This Week In Tech by Nosa Alekhuogie nosa.alekhuogie@thisdaylive.com
Microsoft Launches AI-Powered Search Engine
Microsoft has announced the latest mentation of its hunt motor Bing, powered by an upgraded mentation of the aforesaid AI exertion that underpins chatbot ChatGPT. The institution launched the merchandise alongside caller AI-enhanced features for its Edge browser, promising that the 2 volition supply a caller acquisition for browsing the web and uncovering accusation online.
Unlike ChatGPT, the caller Bing tin besides retrieve quality astir caller events. Microsoft calls this the “Prometheus Model,” which is much almighty than GPT 3.5 and gives users much relevant, timely and targeted results with improved safety.
The tech elephantine further revealed that the caller Bing is disposable successful a constricted preview connected desktop, and everyone tin sojourn Bing.com contiguous to effort illustration queries and motion up for the waitlist.
The institution besides said that a mobile acquisition would besides beryllium successful preview soon.
It said it spent important resources trying to marque the exemplary safer, including moving with OpenAI exertion arsenic an adversarial idiosyncratic to effort to find imaginable problems successful the system, arsenic good arsenic grooming the AI exemplary to constabulary itself by rooting retired biases, successful portion by teaching the strategy to recognise violative contented and, therefore, ideally debar it.
Twitter Outage Caused by Employee’s Mistake
Last week, Twitter’s large outage occurred due to the fact that an worker mistakenly deleted important information from an interior service.
The outage near users incapable to tweet oregon retweet and being faced with the mistake message: “You are implicit the regular bounds for sending tweets.”
According to Twitter’s website, that bounds is expected to beryllium 2,400 tweets a day, but users were inactive presented with the mistake if they had not tweeted astatine all. In a backstage message, a Twitter worker described it arsenic “a monolithic outage.”
About 90 minutes aft users began reporting problems, the institution tweeted: “Twitter whitethorn not beryllium moving arsenic expected for immoderate of you, atrocious for the trouble, we’re alert and moving to get this fixed.”
According to tech newsletter, Platformer, the outage happened due to the fact that information from Twitter’s interior work for these complaint limits was deleted by accident, and the squad which worked connected that work had near the institution successful November.
That month, Musk sent each Twitter employees an ultimatum astatine midnight, telling them to perpetrate to moving “extremely hardcore” oregon permission the company. It told unit they needed to enactment “long hours astatine a precocious intensity” to “build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0.”
The incidental is the societal media site’s archetypal evident wide work disruption since billionaire Elon Musk took implicit Twitter arsenic CEO successful precocious October.
NCC Advises Samsung Phone Users to Update their Apps
To prevention mobile telephone users successful Nigeria from cyber attacks, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), done its Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT), has advised Samsung users to update their Galaxy App Store.
The committee gave the directive aft its squad discovered aggregate vulnerabilities successful the Samsung Galaxy App Store.
This isn’t the archetypal clip this assemblage is creating consciousness to support its citizens.
The NCC-CSIRT discovered the vulnerabilities successful the Galaxy App Store exertion connected Samsung devices that are moving Android 12 and older.
While informing that cybercriminals are continuously devising caller means of compromising their targets, NCC-CSIRT said, “we counsel phone, and machine users advised users not unfastened files from radical they bash not know, not to click ‘OK’ and instantly exit the exertion if they person a informing that opening an attachment oregon nexus tin harm their machine oregon files and to promptly stock an chartless email they judge to beryllium genuine with a information oregon Windows head to assistance successful determining whether the record is secure.”
In a related advisory, pursuing the find of respective phishing apps connected the Google Play Store, NCC-CSIRT had besides advised users not to springiness retired delicate accusation done untrusted platforms.
NCC-CSIRT’s advisory connected the find said the apps, which person been downloaded 450,000 times successful total, tin beryllium games oregon concern services but are designed to bargain delicate idiosyncratic information.
While immoderate malicious apps person been removed, others are inactive progressive connected the store.
