At the moment, Microsoft has only launched the downloads on the Windows Insider Program. The company says the features are available for those on the newest preview builds. With this release, the company is furthering its plans to release more open source distribution methods to the Windows Store. Indeed, at Build 2017, Microsoft confirmed that ubuntu and RedHat Fedora will both come to the store soon. The former is arriving on the Windows Store in collaboration with Ubuntu creator Canonical....

Apparently, the feature has been enabled in Windows 10 20H1 Preview Build 18932, which was released yesterday. However, it is currently hidden from users. To access the new search tool, you will need a tool such as Mach2. The addition is straightforward, it simply integrates a Bing search box into the lock screen. So, in the future you will be able to conduct a search before opening the PC. It is unclear whether this will mean Bing will surface results onto the lock screen or whether users will have to unlock after conducting the search....

European Commission regulators have been putting Microsoft Cloud under a microscope for three years. Smaller cloud providers have been concerned the company’s practices are shutting them out of the market. Earlier this year, Microsoft made an initial round of concessions, including allowing cloud providers to host Windows and Microsoft 365 apps on their own infrastructure. In a new blog post, the company is also addressing licensing concerns that were part of the investigation....

Microsoft has officially revealed Redstone 5 will indeed become the October 2018 Update. As the name suggests, the update will arrive in October. We already know some new additions to the platform include a cloud clipboard, dark File Explorer theme, and Microsoft Edge improvements. It’s true that this Redstone release is slightly less packed than previous Redstone builds. It certainly does not feel as seismic as Redstone 2, the Creators Update....

Available on PC and Xbox in 2020, Flight Simulator already has an Insider Program available. Microsoft has been updating the title weekly and earlier this month road-mapped its Tech Alpha 2 release. With the rollout of the first Tech Alpha build, Microsoft is making a few promises. Firstly, the company says users who were not chosen for the first alpha build will be automatically registered for the second. Microsoft says it wants to get “everyone interested in early build testing, actually testing early builds”....

Windows Terminal was launched last month, but developers could only access it through code on GitHub. Microsoft has now released an installer for the application on the Microsoft Store. Users can now install the Terminal app on Windows 10 as they would a normal Store app. If you are unfamiliar with the new service, the Terminal is a one-stop shop for command line implementation on Windows 10. Developers can leverage multiple tabs and customize the experience with themes....

In its announcement, the company also says Windows Server 2008 and later customers can also pull in the update. Available now, .NET Framework customers can get the release through the Windows Update, Windows Server Update Services, Microsoft Update Catalog, and Docker. Microsoft has made several important security changes. The company has fixed a code execution vulnerability that would occur when the framework processed untrusted inputs. This allowed hackers to potentially take over a system....

1 Securing Android for the Surface Duo?2 Features You may remember Microsoft announced its plan to bring Microsoft Defender ATP to Android and iOS back in February. Windows Defender ATP was launched in 2016 and is aimed at enterprise customers on Windows 10. The service provides an early barrier against cyberattacks, detecting and dealing with incoming threats on enterprise networks. Now that the service is available across platforms, it was rebranded as Microsoft Defender this year....

If you’re unfamiliar with Zerobot, it is a type of botnet that spreads across web applications and IoT by exploiting vulnerabilities. It is a malware as a service, which means it evolves over time. In fact, the Microsoft Defender for IoT security team says the botnet has been updated multiple times since it has been tracking the malware. Malware as a service is a relatively new concept in the cybercrime world....

Completely revamped models were supposed to change that by the end of this year, but that’s no longer the case. Mike Ybarra, vice president of Xbox and Windows gaming, confirmed a delay on Twitter. — Mike Ybarra (@Qwik) November 13, 2017 Disability Friendly It appears the Xbox team has further tweaks to make, so we’ll ‘most likely’ see them in early 2018. The Xbox avatars, as well a bringing beautiful new aesthetics, will give more customization....

The FCU brought two important new DirectX 12 features. Specifically, the new features give developers tools to determine what commands are at fault in a GPU crash. Rhyn says the tools were created to be used together in “device lost” and “device removed” problems. Before the introduction of the Fall Creators Update, DirectX 12 apps had no control over resource memory. However, there are certainly times when application developers need to access the resources....

The most prominent addition is breaking news notifications. Like the News app on desktop, Microsoft Edge will now alert the user when something important happens. A high percentage of users will have an app that does this already, but it’s a nice touch. Unfortunately, you can’t disable news alerts, but you are able to turn the news feed off entirely. It’s possible Microsoft will add it in the full build or give you the option once a notification gets pushed....

Dutch security researchers Bernard von Gastel and Carlo Meijer from Radboud University discovered the flaw and described it in a research paper. Titles “Weaknesses in the encryption of solid state drives,” the paper shows how hackers could access the drive and transfer data without needing password authentication. While this is clearly a major problem, it is somewhat self-mitigated. That’s because the attacker would need physical access to the drive to be able to exploit the vulnerability....

It is worth noting Microsoft Exchange Online has always had an upper limit. This is a cap on the number of emails someone can receive. This upper limit only really bothers so-called “hot recipients”, users who receive thousands of emails each hour. That upper limit is 3,600 but Microsoft has never really been strict about enforcing it. In other words, recipients were receiving over the upper limit without Microsoft stopping them....

Since launch DirectX 12 Ultimate has only been available to users running Windows 10 20H1 (May 2020 Update) or newer. Because of this limited availability, developers have been cool on creating for the new API is fewer people are using it. To stir developer interest, Microsoft is launching this week the DirectX 12 Agility SDK. While it is like DX12 Ultimate, the Agility SDK works with older Windows 10 versions....

However, Microsoft highlights that while its software lagged behind slightly in performance and false positive rates, it protected users 100% of the time. A new paper examines the results of the German AV-Tests and makes some interesting points. The main takeaway is that Windows Defender is still enough to protect users and that it’s getting better every year. The results show that it maintained a perfect protection score while improving in other areas....

The company originally planned to end the promotion on December 31, 2017. However, in its post, Microsoft says it wants the Windows 10 Pro path open for longer. So, the company has extended it to March 31, 2018. “For those that find they need an application that isn’t yet available in the Store and must be installed from another source, we’re extending the ability to switch from Windows 10 S to Windows 10 Pro for free until March 31, 2018....

The antitrust complaint has been filed with both the European Commission and the German Federal Cartel Office. Kaspersky has already pushed the same complaint through the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS). “We see clearly—and are ready to prove—that Microsoft uses its dominant position in the computer operating system (OS) market to fiercely promote its own—inferior—security software (Windows Defender) at the expense of users’ previously self-chosen security solution,” Kaspersky Lab CEO Eugene Kaspersky explains....

Microsoft says the bug has affected Windows 10 versions 1803 (April 2018 Update) and 1809 (October 2018 Update). The company removed the faulty driver from Windows Update on October 11. It seems there was a faulty keyboard driver sent out by HP. Of course, this is an OEM specific problem, so only users of HP Windows 10 devices would have been affected. The driver was version 11.0.3.1 and caused “known incompatibility with certain HP devices”....

Yesterday was June 2020 Patch Tuesday and one of the fixes released was a patch for the issues blocking those Surface products. This means some Surface users who install the patch can now download Windows 10 May 2020 Update. However, users of the Surface Laptop 3 and Surface Pro 7 will still have to wait to receive the update. One of the problems Surface device owners reported was unscheduled restarts for devices using multiple Always Connected network adapters....