Motherboard has expanded its investigation into the situation and found Microsoft also allow contractors to listen to voice commands on the console. Several third-party contractors have confirmed they are told to listen to Xbox One users. For the most part, user recordings are monitored from commands given to the Kinect camera that shipped with the original Xbox One. As Microsoft has already confirmed it allows contractors listen to Cortana, it is not surprising it extends to other services too....

The situation is hardly much of a surprise, although it remains interesting that 10th anniversary celebrations won’t include the person who actually created what’s being celebrated. Either way, Microsoft had the following to say on Persson’s involvement: “His comments and opinions do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang and are not representative of Minecraft.” If you are out of the loop on the situation, Notch has received major criticism in recent years....

In a blog post, Microsoft’s Sylvie Liu said the Azure team collaborated with Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center to create the new feature. By tapping into Microsoft machine learning technology, Fusion can spot attacks in their early stages. Alerts of security teams allows time to prevent threats from escalating. “Preventing such attacks in the first place would be the ideal solution, but with the new trend of ‘ransomware as a service’ and human-operated ransomware, the scope and the sophistication of attacks are increasing — attackers are using slow and stealth techniques to compromise the network, which makes it harder to detect them in the first place,” says Liu....

It turns out the former is the case. Microsoft is now rolling out a new Windows 11 preview build to the Dev and Beta channels. Specifically, this is build 22000.132 and brings the integrated Microsoft Teams experience. You will also find the new Snipping Tool in this build. As predicted the new feature is complete replacing Skip & Sketch and taking some of its abilities. It is also worth noting the Mail and Calendar apps have also been updated to reflect the new “Flow” design language of Windows 11....

The Digital Equity Data Dashboard is the work of the Microsoft AI for Good Lab and Juan Lavista Ferres, Microsoft’s Chief Data Science Officer. It runs on the company’s Power BI app. The tool works by aggregating public data taken from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Census Bureau, BroadbandNow, and Microsoft’s own information from Broadband Usage Data. It automatically tracks 20 different indicators of digital equality by going from census tract-by-census tract....

In fact, Visual Studio 2022 Preview 3.1 is a cumulative update that makes two important fixes to the platform. Specifically, Microsoft has fixed a problem when installing WebView 2 would cause VS installations to fail. Secondly, the company has also patched an issue where code changes for break points in the debugger get stuck in the process. You can check out the official changelog from Microsoft below: “Fixes an issue installing the Microsoft....

Specifically, the native Windows 10 antivirus tool is warning against blocking telemetry through editing HOSTS files. Telemetry data is information on the system that on Windows 10 is gathered by Microsoft as part of the Connected User Experience. The platform is connected to Microsoft, allowing information about the device to be sent to the company. With this information, Microsoft can see hardware specifics of the machine, including storage, memory, CPU, and configuration....

[02:09] “I just heard back from our PR team and apparently it is not true, it is a rumor that we [Microsoft] are buying MicroVision. That’s all I have at the moment. Sorry- probably disappointing to a lot of you. No truth to the rumor. We don’t have anything to add at the moment.” The story published yesterday by Florida Independent seems to be based on a story published on TodaysFive from May 8th, 2020....

While its fair to say most people have never heard of Peter Skillman, he has had a major impact on Microsoft and tech in general before joining Redmond. Indeed, before joining Microsoft Skillman was best known for working with Palm and Nokia. As VP of Design for Palm he was at the helm of webOS and introduced the platform to the world. Later with Nokia, he was part of the development team behind the scrapped MeeGo OS....

Discovered by Microsoft watcher WalkingCat on Twitter, the documentation suggests the company is preparing a preview release. The documentation details two release channels for Microsoft Edge on Chromium. One is Microsoft Edge Canary, with Canary referencing Google’s preview version of Chrome. The other branch is Microsoft Edge Dev. Looking at the details, it looks as though Microsoft will limit Edge Insider Preview to Windows 10 64-bit. When available, the browser is expected to run on Windows 7, Windows 8....

