A New Windows 11 Ad You Can’t Disable; Microsoft Tells Users to Reboot 15 Times; Google Scraps Plan to Ditch Cookies; Southwest Airlines is NOT Using Windows 3.1… and more
Every day we scan the tech world for interesting news in the world of technology and sometimes from outside the world of technology. Every Wednesday, we feature news articles that grabbed our attention over the past week. We hope you find this week’s ‘Wednesday Newsbytes’ informative and interesting!
Windows 11 strikes again with annoying pop-up that can’t be disabled
It’s enough that we have to deal with Microsoft’s pop-ups. But when they can’t be turned off? That’s just unacceptable.
Microsoft is always finding new ways to disrupt and annoy users—and this time, it comes in the form of an unavoidable pop-up notification.
Even while most people are still upset by constant Windows 11 update notifications, Windows 11 has recently started displaying more and more information about cloud backups.
Specifically, Windows users are being notified that their systems aren’t backed up with the built-in Windows backup solution. A corresponding message appears with the advice that it’s best to make backups so that all data is stored “in case something happens to the PC.”
It almost reads like an indirect threat, but Microsoft is actually just pointing out the option to store file backups on its own OneDrive cloud service. And it’s also advertising more storage space…
Microsoft Recommends Rebooting Your Computer 15 Times as Blue Screen of Death Strikes Worldwide
Have you tried turning it off and on again? And then on again? And then off again? And then…
Off and On Again
As the world is still reeling from a massive IT outage triggered by a faulty security software update by CrowdStrike that forced Windows machines to crash, Microsoft is trying to pick up the pieces.
Worse yet, the bug needs to be addressed in person by IT professionals.
And on top of all the chaos the outage has caused already, those professionals will need to be patient as they quite literally try to turn it off and then back on again — over and over.
“We have received feedback from customers that several reboots (as many as 15 have been reported) may be required, but overall feedback is that reboots are an effective troubleshooting step at this stage,” Microsoft wrote in an update.
Really? 15 times? Depending on how ancient the Windows machine in question is, that could take an eternity.
Global RebootThe bug has wreaked havoc on numerous industries, including hospitals, banks and airports. Airlines have canceled thousands of flights worldwide, with passengers across the world getting stranded.
An entire TV network in Australia wasn’t able to broadcast due to the outage…
After five years of work, Google finally abandons monumental Chrome shake-up for billions
Advertising cookies will remain for the foreseeable future
Google will abandon a major overhaul to its Chrome web browser — the most popular way to access the internet on the planet — five years after it first announced plans. The Californian company hoped to strip third-party advertising cookies from Google Chrome in a bid to improve online privacy.
Even if you’re unfamiliar with the term “cookie, ” you’ll have come across these minuscule text files stored in your browser so online services can remember who you are. If you return to an online store and find that you’re still got some items in your basket from an earlier visit — that’s only possible because of cookies.
They’re also the reason that you’ll be confronted with a pop-up warning that a website uses cookies whenever you visit for the first time — an initiative passed by the European Union when the UK was still a member state.
Google launched its Privacy Sandbox initiative in 2019 to find a way to remove third-party cookies used for advertising within its browser. These text snippets are used to track activity across multiple websites to learn your habits and interests to better target you with adverts for new products, holidays, or services…
No, Southwest Airlines Isn’t Using Windows 3.1 In 2024
Stories claiming the airline avoided the Crowdstrike fiasco because it uses an ancient OS are false
Last week, a good chunk of the digital world shut down and stopped working due to an update that caused Microsoft’s Windows operating system to crash and display a blue screen on millions of devices. This affected places like hospitals, schools, and airports. But one airline, unlike the others, was spared from the chaos. And many are saying it’s because it’s still using an ancient operating system, but that’s not the case.
On July 19, millions of computers and other Windows-powered devices crashed and stopped working around the globe. It was later discovered that Crowdstrike, a large cybersecurity company, had pushed out an update that was borked and broke everything for hours. And as is common on the internet these days, people began joking about it and making up stories, some of which went viral. For example, a lot of people still think the Las Vegas Sphere crashed during the Crowdstrike event. (It didn’t.)
But perhaps the most viral claim, which was reported by multiple outlets and shared online as the truth, was that Southwest Airlines in the United States avoided all of the Crowdstrike chaos because its systems still run on Windows 3.1. This isn’t accurate, though Southwest Airlines does indeed use some older software that it should probably upgrade.
As pointed out by OS News, digging into this story reveals that a lot of places are citing a tweet that went viral claiming Southwest still uses Windows 3.1. This person later confirmed that they were trolling, but that didn’t stop the claim from spreading. Later, people discovered an article from 2023 that compares Southwest’s internal software with Windows 3.1, suggesting it is nearly as old. But it never says that Southwest is actually still using Windows 3.1…
CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF ACCURACY
Model mixes AI and physics to do global forecasts
Google/academic project is great with weather, has some limits for climate.
Right now, the world’s best weather forecast model is a General Circulation Model, or GCM, put together by the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. A GCM is in part based on code that calculates the physics of various atmospheric processes that we understand well. For a lot of the rest, GCMs rely on what’s termed “parameterization,” which attempts to use empirically determined relationships to approximate what’s going on with processes where we don’t fully understand the physics.
Lately, GCMs have faced some competition from machine-learning techniques, which train AI systems to recognize patterns in meteorological data and use those to predict the conditions that will result over the next few days. Their forecasts, however, tend to get a bit vague after more than a few days and can’t deal with the sort of long-term factors that need to be considered when GCMs are used to study climate change.
On Monday, a team from Google’s AI group and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts are announcing NeuralGCM, a system that mixes physics-based atmospheric circulation with AI parameterization of other meteorological influences. Neural GCM is computationally efficient and performs very well in weather forecast benchmarks. Strikingly, it can also produce reasonable-looking output for runs that cover decades…
Thanks for reading this week’s Wednesday Newbytes. We hope these articles were informative, interesting, fun, and helpful. Darcy & TC
