We found the best laptop deals on Prime Day
Microsoft’s Surface Laptop with 16GB RAM and 1 TB SSD is being sold for $1,399.99 at Amazon, while Best Buy is selling the laptop for $1,499.99. The 13.3-inch laptop features a Snapdragon X Elite Arm processor and comes with a 13.8-inch touchscreen. It comes with 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD in this discounted configuration.
Microsoft’s copilot artificial intelligence has a voice, vision, and a “hype man” persona
Microsoft has launched ‘Copilot Vision’, a feature that allows users to use Copilot’s artificial intelligence (AI) to see and explore their content while they’re away from their devices. Copilot Vision is currently available for a select group of Copilot Pro subscribers in the US. The feature works with websites that are restricted by Microsoft so it doesn’t work on paywalled and sensitive content.
The nuclear plant on Three Mile Island is going to be used to power Microsoft data centers
Microsoft has signed its largest power purchase agreement with Exelon for the re-opening of Exelon Reactor and Data Center in Los Angeles. As part of the agreement, Microsoft is buying power from the plant that will be renamed to honour the late Chris Crane, ex-CEO of Exelon. The reactor thatMicrosoft plans to source its energy from was retired in 2019 for economic reasons.
Microsoft’s new playground for businesses is called Copilot Pages
Microsoft has announced that its Copilot AI-powered assistant is being integrated with the excel spreadsheet software to create a new work hub for users called Copilot Pages. Users can share Copilot Pages with other people and they’ll be able to start editing them immediately like they would a Word document. The integration of Copilot and Python in the code of excel is a public preview.
Delta’s CEO said that the CrowdStrike outage cost the airline $500 million in 5 days
Delta Airlines has sued Microsoft’s cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike over the software outage last month which led to thousands of flight cancellations. Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian said, “If you want priority access to the Delta, you need to fix the flaw in CrowdStrike’s deployment processes.” “You can’t come into a mission-critical 24/7 operation and tell us we have a bug,” he added.
Microsoft wants Congress to act against fraud created by artificial intelligence
Microsoft has called on US lawmakers to amend the federal law to combat ‘deepfake’ or AI-generated content. It said the laws need to be updated to include AI-generated content. “While tech sector and non-profit groups have taken recent step to address this problem, it has become apparent that our laws will…need to evolve to combat deepfake fraud,” Microsoft added.
Microsoft is having an outage that affects flights and banking around the world
A global IT outage on Friday led to a disruption in the services of at least 8.5 million Windows devices, including those of government agencies and businesses, Microsoft said. The outages are being felt across the globe, including in India, Japan, the UK, the US, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand.
Microsoft faces charges from the EU for abuses
The European Union (EU) has said it will impose a fine on Microsoft if it is found guilty of antitrust violations, if it cannot reach an agreement. In 2004, the EU had ordered Microsoft to offer a Windows operating system without Media Player bundled, which resulted in a Windows XP N version available only in EU markets.
After security backlash, Microsoft will switch off recall
Google’s Project Zero researcher James Forshaw has found a way to access Microsoft’s Recall feature without “administrator privileges”. This comes after Microsoft announced changes to its Copilot+ feature to make it an opt-in feature. The new features require users to provide a username and password to unlock the feature, which was previously turned on by default.
Unless you opt in, Windows won’t take the photos after all
Microsoft has said that it will continue to develop new ” capabilities and experiences” for its customers by prioritising privacy, safety and security first. This comes after Microsoft’s ‘Recall’ feature was criticised for failing to protect users’ data from unauthorised access. “We are taking steps to improve recall security,” said Nina Davuluri, corporate VP at Microsoft.