1 Ray Tracing2 Graphical Changes Interestingly, the Mojang developed game is about to gain a significant graphics overhaul. We’ll discuss why this development is interesting, but first let’s look at the specifics. Graphic improvement on Minecraft will only be for select users. Specifically, those who run the game on PC, allowing for the support of real-time ray tracing through the Nvidia RTX GPU. Microsoft and Nvidia have partnered on support for the RTX through an announcement at the Gamescom conference in Germany today....

SAP SE and Microsoft sent out a press release saying that the latest collaboration will see further cross-company integrations. Among them is SAP’s S/4 HANA database being used to run Microsoft’s core internal financial planning. In the other direction, SAP will now run more than a dozen critical internal financial systems on Microsoft Azure. “We are taking our partnership to the next level with this new capability to run S/4HANA in the Microsoft Azure environment,” said SAP CEO Bill McDermott....

Sony’s contention to the deal rests on Microsoft taking control of major franchises – most notably Call of Duty but also Warcraft and Candy Crush – and making them exclusive to Xbox Game Pass. This concern is shared by regulators such as the CMA, European Commission, and the FTC in the United States. Microsoft has consistently said it has no intention of making the Activision Blizzard franchises exclusive to Xbox....

In a blog post last month, Yousef Khalidi, corporate vice president for Azure networking announced SONiC. It is an open source software based on the Linux platform. It runs on networking switches and lets public cloud provider have more hardware tools across scales. “SONiC is built on the Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI), which defines a standardized API. Network hardware vendors can use it to develop innovative hardware platforms that can achieve great speeds while keeping the programming interface to ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) consistent....

At the moment, the availability of Office 2019 is limited to commercial volume license customers, those who buy Office in bulk for cross-organization deployment. Microsoft says consumer and commercial users will receive the latest release in the next few weeks. Office 2019 brings more artificial intelligence integration to the productivity suite. We also know Microsoft’s Dark Theme design is coming to Word, while the document app will also get improved inking integration with Windows 10....

Last month, Microsoft said it was integrating FPGA with Azure and Bing and is continuing to turn its attention to FPGA. Brainwave is the next step of the evolution. The company says its benchmarking shows the platform can sustain 39.5 Teraflops without the need for batching on a large gated recurrent. In its early tests, Microsoft was using the system on Intel Statix 10 FPGAs. Microsoft has often talked up the potential of FPGAs for machine learning and parallel computing....

In the post, Microsoft explains that the new licensing service comes from a changing dynamic in the meaning of a device. The company points to the evolving modern workplace and how devices are changing. IT is no longer just about the PC, but also includes IoT devices and collaborative hardware like Surface Hub. Furthermore, people are increasingly using bring-your-own (BYO) devices. The new Intune device-based subscription is now available to help cover the demands of an undefined device environment....

Allowing support for the Creators Update SDK has been achieved by making improvements to the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) Tools. Microsoft says Windows SDK Preview support now allows users to side-by-side install a new SDK. The company points out that this allows customers to carry on making packages for release SDK’s while also running an installed preview. With this ability, new APIs and functionality can be used without needing a separate machine....

It’s unclear what comes under the umbrella of other activity, but we expect notifications such as password and security question changes. The move makes a lot of sense, providing users with avenues other than their possibly compromised email and ensuring they see it as quickly as possible. Microsoft says it’s “part of our effort to provide the best protection for your account and keep you updated,” and it should be a great help in that regard....

Security firm Wiz discovered and disclosed the problem, which is found in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB. Specifically, the data of over 3,300 customers is open and available online without restriction. Threat actors could access this information and use it in a cyberattack. Azure Cosmos DB was announced at Build 2017. It is a cloud database service is a brand-new platform created from the ground up. It allows customers to power planet-scale cloud services and huge data applications....

