Intro and Headlines [Music] [Applause] hey everybody and welcome to the five bytes podcast I'm your host Rory manahan coming up on this week's episode Apple announces new devices including the iPhone 16 also September Patch Tuesday news Roundup and AT&T brings a lawsuit against broadcom for allegedly retroactively changing VMware support and contracts for this and more keep listening to this episode of the podcast which of course as always is brought to you by my sponsors and that includes new messent the inventors of the first and only Cloud native container management platform for Windows desktops and of course also brought to you by Master packager who make an application packaging software that helps you build packages that end users love Enterprises want and the windows OS needs if you enjoy the show each week you have these Progress Software to Acquire ShareFile awesome sponsors to thank and now for some news progress software corporation a company that produces software for creating and deploying business applications including chat Bots and other automated Solutions leveraging AI has announced it is set to acquire share file from cloud software group for about $875 million progress said it would also suspend its quarterly dividend as of the closing of the sharefile acquisition as it plans to redirect Capital toward the repayment of debt to increase liquidity for future deals and for share repurchases so I tried to look up what uh Citrix originally bought sharefile for I was seeing there was estimated around $600 million so it seems like a tidy little profit but of course you know share file was acquired by Citrix before Citrix itself was acquired so it's kind of a guess somewhat of a zero sum game and uh there was plenty of speculation that share file was going to be sold off it kind of makes sense that uh it would be because it's not part of that core product that tibco or the cloud software group claimed they were going to be focusing on progress software on Monday also said it expects revenue and adjusted earnings per share for its fiscal third quarter to be within or above the high end of the forecast to provided back on June 25th from what I could see it seems like progress software corpse stock dipped upon the announcement uh but it has regained most of those Patch Tuesday Roundup losses and of course this week was yet another Patch Tuesday which saw Microsoft patching 79 flaws with their Windows updates including four actively exploited and one publicly disclosed zero day vulnerability and for a total Roundup of the vulnerabilities patched it included 30 elevation appr privilege vulnerabilities four security feature bypass vulnerabilities 23 remote code execution vulnerabilities 11 information disclosure vulnerabilities eight denial service vulnerabilities and three spoofing vulnerabilities I won't go through all of the zero day vulnerabilities the four but um just to highlight two that I thought was of particular interest there's cv-22 4- 3814 which is a Windows installer elevation or privilege vulnerability this vulnerability allows attackers to gain system privileges on Windows systems but of course but Microsoft has chosen not to share any details on how this was exploited in attacks so that's a little bit interesting because well I mean sometimes they do withhold this kind of information uh but Microsoft tends to be much more forthcoming with details than the likes of Google and the fact that this vulnerabilities in the windows installer which is pretty much ubiquitous with how you install uh applications and the way the vendors deliver their applications to you uh is a little bit concerning also of note is cve d224 4349 which is a Microsoft Windows update remote code execution vulnerability bleepy computer.com reports that Microsoft has made aware of a vulnerability in servicing stack that has rolled back fixes for some vulnerabilities affecting optional components on Windows 10 version 1 157 and they explained in in an advisory that quote this means that an attacker could exploit these previously mitigated vulnerabilities on Windows 10 version 1 157 systems that have installed the Windows security update released on March 12th 2024 which is kb50 35858 are other updates released up until August 2024 all later versions of Windows 10 are not impacted by this vulnerability the servicing stack vulnerability is addressed by installing the September 2024 servicing stack update and then the September 2024 Windows security update in that order now the good news is most people should be far removed from that version of Windows 10 uh it did go end of life in 2017 but I thought it was a particular interest because you essentially need to install a servicing stack and then install this recent update and of course yes no one's using now but this vulnerability had likely been in existence before that version was end of life the optional components affected were apparently active directory lightweight directory Services XPS viewer Internet Explorer 11 LPD print services IIs and Windows Media Player you can check out more information at Microsoft's advisory and I'll share a link to more information about all these vulnerabilities with this episode which is episode 351 and you'll find out at 5 Server 2019 Performance Issues Addressed bytes podcast.com and following up on a previous issue caused by Windows updates recently the performance issues that were being experienced on Windows Server 2019 machines by some has reportedly been addressed with a routine fix that's included in this month's patches so if you were affected by those Windows Server 2019 performance issues it will now be fixed in this Windows update uh if you haven't already resolved it Apple iPhone 16 Announced yourself there was an Apple event this week where Apple launched some of their latest new products and devices including the iPhone 16 which features the latest Apple developed processor the a18 which is equipped to make the new iPhones the first iPhone tailor made for Apple intelligence which is Apple's leap into AI that I covered on a previous episode