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After a long wait, Intel has officially launched its first 10th generation core processors, code-named ‘Ice Lake’. The first batch contains 11 highly integrated 10nm processors which showcases high-performance artificial intelligence (AI) features and is designed for sleek 2 in 1s and laptops. The ‘Ice Lake’ processors are manufactured on Intel’s 10nm processor and consist of the 14nm chipset in the same carrier. It includes two or four Sunny Cove cores along with Intel’s Gen 11 Graphics processing unit (GPU). The 10nm measure of the processor indicates the size of the transistors used. The 10 nanometer miniscule length also shows the power of the transistor as it is considered that smaller the transistor, better is its power consumption. Read More: Intel unveils the first 3D Logic Chip packaging technology, ‘Foveros’, powering its new 10nm chips, ‘Sunny Cove’ Chris Walker, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of Mobility Client Platforms in the Client Computing Group says that “With broad-scale AI for the first time on PCs, an all-new graphics architecture, best-in-class Wi-Fi 6 (Gig+) and Thunderbolt 3 – all integrated onto the SoC, thanks to Intel’s 10nm process technology and architecture design – we’re opening the door to an entirely new range of experiences and innovations for the laptop.” Intel was supposed to ship the 10nm processors, way back in 2016. Intel CEO Bob Swan says that the delay was due to the “company’s overly aggressive strategy for moving to its next node.” Intel has also introduced a new processor number naming structure for the 10th generation ‘Ice Lake’ processors which indicates the generation and the level of graphics performance of the processor. Image source: Intel What’s new in the 10th generation Intel core processors? Intelligent performance The 10th generation core processors are the first purpose-built processors for AI on laptops and 2 in 1s. They are built for modern AI-infused applications and contains many features such as: Intel Deep Learning Boost, used for specifically boosting flexibility to run complex AI workloads. It has a dedicated instruction set that accelerates neural networks on the CPU for maximum responsiveness. Up to 1 teraflop of GPU engine compute for sustained high-throughput inference applications Intel’s Gaussian & Neural Accelerator (GNA) provides an exclusive engine for background workloads such as voice processing and noise prevention at ultra-low power, for utmost battery life. New graphics With the Iris Plus graphics, the 10th generation core processors imparts double graphic performance in 1080p and higher-level content creation in 4K video editing, application of video filters and high-resolution photo processing. This is the first time that Intel’s Graphics processing unit (GPU) will support VESA’s Adaptive Sync* display standard. It enables a smoother gaming experience across games like Dirt Rally 2.0* and Fortnite*. According to Intel, this is the industry's first integrated GPU to incorporate variable rate shading for better rendering performance, as it uses the Gen11 graphics architecture.  The 10th generation core processors supports the BT.2020* specification, hence it is possible to view a 4K HDR video in a billion colors. Best connectivity With improved board integration, PC manufacturers can innovate on form factor for sleeker designs with Wi-Fi 6 (Gig+) connectivity and up to four Thunderbolt 3 ports. Intel claims this is the “fastest and most versatile USB-C connector available.” In the first batch of 11 'Ice Lake' processors, there are 6 Ice Lake U series and 5 Ice Lake Y series processors. Given below is the complete Ice Lake processors list. Image Source: Intel Intel has revealed that laptops with the 10th generation core processors can be expected in the holiday season this year. The post also states that they will soon release additional products in the 10th generation Intel core mobile processor family due to increased needs in computing. The upcoming processors will “deliver increased productivity and performance scaling for demanding, multithreaded workloads.”   Users love the new 10th generation core processor features and are especially excited about the Gen 11 graphics. https://twitter.com/Tribesigns/status/1133284822548279296 https://twitter.com/Isaacraft123/status/1156982456408596481 Many users are also expecting to see the new processors in the upcoming Mac notebooks. https://twitter.com/ChernSchwinn1/status/1157297037336928256 https://twitter.com/matthewmspace/status/1157295582844575744 Head over to the Intel newsroom page for more details. Apple advanced talks with Intel to buy its smartphone modem chip business for $1 billion, reports WSJ Why Intel is betting on BFLOAT16 to be a game changer for deep learning training? Hint: Range trumps Precision. Intel’s new brain inspired neuromorphic AI chip contains 8 million neurons, processes data 1K times faster

Yesterday, Amazon introduced a new SQL-compatible query language named PartiQL, which is a “unifying query language” that allows you to query data regardless of the database type and vendor. Amazon has open-sourced the language’s lexer, parser, and, compiler under the Apache 2.0 license. The open-source implementation also provides an interactive shell or Read Evaluate Print Loop (REPL) using which you can quickly write and evaluate PartiQL queries. Why PartiQL is introduced Amazon’s business requires querying and transforming huge amounts and types of data that are not just limited to SQL tabular data but also nested and semi-structured data. The tech giant wants to make its relational database services like Redshift capable of accessing non-relational data while maintaining backward-compatibility with SQL. To address these requirements, Amazon created PratiQL that enables you to query data across a variety of formats and services in a simple and consistent way. Here’s a diagram depicting the basic idea behind PartiQL: Source: Amazon Many Amazon services are already using PratiQL including Amazon S3 Select, Amazon Glacier Select, Amazon Redshift Spectrum, Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (Amazon QLDB), and Amazon internal systems. Advantages of using PartiQL PartiQL is fully compatible with SQL: You will not have much trouble adopting PartiQL as it is fully compatible with SQL. All the existing queries that you are familiar with will work in SQL query processors that are extended to provide PartiQL. Works with nested data: PartiQL treats nested data as a first-class citizen of the data abstraction. Its syntax and semantics enable users to “comprehensively and accurately access and query nested data.” Format and datastore independent: PartiQL allows you to write the same query for all data formats as its syntax and semantics are not tied to a specific data format. To enable this behavior, the query operates on a logical type system that maps to diverse formats. Because of its expressiveness, you can use it with diverse underlying datastores. Optional schema and query stability: You do not require to have a predefined schema over a dataset. It is built to work with engines that are schemaless or assume the presence of a schema. Requires minimal extensions: It requires a minimum number of extensions as compared to SQL. These extensions for multi-valued, nested, and schema-less combine seamlessly with joining, filtering, and aggregation, and windowing capabilities of standard SQL. To know more in detail, check out the official announcement by Amazon. #WeWontBuildIt: Amazon workers demand company to stop working with Palantir and take a stand against ICE Ex-Amazon employee hacks Capital One’s firewall to access its Amazon S3 database; 100m US and 60m Canadian users affected Amazon Transcribe Streaming announces support for WebSockets

