There is just about no field of technology that is not somehow being enhanced by artificial intelligence. Microsoft has already shown its own love of AI by introducing it to various aspects of Windows and other products, and the latest release from the company is .NET Smart Components.

These are described as "AI-powered UI controls" that Microsoft says can be quickly and easily add to .NET apps. Billed, unsurprisingly, as "genuinely useful", the company says the components remove the need to "spend weeks of dev time redesigning your UX or researching machine learning and prompt engineering".

The groundswell of interest in the fediverse really kicked off when Elon Musk took over at Twitter, renamed it X, and made a seemingly endless series of controversial changes and decisions. A large number of users sought new homes, and the likes of Bluesky and Mastodon reaped the benefits.

Another recent entrant into the social arena is Threads -- Meta's answer to X. For quite some time there has been talk about plans to plug Threads into the fediverse, much to the disgust of many Mastodon users. Now this day has rolled around, with Mark Zuckerberg announcing that fediverse integration is now available to some users in beta.

Following complaints from large numbers of system administrators, Microsoft has finally acknowledged that there are problems with the recently released KB5035857 update for Windows Server.

The March 2024 security update was released 10 days ago, and it did not take long for users to start experiencing problems. Now Microsoft has confirmed that it is aware of an issue with Kerberos requests on domain controllers which may cause LSASS memory leaks. [UPDATE: there is now a fix available]

While Microsoft is keen on deprecating features and apps, it has also been engaged in injecting new life into legacy apps in recent years -- just look at how Paint has evolved, for instance. The company has also been slowly but surely updating another software stalwart, Notepad.

Having already added a tabbed interface, an auto-save feature and, of course, a dash of AI, Microsoft is a now set to add a spell checking. It does not end there, though. In addition to a highly customizable spell checker, there will also be an autocorrect feature -- and considerations have been made for developers and coders.

Here's a blast from the past for you -- ObjectDock. After lying dormant for several years, the customization utility has suddenly been updated by Stardock to add support for Windows 10 and Windows 11.

This is great news for anyone who is not a fan of the Windows 11 Start menu and taskbar, as it adds a macOS-style dock to the desktop which can be used instead. The newly updated app is now 64-bit and it's a welcome -- and surprising -- return almost a decade after the last release.

Microsoft has quietly announced plans to deprecate TLS server authentication certificates using RSA keys with key lengths shorter than 2048 bits.

The change means that it will not be possible to use 1024-bit keys, although Microsoft is yet to reveal exactly when the changeover will start. This is important information for companies using aging hardware and software as it will mean weaker keys can no longer be used for authentication.

It is a rare month in which Microsoft releases an update for Windows that doesn't cause problems, and March sees the company maintaining this habit. The KB5035853 update released last week was supposed to fix a number of issues, including a persistent 0x800F0922 error, but it seems to have introduced problems of its own.

The KB5035853 update is a security update so it is being automatically installed for the majority of Windows 11 users, and this means that the issues associated with it are hitting a lot of people. Among the problems users are experiencing are BSoDs, slow boot times and reduced system performance.

Microsoft has announced that the next subscription-free version of its Office suite will launch later this year. A commercial preview of Office LTSC 2024 will be available from next month, with a full launch scheduled for later in the year.

The Office Long-Term Servicing Channel is supported for five years, and it holds great appeal for the many businesses that are not keen on the idea of software subscriptions. There will also be a consumer-focused version of the suite, Office 2024, available via a traditional "one-time purchase" model.

A major frustration for users of Microsoft Teams has been the need to use different versions of the app for different accounts. It has not been possible, for instance, to use a personal account and a work account in the same app. But this is changing.

With the release of Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26080 to the Canary and Dev Channels, Microsoft has announced that a preview version of a unified Teams app is to be made available very soon. A single Teams app will be able to handle multiple accounts, including different types of account, and it will be possible to easily switch between them.

Windows 10 users have a new security update to install in the form of the KB5035845 update. In addition to addressing a number of security issues, this mandatory update also kills the Windows Backup app for many people and introduces various other changes.

One of the most interesting additions to be found in the KB5035845 update are improvements to Windows share. There are also fixes for various issues in Windows 10 including Windows Hello problems.

Microsoft has released a new security update for Windows 11. KB5035853 is a mandatory update which not only addresses security issues, but also introduces changes to make Windows 11 compliant with new DMA legislation in Europe.

On top of this, the update fixes the 0x800F0922 error which many people started to experience back in February. The KB5035853 update also features various other changes and additions such as the arrival of support for the USB 80Gbps standard.

New rules in Europe means that WhatsApp will have to offer interoperability with other messaging apps and platforms. This is something that Meta has already been talking about, having published its preference for third parties to use the Signal Protocol as the foundation for these E2EE communications.

Use of the Signal Protocol will not be a requirement for interoperability, but whatever protocol is used by a third-party messaging app or platform, it will need to show they offer "the same security guarantees as Signal". To communicate security to users, WhatsApp is introducing a new "end-to-end encrypted" label that will be added to secure chats.

In three short months, Microsoft is ending support for various editions of Windows 10 21H2. This means that not only will there be no more new features or bug fixes, there will also be no more security updates released for the operating system.

Running any version of Windows that is not in receipt of security updates is a bad idea, but as this latest announcement includes numerous Enterprise and Education versions of Windows 10, the impact could be huge.

March 6 was an important day in the European Union as it marked the date on which the Digital Markets Act (DMA) came into force. The new legislation places numerous requirements on "gatekeepers" (defined as "large digital platforms providing so called core platform services"), and this has already seen Apple roll out a different version of iOS to the EU than to the rest of the world.

The DMA affects a lot of tech firms, including the likes of Google and Microsoft. With the new legislation having come into force, Microsoft has implemented compliance measures, and this includes rolling out DMA compliant versions of Windows 10 and 11 to users in the EU. The company has started this process and has explained what changes and differences this includes.

Microsoft has released a new update for Windows 10 users in the form of KB5001716. While the company is promoting this as an update that refreshes the UI for Windows Update, there is rather more to it than that.

The release notes point out that after installing this update "you may see a notification informing you that your device is currently running a version of Windows that has reached the end of its support lifecycle ". In other words, expect Windows 11 upgrade nags. Oh, and if the slightly predictable underhand tactics were not enough, the installation of the KB5001716 update is proving problematic for some users, with numerous instances of 0x80070643 errors.