of podcast but if you didn't listen to that some examples of what you might be able to do with it is like get it to proofread text help generating get help generating images transcribe recordings and more something that caught my eye is the ability to remove unwanted objects from your pictures so that seems like it would actually be a really really useful uh ability that the intelligence service will provide this A8 chip will supposedly will make the iPhone up to 60% faster it has six core CPU and it has a five core GPU for battery life you'll get up to 27 hours of video playback on the iPhone 16 plus and up to 22 hours of video playback on the iPhone 16 I saw people making a pretty big deal that there's like two new buttons on the iPhone and saying that this is a pretty radical shift for Apple because they've been moving away from buttons and uh ports and just making things more minimalistic in terms of the form factor uh but these two buttons includes uh a way to access your camera tools quicker and also be able to zoom scroll on the side of your phone and then there's another button which essentially seems to be kind of like a hotkey type button that you can customize and it's just like an action button and you can decide what action it takes to me one of the most interesting things that seem to get a little overlooked by people who were covering the announcements was the fact that they said that if you don't have cell service or like mobile signal on your iPhone 16 or Wi-Fi the iPhone 16 can connect to a satellite so you can stay in touch or get assistance if you need it they say messages via satellite lets you send and receive messages and tap backs when you're off the grid right from the messages app your iPhone will help you connect to a satellite so you can text or iMessage or SMS so I think that's pretty significant just even as a daily phone user like I live in a spot with pretty poor reception of the best of times and a lot of the government services in Ireland require you to log in and have two-factor authentication and they only offer SMS message for the authentication for sending the code so I might have to like walk down my back Garden to get signal in order to get the message and then I get back and log in or attempt to log in and the code has expired so something like this if it actually works Within Ireland and it's available to just all Apple users like New Apple Watch it's an apple satellite that would be great for me also announced was the latest Apple watch which brings its largest display and thinnest display yet for their devices it also features a sleep apneia detection and reportedly you can get an 80% battery charge within Airpods Announced and Airpods Hearing Aids 30 minutes there are also some new airpods announced which Apple has called the most comfortable airpods to date and later this year Apple will be making the airpods Pro 2 available as an over-the-counter hearing aid apple is launching a couple of hearing focused features on the airpods Pro 2 including a feature designed to protect hearing and a clinical grade hearing test these features become available in a free software update in more than 100 countries and regions coming this Apple Loses Major Tax Ruling Autumn it wasn't all good news for Apple this week as they lost their case that was brought against them by the Eur European commission who set after Apple for underpaying Corporation taxes to Ireland to the tune of 13 billion following the commission's original ruling Apple had to pay 13.1 billion EUR in unpaid taxes plus 1.2 billion in interest into an independent third party administered escrow account the Department of Finance in Ireland confirmed the value of funds in the third party or escor account holding tax money over by Apple is now at1 14.1 billion the department said the full balance in the fund after fees and operational expenses are paid will ACR to the Irish State and these processes are likely to take at least 6 months it confirmed that € 4555 million EUR have been paid out to other countries so if you're calculating obviously that's more than uh the 14.3 billion that would have been in the account originally and the Irish Testa had stated that the money was being held in the escrow account for a few years now whilst waiting this final decision after Apple had originally lost to ruling and then they had won a ruling but the money was being kept in the escrow account throughout this entire time until this final ruling and in that time at the money actually accured interest so there was a bit more in the account I believe thus why it's still over 14 billion after paying out some of this money to other countries and after paying the administrative fees in its original state aid decision the European commission said there was a possibility that other countries May seek to tax some of the profits which the commission were proposing to allocate to the Irish branches of the Apple companies it noted that €9 million EUR was returned to Apple in 2019 the department said it was not aware of any further claims by other countri r on the Apple tax money it also confirmed that over 10 million EUR has been spent so far on managing this apple tax case it said that 10.3 million has been paid by various State entities over the course of the case the figure includes $4.2 million EUR relating to the recovery process and the amount also includes legal fees consultancy fees and what was termed Associated costs in a statement Simon Harris the thuk in Ireland said that the Irish government will consider how best to put these funds to use State and quote obviously one-off resources cannot be used for day-to-day spending but careful consideration should now be given to how best to utilize this for Ireland and the needs of our country end quote so I don't think this story is over yet this is a final ruling so Apple has lost that money is now taken from them and at the moment at least it's with the Irish government the way this reads it seems like other European countries may try to stake a claim to at least some of that money and at the very least