Tux Machines

Proprietary and Openwashing Leftovers (and Over 1,000 Microsoft Layoffs Last Week)

Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jul 20, 2023

Programming Leftovers

Security Leftovers

Microsoft 'fesses to code blunder in Azure Container Apps • The Register

↺ Microsoft 'fesses to code blunder in Azure Container Apps • The Register

Seattle-area workers’ paychecks shrank in 2022. Why? Tech

↺ Seattle-area workers’ paychecks shrank in 2022. Why? Tech

Microsoft Cuts More Staff [Ed: It should say over 1000 and not repeat the lie about "10,000" earlier this year (it was vastly more)]

↺ Microsoft Cuts More Staff

> Microsoft reportedly let go of 1,000 employees over the past week in addition to the 10,000 it cut earlier this year...

GNU Linux since kernel 5.x now fully supports NTFS (thanks a lot M$, it only took them approx a decade) but exFAT might be an option too

↺ GNU Linux since kernel 5.x now fully supports NTFS (thanks a lot M$, it only took them approx a decade) but exFAT might be an option too

> NTFS (better file exchange since 2021) vs Open Source https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/13/how_ntfs_finally_made_it/ wow.

Let the Platforms Burn

↺ Let the Platforms Burn

> This is a vicious cycle: massive fire suppression efforts creates the illusion that people can safely live at the wildland–urban interface. Taken in by this illusion, more people move to this combustible zone. The presence of these people in the danger zone militates for more extreme fire-suppression, which makes the illusion all the more tempting. Yielding to temptation, more people move to the fire zone.

> But the opposite of controlled burns isn’t no burns, it’s out-of-control burns: wildfires.

U.N. Officials Urge Regulation of Artificial Intelligence

↺ U.N. Officials Urge Regulation of Artificial Intelligence

> On Tuesday, diplomats and leading experts in the field of A.I. laid out for the Security Council the risks and threats — along with the scientific and social benefits — of the new emerging technology. Much remains unknown about the technology even as its development speeds ahead, they said.

> “It’s as though we are building engines without understanding the science of combustion,” said Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, an A.I. safety research company. Private companies, he said, should not be the sole creators and regulators of A.I.

MSFT Stock Slips despite Analyst Enthusiasm over AI Tools

↺ MSFT Stock Slips despite Analyst Enthusiasm over AI Tools

> Despite these impressive numbers, Microsoft is still engaging in layoffs. Only yesterday, news emerged about just over 1,000 employees losing their jobs in the last week alone...

I Found and Reported a Security Vulnerability on Discover Bank’s Mobile Web Site.

↺ I Found and Reported a Security Vulnerability on Discover Bank’s Mobile Web Site.

> I called 1-800-Discover to tell them how to reproduce it and expose the user’s account credentials to anyone with local access to the phone’s Web browser if that browser is Firefox or Fennec on Android.

> I’m also going to expose the issue here on my blog to motivate them to fix it since I noticed this problem several months ago and meant to say something and it still does it.

Meta and Microsoft Introduce Llama 2 AI and It's Open Source [sic]

↺ Meta and Microsoft Introduce Llama 2 AI and It's Open Source [sic]

> Meta announced the new open-access Llama, which stands for Large Language Model Meta AI, in a blog post today. The corporation explained that letting people peer under the hood of Llama was an important step in making the AI safer, as a “generation of developers and researchers can stress test [it].” Llama 2 is now available for free for research and commercial use—Meta touts that Llama 2 was trained on 40% more data than the first model. Meta also named Microsoft as a preferred partner in Llama 2, with the AI being available with Microsoft’s cloud computing platform Azure.

Meta’s latest AI model is free for all

↺ Meta’s latest AI model is free for all

> The company is actually releasing a suite of AI models, which include versions of LLaMA 2 in different sizes, as well as a version of the AI model that people can build into a chatbot, similar to ChatGPT. Unlike ChatGPT, which people can access through OpenAI’s website, the model must be downloaded from Meta’s launch partners Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Hugging Face.

Meta makes public its ChatGPT rival, Llama

↺ Meta makes public its ChatGPT rival, Llama

> The financial terms of that partnership were not disclosed.

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