Microsoft has announced a new, upcoming feature, that aims to solve a decades-old conundrum with DNS security.
The feature is called ZTDNS, or Zero Trust Domain Name System, and is currently entering private preview. Microsoft promised a separate announcement once the feature makes it to the Insiders program.
In a blog post, Microsoft explained how virtually since its inception, the process of translating human-readable domain names into IP addresses was, from a security standpoint, a major risk. Due to the way DNS was designed, IT admins were often faced with a choice: to either add cryptographic authentication and encryption to DNS and risk losing visibility over malicious traffic, or route DNS traffic in clear text and leave no option for the server and the client device to authenticate each other, which is as equally risky.
No new protocols
To solve this problem, Microsoft decided to integrate the Windows DNS engine with a core part of Windows Firewall – Windows Filtering Platform – directly into end devices.
Commenting for Ars Technica, VP of research and development at Hunter Strategy, Jake Williams, said integrating these engines will allow Windows Firewall to be updated with a per-domain name basis. In other words, organizations will be able to tell clients “only use our DNS server, that uses TLS, and will only resolve certain domains.” Microsoft calls this DNS server or servers the “protective DNS server.”
“For DNS servers to be used as Protective DNS servers for ZTDNS lockdown, the minimum requirement is to support either DNS over HTTPS (DoH) or DNS over TLS (DoT), as ZTDNS will prevent the use of plain-text DNS by Windows,” Microsoft explained in its blog post. “Optionally, use of mTLS on the encrypted DNS connections will allow Protective DNS to apply per-client resolution policies.”
To conclude, Microsoft stressed that ZTDNS doesn’t include new network protocols, which should enable an “interoperable approach” to domain-name-based lockdown.
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Go ahead and make fun of the Apple iPad on your favorite social network, I dare you. You will be swarmed by iPad fans, defending their favorite tablet to the death, which always seems to be just over the horizon for the tablet market. We got no new iPads in 2023, making it one of the hardest ever for iPad fanatics, but I say fear not! The iPad is healthy, and I see a brighter future than ever for Apple’s tablet.
Is the iPad really healthy? Well, according to Canalys, iPad sales declined year-on-year by quite a bit, as much as 24%. That still left Apple in a distant first place among tablet makers. Samsung’s sales declined only 11%, but it still shipped less than half of the tablets that Apple delivered, according to Canalys estimates.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra is incredibly capable (Image credit: Future / Philip Berne)
That’s gotta be tough news for Samsung. The latest Galaxy Tab S9 series, including the more affordable Galaxy Tab S9 FE, are some of Samsung’s best tablets ever. The entire lineup is IP68 water resistant, which is a first for tablets that aren’t sold as rugged business tablets. They come with an S Pen, which is a better stylus than the Apple Pencil, a $79 / £79 / AU$139 implement that doesn’t even work with every iPad.
The iPad didn’t need an update to stay up-to-date
The iPad, on the other hand, has languished on shelves for a long time. There were no iPad updates in 2023. After endowing the iPad Pro with the M2 chip, and the iPad Air with the M1 chip, in late 2022, Apple left the tablet alone.
The base model iPad was updated in 2022, and it still uses a mobile A14 Bionic chipset, while the even older iPad mini, last updated in 2021, inexplicably uses a faster A15 Bionic. Apple also still sells the iPad 10.2-inch model from 2021 as a new device.
You can still buy this 2021 iPad 10.2 from Apple brand new (Image credit: TechRadar)
Here’s the thing – the iPad was already more than a year ahead of other tablets on the market. Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S is a powerful, capable Android tablet with a fantastic display. Its Snapdragon processor can’t come close to the iPad Air’s M1 chip. The M1 chipset can power a professional laptop. The Snapdragon is strictly mobile.
Even the A14 Bionic chipset in the base model iPad gives the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, found in the Galaxy Tab S9, a run for its money.
The iPad is so overpowered it sticks around longer
How could Apple improve the iPad? Maybe a better question would ask, what improvements do we need? The iPad is already powerful, well-designed, and long-lasting. I mean it lasts a long time in battery tests, and it also lasts a long time as a product you’ll own. When it comes to longevity, the iPad puts the iPhone to shame, though maybe that should change.
I owned the very first iPad, and I used it for at least six years before I broke it accidentally by dropping it. By then, it wasn’t worth fixing, but I felt I’d gotten plenty of value out of that purchase. On the last day it was alive, I was able to do everything I wanted, including playing games, watching movies, and browsing all of my favorite websites. A six-year-old iPad was completely capable, and I couldn’t have asked for more.
