Microsoft released its ElectionGuard software development kit in the run-up to the 2020 US presidential election, promising a way to secure the integrity of votes placed on electronic voting machines. SEE: Guide to Becoming a Digital Transformation Champion (TechRepublic Premium) Microsoft’s system offers voters a tracking code on an election website where they can verify that their vote has been counted and not altered. The code also doesn’t reveal what party the voter chose....

Today’s Patch Tuesday fixes and updates also should bring to Windows 11 users some of the new features that Microsoft began rolling out in preview a couple of weeks ago, including the aforementioned Android apps on Windows. Mainstream (non-Insider tester) customers could manually download the handful of new Windows 11 features as of February 15.

But the Skype team has posted an upbeat blog about its “future plans” and says the app isn’t going anywhere. It also promises the app performs faster and matches the experiences people have come to expect from Zoom, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and other rivals. “Skype has been in our lives for nearly two decades, and we are here to stay,” the Skype team wrote. SEE: Remote working jobs row shows how much tech has changed Microsoft bought Skype for $8....

When a company comes out and tells you something is new and wonderful and will completely change how you live, work, and breathe, you want to believe it. Even though you’re sitting there quietly giggling. Yes, of course we’re talking about Windows 11. When Microsoft launched the latest lexicon of its looking glass, the company and its people made some extraordinary statements. Here’s an example from the company’s creative director, Christina Koehn: “We’ve got these four squares....

The official Microsoft response from a spokesperson when I asked about the value proposition of Windows on Arm: “With Surface Pro 9 and the upcoming Windows Dev Kit 2023 in mind, we believe the continued investments we’re making in Windows on Arm will ultimately benefit customers and the entire Windows ecosystem.”

Teams users can now delete chats and remove themselves from a conversation without impacting other participants in the same chat conversation. Users can also add new participants to a chat with an @mention, while Teams will now recommend colleagues for a conversation. “Using AI, Teams chat will assist you in initiating new conversations by recommending colleagues based on your previous collaborations”. This feature will be generally available by the end of the year, Microsoft said in a blogpost....

Microsoft is not planning to offer Extended Security Updates for Windows 8.1 as it has done for Windows 7. That means there will be no way to continue to get security updates for Windows 8.1 after January 10, 2023. Microsoft is advocating that users on Windows 8.1 go to Windows 11, but Windows 10 is another option. Windows 10 will continue to be supported by Microsoft and receive security updates until October 14, 2025....

Computers and other connected devices, including IoT and NAS storage, are compromised through weak credentials, vulnerabilities, exploit kits, and other security weaknesses. These systems join a network of slave devices that can be commanded to perform malicious activities. Attack types commonly associated with botnets are the launch of Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, brute-force attacks leading to information theft and ransomware deployment, and the covert installation of cryptocurrency mining software on vulnerable, Internet-facing servers....

There’s no way you can really repay Mom for all the love she gives you, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. And as a public service to every grateful child out there, you should probably know Mom has more than enough flowers, sweaters, candy and spa coupons. So this year, it’s time to step up your gifting game, and this Apple iPad Mini 4 might be just the gift she needs, especially now that you can ship it for free with coupon code SHIP4FREE....

The apps will also get support to implement specific user-centric data governance features, policies, and practices. Mehan Jayasuriya, senior program officer at Mozilla, said the four projects “will pilot new models for data stewardship with existing communities and provide real-world examples of how users and communities can be given greater ownership and control over their own data.” Place Trust is a non-profit working to create maps of cities that are “open, reliable and accessible and place them in a perpetual legal trust in the public interest....

Multichain, previously known as Anyswap, is a cross-blockchain router protocol designed to allow users to swap and exchange digital tokens across chains while reducing fees and streamlining the overall process. However, chaos now reigns in the ecosystem due to a cybersecurity incident caused by a vulnerability in the network, as first reported by Vice. Dedaub reported the vulnerability to Multichain. The company said in a blog post dated January 17 that the critical flaw impacted WETH, PERI, OMT, WBNB, MATIC, and AVAX swaps, but assured users at the time that “all assets on both V2 Bridge and V3 Router are safe [and] all cross-chain transactions can be done safely as usual....

That’s right. You can just pay what you want! Here’s how that works: If you pay less than the average price paid by others, you still get valuable content. However, if you choose to pay more, you get all of the e-books in the bundle. And if you pay more than the leader’s price, you get featured on the Leaderboard and receive an entry in our epic giveaway. The e-books include “Effective DevOps with AWS,” which explains how to maintain AWS-based infrastructure and scale it gracefully and effectively....

But when the panels are turned off, the off-white color doesn’t necessarily blend in. On Thursday, Nanoleaf announced a new line of smart home light panels that move away from what the company is currently known for. The first product in the Nanoleaf Elements line is the Wood Look Hexagons, which, as the name implies, have a wood grain look on their front. Instead of RBG lights, Nanoleaf has gone with more traditional white lighting, with options ranging from 1500-4000K (cool to warm light)....

Sebastien Vachon-Desjardins, a Canadian citizen, received the Canadian prison sentence after he pleaded guilty to five charges related to “theft of computer data, extortion, the payment of cryptocurrency ransoms, and participating in the activities of a criminal organisation”. The charges in Canada were for Vachon-Desjardins’s involvement in 17 ransomware attacks that caused at least $2.8 million in damages. He also received an additional 54-month sentence in Canada for trafficking drugs in Quebec in the following weeks....

Don’t believe that DevOps is a better career move? Just look at the numbers. The 2021 Open Source Jobs Report found that 88% of technology professionals surveyed use DevOps practices in their work. A glance for DevOps Engineer jobs on Dice, the technology job website, showed that there were over 37,000 job openings in mid-October. By Glassdoor’s count, the average DevOps Engineer salary is just over $105,000 a year. That’s nothing to sneeze at!...

The banner block thus far has been last month’s pause by Discord on plans to integrate crypto wallets into its product, after users started cancelling subscriptions en masse. The big lesson here is if users want to impact a company’s direction, hitting them in the hip pocket works. At the time of writing, another pair of pushback events are taking place. Kickstarter’s plan to essentially refactor its core functionality on a distributed blockchain protocol, for seemingly no good reason other than it can, has not been entirely well-received, with comic, video game, and music creators taking to social media to decry the move....

Defenders shouldn’t disable PowerShell, a scripting language, because it is a useful command-line interface for Windows that can help with forensics, incident response and automating desktop tasks, according to joint advice from the US spy service the National Security Agency (NSA), the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the New Zealand and UK national cybersecurity centres. It also lets admins automate security tasks on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform....

During those elections last month, an unknown number of voters were unable to cast a vote due to the state’s iVote online voting system suffering a failure for a portion of the voting period. In the immediate aftermath, the NSW Electoral Commission (NSWEC) attributed the iVote online voting system failure to a higher-than-expected elector load, with around 650,000 people using the system during the local elections last month. “Almost triple the number of voters have used iVote at these elections than any previous election,” NSWEC said....

Healthcare facilities use clinical algorithms to help decide how medical care is doled out to patients, and many hospitals use a process called “race norming” – also known as race adjustment. It has been proven to negatively impact the care Black and Latino residents of the city receive. The announcement includes examples of real-world situations impacting the city’s residents, including an “adjustment” factor for Black patients in reference to kidney function....