Month: July 2024

10 ways to boost your Windows laptop’s battery life

July 10, 2024 /

We all dream of all-day battery life — the ability to use a laptop away from an outlet for an entire workday, or longer. But while everyone’s talking about the long battery life promised by new Qualcomm Snapdragon chips and upcoming Intel CPUs, you don’t have to buy something new to enjoy better battery life this minute.

This collection of tips will give you more time on battery, whether you’re running Windows 11 or Windows 10. These are good even if you have a modern laptop with the latest hardware, too — you’ll get better battery life if you keep them in mind.

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Windows battery life tip #1: Start saving

If you’re going to be away from a power outlet for a while or your laptop’s battery seems to be draining too fast, you’ll want to activate Battery Saver or Energy Saver. In this mode, Windows makes a variety of tweaks to lower power consumption — for example, it limits some background tasks and lowers your screen brightness. By default, Windows will automatically activate this option around 30% battery to save power. However, you can turn on battery saver whenever you like — or make Windows always enable this setting when you’re on the go.

On Windows 11, you turn on Battery Saver by clicking the system tray icons at the right side of your taskbar and clicking the “Battery Saver” or “Energy Saver” button. (The name depends on which version of Windows 11 you have.) If the option is grayed out, that’s because your computer is plugged in — you can only activate this option when you’re unplugged.

To make Windows use this mode automatically, head to Settings > System > Power & battery and tweak the options under “Battery Saver” or “Energy Saver.” If you set to “Always” automatically turn on, Windows will always use this feature whenever your laptop is running on battery power.

Windows laptop battery life: Battery saver (auto)
For maximum battery life, set Battery saver to turn on whenever you unplug your laptop.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

To turn on Battery Saver in Windows 10, click the notification bubble icon at the right side of the taskbar, click “Expand” if you don’t see all the icons, and then click the “Battery Saver” icon. To use this mode automatically, head to Settings > System > Battery and select “Always” under “Turn Battery Saver on automatically.”

Windows battery life tip #2: Power up your power mode

For maximum battery life, be sure to select the right power mode. By default, Windows often uses “Balanced” power mode. You can select “Best power efficiency” to save some battery power at the cost of a little bit of performance.

To choose your power mode on Windows 11, go to Settings > System > Power & battery. Use the “Power mode” box to select “Best power efficiency” or at least “Balanced.” The “Best performance” setting will drain your battery faster.

On Windows 10, click the battery icon in your system tray and drag the slider to configure your power mode.

Windows laptop battery life: Power mode
The “Best power efficiency” power mode is the best choice for maximum battery life.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

Windows battery life tip #3: Be bright about brightness

Your laptop’s display is one of the biggest energy hogs on your system. The brighter the display, the more power it uses. Try to set your brightness on the low side to prolong battery life.

To adjust screen brightness, you can often use function keys on your computer’s keyboard. On Windows 11, you can also click the system tray icons at the bottom right corner of your taskbar and use the brightness slider.

On Windows 10, click the notification bubble on the right side of your taskbar and use the brightness slider. If you don’t see it there, click “Expand.”

Windows battery life tip #4: Wake up to smarter sleep settings

Your laptop can automatically turn off its display and go to sleep when you’re not interacting with it. The more aggressive you make these settings, the more power you can save. For example, if you set your computer to sleep three minutes after you stop interacting with it, you’ll save more battery power than if you set it to sleep after 10 minutes.

To find these settings on Windows 11 or Windows 10, head to Settings > System > Power & battery. Under “Screen and sleep,” change the “On battery power, turn off my screen after” and “On battery power, put my device to sleep after” settings.

Windows laptop battery life: Screen and sleep
Ensure Windows is set to turn off your laptop’s display and put your device to sleep shortly after it becomes idle.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

Windows battery life tip #5: Bat down battery hogs

The above tweaks will help you stop Windows and your PC’s display from draining as much battery power. But applications are also a major factor.

Windows tracks which apps are using the most battery power, and you can check on which ones are the problem. To see which apps have been draining your battery on Windows 11, head to Settings > System > Power & battery. Expand the “Battery usage” section and look under “Battery usage per app.” On Windows 10, head to Settings > System > Battery and look under “Battery usage per app.”

The information here will tell you a lot. It’s normal to see applications you use the most using lots of battery — your web browser of choice may be on top of the list. But you may also see some surprises, and you canconsider switching to a different app if anything seems unusually battery hungry. (If you don’t use an application and see it’s draining battery power in the background, you might just want to uninstall it.)

Windows laptop battery life: Battery usage per app
The “Battery usage per app” list on your laptop will be very informative.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

Windows battery life tip #6: Do an energy audit

While the Settings app will show you which apps have been using the most power recently, the Task Manager can show you which apps are using the most energy right now.

To find this, open the Task Manager — either press Ctrl+Shift+Esc or right-click an empty spot on the taskbar and select “Task Manager.”

On the main processes list pane, right-click the heading bar and check “Power usage.” You’ll get a column showing which applications are using the most power right now, and you can click it to sort by power usage. You can also activate “Power usage trend” to get an idea of recent power usage, not just power usage at the current moment.

Windows laptop battery life: Task Manager power usage
The “Power usage” column is hidden by default, but it’s helpful for spotting power-hungry apps.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

Windows battery life tip #7: Battle background drain

Applications that launch at startup and run in the background can waste battery power, too. I recommend looking at your system tray, clicking the little up arrow on your taskbar, and closing any applications you don’t use.

