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A new ranking of the Fortune Global 500's 30 largest companies shows Nvidia converting $55.60 of every $100 in revenue into profit, the highest margin in the group. Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta also each keep more than $30 per $100, while retailers, health care firms, and energy companies such as Walmart, CVS, and Sinopec keep less than $5.
Security researcher Faav discovered that an internal Microsoft analytics service failed to verify the signature on login tokens, allowing anyone to impersonate an administrator and run unauthorized SQL queries. Faav says the flaw could have exposed roughly 17.3 trillion rows across multiple Microsoft datasets, but reported it through Microsoft's Bug Bounty Program without accessing customer data or PII. Microsoft confirmed it investigated and hardened the affected service in response.
A new independent website called 'Definitely Not Windows / Windows 11½' presents a fake operating-system interface satirizing modern Microsoft products, including subscription prompts, ads, AI features, forced updates and storage warnings. The site explicitly states it is unaffiliated with Microsoft and includes a Clippy-themed visitor counter that assigns users an anonymous, persistent visitor number.
After US sanctions on the International Criminal Court left its chief prosecutor without access to Microsoft services including email, the Dutch government launched DAWO (Digitaal Autonome Werkomgeving Overheid) to reduce dependence on US-based software and cloud services. The Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations is overseeing the project, with SSC-ICT, DICTU and DUO-ICT building a system around NixOS, and eight municipalities are already running trials.
A tech guide outlines how users can strip Windows 11 of pre-installed third-party apps, ad modules and data-collection features that Microsoft and hardware partners bundle into the OS by default. It recommends a combination of manual uninstalls, settings changes, and a targeted third-party debloating tool as the safest approach, while noting no method is entirely risk-free.
We Make Indiana, a coalition of 25 nonprofits, faith groups and civic organizations near South Bend, sought funding from Microsoft under the company's publicized commitment to invest in local nonprofits near its AI data centers. According to Ars Technica's reporting, Microsoft's community liaison did not commit to providing the requested support, leaving the group without the promised backing.
In an interview aired on NBC's 'Meet the Press,' Bill Gates said a kill switch for AI systems isn't sufficient on its own to address risks, and argued companies should instead track exactly how sophisticated AI models are being used. He said the more pressing danger is people using AI for cyberattacks or bioterrorism rather than AI systems acting autonomously, and called for legislation mandating safeguards since voluntary industry self-regulation isn't enough.
404 Media reports that Microsoft hired hundreds of contractors to evaluate how well its Copilot AI executes image-editing prompts, including sexually explicit and nonconsensual requests involving real women, children's cartoon characters, and upskirt-style images. The contractors say Microsoft instructed them to judge output quality using their 'intuition,' not to assess the ethics of the prompts themselves, and faces in uploaded photos reportedly remain uncensored.
Microsoft launched its updated Surface Laptop and Surface Pro at Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit, powered by Snapdragon X2 Plus chips, without an AMD option. Surface CVP Brett Ostrum told Windows Central the company's limited device portfolio forces selective processor choices, while insisting Microsoft still values its AMD partnership.
Executives and researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft and Meta said artificial intelligence systems could soon begin improving themselves at a pace beyond human ability to monitor or control. They called for stronger oversight mechanisms to be put in place before that happens.
Church and community groups have pressed Microsoft to commit roughly 1% of its data center construction costs to local investment, but company representatives at community meetings have struggled to answer detailed questions beyond prepared 'good neighbor' talking points. Microsoft has acknowledged that its $229 million in 2024 employee-matched charitable giving across 29,000 nonprofits isn't sufficient, without specifying larger commitments.
A teenage security researcher named Faav says he used a custom AI tool called Antares to probe Microsoft's internal Titan analytics platform and discovered an API endpoint that accepted raw SQL queries without requiring authentication. He reportedly traced subdomains and an archived configuration file via the Wayback Machine to map the database's 56 tables, which he says held roughly 17 trillion rows and 25,000 employee records.