Wednesday Newsbytes: Windows 10 Not Dead Yet; Get a 55″ TV Free with a Catch; Gmail Users to Get New Free Service; Microsoft Drops Ads After Users Revolt; Google’s New AI Can Help You Write a Song… 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 10 isn’t dead after all – Microsoft may add a few features in the future
Only minor ones though, and we don’t know how much activity we’ll see
The effective death of Windows 10 – in terms of feature updates being completely halted – may have been announced prematurely, as it seems Microsoft will still be tweaking and adding some capabilities to the OS, albeit only in a (very) minor capacity.
This is according to a Ghacks(opens in new tab) report that point outs a new Windows 10 build hitting the Release Preview channel, and guess what? There are some new features in that build (version 19045.3030).
This means that once tested in that preview channel, those features – which comprise of tweaks(opens in new tab) to the search box in the taskbar, and also minor changes to toast notifications – will be arriving for the full version of Windows 10 soon.
So, it seems while Microsoft will not be pushing out any major updates for Windows 10 – so there’ll be no 23H2 upgrade and no ‘Moment’ style feature drops for the OS – what might happen is that some minor features are going to pitch up from time to time in cumulative monthly updates.
Or at least it looks that way – let’s dig into this a bit more.
How Much Personal Data Would You Give Up for a Free 4K TV?
If you assume a free TV would be accompanied by a huge catch, you’d be right.
Tech startup Telly is making a a huge bet: The company’s business model involves giving away a dual-screen, 55”, 4K TV, plus a sound-bar and a teleconferencing camera, music software, games, and more, to the first half a million people who ask for one. Free tech? Score!
Here’s the Telly link if you’re interested, but before you sign up, there’s the catch: The TV may be free, but you’ll still be paying for it, signing yourself up for an advertising scheme that takes data collection to new heights.
Should you enter the Telly-verse, your television will show non-stop ads, no-doubt specifically geared to you, on its lower screen whenever you watch anything—and Telly also plans to run commercials on both screens when the TV isn’t even being watched. “When the Theatre display (top screen) is not in use, the ad unit could come to life in a fun way connecting both,” Telly founder Ilya Pozin explained in a statement. Uncontrollable advertising? Perhaps Pozin and I have different definitions of fun…
Google is bringing this once paid security feature to Gmail for free — and you can try it soon
Gmail will soon scan the dark web for your passwords and other credentials
Regardless of whether you’ve been hacked or not, your passwords and other credentials could be floating around the dark web. And that puts your accounts at risk of being taken over by hackers.
The reason for this is that after a company suffers a data breach, the account credentials of its users may be stolen as well. In fact, hackers have made millions selling stolen data on the dark web to other cybercriminals to use in their attacks.
Although AI and all of the new improvements to Google Bard were a major part of Google I/O 2023, the search giant also revealed that it is giving Gmail a major security upgrade to help warn users if their data has ended up on the dark web.
While dark web monitoring used to be limited to paid Google One users, Google has announced that the feature will be rolling out for free to all U.S. Gmail users in the coming weeks…
Microsoft makes embarrassing Windows 11 U-turn after user revolt over ads
Complaining works: Microsoft U-turns on ads in Windows 11 Weather app
It looks like complaining can work, as it appears that Microsoft has pulled a U-turn when it comes to cramming one of Windows 11’s most popular apps with ads.
As Windows Latest reports(opens in new tab), Microsoft had recently changed the Weather app in Windows 11 to be based on the MSN website’s weather service. While this ordinarily wouldn’t have been too controversial, as web-based apps can take up less storage space and run more quickly than traditional Windows apps, Microsoft still found a way of annoying users by adding ads into what was once an ad-free app.
This isn’t the first time Microsoft has riled up users by forcing ads into its products, but it looks like this time it went too far, with the backlash on social media and via Microsoft’s feedback site causing the company to quietly drop ads from the app – or at least in some of the app.
On the home screen, you’ll no longer see ads in the app. However, as Windows Latest noticed, and I’ve confirmed, if you click on another page in the app, such as ‘Forecasts’, there are still ads…
Google Just Launched a Dramatic Gmail Change That Could Negatively Affect Users
If you’re holding on to old emails in Gmail, you may want to read this.
Twitter caused a buzz last week when Elon Musk announced that the social media platform would be purging (by archiving) accounts that have not been used for several years.
Just a week later, Google (GOOGL) – Get Free Report released an update to its own inactive account policies.
Citing the safety risks of old, unattended accounts, Google said May 16 that, starting in December 2023, it may begin deleting Google accounts that have been inactive for two years.
“We are going to roll this out slowly and carefully, with plenty of notice,” the update reads.
Google will begin by deleting accounts that were created and never used again; before deleting an account, the company will send multiple notifications to the email address…
Try Google’s new AI music service for yourself: Here’s how
If you need a backing track for your next album, MusicLM is ready.
You’ve heard of AI art, and AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing. Now you can try out AI music, compliments of Google’s MusicLM.
Originally announced in January, MusicLM is now available for you to play with, compliments of what Google calls its AI Test Kitchen. Though you can jump directly to the MusicLM site to try it out, Google may throw up a popup requiring you to sign up for AI Test Kitchen first. You’ll need to provide a Gmail address, and agree that whatever prompts you provide may be reviewed by human members of Google’s team, though anonymized.
Google quietly announced the opening of MusicLM at its Google I/O developer conference, where it also announced a service to protect your email from the dark web, as well as AI improvements to search—which seem to have failed spectacularly, at least initially.
Like our best AI art generators, MusicLM begins with a text prompt: You define the piece of music you want Google to come up with: “a drum and bass funeral dirge,” for example, or “a soft melody, with strings, about walking through a spring meadow.” MusicLM will then generate a music sample trying to match what you provided, about 20 seconds long. Some samples will include “vocals,” though they’re more of the “wawawa” vocals you’d hear in an animated Peanuts cartoon…
AI Content Detectors Don’t Work, and That’s a Big Problem
Looking to check whether something has been created by artificial intelligence? Detectors often don’t work and that’s bad news for your security.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) will transform entire segments of our society whether we like it or not, and that includes the World Wide Web.
With software like ChatGPT available to anyone with an internet connection, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to separate AI-generated content, from that created by a human being. Good thing we have AI content detectors, right?
Do AI Content Detectors Work?
AI content detectors are specialized tools that determine whether something was written by a computer program or a human. If you just Google the words “AI content detector,” you’ll see there are dozens of detectors out there, all claiming they can reliably differentiate between human and non-human text.
The way they work is fairly simple: you paste a piece of writing…
Thanks for reading this week’s Wednesday Newbytes. We hope you found these articles informative, interesting, fun, and helpful. Darcy & TC