To stop them from launching at startup, use the Task Manager. First, open it by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc. Click over to the “Startup” tab. Look at this list and turn off applications you don’t use or need — you can right-click an app and select “Disable” to stop it from launching when you sign in. Or, if you’re not sure what an application does, right-click it and select “Search online” for more information.

If you don’t use the application at all, you can uninstall it completely.

Windows laptop battery life: Task Manager startup apps
It’s always a good idea to prune the startup apps list on your PC.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

Windows battery life tip #8: Go on an app diet

While it’s natural that the apps you use the most will use a good amount of battery power, the “Battery usage per app” list in the Windows Settings app offers clues that some of your applications are unusually heavy.

If an app seems particularly power-hungry, try switching to a different one. If you have a lot of browser extensions in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or whatever your web browser of choice is, you might want to turn some of them off.

You may also want to wait and run heavier tasks when you’re connected to an outlet. So, if you need to perform a huge download or install a lot of applications, do that while plugged in. 

Windows battery life tip #9: Shut down

Ideally, we could all just close our laptops when we’re not using them. They’d go to sleep and be ready when we open them back up. And you absolutely can use your laptop in this way. If you’re happy with your battery life, go right ahead.

But, if your battery life isn’t where you want it to be — and if you find yourself opening up your laptop and being surprised at how much it drained when not in use — you might want to fully shut down your laptop when you’re not using it. Just use the power options in the Start menu.

There are a few reasons sleep mode isn’t ideal for laptop battery life: Windows will wake up your sleeping laptop to perform updates and other tasks, and power-saving settings might sometimes not work quite right, leading to fast battery drain when your laptop should be sleeping and sipping power.

At the end of the day — or if you won’t be using your laptop for a while — consider shutting it down rather than just letting it sleep.

This isn’t a great tip all of the time. If you’re just stepping away and you’ll be back shortly, your laptop will use more power to shut down and then boot up than just using sleep mode. But if you’re throwing your laptop in a bag and don’t plan on using it until the next day, powering it off is ideal.

Windows battery life tip #10: Plan for long-term health

Battery life isn’t just about the software choices you make. It’s also about preserving the physical health of your battery. All batteries degrade over time — that’s just entropy. But how fast they degrade is up to you.

For example, heat is a battery’s worst enemy. You should avoid leaving your laptop in direct summer sunlight or very hot cars.

It’s also a good idea to charge your laptop frequently — it’s better to top it off more often than to always let it drain down to 0%.

However, you might preserve your battery power by only charging it to 80%. Some laptop manufacturers include utilities with options that will let you set them to charge to 80%, while many modern Windows laptops now include “Smart charging” features that do the same thing.

At the end of the day, this isn’t about perfection. Sometimes your laptop has to be outside on a hot day, and sometimes you’ll drain it to 0%. And, if your laptop doesn’t include an easy way to limit charging to 80%, there’s no point in driving yourself crazy by always trying to unplug at 80%.

But by keeping these best practices in mind, you’ll preserve your laptop’s battery health and get better battery life for a long time to come.

There’s more PC advice where this came from! Check out my free Windows Intelligence newsletter — I’ll send you three things to try every Friday. Plus, get free copies of Paul Thurrott’s Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (a $10 value) as a special welcome gift.

10 forgotten Android text selection shortcuts

July 10, 2024 /

When you hang around Android long enough, you start to sense a persistent three-step pattern:

  1. A promising new system-level feature comes along with a splashy on-stage demo and availability announcement (ooh, exciting!)
  2. A handful of apps start to support the feature (ooh, intriguing!)
  3. Everyone forgets about the feature entirely and moves on (new shiny thing distraction — ooh, exciting!)

I’ve kept my person-peepers pressed to the Googley glass for something like 797 years now, and I’ve gotta tell ya: This happens far more often than you’d expect.

In fact, it just happened to me this week — with a newfound realization that I’d completely forgotten about a once-promising Android system feature.

Android Intelligence reader and The Intelligence Insider JRGreenboro brought this dusty old diamond back to the forefront of my man-lobes with a post in our wisdom-filled Intelligence Insider Community the other day. He noticed that when pressing and holding text to select it in different places on his phone, he saw helpful shortcuts to actions like creating a new calendar event around a selected date — without all the typical steps you’d have to take to pull off that process.

And thus, a forgotten Android feature made its way to the surface once more.

[Psst: Love shortcuts as much as I do? My free Android Shortcut Supercourse will teach you tons of time-saving tricks for your phone. Start now!]

Android text selection — beyond the basics

Before we get into the good stuff, a quick crumb of critical context: The system behind this phenomenon actually came around way back in 2016 — as part of the then-shiny-new Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) release. It’s an underlying mechanism within Android that lets developers tap into that simple-seeming text selection tool and add in their own custom options that then appear right alongside “cut,” “paste,” and other such commands.

And while the system never quite earned much in the way of mainstream attention or awareness, it’s been slowly chugging away and getting ever-more useful all this time.

Following that friendly reminder about its existence, I set out to unearth Android apps that tap into this possibility and offer up genuinely useful shortcuts tied to text selection. The list is relatively limited, and that may be at least in part due to the specific nature of this feature and the fact that it really would only make sense for a small set of text-connected actions.

But within that framework, some worthwhile shortcuts are absolutely out there and waiting to be embraced. And all you’ve gotta do is remember that they’re available.

Ready for an added jolt of Android-centric efficiency?

Android text selection shortcut #1: Events

First and foremost is the text selection shortcut that sparked this entire expedition — and that’s a swift ‘n’ simple way to create a new calendar event from anywhere on your device.

