In this case study, Deryck Webb from the Government of Alberta (GoA) explains how Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) and Nerdio enabled employees to access workspaces from anywhere across the most remote parts of Canada — particularly vital for those involved in critical services, such as wildfire management.
Originally relying on on-premises Citrix and VMware solutions, GoA found Azure Virtual Desktop to be a more robust, cost-effective alternative as part of its Microsoft 365 licensing. By partnering with Nerdio, GoA was able to streamline its Azure Virtual Desktop deployment, providing seamless access and improved user experience for over 3,000 monthly active users.
The intuitive Nerdio platform enabled the GoA team to efficiently manage virtual machines and optimize resource allocation, creating a secure and reliable remote work environment, while Nerdio’s advanced analytics and Auto-scaling features allowed the organization to save up to CAD $36,000 monthly on AVD storage.
I wasn’t surprised to learn that, according to the folks at QR Code Generator, “Analysis of Google search data has revealed that online searches for “Microsoft alternative,” “MacOS,” “Debian,” “Ubuntu,“ and “Linux” soared by up to 290% worldwide during Microsoft’s global IT outage.”
Once more, and with feeling, I suggest you seriously consider switching your computers from Windows to Linux and contemplate moving from PCs to Macs.
Leaving that smart-aleck attitude aside, we really do depend too much on Windows, period. If we were all using Macs or Linux, we might have encountered the same problem, but it’s less likely. Linux is more secure by design, but it’s had its security breaches, as well. It just doesn’t have them nearly as often as Windows does.
Speaking to Proofnews, Dave Farina, the host of “Professor Dave Explains,” put it this way: “If you’re profiting off of work that I’ve done [to build a product] that will put me out of work or people like me out of work, then there needs to be a conversation on the table about compensation or some kind of regulation.”
To some extent, the focus on YouTube data distracts from that critical argument, which is that the generative AI (genAI) tools coming into common use today are likely to have been trained by information created by humans and shared online. That’s the kind of information picked up by webcrawlers, including Apple’s.
But data quality is a real issue here, and the search for the best data inherently means that the best data sources are the highest octane of fuels to power training AI.
“It’s going to be situational. In the Moody/Paxton cases, NetChoice was angling for them to say that newsfeed generation is always expressive, but the Court rejected this overbroad strategy,” McBrien said. “It remanded the case for the lower courts to parse through the arguments more granularly: what exact newsfeed-construction activities are implicated by the laws, which are claimed to be expressive, are they really expressive, etc.”
The Justices, however, were open to the idea that using algorithms to do something expressive might receive less First Amendment protection, depending on the specifics of the algorithm such as how closely and faithfully it carries out the human being’s message, according to McBrien.
Specifically, the majority thought when content curators (social media) enforce content and community guidelines, such as prohibitions on harassment or pro-Nazi content, those activities receive First Amendment protections. “So, when an algorithm is used to enforce those guidelines, the majority said it might receive First Amendment protections,” he said.
PowerShell updates will require a diagnostics test. Try the command, “import-module Microsoft.powershell.diagnostics – verbose” and validate that you are getting the correct results from your home directory.
Due to the change in the Windows core installation technology (MSI), please validate that User Account Control (UAC) still functions as expected.
Microsoft SQL Server
This month is a big update for both Microsoft SQL Server and the local, or workstation supporting elements ofOLE. The primary focus for this kind of complex effort should be your line-of-business or core applications. These are the applications that have multiple data connections and rely on complex, multiple object/session requirements. Due to the changes this month, we can’t recommend specific Windows feature testing regimes, as we are most concerned that the business logic (and resulting data) of the application in question might be affected. Only you will know what looks good; we advise a comparative testing regime across unpatched and newly patched systems looking for data disparities.
Windows
Microsoft made another update to the Win32 and GDI subsystems with a recommendation to test out a significant portion of your application portfolio. We also recommend that you test the following functional areas in the Windows platform:
File compression has been updated, so file and archive extraction scenarios will need to be exercised.
Due to the Microsoft codec updates, perform a system reboot and test that your audio and camera still work together.
Security updates will require the testing of the creation of new Windows certificates.
Networking changes will require a test of DNS and DHCP, specifically theDHCP R_DhcpAddSubnetElement API. As part of these changes, testing VPN authentication will be required. Try to include your Network Policy Server (NPS) as part of the connection creation and deletion effort.
This month’s update to Remote Desktop Services (RDS) will require the creation and revocation of license requests.
A significant update to the Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS) will require testing of network traffic involving repeated bursts of large files. Try using Teams while this networking burst testing is in progress.
Backup and printing have been updated, so test your volumes and ensure that when you print out a test page, your OS does not crash (yes, really). Try printing outTIFF files. (Hey, you might like it.)
As part of the ongoing effort to support the new ARM architecture, Microsoft released the first patch for this new platform, CVE-2024-37985. This is an Intel assigned processor-level vulnerability that has been mitigated by a Microsoft OS level patch. The Readiness team has provided guidance on potential ARM-related compatibility and testing issues.
Slack hasn’t moved as aggressively to integrate with Salesforce as it might have, though the launch last year of Sales Elevate, which makes Salesforce data more easily accessible in the collaboration app, is a sign of an improvement. “I think that’s where there’s a huge opportunity to make Slack the front-end of Salesforce,” said Lazar. If I’m a salesperson or sales manager, or if I’m using Salesforce marketing campaigns, then I can manage all the different Salesforce features within Slack, and I have the ability to collaborate,” he said.