The original iPad lasted a very long time, years and years
A big reason why the iPad market has stalled is because the market is saturated. People keep iPads and tablets much longer than they keep phones. On inspection, we should probably all just hold onto our phones longer. If a five-year-old iPad is a powerhouse, then a five-year-old iPhone is probably much more capable than we all imagine.
The difference is that Apple and our mobile carriers offer us financial incentives to trade in our old phones for new ones. That’s how we buy phones, on contracts and payment plans. That’s not how most people pay for tablets.
Do you really need a fourth screen? Of course you do
The iPad is the best of all of those worlds, and iPad fans know it
That’s the real problem with the iPad: it’s another expenditure on a device that replaces… well, nothing. If you have an iPhone, you can do everything the iPad can do, and more. If you have a laptop, too, then you really don’t need a third screen. What about that smart TV on your wall? Now, an iPad makes four screens, and there’s nothing it offers that your other screens can’t manage.
The iPad isn’t an impulse buy, either. It isn’t a hundred bucks or so. You can’t buy it with the gift card you won in a work raffle like you might buy an Amazon Fire tablet for $100. The iPad costs hundreds, and that’s before you add accessories like the Apple Pencil, a keyboard, or even just a nice folio cover.
Still, there is something undeniable about its appeal. The iPad is more powerful and capable than a smartphone. It’s more portable than a laptop. It’s more personal than the TV hanging on the wall. The iPad is the best of all of those worlds, and iPad fans know it.
The iPad’s bottom line is much lower this year
Of course a new iPad Air with an OLED screen would be sweet (Image credit: Apple)
Here’s what truly made this past year a boon for iPad fans. Every iPad model can be found for the lowest price ever. The iPad 10.9 is $429 / £307.62 right now on Amazon, down from $449 / £499 at launch. The iPad Air is $449 / £438.02, down from $599 / £569. Sorry, Australian friends, Amazon isn’t giving you the same iPad discount these days.
The iPad Pro hasn’t dropped as much as the rest, but the 64GB M1 iPad Air now costs $150 / £120 less on Amazon than it did when it launched. That’s a 25% discount in the US. Maybe Apple was doing the right thing by delaying any iPad update as long as possible. The iPad didn’t need an update. It needed a price cut.
The rising cost of living has led to some holding onto their phones longer than ever. Coupled with the steady rises in the price of phones, we’re buying phones less often but expecting longer hardware and software lifespans.
The Samsung Galaxy S24 and Google Pixel 8 series have addressed the software side by providing support cycles of seven years of OS updates. This extended software support seems appealing at first glance, but I’m not so sure. Instead, I feel that the promise of longevity via continued updates is just another marketing strategy to convince you to buy an expensive flagship device.
Call me cynical, but holding on to a phone for seven years and expecting it to run seamlessly seems unrealistic. Even if the software is updated, the outdated hardware will struggle with modern apps’ increasing complexity and demands. If you want your phone for anything more than light use, this could be a problem.
What’s more, older hardware could miss new features applied in future software updates. For instance, the seven-year-old Google Pixel 2 lacks 5G support, and older Samsung devices may not run the latest Galaxy AI features.
Extended OS support made me think about what it would be like to use my hopelessly outdated Samsung Galaxy S8 from seven years ago today. Not that it was a bad phone, it’s just that technology has advanced rapidly in the past few years, particularly in processor, battery, and camera technology, and many devices begin to feel sluggish and old long before their software support period is up.
Instead of returning to a seven-year-old device and tearing my hair out waiting for it to load, I switched to my relatively newer and more capable, four-year-old Samsung Galaxy S20 to see if it could still hold its own among the newest smartphones.
So, I begrudgingly removed my SIM card from my cutting-edge OnePlus 12 and slapped it back into my old Galaxy S20, transporting myself back to 2020…
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Design
The first thing that struck me about the Samsung Galaxy S20 was how compact and light it is compared to many modern phones. I’m also a big fan of the curved design that has been mostly replaced by a thicker, flat body in many recent flagships.
The compact size feels so comfortable and much more pocketable than many of today’s phones, bar the base iPhone 15. Still, this more compact design comes at the cost of a smaller screen, which makes watching films and videos and gaming a little harder, but not impossible.
On my second day using the Galaxy S20, I accidentally dropped it in the sink. Thankfully, I discovered it is more water resistant than my OnePlus 12, with an IP68 rating compared to the IP65 on that device, meaning I can honestly say “they don’t make them like they used to”.
(Image credit: Future)
Display
The screen on the Galaxy S20 holds up the best to its modern contemporary. The 6.2-inch AMOLED display supports HDR10+, a fast 120Hz refresh rate, and 1,200 nits peak brightness, which is respectable even four years later.
