November 11

WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 13 - 18 NOVEMBER, 2023

Hello and Welcome,

Meetings This Week

2023/11/14 — 18:00-20:00 — November, Tue — Programming

2023/11/18 — 14:00-16:00 — November, Sat — Web Design

Meeting Next Week

2023/11/21 — 10:00-12:00 — November, Tue — Tuesday Group

Schedule of Current & Upcoming Meetings

First Tuesday  18:00-20:00 — Main Meeting

First Saturday 13:00-14:00 — Penrith Group

Second Tuesday 18:00-20:00 — Programming

Third Tuesday  10:00-12:00 — Tuesday Group

Third Saturday 14:00-16:00 — Web Design

----------

Go to the official Sydney PC Calendar for this month's meeting details.

----------

Penrith meetings are held every 2nd month on the 1st Saturday from 1-2 pm.
The following meetings are in January, March and May 2024.

ASCCA News:Tech News:

Microsoft announces A$5 billion investment in computing capacity and capability to help Australia seize the AI era

See the Microsoft article by Microsoft News Centre on 24 October 2023.

Today, Microsoft announced significant digital infrastructure, skilling and cybersecurity investments in Australia to help the nation seize the artificial intelligence (AI) era to strengthen its economic competitiveness, create high-value jobs and protect it from the increasing threat of cyberattacks.

Microsoft will invest A$5 billion in expanding its hyper-scale cloud computing and AI infrastructure in Australia over the next two years — the single most significant investment in its forty-year history in the country. This investment will also grow Microsoft's local data centre footprint from 20 sites to 29 spread across Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney.

To realise the full potential of this new digital infrastructure investment, Microsoft is working with TAFE NSW towards establishing a Microsoft Datacentre Academy in Australia. The company will also extend its global skills programs to help more than 300,000 Australians gain the capabilities they need to thrive in a cloud and AI-enabled economy.

In addition, Microsoft will collaborate with the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) on an initiative called the Microsoft-Australian Signals Directorate Cyber Shield (MACS), aimed at improving protection from cyber threats for Australian residents, businesses and government entities. As part of this partnership, Microsoft will work with ASD to build fit-for-purpose, next-generation cybersecurity solutions.

Today's announcement coincided with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's state visit to the United States. Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith and Microsoft Australia and New Zealand Managing director Stephen Worrall joined him.

Expand Australia's digital capacity to seize the AI opportunity.

Microsoft's A$5 billion digital infrastructure investment will increase its computing capacity by approximately 250 per cent over the next two years. This will enable the company to meet the growing demand for cloud computing services, which are expected to almost double from A$12.2 billion in 2022 to A$22.4 billion in 2026, according to a whitepaper by International Data Corporation, commissioned by Microsoft.

The investment will also enable Australia to capitalise on the significant economic and productivity opportunities presented by the latest AI technology, highlighted in a recent report by the Tech Council of Australia and Microsoft. The report found that generative AI — if adopted at an accelerated pace — could contribute as much as A$115 billion a year to Australia's economy by 2030.

Microsoft will ensure that its new data centres in Australia help meet the company's sustainability goals of being carbon-negative, water positive and zero waste by 2030. This includes using low-carbon materials during construction, as well as using renewable energy, advanced water-cooling features and measures to decrease diesel fuel use during operation.

Build capability for the era of AI.

As part of today's announcement, Microsoft has committed to supporting an additional 300,000 Australians in its global skills programs, designed to help people gain the skills and capabilities they need to succeed in the digital economy by providing access to learning resources, certifications and job-seeking tools.

In addition, Microsoft is working towards launching its first Datacentre Academy in Australia in early 2024, in partnership with TAFE NSW. The academy's curriculum will align with core operational roles, including data centre technicians, critical environment specialists, inventory and asset management professionals, and IT operations personnel.

Microsoft's skilling investments are part of the tech industry's shared commitment with the Australian Government to fill 1.2 million tech-related jobs nationwide by 2030.

Strengthening the nation's cyber defences

The Microsoft-ASD Cyber Shield (MACS) builds on the longstanding partnership between Microsoft and the Australian Government, where the exchange of cyber threat information has led to better protection for Australian residents, businesses and government entities. The collaboration will enhance the government and Microsoft's joint capability to identify, prevent and respond to cyber threats, which are growing in frequency and severity.

