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More than half a year since its launch, Apple’s Vision Pro has attracted only muted interest from businesses. The augmented reality headset holds greater appeal to large firms, however, as well as in particular industry sectors.

That’s according to a recent International Data Corporation (IDC) survey report, which polled 402 US-based IT managers and employees with responsibility for purchasing AR/VR devices.

The survey, conducted in June this year, showed that 35% of the repondents were “very interested” or “somewhat interested” in the device.

 

The level of interest from businesses to date can be described as “mediocre,” according to Lewis Ward, senior research analyst at IDC. “I think Apple has a lot to do on both a software and hardware front before the Vision Pro will become a ‘must have’ device, even at a pilot level, at the typical US business,” Ward said.

The Vision Pro is a new device category for Apple and a work in progress in many ways.

If rumors are to believed, Apple is already working on a cheaper version of the headset aimed at consumers, though this is likely to be at least a year away from release, with a proper follow-up Vision Pro device taking even longer.

Meaningful software improvements may arrive in the interim, Ward said. This could make the headset more attractive to business users.

As part of the VisionOS 2.0 preview release at WWDC this summer, Apple, which has talked up enterprise adoption of the Vision Pro in recent months, announced new developer tools that aim to increase the headset’s utility for certain business use cases. It has also added enterprise-friendly features such as support for mobile device management software since the headset launched to US customers in February.

Vision Pro appeals to finance and healthcare orgs

There were indications that the Vision Pro resonates more with certain types and sizes of business, according to the IDC survey.

Large organizations (over 2,500 employees) showed the highest levels of interest in the device, for example, with 42% “very” or “somewhat” interested. This is likely due to the availability of more resources to try out new technologies such as the Vision Pro, said Ward, alongisde a wider set of potential use cases in comparison with smaller and more focused organizations.

The two industry sectors that displayed the highest levels of interest were healthcare and social assistance (54%), and finance and insurance (52%). A separate survey report from March of this year by electronic health record provider Tebra also highlighted the positive perceptions of the Vision Pro among healthcare professionals.

Ward suggested that organizations in these sectors see potential for the device to solve well-defined problems for certain employees or customers, and may have developed custom software that makes use of the Vision Pro’s strengths.

Manufacturing and retail organizations showed lower interest levels comparatively, below 30%. “This is also an interesting — and, in some ways, counterintuitive — finding, because these are two verticals that have been discussed as being decent fits for Vision Pro,” said Ward.

The IDC survey also indicated that Apple’s entrance into the market has had a “moderately positive” effect on business attitudes towards the use of AR/VR in the workplace more generally.

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a critical security flaw impacting Microsoft's Copilot Studio that could be exploited to access sensitive information. Tracked as CVE-2024-38206 (CVSS score: 8.5), the vulnerability has been described as an information disclosure bug stemming from a server-side request forgery (SSRF) attack. "An authenticated attacker can bypass Server-Side Request Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

A new remote access trojan called MoonPeak has been discovered as being used by a state-sponsored North Korean threat activity cluster as part of a new campaign. Cisco Talos attributed the malicious cyber campaign to a hacking group it tracks as UAT-5394, which it said exhibits some level of tactical overlaps with a known nation-state actor codenamed Kimsuky. MoonPeak, under active development Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

Forget about your love life too, no dating apps until the war is over

Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs is warning residents of under-siege regions to switch off home surveillance systems and dating apps to stop Ukraine from using them for intel-gathering purposes.…

Apple and Google can take a moment to breathe, as the UK’s competition regulator has decided to end its investigation into their app stores — but not for long.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) today confirmed it is closing its ongoing investigations into both Apple’s App Store and Google Play, but only because a much tougher set of regulations is about to come into effect.

Breathing space, but trouble’s coming

Passed into law in May, the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition, and Consumers Act (DMCCA) will give the CMA more powers and more flexibility in how its powers are applied. Principally, these powers include the ability to impose requirements on the conduct of firms in digital markets where those firms have been designated as having Strategic Market Status, and to impose significant fines against firms if those requirements are breached. The intention of these laws is similar to Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA).

The DMCCA sets up the Digital Markets Unit (DMU), a new regulatory body within the CMA that will police large technology companies.

Will Hayter, Executive Director for Digital Markets at the CMA, said: “Once the new pro-competition digital markets regime comes into force, we’ll be able to consider applying those new powers to concerns we have already identified through our existing work.”

In 2022, the regulator’s market study of the UK mobile ecosystem found that Apple and Google held an effective monopoly over app distribution in the UK. The CMA then commenced investigating both companies for alleged anti-competitive behavior, but the investigations took place within the framework of a previous set of laws that will be superseded by the DMCCA.

Concerning Apple, in a statement, the CMA said the closure of the investigations “should not be understood” to mean the concerns it was investigating had been resolved. “The decision does not affect any other action that the CMA may wish to take in relation to Apple’s conduct in this area in the future,” it said.

Commenting on the decision, Hayter added:

“It’s critical that tech businesses in the UK, including app developers, can have access to a fair and competitive app ecosystem, helping to grow the sector, boost investment and result in better outcomes for UK consumers. These are all factors we are considering before launching our first investigations under the new regime.”

