Wednesday Newsbytes: Your Gmail Account is Changing, Install Windows 11 Easier, Windows Defender resource-hogging, Microsoft Seeks Testers, and more…
Every day we scan the tech world for news that affects all of us who use Windows computers. Every Wednesday, we feature some of the news articles that grabbed our attention over the past week. We hope you find this week’s “Wednesday Newsbytes” informative and interesting!
Your Gmail account is changing whether you like it or not
YOUR Gmail inbox could soon look very different, whether you like the new look or not.
Google is starting to roll out a new Gmail upgrade to millions of users. Earlier this year the Mountain View firm launched its new look Gmail, which not only integrated the Meet and Chat services but also brought with it a fresh design based on Material You. At the time of its initial rollout in February, if you wanted to try out the new Gmail look you specifically had to opt-in to get it.
But starting this week the new Gmail design will be applied automatically to millions of accounts around the world.
If you’re not a fan and still want to stick with the old look then you’ll have to opt out.
Revealing this Gmail change, Google in a new blog post said: “Earlier this year, we introduced a new, integrated view for Gmail, making it easy to move between critical applications like Gmail, Chat and Meet in one unified location.
‘Beginning today, we are rolling out the opt-out experience to a segment of Gmail users. This means that select users will see the new Gmail experience by default, but they will still have the option to revert to classic Gmail via the settings menu. As we continue to roll out this new experience, the new Gmail view will also continue to be available for users who want to enable it via Quick settings.’
Windows 11 Custom USB Installer Removes TPM, Secure Boot & Account Requirements
Despite coming up for a year since its release, the Windows 11 adoption rate still remains more than a little sluggish (currently at just over 10% across all Windows platforms). There are, of course, a number of factors at play here as to why people aren’t too keen on this new operating system.
Most predominantly it seems, people just don’t seem overly keen to migrate to a new operating system when Windows 10 is still providing to be both good and reliable. Secondly though, and this is certainly the most overly problematic, Windows 11 comes with not only terse system requirements in terms of processors, but it also requires a number of key settings to be activated before it will typically allow its upgraded installation (TPM 2.0/Secure Boot).
Following the release of a ‘fan-made’ USB installer, however, ‘Rufus’ is a new piece of software that can not only successfully install Windows 11 on practically any system, but it can bypass all of the apparent system requirements it has! – And yes, this also includes the upcoming need that users on the operating system will have to use and log into a Microsoft (Live/Outlook, etc.) account.
Rufus – USB Installer That Can Bypass All of Windows 11’s Installation Headaches
According to the official website, ‘Rufus’ will allow a USB installation of Windows 11 on practically any ‘mostly’ compatible system. Most interesting, however, is the fact that this comes with options that allow the installation without the TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot being set within the BIOS. – More so, it’s also ready to allow it to be installed on systems where the user does not have a Microsoft account.
Windows Defender is reportedly hindering performance on Intel CPUs
Developer claims that a Windows Defender bug could be sapping up to 6% of Intel CPU performance.
Developer Kevin Glynn, aka “Uncle Webb,” has discovered a weird Windows Defender bug that causes Intel CPUs to suffer a significant performance hit on Windows 10 or 11.
According to a Tech Power Up report(opens in new tab), the bug causes Windows Defender to “randomly start using all seven hardware performance counters provided by Intel Core processors.” That wouldn’t be a big problem, according to Tech Power Up, except that Defender is randomly changing the privilege level of the counters—setting them to “mode 2″—which puts it in conflict with other software that’s trying to use the counter in its typical state, “mode 3.”
Uncle Webb saw his Intel Core i9 10850K take a 6% performance dip in Cinebench; he claims this can affect users with Intel Core CPUs from 2008 and on. Other instances saw Defender dinging CPU performance by around 4%. He did not see any issues on AMD Ryzen CPUs.
The wild thing is that there is no way to predict when Windows Defender will act up…
Microsoft seeks testers for its Family Insider program
Microsoft is seeking more participants for various customer-test programs, including its Family Insider, Windows Customer Connection, and Customer Co-Creation groups.
Microsoft has a number of programs through which users can sign up to get early access and information about various products and services. The company is already running Windows Insider, Office Insider, Edge Insider, and Skype Insider. Another Microsoft test program called the “Microsoft Family Insider” program is seeking more new participants.
Microsoft wants people who care about current and future family-related Microsoft products to join the program. Family Insiders can participate in virtual monthly community calls with Microsoft employees working on new family experiences. They will get monthly newsletters featuring surveys, polls, and opportunities to connect one-on-one with Microsoft product teams…
The Infamous 1972 Report That Warned of Civilization’s Collapse
The Limits to Growth argued that rampant pollution and resource extraction were pushing Earth to the brink. How does it hold up 50 years later?
The computer modeling made it plain: If people continued to overextract finite resources, pollute on a massive scale, and balloon the human population in an unsustainable way, civilization could collapse within a century. It sounds like that modeling could have been done last week, what with climate change, water shortages, and microplastics corrupting every corner of the Earth. But in fact it dropped in the 1972 book The Limits to Growth, published by the Club of Rome, an international organization of intellectuals founded in 1968.
The book sold millions of copies and was translated into at least 30 languages, attracting a storm of controversy. It was, after all, very early computer modeling—completed on a punch-card machine at MIT—and a highly simplified simulation of complex global systems. And it was making rather grand and consequential predictions. (As the old quip goes: All models are wrong, but some are useful.) That model spit out scenarios in which humanity either got more sustainable and equitable, and thus flourished, or continued letting capitalists plunder the planet and our civilization to death.
AN artificial intelligence program has created incredibly realistic images of people that ‘never existed’ – and this is what they look like.
OpenAI is an AI research lab founded by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and several others in 2015.
The company has developed intelligent programs that can write text from descriptions in ‘natural languages’.
In recent weeks, OpenAI introduced DALL-E2 – a system that can create realistic images and art in the same way.
‘DALL·E 2 has learned the relationship between images and the text used to describe them,” OpenAI officials said on the webpage.
‘It uses a process called ‘diffusion,’ which starts with a pattern of random dots and gradually alters that pattern towards an image when it recognizes specific aspects of that image.’
Since its inception, some have been using the technology to create hyper-realistic images of humans.
However, the program had banned users from sharing images of AI-generated humans, per The Daily Star.
As of last week, though, the ban has been lifted and one Twitter user named Patrick Clair shared images of some digitally created humans.
‘OpenAI has decided that it’s safe for us to start sharing images containing realistic faces,’ Clair tweeted.
Thanks for reading this week’s Wednesday Newbytes. We hope you found these articles useful, informative, interesting, fun, and/or helpful. Darcy & TC
Thanks for the Gmail article. I use Thunderbird but keep Gmail as a backup.
These articles are interesting…thanks.