Microsoft

It will soon be serious about the cloud initiative Gaia-X, which was committed primarily by the German and the French Government. In mid-September, 22 organizations and corporations from Germany and France – including ATOS, BMW, Bosch, SAP and Telekom – founded a non-new organization in Brussel, which establishes the structure of the "Trustworthy, sovereign digital infrastructure for Europe" coordinate.

At the same time, some of the partners announced first concrete, GAIA-X-compatible products. For example, the Telekom and the French Hoster Ovhcloud want to introduce early 2021 "Create trustwurried public cloud offer for all industries where data sourceianity and DSGVO conformity play a significant role". Also PlusServer and other providers are planning Gaia-X-compatible Cloud Services. So soon, it will show if it is available for the concept required by politics with advanced and with taxpayers also a market.

Official goal of the GAIA X initiative is one "Composite system of existing cloud providers". Thanks to uniform open source interfaces, customers should switch quickly and cheap between cloud providers or can be used in parallel and thereby avoid dependencies. A machine-readable catalog should simplify the selection of suitable services. In addition, the initiative attaches great importance to its own so "Data": Users should decide where data are stored and "by whom and for what purpose they are processed throughout".

Since AMD with Ryzen 4000 also sets the fastest processors in the notebook market, the eyes are directed on how Intel’s counter-looking. On an Architecture Day and present at the specialist conference Hot Chips HC32, the ChipGigant called first details, such as the upcoming 11. Core I Generation – Codename Tiger Lake – wants to counter dominant AMD processors: with optimizations at all fronts.

It’s about that Intel has developed a new transistor type called Superfin for its chospre’s 10-nanometer manufacturing process – with sophisticated marketing designations like "10nm+" So is a conclusion. Superfin transistors are used in new CPU nuclei (Codename Willow Cove), which bubble the ICE Lake Generation Sunny Cove Core. While the latter hardly reached more than 4 GHz, because the FINFET transistors used there do not tolerate the voltages required for higher clock rates, should now be around the 5 GHz in it. In addition, Intel promises a higher cycle even at low voltages and thus more performance with the same energy input.

Architecturally, Willow Cove brings significantly coarse caches: The L2 cache per core growth of 0.5 to 1.25 Mbytes and the L3 cache shared by several cores – with a four-core of 8 on 12 Mbytes. Intel did not want to answer for variants with more cores, but referred to the through-the-sized launch timetable: Concrete CPU models and their technical details should only be on 2. September be presented. On the Architecture Day, however, was also said that Tiger Lake has up to 24 Mbyte L3 cache – that sounds great about an OCTA Core. Whether such chips such as the Ryzen-4000 eight-cucore will give in the for flat notebook relevant 15-watt Abwarm budget or only in the 45-watt class for gaming-bolides and mobile workstations, is just as open as concrete statements performance.

Meanwhile it is a year ago that the federal government "digital sovereignty" explained to your goal. But so far, Berlin will not live up to this claim.

In September 2019, Minister of Interior Horst Seehofer was committed to reducing the dependence of individual IT providers and to examine alternative programs. At the same time he dilute a study in which the dependency of the federal government of Microsoft clip and clearly described. His officials already had one before "coarse litter" in the direction of Open Source in view.

Since then a lot has happened. Seehofer has set up a department for independent IT in his house, he also prepares the element of a coarse "Center for digital sovereignty" before. Economic Minister Peter Altmaier pushed Gaia-X. And the GROKO develops new security criteria in Huawei Streit for IT provider.

Browsers are familiar with all kinds of sensitive data, from surfing behavior on personal data to payment information and passwords. But these data are really in good hands? Seven current desktop browser had to compete in the current C’t 14/2021 to privacy check, including Google Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari.

In the evaluation, not only the built-in protective functions against fingerprinting and tracking, but also the communication behavior of the browser: because the best tracking protection is worthless, if the browser itself is the privacy problem and during the use of more data into the world paunt, as a necessary.

Even if the browsers do the same at first glance, the results could hardly be different. During the Underdog Brave by far the best way to cummer the privasphare of his users, Edge turned out to be a Mogelpackung: The Microsoft Browser brings with a good tracking blocker, delivers its users over the "New tab"-However, the same side to the first tracking companies. Turn off these pages did not love.