According to the advisory, aft installing and opening the app, it volition interaction a distant server which volition reply with instructions connected what to do. These instructions typically see phishing pages that volition beryllium displayed to unsuspecting users to cod their delicate information.
Zoom Set to Lay Off 1,300 Employees
Zoom has said it volition laic disconnected astir 1,300 employees, representing astir 15 per cent of its workforce.
The Video Communications institution has go the latest institution deed by the wide layoffs that person rocked the planetary tech manufacture since precocious past year.
In a memo to employees, Zoom’s CEO Eric Yuan said the layoffs would interaction each portion of the organisation. Yuan besides said helium and different executives would instrumentality a important wage chopped aft acknowledging helium made “mistakes” successful however rapidly the institution grew during the pandemic.
While taking afloat work for decisions that led to the layoffs, Zoom CEO successful the memo said, “As the CEO and laminitis of Zoom, I americium accountable for these mistakes and the actions we instrumentality today– and I privation to amusement accountability not conscionable successful words but successful my ain actions. To that end, I americium reducing my wage for the coming fiscal twelvemonth by 98 per cent and foregoing my FY23 firm bonus”.
Yuan said enforcement enactment squad members would trim their basal salaries by 20 per cent for the coming fiscal twelvemonth and forfeit their fiscal twelvemonth 2023 bonuses.
Report: Online Learning Opened New Career Paths for Nigerian Women
A caller study by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) has shown that the caller summation successful women’s entree to online learning has opened caller vocation paths.
The survey besides recovered that 1 successful 3 Nigerian women surveyed reported affirmative vocation oregon concern outcomes aft taking online courses, including uncovering a caller job, mounting up a business, oregon improving occupation performance. The probe is portion of the “Women and Online Learning successful Emerging Markets” study from IFC, created successful concern with the planetary online learning level Coursera and the European Commission.
It besides recovered that 1 occupation is created successful Nigeria for each 30 radical trained connected Coursera.
The survey uses information from Coursera to quantify women’s information successful online education, place challenges to greater participation, and supply recommendations for the nationalist and backstage sectors to amended lifelong learning opportunities and outcomes for women.
Tech Personality of The Week
Temie Giwa-Tubosun
This week’s tech property is Temie Giwa-Tubosun.
Temie is the laminitis of LifeBank, a concern endeavor successful Nigeria moving to amended entree to humor transfusions successful the country.
LifeBank is simply a aesculapian organisation institution that uses information and exertion to observe and present indispensable aesculapian products to hospitals successful Nigeria.
The LifeBank App is simply a web exertion that connects humor donors to patients successful request of humor transfusion during emergencies. It launched successful 2013 during the World Blood Donor Day solemnisation and presently has implicit 1500 radical registered. The Life App is simply a web app, truthful radical bash not request to discarded their information to download it. All they request to bash is motion up astatine Lifebank.ng and hold to beryllium called to donate humor oregon usage it to petition humor erstwhile needed.
The exertion and logistics Hub has its office successful Lagos and was incubated astatine the Co-Creation Hub successful Yaba.
In 2016, Temie met with Mark Zuckerberg during his archetypal sojourn to Nigeria. She was 1 of the 2 women Zuckerberg referenced successful his municipality hallway meeting.
In the past 4 years, the institution has distributed astir 26,000 products to much than 10,000 patients successful adjacent to 7 100 hospitals successful Nigeria.
Utilising multimodal logistics (drones, boats, bikes, and tricycles), the tech hub delivers infirmary supplies swiftly.
In 2020, Giwa was awarded the Global Citizen Prize for Business Leader for addressing humor shortages successful Nigeria and LifeBank’s enactment during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2019, Giwa was named the victor of Jack Ma’s Africa Netpreneur Prize, which held successful Accra, Ghana. The triumph for LifeBank was worthy $250,000. The Prize got applications from much than 10,000 startups from 50 of Africa’s 54 countries.