The easiest place to try it is in your browser — be it Chrome or any other Android browser you fancy. Just press and hold your finger onto any date on any web page in front of you (even this date right on this page, if you want: July 10, 2024).

And hey, how ’bout that? Right there, in the same menu where you usually see “copy,” “share,” and other such options, you should see a calendar-connected option to “Schedule.” You might have to tap a three-dot icon within that text selection menu to reveal it, but it’ll be there! And all it takes is a single tap on that command to create a new calendar event right then and there, with the selected date already filled in for you.

Android text selection shortcuts: Calendar
See that “Schedule” option? It’ll save you tons of time — once you realize it’s available.

JR Raphael, IDG

This works with the standard Google Calendar Android app as well as with Outlook and my own personal favorite Android calendar app, Business Calendar. As long as you’ve got at least one of those apps installed, the option should appear for you whenever you highlight a date anywhere on your device.

Android text selection shortcut #2: Places

The next time you encounter an address somewhere in your Android adventures — on a web page, in an email, wherever — press and hold your finger onto that address to highlight it.

Provided that you’ve got the Google Maps app installed on your device (and you almost certainly do), you’ll see a “Map” option appear within that tidy text selection pop-up.

Android text selection shortcuts: Maps
Select a place, and boom: You can zap over to a map of it with just one more tap.

JR Raphael, IDG

You can then just tap that to hop right over to an interactive map of the address in question without any copying, pasting, or general futzing required.

Android text selection shortcut #3: Email

Need to send an email to someone whose address you’ve got in front of you? Highlight that sucker, then look for the “Email” option in that text selection menu that appears.

Android text selection shortcuts: Email
Highlighting an email address is all you’ve gotta do to fire up a new message.

JR Raphael, IDG

This works with both Gmail and Outlook, depending on which you’ve got installed on your device (and it may work with some other Android emails apps as well).

Android text selection shortcut #4: Calls

Got a phone number staring you down in an email — or maybe a document or a web page? Press and hold that bad boy to highlight it, and you’ll see a “Call” option show up in that purty text selection pop-up of yours.

Android text selection shortcuts: Calls
Beam any number directly into your dialer with the easily overlooked “Call” command in Android’s text selection menu.

JR Raphael, IDG

This works with the universally compatible Google Phone app as well as the Samsung-made equivalent that comes installed on Galaxy devices by default. Either way, you’ve got just one more tap to transport those digits into your dialer and get your call going.

Android text selection shortcut #5: Texts

Just like with phone calls, you can surface a shortcut for sending a message simply by highlighting any valid number anywhere on your Android device.

Android text selection shortcuts: Text
A new text is never more than a press and a tap away.

JR Raphael, IDG

You can pull this one off with Google Messages as well as with Samsung’s Messages app.

Android text selection shortcut #6: Translations

¿Necesitas traducir? Grab the free Google Translate Android app. Even if you never actively open it, it’s worth keeping around for this purpose: With the app in place on your phone or tablet, any text you highlight anywhere on the device will always have “Translate” among its options within that innocuous-seeming text selection menu.

You might have to tap the three-dot icon within that menu to find it, but it’ll be there, all right:

Android text selection shortcuts: Translate
With the Google Translate app installed, language shifting is always at your fingertips.

JR Raphael, IDG

And it’ll give you a one-tap path for translating anything into any other language, anytime.

Android text selection shortcut #7: Knowledge

Another app worth keeping around for this reason alone is the free Wikipedia Android app. With it on your device, you’ll have a handy “Search Wikipedia” option available for any word or phrase you highlight.

Android text selection shortcuts: Wikipedia
Wikipedia as a system-level shortcut? Bring it on, baby.

JR Raphael, IDG

And speaking of on-demand info…

Android text selection shortcut #8: Definitions

Google’s got its own native definition option within the Android text selection menu, but it pops up inconsistently and unpredictably. Installing the free Dictionary.com Android app will give you a permanently present word look-up power — anytime you select any word or phrase, anywhere.

Android text selection shortcuts: Dictionary
Any definition, anytime — with the Android text selection dictionary shortcut.

JR Raphael, IDG

Android text selection shortcut #9: Notes

While most Android note apps are curiously missing any integration with Android’s text selection system — including the Google Keep Android app, even (!) — the Microsoft 365 (Office) app provides a convenient option for adding any text you highlight anywhere into your OneNote-connected (and also Windows-synced) Sticky Notes.

Android text selection shortcuts: Notes
Bring text from anywhere on your device into your notes with Microsoft’s smart Android text selection shortcut.

JR Raphael, IDG

Strangely enough, the standalone OneNote app doesn’t offer this option. But if you’ve got the Microsoft 365 app installed, it’ll be there — and saving something from anywhere into your notes will never be more than a press and tap away.

Android text selection shortcut #10: Websites

Last but not least, whenever you next encounter a web address that isn’t already linked and tappable, don’t waste time with the old-fashioned copy-and-paste caper.

Instead, press and hold your finger to highlight the address and then look for the one-tap “Open” option connected to the Chrome Android app.

Android text selection shortcuts: Websites
Off to the web we go — no copying or pasting involved.

JR Raphael, IDG

Ahh — getting where you need to be has never been easier.

Treat yourself to even more advanced shortcut knowledge with my free Android Shortcut Supercourse. You’ll learn tons of time-saving tricks for your phone!

