Microsoft has introduced a referral scheme that gives Edge users 500 Microsoft Rewards points—about $0.45—for each friend who installs Edge Mobile and searches with it on two separate days within a 14-day window. Monthly earnings are capped at 7,500 points, roughly $6.82 in Xbox or Microsoft gift card value. The program applies to Edge on Android and iOS and had earlier surfaced in a Canary test build before rolling out broadly.
androidauthority.com
· 2026-08-24
Microsoft has shipped the first official release of the Agent Lightning Skill, a tool that helps coding agents systematically improve other AI agents. Users supply an editable agent and a benchmark, and the skill guides iterative changes to prompts, tools, workflows, models, and reasoning settings. It installs directly into Claude Code, Codex, or GitHub Copilot via a simple CLI command.
github.com
· 2026-08-24
Reverse engineering of Windows Paint and Photos apps found that both send user prompts to a Microsoft server for moderation even when image generation runs locally via onboard AI models. That server returns a GUID alongside the approved prompt, and this GUID gets invisibly embedded into the pixels of the generated image, separate from the visible watermark toggle users can control. This applies even on Copilot+ PCs where generation happens entirely on-device.
xusheng.dev
· 2026-08-24
Microsoft shipped Windows NT 4.0 to retail on August 24, 1996, bringing the Windows 95 graphical interface—including the Start Menu, Taskbar, and Explorer shell—to its business-focused NT platform for the first time. Previous NT versions had used the older Windows 3.x-style interface, so this release aligned the look and feel of Microsoft's consumer and workstation operating systems.
techspot.com
· 2026-08-24
Valve, the studio behind Half-Life and Steam, was founded on August 24, 1996, by former Microsoft engineers Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington. The company released Half-Life in 1998, reshaping first-person shooter design, then launched Steam in 2003, establishing digital game distribution as an industry standard. Today the company celebrates its 30th anniversary with both products still shaping the industry.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-08-24
Microsoft is rolling out a new Teams meeting protection policy letting admins automatically block all identified external bots from joining meetings, without requiring organizer approval. This expands on a June update that flagged bots in the lobby but still let organizers admit them manually. The feature is off by default, deploying via targeted release through August with general availability expected by late September.
bleepingcomputer.com
· 2026-08-24
Microsoft has confirmed that the August 2026 .NET Framework cumulative update causes some WPF-based applications to throw a System.IO.FileFormatException when printing or exporting to PDF/XPS with fonts like Calibri. The bug affects current Windows 10 and 11 releases as well as Windows Server versions from 2012 through 2025, and Microsoft is still working on a permanent fix.
bleepingcomputer.com
· 2026-08-24
Valve LLC was formally registered on August 24, 1996, by two ex-Microsoft employees, Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, who left secure jobs to bet on making games. They funded the venture with personal savings, a stock sale, borrowed money, and a deal with publisher Sierra On-Line that gave up 30% of revenue and their intellectual property. That gamble led to Half-Life in 1998 and eventually Steam, which began as a simple patch-delivery tool before becoming the dominant PC gaming storefront.
techspot.com
· 2026-08-24
Microsoft has released a temporary fix for a bug introduced by its August 2026 Windows 11 updates (KB5121003 and later) that caused games like ARC Raiders, MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls, and The Finals to crash, freeze, or trigger system restarts. The company traced the problem to a driver file called inpoutx64.sys, commonly bundled with RGB lighting peripherals, which conflicts with recent changes made to the Windows kernel. Users can now manually disable this driver through the Windows Registry while Microsoft works on a permanent patch.
bleepingcomputer.com
· 2026-08-24
A free, high-performing AI model called Ox Alpha appeared on OpenRouter this week, listed only as a 'stealth model' built by an anonymous third party for coding and agentic tasks. Stripe CEO Patrick Collison praised it publicly, fueling widespread speculation across X and Reddit about its origin, with theories ranging from China's Z.ai GLM models to an unreleased Microsoft MAI build.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-08-23
Microsoft ended free premium Office licenses for smaller nonprofits worldwide, and many organizations discovered their stored data—including Word, Excel, and OneDrive files—had been permanently deleted without adequate warning. Ronald Khosla, who runs the environmental venture fund Canopy, says he was told by Microsoft support that his data could be recovered, only to later learn it was gone for good.
slate.com
· 2026-08-23
GoKawiil