After Brave, Vivaldi and Duckduckgo, Mozilla, Apple and Microsoft have now confessed that Google’s tracking replacement will not move into their browsers. In addition, WordPress wants to treat technology as if it is one "Safety problem" and automatically disable.

The online magazine The Verge has asked the companies. From Microsoft you got the following answer: "The industry is on a journey and there will be browser-based proposals that do not need individual user IDs, and ID-based proposals based on consent and first party relationships." Supports no solutions that share user identities without consent, such as fingerprinting.

Although the statements are not clear, The Verge but interprets them as a rejection of Google. Floc, which stands for Federated Learning of Cohorts, is in criticism for doing as well as fingerprinting users identifiable. Since Microsoft’s Browser Edge is based on chromium, the method must be actively prevented here.

Microsoft users with Apple advice must make sure their hardware and software is up to date enough. Derek Snook, Principal PM Manager in the Group’s Office Department and for the MacOS, iOS and iPados versions of the Buropaket, rally on Twitter that Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and All-In -One-Office app with the upcoming release only on iOS or iPados 13 or 14.

IOS 12 is the Crux

With the update that brings this step, it is already expected in the coming week. iOS 12 is thus falling from the support. Thus, for example, the first generation of the iPad Air loses access to the current office, as well as iPad Minis before the variant 4. Even alter Iphones like the 6 and 6 plus can not play anymore.

Together, all these advised that they feast in iOS 12; With iOS or iPados 13 last year, Apple had attracted the prerequisites.

At the 14th. January 2020 extended mainstream support for Windows 7 ran out, over ten years after the publication of this operating system. Thus, there are no safety or feature updates for private users. Nevertheless, just under a year later, it is still gross popularity, as a look at the evaluation of the StatCounter shows.

Windows 7 ran in December to about 18 percent of StatCounter Windows PCs.

Thus, although there are almost 76 percent of the powered Windows 10, Windows 7, but is about 18 percent in second place. That amazes something, especially since Microsoft offers the upgrade to Windows 10 still free of charge, although the company is no longer awarded. On the other hand, the latest Windows output has a bad reputation in some users, for example because it collects data in the background and strongly urges a Microsoft account.

Microsoft distributes its new versions and thus new functions only gradually. So also the recently confeded new features for teams. Meanwhile they were allowed to be available for most users. However, you have to activate you manually to start about the Together Mode, which is not obvious, among other things, not even immediately.

In the settings in teams, to which you reach over his profile icon, the selection can be found "Activate new meeting experience". If you put the hook there and starts teams new, you get the new structure.

Integration of other applications

First, in the left bar, now under the three-point menu, for example, a planning tool, the stream function and more selections. Integrate the calendar, you can start Meetings directly.

The US Software Concertern Microsoft intends to report reporting with a purchase of its offer for language processing services: The Group is in advanced talks about an acquisition of the KI and Language Distribution Specialist Nuance Communications, the news agency Bloomberg reported on Sunday with the responsibility of the responsibility persons. Nuance is known for its dictation and speech recognition software with the brand name Dragon.

The deal, which is based on an assessment of equity value from – according to the current bargaining level – around 16 billion dollars (13.4 billion euros), could already be explored in the new week according to Bloomberg. Thus, Nuance was evaluated with around $ 56 per share – a surcharge of almost a quarter compared to the closing price from Friday of $ 45.58.

Zenimax swallowed, talking with discord

Microsoft was continuing its shopping tour. Most recently, the Group had its gaming division around the game console Xbox with the billion-heavy purchase of Zenimax Media initiated, the mother’s company of the GamePublisher Bethesda. In addition, US media had reported on a review of the US company Discord for Uber 10 billion US Dollars, an online service for language, video and text chatting, which initially focused on computer players.

With Translate publishes Astian a new translation service that appears as a free software. The program can handle nine languages: German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Arab and Chinese. The automatic detection of the input is still experimental.

Try it allows users to service on the Astian-operated LibreTranslate.com, however, the software can be deployed on its own server. The associated API can be found on GitHub, including a manual for setting up and configuring. However, the Astian server is intended for testing purposes.

Kunftig not only as a single service

Under the hood, the service is based on Argos Translate. The free translation software can be used directly as a desktop application or Python library. Astian plans to integrate Translate into its other open source projects such as the Browser Midori or its own cloud platform.