Articles about Microsoft

At Xbox Fanfest this weekend, Microsoft announced that it has acquired two more gaming studios.

InXile Entertainment and Obsidian Entertainment join the company's ever-expanding portfolio, and what's interesting about these two latest acquisitions is that both studios have a focus on RPGs. It is not currently known how much money has changed hands as part of the deals.

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Thanksgiving is coming, which makes me rather happy. I love catching up with family while chowing down on turkey, stuffing, and the like. After the big meal, I like to go through the paper advertisements for stores such as Target, Best Buy, and Kohl's to find the best deals. Then, that night at midnight, I leave the house to score some things I want for Black Friday! In the digital age, this sort of outdated -- I can just as easily shop online, but I cherish the experience. It's fun.

Microsoft has been making quite a mess of things with buggy Windows 10 updates and failing to put USB-C on its latest Surface Laptop 2 computer, but understandably, some of y'all still want/need a Windows PC. If you need a new computer, Xbox, or other tech-related product, Microsoft has finally revealed Black Friday 2018 sales. These are not just deals from Microsoft's own store, but on Windows 10 PCs found at other retailers too.

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We've known for a while that support for keyboards and mice was coming to the Xbox One, but there has been the question of "when?" hanging in the air. Now we have a date.

At its X018 event, Microsoft revealed that the date support will be added is November 14 -- so there are just a few days to wait. It is down to game developers to add the keyboard and mouse control option to their titles, and Fortnite will be among the first to push out an update that adds this support.

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The Windows 10 shit show continues with yet more problems with Microsoft’s newest operating system rearing their ugly heads. Some users -- including a friend of my colleague Brian Fagioli -- have suffered from a problem whereby file associations are broken, so you can’t open files in the default programs you choose.

Now a growing number of users are complaining on Reddit that their Windows 10 Pro installations are suddenly reverting to Windows 10 Home.

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While there’s still no sign of a re-release for the botched Windows 10 October 2018 Update, Microsoft is rolling out new builds for the feature update that follows it, codenamed 19H1.

Today’s new release, Build 18277, gains a new focus assist option that will spring into life whenever you’re doing anything full screen on your PC so you’re not bothered by notifications.

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Microsoft has embraced Linux more and more over the years, and the latest demonstration of this is the company's decision to port the free Sysinternals utilities to work on the platform.

The first tool to make its way to Linux is ProcDump, which can be used to create crash dumps. While not as feature-rich as the Windows version, the Linux port is still a valuable tool. And, importantly, there are more Systinternals tools making their way to Linux.

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Security researchers claim to have unearthed a zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft Edge. The remote code execution is due to be revealed with a proof-of concept.

Microsoft has not yet been informed about the details of the security issue, but exploit developers had been looking for a way to break Edge out of its sandbox -- and it would appear that this objective has now been achieved.

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Nearly two-thirds of all advanced email attacks used emails impersonating Microsoft or Amazon, according to new research by Agari, the email protection specialist.

Microsoft was impersonated in 36 percent of all display name impersonation attacks in the third quarter. Amazon was the second most commonly impersonated company, used in 27 percent of these attacks.

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Things might have gone badly wrong for Microsoft with the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, but the company is working hard on the next big feature release out next spring.

Build 18272 (19H1) pushed out to Insiders on the Fast ring today (and also available in ISO form) includes some input improvements and new sign-in options for Windows Hello.

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Microsoft’s first Windows 10 feature updates used the "Threshold" codename, but the software giant switched to using "Redstone" for the Anniversary, Creators, Fall Creators, April 2018, and October 2018 updates.

The software giant went with "19H1" for the update due out next spring (the April 2019 Update possibly), but it plans to change its naming convention once again for the update that's scheduled to be released in October 2019.

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One of the coolest new features of macOS Mojave is dark mode. As the name implies, it quite literally allows the user to make a system-wide switch to a darker interface. It works quite well, but unfortunately, app developers have to take advantage of it in their code -- their programs will not support dark mode by default. This means that even when you turn dark mode on, some apps will look out of place. Yeah, that inconsistency kind of stinks, but luckily, many developers -- not all -- have been updating their software to support the feature.

One huge app in particular is still not updated -- Microsoft Office. Regardless of what you think of the Windows-maker, it cannot be denied that Office is outstanding. It is still the best office suite after all these years. On macOS Mojave and later, it will be getting even better, as Microsoft is planning to introduce dark mode to Office at some point in the future. As is typical with the company, the feature will first be given to "Insiders" (aka free beta testers).

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A new report from AlienVault, based on findings from vendors' threat reports in its Open Threat Exchange (OTX) platform, reveals more non-Microsoft exploits are in the top 10 list this year.

This is largely due to a rise of server attacks, particularly cryptocurrency-mining botnets that use remote exploits, such as Drupal. The report also sees an IoT exploit make the list for the first time.

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Google may have pulled out of the Pentagon's $10 billion JEDI cloud project, but Microsoft has no intention of following suit. Company president Brad Smith has used a blog post to defend the decision to bid for military contracts, despite pressure from its employees.

Smith recognizes that there are ethical concerns about getting involved in military projects, particularly when artificial intelligence technology is involved. However, he says: "we believe in the strong defense of the United States and we want the people who defend it to have access to the nation's best technology, including from Microsoft".

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Microsoft is still busy fixing the many problems that have blighted the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, but that hasn’t stopped development on the follow up, due out next spring.

Build 18267 for Insiders on the Fast ring, introduces -- among other things -- the ability for the OS to index all of your folders and drives, to make finding files on your PC much easier.

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As you know by now, Microsoft was forced to put the Windows 10 October 2018 Update on ice following reports that it was deleting user files. What made the problem even worse was Insiders had reported that issue to Microsoft months ago, but the software giant failed to address it.

While the feature update is back in testing, non-Insiders have been discovering additional problems with it. First up, if you use the built-in zip tool to extract a file to a folder where a version of that file already exists (even if it has different data), nothing will actually happen.

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