The idea is that virtual twins created on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform can be explored in virtual 3D space. More importantly, it enables teams to collaborate on projects, thanks to Vision Pro’s advanced cameras, sensors and tracking, which allow virtual twins to interact with the physical world around them in 3D UNIV+RSES with scientific accuracy.
Imagine, for example, you are working to develop industrial machinery of some kind. Using these tools, you could build a virtual representation of the machine and use the built-in AI to put your creation through virtual real-world tests to identify problems in the design and find improvements. This is going to be considerably less expensive and risky than actual physical prototyping.
Alternatively, when assessing devices for maintenance, the digital twin can show how things are meant to work, helping to identify ongoing flaws. The same applies to any form of product design and should make it much easier and cheaper to develop new product and bring it to market — particularly as teams can collaborate on these designs in real or asynchronous time from anywhere in the world using Vision Pro and Dassault Systemes’ solutions.
Vendor sales reps push hard to lock in revenue, typically tied to new product adoption, upgrades, or expanded usage, before closing their books, he said, “often dangling so-called ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ aggressive discounting to secure commitments.”
Scott Bickley, advisory fellow at Info-Tech Research Group, agreed. “Buyers have been conditioned by vendors who are publicly traded to strategically position deals at EOQ and preferably at the end of the vendor’s fiscal year,” he said.
But while urgency can create opportunity, it also carries significant risks, Mansfield pointed out. Committing to products and/or volumes that aren’t fully vetted, and misalignment of contract terms, can later cause financial damage, particularly when these new products come with non-cancelable subscriptions.
As of 10 a.m. (ET) today, Apple is no longer offering new users in the UK the chance to enable Advanced Data Protection. Essentially, anyone who now wants to enable the feature to protect their data against criminal or state surveillance or exfiltration will no longer be able to do so.
The move appears to be a direct response to the foolish and supremely dangerous demand by the UK government to undermine personal data security on an international scale. The UK used its Investigatory Powers Act to demand Apple secretly break encryption protecting data held in iCloud with the creation of a backdoor into that data. Rather than comply, Apple has instead switched off the encryption.
Advanced Data Protection (ADP) gives Apple’s users end-to-end encryption across nine iCloud data categories that are not otherwise so encrypted, These include iCloud Backup, iCloud Drive, Photos, Notes, Reminders, Safari Bookmarks, Siri Shortcuts, Voice Memos, Wallet Passes and Freeform. Other iCloud categories, including iCloud Keychain, Health, and iMessage, will remain encrypted.
Related content: Apple 2025 products, news and discussion of the UK data “back door” request.
What this means to UK users
In a statement, the company said: “Apple can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection (ADP) in the United Kingdom to new users and current UK users will eventually need to disable this security feature. ADP protects iCloud data with end-to-end encryption, which means the data can only be decrypted by the user who owns it, and only on their trusted devices.
“We are gravely disappointed that the protections provided by ADP will not be available to our customers in the UK, given the continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy. Enhancing the security of cloud storage with end-to-end encryption is more urgent than ever before.”
What the change means is that if you have not already enabled ADP on your device, you will receive a message warning you that the feature is no longer available to new users in the UK. It gets worse, of course.
If you happen to be a UK customer who is already using ADP, you can eventually expect to be told to disable the feature in order to continue using your iCloud account. Apple evidently doesn’t want to have to do this; the company knows full well that in the current threat landscape, it makes sense to encrypt all of your data — which is why it introduced ADP in the first place.
A huge act of self-harm by the UK
Speaking to the BBC, online security expert Professor Alan Woodward called this a “very disappointing development,” slamming the government for an act of self-harm. “All the UK government has achieved is to weaken online security and privacy for UK based users.”
Unfortunately, the incompetent UK government does not understand this. It’s a huge indictment of UK officials in the Home Office, who have effectively given the world’s authoritarians a green light to demand access to people’s data.As anyone who understands digital security knows, no one is safe unless everyone is safe, and the UK has just made everyone less safe.