It’s also a pixel powerhouse due to its high resolution of 1440 x 3200, which makes it better than its successors, the Galaxy S21, S22, and even the S23. It’s even slightly higher resolution than my OnePlus 12’s 1440 x 3168; it really is incredibly sharp.
Samsung is known for its vibrant displays and the Galaxy S20 is no exception, offering rich, saturated colors. That said, gaming felt a little cramped and slightly less responsive on this screen, which led to more than a few untimely deaths.
Performance and gaming
The Galaxy S20 uses a Samsung Exynos 990 processor, and I had low expectations for this older chip. I needn’t have worried: it was much snappier than I predicted, with most apps booting up quickly and feeling responsive.
It could just about run demanding games like COD Mobile and Genshin Impact at mid-to-high settings, albeit with a few issues. For instance, I did notice the odd stutter, and it couldn’t seem to maintain high performance. The phone also became noticeably warm when running games, and despite running the battery down very quickly, I was too worried to plug it in while playing due to the heat build-up.
The Galaxy S20’s performance was confirmed with benchmarking software. It received a decent score of 1,260 for Single-Core processing and 3,287 for Multi-Core, outperforming newer mid-rangers such as the Google Pixel 7a and Samsung Galaxy A54.
My Galaxy S20 came with 8GB RAM, but this can be boosted by up to an additional 8GB of virtual RAM, another feature I assumed was a more recent development but was pleased to see included. This allows you to run more apps in the background simultaneously.
However, the version I used had only 128GB of storage, which seems small until you consider it comes with expandable memory via a microSD slot. This feature is almost extinct in modern smartphones and certainly doesn’t appear in flagship phones these days. I had forgotten how easy microSD slots made transferring files such as photos and music to and from my PC, and I wish this feature would return to premium handsets.
Camera
(Image credit: Future)
The S20’s camera system isn’t much to look at; the phone’s compact size means it has to use smaller sensors than some contemporary camera modules. However, it does still have a triple camera system, which consists of a 12MP main, a 12MP ultra-wide, and a 64MP telephoto.
In use, it was decent enough – but not a patch on the best camera phones available today. Like chipsets, cameras have developed incredibly quickly over the past five years, so while the Galaxy S20 still takes sharp and good-quality pictures in ideal lighting conditions, it lacks some modern features that I take for granted.
One of the modern features I missed most was the periscope zoom from my OnePlus 12; the S20’s 64MP telephoto loses image quality as soon as you get a little over three times zoom. Its low-light performance wasn’t nearly as clear or detailed as some modern phones, either, and it was also harder to take pictures with a nicely blurred-out background.
(Image credit: Future / James Ide)
The colors were inconsistent, sometimes appearing quite bright, but other items looked dull. Neither seemed as accurate as those on the newer Google Pixel or OnePlus 12. Oh, and the dynamic range was slightly more limited than with my OnePlus 12, with some details blown out in highlights or lost in dark corners.
Battery
The S20’s 4,000mAh capacity battery can’t compete against the latest phones, which generally hold a larger charge and support faster charging, usually aided by much more efficient hardware.
However, the Galaxy S20 lasted almost a full day during the time I was using it, as long as I didn’t play intense games, watch lots of videos, or attempt to do anything fun. Otherwise, it dropped to under 5 hours. It supports 24W wired charging, which isn’t great – but on the flip side, the iPhone 15 only gets 20W charging, so it isn’t terrible either.
One big difference I noticed is was that the Galaxy S20 took over an hour to charge, which seems too long these. Then again, maybe I’ve been spoilt by the OnePlus 12’s fast charging, which is truly incredible; that phone takes just 26 minutes to juice up in full.
Admitting defeat?
So, did my time with the Samsung Galaxy S20 prove my point that older hardware will never stand up to the test of time and be worth continued software support? Well, yes and no.
First, the good: the S20 is an exceptional phone with hardware that held up much better than I had expected.
However, it still has some fundamental problems related to its age that a slick design and an exceptional screen couldn’t help me overlook. For example, it has a less efficient chipset, weaker battery and slower charging, and mixed photo quality. These drawbacks made it harder for me to rely on for day-to-day use, and I was ultimately relieved to return to my OnePlus 12.
The fact is, I wouldn’t keep it as my daily driver even if this model were still supported for another three years. What’s more, I suspect most phones won’t age as gracefully as the four-year-old Galaxy S20 has. And in another three years, it will truly be an anachronism.
So while I don’t consider long software support commitments to be a bad thing in themselves, I really don’t see the likes of the Pixel 8 Pro and Galaxy S24 Ultra being able to keep up in the far-flung year of 2031, and I suspect I’ll have my eye on the Pixel 15 or Galaxy S31 by then.
A man with a balloon for a head is somehow not the weirdest thing you’ll see today thanks to a series of experimental video clips made by seven artists using OpenAI’s Sora generative video creation platform.