The UK regulator now has more power

There are numerous new powers within the DMCCA.

Like Europe’s DMA, the law means some companies with a global turnover of more than £25b or UK turnover of £1b+ may be designated as having Strategic Market Status (SMS). 

Companies given such status will be required to follow requirements on their conduct imposed by the CMA, though the CMA does say it wants to build “productive relationships” with those firms. 

Perhaps so, but as a Linklaters legal blog explained earlier this year, “The scope of permitted conduct requirements is incredibly broad, giving the DMU very wide discretion to decide what obligations should be imposed on each firm.”

The CMA has previously said it expects the first companies to be designated as such will be revealed in July 2025, but this date may now slip a little in consequence of the recent UK election. 

Those requirements will allegedly be developed with the intention of opening up competition and consumer choice in digital markets. That likely extends to app stores and payment systems being opened up, as they are being in the EU under the DMA. The CMA can also impose big fines on companies that fail to comply.

It may be instructive to note that the CMA recently rejected commitments made by Google in response to its concerns.

Google had given app developers some additional flexibility in the use of alternative payment systems. Similar to those Apple has proposed in the EU, Google’s proposals included a commission and pop-up screens to warn users when they were about to use a third-party payment system. 

Open markets seem inevitable

While the CMA hasn’t yet said which companies may be investigated for possible SMS designation, it’s unlikely Apple, Google, or other Big Tech firms will be able to avoid it.

After all, the regulator does state that it “anticipates that its early work under the new digital markets competition regime will build on and leverage its experience in areas it has already studied, such as mobile ecosystems, which includes app stores.” (Italics mine.)

The latest UK news around tech regulation follows similar announcements in the EU, Japan, and South Korea and potential incoming investigations in Apple’s second biggest market, China.

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**Na některých počítačích s GRUBem nestartují OS **Způsobila to bezpečnostní aktualizace, aby nešel obejít Secure boot **Microsoft měl aktualizaci pustit na počítače jen s Windows

Na některých počítačích s GRUBem nestartují OS •Způsobila to bezpečnostní aktualizace, aby nešel obejít Secure boot •Microsoft měl aktualizaci pustit na počítače jen s Windows

Švédská agentura pro veřejné zdraví zaznamenala 15. srpna tohoto roku první případ nebezpečnější varianty mpoxu mimo africký kontinent. Nemocný se nakazil během pobytu v oblasti Afriky, kde je v současné době evidováno velké ohnisko tohoto životu nebezpečného onemocnění. Pouhý den předtím ...

Jaká je cena Netflixu a jak se liší jednotlivé tarify? •Lze sdílet účty mezi kamarády? •Na co všechno dát u předplatného pozor?

The Linux operating system, widely acclaimed for its robustness and security , recently received widespread media attention due to a significant kernel vulnerability, CVE-2024-43856 . The issue involves race conditions in the dmam_free_coherent() function, which could allow race condition-based attacks against various kernel versions.

V továrně Micronu na paměťové čipy v létě vyrobili defektní várku GDDR6X, které Nvidia používá u grafických karet RTX 4070 a vyšších. Krátce nato se začalo spekulovat o možném nedostatku karet. Nvidia ale našla řešení, skladové zásoby GDDR6X využije pro vyšší modely karet, a naopak u nejnižší řady ...

Generative AI firm Anthropic is embroiled in a new legal battle after three authors filed a class-action lawsuit in a California federal court, accusing the company of illegally using their copyrighted works to train its AI-powered chatbot, Claude.

The complaint, filed on Monday, alleges that Anthropic used pirated versions of books by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, along with hundreds of thousands of others, to develop its AI models without proper authorization or compensation.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of high-profile legal actions brought by copyright holders against AI companies for their use of protected materials including articles, books, and paintings in training generative AI systems. This case follows similar lawsuits against tech giants like OpenAI and Meta, where authors claim their works were exploited to train large language models without their consent.

According to the complaint, “Anthropic has built a multibillion-dollar business” by leveraging these stolen works to enhance Claude’s ability to generate human-like text.

“The United States Constitution recognizes the fundamental principle that creators deserve compensation for their work. Yet Anthropic ignored copyright protections. An essential component of Anthropic’s business model — and its flagship “Claude” family of large language models (or “LLMs”) — is the largescale theft of copyrighted works,” the complaint read.

The authors argue that the company’s practices unfairly deprive them of income, as Claude’s AI-driven content creation can churn out large volumes of text in a fraction of the time it would take a human author.

“Claude could not generate this kind of long-form content if it were not trained on a large quantity of books, books for which Anthropic paid authors nothing,” the lawsuit claimed.

The plaintiffs are seeking monetary damages and a court order to permanently stop Anthropic from using their copyrighted material without permission.

“Anthropic has not even attempted to compensate Plaintiffs for the use of their material. In fact, Anthropic has taken multiple steps to hide the full extent of its copyright theft. Copyright law prohibits what Anthropic has done here: downloading and copying hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books taken from pirated and illegal websites,” the complaint read.