I would think that the Irish government should be reimbursing the states that contributed to the actual legal expenses and while this seems like a victory to most including most people in Ireland quite frankly uh the Irish government took quite a defeated stance on this as they seem to tooth and nail to just give the money back to Apple throughout the entire case but regardless Apple lost that money is now in the Irish state but the cynic in me feels like the Irish government is going to try and find a way to little by little get this money back to Apple but Taiwan Semiconductor Company Ramping Up US Operations I guess we'll see Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company has reached a significant milestone in its expansion into the US recent trial production at the company's new Arizona facility has yielded results comparable to those of its established plants in Taiwan according to a report by techspot.com the company plans to invest $65 billion in three plants in Arizona making it the largest foreign direct investment in Arizona history and the largest foreign direct investment in a Greenfield project in US history concurrently the US government is providing substantial support through grants and Loans tsmc is set to receive up to $6.6 billion in Grants and $5 billion in loans for its Arizona project so a major initiative to move some of that chip manufacturing over to the US is Google Back in Court underway Google returned to court this week to face Us justice department allegations that it manipulates the $677 billion display advertising Market in violation of competition laws and a month after losing a landmark ruling that illegally dominates online search the department and a coalition of eight states has accused Google of over the years acquiring the tools used to buy sell and serve ads on the internet locking up the technology behind website ads and harming Publishers and advertisers Google has denied the Department's claims asserting that its tools work seamlessly with products made by compe editors and that the US government's case is based on an outdated understanding of digital ad markets of alphabets nearly $260 billion in Revenue last year about 31.3 billion came from the display advertising at issue in the case according to the company's most recent annual earnings report the Department's competition lawyer say Google using its position as a middleman that controls the market from end to end drives up the price of ads while paying less to the websites that show them due to its dominance of the technology Google has the ability to force Publishers and advertisers to use its Suite of products generating Monopoly profits Google keeps about $36 out of every $100 in advertising spent through its tools according to the Department lawsuit which was filed last year websites show over 13 billion display ads every day bringing in roughly 12 billion dollar in Revenue annually according to the department so this case certainly has massive implications for Google and just digital ad Marketing in general so it's going to Windows PowerToys Launches be interesting to follow it in the coming days Microsoft has released a new workspaces power toy that helps launch sets of applications using custom desktop layouts and configurations with a mouse click the tool lets you easily save your current desktop environment configuration as a workspace and relaunch all the apps later knowing their windows will pop up in the same Microsoft Exec Talks AI Investments positions on your desktop Aon ulag Microsoft's corporate vice president for Azure data recently stated at an event that in a world of constrainted or finite it budgets something will have to give if new projects are set to thrive in the context of artificial intelligence as well as noting the complexity of building generative AI applications he also highlighted that budgets were insufficient to support overall investment in all the fresh projects arising from the new technology saying that quote if this thing goes up a lot something else has to adjust customers are looking for savings and making sure they can fund these initiatives end quote so again it's something I think I've been beating this drum to death quite frankly uh yeah this is exactly in line with what I've been reporting and I've also reported that others have been reporting which is a lot of these layoffs is to not affect the bottom line of these companies too much when they try to pour a bunch of money into AI Investments which kind of sucks but that's just the way capitalism Device hardware inventory is coming soon to Microsoft Intune works I guess they got to protect their bottom line Microsoft has announced that device Hardware inventory is coming to Microsoft in tune the enhanced device inventory capabilities for Windows devices will provide key information to help it Pros answer questions more efficiently like do your devices have TPM version 2 are your devices ready to update from Windows 10 to Windows 11 and our device batteries nearing end of life and can use schedule service to maintain productivity dozens of individual attributes will be made available via the inventory in Broad information categories including network adapter Mac address battery and health bios dis bit Locker CPU system TPM and video so basically device information that you're already getting likely from configuration manager or maybe other Solutions looks like it will be coming No Update on Microsoft Security Yet to you via in tune in future previously on the podcast I reported that Microsoft was set to hold an event this week with security Partners it was supposed to be on September 10th and it was expected that they may have been set to announce major changes to how the windows kernel could be leveraged by endpoint security products going forward but I scoured social media and Tech sites and haven't found a single reference to the event as of scripting this episode so perhaps AWS Announces UK Expansion it's strictly under NDA for now Amazon's cloud computing arm AWS will invest 8 billion pounds in the United Kingdom