Microsoft has announced that new WSL features will be even easier to get in the future. From a report: The company has posted a preview version of WSL to the Microsoft Store so that Windows 11 users can download and update WSL independently of other Windows updates. Many of Windows' built-in apps have already moved to being updated through the Microsoft Store rather than through regular Windows Updates. This gives the company more flexibility when deciding when to update apps, though one side effect has been that many of Windows 11's pre-installed apps still haven't been fully updated for Windows 11. But long-term, it also means you don't need to wait for a new Windows update to benefit from updated apps. For WSL, this means you won't need to install major, potentially disruptive Windows updates (like, say, Windows 11) just to take advantage of new WSL additions.

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An image of a bursting cloud of eggs and sperm as groupers mate in the Pacific is the judges' pick.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Since 2017, Microsoft has pursued this goal under the name Project Turing, a team that's tasked with building these large language models and figuring out how they can be used in the company's vast suite of products. Project Turing might not be a visible name outside the company, its AI can already be found generating text inside Microsoft Office products and powering much of the curated information provided when searching with Bing. If Turing succeeds, the strategy could amplify the research dollars that Microsoft has poured into AI research over previous decades. Notably, Microsoft isn't only using Turing-NLG, the project's flagship model, internally: It's already begun selling the tech to select partners, hinting at the cloud giant's ambitions for the AI market. Insider spoke with AvePoint and Volume.ai, both of whom are using Turing in their own products. "Our job is to further the frontier of AI innovation as much as possible," Ali Alvi, group program manager of Project Turing, told Insider. Alvi tells Insider that the Turing team was assembled from within the company by Microsoft chief technology officer Kevin Scott, in recognition of the ongoing deep learning boom. Scott encouraged the team to think bigger and work with the Azure infrastructure team to make the models exponentially larger. When CEO Satya Nadella saw the team's progress, he decided to get it into the hands of customers, Alvi says. AvePoint, a Microsoft partner that resells and builds applications on top of Microsoft products, has launched two products so far using the Turing model: An education platform for teachers that will automatically create quiz questions using material that's been uploaded for a specific course, and a corporate training platform that uses Turing to test employees on internal material.

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I’ve called myself a developer, media hacker, showrunner, programmer, never a coder (ugh), maker of software snacks and shitty software (with bugs). Now I’m thinking of calling myself a software factor.

A woman allegedly hacked into the systems of a flight training school in Florida to delete and tamper with information related to the school's airplanes. In some cases, planes that previously had maintenance issues had been "cleared" to fly, according to a police report. The hack, according to the school's CEO, could have put pilots in danger. From a report: Lauren Lide, a 26-year-old who used to work for the Melbourne Flight Training school, resigned from her position of Flight Operations Manager at the end of November of 2019, after the company fired her father. Months later, she allegedly hacked into the systems of her former company, deleting and changing records, in an apparent attempt to get back at her former employer, according to court records obtained by Motherboard. The news of her arrest was first reported by local TV station News Channel 8. Derek Fallon, the CEO of Melbourne Flight Training called the police on January 17, 2020, and reported that five days before, he logged onto his account for Flight Circle, an app his company uses to manage and keep track of its airplanes, and found that there was missing information. Fallon found that someone had removed records related to planes with maintenance issues and reminders of inspections had all been deleted, "meaning aircraft which may have been unsafe to fly were purposely made 'airworthy,'" according to a document written by a Melbourne Airport Police officer.

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The Pentagon wants defense contractors to cut the ultimate cost of hypersonic weapons, the head of research and development said on Tuesday, as the next generation of super-fast missiles being developed currently cost tens of millions per unit. From a report: "We need to figure out how to drive towards more affordable hypersonics," Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu told reporters at the Association of United States Army conference in Washington. She said cost was something she "would like to help industry focus on." Currently, the U.S. uses cruise missiles which are mature technologies costing less than $5 million per unit to strike deep into enemy territory. But cruise missiles are inferior to hypersonic weapons because they have a shorter range, are far slower and more vulnerable to being detected and shot down. Both Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies are working on hypersonic weapons for the Pentagon. The Pentagon's budget request in the 2022 fiscal year for hypersonic research was $3.8 billion which was up from $3.2 billion they year before.

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The number of people quitting their jobs has surged to record highs, pushed by a combination of factors that include Americans sensing ample opportunity and better pay elsewhere. From a report: Some 4.3 million people quit jobs in August, according to the monthly survey -- about 2.9 percent of the workforce, according to new data released Tuesday from the Department of Labor. Those numbers are up from the previous records set in April and nearly matched in July, of about 4 million people quitting. The phenomenon is being driven in part by workers who are less willing to endure inconvenient hours and poor compensation, quitting at this stage in the pandemic to find better opportunities elsewhere. According to the report, there were 10.4 million job openings in the country at the end of August -- down slightly from July's record high, which was adjusted up to 11.1 million, but still a tremendously high number. The "quits" numbers include about 892,000 workers in restaurants, bars and hotels, as well as 721,000 workers in retail. An additional 706,000 employees in professional business services and 534,000 workers in health care and social assistance also left jobs. Nick Bunker, economist at the jobs site Indeed, said the numbers were a reflection of the leverage workers have in the current economic market, with job openings outnumbering unemployed workers. The high level of people quitting their jobs was likely due in large part to people leaving jobs to take other positions, although the data doesn't specify why people are quitting and where they are ending up.

