Month: July 2023

Enlarge (credit: Microsoft)

A few months ago, Microsoft previewed Microsoft 365 Copilot, a new service that promised to integrate generative AI features into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and the other productivity apps formerly known as Microsoft Office. Among other things, Copilot promises to automate the creation of documents and emails, summarize meeting notes, and assist in the analysis of Excel data.

Microsoft has just announced pricing for the Copilot features, and it isn't cheap. Copilot will cost an extra $30 per user per month on top of whatever your business is already paying for Microsoft 365—in many cases, this will double or even triple your monthly costs. Copilot can be added to Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Premium ($12.50 and $22 per user per month, respectively) or to Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 accounts for enterprises ($36 or $57 per user per month). It can't be added to the cheaper Microsoft 365 Business Basic plan or to any home plans.

The relatively high cost is likely related to the high server costs for running these kinds of generative AI models. Copilot also draws context from the other emails, documents, and other files in your business's Microsoft 365 cloud, so each business that Microsoft supports will have a slightly different data set that it will need to be able to draw from.

Enlarge / The two skeletons are completely intertwined. (credit: Gang Han)

A new fossil described this week captures two intertwined animals caught in a life-or-death struggle right before both were entombed in a volcanic event. Published in Scientific Reports this Tuesday, the fossil doesn’t capture one dinosaur attacking another—rather, the predator in this case is a smaller mammal known as Repenomamus robustus, and it died with its teeth clamped upon the herbivorous Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis, a dinosaur three times its size.

Gut contents from a Repenomamus fossil described in 2005 prove this same mammalian species ate very young and considerably smaller Psittacosaurus. But the remarkable fossil revealed today is the first evidence of any Cretaceous mammal attacking a larger dinosaur. It’s an astounding snapshot of ancient behavior, challenging previous assumptions of predator/prey dynamics millions of years ago.

A final struggle

These two species in the fossil couldn’t be more different. Psittacosaurus is a type of bipedal ceratopsian dinosaur—an early relative of dinosaurs such as Triceratops—with a large beak-like snout and spiky tail bristles. This was a herd animal, and it's the most commonly found fossil in the Lujiatun Member of the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of China. This particular Psittacosaurus was approximately 6.5–10 years old when it died.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Tesla's Autopilot driver assistance feature is the subject of yet another federal safety investigation. Although the details are scarce, Reuters reports that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened an investigation into a fatal crash in California involving a 2018 Tesla Model 3 sedan. This follows another safety investigation that was opened by NHTSA in March concerning a fatal crash of a 2014 Tesla Model S, also in California.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has often claimed that the cars his company makes are the "safest car[s] on the road," but there have been hundreds of fatal crashes involving Tesla electric vehicles since 2013, and at least 32 deaths in the US and another three abroad have occurred while Autopilot was active.

On its website, Tesla promotes Autopilot as a safety feature, writing:

Enlarge (credit: FT Montage/EPA)

Millions of US military emails have been misdirected to Mali through a “typo leak” that has exposed highly sensitive information, including diplomatic documents, tax returns, passwords, and the travel details of top officers.

Despite repeated warnings over a decade, a steady flow of email traffic continues to the .ML domain, the country identifier for Mali, as a result of people mistyping .MIL, the suffix to all US military email addresses.

The problem was first identified almost a decade ago by Johannes Zuurbier, a Dutch Internet entrepreneur who has a contract to manage Mali’s country domain.