Five-hundred-and-thirty-nine in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Work on future versions of Windows 11 continued this week. Microsoft added an option to hide date and time in one build, and (re)added support for Content Adaptive Brightness Control for plugged in devices in another.

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Smart communities and smart cities are set to deliver a number of benefits, including environmental sustainability, reducing the digital divide, and improving people's lives with smarter, personalized and more intuitive services and experiences.

But making them work involves a good deal of technology such as 5G, small cells and distributed antenna systems (DAS), as well as needing partnerships between governments and businesses. We spoke to Brendan O'Reilly, group chief technology officer at BAI Communications to find out more about smart communities and what makes them work.

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When you think about gaming on a handheld device that is running Windows, Steam Deck may be the first device that comes to your mind. It is developed by Valve, maker of Steam, and optimized for running Steam games.

It is available in three different versions and costs between $400 to $700, based on the selected version. The main difference is storage, with the two higher priced versions using NVMe SSDs and the entry level version eMMC.

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In Amplify Your Influence: Transform How You Communicate and Lead, celebrated keynote speaker, trainer and leadership coach Rene Rodriguez delivers an eye-opening roadmap to using applied neuroscience to improve readers’ communication ability, critical thinking, cultural awareness, and leadership skills. 

Based in the author’s proprietary AMPLIFII system and methodologies he has taught to over 100,000 participants around the world, the book offers practical tips, useful frameworks, guided practice, and simple application exercises to help readers create new and lasting behaviors that effect change in their life and work. 

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At Incognia, we speak with experts in the fields of risk, trust & safety, security, and data science every day, and in almost every one of these conversations, one or all of these recurring themes are mentioned:

1) Fraudsters and scammers are innovating at an accelerated pace, 2) Fraud detection technologies that were once extremely reliable have become less effective, specifically device fingerprinting, 3) Evaluating new risk signals is critical in an effort to continuously stay ahead of the fraudsters and scammers.

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Many security professionals have been misled into believing in the overhyped promise of agentless security. But it looks like the long-lasting 'agentless vs. agent' debate is finally over and the result is finally in -- if you want great cloud workload security, you need an agent.

This noteworthy outcome arose when two of the leading agentless-only vendors finally gave in and announced partnerships with agent-based runtime security and CWPP (cloud workload protection platform) vendors. This is big news, because both of these companies had previously, and persistently proclaimed, that agents are 'old school' and that 'agent-based security is dead'.

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'Graymail' refers to those emails that aren't quite spam but which aren't necessarily all that helpful either. Think things like newsletters, announcements, or advertisements that you may have opted into in the past but which have outlived their usefulness.

It presents a headache for security teams as it can be hard to distinguish from malicious content like reconnaissance attacks. Armorblox is launching a new product aimed at cutting the time security teams spend managing graymail and mitigating the security risks from malicious recon attacks.

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Within the last two years, droves of accountants and auditors across the U.S. have exited the financial field, severely limiting the services and expertise that accounting firms provide many small and midsize businesses (SMBs).

Unfortunately, America’s accountant shortage shows no signs of stopping, and many SMBs continue to face significant challenges when partnering with outside accounting firms. In fact, according to Capterra's Accounting Shortage Survey, 64 percent of SMBs are struggling to find outside firms that can handle their accounting and finance needs.

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New research reveals that CISOs are finding it increasingly difficult to keep their software secure as hybrid and multicloud environments become more complex, and teams continue to rely on manual processes that make it easier for vulnerabilities to slip into production.

The study from Dynatrace shows 68 percent of CISOs say vulnerability management is more difficult because the complexity of their software supply chain and cloud ecosystem has increased.

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From today, Ubuntu 23.04 (Lunar Lobster) will be available for download, publisher Canonical has announced. The release marks a significant step forward for enterprise deployment and customization.

A unified Ubuntu server and desktop installation engine, Subiquity, supports the same autoinstall configuration workflows for both desktops and servers, making life easier for admins. The Ubuntu 23.04 installer has a refreshed user interface with a modern but familiar first-time user experience, along with new enterprise management capabilities.

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A new report based on publicly available resources finds a 25 percent increase in ransomware victims from Q4 2022 and a 27 percent increase compared to Q1 of the same year.

The study from GuidePoint Security's Research and Intelligence Team (GRIT) tracked 849 total publicly posted ransomware victims claimed by 29 different threat groups in the first quarter of this year.

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Twitter has undergone some huge changes since Elon Musk took over at the social media platform, many of which have been very public. But others, like a recent update to its Hateful Content policy, have been quietly slipped out without announcement.

The policy change sees Twitter removing sections that specifically protected transgender users. This means that a long-standing ban on the purposeful deadnaming or misgendering of trans users has been lifted, leading to condemnation from LGBTQIA+ groups and angering the trans community.

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Microsoft today rolled out a new Windows 11 build to Insiders in the Canary Channel that brings Content Adaptive Brightness Control (CABC) to plugged in devices.

Insiders on the Dev Channel aren’t missing out though, as Windows 11 Build 23440 arrives today, with a decent amount of new features and fixes for testers in that channel.

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Two weeks ago, Microsoft released a Windows 11 build to the Dev Channel which came with Content Adaptive Brightness Control (CABC) -- an energy-saving feature that works by dimming areas of the screen depending on the content that is being viewed. It was supposed to be something that would benefit all, including desktop users.

Shortly afterwards, Microsoft backtracked, and said the feature wouldn’t be available to desktops after all. From today, Canary Channel Build 25346 introduces CABC support for laptops and 2-in-1’s that are plugged into a charger.

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Cybercriminals are incessantly coming up with new ways to compromise online systems and wreak havoc, creating an ever-growing need for cybersecurity practitioners in every organization across the globe who understand international security standards, such as the ISO27k family of standards.

If you’re looking to ensure that your company's data conforms to these standards, Cybersecurity and Privacy Law Handbook has got you covered.

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