Wednesday Newsbytes: Windows 11’s Bold New Look; AI Photo Wins Contest; Facebook Might Owe You Money; The Quietest Place on Earth;  America’s Fastest ISPs… and more!

By | April 19, 2023
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Wednesday Newsbytes: Windows 11’s Bold New Look; AI Photo Wins Contest; Facebook Might Owe You Money; The Quietest Place on Earth;  America’s Fastest ISPs… 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!


Microsoft gives Windows 11 a bold new look – but you might not like it

Windows’ core feature is being reshaped

There has been strong speculation that Microsoft has been preparing a pretty substantial update for Windows 11 following its update in February 2023, and more evidence has emerged in a recent Windows Insider webcast (a virtual conference where members of the developer community can voice concerns).

In particular, it’s expected that File Explorer is getting an overhaul by moving it to WinAppSDK, a set of tools and libraries used to build modern Windows applications.

This will allow for greater integration into the WinUI 3 framework, increased functionality through access to new APIs, and other improvements. This is a significant shift on the underlying technical level, but it will preserve existing app frameworks, such as .NET and those of Win32 UIs, while hopefully providing an enhanced File Explorer experience to users.

File Explorer is a major part of Windows 11, and has been a mainstay of Windows operating systems since Windows 95, so any major design overhaul is going to have big repercussions for the overall look of Windows…

Read more at TechRadar.


An AI-generated image won a prestigious photo contest award, but the artist won’t accept the prize

The AI image shows some telltale AI signs, yet it still won the award.

The Sony World Photography Awards represent one of the year’s biggest photography contests, with thousands of entries and very desirable prizes. This year, a German artist named Boris Eldagsen won the “Creative” category in the Open Competition with a portrait of two women. It’s an appealing image that evokes the style of an old-school alternative process. The problem: It’s not a real photograph. It was created using AI.

The image has since disappeared from the contest’s website, and the artist has released a statement on his own site about the entire ordeal. As you might expect, the contest organizers are very unhappy with this development. The artist allegedly never intended to take any of the prizes (which he hasn’t) but wanted to start a discussion about AI’s relationship with photography going forward.

How did the image win?

The image in question looks like a warm-tone tintype. It has imperfections around the edges that are typical of old-school chemical processes, which likely help obfuscate the fact that it was created digitally.

Upon closer inspection, you’ll find some telltale signs that the image isn’t a true photograph. The depth of field seems inconsistent when comparing the faces to the subjects’ bodies. Even though view cameras typically used for tintypes and other alternative processes allow for focal plane manipulation, the effect here goes beyond simple tilt and swing…

Read more at Popular Photography.


Facebook Owes Money To So Many US Users & Here’s How To Claim A Payout Before The Deadline

Did you know a lot of Facebook users in the United States that have been using the social media website for the past 15 years probably qualify for a cash payout following a multi-million dollar class action settlement?

Yep, it’s true. Its parent company, Meta Platforms Inc., settled numerous lawsuit claims that Facebook user data was shared with third parties without user permission or knowledge, and now there’s a cash payout you can apply for.

The massive settlement Facebook has to pay is $725 million, and you are owed a portion of that, but if you don’t know where to start, we’ve got all the information you need to know about to receive free money:

Is there a class-action lawsuit with Facebook?

The United States-based lawsuit against Facebook claimed Meta Platforms Inc. made user data available to third parties without the people’s knowledge and did not monitor the access to your data, according to its settlement website.

A third party is defined as “including but not limited to third-party app developers, ‘whitelisted’ parties, business partners, advertisers, and data brokers.”

So, if you used Facebook between May 24, 2007, and December 22, 2022, your data might have been “shared” with these third parties. However, Meta “expressly” denies any wrongdoing.

How much is the Facebook class action payout?

The company was ordered to pay a hefty $275 million, and when you file a claim, you’ll be receiving a portion of the millions…

Read more at Narcity.


Making One Key Mistake With ChatGPT Will Put You in Danger

Scammers are exploiting the ChatGPT craze.

ChatGPT may be the wave of the future, but the ecosystem around it has some issues in the present that should gives users a bit of a pause.

Cybersecurity YouTuber John Hammond is warning users that like to experiment with the new artificial intelligence chat bot.

The first threat comes when just downloading the program. Hammond points out that just typing ChatGPT into Google Play in order to download the app brings back dozens of results that “at first glance… just look like extra things that would otherwise just be interacting with ChatGPT that you could do if you were just interacting with ChatGPT.”

A fake ChatGPT extension for Google Chrome contained malware that used a backdoor to access Facebook account information — data which goes for big bucks on the the black market of the internet.

The malware stole numerous Facebook accounts, according to Hammond, and created bots that made advertisements promoting the extensions. Those ads drove more people to the extension, creating more bots.

Hammond points out that you should heavily scrutinize any browser extension you install on your device…

Read more at The Street.