Just three hours later, he received a message from a rep saying, “I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure.” Bongiorni was stunned that a salesperson was able to track him in such a manner. It is worth noting Canonical is the developers behind Ubuntu. Outraged by this breach of privacy, the security expert was less than diplomatic in his response: “What the f*** is happening here?...

To start, Microsoft has rebranded the Azure Migration Program (AMP) as the Azure Migration and Modernization Program (AMMP). Just a name change on the surface, but Microsoft says the addition of “Modernization” is important. The company says as it helped organizations migrate to Microsoft Azure over the last year, those same customers were asking for help in modernizing their internal applications. Azure Migration in its new AMMP form will now include support for app modernization and also include support for Azure Cosmos DB and Azure Spring Cloud....

The CSS Custom Properties is a new primitive value type which allows users to fully cascade variables across CSS properties. Microsoft clarifies in the blog post that users can already preview CSS Custom Properties in Windows Insider Preview builds beginning with EdgeHTML 15.15061. What are CSS Custom Properties? SASS, LESS, and other pre-processors have been offering variables in CSS for years. However, these tools are effectively a “find & replace” of the specified value....

Interestingly, PCs running Windows 7 will be start receiving notifications next month warning them about the end of support and the need to upgrade. Why Microsoft has decided now is a good time to release DirectX 12 support is unclear. However, the company said the decision shows its commitment to listen to customers. The first title to spear with DirectX 12 support on Win7 is Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. “At Microsoft, we make every effort to respond to customer feedback, so when we received this feedback from Blizzard and other developers, we decided to act on it,” explains DirectX program manager Jianye Lu....

In a blog post to announce Dynamics NAV 2018, Microsoft says small and mid-sized businesses can sometimes struggle to compete when accelerating to new technology. The new solution if now generally available to customers with new capabilities and more interoperability through Microsoft’s other services. This includes integration with Office 365. The latest version of Dynamics NAV works across devices to help organizations react more efficiently to business changes. In its announcement, Microsoft announced the following capabilities of the suite:...

Organizations can tap into the eCDN service to deliver meetings via video across an employee base, no matter where they are in the world. One of the benefits of using the platform is a reduction in network bandwidth, while it will also include security to protect streams. That bandwidth promise will appeal to businesses. Organizations often face bandwidth bottlenecks on corporate networks. Microsoft’s eCDN product uses peer-to-peer device connection to distribute content load....

DevTools Tooltips First up is DevTools Tooltips, which provides an overlay for Microsoft Edge DevTools. Users can use the layer to understand what panels across tabs do. Working in tandem with Focus Mode UI, developers access informative overlays by selecting the “?” icon. In this mode, users can toggle between overlays with information. Focus Mode UI Another new developer mode in Microsoft Edge, Focus Mode UI gives users tools for group tabs together....

Indeed, Microsoft Edge is now the second most popular web browser in terms of market share. According to the March 2020 report from NetMarketShare, Edge has surpassed Firefox. Again, looking back it is amazing Microsoft Edge has come this far. Microsoft has fleshed out the feature set of the browser, but it still feels like the last year has been the catalyst for the new growth. At the end of 2018, Microsoft announced it would be removing Edge from its EDGEHTML rendering and moving it to Google’s Chromium engine....

If the name of that tool sounds familiar to you, that’s because you may has already heard it and may well have already used the feature. Dynamic Arrays for Excel were first announced and introduced last year. However, since then the feature has only been available to a limited number of Office users. In a recent blog post, Microsoft says improving formula management is important. The company says formulas in Excel has been a limitation on the app because a formula can only output data to a single cell....

The investigation points a strong finger at Turla, a Russian hacking group suspected of having links to their government. Infected networks contained the Turla malware on the same network, featured similar filenames, and reused Powershell scripts and email addresses. Three victims were discovered, including a ministry of foreign affairs and a regional diplomatic organization. The organizations were located in Brazil, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. The First of Its Kind ESET believes this is the first malware that targets Exchange specifically and the only to use a mail transfer agent....