Emerging Technology Industry News Headlines Update on July 29, 2021

Malicious IIS extensions quietly open persistent backdoors into servers

Attackers are increasingly leveraging Internet Information Services (IIS) extensions as covert backdoors into servers, which hide deep in target environments and provide a durable persistence mechanism for attackers. While prior research has been published on specific incidents and variants, little is generally known about how attackers leverage the IIS platform as a backdoor. Read more: Malicious IIS extensions quietly open persistent backdoors into servers

Microsoft Adds Improvements to Certificate-Based Authentication Preview

Microsoft this week announced improvements to its Azure Active Directory Certificate-Based Authentication (CBA) preview, which promises to provide an alternative to federated-based authentication methods. Azure AD CBA will allow organizations to stop using the Microsoft’s Active Directory Federation Service (ADFS) on premises. Read more: Microsoft Adds Improvements to Certificate-Based Authentication Preview

Amazon Health?

Amazon continues moving into healthcare, this time buying One Medical for $3.9 billion. One Medical is a membership-based market solution to a failed US public healthcare system. For those that can afford it, you pay a fee and get the kind of primary healthcare and treatment that most people wish they had already. They also offer telehealth. In my mind this is another development on the battlefield of public (government) vs. private (corporate) services. People wonder what the play is for Amazon, and I think it’s simple: slowly fill in all the services that people need to get from somewhere, which they often get from governments, and do it better and at scale. Healthcare and Education are obvious opportunities. More on that below. Read more: Amazon’s $3.9 billion reach into health care is hard to stop

Minecraft Rejects NFTs

Minecraft has rejected NFTs on its platform. It’s widely known now that many gamers hate everything about NFTs, and now one of the giants has solidified this in policy. They’re specifically trying to avoid people thinking less about the game and more about monetization, and I think it’s a smart move. At least for now, with NFTs in their current form. Read more: MINECRAFT AND NFTS

Netflix Loses Nearly 1 Million Subscribers

Netflix lost nearly a million subscribers last quarter, and they’re looking at multiple ways to make up revenue. One is an ad-based tier, and the other is clamping down on people sharing accounts. In conjunction with the lockdown, they now have a new paid option to share your account with someone legitimately. Read more: Netflix loses 970,000 subscribers, says ads and new fees are key to recovery

Subscription Cars

BMW, GM, and other car companies are trying to get in on the subscription model. BMW is selling heated seat subscriptions in multiple countries, and GM made over $2 billion in subscriptions last year. They expect that to be $25 billion by 2030. I think Tesla might have moved us forward with this model given how much their cars feel like a software product. Read more: The future of cars is a subscription nightmare

Facebook Just Re-invented Facebook

They’re adding a new featured tab where you can follow your friends’ activity in chronological order. Amazing. They went so far astray they had to invent a new feature to be the thing everyone originally liked.

Robot Checkmats a Kid’s Finger

A Chess robot broke a 7-year-old boy’s finger during a tournament in Moscow. No, it wasn’t Terminator stuff. It evidently thought the boy’s finger was a piece after the kid made a move. The Chess Federation President, Sergey Lazarev, said, “This is of course bad.” Thanks Sergey. Read more: Chess robot breaks seven-year-old boy’s finger during Moscow Open

GenZ Prefers TikTok to Google

Nearly 40% of Gen Z is using TikTok and Instagram instead of Google for search.

Microsoft Teams is getting several new hybrid work features

Microsoft has announced several new features for Teams as well as inter-app collaboration features which it believes will be useful for hybrid work. Some of the new features include an Excel Live, Video Clip, Teams Connect, and a LinkedIn integration. Read more: Microsoft Teams is getting all these new hybrid work features

Microsoft Launches its Cloud for Sovereignty

At its Inspire conference, Microsoft this week announced the launch of the Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty, a new solution for public sector customers — especially in Europe — who need to be able to guarantee that their users’ data is stored and processed in a given region. Read more: Microsoft launches its Cloud for Sovereignty

