Wednesday Newsbytes: Elderly Victim Warns About Tech Support Scams; Windows April Patch Tuesday Fixes 149 Flaws; Copilot May Be the New Clippy; Windows 11 and Edge See Decreased User Share… and more
Every day we scan the tech world for interesting news in the world of technology and sometimes from outside the world of technology. Every Wednesday, we feature news articles that grabbed our attention over the past week. We hope you find this week’s ‘Wednesday Newsbytes’ informative and interesting!
‘They’re ruthless!’: Elderly Cleveland woman warns you to watch out for tech support scams
Any kind of scam that takes people’s money is bad enough, but when criminals target our most vulnerable, that’s a whole new level of terrible.
News 5 Investigators sat down with the victim of a tech support scam who wanted to come forward to warn you to watch out.
81-year-old Joyce Meeks sat in her modest apartment on Cleveland’s west side amongst the rooster collection, the refrigerator signs, and the hum of an oxygen machine.
SHE CLICKED ON A FAKE STORY
Last year, as she was on her computer scrolling through the headlines of stories, she found an interesting one. “A dog had been adopted out for 11 times,” described Meeks.
After clicking on the story, she said her computer screen went blurry…
Read more at News 5 Cleveland.
Microsoft Fixes 149 Flaws in Huge April Patch Release, Zero-Days Included
Microsoft has released security updates for the month of April 2024 to remediate a record 149 flaws, two of which have come under active exploitation in the wild.
Of the 149 flaws, three are rated Critical, 142 are rated Important, three are rated Moderate, and one is rated Low in severity. The update is aside from 21 vulnerabilities that the company addressed in its Chromium-based Edge browser following the release of the March 2024 Patch Tuesday fixes…
While Microsoft’s own advisory provides no information about CVE-2024-26234, cybersecurity firm Sophos said it discovered in December 2023 a malicious executable (“Catalog.exe” or “Catalog Authentication Client Service”) that’s signed by a valid Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility Publisher (WHCP) certificate…
Copilot is getting animated
Microsoft has made a relatively minor but pretty useful tweak for Copilot in testing, as part of the ongoing effort to bring the AI assistant into play more often with Windows 11.
This is part of the new Windows 11 preview build 22635 deployed in the Beta channel, and the change to Copilot is rolling out gradually, so not all testers in that channel will have it just yet.
The idea is a ‘new experience’ for Copilot that aims to boost your productivity in Windows 11. How exactly? Well, when you copy a text or image file, the AI’s icon in the taskbar has an animation that’s triggered to let you know the assistant can help with that file.
If you hover the mouse over the Copilot icon, you’ll then get some new options – for example with an image file, you’ll be presented with choices including creating an image like the current one, or getting Copilot to analyze…
Despite Microsoft’s push, Windows 11 and Edge see decreases in user share
According to Statcounter and the Steam survey
It was February this year when Windows 11 reached its highest-ever global user share among Windows versions, reaching 28.16%. A month earlier, Windows 10 had fallen to 66.47%, its lowest since December 2019.
But Statcounter’s updated report won’t make for welcome reading for Microsoft. Windows 11 saw its global share drop 1.46% in March to 26.72%. At the same time, Windows 10’s share grew almost 2% to 69.07%.
In February, Microsoft started nagging Windows 10 users to upgrade to Windows 11 using several full-screen popups. The upgrade button gave users the choice of getting Windows 11 or scheduling an install later. The option for staying on Windows 10 was easily missable at the bottom of the screen.
We were also reminded in March that Windows 10 Enterprise and Education editions would soon enter their end of life status, with organizations pushed to upgrade to the latest Windows 10 release or Windows 11.
It appears that Microsoft’s efforts are yet to pay off. In addition to Statcounter’s results, Windows 11 has been falling in popularity among Steam survey participants. For the second month in a row, its user share dropped while Windows 10 increased…
Best Buy’s Geek Squad agents say they were hit by mass layoffs this week
Agents who lost their jobs this week posted on the Geek Squad subreddit, and confirmed the news to 404 Media
Geek Squad agents have been flooding Reddit with images of their badges and posts about “going sleeper” after the company reportedly conducted mass layoffs this week. A former employee who spoke to 404 Media said they were sent an email notifying them to work from home on Wednesday and were then called individually to be told the news about their jobs. Some, per 404 Media’s sources and numerous Reddit posts, were longtime Geek Squad agents who had been with the company for more than 10 or even 20 years. Best Buy has not yet responded to Engadget’s request for comment.
There has been an outpouring of support for the laid off workers on the unofficial Geek Squad subreddit, where many have lamented the loss of jobs they’d dedicated much of their lives to and noted that things in the lead up had been heading in a concerning direction. Some commented that their hours had dwindled in recent months, with one former employee telling 404 Media it’s been “a struggle to get by….”
Thanks for reading this week’s Wednesday Newbytes. We hope these articles were informative, interesting, fun, and helpful. Darcy & TC
