Windows Weekly 863: Full of Corn

Leo, Richard, and Paul discuss new PCs and PC chipsets at CES 2023, Windows 11, Microsoft 365, AI, Xbox, and so much more.

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It’s CES, so let’s observe a moment of silence for all the stupid #*$% our colleagues are covering right now

But there is some wheat in the chaff, of course:

• Intel announces 14th Gen Core desktop and mobile chips. But I thought Meteor Lake was mobile only?
• PC makers announce a lot of Meteor Lake PCs: Acer, Acer again, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, more, plus the MSI Claw mobile gaming handheld and the first ASUS NUC!
• Paul’s been using an HP Spectre x360 14 for the past month, what’s the AI stuff really like?
• It’s not just Intel: Nvidia goes nuts on AI and AMD has new AI-powered CPUs too
• Google announces improvements across the Android ecosystem – Quick Share
• Amazon adopts Matter Casting – and now we have too many of these things – what about Microsoft?
• Thread will finally fix networking and thus Matter

AD 1 HERE

Windows 11

Microsoft announces a Copilot new key for Windows keyboards – settle down, everyone

Windows Insider Preview

• Beta channel (last Thursday) – Bug fixes – after the Dev/Canary updates of last Wednesday

Quick Windows 11 Field Guide update – 160 pages of new 23H2 content in two months, now 1058 pages long, so download the latest version

Microsoft is reportedly looking to add AI writing assistance to Notepad. For some reason (original)

Microsoft 365

Awesome! Microsoft PC hardware to be sold now by Incase

Almost four years later, it looks like Microsoft will finally make Teams (free) an actual Teams client

Apple tries to stamp down the CES hype, announces Apple Vision Pro launch date

AD 2 HERE

AI

OpenAI responds to the NYT and … yikes. Did AI write this?

• It admits that ChatGPT does what the NYT claimed
• Has met with “dozens” of news orgs but can only cite four actual partnerships, and licensing costs are confidential
• Emphatically cites the fair use argument, which is an open discussion and not clear-cut
• Offers an opt-out for news publishers, but … only since August, so after it used all the NYT content
• Says the NYT is not telling the full story. Right, it’s telling its side of the story. Just like OpenAI
• Interesting details about negotiations between the two
• Seeks constructive partnership in a final olive leaf

EU is investigating Microsoft/OpenAI partnership, following U.S. FTC and UK CMA

Pennsylvania adopts OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise

OpenAI launches GPT Store for ChatGPT Plus, Team and Enterprise users

Now we know which Microsoft executive is sort of on the OpenAI board

Didn’t cover this, but Duolingo lays off staff because AI is so good (one report)

Xbox

Microsoft could be bringing Xbox exclusives to PlayStation

Microsoft is bringing back the Xbox Developer_Direct event on January 18 – no AB, sorry

Minecraft Legends, RIP

Big changes to GeForce Now: New Xbox titles, day passes, more

Layoffs at Twitch

After its failed coup of the userbase, Unity lays off 25 percent of its workforce

PAUSE HERE

Tips and picks

Tip of the week: We need to talk about password managers

Last week, LastPass began requiring 12-character master passwords. Guys. Bring on the passkeys, please.

App pick of the week: Alternative web browsers

Vivaldi 6.5 is on Android now (already on PCs, iOS)

Opera teams with MSI on new Opera GX

Plus: I’ve been using Brave Search after my success with DuckDuckGo. It’s not as good, but the AI summarizing is interesting (semi-related: Brave just added software code generation LLM capabilities to its Search)

RunAs Radio this week: Hardening Active Directory with Jerry Devore

https://runasradio.com/Shows/Show/914

Brown liquor pick of the week: Bearface Triple Oak

https://www.bearfacewhisky.com/triple-oak-whisky/