No more driver updates to be piped via Windows Update

Windows 7 users are hit by some more bad news, with the revelation that Microsoft is not any longer supporting driver updates in the least through Windows Update for the aging OS.

This follows another recent move made by Nvidia, where Team Green discontinued core driver support for its graphics cards with Windows 7, and also Windows 8/8.1 for that matter (although any vital security fixes will still be delivered through until 2024).

As Bleeping Computer reports, support has now been ditched for Windows 7 (SP1) drivers being delivered via Windows Update, following the expiry of the SHA-1 Trusted Root Certificate Authority in May 2021. also as Windows 7, this is applicable to Windows Server 2008.

Naim Mohammad, Technical Program Manager at Microsoft, said: “On June 17, 2021, Microsoft will discontinue the publication of drivers to Windows Update for Windows 7 SP1, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2.”

However, note that business users paying for the ESU or Extended Security Update program (which will continue until July 2022) will still be ready to deploy Windows 7 drivers via WSUS (Windows Server Update Services).

Microsoft explains that the piping of drivers to Windows 7 has been ceased because with the aforementioned expiration of SHA-1 certificates, partners who are delivering their drivers through the Microsoft Trusted Root Program could deploy SHA-2 signed drivers instead – but these are incompatible.

If they made their way through to Windows 7 devices from Windows Update, that would cause serious issues including ‘degraded functionality’ or indeed totally bricking the machine so it doesn’t boot. As Microsoft notes: “Unpatched systems will have code integrity failures when presented with an SHA-2 signed driver.”

So to avoid any potential nasty side effects like this, Microsoft is not any longer allowing SHA-2 signed drivers to be delivered via Windows Update, so driver updates are effectively now pack up.

Official support for Windows 7 ended at the beginning of 2020, a year and a half ago now, so consumers still using Windows 7 – or businesses not paying for extended security support – should, of course, be moving on to Windows 10 (soon to be Windows 11) by now (or switching elsewhere, perhaps finding out Linux distros). Yet going by some reports, a surprising amount of PC owners are sticking with Windows 7, which ground will only get rockier going forward.

 

Read on for our detailed analysis of every Medical Alert with GPS tracking

We all wish to enjoy the good outdoors once in a while , even those that only take a brief stroll to enjoy the seasonal changes.

But for seniors or others with medical issues, leaving home without a way to remotely summon help could easily become a significant issue.

Having a tool to summon assistance is useful, but having a GPS-enabled device is critical if you aren’t sure of your exact location. And, for those with cognitive difficulties, getting lost may be a genuine problem that extreme weather and temperature changes could turn life-threatening.

We’ve collected the simplest medical alert devices that relay GPS location information to people who got to know where you're once you need help most.

Get medical alert systems that transcend basic fall detection

Want your company or services to be added to the present buyer’s guide? Please email your request to desire.athow@futurenet.com with the URL of the buying guide within the subject line.

Bay Medical Alert with GPS

(Image credit: Bay Medical)

Be found once you got to be

Fall Detection: Yes

Requires Mobile Phone: No

Subscription: Yes

Wearable: No

+Professional support team

+4G offers more accurate GPS

+No phone needed

-Fall detection costs extra

Bay Alarm Medical offers some elegant technology linked to a support service with a superb reputation. The 4G LTE GPS Help Button is one of its latest products and joins a spectrum of devices designed to bring help to people.

Available in black and white colors, the assistance Button uses 4G mobile technology to determine a communication link to the support center do you have to need help. And, the support team can alert carers or emergency services to your exact location in order that help can come on to you.

And, for carers to stay an eye fixed on where the owner is at any time, they supply a phone app with live GPS tracking.

The Help Button costs just $79, although it requires a support subscription that starts at $24.95 per month for the quality service. Caregiving tracking requires the well-liked Protection plan, at $29.95, and fall detection is merely included on the $39.95 Premium Protection plan. 

Our only real concern about this product is that fall detection is merely available with the premium service, and we’d wish to see it as a typical feature.

A phone that brings help fast

Fall Detection: No

Requires Mobile Phone: No

Subscription: Yes

Wearable: No

+Made for seniors

+5Star service

+GPS tracking

-Only works within the US

-AT&T only

Great call currently has two phone options, the favored Jitterbug Smart2 and therefore the smaller Jitterbug Flip. Of these, the Flip is simpler to pocket and comes with a charging dock that permits it to be easily used as a bedside clock.

But what makes the Jitterbug Flip potentially lifesaving is that the core phone electronics and interface are redesigned for those with poor eyesight, and to supply single-button access to Greatcall’s 5Star emergency help service.

Should the owner have a fall or other difficultly, they will simply open the phone and hit the large ‘5Star’ button and they’ll be connected to a Great call urgent response Agent. they will confirm your location supported the GPS within the Flip, evaluate your situation and obtain help to you 24/7.

And, you'll use it to call and text friends and family, like any mobile.

The Jitterbug Flip costs just $74.99, and therefore the helpline service plans start at $19.99.

This solution is merely available within the USA and can only add a location with access to the AT&T mobile network.

