The World Opinion

Tag: Microsoft

  • Bill Gates Visits Microsoft’s India Development Centre In Hyderabad | Companies News

    New Delhi: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates paid a visit to the India Development Centre (IDC) in Hyderabad, a hub of innovation that he had envisioned back in 1998. This year, the IDC is celebrating 25 years of remarkable achievements in research, engineering, and development, playing a crucial role in shaping top-notch products like Azure, Windows, Office, Bing, Copilot, and various AI applications.

    Rajiv Kumar, the Managing Director of Microsoft IDC and CVP of Experiences + Devices India, expressed his satisfaction at witnessing Bill Gates engage with some of India’s brightest engineering minds at the IDC, which he considers the company’s most valuable asset. (Also Read: EPFO Services To Remain Impacted Today: Know Why)

    Kumar echoed Gates’ enthusiasm for the potential of AI in India and expressed IDC’s eagerness to lead innovation efforts for Microsoft, spanning across AI, cloud services, security, and gaming. (Also Read: Dating App Bumble To Layoff 30% Of Workforce)

    Gates’ Plan To Visit India

    Gates had recently shared his plans to visit India in a post on LinkedIn, expressing his eagerness to discover how India is pioneering innovative solutions in healthcare, digital infrastructure, and climate initiatives, with the aim of benefiting billions of people worldwide.

    In his blog, Gates mentioned his visit’s purpose: to explore ways of collaborating with India to ensure that its groundbreaking ideas and inventions reach everyone, regardless of their location.

    Meeting With Prime Minister Modi

    Gates emphasized that during his visit, discussions with Prime Minister Narendra Modi would focus on Microsoft’s continued collaboration with India to ensure that its ideas and inventions are accessible to all who need them, regardless of geographical barriers.

    (With IANS Inputs)

  • Microsoft To Expand AI And Cloud Infrastructure In Spain, Says Vice Chair Brad Smith

    This announcement follows closely after Microsoft’s recent commitment of 3.45 billion dollars towards AI-centric investments in Germany.

  • OpenAI, Meta And Other Tech Giants Sign Effort To Fight AI Election Interference |

    New Delhi: A group of 20 tech companies announced on Friday they have agreed to work together to prevent deceptive artificial-intelligence content from interfering with elections across the globe this year.

    The rapid growth of generative artificial intelligence (AI), which can create text, images and video in seconds in response to prompts, has heightened fears that the new technology could be used to sway major elections this year, as more than half of the world’s The population is set to head to the polls. (Also Read: OpenAI Can’t Register GPT As Trademark, Rules US Patent Office)

    Signatories of the tech accord, which was announced at the Munich Security Conference, include companies that are building generative AI models used to create content, including OpenAI, Microsoft and Adobe. Other signatories include social media platforms that will face the challenge of keeping harmful content off their sites, such as Meta Platforms, TikTok and X, formerly known as Twitter. (Also Read: You Can Now Remix YouTube Music Videos In Shorts – Here’s How!)

    The agreement includes commitments to collaborate on developing tools for detecting misleading AI-generated images, video and audio, creating public awareness campaigns to educate voters on deceptive content and taking action on such content on their services.

    Technology to identify AI-generated content or certify its origin could include watermarking or embedding metadata, the companies said. The accord did not specify a timeline for meeting the commitments or how each company would implement them.

    “I think the utility of this (accord) is the breadth of the companies signing up to it,” said Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta Platforms. “It’s all good and well if individual platforms develop new policies of detection, provenance, labeling, watermarking and so on, but unless there is a wider commitment to do so in a shared interoperable way, we’re going to be stuck with a hodgepodge. of different commitments,” Clegg said.

    Generative AI is already being used to influence politics and even convince people not to vote. In January, a robocall using fake audio of US President Joe Biden circulated to New Hampshire voters, urging them to stay home during the state’s presidential primary election.