To highlight the scale of the problem, ASD's national Cyber Watch Office received more than 76,000 cybercrime reports in the 2021–22 financial year, an increase of nearly 13 per cent from the previous year. This equated to one report every 7 minutes.

MACS will include:

— Evolving national threat intelligence sharing capabilities.

— Focusing on detecting.

— Analysing and defending against sophisticated nation-state cyber threats.

Anthony Albanese

Quotes attributable to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese:

"This is a major investment in the skills and workers of the future, which will help Australia to strengthen our position as a world-leading economy."

"A priority for my Government is to ensure all Australians benefit from economic growth. This means that we need to provide the skills to enable Australians to succeed in the jobs of the future."

"A strong economy requires protection from cyber threats. I welcome Microsoft's collaboration with the Australian Signals Directorate to enhance cybersecurity for households and businesses."

Brad Smith

Quotes attributable to Brad Smith, Microsoft Vice Chair and President:

"This is our largest investment in Microsoft's 40-year history in Australia and a testament to our commitment to the country's growth and prosperity in the AI era. We're coupling this A$5 billion computing capacity and capabilities with AI and engineering to strengthen the nation's cyber defence, including a deeper collaboration with the Australian Signals Directorate."

Read More »

New Windows 11 23H2 Features Confirmed

See the InfoPackets article by John Lister on November 6, 2023, at 12:11 pm EST.

This year's major update to Windows 11 is now available. The word "major" is doing some heavy lifting on this occasion.

Users can now manually install the 23H2 update, which will roll out to all users through automatic updates in the next few months. While Microsoft issues regular bug fixes and security updates, the "H2" update is the primary way it publishes new features.

The update, released in the second half of each year (H2), effectively counts as a new version of Windows. Once installed, it resets the support calendar and guarantees another 24 months of support from Microsoft.

AI Goes Standalone

The main new feature this year is Copilot, "an AI-powered intelligent assistant that helps you get answers and inspirations from across the web, supports creativity and collaboration, and helps you focus on the task at hand." (Source: microsoft.com)

In effect, it's a standalone version of the AI assistant tools built into the Bing search engine and Edge browser. However, as well as asking questions, it can carry out some system tasks. Users can type what they want Windows to do rather than hunt through settings menus.

Another "new feature" is removing the Curious Chat app, which was effectively a more basic messaging tool aimed at consumer rather than business use. That's been replaced by a free version of the Microsoft Teams system.

Image Apps Tweaked

Beyond that, the changes are very minor, if practical. System Apps will be labelled as such and manageable through a dedicated settings page. Meanwhile, the built-in image tools are getting some tweaks that could reduce the need for web-based or "professional tools."

Examples include MS Paint getting a background removal tool, Photos being able to blur backgrounds, and the Snipping Tool being able to automatically recognize and blur out personal information that may appear in a screenshot. (Source: techspot.com)

What's Your Opinion?

Are you impressed or disappointed by these new features? Does Microsoft need to add new features to Windows 11 at all? What features would you like to see added?

User Comments

Submitted by buzzallnight on Tue, 07/11/2023 — 01:32

Are you impressed by these new features? No.

What features would you like to see added?

1. The ability to install and use the XP interface.

2. One of the many problems with M$ software is they try to please everybody, so they have way too many functions available. So, if you accidentally click somewhere, weird stuff happens and you need to know how to return to where you were.

I don't, and most people don't use half of all the weird commands in M$ software.

So what is needed is a way to shut every single thing off in a big chart that shows everything possible to do.

Read More »

ChatGPT Isn't Stuck in the Past Anymore

See the How-To Geek article by CORBIN DAVENPORT | PUBLISHED Nov 7, 2023.

ChatGPT

The new GPT-4 Turbo model is more valuable and knows more recent information.

ChatGPT helped kick off the current wave of generative AI technology, and the underlying GPT software powers many other AI-based apps and services. OpenAI has announced a few improvements to ChatGPT and the GPT APIs, potentially making AI more useful.