‘Quiet firing’ layoffs risk fomenting a toxic environment

July 10, 2024 /

So far this year, companies have laid off just under 100,000 employees, according to layoffs.fyi, which emphasizes losses at tech companies. Job cuts totaled more than 260,000 in 2023, so, while the trend appears to be down a little for 2024, layoffs continue. (For another up-to-date list of tech-specific layoffs, see TechCrunch.)

What’s changed since February, when I wrote about the economics of job cuts, is that some companies are using new tactics to avoid negative publicity, lawsuits, and paying out potentially costly layoff benefits:

  • Silent layoffs occur when a company offers severance on condition that the employee keep quiet about the details of his or her exit.
  • Quiet firing is when bosses intentionally or unintentionally make a role less appealing, thereby provoking workers to quit instead of forcing them out via layoffs that might entail severance packages.
  • Return to office mandates (RTO); many believe stringent RTO mandates are a form of quiet firing. They also duck the cost of severance benefits.

Silent layoffs

Silent layoffs (a.k.a. quiet layoffs) have been in the news lately. PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) is widely reported to have launched a round of silent layoffs in the UK last month. According to the Financial Times, “the affected staff [members were] told they must not inform colleagues why they are leaving and they should follow a ‘suggested wording’ if they want to send goodbye messages.” The move backfired on the Big Four accountancy firm. Any semblance of silence was lost to the negative publicity, which is worse than it would have been had PwC simply announced the layoffs publicly and taken its lumps.

In early 2023, silent layoffs became unlawful in the US when the National Labor Relations Board overturned a 2020 ruling that allowed employers to use confidentiality and non-disparagement language in their severance agreements. The move reinstates rights afforded by the National Labor Relations Act (1935) and blocks the use of nondisclosure and other agreements that seek to prevent employees from speaking out about the terms of their severance and unfair practices of employers.

Quiet firing

The prevalence of bosses subtly pressuring employees to quit their jobs, or “quiet firing” (also. known as quiet cutting) in the US is partly the result of the National Labor Relations Board’s 2023 action. There’s a catch for employees, too; the ruling disincentivizes companies to pay severance, and even if they do, employee resignation obviates any possible severance benefits. 

That companies resort to this toxic method of job cutting is especially cruel because it stresses out employees both professionally and financially. The flagrant disregard for employees’ well being in the name of avoiding bad publicity is a harsh reality. The fallout for companies using this tactic could be consequential.

Return-to-office mandates and quiet firing

A recent study from BambooHR (of just over 1,500 US full-time salaried employees) shows that 25% of top-level execs and C-suite respondents — and 18% of HR pros — admit they hoped for a voluntary employee exodus as a result of RTO mandates. Some 37% of managers, directors and executives said they enacted layoffs during the past year because their RTO mandate pushed fewer people to quit than expected. Nearly half of respondents who have experienced an RTO order report significant talent loss from the best and brightest in their organizations.

The report concludes that the current level of employee “dissatisfaction could lead to a further drain of talent, affecting not just morale but also stability and the [potential for innovation].”

What to do if you think you’re being quietly fired

If you suspect you might be a victim of quiet firing, Forbes details eight indicators that you’re being quietly let go. And Harvard Business Review lists 18 early warning signs, including not providing employee bonuses, reassigning important job responsibilities, and setting up unreasonable performance targets. Confidentially finding others at your company who believe they’re in the same boat can help validate your experience.

If you conclude that you’re likely in a quiet firing situation, accusations of “quiet firing” likely won’t be constructive. Talking to your boss dispassionately about suggested changes to address the issues you’ve noticed is a good first step. Be transparent and if the conversation goes well, wait for a while to see whether it bears fruit.

If it doesn’t, you have to ask yourself whether the company culture and opportunities for growth and advancement are worth the continued effort. Your remaining options may be limited. You can seek out other employees who may be able to advocate for you, suggests this Time article. Or speak to your manager’s boss about your role going forward.

At some point, you might want to put your energy into initiating a job search. Use the time you have to take positive steps while you’re able to deal with it. Your mental health and positive outlook are important to making this transition. Keep in mind that this experience does not reflect poorly on you.

When you reach the end of your rope, try negotiating with your company. Tell them you believe that you’re being induced to quit and ask them for severance, health insurance benefits, time while on salary to job hunt. It can’t hurt to ask. You might also want to get legal help with reviewing any negotiated outcome. 

It’s a sorry state of affairs when companies get caught up in using underhanded tactics to lay off employees. It’s a sign of a weak company that’s being managed poorly. Strong companies are transparent and above board with employees. If you wind up job hunting, look for a company that has the reputation of treating its employees fairly and honestly.

Retirement of Office 365 connectors in Teams not sitting well

July 9, 2024 /

A decision by Microsoft to start retiring Office 365 connectors within Microsoft Teams has resulted in a firestorm of negative reaction.

According to a blog post released last week by Microsoft, starting August 15, all new “connector creation will be blocked within all clouds” and effective October 1,  “all connectors within all clouds will stop working.”

Office connectors in Microsoft Teams, the blog notes, deliver content and service updates directly from third-party services into a Teams channel, allowing team members to stay informed and in sync. The connectors link to services such as Trello, GitHub, RSS feeds, BitBucket, and Azure DevOps, giving users the ability to, for example, collaborate and manage software projects online, manage and collaborate on code projects, receive RSS feeds, and allow a user to receive notifications when videos are created, all within Teams.

To replace the connectors, authors of the blog wrote, “We recommend Power Automate workflows as the solution to relay information into and out of Teams.” Known as Microsoft Flow until late 2019, the SaaS platform optimizes and automates workflows and business processes.

