Thanks to Herr Musk being a total poison pill, they can't even give those pieces of scrap away.  They can't even ship them to the UK/EU because they're completely illegal over here.  

Intel vs AMD? Microsoft seemingly has a clear recommendation for Windows 11 Pro PC upgrade by Sayan Sen Microsoft and its partners are now quite actively and regularly promoting the upgrade to Windows 11. Asus, for example, recently published blog posts about the "mandatory Windows 11 upgrade" that is coming as the Windows 11 end of support date nears. Microsoft itself, from time to time, urges users to upgrade to its newest OS. Back in February 2024, Microsoft released an advert highlighting the best things about Windows 11 over Windows 10. Later, in June in the same year, the tech giant busted "myths and misconceptions" surrounding a Windows 11 upgrade. And towards the end of 2024, in December, Microsoft put up a blog post outlining the gaming features a user enjoys on 11 if they were to upgrade from Windows 10. While technically there is nothing wrong with a company promoting its own product, sometimes these campaigns make little sense and they fall flat. For example, in January earlier this year, Microsoft shared a blog post headlined "Free Upgrade to Windows 11 (For a Limited Time Only)" which did not make sense as it offered little information about it being a "free upgrade," and it was rightfully, later taken down. The company is back again with a new commercial about Windows 11. This time it is aimed mainly at IT professionals and enterprises as the advert talks about upgrading to Windows 11 Pro from Windows 10. This landed a few days after Microsoft released a new backup tool for organizations for such a purpose. What is interesting is that the company is promoting Intel's vPro processors and there is no mention of AMD's Ryzen PRO parts. The commercial is posted on the Windows official YouTube channel and has been titled "Right side of risk | Windows 11 Pro and Intel". The video description says, "Windows 10 support ends October 14. Stay on the right side of risk—upgrade now to the power of Windows 11 Pro PCs with Intel vPro®." AMD does have a support article about the subject headlined "Support Your Customers’ Move to Windows 11, With AMD Ryzen™ PRO Processors" and you can find it here. This is not the first time Microsoft has promoted Intel CPUs over AMD ones. Back in 2021, the company also put up a full page explaining how users should "look for the Intel EVO badge" on a new device before making a purchase decision because such PCs are "verified wonderful" which was a bit of an odd language. Like the limited upgrade time article, the page above was taken down after we reported on it (can be viewed via the archive) and replaced with something else. The new commercial was published about a couple of days ago, and it is possible that Microsoft may have a dedicated AMD advert too in the pipeline scheduled for a later release, and that would only be fair if both companies get a similar treatment.

Don’t blame web developers for the downfall of Firefox. 😂

Microsoft, Indian police bust AI-powered tech support scam ring targeting elderly in Japan by Paul Hill Pop-up scams pretending to be Microsoft Working with India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Microsoft recently assisted in busting a scam network that was targeting the elderly in Japan. The CBI raided 19 locations on May 28, leading to the arrest of six key operatives and the taking down of two call centers. The scammers were impersonating Microsoft specifically and using tech support scams against Japanese seniors. The raid led to the seizure of both digital and physical infrastructure, including computers, storage devices, and phones. The scammers were targeting older adults, who are more vulnerable to fraud. To put this activity to an end, Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU), the Japan Cybercrime Control Center (JC3), Japan’s National Police Agency (NPA), and India’s CBI conducted significant cross-border collaboration to trace the criminals. Thanks to the internet, cross-border crimes like these have been around for a while and multinational tech firms like Microsoft are making significant efforts to help law enforcement agencies crack down on cybercrime. Artificial intelligence is also starting to be used to make more sophisticated scams. The evolving threat This case reveals an evolution in how Microsoft’s DCU addresses cybercrime involving tech support fraud. Thanks to AI, scammers have been able to scale their operations. In response, Microsoft has moved away from focusing on individual call centers to target the heads of criminal operations and disrupting their technical infrastructure. Notably, Microsoft’s collaboration with JC3 is the first time the DCU has partnered with a Japan-based organization to assist victims. Microsoft is continually getting tips from JC3 about malicious pop-ups urging recipients to call fake technical support lines that claim to be Microsoft. This data has allowed Microsoft to shut down 66,000 malicious domains and URLs globally since May 2024. Microsoft noted that artificial intelligence is now being used by criminals to scale their operations. Some ways in which these entities leverage AI are for victim identification, writing convincing scam emails and building fake web pages, as well as for convincing translations. Anyone can use AI for malicious purposes so it could increase the number of people or groups carrying out attacks. It also makes attacks much more sophisticated and harder to detect and necessitates better consumer protections and more sophisticated security tools such as passkeys to reduce hacks. Protecting vulnerable populations and what readers can do Tech support fraud attacks have been found by the FBI to disproportionately affect older people, resulting in $590 million in losses in 2023 for just older Americans alone. In this operation that targeted Japanese victims, around 90% of the 200 affected people were over 50. If you’ve ever received suspicious communications from a party claiming to be Microsoft, you should know that Microsoft never sends unsolicited emails or makes phone calls requesting personal or financial information, and it doesn’t offer unsolicited tech support. If you do get any suspicious communications, then you should report it to Microsoft so that it can take action.