Two for the worth of 1 

Fall Detection: Yes

Requires Mobile Phone: No

Subscription: Yes

Wearable: Yes

+Two devices included

+No landline or cellular contract needed rated service

-Fall detection costs extra

-US-based Emergency Response

MobileHelp has some excellent products for seniors, and therefore the Mobile Duo may be a unique offering for people who want an alert system with GPS tracking.

As the naming hints, this product is meant specifically for 2 seniors and provides each with a water-proof alert button which will bring help quickly.

These don’t recall a landline-connected base station to figure, as they each have mobile electronics that connect via the AT&T network.

Once the alert button is pressed the wearer can begin a two-way conversation with a MobileHelp emergency operator, who can get them the assistance they have.

The cost of this service starts at $44.95 per month, but reductions are available with longer contract periods. The alert equipment is provided as a part of the contract, and you'll cancel any time.

For a further $10 per month, a fall detection device is out there. We’d prefer that they merged this into one device, but currently, they're separate.

What’s best about this solution is that the very high reputation of the service that the corporate is understood , and the way they channel the aware of emergency services, neighbours or relations as appropriate.

For those single seniors, MobileHelp features a Solo product option.

The discrete low-cost option

Fall Detection: No

Requires Mobile Phone: No

Subscription: No/Yes

Wearable: Yes

+Low cost

+GPS tracking

+Heart monitor

-Only uses GSM networks

To anyone seeing the CPR Guardian II on a senior's wrist will assume it's a watch, and they’d be partly correct.

It used a wearable technology platform that has been pre-configured to supply a cardiac monitor, location tracking, and an emergency call solution.

Carers and family can download the CPR Guardian App, and once the device and app are linked, the GPS location of the wearer are often tracked and any alerts routed to the remote mobile.

What sets this device aside from others is that a contract isn’t mandatory, and it's possible to use it without one.

You can prefer to have a monitored 34/7 service connected to the device, which costs £39.99 a month within the UK, and under contract, the CPR Guardian Watch is included gratis.

Or, if you simply want to be ready to alert relations, you'll make a one-off single payment of £199 and use a PAYG mobile sim.

You can find an equivalent device on the US Amazon.com for $249.99, and a few US-based services support it. However, we wouldn’t recommend it for US customers, because it relies on a 2G mobile network that uses GSM. And, that isn’t something that you simply can believe since AT&T turned its 2G network off in 2017.

Peace of mind for active seniors

Fall Detection: Yes

Requires Mobile Phone: No

Subscription: Yes

Wearable: Yes

+Works with Alexa

+Small and straightforward to wear

+Charging lasts five days

-Relies on AT&T mobile services

-Only available within the USA

-Fall detection costs extra

LifeStation offers both home alert solutions and people designed for more active seniors who wish to enjoy the outside or traveling.

Its Mobile GPS Medical Alert System is specifically designed to bring assistance to those far away from their home. and will the worst happen, it can locate its exact geographic location accurately using either WIFI signal or GPS satellite system?

The lightweight device is worn around the neck or on a wristband and contains an AT&T mobile SIM which will connect the owner to a licensed care specialist in moments once the alert button is pressed.

One unique feature of this design is that LifeStation has crafted an Alexa skill, enabling Alexa to inform you where the pendant wearer is that if asked.

By default, it doesn’t include fall detection, but this is often an option you'll specify once you order the service.

The only limitations of this device are that it uses AT&T mobile services and thus won’t work outside the USA or in locations that this provider doesn’t offer coverage.

LifeStation features a wide selection of plans that start at $34.95 for GPS trackable devices, and you'll add extra buttons to a home or fall detection as needed easily.

Lack of official word doesn’t bode well for the corporate, say developers

Microsoft’s official repository, from which it serves all its cross-platform software for several Linux distros, was knocked offline for nearly a whole day.

Microsoft builds and supports a spread of software products for distros like Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, et al., and makes them available via standard APT and YUM package repositories. 

Many users who used these software and tools took to GitHub to boost the difficulty with the respective projects, including .NET Core, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft SQL Server for Linux, Microsoft Edge, et al..

Microsoft engineer, Rahul Bhandari, from the .NET team informed users that the repository “ran into some space issues.” 

The outage apparently disrupted the workflow of the many developers, who were frustrated by the shortage of communication from Microsoft.

In response to Bhandari’s update, which came several hours into the outage, one user listed several other issues raised by users in other projects that were closed with no update or resolution to the disruption.

A status update on the Azure DevOps project by another Microsoft programmer, Edgar Ruiz Silva pinned the difficulty of maintenance work. 

“The issue is now fully mitigated. Maintenance work on packages.microsoft.com caused temporary unavailability of some files therein the package repository. We apologize for the impact this had on our customers,” wrote Silva.

An outage of this type and scale by one among the leading cloud providers doesn't reflect well on Microsoft, especially when its competition goes all bent to demonstrate the prowess of their cloud computing platform.