Judging from the bulk of the 127 comments posted in response to the blog post by late afternoon Tuesday, people are outraged. One asked Microsoft if it has not learned from “insufficient transition deadlines. You have given users three months, two of which are during peak holiday season where many staff will be on annual leave for parts of it, to move service integrations away from connector format to possibly something they have never even looked at it. Why?”

Another wrote, “what are you doing? This is a major change for us, coming in the middle of the summer vacation. You should show more respect and not make such changes during the vacation when most people are away from work. Very disappointing!”

Other reactions ranged from “this timeline is a joke, hopefully there was a typo and you meant October ’25” to “the transition time is insufficient. More importantly, Power Automate does not currently replace the functionality of Connectors. I vote that Microsoft delays this transition by at least one year.”

Jeremy Roberts, senior analyst at Info-Tech Research Group, said today, “it is not entirely clear why they are choosing to do  this. They say it is about scale and depth, but there are certainly some kinks they will have to work out. (For example, you can’t send a message to a private channel, which is going to be a whole thing.) I do not know that their user base was begging for the sort of scale they would get from Power Automate replacing their basic connectors. The cynic in me says they derive benefit from pushing Power Automate premium licensing.”

Microsoft, he said, ”has been under some heightened anti-trust scrutiny, and they have done things like unbundling Teams. Perhaps this is a response to increasing regulatory pressure? Teams sits at the nexus of a bundled offering, or at least that was its initial promise. Perhaps introducing this further complexity is a way to demonstrate to regulators, especially in Europe, that Teams is not far and away the market leader? That is a bit conspiratorial but the thought had crossed my mind.”

He described Power Automate as “powerful, but it is more complex than a simple webhook. I could see a situation where the effort required to build and maintain in Power Automate exceeds the value of the notification into the Teams channel that the webhook provided.”

In reaction to the short transition period, Roberts noted,  “the many complaints about this in Microsoft and other sysadmin communities. A few months for something like this does feel rushed, though maybe it is best to rip the band-aid off.”

Overall, he said, the move “feels anti-consumer, though Microsoft would probably argue that Power Automate brings greater opportunities for consumers. The question is, do they want to put the time, effort and money in to realize those opportunities?”

OpenAI models still available in China via Azure cloud despite company ban

July 9, 2024 /

OpenAI models are still accessible through Microsoft Azure’s cloud in China despite the fact that the company has banned the use of these models in the region. The backdoor access to the models is part of a changing dynamic in China’s tech space, where emerging players hope to fill the gap the ban is poised to leave in the market, even as US-based tech firms look to circumvent growing trade restrictions.

Azure China operates as a joint venture with local company 21Vianet in China, which offers OpenAI’s service, according to an exclusive report by The Information on Monday. Three Azure customers in China also confirmed to the publication that they still have access to OpenAI’s models; two claimed they’ve used OpenAI’s API to train AI models sold to Chinese customers.

Microsoft confirmed to Computerworld Tuesday that Azure regions operated by 21Vianet are physically separated instances from Microsoft’s global cloud, though they are built on the same cloud technical base as its global peers. The company did not confirm or deny that access to OpenAI is still possible through Azure in China.

Two weeks ago OpenAI sent letters to Chinese users warning it plans to cut off its AI development software and tools starting in July, according to multiple reports, incuding oneby Time magazine. This caused a rush by other China-based AI companies to incentivize developers using OpenAI to switch to their platform. 

“Already we see Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba and many other Chinese companies stepping in with heavy discounts in an attempt to pick up current OpenAI users in China,” said Brad Shimmin, chief analyst, AI and data analytics, at Omdia.

Baidu, for example, has promised free AI model fine-tuning and expert guidance on its flagship Ernie model, along with 50 million free tokens developers can use to query the bot, according to the Time report. Alibaba and Tencent posted ads encouraging the move, while Chinese technology pioneer Kai-fu Lee’s 01.AI is promoting heavy discounts to use its service, Time reported.

Meanwhile, at the World AI Conference in Shanghai last week, another Chinese AI company, SenseTime, unveiled its latest model — SenseNova 5.5; like Baidu, it offered companies 50 million free tokens to use the model, according to a separate report by The Guardian. SenseNova also promised to deploy staff for free to help new clients migrate from OpenAI to SenseTime’s AI tools.

Getting around trade restrictions

Microsoft invested billions of dollars in OpenAI in January 2023 and is closely aligned with the ChatGPT maker, integrating its technology through its own AI chatbot called Copilot, which is hosted on Azure and an integral part of its own products and services.

Microsoft did not provide a motive for allowing access to OpenAI in China through Azure. Shimmin, however, noted that China is a “sizeable market opportunity” for “mega-brands” like Microsoft, Google, Meta and Apple, “one worth the additional cost of establishing sometimes complex operating policies in order to do business in-country.”

For many companies operating within China’s borders, restrictions on technology and other products from US vendors are nothing new given the long-term battle between the two nations over tech supremacy. “Many companies have and are actively circumventing in-house blocks from the government using VPN services,” Shimmin said. 

The US most recently imposed a series of tight restrictions on the export of microprocessors to China. However, US President Joseph R. Biden Jr. made it clear last year that the tech trade war with China extends to other technology, including AI.

A competitive advantage

In addition to OpenAI, a number of US-based AI services aren’t currently operating in China, including Anthropic, which does not support mainland China or Hong Kong, and Amazon Bedrock from AWS, which is only available in the region in Singapore, Japan, and Australia, Shimmin said.