OpenAI revealed its new GPT-4 Turbo model today at its "DevDay" event, which is an improved version of the GPT-4 model that was released earlier this year. The company said, "GPT-4 Turbo is more capable and has knowledge of world events up to April 2023. It has a 128k context window to fit the equivalent of more than 300 pages of text in a single prompt."

The regular version of GPT-4 is available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers, and Bing Chat uses GPT-4 for conversations. ChatGPT and the GPT language model were initially trained on data until September 2021, so questions about more recent events or facts didn't work. The GPT-3.5 language model is still stuck on data up to January 2022, while GPT-4 has been updated a few times to more recent data (it's now on October 2023). The web browsing plugin in ChatGPT was a partial workaround, allowing ChatGPT to search the web for more recent information, but integrating newer data into the model should be more reliable. Bing Chat also uses web searches to answer most questions.

OpenAI says GPT-4 Turbo is more reliable with tasks that require careful following of instructions, such as answers in specific formats. It also supports JSON mode, which ensures that the output will be valid JSON — that's mostly only helpful for services using the API or programmers.

The existing GPT-3.5 Turbo model, which is still available to free ChatGPT users, is also being updated. The blog post explains, "The 3.5 Turbo supports improved instruction following, JSON mode, and parallel function calling. For instance, our internal evals show a 38% improvement in format following tasks such as generating JSON, XML and YAML."

GPT-4 Turbo is available to developers starting today, and it should be available for ChatGPT Plus subscribers soon. It needs to be clarified when GPT-4 or GPT-4 Turbo will roll out to free ChatGPT users. Still, the GPT-4 Turbo is (supposedly) cheaper to operate than the initial GPT-4 release, which was one of the reasons OpenAI limited it to paying customers.

Source: OpenAI

Read More »

Fun Facts:

Optus hit by national mobile, broadband outage since 4 am

See the iTWire article by Sam Varghese | Wednesday, 08 November 2023, 07:38 am.

Singtel Optus has been affected by a national outage since 4 am on Wednesday, with its 10.2 million customers unable to make mobile calls or use NBN services.

Melbourne train services were also hit by issues, coming to a halt for a while this morning. Services resumed about 6 am. It is not known if there is a connection between the two outages.

Optus has not issued any media release about the issues affecting its networks. The company has been contacted for comment.

amaysim, an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) that resells Optus services, had this on its website: "We're currently experiencing a nationwide outage which may impact your ability to connect to our services. We apologise for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we resolve this matter."

Optus cannot provide Australians with an update as their phones & internet are currently down. Instead, they have resorted to more traditional means of communication.

In a statement, an Optus spokesperson said: "Optus is aware of an issue that may be impacting some of our mobile and internet customers. We are working to identify the cause and apologise for any inconvenience. In case of an emergency, customers can still call 000."

Daryl Maguire's tractor: Hey Optus, why is your entire network down?

Optus, being advised by its star recruit Gladys Berejiklian:

You don't need to know about that.

— Gladys

Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin called ABC Sydney on WhatsApp and said she had "no more information" about the cause of the issue.

Bayer Rosmarin said the company's technicians had tried "several paths of restoration", but none had worked.

Simmo: First pictures of the Optus marketing department:

Optus Marketing Department

"Our team is still pursuing every possible avenue. We had some hypotheses, and each one so far that we've tested and put in place new actions for has not resolved the fundamental issue," Bayer Rosmarin told the ABC.

"So we're still working on it. And when we have an identified root cause and a time for restoration, we'll be updating everybody as soon as we can."

Read More »

Meeting Location & Disclaimer

Bob Backstrom
~ Newsletter Editor ~

Information for Members and Visitors:

Link to — Sydney PC & Technology User Group
All Meetings, unless explicitly stated above, are held on the
1st Floor, Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts, 280 Pitt Street, Sydney.
Sydney PC & Technology User Group's FREE Newsletter — Subscribe — Unsubscribe
Go to Sydney PC & Technology User Group's — Events Calendar
Are you changing your email address? Would you please email your new address to — newsletter.sydneypc@gmail.com?
Disclaimer: We provide this Newsletter "As Is" without warranty of any kind.
The reader assumes the entire risk of accuracy and subsequent use of its contents.