Yesterday, Data Transfer Project (DTP) updated on their website that Apple has officially joined the project as a contributor, along with other tech giants like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter. Read More: Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and Facebook team up for Data Transfer Project The Data Transfer Project launched in 2018, is an open-source, service-to-service data portability platform which allows individuals to move their data across the web, whenever they want. The seamless transfer of data aims to give users more control of their data across the web. It’s tools will make it possible for users to port their music playlists, contacts or documents from one social network to another, without much effort. Currently, the DTP has 18 contributors. Their partners and open source community have inserted more than 42,000 lines of code and changed more than 1,500 files in the Project. Other alternative social networks like Deezer, Mastodon, and Solid have also joined the project. New Cloud logging and monitoring framework features and new APIs from Google Photos and Smugmug have also been added. The Data Transfer Project is still in the development stage, as its official site states that “We are continually making improvements that might cause things to break occasionally. So as you are trying things please use it with caution and expect some hiccups.” It's Github page has regular updates since its launch and has 2,480 stars, 209 forks and 187 watchers currently. Many users are happy that Apple has also joined the Project, as this means easy transfer of data for them. https://twitter.com/backlon/status/1156259766781394944 https://twitter.com/humancell/status/1156549440133632000 https://twitter.com/BobertHepker/status/1156352450875592704 Some users suspect that such projects will encourage unethical sharing of user data. https://twitter.com/zananeichan/status/1156416593913667585 https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/1156313114788241408 Visit the Data Transfer Project website for more details. Google Project Zero reveals six “interactionless” bugs that can affect iOS via Apple’s iMessage Softbank announces a second AI-focused Vision Fund worth $108 billion with Microsoft, Apple as major investors Apple advanced talks with Intel to buy its smartphone modem chip business for $1 billion, reports WSJ

Yesterday, Senator Josh Hawley proposed a bill to voice against the different techniques tech giants use to exploit users’ attention for keeping them addicted to their apps. The Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology (SMART) Act would “ban certain features that are designed to be addictive, would require choice parity for consent, and would give users the power to monitor their time spent on social media”,  Sen. Hawley’s official post states. “Big tech has embraced a business model of addiction. Too much of the ‘innovation’ in this space is designed not to create better products, but to capture more attention by using psychological tricks that make it difficult to look away. This legislation will put an end to that and encourage true innovation by tech companies,” Senator Hawley said. “Deceptive design played an enormous part in last week’s FTC settlement with Facebook, and Hawley’s bill would make it unlawful for tech companies to use dark patterns to manipulate users into opting into services”, The Verge reports. The bill would ban user in-app achievements such as “Snapstreak” on Snapchat that gets the user addicted and difficult to leave the social media platform. [box type="shadow" align="" class="" width=""]Snapchat explains Snapstreaks as “The number next to the 🔥 tells you how many days you've been on a Snapstreak. For example, if you have an 8 next to the 🔥 it means you both have Snapped (not chatted) back and forth with this friend for 8 days.[/box] The bill, if passed, would require social media organizations to, within six months,  implement a feature allowing users to set a time limit on how long they can access the platform each day. With the default time limit being 30 minutes, "if the user elects to increase or remove the time limit, [it] resets the time limit to 30 minutes a day on the first day of every month," the bill text says. The bill also demands including a pop-up every 30-minute that would notify users of the total time spent. Apple and Google have included these monitoring systems with Screen Time and Digital Wellbeing. Instagram and Facebook also let you keep tabs on how much time you spend on them each day. Josh Golin, Executive Director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, said, “Social media companies deploy a host of tactics designed to manipulate users in ways that undermines their wellbeing. We commend Senator Hawley for introducing legislation that would prohibit some of the most exploitative tactics, including those frequently deployed on children and teens.” Sen. Hawley talked about natural stopping points, like the end of a page, naturally prompt users to choose whether to continue reading. However, tech giants eliminate these mental opportunities by using structures like infinite scroll for newsfeeds and autoplay for videos. Within three months, if the bill is passed, the companies would be banned from offering features that automatically load and display content "other than music or video content that the user has prompted to play" without that person opting in. If users have reached the end of a block of a tweet, they will have to "specifically request (such as by pushing a button or clicking an icon, but not by simply continuing to scroll) that additional content is loaded and displayed." In a hearing on putting legislative limits on the persuasiveness of technology, late last month, Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist, explained how platforms create products to increase the amount of time users spend on a site. “If I take the bottom out of this glass and I keep refilling the water or the wine, you won’t know when to stop drinking. That’s what happens with infinitely scrolling feeds”, Harris explained the committee. According to Bloomberg, Google and Facebook declined to comment. NetChoice, a trade group that counts both companies as members, said, “The goal of this bill is to make being online a less-enjoyable experience.” Many users and app developers are not in favour of the bill and have exclaimed why this tech is was implemented. A user on HackerNews writes, “I'm the dev that built Netflix's autoplay of the next episode. We built it first on the web player because it is easy to A/B test new features there. We called it "post-play" at the time…...So yes, Netflix wants you to spend more hours watching Netflix and the product team is scientifically engineering the product to make it more addictive. But...the product team at Doritos does the same thing.” https://twitter.com/ptbrennan11/status/1156221816983248896 A user on Reddit comments, “I design user interactions for a living, and infinite scroll is used ALL the time, and often in different levels/areas of a page. Just like we can design things to be fast, easy, addicting, etc, we can design things to be slow and require more consideration….. This seems like a thoughtless proposal that needs to be a step up from where it is: …..” https://twitter.com/petersuderman/status/1156296953069744128 https://twitter.com/JDVance1/status/1156285549638012930 A lot of users may not accept the conditions of this bill as they feel it would be too restrictive and the pop-ups after certain time interval may break their continuity online, and a lot other factors. However, some feel, social media companies can at least provide choices for users to keep autoplay settings on. A user David Kwan commented on The Verge article, “With the intent of establishing UX/UI design policies, instead of a ”ban,” the US gov could establish design guidelines (like the UK gov) that can help mitigate online addiction and other design matters that affect how people interact with digital media. For example, instead of allowing platforms like YouTube to set autoplay settings “on” by default, the default setting should be set to “off” instead.” https://twitter.com/reckless/status/1156206435887439874 In May, Sen. Hawley introduced a bill to ban loot boxes in video games that said such microtransactions exist to exploit children. In June, he introduced a bill that declares top internet companies to undergo external audits to evaluate whether their content moderation systems are free of political bias. To know more about Sen. Hawley’s SMART Act in detail, read the proposed bill. Along with platforms like Facebook, now websites using embedded ‘Like’ buttons are jointly responsible for what happens to the collected user data, rules EU court Microsoft mulls replacing C and C++ code with Rust calling it a “modern safer system programming language” with great memory safety features Microsoft adds Telemetry files in a “security-only update” without prior notice to users  

