Security and Proprietary Stuff
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Microsoft OneNote Abuse for Malware Delivery Surges
In August last year, security researchers warned that MOTW was not applied to OneNote attachments, meaning that unsigned executables or macro-enabled documents could be used to bypass existing protections.
According to WithSecure, however, Microsoft last month silently patched the ability to bypass MOTW for OneNote attachments, which decreases the potential for abuse, but does not completely eliminate it, allowing threat actors to embed files in OneNote documents and lure users into executing them.
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Microsoft has stopped selling Windows 10: here's where you can still buy it [Ed: No, use GNU/Linux instead]
Find out where you can still buy Windows 10 for less than Microsoft was selling it, plus what to do if your computer is running an old operating system
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Microsoft reportedly makes job cuts across metaverse, Surface and Xbox units
Microsoft Corp. has reportedly cut jobs at the business units responsible for developing its Surface device lineup, Xbox video game console and metaverse products.
Bloomberg reported the development today, citing sources familiar with the matter. The layoffs are said to have been made on Thursday.
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[Repeat] If you want to reduce ChatGPT mediocrity, do it promptly
What I learned from this was that there is a valuable business in writing prompts for Large Language Models like ChatGPT (many more are coming). I was stunned that it only required adding the words “in the style of Bob Cringely” to clone me. Until then I thought personalizing LLMs cost thousands, maybe millions (ChatGPT reportedly cost $2.25 million to train).
So where Google long ago trained us how to write queries, these Large Language Models will soon train us to write prompts to achieve our AI goals. In these cases we’re asking ChatGPT or Google’s Bard or Baidu’s Ernie or whatever LLM to temporarily forget about something, but that’s unlikely to give the LLMs better overall judgement.
Part of the problem with prompt-engineering is it is completely at the spell-casting / magical incantation phase: no one really understands the underlying general principles behind what makes a good prompt for getting a given kind of answer – work here is very preliminary and will probably vary greatly from LLM to LLM.
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Why do you want to touch your Mac screen so badly?
To get back to my theory: the people who’d love to have a touchscreen Mac are people who prefer having the iPad and iPhone as primary devices for work and leisure. It’s the iPad-first guys who on the one hand are frustrated by the still mediocre multitasking and still limited functionality Apple is providing on the iPad, and on the other hand realise the sheer versatility and multitasking dexterity the Mac still has in spades despite the general worsening of Mac OS over the past few years. In short, they say they’d love a touchscreen Mac, but what they mean is that they’d love a hybrid iPad/Mac device that could offer the best of both worlds.