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Microsoft just announced that they're releasing a Microsoft 365 update that will allow you to BANISH the new floating Copilot button. I'm Linus Sebastian. This is TechLinked, and it looks like we've just learned how much user rage it takes to cause Microsoft to make incremental software improvements. The new button rolled out to everyone earlier this month and was intended to be an easily accessible one-click shortcut to open the Copilot side panel. Microsoft added it hoping that it would boost engagement with Copilot, but it ended up being as frustrating as Clippy without any of his signature charisma. In Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, the button sat on top of the user workspace,
covering up text and data that the user needed to see. And while you could shrink it to a small carré on the side, you couldn't fully turn it off. Microsoft tried to save face by noting that engagement with Copilot did actually go up after shoving the button onto everyone's screens, and I got to say, they've got a point. Rage is a type of engagement. GitHub announced on Tuesday that they suffered a major breach at the hands of notorious hacker group Team PCP. The breach came via a malicious VS Code extension that was installed by a GitHub employee, which gave the hackers access to roughly 3,800 internal repositories. The group has the
stolen code up for auction on a cybercrime forum, stating that if no buyer is found, they will leak the code for free. Luckily for GitHub users, it seems that no customer code has been compromised, only GitHub's own. With that said, there is still cause for concern as Team PCP are experts at supply chain attacks using compromised code to introduce vulnerabilities into other code systems. They've already hit OpenAI, Mercor, and Mistral AI in this fashion. And given that GitHub is unsure how long Team PCP had access to their systems, threat vectors stemming from this hack will likely keep popping up in the future. It's like the game of whack-a-mole. Nvidia is urging its GPU owners to update their drivers immediately because your graphics card
is currently rendering a massive security nightmare. Nvidia has released a software security update for its GPU display driver patching 14 vulnerabilities discussed in their recent security bulletin. The flaws affect gaming, workstation, and even data center GPUs, plus vGPU and cloud gaming software. Basically, every Nvidia product that isn't a leather jacket. The biggest threat is a memory flaw scoring an 8.8 out of 10 for danger. If a hacker already has a foothold in your machine, this bug rolls out the red carpet to your files, your privileges, and even a full system takeover. So, update your drivers ASAP to the latest version. On Windows, that's 596.36 for modern GeForce GPUs and 582.53 or newer for GTX
10 series and older. Linux users should also pull the latest fixed version for whichever driver branch they're on because the only thing that should be quietly running in the background of your PC is our sponsor, Bitdefender. There is a world beneath this world, a computer world made of bleeps and bloops. And in that world, a war rages. Bands of scammers roving the cyber waste trying to pillage your digital life. Fret not though, for through the chaos a hero rises. Bitdefender, their new scam radar feature watches ever vigilant for scam outbreaks near you alerting you when you're in danger. Take heed, for last year alone, these bandits stole over $1 trillion.
I didn't EVEN KNOW WE HAD THAT MUCH. And now they use the dark power of AI to fake voices and faces creating digital ghouls to aid in their nefarious schemes. For 18 years, Bitdefender has trained to find AND NEUTRALIZE THESE THREATS. AND BE YOUR LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS. SO, I beseech you, try Bitdefender's powerful scam protection. You can get it for free for 90 days in the Bitdefender mobile security app using our link below. Godspeed. Since we did three main stories, I guess we're going to need five bits to make a whole byte. Meta has released Forum, a Reddit-like app that pulls your Facebook groups into a dedicated feed and naturally requires a Facebook account to
use. It launches as Meta is cutting 8,000 jobs to fund its AI push, apparently with enough efficiency gains left over to ship an additional app that nobody asked for. Meta really has cemented themselves as a one-stop shop for social media slop. Meanwhile, Riot's updated Vanguard anti-cheat can apparently kill hardware that cheaters plug into PCs to hide hacks. On Twitter, Riot taunted a disgruntled cheater with, "Hey, congrats on the brand new $6,000 paperweight." Making it sound like Vanguard had bricked the entire PC. Riot has since clarified that only the cheat hardware gets bricked. Normal PCs are totally fine. Unfortunately for cheaters, they now face an even bigger problem than fried hardware,
learning to actually play Valorant and get good. Discord has officially enabled end-to-end encryption for voice and video calls for all users. On their blog, they wrote, "End-to-end encryption is now standard outside of stage channels. No opt-in required." Discord, however, has no plans to change text messages, citing features that were built that just kind of assumed no text encryption. So, if you type something, Discord will probably read it, all of it, especially the weird stuff. Spotify and Universal Music Group struck a deal to let premium subscribers pay extra to create AI-generated fan-made covers and remixes of UMG songs. Oh, cool.
Artists do have to opt in for their songs to be used and they do get a revenue share when they're used, which I guess makes this Spotify's licensed artist compensating answer to Suno, the AI music generator which just kind of trained on everybody's music without asking. Huh. So, the good news is I get to listen to Taylor Swift songs reimagined as MF Doom raps, but the bad news is well, that and everything else. Pizza Hut is being sued for $100 by one of their largest franchisees after their mandatory AI system allegedly tanked sales. According to the franchisee, the mandatory delivery AI system Dragon Tail created misaligned incentives for drivers, causing a series of cascading problems which nearly doubled delivery times and damaged
customer relations, resulting in $100 in damage. That's That's a lot of cheddar and mozzarella. And now you cheddar come back on Monday for some tech news. Now, I'm going to use this time to complain about the injustice that is binary. Because why in the heck is it zero and one and not minus one, zero, and one? We need ternary computers and we need them now. Ternary computers.
