Hello and happy hump day. There are a few things happening in tech land, here they are.
1. Massive cloud outage hits
Now over to Reuters and it’s reporting that Amazon’s cloud services arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS), suffered a big disruption overnight that affected websites of SO many U.S. organisations, from media sites to emergency services and everyone in between. Per the report, several hours after Downdetector.com started showing reports of outages, Amazon said many AWS services were fully recovered and marked “resolved”.
2. ACT government affected by vulnerability
Brought to our attention by iTnews, security vendor Barracuda last week disclosed a vulnerability in its email security gateway – and while that’s not something that directly affects consumers, it appears the ACT government investigated Barracuda’s announcement, and discovered that it may be affected. “The investigation has now identified that a breach has occurred and a harms assessment is underway to fully understand the impact specific to our systems, and importantly to the data that may have been accessed,” the notice reads. “We are confident that actions taken to date have contained the breach and that there is no ongoing threat. Canberrans can continue to use ACT Government online systems with confidence.”
3. An AI interface straight into Windows 11
Over to Cnet and it’s reporting that Microsoft has begun building an AI chat interface straight into Windows 11. As you can see from the demo below, it’s really leaning into an AI bot as the future of information searching. Thanks, I hate it.
Microsoft has begun building an AI chat interface straight into Windows 11. Once rolled out, it will be able to perform tasks like tech support, summarizing documents, suggesting music and answering questions you might ask a search engine or AI chatbot. pic.twitter.com/fF7qDb3I9U
— CNET (@CNET) June 13, 2023
4. Even the Beatles aren’t safe from AI
Unfortunately, The Beatles have used artificial intelligence to extract John Lennon’s voice from an old demo to create “the last Beatles record,” decades after the band broke up. Per AP, Paul McCartney told the BBC that the technology was used to separate the Beatles’ voices from background sounds during the making of director Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary series The Beatles: Get Back. The “new” song is set to be released later this year, he said.
5. Tapping off with a locked iPhone
Passengers on Sydney’s public transport network can now ‘tap off’ without unlocking their phones. Brought to our attention by The Guardian, the new feature means you no longer have to stare at your iPhone when in a rush to get off the bus (or train, or ferry), hoping the FaceID registers it’s you. It is the ultimate first-world problem but boy do I get flustered trying to get my phone to acknowledge it’s me, just with makeup on. The capability is already active on some Opal readers, and will be fully rolled out to all 25,000 readers across the bus, train, light rail and ferry networks in the coming weeks. I just tried it on a bus and it didn’t work, but maybe it will next week.
BONUS ITEM: There’s not much to this, but it shocked me a little when it came across my feed so I thought i’d share.
Most U.S. patents received each year:
2022: Samsung 🇰🇷
2021: IBM 🇺🇸
2020: IBM 🇺🇸
2019: IBM 🇺🇸
2018: IBM 🇺🇸
2017: IBM 🇺🇸
2016: IBM 🇺🇸
2015: IBM 🇺🇸
2014: IBM 🇺🇸
2013: IBM 🇺🇸
2012: IBM 🇺🇸
2011: IBM 🇺🇸
2010: IBM 🇺🇸
2009: IBM 🇺🇸
2008: IBM 🇺🇸
2007: IBM 🇺🇸
2006: IBM 🇺🇸
2005: IBM 🇺🇸…— World of Statistics (@stats_feed) June 12, 2023
Have a lovely day.