A New Internet Provider Speeds to the Top as Fastest in the US

Spectrum and Xfinity, both did well among all fixed broadband providers in Ookla’s first quarter report for 2023.

Every three months, internet speed-test company Ookla publishes data collected from millions of people using its Speedtest.net tool to determine which internet provider offers the fastest median download speeds. Which is America’s fastest fixed internet service provider? Spectrum and Xfinity have traded places back and forth since last summer. Now the verdict for the first three months of 2023 is in, and Spectrum is back on top.

Spectrum, Charter Communications’ internet service provider, took the pole position with a median download speed of just under 235 megabits per second, beating out the previous quarter’s winner, Comcast’s Xfinity, which finished the first quarter of 2023 with a median download speed of just shy of 233Mbps.

To qualify as one of the country’s top internet providers in this survey, an ISP must appear in 3% or more of the total test data taken during the three months. For example, EPB, a provider in Chattanooga, Tennessee, boasts the country’s fastest residential internet plan at 25 gigabits per second (or 25,000Mbps). But since it’s only available in that portion of the country, it won’t appear on the national list…

Read more at CNet.


iSIM vs eSIM vs SIM: The constantly shrinking ways carriers ID your phone

The death of physical SIM cards is quickly approaching. These are the alternatives.

Every month, you pay a bill for cell phone service. Somehow, that access needs to make it to your device. The SIM card, or “subscriber identity module,” connects your phone with your phone bill.

While you might expect authentication to happen over a network with a simple username and password, cell phones predate the Internet, so SIM cards can seem a little old-fashioned. Still, the industry is trying to modernize itself while maintaining backward compatibility with older devices, and that has led to the rise of many different SIM card formats. The newest is iSIM, the latest advancement in a never-ending quest to save space in your smartphone.

Ye olde physical SIM card

Physical SIM cards have been around forever. They’re the hunks of plastic you get from your phone carrier and slide into your cell phone. A small gold chip printed on the card—much like those on credit cards—makes electrical contact with the slot in your phone. Even these physical cards have their own standards and have shrunk over time; there’s Mini SIM, Micro SIM, and Nano SIM, which all use the same chip with differing amounts of plastic around it.

Going back even further, there was a credit card-sized “Standard SIM” without any of the diminutive prefixes. If you want to understand why SIM cards work the way they do, it’s worth looking at how these smart cards previously operated…

Read more at Ars Technica.


Inside quietest place on earth where you can hear your own organs

The world’s quietest room might sound like a pretty relaxing place, but it’s actually so silent that most people can’t stand to be in it for more than a few minutes.

The anechoic test chamber at Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis, Minnesota is officially the quietest place on Earth and has got itself the Guinness World Record to prove it.

The specially created chamber absorbs around 99.9 percent of sound and is mainly used for conducting experiments – although it has become a bit of an unlikely tourist spot with people keen to check it out for themselves. Rather them than me.

To give you some context, your average room measures around 30 decibels at night, whereas the lab drops to -24.9 decibels, according to the Guinness World Records.

Designed by Stephen Orfield, the area comprises a large masonry and concrete chamber, with a smaller steel chamber supported on vibration absorbing springs inside that.

Inside this second space, the interior walls are lined with a layer of heavy insulation covered with glass-fibre wedges…

Read more at LADBible.


Thanks for reading this week’s Wednesday Newbytes. We hope you found these articles informative, interesting, fun, and helpful. Darcy & TC

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5 thoughts on “Wednesday Newsbytes: Windows 11’s Bold New Look; AI Photo Wins Contest; Facebook Might Owe You Money; The Quietest Place on Earth;  America’s Fastest ISPs… and more!

  1. Mary McCracken

    HI, Is the Facebook payout only for Americans? i live in canada. thanks.

    Reply
    1. infoave Post author

      I think so. This is what it says in the article.

      Can I apply for the Facebook settlement?

      Facebook has opened a settlement claims website where Americans can apply for a cash payout.

      You have until August 25, 2023, to file a claim by using an online form where you’ll fill out details like your basic information, your account usernames, as well as the method you’d like your payment — they offer PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, a pre-paid MasterCard, or a physical check.

      You currently have about five months to submit this claim and get it approved by the Settlement Administrator.

      Reply
  2. Sam

    I love your Wednesday Ndewbytes. Especially how you add where to read the full article. There are so many articles out there, I never know which one to believe. But you mention them, those are the ones I read and trust.
    Thank you for adding them to your newsbytes.

    Reply
  3. Judie L Pepin

    Any idea exactly where you go to find the date you joined facebook ? Thank you !!

    Reply
    1. infoave Post author

      > Log in to your Facebook account.
      > Go to your profile by clicking on your name in the top left corner of the screen.
      > Click on the “About” section below your profile picture.
      > Scroll down until you find the “Contact and Basic Info” section.
      > Look for the “Joined Facebook” entry. This will show the date you joined Facebook.
      > If you joined Facebook a long time ago, you may need to scroll back through your timeline to find your earliest posts or activities to get a more precise date.

      Reply

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