Yesterday the Guardian reported that the “Five Eyes” nations (UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) met in London on Tuesday. The representatives discussed plans to give spy agencies and police a backdoor access to encrypted social media messages on platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp in order to combat online child abuse and terrorism. As per the Home Office, it is a two day meeting hosted by the the new UK Home Secretary, Priti Patel. The agenda for the meeting was to focus on the ‘Emerging threats’ and how best to address the opportunities and risks posed by the new technologies. Ministers attending the event included: Australian Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton MP Canadian Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Ralph Goodale MP Canadian Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Ahmed Hussen MP Canadian Associate Deputy Minister of Justice Francois Daigle New Zealand’s Minister of Justice Andrew Little MP New Zealand’s Attorney General David Parker MP US Attorney General William Barr US Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security David Pekokse Ministers discussed challenges with end to end encryption Ms Patel demanded that Facebook, along with Twitter and Google, allow access to hidden messages by intelligence agencies. She said to the Daily Telegraph that, “The use of end-to-end encryption in this way has the potential to have serious consequences for the vital work which companies already undertake to identify and remove child abuse and terrorist content.” “It will also hamper our own law enforcement agencies, and those of our allies, in their ability to identify and stop criminals abusing children, trafficking drugs, weapons and people, or terrorists plotting attacks.” US Attorney General William Barr said in the meeting, “Encryption presents a unique challenge. We must ensure that we do not stand by as advances in technology create spaces where criminal activity of the most heinous kind can go undetected and unpunished.” The security ministers of the five nations said in a statement that online child abuse material had increased twenty-fold in the past four years, to 18 million images found last year, according to the Guardian. Controversial ‘Ghost Protocol’ proposed by UK intelligence agency It was noted that, GCHQ, the UK agency which monitors and breaks into communications, has suggested that Silicon Valley companies could develop technology that would silently add a police officer or intelligence agent to conversations or group chats. This seems to be a controversial so called “ghost protocol” which is opposed by companies, civil society organizations and by security experts too. In May, tech companies signed an open letter to the GCHQ, opposing the concept of a ghost protocol. The protocol involved plans for tech companies to allow law enforcement access to encrypted messages by including the government as a third-party that would secretly receive a copy of the messages without the other parties' knowledge. Dangers of ghost protocols The reality of this will be that user’s privacy will be under assault on a variety of fronts. Companies crave access to personal information because it helps them target users with advertisements. Bad actors want access to private information for nefarious and criminal purposes. And governments want the ability to know who you communicate with and what you say, presumably in order to better protect you. But it begs the question, of how much intrusion we are willing to accept in the name of national security. Because the dangers are innumerable. For example China’s social credit system, if you are officially designated as a “discredited individual,” or laolai in Mandarin, you are banned from spending on “luxuries,” whose definition includes air travel and fast trains. This class of people, most of whom have defaulted on their debts, sit on a public database maintained by China’s Supreme Court. For them, daily life is a series of inflicted indignities some big, some small from not being able to rent a home in their own name, to being shunned by relatives and business associates, highlights the Inkstone report. You can't have a secure system that fully protects user privacy while also having a backdoor that lets the government in whenever it sees fit. Community criticizes move saying backdoors to encryption renders it worthless There was an immediate backlash to this news, Forbes reported. A backdoor is a vulnerability. And introducing weakness into end-to-end encryption renders that encryption worthless. On Reddit as well, users from Australia criticized this development, “It is not the purview of government to know what its' citizens are talking about at all times.” While on Hacker News, users discuss the challenges of spying the platforms in bulk, “In bulk, as opposed to targeted spying - you can send an agent to hide behind the bushes, or plant a microphone, or infiltrate a group. Which was possible for a long time before computers or electronics, but it's not possible to do it at scale - you can spy on a few hundred people this way, but not on a few million.” Apple advanced talks with Intel to buy its smartphone modem chip business for $1 billion, reports WSJ Facebook signs on more than a dozen backers for its GlobalCoin cryptocurrency including Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Uber Microsoft quietly deleted 10 million faces from MS Celeb, the world’s largest facial recognition database

Yesterday, a significant judgement was made on the usage of Facebook’s ‘Like’ feature by third party websites. The Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) ruled that the operator of a third party website with an embedded Facebook ‘Like’ button can be held jointly responsible for the initial collection and transmission of the visitor’s personal data to its website, under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It also stated that “By contrast, that operator is not, in principle, a controller in respect of the subsequent processing of those data carried out by Facebook alone.” This ruling was made in a case filed by a German consumer protection association, Verbraucherzentrale NRW against an online clothing retailer Fashion ID. The court found that the installed Facebook 'Like' button on a third party website allows Facebook to collect user’s information without their consent, irrespective of the fact that users did not click the button or were not part of the social media network. According to the press release, the ECJ has set guidelines that third party website operators  must seek consent from site visitors by clarifying the identity and purpose of the information transmission, before the data is handed over to Facebook. It also adds that for lawful purposes, operators “must pursue a legitimate interest through the collection and transmission of personal data in order for those operations to be justified in that regard.” The ‘Like’ button feature, introduced by Facebook 10 years ago,  is one of the most utilized features by users. The feature has also been adapted into most other social media platforms like Youtube, Twitter and Instagram. It makes sharing content or opinions about content on social platforms extremely convenient with a single click. This ruling is significant because many online portals use the 'Like' button to make their products more visible on