The lawsuit highlights the ongoing debate over the ethical and legal implications of using copyrighted material to train AI models. While some argue that such use is fair use, others contend that it infringes on copyright holders’ rights.

“Such situations will also lead to heightened scrutiny by enterprises, and lead them towards adopting private, ’walled garden’ solutions that are built on proprietary data,” said Chirajeet Sengupta, managing partner at Everest Group. “Further, we expect a rich ecosystem to emerge that checks and assures AI-generated output for such issues.”

It’s a rising concern

The legal filing also highlights the broader industry implications, as it joins a growing body of litigation challenging the use of copyrighted content in AI training. Similar cases have emerged since 2022, questioning the legality of using protected works to train AI models and the potential copyright infringements of AI-generated outputs.

Earlier this month, a federal judge in California ruled in favor of a group of visual artists who sued AI companies including Stability AI, Midjourney, DeviantArt, and Runway AI  for allegedly violating their copyrighted works. The artists alleged that these companies used their copyrighted images to train their AI models without permission, violating their rights.

“AI is a tool and like any other tool will be misused by some,” said globally acclaimed painter and artist Jatin Das. “I hope the judiciary will look into such matters and take care of art and artists.”

Anthropic, which has secured significant financial backing from major firms including Amazon and Google, previously faced a lawsuit from music publishers over the alleged misuse of copyrighted song lyrics in training Claude.

“We have observed a similar scenario when AI companies were scrutinized for sharing responses generated from paid articles by bypassing paywalls,” said Arjun Chauhan, senior analyst at Everest Group.

“This scrutiny has led to two significant outcomes: AI companies are now more vigilant about the sources of their training data, and they have begun forming partnerships with media outlets to access content legally. For example, in April 2024, OpenAI partnered with the Financial Times to use its journalism for training AI models. Such partnerships are likely to increase, potentially driving up costs for end customers.”

The outcome of these cases could set critical precedents for how copyright law applies to AI, particularly in the areas of data training and the creation of AI-generated content. With the legal landscape still evolving, the stakes are high for both content creators and the AI industry as they navigate the complex intersection of technology and intellectual property rights.

Teams users can now access work, education, and personal accounts in the same app, Microsoft announced on Tuesday.

Microsoft introduced the original Teams app for workplace collaboration in 2017, with a separate app for conversations with friends and family appearing in 2020. Users had to install two different Teams apps on their PCs if they wanted to use the platform for both work and personal text chats and video calls.

Now users can access both their personal and work accounts from a single Teams app for Windows 11, Windows 10, and macOS, Microsoft said in a blog post. The unified app feature has been in development for several months in response to feedback that users want an easier way to switch between their accounts.

The new Teams unified app lets you access both work and personal accounts.

Microsoft

To add a personal account, users just select their profile picture in the upper right corner of the Teams app and log in.

To help avoid confusion, Teams notifications display which account they relate to, Microsoft said in a March blog post announcing the feature in testing.

When joining a Teams meeting, users are presented with the choice of accounts to sign in with. In addition, Microsoft has added an option to join a Teams meeting as a guest, with no requirement to sign in to an account.

If you already have the Teams desktop app, there’s no need to download the new version, as the app will automatically update with the new features. Otherwise, you can download the new version on Microsoft’s website.

Oživeno 21. srpna | Den D nastane 26. září. CZC totiž oznámilo zákazníkům, že do 25. září 2024 do 23:59 mohou naposledy vyčerpat body v tzv. CZC.Klubu, které nahromadili za předchozí nákupy. Od 19. srpna už obchod ani další body nepřiděluje. Klubové body se dají směnit za bezplatnou dopravu, ...

Last week, Microsoft released a security patch that is supposed to fix CVE-2022-2601, a two-year-old vulnerability in the GRUB bootloader.

However, something went wrong with the update and as a result, Linux-based systems refuse to boot on computers with dual operating systems.

When users try to boot the system, they get an error message saying “Verifying shim SBAT data failed: Security Policy Violation. Something has gone seriously wrong: SBAT self-check failed: Security Policy Violation.”

According to Microsoft, the bug only affects older versions of Linux-based operating systems, but apparently it has also affected the latest versions of Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Zorin OS and Puppy Linux.

Fortunately, while waiting for an official fix, it is possible to work around the problem by temporarily turning off Secure Boot, opening the terminal and deleting the SBAT policy with the sudo mokutil -set-sbat-policy delete command. After rebooting, you should turn Secure Boot back on, Ars Technica reports.

It's no great revelation to say that SaaS applications have changed the way we operate, both in our personal and professional lives. We routinely rely on cloud-based and remote applications to conduct our basic functions, with the result that the only true perimeter of our networks has become the identities with which we log into these services. Unfortunately – as is so often the case – our The Hacker Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

In what's a case of an operational security (OPSEC) lapse, the operator behind a new information stealer called Styx Stealer leaked data from their own computer, including details related to the clients, profit information, nicknames, phone numbers, and email addresses. Styx Stealer, a derivative of the Phemedrone Stealer, is capable of stealing browser data, instant messenger sessions from Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]