Fortunately, the ADP system remains available in the rest of the world.
It is likely the decision to disable the system in the UK follows the recent UK attempt to demand access to data held in iCloud by anyone in the world. Sadly, we can’t be certain this is the case as, under the law the government used to demand this, we have no right to be told.
That means we do not know the full extent to which Apple has been forced to open up to state surveillance by UK authorities. We do not know how the government is handling that access and have not been told how it will affect users. Nor do we know the extent to which the government is attempting to secure global access to iCloud data, threatening the interests of other nations in the act.
As I wrote when this foolish demand was made, far from making people safer, the UK demand threatens everyone: “Ultimately, privacy is a human right, not a feature, and the removal of such rights should at least be a matter of public and democratic debate, which it has not been. As it stands, this UK overreach should be opposed not only by civil rights advocates, but by anyone else who uses — or provides — online services of any kind, and certainly by any nation that does protect privacy among its citizens. “
The fight for privacy is not over. Apple will continue to push for it. In the statement, the company stressed: “Apple remains committed to offering our users the highest level of security for their personal data and are hopeful that we will be able to do so in the future in the United Kingdom. As we have said many times before, we have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services, and we never will.”
“There are only a few collaboration platforms in use today for enterprise and defense, and a good chunk of the potentially vulnerable collaboration tools most likely don’t connect to the open internet,” Sag said. “That’s why I think a lot of the implementations that the government wants to use — or any kind of secure applications like enterprises [rely on] — need to have code evaluations and audits.”
The researchers said the attacks would be difficult for users to comprehend and identify. “An attack might alter the environment for one user without affecting the view of others or disrupt communication between users at a critical moment,” the researchers said.
They noted the possibility of a “click redirection attack,” which they likened to web-based clickjacking. In this case, a malicious party could attack a 3D object in a collaborators’ field of view. When the person tries to move the object, the action affects another 3D object instead.
Winsock: Microsoft advises that a multipoint socket (type c_root) is created and employed with the following operations: bind, connect, and listen. The socket should close successfully.
DHCP: Create test scenarios to validate Windows DHCP client operations (discover, offer, request, and acknowledgment (ACK)).
RDP: Ensure that you can configure Microsoft RRAS servers through netsh commands.
ICS: Ensure that Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) can be configured over Wi-Fi.
FAX/Telephony: Ensure that your test scenarios include TAPI (Telephony Application Programming Interface) initialization and shutdown operations. Since these tests require an extended runtime, allocate extra time for them.
Local Windows File System and storage
Ensure that File Explorer correctly renders URL file icons. Microsoft recommends testing the Storage Sense clean-up tool. If disk quotas are enabled, confirm that all I/O workloads function as expected.
Local and domain security
Domain controllers should continue to support certificate logons after applying the updates.
Kerberos: Microsoft recommends creating authentication scenarios for domain-joined systems, using local and encrypted login methods.
If you have the time and resources (VMs and networking), the Readiness team strongly recommends building a test Remote Desktop environment that includes a connection broker, remote desktop gateway, and remote desktops on virtual machines. After setting up each component, verify that all RDP connections are established successfully.
This month, testing Microsoft’s ICS functionality requires an extended test plan covering the following areas:
Usability testing: Create test scenarios to verify that the process of enabling/disabling ICS functions as expected.
Validation: Microsoft recommends confirming that Network Address Translation (NAT) correctly translates private IP addresses to that of the shared connection.
Security: Ensure that ICS traffic adheres to existing firewall rules and does not create unintended security risks.
Each month, we break down the update cycle into product families (as defined by Microsoft) with the following basic groupings:
Adobe has released a video generator in public beta in its generative AI (genAI) tool, Adobe Firefly. The company calls the tool the first “commercially safe” video generator on the market. It has been trained on licensed content and public domain material, meaning it should not be able to generate material that could infringe someone else’s copyright.