    Despite the popularity of text-generation tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the tech companies will focus on preventing harmful effects of AI photos, videos and audio, partly because people tend to have more skepticism with text, said Dana Rao, Adobe’s chief trust officer, in an interview.

    “There’s an emotional connection to audio, video and images,” he said. “Your brain is wired to believe that kind of media.”

  • Hackers Utilizing ChatGPT To Enhance Cyberattacks, Microsoft And OpenAI Reveal |

    New Delhi: Microsoft and OpenAI announced on Wednesday that hackers are utilizing large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT to enhance their current cyber-attack methods. The companies have identified efforts by groups supported by Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China to utilize tools such as ChatGPT for investigating targets and developing social engineering tactics.

    In partnership with Microsoft Threat Intelligence, OpenAI intervened to disrupt five state-affiliated actors who aimed to utilize AI services to facilitate malicious cyber operations. (Also Read: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg Tries Apple Vision Pro, Shares Video On Instagram)

    “We disrupted two China-affiliated threat actors known as Charcoal Typhoon and Salmon Typhoon; the Iran-affiliated threat actor known as Crimson Sandstorm; the North Korea-affiliated actor known as Emerald Sleet; and the Russia-affiliated actor known as Forest Blizzard,” said the Sam Altman-run company. (Also Read: OpenAI’s ChatGPT Is Testing New ‘Memory’ Feature With Select Users)

    The identified OpenAI accounts associated with these actors were terminated. These bad actors sought to use OpenAI services for querying open-source information, translating, finding coding errors, and running basic coding tasks.

    “Cybercrime groups, nation-state threat actors, and other adversaries are exploring and testing different AI technologies as they emerge, in an attempt to understand potential value to their operations and the security controls they may need to circumvent,” Microsoft said in a statement. .

    While attackers will remain interested in AI and probe technologies’ current capabilities and security controls, it’s important to keep these risks in context, said the company.

    “As always, hygiene practices such as multifactor authentication (MFA) and Zero Trust defenses are essential because attackers may use AI-based tools to improve their existing cyberattacks that rely on social engineering and finding unsecured devices and accounts,” the tech giant noted. (With IANS Inputs)

  • Microsoft Gaming’s Layoffs Hit Skylanders Studio ‘Toys for Bob’, Let Go 86 Workers

    According to Eurogamer, the layoffs at the gaming studio are much higher than the original estimate of 35 people, which accounted for 30 to 40 percent of its workforce.

  • CEO Satya Nadella Wants Microsoft To ‘Copilot’ India’s AI journey To Foster Innovation

    Addressing concerns about job cuts due to technology, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella pointed out that the current generation of AI reduces the learning curve.

  • Video Recreation Employees Shape Microsoft’s First US Hard work Union

    A gaggle of online game testers has shaped Microsoft’s first hard work union within the U.S., which can also be the most important within the online game trade.

    The Communications Employees of The usa mentioned Tuesday {that a} majority of about 300 quality-assurance employees at Microsoft online game subsidiary ZeniMax Studios has voted to sign up for the union.

    Microsoft already advised the CWA it will settle for the formation of the union at its Maryland-based online game subsidiary, enjoyable a promise it made to check out to construct public toughen for its $68.7 billion acquisition of some other giant recreation corporate, Activision Snowfall.

    Microsoft purchased ZeniMax for $7.5 billion in 2021, giving the Xbox-maker keep watch over of ZeniMax’s well known recreation publishing department Bethesda Softworks and fashionable recreation franchises similar to The Elder Scrolls, Doom and Fallout.

    Senior recreation tester Wayne Dayberry mentioned in an interview with The Related Press that the unionization marketing campaign started sooner than Microsoft took over and mirrored place of job considerations which might be commonplace at online game corporations.

    “During the trade, the standard assurance departments are handled poorly, paid little or no, and handled as replaceable cogs,” mentioned Dayberry, who has labored for 5 years at ZeniMax’s Rockville, Maryland headquarters on video games similar to Fallout, Prey and The Evil Inside.