Microsoft’s circumvention of the OpenAI ban “underscores its commitment to the region and to its customers,” Shimmin said. 

It also could help the company maintain its competitive edge and market share, not only in AI but also in China’s lucrative cloud services market, even while keeping its relationship with OpenAI on track, said Stephen Kowski, Field CTO at SlashNext Email Security+.

“By offering continued access to OpenAI models, Microsoft can attract and retain enterprise customers seeking advanced AI capabilities,” he said. “This approach allows Microsoft to balance its partnership with OpenAI and its business interests in China.”

When given the choice to access OpenAI GPT models directly from OpenAI or via Microsoft OpenAI Azure Service, most enterprise customers would likely opt for Microsoft, Shimmin noted, “because they can access GPT without worrying about issues like data leakage or model privacy/security.”

Microsoft mandates Chinese staff to use iPhones, not Android

July 9, 2024 /

Microsoft has ordered its staff in China to use iPhones for their work starting in September.

The decision effectively bars the use of Android smartphones by the tech giant’s Chinese staffers, Bloomberg reports.

The decision has more to do with standardising use of the Microsoft Authenticator and Identity Pass app among all personnel rather than security concerns about the Android mobile operating system.

AI managing AI that is monitoring AI: What could possibly go wrong?

July 9, 2024 /

If IT leaders were in a statistical analysis class, many would be in a lot of trouble. If students were given a very low reliability element and told to pair it with another low reliability element, a good student would know that the error rate — the risk of bad data results — would get higher. Quite likely much higher.

And yet, some tech leaders seem fine with the idea of combatting generative AI’s bad data — a.k.a. hallucinations — by marrying different genAI programs. Even worse, they are now embracing the idea of using genAI to monitor/manage other genAI as a way to negate hallucinations. Math doesn’t work that way.

Consider: OpenAI recently launched a genAI program to try and identify errors made by other genAI programs. “We’ve trained a model, based on GPT-4, called CriticGPT to catch errors in ChatGPT’s code output. We found that when people get help from CriticGPT to review ChatGPT code, they outperform those without help 60% of the time,” the company wrote in a post announcing the new app.

OpenAI predicts that hallucinations are likely to become harder for humans to find. The company talks about the limits of its Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) approach, in which human AI trainers evaluate ChatGPT responses. 

“As we make advances in reasoning and model behavior, ChatGPT becomes more accurate and its mistakes become more subtle. This can make it hard for AI trainers to spot inaccuracies when they do occur, making the comparison task that powers RLHF much harder,” OpenAI wrote. “This is a fundamental limitation of RLHF, and it may make it increasingly difficult to align models as they gradually become more knowledgeable than any person that could provide feedback.”

This is consistent with many other reports on genAI efforts, which suggest that, despite what experienced IT folk have come to expect from software (namely, that software gets generally better as it goes through updates), hallucinations are likely to get worse.

“Worse” in this context is a complex word. The hallucinations may not necessarily become more frequent and/or the lies genAI chatbots tell may not become more outlandish. But “worse” in that they will become more nuanced, making it more likely that humans won’t catch them. That is a legitimate problem.

That said, it’s not at all certain that throwing more genAI at this problem will help as much as it will create more problems.

OpenAI’s argument is not that the software will work on its own, but that this new genAI software will train humans to be better at spotting hallucinations created by a different genAI program. 

“CriticGPT’s suggestions are not always correct, but we find that they can help trainers to catch many more problems with model-written answers than they would without AI help,” the company wrote. “Additionally, when people use CriticGPT, the AI augments their skills, resulting in more comprehensive critiques than when people work alone, and fewer hallucinated bugs than when the model works alone.”

And therein lies the logic problem here. One of the criticisms of generative AI is that it is terrific at mimicking humans but fails to actually understand humans. I’m reminded of a column I wrote more than a decade ago, about engineers creating a product that tests for true love. (It was an actual product: a Bluetooth bra that would unhook only when it detected true love. Really. To be clear, I am not officially suggesting that engineers are as bad at understand human emotions as genAI. Not disputing it, but also not officially saying it.) 

Getting back to genAI logic, the flawed assumption that OpenAI is making is that humans will continue checking their systems for lies. Humans are lazy, and human IT employees are overworked and under-resourced. The far more likely outcome is that humans will trust the AI-watching-AI more and more. That is where the real danger exists.

Another example of this “trust AI to find errors in other AI” comes from Morgan Stanley. In a CIO.com piece looking at Morgan Stanley’s recent genAI rollout, the CEO of another financial company spoke of using multiple genAI models to check on each other. 

Morgan Stanley wants to use genAI to create transcripts and summaries of its client meetings. What Aaron Cirksena, founder and CEO of MDRN Capital, suggested was that Morgan could also run transcripts and summaries from the genAI capabilities within Zoom, Google, Microsoft, or Apple — and then use yet another genAI program to compare the results and flag any informational conflicts. “How likely is it that both AI systems will get the same thing wrong?” Cirksena asked. 

It is a legitimate question. But so is the opposite question: How likely is it that one or more of these genAI programs will introduce more hallucinations into the process? What if the checker program hallucinates that there are no conflicts when there are? 

An even worse problem is if the checker app labels things as disconnects that are actually fine. Why is that worse? This brings us back to the human nature issue. The more hassles that the checker program delivers to humans, the less inclined they will be to use it or believe it. 