Firefly can generate clips either from text instructions or by combining a reference image with text instructions. There are also settings to customize things such as camera angles, movements, and distances.
A paid subscription is required to use the video generator. Firefly Standard, which costs about $11 a month, gives access to 2000 credits; that should be enough for 20 five-second videos with a 1080p picture resolution and a frame rate of 24 frames per second.
It’s often much easier to convey information with a well-designed diagram than to communicate through a large text blurb. As the old saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
That’s where Microsoft Visio comes in. Part of the Microsoft 365 suite, this app helps professionals convey information through professionally designed diagrams.
In this article:
What is Microsoft Visio?
How to find Visio in Microsoft 365
How to create a flowchart in Visio
How to create an organizational chart in Visio
How to create a Venn diagram in Visio
How to create a diagram from scratch in Visio
How to save, open, and collaborate on Visio diagrams
What is Microsoft Visio?
Microsoft Visio is the diagramming and vector graphics application in the Microsoft Office family. If you need to make diagrams such as decision trees, flow charts, org charts, and so on, this is the Microsoft tool to do it. Visio is less popular than other Microsoft apps like Word or Excel, but it is still a valuable tool to understand and use in everyday business.
Although there is a desktop Visio application, this cheat sheet will walk you through the basics of using Visio in Microsoft 365 — the web-only version that’s included with Microsoft 365/Office 365 business and enterprise subscriptions — since most business professionals who use Office have access to this version. All of the features in the web version of Visio can also be found in the desktop application, but not vice versa.
How to find Visio in Microsoft 365
For most people, Visio will not appear by default on your Microsoft 365 home page. To find Visio, navigate to your Microsoft 365 home page, sign in if you haven’t already, and type visio in the search bar.
From the Microsoft 365 home page, search for Visio and launch it in your browser.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
Click Visio in the results list to launch the web app in your browser. You will be taken to a page where you can see some commonly used templates for creating diagrams. This includes flowcharts, basic diagrams, organizational charts, infographic timelines and more.
There’s also an icon labelled “All templates” — here you can go through the complete list of templates available in Visio to help you find the exact template that’s right for your situation.
The Visio start page offers a variety of templates to start from.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
Using templates is the easiest way to begin making diagrams in Visio. I’ll walk you through three of the most common Microsoft Visio use cases — creating flowcharts, org charts, and Venn diagrams.
If Visio doesn’t have a template that suits your business needs, it’s quick and easy to make custom diagrams using Visio’s drag-and-drop features; I’ll show you that process as well.
How to create a flowchart in Microsoft Visio
A flowchart is a type of diagram that represents a workflow or process. It is excellent for showing the step-by-step process for completing a task while giving you the flexibility to show different decisions that need to be made and representing if-then scenarios. Microsoft Visio makes it extremely easy to create this type of diagram.
In this example, we will create a simple flow diagram to show what will happen during a team meeting to discuss a new idea for a company app. The team will discuss the idea, decide if they like it, and then take action based on that decision before ending the meeting.
Begin by clicking the Flowchart Template icon on the Visio start page. You’ll be taken to the main Visio interface, which looks a lot like Microsoft Word and other Microsoft 365 apps.
The flowchart template opens with basic flowchart shapes in the left column and a blank canvas on the right, topped by the Office Ribbon toolbar.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
The first step for any flowchart is creating a start point. Click and hold the oval Start/End icon in the left panel and drag it onto the blank canvas area on the right. The oval object appears with eight “handle” points at the corners and sides. To resize the oval, click and drag any of these handles; to move the oval on the canvas, click the middle of the oval and drag it.
Drag and drop a Start/End oval onto the canvas. You can drag any of the “handles” around the outside of the oval to resize it.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
To add text to a shape on the canvas, double-click in the center of it, and you’ll enter text edit mode — just type in the text you want to appear there. In our example, we’ll call the starting oval shape “Team Meeting Begins.” You can adjust the text’s font and size using the tools in the Ribbon toolbar at the top of the screen. I recommend making the text at least a size 24 so that it is properly visible.
