Month: March 2023

Enlarge / Microsoft 365 Copilot will attempt to automate content generation and analysis in all of the former Microsoft Office apps. (credit: Microsoft)

Today Microsoft took the wraps off of Microsoft 365 Copilot, its rumored effort to build automated AI-powered content-generation features into all of the Microsoft 365 apps.

The capabilities Microsoft demonstrated make Copilot seem like a juiced-up version of Clippy, the oft-parodied and arguably beloved assistant from older versions of Microsoft Office. Copilot can automatically generate Outlook emails, Word documents, and PowerPoint decks, can automate data analysis in Excel, and can pull relevant points from the transcript of a Microsoft Teams meeting, among other features.

Microsoft is currently testing Copilot "with 20 customers, including eight in Fortune 500 enterprises." The preview will be expanded to other organizations "in the coming months," but the company didn't mention when individual Microsoft 365 subscribers would be able to use the features. The company will "share more on pricing and licensing soon," suggesting the feature may be a paid add-on in addition to the cost of a Microsoft 365 subscription.

Enlarge / Sam Bankman-Fried arrives at court in New York on Feb. 16, 2023. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

Sam Bankman-Fried received about $2.2 billion in payments and loans from FTX entities, mainly from Alameda Research, FTX and its affiliated debtors said yesterday. Bankman-Fried's fellow executives received another $951 million combined, including $839 million to three executives who already pleaded guilty to fraud, FTX and its debtors said in a press release describing a series of filings made in US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.

As summarized by the Financial Times, "Bankman-Fried and five members of his inner circle transferred $3.2 billion in total to their personal accounts in the form of 'payments and loans,' the funds primarily coming from Alameda Research, a crypto trading hedge fund affiliated with FTX." John Ray, the new CEO leading FTX through bankruptcy proceedings, "has been seeking to identify the location of cryptocurrency and other assets that can be eventually returned to the millions of FTX customers whose accounts have been frozen since its collapse," the Financial Times noted.

Bankman-Fried, who faces criminal fraud and conspiracy charges, is accused of improperly diverting billions of dollars of FTX customer funds to Alameda.

Enlarge / Several of Belkin's Wemo smart home accessories support the Thread networking protocol, but the company is holding off on Matter support for now. (credit: Belkin)

Belkin is pumping the brakes on its support for the nascent Matter smart home standard, according to The Verge. Devices from Belkin's Wemo smart home brand may still support Matter eventually, but Belkin will "take a big step back, regroup, and rethink" its product strategy before supporting Matter in any of its products. This is a reversal for Belkin, which had announced at CES 2022 that it planned to support Matter in several of its new accessories when the standard was ready.

Some Wemo devices already support Thread, the underlying network protocol that Matter uses to allow devices in your home to communicate without flooding your Wi-Fi router. But at least for now, those devices remain tied to Apple's HomeKit ecosystem.

The oft-delayed Matter standard was finally released in the fall of 2022. It promises to break down the walls between smart home fiefdoms, taking the guesswork out of buying accessories and allowing for control of devices without having to install any device-specific apps. Matter devices should work whether you use HomeKit, Amazon's Alexa, Google Home, or even some combination of all three. Matter-compatible devices will also retain a basic level of functionality even if the company that made an accessory goes out of business or gets acquired and shut down.

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)

After US President Joe Biden and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) spent years trying to work out a deal with TikTok that could address national security concerns, Biden seems to have given up. Yesterday, TikTok confirmed that the Biden administration issued an ultimatum to the app’s China-based owners to either divest their stakes or risk a TikTok ban in the US, Reuters reported.

Biden’s demand comes just one week before TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is scheduled to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The Wall Street Journal confirmed that Chew is already in the US and is working with “experienced Washington advisers” to help him defend TikTok against its harshest critics in Congress next Thursday.

Chew told The Journal that forcing a sale does not address national security concerns any better than the deal that TikTok had already worked out with the CFIUS. Under the deal that Biden seems to be shrugging off now, TikTok has already invested billions in moving its US users’ data to US servers and hiring independent monitors to ensure that Americans’ TikTok feeds can’t be manipulated and that their data can’t be accessed by China authorities.

We're now firmly ensconced in the second decade of Star Citizen's crowdfunding-driven development. And while backers can currently play a minimally functional alpha version (that's still missing many promised features), there's still no sign of even a fully playable beta version in sight.

Don't worry, though—that state of affairs hasn't stopped developer Roberts Space Industries (RSI) from finding new and interesting ways for the game to break.

Star Citizen's current problems revolve around this week's rollout of the Alpha 3.18 "Lasting Legacies" update, which RSI is selling as "the biggest Star Citizen update yet."

Enlarge / Virgin Orbit was founded by Sir Richard Branson. (credit: Virgin Orbit)

It's been a rough first quarter of 2023 for Virgin Orbit, Sir Richard Branson's US-based flagship satellite launch company. First, the company had a disastrous UK launch attempt in January; the launch failed after a problem with the rocket's second-stage engine. The company's already precarious financial situation went critical in the wake of that failure. As Ars' Eric Berger reported at the time, several financial analysts predicted that the company would run out of money sometime in March.

Those analysts proved quite prescient. BBC News reports that the beleaguered company will pause its operations on Thursday and furlough almost all its staff, although the company did not officially confirm the furloughs to BBC News. In a statement, the company merely said, "Virgin Orbit is initiating a company-wide operational pause, effective March 16, 2023, and anticipates providing an update on go-forward operations in the coming weeks." Shares dropped 18.8 percent to 82 cents (72p) in extended trading in response to the news.

Per our prior coverage, Virgin Orbit started as an idea in 2011 by Branson as an offshoot of his Virgin Galactic space business, with the goal of fully utilizing the White Knight aircraft. Eventually, it was decided that the company, formally created in 2017, would use its own aircraft, a modified Boeing 747-400 named Cosmic Girl, as a platform from which it could drop and launch small rockets. It was funded for most of a decade by the Virgin Group, the multinational company that owns and operates Branson's various businesses, as well as an Emirati state-owned holding company Mubadala Investment Company.