Chinese Hackers Breach U.S. Treasury; Windows 11 Losing Market Share; Microsoft Warns Not to Install This Update; Meat Eating Squirrels & Other Fascinating Science Stories from 2024… and more!
Every day, we scan the tech world for interesting news, sometimes from outside the tech world. Every Thursday, we feature news articles that grabbed our attention over the past week. We hope you find this week’s ‘Thursday Newsbytes’ informative and interesting!
‘Major incident’: China-backed hackers breached US Treasury workstations
The US Treasury Department notified lawmakers on Monday that a China state-sponsored actor infiltrated Treasury workstations in what officials are describing as a “major incident.”
In a letter reviewed by CNN, a Treasury official said it was informed by a third-party software service provider on December 8 that a threat actor used a stolen key to remotely access certain Treasury workstations and unclassified documents.
“Based on available indicators, the incident has been attributed to a Chinese state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actor,” Aditi Hardikar, assistant secretary for management at the US Treasury, wrote in the letter.
A Treasury spokesperson said in a statement to CNN that the compromised service has been taken offline and officials are working with law enforcement and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
“There is no evidence indicating the threat actor has continued access to Treasury systems or information,” the Treasury spokesperson said.
Windows 11’s Market Share Is Dropping Again, With Windows 10 Gaining
Windows 11 is once again losing market share after a solid few months when it seemed to be gaining ground. And which operating system is Windows 11 losing out to? Yep, you guessed it: Windows 10. Which, given that we’re now in 2025, the same year Microsoft is ending support for Windows 10, is rather bizarre.
Windows 11 Is Losing Market Share… Again
After finally gaining some ground on Windows 10 through the middle part of 2024, Windows 11 is once again losing market share. This is according to StatCounter, which tracks how many people are actively using each operating system.
As you can see in the chart below, the last two months of 2024 showed usage of Windows 11 dropping, with Windows 10 appearing to reclaim some of the users it had previously lost.
Windows 11’s market share peaked in October 2024….
Microsoft Warns Millions Of Windows Users—Do Not Install This Update On Your PC
Microsoft has confirmed an unusual warning for Windows users updating their PCs. If you make a simple mistake, your PC “might remain in a state where it cannot accept further Windows security updates.” Bad news, especially as it will clearly be confusing if and when it happens.
As Windows Latest reported on Christmas Day, “if you use a USB or drive to install Windows 11 24H2 with the October 2024 or November 2024 security updates included, you might end up breaking Windows Update. By default, Windows 11 24H2 ships without October or November security patches.”
What Microsoft says in its documentation is that “when using media to install Windows 11, version 24H2, the device might remain in a state where it cannot accept further Windows security updates. This occurs only when the media is created to include the October 2024, or November 2024, security updates as part of the installation (these updates were released between October 8, 2024 and November 12, 2024)…
Blob-Headed Fish, Meat-Eating Squirrels, and Other Fascinating Science Stories From 2024
So much of this year felt like a fever dream: The attempted assassination of Donald Trump. A career-ending presidential debate. The killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Abortion bans. Presidential immunity. The Alaska Airlines door fiasco. Diddy’s arrest. Raygun. Baldoni-Gate. Tradwives!
I, personally, am tired.
Which is why, this year, I’m leaning into my nerdish tendencies and rounding up some good, interesting, or inspiring news stories from the science world—promising discoveries, exciting new data, historic events, and unsung heroes.
In the hope of providing relief from the hell that has been 2024, here’s a non-comprehensive list of the year’s coolest science stories, both big and small:
Possibly the first-ever photo of a newborn great white shark
Wildlife filmmaker Carlos Gauna and University of California, Riverside, PhD student Phillip Sternes spotted what appears to be a baby great white shark off the coast of California last year. In January, the team published the photos in the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes…
Windows Copilot+ PCs aren’t there yet: 8 must-change upgrades for 2025
If AI is the future of Windows, Copilot+ PCs will need some serious improvements.
It seems like every new laptop lately is a “Windows Copilot+ PC.” With Intel’s Lunar Lake and AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 CPUs, AI-infused Copilot+ PCs have finally expanded into traditional x86 laptop territory. They aren’t limited to just Arm-powered laptops with Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite hardware anymore.
That’s good news for everyone. Along with speedy neural processing units (NPU) that are capable of at least 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS), Copilot+ PCs must have at least 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. If that’s the new baseline for Windows PCs, that’s awesome. It will benefit you even if you don’t care about AI.
So, your next laptop might just be a Copilot+ PC. But if you ask me, Copilot+ PCs still leave a lot to be desired. While those min specs are great, there’s more to a great laptop experience than hardware…
Thanks for reading this week’s Thursday Newbytes. We hope these articles were informative, interesting, fun, and helpful.
Interesting articles…
Thanks for all you do. Happy New Year!
My windows 10 security updates haven’t worked for some time now it says can’t connect to the update service.
I’ve gone all of the trouble shooting blogs and also micro soft information blogs still hasn’t solved update problems
Windows 10 updates have consistently been a problem. You can install the latest updates manually by going to this page and clicking the “Update now” button.