Credit Suisse all at Sea once again. I had promised myself not to mention Credit Suisse this week but last Wednesday’s FT article was too interesting to ignore. The article concerns a request to investors in some of CS’s somewhat more sporty packages to destroy confidential information given to them to help them evaluate the […]
Here are the top trending news from the world of technology 1) Stripe again launches Crypto & NFT Payment Support American payment giant Stripe, which is the third most valued startup in the world, announced on Thursday that it is launching Crypto & NFT payment support. The company has unveiled wide-range of products for giving [...]
MIAMI–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Infinite Assets, Inc. (“InfiniteWorld”), a leading metaverse infrastructure platform that enables brands to create, monetize and drive consumer engagement with digital content, announced today the company has added Milica Zec to its executive team as Chief Metaverse Officer. Zec will lead the company’s metaverse initiatives, including current and upcoming projects and partnerships for brand […]
Technology company NVIDIA has received a rather odd request from a group of hackers calling themselves Lapsus$. The organization is asking that the company make their graphics cards capable of mining faster. If NVIDIA does not comply, the hackers will release the over one TB of data they’ve allegedly stolen. NVIDIA Has Gotten an Odd...
Two of the biggest laptop vendors have chosen to pass over Microsoft's blossoming vision for PC chip security, Pluton. But the reason why may be less complex than it appears: Both companies are apparently sticking with an established relationship with Intel's vPro technology, instead.
The Registerreported this week that both Dell and Lenovo planned to skip Microsoft's Pluton technology in its commercial PCs, which Microsoft introduced two years ago as a better way of integrating security directly into the CPU. The technology originally received somewhat tepid endorsements from both Qualcomm and Intel, and a more enthusiastic response from AMD — which had helped develop the technology to secure the Xbox game console.
Now, Dell told El Reg that “Pluton does not align with Dell's approach to hardware security and our most secure commercial PC requirements” and that it won't include the Pluton technology in most of its commercial PCs. Lenovo, too, said that it would ship Intel ThinkPads without Pluton, and that laptops with AMD Ryzen (and Pluton-enabled) chips inside them would be turned off by default.
That sounds alarming, but the reality of the situation might be simpler: The majority of the world's commercial laptops ship with Intel's Core chips inside, specifically with its vPro security enabled.
According to Bob O'Donnell, the president of Technalysis Research, Intel's vPro technology can't currently work with the Microsoft Pluton security core. “You can't do both,” O'Donnell said. “My guess is at the end of the day, Lenovo and Dell have invested a fair amount of time, money and effort into supporting vPro. So, as a result [Pluton] becomes a bit of an unnecessary thing.”
What's Microsoft Pluton, again?
Pluton is, and was, Microsoft's ongoing effort to secure the PC. Microsoft announced Pluton in 2020, the year before the company began laying down the law on Windows 11's security requirement: Windows 11 PCs need a Trusted Platform Module, or TPM, whether discrete or integrated. Most processors for commercial and consumer PCs alike integrate a TPM function inside the processor, even if it doesn't always go so well. Pluton is Microsoft's approach — a secondary logic block that integrates security functions into the processor as well. Its selling point is that Microsoft used it to help secure the Xbox, which hasn't suffered from any notable high-profile hacks. More importantly, it's secure enough to allow firmware updates via Microsoft's standard Windows Update channels.
But to be fair, worrying about Pluton may be jumping the gun. AMD originally said that even if it implemented Pluton, which it has, it wouldn't replace AMD's own TPM implementation — just sit alongside it. And Intel said that it would partner with Microsoft to add the Pluton technology to future platforms, “in the next few years.” More significantly, Intel never acknowledged Pluton as a feature in its recent Alder Lake platforms, including those for its most recent vPro systems. Even with its sliver of PC sales, Qualcomm may turn out to be Pluton's biggest backer, as the company said in December that it plans to enable Pluton inside of its upcoming Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 processor.
So with minimal chip support, what can PC makers do?
Lenovo's decision is the most interesting, since the Pluton technology was included within the Ryzen-powered Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 and Z16, which were announced at CES 2022. Leaving the technology turned off for the entirety of 2022, as The Register reported, would put the burden of securing those PCs on AMD. Lenovo representatives didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
So what does this mean for Pluton? For Microsoft, its customers' lukewarm response to Pluton is a bit of an embarrassment. But it's not like commercial PCs powered by either AMD or Intel will be unsecured going forward, which is really what matters.
With the supply of homes hitting record lows nationwide, prices are skyrocketing, and homes are getting snatched up as soon as they become available. If you’re selling a home, you currently are in a prime position to attract multiple offers and possibly incite a bidding war if you play your cards right.