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Magic Leap has raised $500 million in funding and is preparing to release a new AR headset, the Magic Leap 2, next year, the company announced Monday. From a report: The headset will be generally available next year, the company said, and "select customers" are using it as part of an early access program. CEO Peggy Johnson said in a statement that with the new funding "Magic Leap will have greater financial flexibility and the resources needed to continue our growth trajectory as we expand on our industry-leading AR technology." She revealed the new device in an Monday appearance on CNBC. Magic Leap, of course, is the company that began its existence as a mysterious AR startup, received almost $3 billion to fund its consumer-friendly AR headset, before changing its headset's name from Magic Leap 1 to The Magic Leap One Creator Edition in an attempt to attract professional customers. The company laid off 1,000 employees -- roughly half its workforce -- in 2020, and was reportedly abandoning its consumer business. Cofounder and CEO Rony Abovitz left the company in July 2020, and was replaced by Johnson. Magic Leap, which has previously raised $3.5 billion (according to Pitchbook), is now valued at $2 billion, down from $6 billion in 2018.

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Coinbase is getting into NFTs. The cryptocurrency exchange said Tuesday it plans to launch a marketplace that lets users mint, collect and trade NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. From a report: Users can sign up to a waitlist for early access to the feature, the company said. NFTs are one-of-a-kind digital assets designed to represent ownership of online items like rare art or collectible trading cards. They aren't fungible, meaning you can't exchange one NFT for another like you could with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Sales of such tokens have boomed this year. The NFT market topped $10 billion in transaction volume in the third quarter of 2021, according to DappRadar, a company that tracks data on crypto-based applications.

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This quote, which is part of what I wrote for The Future of Text, kind of says it all, everything I've discovered and built on in my career. I guess it's the answer to the question: "What's possible with computers that most people don't know about." They posted this in a tweet at the same time I was posting one about how we fixed the big problem with JavaScript in Drummer. Trust me, this is a momentous tweet. No one has noticed it yet. I know it sounds arrogant, but at this point I've been programming as long as anyone has, probably ever (most people quit before they reach my age), and I feel entitled at this point to say exactly what I think. First, I love JavaScript because it's the closest thing we have to a universal language. We have Marc Andreessen to thank for that (no sarcasm!). But there's no damned reason it has to be hobbled by callback hell or promises or whatever other hack they think up next. It's not hard to factor that out. Every other language does it. There is absolutely no reason JavaScript has to leave that visible to the programmer who wants it hidden. We proved that in Drummer. Now our implementation may not be fully baked, and at least one JS guru thinks it's too slow, all that can be fixed. But just to be able to write straight-line code and let the runtime handle the synchronization, that's the way comptuers are supposed to work, imho. And what it relief it runs in the freaking browser, and if I didn't say anything most devs probably wouldn't even notice.

Apple's next hardware event will take place on October 18th, according to invites it sent out today. From a report: The company is widely expected to use its second fall event to launch a pair of new MacBooks, a redesigned higher-end Mac Mini, and possibly a pair of third-generation AirPods. The invite video teases one word: Unleashed. [...] There have been reports for months that Apple is on the cusp of releasing new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro models. The new MacBooks would be the latest step in Apple's transition away from Intel chips, replacing them with an Arm-based processor called the M1X that Apple designs itself. The new chip could boost performance compared to the M1 chip that debuted last year. Other anticipated features include the return of fan-favorite MacBook features like magnetic MagSafe charging, an HDMI port, and an SD card slot. The maligned OLED touch bar, mercifully, could be on the way out. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman recently noted that stock of the company's existing MacBook Pro appears to be running low.

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Japanese technology giant Olympus has confirmed it was hit by a cyberattack over the weekend that forced it to shut down its IT systems in the U.S., Canada and Latin America. From a report: In a statement on its website, Olympus said it is "investigating a potential cybersecurity incident detected October 10" and is "currently working with the highest priority to resolve this issue." "As part of the investigation and containment, we have suspended affected systems and have informed the relevant external partners. The current results of our investigation indicate the incident was contained to the Americas with no known impact to other regions. We are working with appropriate third parties on this situation and will continue to take all necessary measures to serve our customers and business partners in a secure way. Protecting our customers and partners and maintaining their trust in us is our highest priority. Our investigation is ongoing and we are committed to transparent disclosure and will continue to provide updates as new information becomes available." It's near-identical to a statement put out by Olympus last month following a cyberattack on its European, Middle East and Africa network.

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The Goldfish Window, 1916 .

The Environment Agency says the UK is unprepared for dealing with the effects of climate change.

An anonymous reader writes: Spectrum has been sending former customers strange letters threatening to report them to the credit agencies unless they renew services, in attempt to win back their business. The letters say that "as a one-time courtesy," the company will cancel debt it claims they owe and stop reporting them to credit agencies -- if they agree to resume cable service. The threat continues by stating that "You have worked hard to build a great future for yourself and your family" "We look forward to welcoming you back."

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