to cloud technologies, product and design, fundraising and sales and marketing.
In addition, founders will have access to Microsoft Learn for tailored startup centric training content and programmes to help them build connections with the industry and potential customers, said the tech giant.
Microsoft and ISRO will also jointly organise knowledge sharing and thought leadership sessions for the startups with space industry experts.
The government has opened up the space sector for private players. The country has more than 100 active startups in the spacetech sector.
The tech giant aspires to emulate companies such as Tencent, which has all-in-one applications like WeChat….reports Asian Lite News
Tech giant Microsoft will reportedly build an all-in-one ‘super app’ to compete with Apple and Google mobile dominance.
The application might combine shopping, messaging, web search, news and other services all in one place, reports AppleInsider.
Executives at Microsoft believe that the application will help to grow both Bing search and their advertising business.
The tech giant aspires to emulate companies such as Tencent, which has all-in-one applications like WeChat.
It is still unclear whether the company will ever release such an application. Meanwhile, last month, the tech giant had introduced ‘polls’ that offer users a way to create polls right away with the Microsoft Forms app, making meetings more engaging in Teams.
To post a poll in a Teams channel or get instant feedback in a chat pane, go to the channel or chat you want to include a poll in, then at the bottom of your Teams window, select Forms, then add your question – and – Answer options.
The move follows earlier agreements by both companies to buy renewable energy in the US, said the report…reports Asian Lite News
Google and Microsoft have both announced new agreements to lower their IT operations’ carbon footprint by using renewable energy sources in their data centres.
According to ‘The Register’, Google has signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Engie, a French utility company, for 100 MW of energy generated by the Moray West offshore wind farm in Scotland to power its UK operations.
Meanwhile, Microsoft announced PPAs supplying more than 900 MW of renewable energy in Ireland for its data centres.
While Microsoft did not disclose its renewable energy suppliers, other sources identified Statkraft and Ireland’s Energia Group as two that are involved, with a mix of wind and solar projects, according to the report.
Google claimed that the new agreements will bring the company closer to its goal of running its UK offices and cloud regions entirely on carbon-free energy sources by 2030.
The company stated that with the most recent PPA signed with Engie, it expects to be at or near carbon-free by 2025.
Matt Brittin, President of Google EMEA, said that people in the UK and Europe are increasingly concerned about climate change.
The move follows earlier agreements by both companies to buy renewable energy in the US, said the report.
SoftBank subsidiary SB Energy signed a deal with Google for 900MW of solar power to power a Texas data centre, while Microsoft recently entered into a 20-year agreement with AES Corporation to supply its data centres in California with renewable energy from 110 MW solar and 55 MW four-hour storage projects.
In addition to expanding its data centres to meet customer demands, Microsoft has also increased its commitment to reducing carbon consumption and contributing to climate change solutions, the report added.
The cuts occurred across a variety of levels, teams, and parts of the world…reports Asian Lite News
Tech giant Microsoft has laid off nearly 1,000 employees across multiple divisions of the company, media reports said.
According to Axios, the move is yet another example of large tech companies cutting jobs after earlier moving to slow or freeze hiring as the broader economy cools.
The tech giant declined to say how many jobs had been cut, but a source said the layoffs numbered under 1,000, as per the report.
“Like all companies, we evaluate our business priorities on a regular basis, and make structural adjustments accordingly. We will continue to invest in our business and hire in key growth areas in the year ahead,” Microsoft was quoted as saying in a statement.
The cuts occurred across a variety of levels, teams, and parts of the world.
Multiple laid-off workers turned to Twitter and Blind, among other online forums, to share that their job had been cut.
The report noted that nearly all the major tech firms have slowed headcount growth, with many freezing all but essential hires.
Meta, which had already frozen hiring, plans to cut budgets in most divisions, with layoffs expected.
Meanwhile, in the past few months, the tech giant has laid off nearly 2,000 employees globally.
Other tech companies that have either laid off employees or slowed hiring in the current economic downturn include Google, Meta, Oracle, Twitter, Nvidia, Snap, Uber, Spotify, Intel and Salesforce, among others.
A visitor poses for a photo with Microsoft's logo at Microsoft's corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington State, the United States, Sept. 19, 2015. (Xinhua/Yang Lei/IANS)
The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) identified evidence of a novel hacking campaign utilising a previously unidentified ransomware payload…reports Asian Lite News
Microsoft has identified a new hacking group that is targeting organisations in the transportation and related logistics industries in Ukraine and Poland.
The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) identified evidence of a novel hacking campaign utilising a previously unidentified ransomware payload.
“We observed this new ransomware, which labels itself in its ransom note as ‘Prestige ransomware’, being deployed on October 11 in attacks occurring within an hour of each other across all victims,” the company said in a blog post.
According to the company, this ransomware attack was not connected to any of the 94 currently active ransomware activity groups that Microsoft tracks.
“The Prestige ransomware had not been observed by Microsoft prior to this deployment. The activity shares victimology with recent Russian state-aligned activity, specifically on affected geographies and countries, and overlaps with previous victims of the FoxBlade malware (also known as HermeticWiper),” Microsoft explained.
The tech giant said it has not yet linked this ransomware campaign, called DEV-0960, to a known threat group that was continuing investigations.
The ransomware payload was deployed by the actor after an initial compromise that involved gaining access to highly privileged credentials.
“In all observed deployments, the attacker had already gained access to highly privileged credentials, like Domain Admin, to facilitate the ransomware deployment,” said the team.
The threat landscape in Ukraine continues to evolve, and wipers and destructive attacks have been a consistent theme.
“Ransomware and wiper attacks rely on many of the same security weaknesses to succeed,” said Microsoft.