Machine learning (ML) helps organizations increase revenue, drive business growth, and reduce cost by optimizing core business functions across multiple verticals, such as demand forecasting, credit scoring, pricing, predicting customer churn, identifying next best offers, predicting late shipments, and improving manufacturing quality. Traditional ML development cycles take months and require scarce data science and ML […]
Many software as a service (SaaS) providers across various industries are adding machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to their SaaS offerings to address use cases like personalized product recommendation, fraud detection, and accurate demand protection. Some SaaS providers want to build such ML and AI capabilities themselves and deploy them in a […]
Amazon SageMaker Autopilot is an automated machine learning (AutoML) solution that performs all the tasks you need to complete an end-to-end machine learning (ML) workflow. It explores and prepares your data, applies different algorithms to generate a model, and transparently provides model insights and explainability reports to help you interpret the results. Autopilot can also […]
Tesla will defend itself in a lawsuit in Federal Court against an ex-employee and former Oregon State football player who says he was fired from the company after appearing in a Super Bowl ad for Audi. The former Tesla employee, Naymon Frank, alleges he was racially discriminated against and fired from a store management position […]
NFTs have become the newest, hottest, and most powerful trend of the gaming world since the long-gone era of Pong and Galaxy Game. Gamers worldwide, for the first time, can now make real money with play-to-earn (P2E) gaming, and in-game assets (characters, land, tools, and more) have been turned into tradable tokens with actual monetary value. Large amounts of money from both investors and gamers are rapidly rushing into the sector: Sandbox, a virtual world development game, saw its sales of NFT land plots surge by over 1,600% in 2021, with sales peaking at over $3 million per day. Ember Sword’s NFT digital land sale in August 2021 raised an unprecedented $203 million. Investment fund Metaverse Group bought an NFT land plot on virtual platform Decentraland in December 2021 for $2.43 million – an all-time price record. Top NFT metaverse game Axie Infinity generated a record $3 billion in NFT sales in 2021. The explosion in NFT trading volumes ($41 billion in 2021) and the number of NFT game metaverses (rapidly approaching 500) are signaling a tectonic shift. Also, with Facebook’s name change to Meta introducing the term “metaverse” to the wider public, this seems to signal the beginning of the Web 3.0 era. PwC sees the metaverse sector being worth $1.54 trillion by 2030, with Goldman Sachs upping the estimate to a potential $8 trillion. This game-changing trend, however, has come with a significant challenge. The traditional channels for gamer communications, including Discord and Twitter, and NFT storage, have recently been the recent victims of high-profile hacks: In December 2021, hackers stole $2.2 million of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs from their owner’s wallet. Within hours of BAPE announcing it would launch NFTsand opening its Discord channel, users of the platform received fraudulent direct messages which cost 20 members their entire NFT holdings. A Discord server run by recently launched gaming NFT marketplaceFractal was hacked, scamming members out of $150,000 in cryptocurrency. Web 2.0 social media platforms (Twitter, Telegram, Discord) lack adequate mechanisms to support communications that are needed for the Web 3.0 era. Spammers, hackers, and bots, which generate misinformation and undermine the safety of users’ assets, often overrun channels on these platforms. There is an urgent need for a solution that enables reliable and seamless communications between gamers, and the ability to exchange NFT assets safely and cost-effectively. The solution is here, and its name is Secretum. Built on Solana, the world’s fastest and lowest cost blockchain, Secretum aims to become the go-to platform for messaging and NFT trading for the global gaming community. The key pillar to Secretum is Public Smart Channels, where creators set certain rules for channel access based on subscriptions and proof of NFT ownership: Subscriptions – Channel owners can define a one-time fee or recurrent fees, paid directly to the connected wallet of the channel owner by staking SER tokens. This tool screens out less motivated and engaged channel members, including fictitious members (bots) and potential hackers. Proof of NFT ownership – Channel owners can request new users to prove they hold certain assets, tokens or NFTs, to access a channel. Only true gamers, which are actively involved in the ecosystem, can therefore take part. Secretum’s Public Smart Channels function is a first-of-its-kind revolution for gamers worldwide, creating the ideal conditions for: Messaging Safety – No centralized data storage, complete anonymity, no data transfers, no moderators, and complete end-to-end encryption. Strong Gaming Communities – Users will never again be spammed, phished, or harassed by malevolent actors. This means that, unlike Discord or Twitter, all community members are real and channel communications are always genuine and verified. NFT ownership becomes a tool for identity verification, while the SER token becomes the currency of a new messaging ecosystem. Strong Trading Volumes – Public Smart Channels lead to more communication, more connections, and consequently more trading of NFTs between channel members on Secretum. NFT owners can furthermore avoid the congestion, high fees, and liquidity issues affecting most crypto and NFT exchanges. Solana’s trading costs are as low as $0.00025 per transaction, stimulating Secretum users to invest in and trade NFTs. With a potential 65,000 transactions per second, Solana ensures that Secretum is built to scale. One of the Secretum’s goals is to create the NFT gaming world’s leading platform for trusted communications, cost-effective NFT trading, and community building – all underpinned by the power of the Solana blockchain. With the NFT sector booming, Secretum is positioned to satisfy a market need that is getting bigger by the day. The last round of Secretum Private Token Sale of 3,000,000 SER tokens at a rate of $0.50 will end on April 22, 2022, at 24:00 EET or before allocated SER Tokens are sold.