Unlike OpenAI‘s ChatGPT AI chatbot and the DALL-E image generation platform, the company’s text-to-video tool still isn’t publicly available. However, on Monday, OpenAI revealed it had given Sora access to “visual artists, designers, creative directors, and filmmakers” and revealed their efforts in a “first impressions” blog post.
While all of the films ranging in length from 20 seconds to a minute-and-a-half are visually stunning, most are what you might describe as abstract. OpenAI’s Artist In Residence Alex Reben’s 20-second film is an exploration of what could very well be some of his sculptures (or at least concepts for them), and creative director Josephine Miller’s video depicts models melded with what looks like translucent stained glass.
Not all the videos are so esoteric.
OpenAI Sora AI-generated video image by Don Allen Stevenson III (Image credit: OpenAI sora / Don Allen Stevenson III)
If we had to give out an award for most entertaining, it might be multimedia production company shy kids’ “Air Head”. It’s an on-the-nose short film about a man whose head is a hot-air-filled yellow balloon. It might remind you of an AI-twisted version of the classic film, The Red Balloon, although only if you expected the boy to grow up and marry the red balloon and…never mind.
Sora’s ability to convincingly merge the fantastical balloon head with what looks like a human body and a realistic environment is stunning. As shy kids’ Walter Woodman noted, “As great as Sora is at generating things that appear real, what excites us is its ability to make things that are totally surreal.” And yes, it’s a funny and extremely surreal little movie.
But wait, it gets stranger.
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The other video that will have you waking up in the middle of the night is digital artist Don Allen Stevenson III’s “Beyond Our Reality,” which is like a twisted National Geographic nature film depicting never-before-seen animal mergings like the Girafflamingo, flying pigs, and the Eel Cat. Each one looks as if a mad scientist grabbed disparate animals, carved them up, and then perfectly melded them to create these new chimeras.
OpenAI and the artists never detail the prompts used to generate the videos, nor the effort it took to get from the idea to the final video. Did they all simply type in a paragraph describing the scene, style, and level of reality and hit enter, or was this an iterative process that somehow got them to the point where the man’s balloon head somehow perfectly met his shoulders or the Bunny Armadillo transformed from grotesque to the final, cute product?
That OpenAI has invited creatives to take Sora for a test run is not surprising. It’s their livelihoods in art, film, and animation that are most at risk from Sora’s already impressive capabilities. Most seem convinced it’s a tool that can help them more quickly develop finished commercial products.
“The ability to rapidly conceptualize at such a high level of quality is not only challenging my creative process but also helping me evolve in storytelling. It’s enabling me to translate my imagination with fewer technical constraints,” said Josephine Miller in the blog post.
Go watch the clips but don’t blame us if you wake up in the middle of the night screaming.
Microsoft has announced its Copilot (AI) tools will be rolling out to more users than ever before with the expansion of its Pro tier.
The move will see the more advanced version of the platform available to more users across the globe without the need for confusing subscriptions, with Copilot Pro now available in all 222 countries where Copilot is available.
“Copilot is your everyday AI companion, meant to bring the power of generative AI to everyone across work and life,” noted Microsoft’s Divya Kumar, General Manager, Search and AI Marketing in a blog post announcing the news. “With Copilot, we’re committed to giving everyone the opportunity to supercharge their creativity and productivity.”
Microsoft Copilot Pro expansion
The upgrade means that the use of Copilot across the Microsoft 365 web app collection, including popular tools such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more, will be available as part of your Copilot Pro subscription.
Previously, users had to have an additional Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription to access the tools online – and this will still be the case for desktop apps across PC and Mac.
The upgrade will also extend to Copilot Pro subscribers on the Microsoft 365 and Outlook mobile apps for iOS and Android in the coming months.
Copilot Pro will remain at its price of $20 / £19 per month/per user, but Microsoft is currently offering a 1-month free trial of Copilot Pro for anyone who downloads the mobile app for iOS or Android.
Elsewhere, the upgrade will bring Copilot GPT Builder to all Copilot Pro subscribers, allowing users to build custom Copilot GPTs to help solve specific problems or aid certain tasks, which Microsoft giving examples across job hunting, studying or even cooking.
“We want all power users, creators, and anyone else to take their Copilot experience to the next level,” added Kumar.
Released in January 2024, Copilot Pro is powered by some of the very latest AI models around today, including Open AI‘s GPT-4 Turbo, which offers faster and smarter assistance than previous generations. As well as assistance in productivity apps, the platform also offers Microsoft’s Image Creator from Designer (previously known as Bing Image Creator), providing enhanced AI image creation at a higher quality than ever before.
