NTFS3 Driver Sees Improvements In Linux 7.0 While “NTFS Remake” Driver Bakes
The NTFS3 driver maintained by Paragon Software for Microsoft NTFS file-systems today saw a batch of improvements merged for Linux 7.0 This comes as there is also the competing “NTFS Remake” driver that began a few months ago as the “NTFSPLUS” driver. That NTFS Remake driver isn’t looking like it will be submitted for the Linux 7.0 merge window so at least for now the NTFS3 driver continues seeing improvements with the latest mainline kernel code … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft’s AI Chief Says All White-Collar Desk Work Will Be Automated Within 18 Months
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman expects “human-level performance on most, if not all professional tasks” from AI, and believes most work involving “sitting down at a computer” – accounting, legal, marketing, project management – will be fully automated within the next year or 18 months. He pointed to ex … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft .NET On Linux Patches Use IO_uring For Massive Performance Benefits
A pull request for the Microsoft .NET Runtime build on Linux to use IO_uring for sockets is showing some massive performance benefits… ⌘ Read more

Gentoo Linux Begins Codeberg Migration In Moving Away From GitHub, Avoiding Copilot
The Gentoo Linux project last year announced plans to move their code hosting to Codeberg rather than GitHub. Gentoo’s desire to move away from GitHub was motivated by Microsoft’s Copilot training on GitHub repositories. Those plans are turning into action now with the main Gentoo project up on Codeberg and honoring pull requests… ⌘ Read more

exFAT Achieves Better Sequential Read Performance With Linux 7.0
The open-source Linux file-system driver for supporting Microsoft’s exFAT now can deliver better sequential read performance with Linux 7.0 thanks to multi-cluster support… ⌘ Read more

FTC Ratchets Up Microsoft Probe, Queries Rivals on Cloud, AI
The US Federal Trade Commission is accelerating scrutiny of Microsoft as part of an ongoing probe into whether the company illegally monopolizes large swaths of the enterprise computing market with its cloud software and AI offerings, including Copilot. From a report: The agency has issued civil investigative demands in recent weeks to companies that compete wi … ⌘ Read more

Windows 11 Notepad Flaw Let Files Execute Silently via Markdown Links
Microsoft has patched a high-severity vulnerability in Windows 11’s Notepad that allowed attackers to silently execute local or remote programs when a user clicked a specially crafted Markdown link, all without triggering any Windows security warning.

The flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-20841 and fixed in the February 2026 Patch Tuesday upda … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Plans Smartphone-Style Permission Prompts for Windows 11 Apps
Microsoft is planning to bring smartphone-style app permission prompts to Windows 11, requiring apps to get explicit user consent before they can access sensitive resources like the file system, camera and microphone. The company’s Windows Platform engineer Logan Iyer said the move was prompted by applications increasingly overriding u … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Begins the First-Ever Secure Boot Certificate Swap Across Windows Ecosystem
Microsoft has begun automatically replacing the original Secure Boot security certificates on Windows devices through regular monthly updates, a necessary move given that the 15-year-old certificates first issued in 2011 are set to expire between late June and October 2026.

Secure Boot, which verifies th … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft’s Azure Linux Adds 6.12 HWE Kernel, ARM64 Kernel Tuning For More Performance
Microsoft overnight released Azure Linux 3.0.20260204 as the latest release of their in-house Linux distribution widely used within their Azure environment and elsewhere… ⌘ Read more

Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu Linux Performance For Intel Core Ultra X7 Panther Lake
Last week I began publishing the many exciting Panther Lake benchmarks under Linux from the interesting CPU performance and efficiency to the much anticipated Xe3 graphics with the Intel Arc B390 graphics. Up today is a look at how the out-of-the-box performance for the Intel Core Ultra X7 358H compares under Microsoft Windows 11 and the current Ubuntu Linux 26.04 development state. ⌘ Read more

Microsoft On QEMU 10.2’s New MSHV Accelerator For Hyper-V Guests
With QEMU 10.2 that released at the end of last year is the new “MSHV” accelerator for allowing VMs to be created from a Microsoft Hyper-V guest without using nested virtualization. Last weekend at FOSDEM 2026 was a presentation on this MSHV accelerator for those interested… ⌘ Read more

Neocities Founder Stuck in Chatbot Hell After Bing Blocked 1.5 Million Sites
Neocities founder Kyle Drake has spent weeks trapped in Microsoft’s automated support loop after discovering that Bing quietly blocked all 1.5 million websites hosted on his platform, a free web-hosting service that has kept the spirit of 1990s GeoCities alive since 2013.