Consider mobile voice recognition today. Its accuracy is strong enough (often topping 99% and certainly topping 98%) that people are inclined to dictate a message and then send it. This has caused confusion and embarrassment. 

I recently crafted a reply where I told a colleague, “Fine. You can do that.” But the iPhone’s voice recognition heard the words “fine” and “you” next to each other and decided that the most likely F-word was a very different one. It was fine on the screen, so I hit Send and then it changed it to the “other” word and did indeed send. Apple, can you please block your system from changing a word after the message is proofread?

When voice recognition accuracy percentages were in the low 90s, mistakes were so common that people carefully checked. I fear the same disaster is going to hit with AI checking AI. Wonder what disasters that will deliver?

Apple removes VPN apps in Russia; here’s what to do next

July 9, 2024 /

Russia’s state communications watchdog, Roskomnadzor, has forced Apple to stop offering Virtual Private Network (VPN) apps via the App Store in Russia as that nation continues to censor internal dissent.

The regulator has already blocked access to dozens of VPNs in Russia, and Apple has now removed apps for 25 VPN services, including Proton VPN, Red Shield VPN, and Le VPN.

Millions in Russia use a VPN

Millions of people in or near conflict zones rely on VPNs to gain access to information that is not published via official channels. The number of Russians using such services spiked since the invasion of Ukraine, and adoption has not slowed. One VPN provider reports that Web traffic from nations with high degrees of censorship (including Russia) climbed an astounding 212% in 2023.

Russia doesn’t like its people avoiding censorship, which is why it forced Apple to remove the apps from its store. Some industry observers, including security consultant and Objective-See founder Patrick Wardle, have argued that if app sideloading were supported on iPhones, users might have options to download these apps elsewhere.

Apple isn’t the only big US tech firm to have acted against VPN apps in Russia. In 2022, Surfshark revealed that Google was forced to delist over 36,000 URL’s that linked to VPN services from Russia. 

A state of digital isolation

“While users on other operating systems can request mirror download links from VPN providers, it’s much trickier for iOS users who don’t want to jailbreak their devices to download the VPN apps that have been removed from the official store,” said Simon Migliano, head of research at Top10VPN.com. “It’s very disappointing to see Apple complying with the Russian authorities’ increasingly draconian crackdown on VPNs that pushes the country ever closer to digital isolation, cut off from the global internet.”

Apple is also just one component of a larger attack on VPN use in Russia. The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) points out that the ban is “almost certainly intended to restrict the ability of Russian citizens to access independent Russian, and international media, as well as to simplify the ability of the security services to monitor Russian citizens.” 

The MoD also notes that simultaneously with the crackdown on VPN apps distributed in Russia, state authorities demanded telecom providers there end support for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony services

It’s a pattern of repression, control, and erosion of communication that was ongoing in Russia even before the invasion of Ukraine. “While there are a shrinking number of VPNs still available in the Russian version of the App Store, fewer and fewer high-quality services remain, which means they are less likely to work as they lack the sophisticated traffic obfuscation offered by bigger brands,” said Migliano.

Apple says nothing

Apple has made no public comment on the removal so far. If it did, I imagine it would argue that failure to comply with the request could also threaten the interests of existing iPhone users in Russia, as it is possible Apple would be forced to cease processing software updates and other forms of tech support to customers there. This would make their devices vulnerable to attack by state-sponsored hackers. 

It is also worth noting that any current or former Apple employees in Russia might have been exposed to reprisals by Russian authorities had the company refused to comply.

How to (still) access VPNs in Russia

There are some ways people in Russia (or elsewhere) can still use VPNs on iPhones without an app, principally by using an additional device as hotspot and a non-Russian VPN server. This requires changing your country in your AppleID settings, so you can access another nation’s App Store. You might also need a non-Russian payment method. 

“This should allow the installation of VPN apps that have been removed from the Russian app store. My advice would be to install several and cycle through them whenever they get blocked,” said Migliano.

“If you don’t already have a working VPN, it’s also possible to set up Tor on a non-iOS device that can act as a hotspot for connected mobile devices to access the App Store from international IP addresses. Currently, the best options for Russia are Astrill, PrivateVPN, and Windscribe, as they have the best connection success rate, despite the crackdown,” he added.

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Small is big: Meta bets on AI models for mobile devices

July 9, 2024 /

Facebook-parent Meta has been working on developing a new small language model (SLM) compatible with mobile devices with the aim of running on-device applications while mitigating energy consumption during model inferencing tasks, a paper published by company researchers showed.  

To set the context, large language models (LLMs) have a lot more parameters. For instance, Mistral-22B has 22 billion parameters while GPT-4 has 1.76 trillion parameters. In contrast, smaller language models have relatively fewer parameters, such as Microsoft’s Phi-3 family of SLMs, which have different versions starting from 3.8 billion parameters.  

A parameter helps an LLM decide between different answers it can provide to queries — the more the number of parameters, the more the need for a larger computing infrastructure.

However, Meta researchers believe that effective SLMs with less than a billion parameters can be developed and it would unlock the adoption of generative AI across use cases involving mobile devices, which have relatively less compute infrastructure than a server or a rack.

The researchers, according to the paper, ran experiments with models, architected differently, having 125 million and 350 million parameters, and found that smaller models prioritizing depth over width enhance model performance.

“Contrary to prevailing belief emphasizing the pivotal role of data and parameter quantity in determining model quality, our investigation underscores the significance of model architecture for sub-billion scale LLMs,” the researchers wrote.