Announcing Microsoft Viva Engage

This week at Microsoft Inspire, Microsoft introduced Microsoft Viva Engage, the newest app in Microsoft Viva, designed to help people and teams to be their best, have a voice, and feel included in the workplace. Read more: Announcing Microsoft Viva Engage

Elon Musk Officially Bails on Twitter

Elon Musk has officially submitted to stop the Twitter deal, and Twitter is suing him over it. Much has been said about this entire back and forth with the deal, but I think the final lesson will be one for Musk on controlling his impulses. He enjoys being spontaneous, and that’s generally a good trait, but certain things like the SEC, the jobs of tens of thousands of people, and tens of billions of dollars are not to be joked about. This one is going to sting for sure, most likely in the form of 1) people taking him less seriously, and 2) a considerable settlement. Read more: Elon Musk officially tries to bail on buying Twitter

US Crosses 5% Tipping Point of EV Adoption

Bloomberg has done analysis saying 5% is the tipping point for EV adoption in multiple countries, and the US has just crossed that threshold. Read more: US Crosses the Electric-Car Tipping Point for Mass Adoption

German Researchers Quantum Entangle Across 20 Miles

Researchers were able to entangle two atoms across a new record of 20 miles of fiber optics, giving us hope that the Ansible from Ender’s Game will one day be possible. Read more: Record-setting quantum entanglement connects two atoms across 20 miles

Tesla Opening Its Chargers

Tesla is opening its Superchargers to non-Tesla vehicles in the US later this year. The change will require some additional equipment to allow non-Tesla vehicles to charge. Read more: Tesla will open up Superchargers to non-Tesla electric vehicles in the US later this year

Microsoft Announces OAuth 2.0 Client Credentials Flow Support for POP and IMAP Protocols in Exchange Online

Applications that need to access Exchange Online mailboxes without user interaction and using the identity of the application as opposed to user identity are now supported. This is enabled by using service principals in Exchange and mailbox permissions. While no user interaction is needed, Exchange Online admins will need to provide specific mailbox access (using Exchange Online PowerShell) for applications’ service principals to access the mailboxes. Read more: Announcing OAuth 2.0 Client Credentials Flow support for POP and IMAP protocols in Exchange Online

What’s New in Microsoft Teams | June 2022

Microsoft Teams continues to move into the world of hybrid. Meetings, chats, and collaborative experiences need to be as inclusive and connected as possible. This month, the focus is on the meeting “co-organizer role” and the positive impact this role brings to your meetings. Also, the new, enhanced language transcription and meeting invites will allow more people to feel more comfortable participating in discussions. Read more: What’s New in Microsoft Teams | June 2022

An AI Predicts Salaries Based on Job Postings

There’s a giant dataset of job postings (and salary data) that’s been used to train an AI to predict salaries. Sarah Banah, a postdoc at Stanford’s Institute for Human-centered Artificial Intelligence Digital Economy Lab, used the dataset to do all sorts of wizardry, including finding how a salary would change if you added something like a certificate. Read more: Words matter: AI can predict salaries based on the text of online job postings

FedEx Moving to the Cloud

FedEx is closing all its data centers and moving off of mainframes by 2024. They expect the move will save them $400 million a year. Read more: FedEx to close data centers, retire all mainframes by 2024, saving $400m

Niantic is Making a Real-world NBA Game

Niantic of Pokemon Go fame is making a real-world NBA game called All-World. They describe it as, “NBA lifestyle meets the real-world metaverse.” So the world will be like a basketball theme park, where you can get swag, gear, shoes, etc., all of which presumably improve your ability to play. You can play against others in a particular location, and there are leaderboards. Both NBA culture and gaming cultures are huge, and if they combine them successfully this might be a banger. Read more: Niantic is making a real-world NBA game

SpaceX on Boats Planes and Trucks

The FCC has authorized SpaceX to provide internet for moving vehicles such as boats, planes, and trucks. Expect to see major airlines switching over in the coming months. Read more: FCC authorizes SpaceX to provide mobile Starlink internet service to boats, planes and trucks