GoKawiil
Tech News
Microsoft has lowered prices on its smaller Surface Pro and Surface Laptop models, bringing them closer to costs seen two years ago. The refreshed bundles now include a Surface Mouse, though keyboards and the stylus remain separate purchases.
Microsoft is refreshing its lowest-end Surface devices, the 13-inch Surface Laptop and 12-inch Surface Pro, with Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X2 Plus processor featuring an 80 TOPS NPU, replacing the first-gen Snapdragon X Plus. Both machines launch October 13, priced at $1,199 and $1,149 respectively, with new black color options, brighter 500-nit displays, and the Surface Pro gaining optional 5G in enterprise models plus a new sketching app called Ink Canvas.
Microsoft has updated its smaller Surface Pro 12-inch tablet and Surface Laptop 13 with new Snapdragon X2 Plus processors, keeping the same designs but adding brighter 500-nit displays. Prices have risen to $1,150 for the Surface Pro 12 and $1,199 for the Surface Laptop 13, up from sub-$1,000 launches last year, which the company attributes partly to rising memory costs.
A Gallup survey commissioned by Microsoft, covering roughly 1,000 respondents each in 37 of a planned 140 countries between April and July, found that 68% of Americans who use AI daily still report concern about it, with worry rising further among less-frequent users. Overall, 74% of Americans said they feel worried about AI, and only 36% expect it to mostly benefit the country, placing the U.S. among the most anxious nations surveyed. Canada showed a similar pattern, with 29% using AI daily and 64% of those aware of the technology expressing concern.
LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, is rolling out a feature enabling verified companies to strip false employment claims from user profiles. The tool targets people who list jobs they never actually held at a given organization.
Microsoft has filed a patent application, published in July and titled 'Generative Narrative Game Experience With Player Feedback,' for a system that uses generative AI to alter quests, storylines and world details based on individual player behavior. The technology would track player actions through a 'narrative state graph' and could also factor in facial expressions and other emotional signals to decide which characters or areas to expand.
Microsoft has published a patent application titled "Contextually Aware Management of Interactive Software Application Access," describing a system that uses signals from a game engine to insert ads at natural pause points like boss fights, loading screens, or cutscene transitions. The system would display a video or static ad and reset a timer before searching for the next opportunity to interrupt gameplay. Microsoft has not confirmed whether or when this system will be implemented in actual games.
Microsoft has shut down EvilTokens, a subscription-based cybercrime service sold via Telegram that used AI tools to break into Microsoft accounts and mine stolen inboxes for payment details and business contacts. The company said the service compromised roughly 12,000 accounts across 10,000 organizations by abusing Microsoft's device-code sign-in process, and it seized 50 websites and 150 domains via legal action. UK police separately arrested two men suspected of running the operation.
Microsoft has told IT administrators that the September 2026 security updates for Windows 11 versions 26H1, 25H2 and 24H2 can cause Always On VPN connections to fail when automatic protocol selection between IKEv2 and SSTP is enabled. Affected connections may get stuck in a 'Connecting' state or throw a 'port already in use' error on retry. Microsoft has not yet issued a permanent fix but recommends administrators manually set the VPN profile to use only SSTP or only IKEv2 as a workaround.
Microsoft and partners including Cloudflare, Coinbase, OpenAI, SpyCloud, TRM Labs and Health-ISAC disrupted EvilTokens, a phishing-as-a-service platform that used AI to scan compromised inboxes and craft tailored lures. The operation had compromised over 12,000 inboxes across more than 10,000 organizations worldwide, spanning sectors like healthcare, finance and higher education. The takedown seized 50 sites and disabled 150 domains, and UK police arrested two men, aged 32 and 38, after Microsoft shared intelligence with the Metropolitan Police's cybercrime unit.
A new project called FoxDev Studio recreates the Visual FoxPro language on a fully 64-bit foundation, removing the 2GB table and memo-file limits that came from Visual FoxPro's 32-bit signed integer file handling. It uses a Rust-built compiler and bytecode interpreter compiled to WebAssembly, echoing FoxPro's original p-code compiler-and-runtime design, and shares the same editor and runtime code paths so type-checking matches execution behavior exactly.
Microsoft and partner organizations dismantled EvilTokens, a phishing-as-a-service operation that used AI tools and device code phishing to compromise over 12,000 inboxes across more than 10,000 organizations. Following a US court-enabled legal action, Microsoft seized 50 websites and disabled over 150 additional domains linked to the operators, tracked as Storm-2992. The UK's Metropolitan Police also arrested two men connected to the scheme this month; both were released on bail pending further investigation.