Microsoft Blunders and Windows TCO

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 15, 2023

• Microsoft Publishes Garbled AI Article Calling Tragically Deceased NBA Player "Useless"

  "AI should not be writing obituaries," posted one reader. "Pay your damn writers MSN."

  "The most dystopian part of this is that AI which replaces us will be as obtuse and stupid as this translation," wrote a redditor, "but for the money men, it's enough."

• Workers at Georgia gaming accessories manufacturer looking to join Teamsters union

  The Teamsters Union says it is creating a new unit to bring in workers from a growing Atlanta sector… gaming.

  A collage of Corsair employees and Teamsters union members gathered outside of the gaming manufacturing facility in Duluth on Wednesday holding signs that said “Union Strong” and “Vote Teamsters Yes.”

• Microsoft Facing Formal EU Complaint Over Teams Video App

  Microsoft’s recent proposal to split its Teams from a broader business software package and sell it to customers separately with an annual discount wasn’t enough to satisfy regulators’ concerns, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

  The European Commission is preparing a statement of objections to send to the company, which could come in the next few months, the people said.

  At the end of August, Microsoft attempted to allay concerns raised by the EU’s antitrust arm as part of a new investigation into how it ties Teams to its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 packages. The EU’s investigation followed a complaint from Salesforce Inc.’s messaging platform Slack some three years ago.

• Windows TCO

  • Microsoft Teams suffers another outage in the North America region

    However, this is not the first time that a Microsoft 365 application has suffered an outage. The current incident takes the count to nine occurrences in eight months.

  • [Repeat] Microsoft cloud breach report 'leaves many questions unanswered'

    Cloud security company Wiz.io says there are many unanswered questions raised by Microsoft's final report into a breach of its Azure cloud platform, pointing out that the threat actor, given the name Storm-0558, may have been forging authentication tokens for more than two years given the timeline in the report.

  • Young hackers are sticking up Las Vegas casinos for hefty ransoms

    Although MGM claims to have dealt with the issue, social media posts say that everything from slot machines to hotel communication systems have been inoperable at MGM venues in Las Vegas for four days. Check-in lines are growing, room access cards and ATMs won’t work, and people are unable to use food, beverage, and free play credits. Regressing to the past, to use manual cash payouts and physical room keys, is proving slow and clunky. (One tiny silver lining: free parking.)

  • US-Canada water org confirms 'cybersecurity incident' after ransomware crew threatens leak

    NoEscape is a ransomware-as-a-service operation that appeared in May and takes a double-extortion approach. That means instead of simply infecting victims' machines with malware, encrypting their files and demanding a ransom to release the data, the crooks first steal the files before locking them up. They threaten to leak the information, as well as withhold the decryption keys, if the victims don't pay the ransom.