    “There’s now not a large number of dignity excited about it,” he mentioned. “That’s one thing we’re hoping to turn other folks within the trade who’re in like eventualities, that if we will be able to do it, they are able to do it as smartly.”

    The unionization marketing campaign speeded up due to Microsoft’s ongoing bid to shop for California-based recreation massive Activision Snowfall. Microsoft, which is founded in Redmond, Washington, made a June pact with the CWA union to stick impartial if Activision Snowfall employees sought to shape a union.

    The employee-friendly pledge sought to attraction to U.S. regulator considerations beneath President Joe Biden in regards to the hard work implications of huge trade mergers, regardless that it didn’t forestall the Federal Business Fee from suing final month to dam Microsoft’s deliberate Activision Snowfall acquisition. The antitrust case had its first listening to Tuesday and may drag on for months.

    Two small gadgets of Activision Snowfall employees have been the primary to certify unions final 12 months in Middleton, Wisconsin and Albany, New York. A 3rd, Boston-based Activision Snowfall subsidiary Proletariat, filed a Dec. 27 petition with the Nationwide Hard work Family members Board to unionize its 57 employees.

    Microsoft’s legally binding neutrality settlement in particular carried out to Activision Snowfall employees after the remaining of the merger. Nevertheless it additionally displays Microsoft’s broader ideas on dealing with unionization, which remains to be unusual within the tech and gaming industries.

    Dayberry mentioned Microsoft’s neutrality promise gave employees self assurance that there wouldn’t be any “retaliation or union-busting, which there was none of.”

    Microsoft’s inexperienced gentle allowed the ZeniMax union certification to move thru a third-party arbitrator relatively than the lengthier procedure usually overseen through the NLRB. A weekslong election duration ended on Dec. 31 and used to be officially qualified Tuesday. Microsoft mentioned in a remark that it acknowledges the union.

    “They’ve indisputably stood through their phrase all alongside,” mentioned CWA spokesperson Beth Allen. “It’s lovely momentous. Microsoft is an outlier in the way in which tech corporations were behaving.”

    The unionizing employees are founded in Hunt Valley and Rockville, Maryland, in addition to the Texas towns of Austin and Dallas.

  • Netflix to depend on Microsoft for its ad-backed video provider

    By means of Related Press

    SAN FRANCISCO: Netflix has picked Microsoft to lend a hand ship the advertisements in a less expensive model of its video streaming provider anticipated to release later this yr with a pledge to attenuate the intrusions into private privateness that frequently accompany virtual commercials.

    The alliance introduced Wednesday marks a big step towards Netflix’s first foray into promoting after steadfastly refusing to incorporate advertisements in its video streaming provider since its inception 15 years in the past. Netflix introduced it might abandon its resistance to commercials 3 months in the past after disclosing it had misplaced 200,000 subscribers throughout the primary 3 months of the yr amid stiffer pageant and emerging inflation that has careworn family budgets, inflicting control to comprehend the time had come for a more economical choice.

    Netflix has warned it is going to most probably document even higher subscriber losses for the April-June length, expanding the urgency to roll out a less expensive model of its provider subsidized through commercials to lend a hand opposite buyer erosion. That decline has contributed to a 70% decline in its inventory value up to now this yr, burnt up in about $190 billion in shareholder wealth and precipitated loads of layoffs.

    The Los Gatos, California, corporate is scheduled to unencumber its April-June numbers on July 19, however nonetheless hasn’t specified when its ad-supported choice will likely be to be had aside from it is going to roll out ahead of 2023. Netflix’s announcement concerning the Microsoft partnership additionally ignored a a very powerful piece of data: the expected value of the ad-supported choice.

    “It’s very early days and we’ve got a lot to paintings thru,” Greg Peters, Netflix’s leader working officer, mentioned in a put up that still highlighted Microsoft’s “robust privateness protections.”