The start oval now shows “Team Meeting Begins.”
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
Next, you need to add your processes — every step that will be taken for the task to be completed that doesn’t require a decision to be made. These are represented by rectangles.
Click the Process icon and drag it to the canvas below the oval we added previously. As you do so, a dotted green line appears that guides you to place the rectangle directly below the oval. Resize the rectangle as needed, then name it “Team Discusses Idea.”
To connect the items, hover over the bottom edge of the start shape, then click and drag from the green and white button on the start shape to the top of the process shape. This will create a downward-flowing arrow connecting the two.
Connecting the process rectangle to the start oval.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
If you make a mistake, you can delete any shape or line on the canvas by right clicking-it and selecting Delete from the pop-up menu.
In our flowchart, we’ll next show that the team needs to decide whether they like the app idea. This is represented via a diamond shape and will have three possible outcomes.
Click the Decision icon in the left panel, drag it below “Team Discusses Idea,” and repeat the steps outlined above to resize it, name it “Does the team like the idea?” and connect it as shown below.
Add the decision diamond and connect it to the process rectangle above.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
The three possible responses to the decision will be “No,” “Yes,” and “Not enough info.”
To add text boxes for the responses, go to the Home tab on the Ribbon toolbar and select the Text Box icon (a rectangle with an A in the middle). Click on that, and your cursor will be able to draw text boxes on the canvas.
The lines around a text box appear when you select the box or type in it but disappear when not selected — so the text inside appears directly on the canvas rather than inside a shape.
Create a text box for each response, then type the appropriate word or phrase in each one. You can work with text boxes in the same ways you can with shapes.
Adding text boxes for the three possible responses.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
Below each text box, add a rectangular Process shape for its outcome and name the outcome shapes as shown below. Draw connector lines from the Decision shape to each response and from each response to its outcome.
To create connector lines that go across and then down the canvas, simply drag from the starting object out to the side and then down, and the connector line will appear where you dragged.
Adding and connecting the three outcomes to the flowchart.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
Now we’ve added three possible outcomes to our decision tree that will cover the possible outcomes of the meeting. Please take note of the third decision (furthest to the right). Often you may need to account for decisions that will result in you going back to an earlier step in the process and redoing some steps.
(Having the third option return to a previous step in this example is for demonstration purposes; in reality, you’d conduct more research outside the meeting and then discuss the idea again in a later meeting.)
Now there is only one step left: add the ending to the flowchart (using the Start/End shape again), which is when the meeting ends.
Add, label, and connect the end shape, and the flowchart is complete.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
How to create an organizational chart in Microsoft Visio
Next, we will look at how to create a simple org chart that consists of one head executive, their assistant, two managers, and their corresponding teams. Go back to the Visio start page and click on the Organization Chart template.
Creating an org chart is relatively simple. As we did with the flowchart, drag and drop the items you want — in this case, colored rectangles corresponding to work roles — from the left pane onto the main canvas and organize them in a hierarchical structure as shown below.
Drag and drop placeholders for the employees in your org chart.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
All that’s needed after that is to draw the lines showing the relationships between staff members. As with the flowchart, draw lines going from the higher-level staff to the lower-level staff.
Draw connector lines showing the relationship of employees to one another.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
To add text to the boxes, click on each image, then modify the name and title of the staff member.
Fill in the employees’ names to complete the org chart.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
How to create a Venn diagram in Microsoft Visio
Venn diagrams are a great way to visually compare two or more groups or items and show where they overlap. To quickly create one in Visio, go to the Visio home page and select All templates. In the search bar, type venn and choose Venn Diagrams from the type-ahead options that appear.
In the results, you’ll see a basic Venn diagram template as well as some completed sample diagrams. Select Venn Diagram Template.