Facebook and do not bother about the consequences of data sharing with social media platforms. Last year, Facebook had notified the UK parliament that between April 9 and April 16, the 'Like' button appeared on 8.4M websites. This judgement comes as a warning to all third party websites, as they can no longer hide behind Facebook for their complicity in dodgy data gathering practices. Last month, the BBC reported that Facebook uses information from the 'Like' button feature to not only alter newsfeeds and to apply behavioural advertising, but also to use it as a tool to target elections and manipulate people’s emotional state. Addressing the court judgement, Jack Gilbert, Associate general counsel at Facebook, says that “Website plugins are common and important features of the modern Internet. We welcome the clarity that today’s decision brings to both websites and providers of plugins and similar tools.” He further added that they are reviewing the court’s decision and “will work closely with our partners to ensure they can continue to benefit from our social plugins and other business tools in full compliance with the law.” Facebook, which believes there’s no expectation of privacy on social media, has a record of trying to evade or delay justice by manipulating laws using legal loopholes. A GDPR-violation lawsuit filed against Facebook by a privacy activist went on for 5 long years as Facebook constantly questioned whether GDPR-based cases fall under the jurisdiction of courts, until it was rejected by an Austrian Supreme Court this year. Last year, a lawsuit was filed against Facebook over a data breach impacting nearly 30 million users. In response, Facebook argued that some of the leaked information were not sensitive. However, an appellate court in San Francisco ruled against Facebook’s appeal, last month. When caught red-handed, Facebook has attempted to deploy their PR and lobbying juggernaut to turn verdicts in their favour. Two months ago, reports emerged claiming that Facebook allegedly pressured and “arm-wrestled” EU expert group to soften European guidelines for fake news. Facebook’s chief lobbyist, Richard Allan allegedly threatened the expert group by saying, “We are happy to make our contribution, but if you go in that direction, we will be controversial”, and would stop Facebook’s support for journalistic and academic projects. We will have to wait and watch if Facebook and other social media & content platforms will comply with the GDPR data protection framework this time or will it again try to escape laws using its might. https://twitter.com/MaxMoranHi/status/1155855819868688384 https://twitter.com/PepperoniRollz/status/1155785646595817473 Some people are satisfied that the court ruling will ensure third party websites think hard before sharing user information with Facebook. A user on Hacker News comments, “Good. I don't want you telling Facebook I've visited your website.” https://twitter.com/LguzzardiM/status/1155894027046158336 https://twitter.com/ChopinOpera/status/1155962319874080768 To tackle the plague of tracking in Facebook ‘Like’ button, open source developers are coming up with their own solutions. Social Share Privacy is one such plugin project in jQuery. It enables third party websites to disable the Like/recommend button on their websites, by default. Read the Court of Justice of the European Union’s press release for more information. “Why was Rust chosen for Libra?”, US Congressman questions Facebook on Libra security design choices CraftAssist: An open-source framework to enable interactive bots in Minecraft by Facebook researchers Facebook released Hermes, an open source JavaScript engine to run React Native apps on Android

On Monday, a group of Amazon employees sent out an internal email to the We Won’t Build it mailing list, calling on Amazon to stop working with Palantir. Palantir is a data analytics company, founded by Peter Thiel, one of President Trump’s most vocal supporters in Silicon Valley, has a strong association with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). https://twitter.com/WeWontBuildIt/status/1155872860742664194 Last year in June, an alliance of more than 500 Amazon employees had signed a petition addressing to CEO Jeff Bezos and AWS head Andy Jassy to abandon its contracts with government agencies. It seems that those protests are ramping up again. The email sent to employee mailing lists within Amazon Web Services demanded that Palantir to be removed from Amazon’s cloud for violating its terms of service. It also called on Amazon to take a stand against ICE by making a statement establishing its position against immigration raids, deportations and camps for migrants at the border. They have also demanded to stop selling its facial recognition tech to the government agencies. https://twitter.com/WeWontBuildIt/status/1155872862055485441 In May, Amazon shareholders had rejected the proposal to ban the sale of its facial recognition tech to government. With this they had also rejected eleven other proposals made by employees including a climate resolution, salary transparency and other issues. "The world is watching the abuses in ICE's concentration camps unfold. We know that our company should, and can do better,” the email read. The protests broke out at Amazon’s AWS Summit, held in New York, last week on Thursday. As Amazon CTO Werner Vogels gave a presentation, a group led by a man identified in a tweet as a tech worker interrupted to protest Amazon ties with ICE. https://twitter.com/altochulo/status/1149305189800775680 https://twitter.com/MaketheRoadNY/status/1149306940377448449 Vogels was caught off guard by the protests but continued on about the specifics of AWS, according to ZDNet. “I’m more than willing to have a conversation, but maybe they should let me finish first,” Vogels said amidst protesters, whose audio was cut off on Amazon’s official livestream of the event, per ZDNet. “We’ll all get our voices heard,” he said before returning to his planned speech. According to Business Insider reports, Palantir has a $51 million contract with ICE, which entails providing software to gather data on undocumented immigrant’s employment information, phone records, immigration history and similar information. Its software is hosted in the AWS cloud. The email states that Palantir enables ICE to violate the rights of others and working with such a company is harmful to Amazon’s reputation. The employees also state that their protest is in the spirit of similar actions at companies including Wayfair, Microsoft and Salesforce where workers have protested against their employers to cut ties with ICE and US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Amazon has been facing increasing pressure from its employees. Last week workers had protested on Amazon Prime day demanding a safe working conditions and fair wages. Amazon, which typically takes a cursory view of such employee outcry, has so far given no indication that it will reconsider providing services to Palantir and other law enforcement agencies. Instead the company argued that the government should determine what constitutes “acceptable use” of technology of the type it sells. “As we’ve said many times and continue to believe strongly, companies and government organizations need to use existing and new technology responsibly and lawfully,” Amazon said to BuzzFeed News. “There is clearly a need for more clarity from governments on what is acceptable use of AI and ramifications for its misuse, and we’ve provided a proposed legislative framework for this. We remain eager for the government to provide this additional clarity and legislation, and will continue to offer our ideas and specific suggestions.” Other tech worker groups like Google Walkout For Real Change, Ban Google for Pride stand in solidarity with Amazon workers on this protest. https://twitter.com/GoogleWalkout/status/1155976287803998210 https://twitter.com/NoPrideForGoog/status/1155906615930806276 #TechWontBuildIt: Entropic maintainer calls for a ban on Palantir employees contributing to the project and asks other open source communities to take a stand on ethical grounds Amazon workers protest on its Prime day, demand a safe work environment and fair wages Amazon shareholders reject proposals to ban sale of facial recognition tech to govt and to conduct independent review of its human and civil rights impact

