Tech News
← Home  ·  All topics

Microsoft

262 GoKawiil briefs on this topic

Leaked 2003 email shows Bill Gates struggling to download Windows Movie Maker

An internal Microsoft email from January 2003, later made public through litigation records, shows Bill Gates recounting a frustrating attempt to download Windows Movie Maker and a Digital Plus pack from Microsoft's own website. Gates described slow load times, a confusing list of 45 unfiltered download options, failed searches for 'moviemaker' and 'movie maker,' and being redirected to Windows Update just to find the software.

BigBear 2.0 phishing kit steals 5,000+ Microsoft 365 logins across 258 firms

CloudSEK researchers infiltrated the admin panel of a phishing-as-a-service tool called BigBear 2.0 and found it had harvested over 5,000 Microsoft 365 credentials from 258 organizations. The kit uses an Evilginx2-based adversary-in-the-middle proxy to intercept usernames, passwords, and session cookies even after victims complete multi-factor authentication, letting attackers replay stolen sessions to hijack accounts.

Microsoft again pledges faster Windows 11 boot and better 8GB PC performance

At IFA 2026, Microsoft's Mark Linton said an internal Windows 11 build shows notable gains in boot speed and Windows Hello responsiveness, alongside earlier promises that the OS will run well on 8GB machines. No timeline for public rollout or performance data was shared, and the changes haven't yet reached testing channels.

GitHub Copilot's coding agent now handles setup, testing and pull requests

Microsoft is expanding GitHub Copilot's coding agent to manage more of the software development pipeline, including setting up Windows development environments, running linters and tests, and opening pull requests for human review. GitHub also added agent support for Windows Subsystem for Linux, helping teams that build on Windows but test or deploy on Linux. Microsoft Distinguished Engineer David Fowler said on X that 'typing code is absolutely over,' pointing to a shift in what developers actually spend time doing.

Switzerland expands open-source pilot to 3,000 federal workstations

The Swiss Federal Chancellery is spending CHF 9 million to test the openDesk open-source suite as a replacement for Microsoft 365 across 3,000 federal employees, roughly 7% of the workforce, with migration targeted for completion by end of 2027. The pilot follows a proof-of-concept with 172 employees that rated document editing and email positively but flagged limitations in large-scale video conferencing, and it will run alongside Microsoft 365 rather than replace it immediately.

Seattle Times and Newsday sue OpenAI, Microsoft over AI training data

The Seattle Times and Newsday have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming their journalism was used without permission to train AI models and is often reproduced verbatim in chatbot responses. Microsoft was named as a defendant because its Copilot tool relies on OpenAI's technology, and the outlets are seeking destruction of any copied works, datasets, and models built from them.

Windows 11's Task Scheduler can send custom reminder alerts on any schedule

Windows 11 users can build their own scheduled notifications using the built-in Task Scheduler tool, without installing any extra software. By creating a basic task, choosing a recurrence pattern, and entering a message via the 'msg' program with custom text, users can trigger personalized reminders at set times or events.

Microsoft flags phishing campaign hiding invisible Unicode characters in finance-themed emails

Microsoft researchers identified a large phishing operation that inserts invisible Unicode 'Tags' characters inside finance-related keywords—splitting words like 'funding' into fragments—to slip past email filters that scan for suspicious terms. The campaign peaked at 2.37 million daily messages in late February and, despite a drop in volume by May, remains active, with Defender for Office 365 tracing it to 148 finance-themed sender domains.

Seattle Times and Newsday sue OpenAI, Microsoft over AI training data

The Seattle Times and Newsday have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging their journalism was used without permission to train AI models like ChatGPT and Copilot. The suit claims these tools consume original reporting and generate imitative outputs that could financially undermine the news organizations that created the source material.

Seattle Times and Newsday sue OpenAI and Microsoft over AI training data

The Seattle Times and Newsday filed a joint lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging the companies scraped their copyrighted articles, bypassing paywalls, to train generative AI models. The publishers claim this practice has hurt their revenue by diverting readers to AI-generated summaries and has produced false information wrongly attributed to their outlets.

Microsoft unveils Project Zenith, a developer-focused Windows 11 build for local AI work

Microsoft has launched Project Zenith, a stripped-down version of Windows 11 aimed at AI developers, requiring at least 64GB of unified memory and 250GB/s memory bandwidth. It will debut on AMD's Ryzen AI Halo hardware, a rival to Nvidia's DGX Spark, before expanding to other OEM devices, and ships preloaded with tools like VS Code, GitHub Copilot, Python, WSL, and .NET 10 already configured for coding.

Microsoft caps Xbox Cloud Gaming hours, charges extra beyond monthly limit

Starting in November, Microsoft will limit monthly Xbox Cloud Gaming playtime for Game Pass subscribers: five hours for Essential, 10 for Premium, and 15 for Ultimate. Once users hit these caps, they'll need to buy additional hours from the Xbox Store to keep streaming games, though downloading and playing titles locally remains unlimited. Microsoft has not yet revealed pricing for extra playtime beyond the cap.