    Touchdown the advert care for a video streaming provider that boasts greater than 220 million subscribers represents a big coup for Microsoft, which has been engaged in a long-running and frequently acrimonious struggle for the previous twenty years with Google, the dominant pressure in virtual promoting.

    “This deal offers Microsoft one thing its rising advert industry has lacked — high quality streaming video stock that has doable to scale” mentioned Insider Intelligence analyst Ross Benes.

    Mikhail Parakhin, Microsoft’s president of internet studies, mentioned the Redmond, Washington, corporate is “overjoyed” with Netflix’s selection in a put up that still underscored the corporate’s dedication to privateness.

    Whilst Microsoft nonetheless makes device that powers many of the global’s private computer systems, Google has turn out to be an increasing number of tough thru its dominant seek engine, ubiquitous Android device for smartphones and different fashionable virtual services and products that closing yr generated greater than $200 billion in advert income — way over another advertising community.

    However Google advert gross sales rely closely at the private knowledge that its most commonly loose services and products accumulate about their billions of globally customers, a type of surveillance that Netflix it appears that evidently needs to steer clear of with the industrial interruptions in its video provider to minimize the probabilities of alienating subscribers. Google additionally owns YouTube’s video website online, which already competes towards Netflix for other people’s consideration and can quickly be an promoting rival, too.

    Microsoft additionally can have had any other issue operating in its favour. Netflix Inc.’s co-founder and co-CEO, Reed Hastings, served on Microsoft Corp.’s board of administrators from 2007 to 2012.

    SAN FRANCISCO: Netflix has picked Microsoft to lend a hand ship the advertisements in a less expensive model of its video streaming provider anticipated to release later this yr with a pledge to attenuate the intrusions into private privateness that frequently accompany virtual commercials.

    The alliance introduced Wednesday marks a big step towards Netflix’s first foray into promoting after steadfastly refusing to incorporate advertisements in its video streaming provider since its inception 15 years in the past. Netflix introduced it might abandon its resistance to commercials 3 months in the past after disclosing it had misplaced 200,000 subscribers throughout the primary 3 months of the yr amid stiffer pageant and emerging inflation that has careworn family budgets, inflicting control to comprehend the time had come for a more economical choice.

    Netflix has warned it is going to most probably document even higher subscriber losses for the April-June length, expanding the urgency to roll out a less expensive model of its provider subsidized through commercials to lend a hand opposite buyer erosion. That decline has contributed to a 70% decline in its inventory value up to now this yr, burnt up in about $190 billion in shareholder wealth and precipitated loads of layoffs.

    The Los Gatos, California, corporate is scheduled to unencumber its April-June numbers on July 19, however nonetheless hasn’t specified when its ad-supported choice will likely be to be had aside from it is going to roll out ahead of 2023. Netflix’s announcement concerning the Microsoft partnership additionally ignored a a very powerful piece of data: the expected value of the ad-supported choice.

    “It’s very early days and we’ve got a lot to paintings thru,” Greg Peters, Netflix’s leader working officer, mentioned in a put up that still highlighted Microsoft’s “robust privateness protections.”

    Touchdown the advert care for a video streaming provider that boasts greater than 220 million subscribers represents a big coup for Microsoft, which has been engaged in a long-running and frequently acrimonious struggle for the previous twenty years with Google, the dominant pressure in virtual promoting.

    “This deal offers Microsoft one thing its rising advert industry has lacked — high quality streaming video stock that has doable to scale” mentioned Insider Intelligence analyst Ross Benes.

    Mikhail Parakhin, Microsoft’s president of internet studies, mentioned the Redmond, Washington, corporate is “overjoyed” with Netflix’s selection in a put up that still underscored the corporate’s dedication to privateness.

    Whilst Microsoft nonetheless makes device that powers many of the global’s private computer systems, Google has turn out to be an increasing number of tough thru its dominant seek engine, ubiquitous Android device for smartphones and different fashionable virtual services and products that closing yr generated greater than $200 billion in advert income — way over another advertising community.