Today Baidu released a continual natural language processing framework ERNIE 2.0. ERNIE stands for Enhanced Representation through kNowledge IntEgration. Baidu claims in its research paper that ERNIE 2.0 outperforms BERT and the recent XLNet in 16 NLP tasks in Chinese and English. Additionally, Baidu has open sourced ERNIE 2.0 model. In March Baidu had announced the release of ERNIE 1.0, its pre-trained model based on PaddlePaddle, Baidu’s deep learning open platform. According to Baidu, ERNIE 1.0 outperformed BERT in all Chinese language understanding tasks. Pre-training procedures of the models such as BERT, XLNet and ERNIE 1.0 are mainly based on a few simple tasks modeling co-occurrence of words or sentences, highlights the paper. For example, BERT constructed a bidirectional language model task and the next sentence prediction task to capture the co-occurrence information of words and sentences; XLNet constructed a permutation language model task to capture the co-occurrence information of words. But besides co-occurring information, there are much richer lexical, syntactic and semantic information in training corpora. For example, named entities, such as person names, place names, and organization names, contain concept information; Sentence order and sentence proximity information can enable the models to learn structure-aware representations; Semantic similarity at the document level or discourse relations among sentences can enable the models to learn semantic-aware representations. So is it possible to further improve the performance if the model was trained to learn more kinds of tasks constantly? Source: ERNIE 2.0 research paper Based on this idea, Baidu has proposed a continual pre-training framework for language understanding in which pre-training tasks can be incrementally built and learned through multi-task learning in a continual way. According to Baidu, in this framework, different customized tasks can be incrementally introduced at any time and these tasks are trained through multi-task learning, which enables the encoding of lexical, syntactic and semantic information across tasks. And whenever a new task arrives, this framework can incrementally train the distributed representations without forgetting the previously trained parameters. The Structure of Released ERNIE 2.0 Model Source: ERNIE 2.0 research paper ERNIE is a continual pre-training framework which provides a feasible scheme for developers to build their own NLP models. The fine-tuning source codes of ERNIE 2.0 and pre-trained English version models can be downloaded from the GitHub page. The team at Baidu compared the performance of ERNIE 2.0 model with the existing  pre-training models on the English dataset GLUE and 9 popular Chinese datasets separately. The results show that ERNIE 2.0 model outperforms BERT and XLNet on 7 GLUE language understanding tasks and outperforms BERT on all of the 9 Chinese NLP tasks, such as DuReader Machine Reading Comprehension, Sentiment Analysis and Question Answering.  Specifically, according to the experimental results on GLUE datasets, ERNIE 2.0 model almost comprehensively outperforms BERT and XLNET on English tasks, whether it is a base model or the large model. Furthermore, the research paper shows that ERNIE 2.0 large model achieves the best performance and creates new results on the Chinese NLP tasks. Source: ERNIE 2.0 research paper To know more about ERNIE 2.0, read the research paper and check out their official blog on Baidu’s website. DeepMind’s AI uses reinforcement learning to defeat humans in multiplayer games CMU and Google researchers present XLNet: a new pre-training method for language modeling that outperforms BERT on 20 tasks Transformer-XL: A Google architecture with 80% longer dependency than RNNs  

Launched in 2018, Alibaba’s chip subsidiary, Pingtouge made a major announcement yesterday. Pingtouge is launching its first product - chip processor XuanTie 910 using the open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture. The XuanTie 910 processor is expected to reduce the costs of related chip production by more than 50%, reports Caixin Global. XuanTie 910, also known as T-Head, will soon be available in the market for commercial use. Pingtouge will also be releasing some of XuanTie 910’s codes on Github for free to help the global developer community to create innovative applications. No release dates have been revealed yet. What are the properties of the XuanTie 910 processor? The XuanTie 910 16-core processor has 7.1 Coremark/MHz and its main frequency can achieve 2.5GHz. This processor can be used to manufacture high-end edge-based microcontrollers (MCUs), CPUs, and systems-on-chip (SOC). It can be used in applications like 5G telecommunication, artificial intelligence (AI), and autonomous driving. XuanTie 910 processor gives 40% increased performance over the mainstream RISC-V instructions and also a 20% increase in terms of instructions. According to Synced, Xuantie 910 has two unconventional properties: It has a 2-stage pipelined out-of-order triple issue processor with two memory accesses per cycle. The processors computing, storage and multi-core capabilities are superior due to an increased extension of instructions. Xuantie 910 can extend more than 50 instructions than RISC-V. Last month, The Verge reported that an internal ARM memo has instructed its staff to stop working with Huawei. With the US blacklisting China’s telecom giant Huawei, and also banning any American company from doing business with them, it seems that ARM is also following the American strategy. Although ARM is based in U.K. and is owned by the Japanese SoftBank group, it does have an “US origin technology”, as claimed in the internal memo. This may be one of the reasons why Alibaba is increasing its efforts in developing RISC-V, so that Chinese tech companies can become independent from Western technologies. A Xuantie 910 processor can assure Chinese companies of a stable future, with no fear of it being banned by Western governments. Other than being cost-effective, RISC-V also has other advantages like more flexibility compared to ARM. With complex licence policies and high power prospect, it is going to be a challenge for ARM to compete against RISC-V and MIPS (Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages) processors. A Hacker News user comments, “I feel like we (USA) are forcing China on a path that will make them more competitive long term.” Another user says, “China is going to be key here. It's not just a normal market - China may see this as essential to its ability to develop its technology. It's Made in China 2025 policy. That's taken on new urgency as the west has started cutting China off from western tech - so it may be normal companies wanting some insurance in case intel / arm cut them off (trade disputes etc) AND the govt itself wanting to product its industrial base from cutoff during trade disputes” Some users also feel that it is technology that wins when two big economies continue bringing up innovative technologies. A comment on Hacker News reads, “Good to see development from any country. Obviously they have enough reason to do it. Just consider sanctions. They also have to protect their own market. Anyone that can afford it, should do it. Ultimately it is a good thing from technology perspective.” Not all US tech companies are wary of partnering with Chinese counterparts. Two days ago, Salesforce, an American cloud-based software company announced a strategic partnership with Alibaba. This aims to help Salesforce localize their products in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. This will enable Salesforce customers to market, sell, and operate through services like Alibaba Cloud and Tmall. Winnti Malware: Chinese hacker group attacks major German corporations for years, German public media investigation reveals The US Justice Department opens a broad antitrust review case against tech giants Salesforce is buying Tableau in a $15.7 billion all-stock deal

