We are at the end of yet another week and it is time again to recap everything that has happened in the world of Microsoft in recent days. This time around we have news about Microsoft handing out free USB drives to Insiders, Bing integration in Microsoft Edge, and stories about Microsoft-approved pirated Windows copies of sorts. Without further ado, let’s dive into our weekly recap for March 12-17!
Free USB sticks
With the recent move of Dev Channel Insiders to the new Canary Channel, users who want to downgrade to lower channels must clean install their operating system. To help customers in this endeavor, Microsoft is offering free USB drives on a first-come, first-served basis. The bad news is that hardware delivery can take 6-8 weeks, find out how to claim your USB here.
Speaking of Insider Channels, Microsoft has confirmed that it won’t be running Dev or Canary Channel builds this week – although the company is working on a new capability to allow Insiders to receive efatures more quickly. Instead, Insiders on the Beta Channel has networked build 22624.1465 (KB5023775) with improved live captions, touch keyboard settings, VPN status changes, and a few bugs. Similarly, Windows 10 and Windows 11 Insiders on the release preview channel have received many backend improvements.
It wasn’t the Insiders who had fun. Customers on stable versions were entitled to Patch Tuesday updates. Windows 10 users received security updates and a known issue, while Windows 11 builds 22H2 and 21H2 had lengthy change logs with lots of fixes.
While there hasn’t really been much activity in the upper Insider channels, the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA) has achieved better performance and stability in Dev and Beta. This area is perhaps becoming even more important for Microsoft as it faces competition from Google Play Games, which will soon arrive in more countries. On the Linux side, Microsoft has brought support for the custom Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) kernel to Arm.
Those who use Windows 10 for gaming should also be aware that some OEMs apparently enable virtualization-based security (VBS) in the operating system, which could cause slight performance hits. And since we’re on the subject of performance, it’s important to point out that Yandex has alleged that AMD writes its drivers in a way that unfairly favors Edge and Chrome, over the Yandex browser.
And while unrelated to the aforementioned topic, Microsoft says it’s working on new policies for app pinning and default apps as part of its “longstanding approach to putting people in control.” of their Windows PC experience” (eh eh). The company officially released guidance on Windows 11 home features and recently made it easier to deploy AppLocker on different versions of Windows.
AI everywhere
Microsoft is on a mission to bring its AI capabilities to its consumer products. To that end, Bing AI is now integrated into the Microsoft Edge sidebar, and it looks like GPT is on its way to LinkedIn as well. Microsoft also announced Microsoft 365 Copilot for its Office productivity apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and others. You can also watch a video of this feature in action in PowerPoint here.
The Redmond tech firm is also busy making improvements to Bing Chat. The chatbot now runs on GPT-4, sports daily chat, and turn-per-session limits of 150 and 15 respectively, and allows people to share responses on social media platforms. Faster AI responses are also being worked on. Some people even report that they no longer need to queue to access the chatbot. Microsoft is also working on integrating Bing Chat answers directly into Bing Search.
In related news, Microsoft gave customers a glimpse of how it combines its Azure cloud with Nvidia hardware to power AI supercomputers, which are also the backbone of ChatGPT’s big language model. While its hardware and software are certainly impressive, some might find it problematic that Microsoft fired its entire ethical AI team.
As for updates to other Microsoft apps and services, video filters are now available in Teams, while avatars and the default 3×3 video view for Edge and Chrome are coming in May. Speaking of Edge, the stable release now has Adobe Acrobat PDF reader natively integrated, while Dev has tab pinning, video ad blocker on Android, and more. Meanwhile, the Canary version has an implementation that disables the Bing button and disables rounded corners on web pages. Microsoft also plans to bring Bing Search to the Windows 10 desktop through Edge, without the AI co-driver for now. It has also started testing the browser on iPhone and iPad.
Finally, Microsoft will start rolling out the new Outlook client to more users in April, and for those with the new Microsoft 365 app on Android, you can now quickly access recently opened files.
Pirated Windows Copies
A somewhat amusing story surfaced this week when a Windows 10 customer reported that a Microsoft support representative had activated their copy by exploiting a script used to crack the operating system. Yes, you read that right. This was confirmed by the creator of the script who noted that their method is illegal and not an official way to activate Windows. All in all, no harm since the user in question had already purchased the copy of Windows 10 officially, but was having trouble activating it.
In related news, Microsoft has released PowerShell scripts to fix WinRE BitLocker bypass to improve security. Its Patch Tuesday updates also fixed a critical Outlook 0-day exploit and another reported by Google; it was linked to ransomware bypassing Microsoft SmartScreen. And if you’re using a relatively insecure Windows 8.1, also be aware that Power BI Desktop is ending support for the operating system in a few months.
In other security news, hackers from North Korea are reportedly invading LinkedIn with fake job postings targeting unsuspecting people. To further protect customers against threats like these and more, Microsoft is also publicly introducing real-time custom detections in Microsoft 365 Defender. Finally, the company is working on implementing an NFT and crypto wallet in its Edge browser (sigh).
Git Gud
As has been the case for the past few weeks, we’ll be kicking off this section again with Microsoft’s ongoing purchase of Activision Blizzard. The former has signed two other agreements with cloud streaming platforms regarding the distribution of Call of Duty, these being Boosteroid and Ubitus. Despite these seemingly consumer-friendly measures, the FTC accused Microsoft of withholding requested documents regarding the acquisition while the EU postponed its decision until May. As the acquisition continues to expand, Blizzard has confirmed that it has no current plans to bring Diablo IV to Xbox Game Pass. Ghostwire: Tokyo arrives at the service on April 12, however.
Meanwhile, the highly anticipated Microsoft star field received an R18+ rating in Australia due to excessive drug use. This means that it cannot be legally sold to minors, and Microsoft may also need to be careful when advertising the title. At the other end of the spectrum, Minecraft is now available on select Chromebooks. Additionally, the Xbox app on Windows has been updated with improved filters and game discovery capabilities, read the changelog here.
When it comes to offers and promotions, Xbox Free Play Days have Year 1800, SessionAnd Autonauts on offer. lamentation is free to claim on Games with Gold and NFS unbound headlines deals with gold. However, if console games aren’t your thing, check out this weekend’s PC game deals curated personally by our editor Pulasthi Ariyasinghe.
Development Channel
Under the projectors
John Callaham of Neowin is the author of a very interesting article comparing today’s reality to what Microsoft envisioned a smart home to be in 1999. Read more about the comparison here to find out how accurate Microsoft was in his predictions.
We also have a few guides to highlight. The first is from journalist Taras Buria who explains how you can disable the new Bing button in the sidebar in the latest Edge 111 Stable update.
The other guide comes from forum member Adam Bottjen, who detailed the process of enabling Back Tap on your iPhone in his latest Tech Tip Tuesday post.
Logout
Our most interesting news in this edition of Microsoft Weekly concerns the Redmond tech giant running ads for Microsoft Edge again. This time it was a full-page ad without the title bar – which meant you couldn’t close the window by pressing the traditional “x” button -, and it was showing after an update. browser update rather than on first launch. This hasn’t been widely reported so far, so it’s possible that this ad showing to us after a browser update is a glitch rather than something intentional. But then again, you never know given Microsoft’s history in this area.
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