McKeon-White also sees potential for Slack to further tailor its app to specific job roles and industries. Features like lists and Workflow Builder enable Slack to be tailored to internal use cases, such as procurement, for example, or IT, and there are opportunities to cater to specific verticals such as a healthcare or retail organization more intently.
Slack can also increase revenues from existing customers, said Lazar, as it continues to evolve. “Most of their growth is going to happen within their existing customer base by adding new feature functionality and adding higher-level licenses, or converting people over to the Enterprise Grid product,” he said.
Apple is, of course, not blind to the growing tension between the two nations. It’s rapidly increasing investments in India and manufacturing hubs elsewhere across the APAC region, evidence of that awareness. But even now the vast majority of its products are made in China. Building a replacement manufacturing ecosystem was always going to take vast amounts of money and time, and it wasn’t merely the pandemic that forced Apple’s operations staff to accelerate investment in manufacturing outside of China.
It’s complicated
One thing Apple doesn’t need is for trading conditions to worsen in what remains its biggest market outside the US. The slow move by China’s government to reject iPhone use at work is potentially as significant a problem to the company as the US government’s poorly considered anti-trust litigation against it. Both sets of decisions are likely to hit Apple’s bottom line, even as the gulf between the two nations continues to grow.
The race to AI is unlikely to improve things. The US has already taken steps in the form of sanctions to hamper China’s progress in AI development, though the impact seems limited. At the same time, Apple’s decision to introduce its own AI tools first only in the US, and to confirm that the EU will not gain access to them for some time yet, reflects a similar story of disunity as nations vie for tech prominence.
Take, for example, the very fuselages of the 737s. In 2005, Boeing cut costs by selling its Witchica-based manufacturing site to Onex, a private equity firm that buys struggling businesses, slashes costs, and resells them. There went years of experience and a quality-first culture.
That plant would re-emerge as Spirit AeroSystems, Boeing’s third-party manufacturing partner. Whether Boeing overseeing its quality assurance would have improved anything is an open question, but there can be no doubt that Spirit’s products were shoddy and second-rate under a cost-saving mandate.
Never, ever outsource mission-critical work. What Boeing used to do best was engineering and manufacturing. I don’t know what your company does best, but neglecting your expertise to cut costs is a fool’s move.
The company said it may offer fixes for vulnerabilities that Microsoft leaves unpatched, while also providing patches for non-Microsoft products (such as Java runtime, Adobe Reader etc.), as explained in a blog post.
Gauging risk to reward
Rich Gibbons, head of market development at IT asset management specialist Synyega, noted that third-party support is an established part of the enterprise software market.
“Businesses regularly bring in third parties to help patch and maintain their legacy Oracle, SAP, and IBM estates, and while it’s not as common with Microsoft, it’s still a legitimate option, and one worth assessing,” Gibbons said.
When you’ve got YouTube on your to-do list and you have neither the time nor the patience to sit and watch an entire work-related video — say, a presentation of some sort, a marathon company keynote, or maybe a boring-as-can-be board meeting — a splendid site called Summarize.tech will make your life instantly easier.
Summarize.tech takes any YouTube link you feed it and generates an on-demand transcript of the entire clip in seconds. It breaks the video down into broadly summarized sections and lets you click on any section to expand it and dive into deeper, more specific summaries within. It can even take videos in other languages, including Spanish and French, and translate and then summarize them in English for you.
You can save yourself tons of time by letting Summarize.tech summarize and transcribe lengthy videos for you.
You can save yourself tons of time by letting Summarize.tech summarize and transcribe lengthy videos for you.
JR Raphael / IDG
You can save yourself tons of time by letting Summarize.tech summarize and transcribe lengthy videos for you.
JR Raphael / IDG
JR Raphael / IDG
Summarize.tech is free for “a few” videos per day. For anything more than that, the service offers a $10-a-month premium plan that raises the limit to 200 videos a month.
Last but not least, if you take lots of notes on the go, an AI-infused app called AudioPen is a tough tool to beat.
AudioPen is kind of like a dumping ground for any and all of your passing thoughts. Whenever something occurs to you — an idea for a client proposal, a potential project for your company’s upcoming quarter, or anything else imaginable — you just hit the record button within the service and yammer away.
AudioPen stores a complete audio recording of your ramblings and also cooks up near-instant plain-text summaries of everything you say, automatically editing out filler words and repetition. Each individual recording then becomes a note in your virtual notebook. You can search through the text, translate it into another language, and interact with it in all sorts of potentially useful ways from there.
AudioPen transforms any manner of rambling into concise, organized notes for ongoing reference.
JR Raphael / IDG
Like many of the other tools in this collection, AudioPen is completely web-based — which means it works on any device, be it a phone, tablet, or computer, and it doesn’t require any downloads or installations. You can, however, opt to install it as a progressive web app if you want a more native-feeling app-like experience.
AudioPen is free for recordings up to three minutes in length and with up to 10 stored notes at a time. An optional $99-a-year (or $159-for-two-years) premium plan eliminates those limitations and adds in a slew of extra features, including customizable styles for your summaries, summaries across multiple notes, and a simple system for sharing any notes you want to make public.