    However Google advert gross sales rely closely at the private knowledge that its most commonly loose services and products accumulate about their billions of globally customers, a type of surveillance that Netflix it appears that evidently needs to steer clear of with the industrial interruptions in its video provider to minimize the probabilities of alienating subscribers. Google additionally owns YouTube’s video website online, which already competes towards Netflix for other people’s consideration and can quickly be an promoting rival, too.

    Microsoft additionally can have had any other issue operating in its favour. Netflix Inc.’s co-founder and co-CEO, Reed Hastings, served on Microsoft Corp.’s board of administrators from 2007 to 2012.

  • RIP, Web Explorer

    Fellow surfers of internet 2.0, we’re collected right here as of late to mention good-bye to a browser that used to be beloved and hated in equivalent measure.

    On Wednesday, June 15, 2022, Microsoft will officially retire Web Explorer (pejorative: Web Exploder) on the ripe previous age of 27. It used to be preceded in demise via MS Paint.

    Possibly, the browser might be despatched to a farm upstate, the place it might probably spend the remainder of its days operating safety vulnerabilities and leaking all of the reminiscence it needs.

    “When you’re a internet developer operating on a contemporary web site or app, we all know you’ve been looking ahead to this present day for a very long time,” Microsoft wrote in a weblog remaining spring pronouncing the exchange. “Web Explorer has more and more been tricky to beef up side-by-side with trendy browsers.”

    The browser used to be birthed in 1995 and, to the nice worry of rival Netscape Navigator, quickly turned into an integral a part of Microsoft’s Home windows running machine. The bundle deal gave Microsoft an enormous merit because it sought to scouse borrow marketplace percentage from its older, extra established rival.

    In 1997, with the Browser Wars in complete swing, Microsoft engineers celebrated the release of Web Explorer 4.0 via sneaking a car-sized model of this system’s brand, a large “e,” onto the entrance garden of Netscape’s headquarters. Netscape retaliated via knocking over the construction and striking their mascot, a six-foot dinosaur named Mozilla, on best.

    A Netscape spokesperson on the time instructed the San Francisco Chronicle they had been stunned that the most important instrument corporate on the earth would lodge to “immature fraternity ways.”

    Through 1999, because of its obligatory inclusion with Home windows, Web Explorer had 99% of the marketplace ― and the eye of antitrust regulators around the globe. A Ecu fee ordered Microsoft to supply different internet browser possible choices, later hitting the corporate with a nice of 561 million euros for failing to conform.

    The web has modified dramatically within the intervening years; arguably, a lot of that innovation stems from antitrust motion that avoided Microsoft from wholly controlling its building.

    Netscape lives on in a reincarnated shape by way of Mozilla Firefox, an open-source nonprofit venture that launched its a centesimal model in Might.

    Web Explorer is survived via Microsoft Edge, a more youthful sibling born in 2015.

  • Invoice Gates Will get COVID, Says He is Experiencing Delicate Signs

    SEATTLE (AP) — Microsoft co-founder Invoice Gates mentioned Tuesday he has examined certain for COVID-19 and is experiencing delicate signs.

    By the use of Twitter, the billionaire philanthropist mentioned he’s going to isolate till he’s once more wholesome.

    “I’m lucky to be vaccinated and boosted and feature get entry to to trying out and nice hospital treatment,” Gates wrote.

    The Seattle-based Invoice and Melinda Gates Basis is essentially the most influential personal basis on this planet, with an endowment of about $65 billion.

    Invoice Gates has been a vocal proponent for pandemic mitigation measures, in particular get entry to to vaccines and medicine for poorer nations. The Gates Basis in October mentioned it is going to spend $120 million to spice up get entry to to generic variations of drugmaker Merck’s antiviral COVID-19 tablet for lower-income nations.