๐ Overhauls at Microsoft, Snowflake's New LLM, and Cisco's Security Breach
Todayโs pick
Microsoft needs to win back trust. The world's largest tech company has a security problem. A series of high-profile security incidents have rocked Microsoft over the past few years, and a scathing report from the Cyber Safety Review Board recently concluded that โMicrosoft'sย security culture was inadequate and requires an overhaul.โ Inside Microsoft, there is concern that the attacks could seriously undermine trust in the company. By Tom Warren via The Verge
๐: Microsoft needs to win back trust. After years of security issues, Microsoft now faces a need to overhaul its software practices. Inside Microsoft, there is concern that the attacks could seriously undermine trust in the company. - Tom Warren (@tomwarren)
Snowflake launches Arctic, an open โmixture-of-expertsโ LLM to take on DBRX, Llama 3. Today, Snowflake announced the launch of Arctic, a large language model (LLM) optimized for complex enterprise workloads such as SQL generation, code generation and instruction following. Touted as the โmost open enterprise-grade LLMโ in the market, Arctic taps a unique mixture of expert (MoE) architecture to top benchmarks for enterprise tasks while being efficient at the same time. By Shubham Sharma via VentureBeat
๐: A lot of the insider knowledge on how to build an LLM has gone underground in the last 24 months. We are going to build #SnowflakeArctic in the open Model arch ablations, training and inference system performance, dataset and data composition ablations, post-training fun, big run stability, decontamination tricks, metric subtleties. - Vivek Raghunathan (@vivek7ue)
The best way to reach new readers is through word of mouth. If you click THIS LINK in your inbox, itโll create an easy-to-send pre-written email you can just fire off to some friends.
Cyberspies Hacked Cisco Firewalls to Access Government Networks. Network security appliances like firewalls are meant to keep hackers out. Instead, digital intruders are increasingly targeting them as the weak link that lets them pillage the very systems those devices are meant to protect. In the case of one hacking campaign over recent months, Cisco is now revealing that its firewalls served as beachheads for sophisticated hackers penetrating multiple government networks around the world. By Andy Greenberg via WIRED
๐: Cisco warns that a group of state-sponsored hackers has exploited two zero days in its ASA security appliances to spy on government networks over the last several months. Sources close to the investigation tell us they suspect China. - Andy Greenberg (@agreenberg at the other places) (@a_greenberg)
Google Meet will let you transfer calls between web and phone with 'Switch here. Google Meet's new โSwitch hereโ capability will let you seamlessly transfer calls between devices โwithout hanging up and rejoining.โ In today's world, getting our work done can happen from many locations, across many devices. Letโs say you start a call on your phone because youโre not at your desk yet. Once you get to a computer, opening the Meet page/preview for that call will soon offer a โSwitch hereโ option. By Abner Li via 9to5Google
Chatbot answers are all made up. This new tool helps you figure out which ones to trust.. Chatbots are quickly becoming the dominant way people look up information on a computer. Search engines are being redesigned around the technology. Office software used by billions of people every day to create everything from school assignments to marketing copy to financial reports now comes with chatbots built in. And yet a study put out in November by Vectara, a startup founded by former Google employees, found that chatbots invent information at least 3% of the time. It might not sound like much, but itโs a potential for error most businesses wonโt stomach. By Will Douglas Heaven via MIT Technology Review
AI news
Zuckerberg says it will take Meta years to make money from generative AIย
โIโm unable toโ: How generative AI chatbots respond when asked for the latest news
AI Memory Boom Propels SK Hynix's Fastest Sales Growth Since 2010
An AI startup made a hyperrealistic deepfake of me thatโs so good itโs scary
Silicon Valley Artificial Intelligence Is Running On Eastern Coal
Thanks for reading to the bottom and soaking in our Newslit Daily fueled with highlights for your morning.
I hope you found it interesting and, needless to say, if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply.
Take care and see you tomorrow!
P.S. Want to advertise with us? Weโd love to hear from you.