Close to the Metal Ep. 41: Everything Microsoft, and our first reader poll

By Brad Bourque Published May 5, 2017

As Microsoft gears up for Build, it’s only natural the software producer-turned hardware maker would want to show off what its been working on. The press conference today marked the release of the Surface Laptop, a traditional notebook, and a Windows 10 S, a student edition with specific limits and quick pick-up time.

Software limitations set Windows 10 S apart from its full-featured sibling. Users can only run apps downloaded from the Windows Store, preventing any unwanted problematic installations or security issues. If need be, an administrator can install more typical x86 applications, but it wasn’t made clear exactly what that process would look like. In addition to client systems, Windows 10 S helps administrators configure other systems, with a simple wizard that creates USB drives to load that image onto new computers.

Speaking of new computers, Microsoft took the opportunity to roll out the Surface Laptop, starting at $999. While the Redmond team didn’t mention any specific configurations, the system will come with Seventh-Generation Intel Core i5 and i7 CPUs, and up to 1TB NVMe SSD options, with an estimated battery life of more than 14 hours.

Microsoft is certainly swinging for the fences, but is it risking its OEM partners by infringing on their territory? We’ll discuss all that and more on this week’s episode of Close to the Metal.

Close to the Metal is a podcast from Digital Trends that takes a deep dive into computing and PC gaming topics. Each show, we’ll focus in on one topic, and leave no stone unturned as we show off the latest in hardware and software. Whether it’s the latest GPU, supercomputers, or which 2-in-1 you should buy, we break down the complicated jargon and talk about how user experience is affected in the real world. Please subscribe, share, and send your questions to podcast@digitaltrends.com. We broadcast the show live on YouTube every Tuesday at 1pm EST/10am PST.

Former Staff Writer

Brad Bourque is a native Portlander, devout nerd, and craft beer enthusiast. He studied creative writing at Willamette…

Topics

Computing

Qualcomm is set to ratchet up chip prices in September, and your next gadget upgrade could bear the brunt

The price hike could touch every Snapdragon-powered device category.

The new Qualcomm Snadragon 8 Elite Gen 5

I want you to sit with this for a second. Qualcomm, the company whose Snapdragon chips sit inside your Android phone and tablet, your Windows laptop, your Meta smart glasses, your Galaxy Watch, and your wireless earbuds, reportedly sent a letter to every major customer telling them prices are going up by double digits.

The price hike will be in effect from September 1, 2026, a recent Bloomberg report claims. Essentially, all the companies placing their chip orders after that will pay a higher price.

Computing

Stop fighting with your roomie over outlets and get one of these multi-port chargers before you head back to school

One plug, zero drama, all your devices charged by morning.

Satechi ChargeView

Your room has one wall outlet, and you have multiple devices that need power by morning. Phone, laptop, tablet, earbuds, they're all vying for the same socket, and the bricks you own are single-port relics that hog it for just one gadget. You could throw a power strip at the problem, but then you're staring at a tangle of multiple bricks and cables that's enough to give you the sweats. A good multi-port charger cuts all that mess, and could be the only thing standing between you and a dead phone or laptop before your morning classes.

Back-to-school season is a smart time to buy one. You're already thinking about what'll go on your desk or in your bag, so it's the natural point to replace a pile of single-port bricks with one charger that does it all. I dug through the current crop of multi-port chargers so you don't have to, and here are five worth your money.

Computing

OpenAI’s rogue AI hack was just the beginning, Hugging Face warns

OpenAI’s rogue AI has come back to bite it

Hugging Face already knows what it is like to be attacked by an autonomous AI agent. If one of its co-founders is right, plenty of other companies are going to find out soon. Thomas Wolf, co-founder and chief science officer of Hugging Face, has called the recent cyberattack carried out by OpenAI models a “wake-up call” for the technology industry.

Speaking to the BBC, Wolf warned that AI-driven intrusions could become one of the most common forms of cyberattack and said many companies have yet to realize how dramatically the threat has changed. This arrives after OpenAI disclosed that its models escaped a restricted cybersecurity evaluation environment and compromised Hugging Face while trying to obtain answers for the ExploitGym benchmark. So Wolf’s comments now give us a better idea of what the attack looked like from the other side.