Softbank has announced a second Vision Fund with a focus on accelerating AI innovation. This second investment fund totalling $108 billion is backed by investors including Apple, Foxconn, Microsoft, and Standard Chartered Bank, to name a few. SoftBank Group’s own investment in the fund will be $38 billion. SoftBank Group is also said to be still in discussions with other participants with the total amount of the fund expected to increase. The first Softbank vision fund of $97 billion fund was mainly backed by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi and was used for investments in Uber, WeWork, Grab, Grofers, Paytm, and Oyo. Notably, the second Vision Fund does not currently include any participants from the Saudi Arabia government.  Following the revealation of Saudi Arabia’s role in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, SoftBank received a lot of backlash for taking funding from Saudi Arabia. Speaking at a quarterly earnings call in early November 2018, Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank, condemned Khashoggi’s murder, describing it as an “act against humanity and also journalism and free speech… a horrible and deeply regrettable act.” He said that the killing of Khashoggi could have an impact on the bank’s Vision Fund. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week, citing unnamed sources, that Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi had indicated they were likely to invest again, but Riyadh’s funding would be less than $45 billion which was the amount invested in the first fund. Also reported by WSJ, Microsoft being a major investor in this fund, SoftBank executives told Microsoft they would encourage the fund’s roughly 75 companies to shift from Amazon’s cloud platform to Microsoft’s. Quite an interesting way to capture the market! https://twitter.com/KateClarkTweets/status/1154128555728494593 https://twitter.com/seyitaylor/status/1154150531897679873 According to Financial Times, SoftBank said it had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoUs) to invest in the fund with an unnamed Taiwanese investor and seven Japanese financial groups including the top three banks — Mizuho, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and MUFG Bank — as well as Dai-ichi Life Insurance and Daiwa Securities. Read the official report here. Why are experts worried about Microsoft’s billion dollar bet in OpenAI’s AGI pipe dream? SoftBank CEO says Khashoggi murder could have an impact on Saudi-backed $100 billion Vision Fund pouring money into Silicon Valley Ericsson’s expired software certificate issue causes massive outages in UK’s O2 and Japan’s SoftBank network services.

The U.S. Justice Department is opening a broad antitrust review into whether dominant technology firms are unlawfully stifling competition, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. The review is geared toward examining the practices of online platforms that dominate internet search, social media and retail services, which includes Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple, according to the report. The move is the strongest by DOJ so far towards big tech, which faces increased scrutiny from both political parties because of the expanded market power the companies have and the tremendous amount of consumer data they control. The review is designed to go above and beyond recent plans for scrutinizing the tech sector that were crafted by the Justice department and the FTC. DOJ will examine big tech’s growth in size and reach The Justice Department will examine issues including how the most dominant tech firms have grown in size and expanded their reach into additional businesses. They are also interested in how these tech companies have leveraged the powers that come with having very large networks of users, the department said. There is no defined end-goal yet for the review than to understand whether there are antitrust problems that need addressing, the officials said. The inquiry could eventually lead to more focused investigations of specific company conduct, they said. The review also presents risks for the companies beyond whether antitrust issues are identified. The department won’t ignore other company practices that may raise concerns about compliance with other laws, officials said. “Without the discipline of meaningful market-based competition, digital platforms may act in ways that are not responsive to consumer demands,” Justice Department antitrust chief Makan Delrahim said in a statement. “The department’s antitrust review will explore these important issues.” At a broader level, the division will work in close coordination with Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, the officials said. DoJ hosted a meeting with critics of social media giants WSJ further mentioned that the department had recently hosted a private presentation where officials heard from critics of Facebook, who walked through their concerns about the social-media giant and advocated for its breakup. Tech and antitrust observers believed issues related to Facebook’s dominance were to be handled by the FTC. Both the FTC and the Justice Department have made clear that they view tech-sector competition issues as a priority. Under agreements brokered in recent months between Mr. Delrahim and FTC Chairman Joseph Simons, the Justice Department obtained clearance to proceed with a probe of whether Google has engaged in illegal monopolization tactics, as well as jurisdiction over Apple for similar issues. FTC has already undertaken a lengthy consumer-protection investigation of Facebook’s privacy practices, and imposed a $5 billion fine to Facebook for which the company was already prepared. Justice Department officials said those agreements weren’t meant to be open-ended or all-encompassing. But in any case the department isn’t trying to pre-empt the FTC’s work, they said, and suggested the two agencies might explore different tech practices by the same company, as well as different legal theories for possible cases. Apart from the Justice Department and FTC scrutiny, a House antitrust subcommittee also is taking a broad look at potential anticompetitive conduct in the tech sector. Executives from Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon all testified before the panel last week. “I don’t think big is necessarily bad, but I think a lot of people wonder how such huge behemoths that now exist in Silicon Valley have taken shape under the nose of the antitrust enforcers,” Mr. Barr told senators. “You can win that place in the marketplace without violating the antitrust laws, but I want to find out more about that dynamic.” The market and community reactions Hours after this news on Tuesday, shares for the four companies were down. Apple was down by about 0.4%, Amazon by about 1.13%, Alphabet by about 0.96%, and Facebook by about 1.65% according to CNBC report. On this news, Professor at NYUStern, Rob Seamans put forth his views and proposes a few ideas on how the law makers can regulate the big tech. He says  lawmakers should break big tech in a horizontal way, which means that the big tech firm is divided into two smaller, but similar-looking firms. Another idea of break up can be vertical in nature, which means that the big tech firm’s platform remains the same, but it has to spin off anything that uses the platform. For example, Google’s search platform would no longer be able to provide its own maps or other “edge services.” https://twitter.com/robseamans/status/1153849902629314562 On Hacker News, this development has gained significant attention and discussions revolve around the question of whether scientifically the tech companies have made any progress. One of the user comments reads, “I just finished the Eric Weinstein/Peter Thiel podcast, and came away mostly agreeing with their assessment that we’ve really stagnated when it comes to progressing scientifically. I definitely feel like there’s this illusion of tech innovation coming from these big companies that suck up all the tech talent, but at the end of the day the best and brightest are working on optimizing ad clicks (FB, Goog) or getting people to buy crap (Amazon) or working on incremental hardware improvements (Apple).   