“Leveraging deep and thin architectures, coupled with embedding sharing and grouped-query attention mechanisms, we establish a strong baseline network denoted as MobileLLM, which attains a remarkable 2.7%/4.3% accuracy boost over preceding 125M/350M state-of-the-art models,” they added.

The 125 and 350 million models, dubbed MobileLLM, according to the researchers, were as effective as large language models, such as Llama 2, in handling chat and several API calling tasks, highlighting the capability of small models for common on-device use cases. While MobileLLM is not available across any of Meta’s products for public use, the researchers have made the code and data for the experiment available along with the paper.

Copilot+ AI PCs are finally here. You don’t want one — yet

July 9, 2024 /

The AI hype keeps on coming. 

The latest news is the arrival of an entirely new line of Windows computers, Copilot + PCs, which are specifically designed with artificial intelligence (AI) in mind. Microsoft claims they’ll dramatically speed up AI, offer new features unavailable to other PCs, and deliver improved battery life. The new machines point the way to the future of Windows and of AI, if the company is to be believed.

Laptops from Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung and Microsoft were released several weeks ago, long enough to find out how they perform in real life. So how do they stack up? Are they everything Microsoft claimed they would be, or just one more overhyped new technology?

To find out, let’s start by looking at Microsoft’s promises about what the Copilot + PCs will do. In a blog post announcing them, the company crows:

“Copilot+ PCs are the fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs ever built. With powerful new silicon capable of an incredible 40+ TOPS (trillion operations per second), all–day battery life and access to the most advanced AI models, Copilot+ PCs will enable you to do things you can’t on any other PC. Easily find and remember what you have seen in your PC with Recall, generate and refine AI images in near real-time directly on the device using Cocreator, and bridge language barriers with Live Captions, translating audio from 40+ languages into English. “

The laptops are based on Qualcomm Arm-based processors, which include a neural processing unit (NPU) to handle AI-related tasks. Normally, AI processing occurs in the cloud rather than on a local PC, potentially slowing things down AI. On Copilot + PCs, Microsoft claims, much of that processing will stay local on the machine.

Recalling Recall

Microsoft went into hype overdrive when touting the new machines’ Recall feature. There’s good reason for that. Anyone who has spent too much time trying to remember and open a specific email, website or file they worked on months ago would want it — and that pretty much means all of us. It’s clearly the killer app that could sell countless Copilot+ PCs.

But Recall has an Achilles heel. As I wrote earlier, it could be the ultimate security-and-privacy nightmare. It works by constantly taking screenshots of everything you do, storing them on your PC, creating a searchable database of them, and then using AI tools on them so you can find what you want quickly.

Initially, Microsoft claimed that because all that work is done locally rather than in the cloud, it wouldn’t lead to privacy or security issues. But many security researchers and analysts disagree. 

Jeff Pollard, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, told Computerworld “I think a built-in keylogger and screen-shotter that perfectly captures everything you do on the machine within a certain time frame is a tremendous privacy nightmare for users.”

If a hacker gains access to your PC, researchers found, he or she can read the database, which isn’t even encrypted. At first, Microsoft tried to convince everyone that the privacy issues were much ado about nothing. But then it backed off. The company announced in a blog post that the feature won’t be available on Copilot+ PCs when they launch. Microsoft says it will make Recall available some day — though it won’t say when.

That means the biggest reason for buying a Copilot+ at the moment remains elusive. 

Other Copilot+ PC woes

These machines have other issues, too. One of the most head-scratching ones is that the Copilot app on Copilot+ PCs appears to be less powerful than the app on traditional PCs. On Copilot+ PCs, Copilot runs as a traditional Windows app rather than as a sidebar pane, as it now normally does on traditional PCs. So, you can resize it, move it around the screen, and do anything with it that you can do with any window.

That’s not the problem. The problem is that Microsoft also took away some Copilot features. When run as a sidebar pane, Copilot can perform some basic Windows tasks for you, such as turning dark mode on or off. The app on Copilot+ PCs can’t do that. (By the way, Copilot as a Windows app is now also available for non-Copilot+ PCs, and it has the same problem as the Windows app on Copilot+ PCs.)

Another oddity: Although the new Copilot+ PCs have a dedicated Copilot key, the PCs won’t allow you to launch Copilot with the keyboard shortcut Windows key-C as you can on other PCs. Go figure.

And there’s more, according to Computerworld and PC World contributor Chris Hoffman. On the new machines, he says, “Copilot doesn’t run offline or use the new integrated neural processing unit (NPU) hardware to do anything at all.”

Running AI offline was one of the big promises of the new line. Perhaps someday that will happen, but as Hoffman notes, that day isn’t yet upon us.

Emulation: Thumbs up or thumbs down?

Because Copilot+ PCs run Windows on an Arm chip, they have to run Windows apps via emulation. Theoretically, that could be problematic or slow apps down. Microsoft contends that the chips are so fast that the apps run fine. 

Not everyone agrees. Many reviewers generally report no serious problems, but Android Authority warns: “emulation is hit-and-miss.”

PC World’s Mark Hachman found that most apps work fine, with one big caveat: “There’s a good chance your favorite games won’t even run” on a Copilolt+ PC.

The upshot

So, should you buy one of these machines? I won’t hem and haw. The answer is no. Their two most important AI-related features — Recall and local AI processing — aren’t yet available. And running games on one, is that’s a priority, is iffy at best.

There are plenty of very good thin, powerful Window laptops out there. If you need a new PC, buy one of those, not a Copilot+ PC. Even if you’re looking for true AI power, you’d do better to wait.