The least that Microsoft can do now, especially given the quantity of disruption caused by the broken repositories, is to take the time to interact with its users and explain the difficulty intimately, alongside the steps they’ve taken to make sure such disruptions don’t reoccur.

Getting your voice heard during a Google Meet call should be easier than ever because of a replacement update to the service.

Google's video conferencing tool is upgrading its "Hand Raise" tool so as to form it simpler to deal with those participants eager to speak.

The improvements, which have begun rolling out now, include an "updated and improved visual icon and animation" on a user's video tile, giving a more dynamic view of when a participant wants to talk, and an audio notification will now play when the primary hand raise occurs on a call.

Google Meet can support up to 100 participants on desktop devices, and recently announced support for even bigger calls on Android and iOS devices also.

Many of the new changes look to be focused on large group calls and making users who wish to talk more visible to hosts. This includes a change that moves the video tiles of users who have raised their hands to become more visible during a group call. 

There will even be a clickable notification that shows everyone who has already raised their hand, also as ordering these people during a queue determined by once they first activated the decision for attention.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, and a welcome update for several, a participant’s hand will now even be automatically lowered after they speak, removing what had been a serious headache for call hosts everywhere.

The new tool is going to be on by default, with no admin or user controls, as Google aims to assist foster better teamwork in meetings.

Google says that the new features are going to be available in meetings organized by users with Workspace Essentials, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Nonprofits, also as G Suite Business customers.

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New AI system will come to all or any Seagate drives soon, says Google

Google Cloud and Seagate have devised a machine learning (ML) system to predict when disks inside Google’s data centers might fail.

Despite their volatility and high fail rates, hard disc drives (HDD) are the well-liked means of housing data inside a knowledge center. 

While newer and more reliable technologies like non-volatile storage are being touted as viable alternatives, IDC predicts that data centers will increase their storage capacity by 17.8% over the subsequent few years, with HDDs leading the way.

Here’s our collection of the simplest hard disc drives for desktops and laptops

These are the simplest cloud storage services on the market

Also, check our collection of the simplest SSDs

“At Google Cloud, we all know first-hand how critical it's to manage HDDs in operations and preemptively identify potential failures,” wrote Nitin Aggarwal, Technical Program Manager, and Rostam Dinyari, AI Engineer, with Google Cloud, during a joint blog post announcing the collaboration with Seagate.

The duo outlined the new ML system that helps them identify potential disk failures to avoid any outages and disruptions to their cloud services - and note that it could soon be unrolled wider also, meaning it'd soon be possible to identify issues in other HDDs.

 

In the past, engineers contend that manually sifting through the terabytes of raw telemetry data generated by the many HDDs to spot problems isn’t feasible. 

This led them to plan an automatic ML system to predict the health of the HDDs.

Together with Accenture, Google Cloud helped Seagate build a symbol of concept that supported by the 2 commonest drive types. 

The companies tested two models. One supported an AutoML Tables classifier and another was custom-developed for the project. the previous clothed to possess the upper precision of the 2 (98%) after analyzing the forecasts and predictions for a month.

While Google Cloud is using this as an example to hawk its ML tools that help put automation into production environments, the corporate said it plans to expand the system to support all Seagate drives. 

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Just before Google IO 2021

Android robot

(Image credit: Future)

We should hear tons more about Android 12 at the Google IO 2021 event happening on Tuesday, May 18, but if you're wanting to get a preview before time, then there are extensive leaks of the software interface to see out.

The leaks come from well-known tipster John Prosser and therefore the Front Page Tech YouTube channel – an equivalent source that earlier in the week unveiled details of what the Pixel 6 flagship could find yourself looking like.

While we have seen hints of the visual overhaul that's coming with Android 12, Prosser goes into far more detail: we get to ascertain a number of the planning tweaks that are coming to notifications and buttons, also as redesigned widgets for music playback, weather, and an analog clock.

According to a slide apparently leaked from Google IO 2021, Android will bring with it "a beautiful new experience", "stronger privacy and security protections", and confirm that "all of your devices work better together" also.

It's that "beautiful new experience" that these new leaks are centered around, with pastel colors and rounded edges in abundance – you'll see a couple of of the planning elements and a few of the updated Android 12 animations within the FrontPage Tech video, which we've embedded above.

Everything looks very fluid and fast – there are apparently incoming changes to the notification buttons within the status bar, the dimensions of the clock in the lock screen, and therefore the way that alerts are stacked on the display as they are available.

It looks as if the Android 12 keyboard is getting some visual refinements too, so there is a lot to require in here. None of those design changes have shown up within the developer preview versions of Android 12 that have already been released, but we'd see them within the first public beta edition.

While these visuals look legitimate and are available from an honest source – and match up with earlier leaks – we'll need to wait until Tuesday to understand needless to say what's coming with Android 12. TechRadar is going to be covering the event through and bringing you all the hardware and software news that Google announces.

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The team plan on adding more enhancements, including increasing the limit on the number of users at a time. “We have a limit of 50 participants to a meeting at the moment but we have received feedback from our users to increase it to 100. We are currently working on that, in addition to having various language options,” concludes Shoeb.