If anything, I would hope any outcome against big tech would level the playing field when it comes to attracting talent, and create an environment where working on true “moonshot” tech was not so risky.” Democratic presidential candidates like Elizabeth Warren have  been calling for the breakup of companies like Google and Facebook since the start of the year. And a few Republicans have voiced concerns about whether tech companies disfavor conservative voices on their platform. Last month the US regulators had already planned to probe Google on anti-trust issues; Facebook, Amazon & Apple were also under legal scrutiny. This month the EU Commission opened an antitrust case against Amazon on the grounds of violating the EU competition rules under Article 101. EU Commission opens an antitrust case against Amazon on grounds of violating EU competition rules US regulators plan to probe Google on anti-trust issues; Facebook, Amazon & Apple also under legal scrutiny Facebook sets aside $5 billion in anticipation of an FTC penalty for its user data practices

Tesla had a disappointing Wednesday earnings call and reported a $408 million loss. Tesla founder Elon Musk also announced that current CTO JB Straubel is stepping down and will now work in a senior advisor role. This marks the fourth departure in a series of high-profile exits since the past year, as Tesla is still struggling to prove it is profitable. Most recently Steve MacManus, the former Vice President of Engineering at Tesla, joined Apple as Senior Director. The combination of a worse-than-expected loss and losing a co-founder sent the stock plunging 11% in late trading after the announcement. Straubel joined Tesla in March 2004 and became a member of the board. He initially served as principal engineer of drive systems and in May 2005 became head of technology. At Tesla, Straubel was responsible for overseeing the technical and engineering design of the vehicles, notably around batteries. He also took an active role in new technology evaluation, R&D, technical diligence review of key vendors and partners, IP, and systems validation testing. According to his company bio, he helped launch programs like its Supercharger network and the Tesla Energy business. In addition to his work at Tesla, Straubel was also on the Board of Directors for SolarCity. Now he will take on the senior advisor role. “I’m not disappearing, and I just wanted to make sure that people understand that this was not some, you know, lack of confidence in the company or the team or anything like that,” Straubel said. Elon Musk thanked Straubel for his time at Tesla at the Q2 earnings call on Wednesday. “I want to thank JB for his fundamental role in creating and building Tesla. If we hadn’t had lunch in 2003, Tesla wouldn’t exist, basically,” Musk added. https://twitter.com/nealboudette/status/1154162074391646208 “It’s a significant transition for Tesla, as Straubel has been one of the most important members of Tesla management,” Dan Levy, an analyst at Credit Suisse, wrote in a note to clients reported by Bloomberg. Drew Baglino, vice president of technology, will take over Straubel as CTO. As for the earnings report, experts say they are concerned. Tesla adjusted net loss of $1.12 per share, which was worse than the $0.31 loss expected. The company’s shares have plunged by more than 20% so far this year while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index has surged by 20%. However, the overall loss of $408m was an improvement over unexpectedly large loss of $702m reported in quarter one. “Overall, a bad report that will inevitably lead to more questions about its ability to stabilize and turn a profit,” Clement Thibault, a senior analyst at financial markets platform Investing.com said. Tesla initially promised to be profitable in the third quarter of 2018 and has now pushed back that target multiple times. Musk said in the earnings report, “Now profit is expected in the fourth quarter of 2019, with the current quarter to be break-even, as the company's focus is less on profit and more on volume growth, capacity expansion and cash generation. https://twitter.com/TezzlaCFO/status/1154135552050028545 Tesla Autonomy Day takeaways: Full Self-Driving computer, Robotaxis launching next year, and more Researchers successfully trick Tesla autopilot into driving into opposing traffic via “small stickers as interference patches on the ground”. Elon Musk’s Neuralink unveils a “sewing machine-like” robot to control computers via the brain

Yesterday the Plotly team announced the release of Plotly.py 4.0 version which is now available for download from PyPI. This version includes some exciting new features and changes, including a switch to “offline” mode by default, the inclusion of Plotly Express as the recommended entry point into the library, and a new rendering framework compatible with not only Jupyter notebooks but other notebook systems such as Colab, Azure and Kaggle notebooks, as well as popular IDEs such as PyCharm, VSCode, Spyder and others. To upgrade to the latest version, you can run pip install plotly==4.0.0 or conda install -c plotly plotly==4.0.0. More details can be found from the page Getting Started and Migrating to Version 4 guides. Let us check out the key features in Plotly 4.0 Offline Only Prior versions of plotly contained functionality for creating figures in both “online” and “offline” modes. In “online” mode, figures were uploaded to an instance of Plotly’s Chart Studio service and then displayed, whereas in “offline” mode figures were rendered locally. This duality was a common source of confusion for several years, and so in version 4 the team made some important changes to help clear this up. In this version, the only supported mode of operation in the plotly package is “offline” mode, which requires no internet connection, no account, no authentication tokens, and no payment of any kind. Support for “online” mode has been moved into a separately-installed package called chart-studio. Express First Earlier this year the team released a standalone library called Plotly Express aimed at making it significantly easier and faster to create plotly figures from tidy data—as easy as a single line of Python. Plotly Express was extremely well-received by the community and starting with version 4, plotly now includes Plotly Express built-in which is accessible as plotly.express. Displayable anywhere In addition to “offline” mode, the plotly.offline package has been reimplemented on top of a new extensible renderers framework which enables Plotly figures to be displayed not only in Jupyter notebooks, but just about anywhere, like: JupyterLab & classic Jupyter notebook Other notebooks like Colab, nteract, Azure & Kaggle IDEs and CLIs like VSCode, PyCharm, QtConsole & Spyder Other contexts such as sphinx-gallery Dash apps (with dash_core_components.Graph()) Static raster and vector files (with fig.write_image()) Standalone interactive HTML files (with fig.write_html()) Embedded into any website (with fig.to_json() and Plotly.js) In addition to the above new features, there are other changes like a new default theme available in Plotly.py 4.0. The team has introduced a suite of new figure methods for updating figures after they have been constructed. It also supports all subplot and trace types: 2D, 3D, polar, ternary, maps, pie charts, sunbursts, Sankey diagrams etc. Plotly.py 4.0 is also supported by JupyterLab 1.0. To know about these feature updates in detail, check out the Medium post by the Plotly team. Plotly releases Dash DAQ: a UI component library for data acquisition in Python plotly.py 3.0 releases Python in Visual Studio Code released with enhanced Variable Explorer, Data Viewer, and more!