Search for and select the basic Venn diagram template.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
On Venn diagram building page, you will see multiple shape and appearance options on the left. For our example, a simple two-item comparison, select the 2-sets Venn item and drag it onto the canvas. As with the shapes in other templates we’ve worked with, you can resize the 2-sets Venn item by dragging the “handles” that appear at the corners and edges when you click on it.
Drag the 2-sets Venn item onto the canvas.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
For this example, we’ll compare tomatoes to apples. Using the Ribbon toolbar, add a text box for “Tomato” at the upper left and one for “Apple” at the upper right.
Add labels for each side of the Venn diagram.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
Now to add labels to each portion of the Venn diagram, simply double click each area (left side, middle, and right side) and type in the appropriate text. To finish the Venn diagram, add the text shown in the picture below.
The completed Venn diagram shows both how tomatoes and apples are different and how they’re alike.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
How to create a diagram from scratch in Microsoft Visio
If there are no templates that suit your exact needs, you can create a diagram from scratch. While we can’t anticipate every action you might want to take in creating a custom diagram, here are the basic steps.
To begin, from the Visio start page, click Blank drawing.
1. Select and place your shapes.
As when using a template, you’ll see the Shapes panel on the left side of the screen, with a blank canvas to the right. The basic building blocks of your diagram are different shapes that you use to represent different items. Click and drag your desired shape(s) onto the canvas.
Drag any shapes you want to use for a diagram from the shapes panel onto the canvas.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
You can move, resize, and add text to shapes on the canvas just as we did when using a template.
In addition to the generic shapes that appear in the Shapes pane by default, you can look up custom icons that more accurately describe the information that you want to convey. Click the plus symbol at the left of the panel, and you’ll be able to browse through multiple collections of shapes and icons that you can pin to your panel, such as Cycle Diagram Shapes, Business Frameworks, and Interface Icons. (In fact, Visio templates are basically targeted sets of these shape collections.)
You can also use the search box at the top of the Shapes panel to search for specific icons, as shown below.
Use the search box to find highly specific shapes or icons for your diagram.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
2. Add arrows
Next, you need to use arrows as connectors to show relationships between the items in your diagram. These arrow images help people to understand the logical direction that information is flowing. Click the icon with two curved arrows at the left of the Shapes panel to see the Arrow Shapes collection.
Visio offers an array of arrow types you can use to show the progression of your diagram.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
3. Apply a theme
Themes can be helpful to make your diagrams more visually appealing or to reflect company or client color schemes. To select a theme, go to the Design tab in the Ribbon toolbar, click Themes, and select the theme of your choice.
Applying a theme makes your diagram more attractive and easier to take in quickly.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
How to save, open, and collaborate on Visio diagrams
As you’re working on a diagram in your browser, Visio autosaves your work, calling it “Drawing” (or “Drawing2,” “Drawing3,” etc.) by default. To change its file name to something more meaningful, click its name in the title bar at the top of the screen and type in a new name.
When you go back to the Visio start page, you’ll see all the diagrams you’ve created (and that others have shared with you) in a list at the bottom of the page. Click any file name in the list to open the diagram.
Visio files you have access to are listed on the Visio home page.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
The diagram will open in a mode that lets you view and comment on it but not edit it. To switch to editing mode, select Edit Diagram > Edit in Browser at the top right of the screen.
When you open a saved diagram, you’ll need to click Edit Diagram to make changes to it.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
Like Word, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft 365 apps, Visio lets you collaborate on diagrams with co-workers in real time. Microsoft calls this “co-authoring.” To share a diagram, click the Share button at top right and select Share from the menu that appears.
The “Share” pane appears. Here you can type in colleagues’ names or email addresses and an optional message. Click the pencil icon at the right to choose whether you want to let the people you’re inviting edit the diagram or simply view and comment on it. When you’re done, click Send, and your invitees will receive an email with a link where they can access the diagram.