Google, it seems, is a major influencing factor in this decision. The Chrome team announced a temporary halt to its stable builds on March 19 as schedules adapt to the global pandemic and new work from home requirements. “This week, majority of our team found ourselves in a fast changing time keeping social distance from each other (not to forget, part of our team has been experiencing it for a while),” said Chrome developers on Twitter previously....

This is essentially a repackaged CloudKnox Permissions Management that will be a part of Microsoft Entra. At the core of the Microsoft Entra Permissions Management is the ability to customers to discover, monitor, and fix issues in permissions across all identity resources. The service constantly monitors permission usage for both humans and workloads. Abilities Admins are able to enforce permissions principles around what privileges are given. Microsoft Entra taps into historical data across an organization to help improve security around identities....

Specifically, the companies have entered a licensing agreement for TruGrid to access Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). “This partnership combines Microsoft’s cutting-edge technology and TruGrid’s innovative approach to connectivity and solutions based on Azure,” said Micky Minhas, head of Microsoft Technology Licensing. “This deal is an example of the ways we can help partners around the world meet their customers’ evolving business needs in the cloud.” TruGrid already uses Remote Desktop Services (RDS) to simplify desktop integration through network access to Enterprise Workspaces....

Of course, the discovery of an exploit by Google also starts a countdown timer. In a bid to encourage rapid fixes, the team promises to publish flaws ninety days after the developer is notified. There was some concern, then, about Microsoft’s ability to patch it in time. Thankfully, the tech giant was able to remedy the issue in just two days. Now that it’s fixed, we’re privy to a few more details....

In its official announcement, Oberthur Technologies says the GSMA Consumer Phase 2 eSIM (embedded SIM) will help change connectivity standards for devices. Customers will be able to have a wider range of connections and be more ubiquitous in choice of cellular service. Embedded SIMs are different to traditional SIM cards because they cannot be removed. They are programmable, which allows users to change network provider of contract on the fly....

However, proponents of open software are angered by a recent decision by Microsoft to remove code for YouTube-DL. If you’re unfamiliar with YouTube-DL, it is a tool for internet video download commands. While the tool is not illegal, it is problematic. It does not violate copyrights, but it allows users to circumvent those laws. These types of software are illegal under section 1201 of US copyright law. On paper, then, Microsoft is correct for taking action....

Microsoft is making 124 million US building footprints available to the community, over four times its current amount. Rather than relying on community contributions and city and county imports, the tech giant leveraged AI to provide accurate data. The Bing Maps teams used the CNTK Unified Toolkit and upsampling for a precision rate of 99.3%. The deep neural network was trained on 5 million labeled satellite images, primarily of residential areas but also with mountains, deserts, beaches, and coasts....

CNIL, the data protection regulator in France, says Microsoft has not given users enough choice on Bing. Microsoft is conceding and paying the fine, while also providing an opt out option for cookies on the search engine. However, the company has not made a decision on whether it will comply with the ad fraud detection cookie consent. A spokesperson for the company says it is “concerned with the CNIL’s position on advertising fraud” because these cookies “shouldn’t require consent by those intending to defraud others....

In an update, Microsoft has confirmed the problem in a Tech Community blog post. According to the company, a fix is currently available. Samsung also provides more details about the issue. The company confirms that there are enrollment issues related to Microsoft Intune on Galaxy S22 smartphones. When users attempt to enroll, they see the following error: Can’t setup device. Contact your IT admin for help. This is followed by the error message: Unable to create Work Profile....

Now, Microsoft has announced a change to its feature updates strategy, planning to release two aligned major updates each year for Windows 10, Office 365 Pro Plus, and the System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). The general manager of the Windows Commercial Marketing department, Bernardo Caldas, explains the new model in a blog post. As Caldas, writes Microsoft will align the release cycles of Windows and Office with two major updates for Windows, Office, and SCCM per year....