TabNine is a language-agnostic autocompleter that leverages machine learning to provide responsive, reliable, and relevant code suggestions. In a blog post shared last week, Jacob Jackson, TabNine's creator, introduced Deep TabNine that uses deep learning to significantly improve suggestion quality. What is Deep TabNine? Deep TabNine is based on OpenAI's GPT-2 model that uses the Transformer architecture. This architecture was intended for solving problems in natural language processing, Deep TabNine uses it to understand the English in code. For instance, the model can negate words with an if/else statement. While training, the model's goal is to predict the next token given the tokens that come before it. Trained on nearly 2 million files from GitHub, Deep TabNine comes with pre-existing knowledge, instead of learning only from a user’s current project. Additionally, the model also refers to documentation written in natural language to infer function names, parameters, and return types. It is capable of using small clues that are difficult for a traditional tool to access. For instance, it understands that the return type of app.get_user() is assumed to be an object with setter methods and the return type of app.get_users() is assumed to be a list. How can you access Deep TabNine? Although integrating a deep learning model comes with several benefits, using it demands a lot of computing power. Jackson clearly mentioned that running it on a laptop will not deliver low latency that TabNine's users are accustomed to.  As a solution, they are offering TabNine Cloud (Beta), a service that will enable users to use TabNine's servers for GPU-accelerated autocompletion. To get access to TabNine Cloud, you can sign up here. However, there are many who prefer to keep their code on their machines. To ensure the privacy and security of your code, the TabNine team is working on the following use cases: They are promising to come up with a reduced-size model in the future that can run on a laptop with reasonable latency for individual developers. Enterprises will have an option to license the model and run it on their hardware. They are also offering to train a custom model that will understand the unique patterns and style specific to an enterprise's codebase. Developers have already started its beta testing and are quite impressed: https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1151887984691576833 https://twitter.com/aruslan/status/1151914744053297152 https://twitter.com/Frenck/status/1152634220872916996 You can check out the official announcement by TabNine to know more in detail. Implementing autocompletion in a React Material UI application [Tutorial] Material-UI v4 releases with CSS specificity, Classes boilerplate, migration to Typescript and more Conda 4.6.0 released with support for more shells, better interoperability among others

Researchers from Skylight Cyber, an Australian cybersecurity enterprise, have tricked Blackberry Cylance’s AI-based antivirus product. They identified a peculiar bias of the antivirus product towards a specific game engine and bypassed it to trick the product into accepting malicious malware files. This discovery means companies working in the field of artificial intelligence-driven cybersecurity need to rethink their approach to creating new products. The bypass is not just limited to Cylance, researchers chose it as it is a leading vendor in the field and is publicly available. The researchers Adi Ashkenazy and Shahar Zini from Skylight Cyber say they can reverse the model of any AI-based EPP (Endpoint Protection Platform) product, and find a bias enabling a universal bypass. Essentially meaning if you could truly understand how a certain model works, and the type of features it uses to reach a decision, you would have the potential to fool it consistently. How did the researchers trick Cylance into thinking bad is good? Cylance’s machine-learning algorithm has been trained to favor a benign file, causing it to ignore malicious code if it sees strings from the benign file attached to a malicious file. The researchers took advantage of this and appended strings from a non-malicious file to a malicious one, tricking the system into thinking the malicious file is safe and avoiding detection. The trick works even if the Cylance engine previously concluded the same file was malicious before the benign strings were appended to it. The Cylance engine keeps a scoring mechanism ranging from -1000 for the most malicious files, and +1000 for the most benign of files. It also whitelists certain families of executable files to avoid triggering false positives on legitimate software. The researchers suspected that the machine learning would be biased toward code in those whitelisted files. So, they extracted strings from an online gaming program that Cylance had whitelisted and appended it to malicious files. The Cylance engine tagged the files benign and shifted scores from high negative numbers to high positive ones. https://youtu.be/NE4kgGjhf1Y The researchers tested against the WannaCry ransomware, Samsam ransomware, the popular Mimikatz hacking tool, and hundreds of other known malicious files. This method proved successful for 100% of the top 10 Malware for May 2019, and close to 90% for a larger sample of 384 malware. “As far as I know, this is a world-first, proven global attack on the ML [machine learning] mechanism of a security company,” told Adi Ashkenazy, CEO of Skylight Cyber to Motherboard, who first reported the news. “After around four years of super hype [about AI], I think this is a humbling example of how the approach provides a new attack surface that was not possible with legacy [antivirus software].” Gregory Webb, chief executive officer of malware protection firm Bromium Inc., told SiliconAngle that the news raises doubts about the concept of categorizing code as “good” or “bad.” “This exposes the limitations of leaving machines to make decisions on what can and cannot be trusted,” Webb said. “Ultimately, AI is not a silver bullet.” Martijn Grooten, a security researcher also added his views to the Cylance Bypass story. He states, “This is why we have good reasons to be concerned about the use of AI/ML in anything involving humans because it can easily reinforce and amplify existing biases.” The Cylance team have now confirmed the global bypass issue and will release a hotfix in the next few days. “We are aware that a bypass has been publicly disclosed by security researchers. We have verified there is an issue which can be leveraged to bypass the anti-malware component of the product. Our research and development teams have identified a solution and will release a hotfix automatically to all customers running current versions in the next few days,” the team wrote in a blog post. You can go through the blog post by Skylight Cyber researchers for additional information. Microsoft releases security updates: a “wormable” threat similar to WannaCry ransomware discovered 25 million Android devices infected with ‘Agent Smith’, a new mobile malware FireEye reports infrastructure-crippling Triton malware linked to Russian government tech institute