You can invite colleagues to collaborate on a Visio diagram.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
To add a comment to a diagram, click the Comments button at the top right and then click New in the pane that appears. Or, to comment on a specific item in the diagram, click its shape and then click the New button in the Comments pane.
Type your comment in the comment box (you can @mention someone to call their attention to it) and then click the Post comment button (a paper airplane icon). Others can read and reply to your comments and/or add their own comments.
Adding a comment to a diagram.
Shimon Brathwaite / Foundry
Now you’re all set to begin creating and sharing custom diagrams for every business need.
This article was originally published in January 2023 and updated in February 2025.
French AI company Mistral has released several updates to its generative AI assistant Le Chat and made it available on Android and iOS. Mistral describes the tool as a comprehensive genAI assistant for both life and work that can be used to access the latest news, plan daily tasks, keep track of projects, upload and summarize documents, and more.
Le Chat is accessed through a chat-like user interface and, according to Mistral, has the fastest inference model in the world. It is also reported to be significantly better at generating images than OpenAI ChatGPT. But Le Chat does not yet have a voice mode.
The AI assistant is available in both a free version and a new paid version that costs $15.49 per month. The paid subscription provides access to the company’s latest AI model, higher user limits, and the ability to opt out of sharing data with Mistral.
In addition to Flash-Lite, Google has made Gemini 2.0 Flash generally available after a developer preview in December and has begun testing an updated version of its flagship “Pro” model.
The updated Gemini 2.0 Flash would be available via the Gemini API in Google AI Studio and Vertex AI, allowing developers to build production applications with 2.0 Flash.
“The Flash series of models is popular with developers as a powerful workhorse model, optimal for high-volume, high-frequency tasks at scale and highly capable of multimodal reasoning across vast amounts of information with a context window of 1 million tokens,” Google said. “2.0 Flash is now generally available to more people across our AI products, alongside improved performance in key benchmarks, with image generation and text-to-speech coming soon.”
Flash-Lite 2 features a 1-million token context window and supports multimodal input, similar to Flash 2, Google added. It can generate captions for around 40,000 unique images at a cost of less than a dollar on Google AI Studio’s paid tier.
Matt Kimball, VP and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, also said he believed that AMD did well in how it handled this situation.
“It’s good to see AMD working with its community to solve for these vulnerabilities quickly. The amount of work that goes into providing a fix — and thoroughly testing it — is extensive. It’s a big resource strain, so good coordination from AMD,” Kimball said. “It is an unfortunate reality that these vulnerabilities find their way into systems, but it’s a reality nonetheless. The real measure of a vendor is how quickly they respond to mitigating and nullifying these vulnerabilities. In the case of AMD, the response was swift and thorough.”
What is critical, Villanustre added, is that admins focus on the UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface), which is the interface between the OS and the firmware. If the UEFI, which used to be known as system BIOS, is not updated, the microcode problem will keep returning every time servers reboot, Villanustre explained. “This can be simply addressed by updating your UEFI.”
“This situation highlights how deeply firmware issues have become [embedded] in modern computing,” Price said. “It is going to make emergency patches more difficult in the future. Future microcode patches will require full system reboots.”
AMD released two patches for the problem. “AMD has made available a mitigation for this issue which requires updating microcode on all impacted platforms to help prevent an attacker from loading malicious microcode,” AMD said. “Additionally, an SEV firmware update is required for some platforms to support SEV-SNP attestation. Updating the system BIOS image and rebooting the platform will enable attestation of the mitigation. A confidential guest can verify the mitigation has been enabled on the target platform through the SEV-SNP attestation report.”
AMD said the cybersecurity risk of not deploying the patch is significant, explaining, “improper signature verification in the AMD CPU ROM microcode patch loader may allow an attacker with local administrator privilege to load malicious CPU microcode resulting in loss of confidentiality and integrity of a confidential guest running under AMD SEV-SNP.”