to build data centers that supports customers in London and the west of England it was estimated that this could create as many as 14,000 jobs at Amazon and in local businesses so it seems like AWS is going to enhance its presence with new data center AT&T Files Lawsuit Against Broadcom Over VMware Licensing and Support locations in the UK AT&T filed a lawsuit against broadcom on August 29th accusing it of seeking to retroactively change existing VMR contracts to match its new corporate strategy the lawsuit spotted by Channel Futures concerns claims that broadcom is not letting AT&T renew support services for previously purchased Perpetual VMware software licenses unless AT&T meets certain conditions AT&T feels it should be granted a one-year renewal for VMware Support Services which it claimed would be the second of three one-year renewals to which its contract entitles it according to AT&T support services are critical in cases of software errors and for upkeep like security patches software upgrades and daily maintenance without support an error or software glitch could result in disruptive failure AT&T claims broadcom refus ref uses to renew support and plans to terminate AT&T's VMware Support Services on September 9th so actually just before I recorded this episode it asked the court to stop broadcom from cutting VMware support services and for further relief deemed necessary the New York Supreme Court has told broadcom to respond within 20 days of the complaints filing the lawsuit reads quote specifically broadcom is threatening to withhold a essential support services for previously purchased VM were perpetually licensed software unless AT&T capitulates to broadcom's demands that AT&T purchase hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bundled subscription software and services which AT&T does not want end quote in its lawsuit AT&T claims bullying tactics were expected from broadcom postacquisition and quoting our Technica report here the lawsuit claims that that quote broadcom wasted no time strong arming customers into highly unfavorable subscription models marked by steeply increased prices refusing to maintain security conditions for Perpetual licensed software and threatening to cut off support for existing products already licensed by customers exactly as it has done here end quote in a statement to ours Technica a broadcom company spokesperson said quote broadcom strongly disag agrees with the obligations and is confident we will prevail in the legal process VMware has been moving to subscription model the standard for the software industry for several years beginning before the acquisition by broadcom our Focus will continue to be providing our customers choice and flexibility while helping them address their most complex technology challenges end quote AT&T's lawsuit emphasizes that should it lose support for VMware offerings Communications for the office of the president and First Responders would be a risk AT&T claims that about 22,000 of its 75,000 VMS relying on VMware are used in some way to support AT&T's provision of services to millions of police officers firefighters paramedics emergency workers and incident response team members Nationwide when reached for comment AT&T spokesperson declined to comment on AT&T's backup plan for minimizing their disruption should it lose vmw support on September 9th and a quick update here but it appears that broadcom and AT&T have reached a temporary VMR support deal that will keep them supported through October 9th so it looks like they've got a one-month reprieve now it be interesting to see if this case is going to be heard before October 9th presumably it's not but they need to get this resolved pretty quickly to maintain their systems and this is a story that you know this is from AT&T but similar stories have come out from other organizations who have used VMware products in the past but feel hard Dum by by recent changes made by Roblox Announces AI Game Generation broadcom for the final story this one's not Enterprise related at all but interesting for those in Tech nonetheless Roblox who make a very popular gaming platform announced plans to introduce an open-source generative AI tool that will allow game creators to build 3D environments and objects using text prompts Roblox has not announced a specific launch date for the new AI tool which is based on what it calls a 3D foundational model the company shared a demo video of the tool where user types create a racetrack then make the scenery a desert and the AI model creates a corresponding model in the proper environment the system will also reportedly let users make modifications such as changing the time of day or swapping out entire Landscapes and roblock says the multimodel AI model will ultimately accept video and 3D prompts not just text so very cool like I used to spend an awful lot of time building like custom skate ramps and skate parks within one of the old Tony Hawk games imagine having this kind of ability with that that would be so cool Roblox obviously kind of more kid oriented but maybe this has potential for some other games Scripts, Tricks and Tips too but now this episode scripts tricks PowerShell Script to Address Temp Profiles with FSLogix and tips first up Thomas King shared a Powershell script for those who may be experiencing login problems with FS Logics due to the presence of a Bak entry in the profilist registry key causing a temporary profile Packaging Recipe for Arduino IDE his Powershell script can eliminate the problem next up show sponsor Master packager shared a pretty comprehensive how-to on packaging arduo IDE version 2.3.2 so if you use this IDE and you Autopilot v2 Tennant Association want to package it up check out this recipe finally Michael nihas shared another great blog post on autopilot V2 of which he already has several this one is on associating devices with a specific tenant so if you're working with autopilot be sure to check out Michael's great blog post over at oof hours.com but that's it for this episode of podcast thank you so much for listening [Music]