Drake first noticed the issue last summer and thought … ⌘ Read more

Big Tech’s $1.1 Trillion Cloud Computing Backlog
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon, Google, and Microsoft each reported hundreds of billions in RPO (remaining performance obligations) – signed contracts for cloud computing services that can’t yet be filled and haven’t yet hit the books. Collectively, the big three cloud providers reported a $1.1 trillion backlog of revenue.

[![](https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.pn … ⌘ Read more

The European Commission Is Testing an Open Source Alternative To Microsoft Teams
The European Commission is preparing to trial a communications platform built on Matrix, the open source messaging protocol already used by the French government, German healthcare providers and European armed forces, as a sovereign backup to Microsoft Teams.

Signal currently serves as the backup tool but has proven to … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Adds Sysmon To Windows
Microsoft has finally delivered on its promise to integrate Sysmon – the long-standing system monitoring tool from its Sysinternals suite – directly into Windows, a move that should make life considerably easier for enterprise administrators who have struggled with deploying and managing the utility across thousands of endpoints.

The functionality landed this week in Windows Insider builds 26300.7733 (Dev … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft’s New Open-Source Project: LiteBox As A Rust-Based Sandboxing Library OS
Microsoft engineers and other stakeholders have been developing LiteBox as a security-focused library OS written in the Rust programming language and leveraging Linux Virtualization Based Security “LVBS”. The design is for LiteBox to operate as a secure kernel protecting the normal guest kernel via virtualization hardware… ⌘ Read more

One Line Fix Coming For Achieving Better Linux Performance On The HP OMEN 8E41 Laptop
A one-line patch to the HP WMI x86 platform driver for Linux was posted for allowing the HP OMEN Transcend Gaming Laptop 14-fb1xxx to correctly hit its rated TDP limit for allowing better performance outside of the Microsoft Windows confines… ⌘ Read more

AMD Hints the Next-Gen Xbox Console Could Launch Next Year
An anonymous reader shares a report: Speaking during an earnings call on Tuesday, CEO Lisa Su stated that its development of Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox SoC is “progressing well to support a launch in 2027.”

While the comment doesn’t outright confirm the next Xbox will release next year, it indicates that the Microsoft could be ready to launch soon.

[![](ht … ⌘ Read more

YouTube Kills Background Playback on Third-Party Mobile Browsers
YouTube has confirmed that it is blocking background playback – the ability to keep a video’s audio running after minimizing the browser or locking the screen – for non-Premium users across third-party mobile browsers including Samsung Internet, Brave, Vivaldi and Microsoft Edge.

Users began reporting the issue last week, noting that audio wou … ⌘ Read more

Reworked NTFS Linux Driver Posted With More Improvements & Fixes
Announced back in October was NTFS Plus as a new Linux driver for NTFS based on the former NTFS kernel driver prior to Paragon Software contributing the NTFS3 driver code. The intent with this new driver is for better performance. more features, public user-space utilities around it, and all-around a nice step forward for those reliant on this Microsoft file-system. Out this week is the sixth iteration of this remade NTFS driver… ⌘ Read more

Linux Prepares To Support Microsoft’s “Turn On Display” DSM To Address Laptop Issues
Microsoft in Windows 11 22H2 introduced a new ACPI Device Specific Method (DSM) “Turn On Display” notification that the Linux 7.0 kernel will be adding support for in dealing with some otherwise problematic laptop behavior… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Weighs Retreat From Windows 11 AI Push, Reviews Copilot Integrations and Recall
Microsoft is reevaluating its AI strategy on Windows 11 and plans to scale back or remove Copilot integrations across built-in apps after months of sustained user backlash, according to a Windows Central report citing people familiar with the company’s plans.

Copilot features in apps like Notepad … ⌘ Read more

Author of Systemd Quits Microsoft To Prove Linux Can Be Trusted
Lennart Poettering has left Microsoft to co-found Amutable, a new Berlin-based company aiming to bring cryptographically verifiable integrity and deterministic trust guarantees to Linux systems. He said in a post on Mastodon that his “role in upstream maintenance for the Linux kernel will continue as it always has.” Poettering will also continue to … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft is Experimenting With a Top Menu Bar for Windows 11
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft’s PowerToys team is contemplating building a top menu bar for Windows 11, much like Linux, macOS, or older versions of Windows. The menu bar, or Command Palette Dock as Microsoft calls it, would be a new optional UI that provides quick access to tools, monitoring of system resources, and much more.

Micros … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Working On Improved vCPU Scheduler Support For Hyper-V Linux VMs
Microsoft posted a patch series for introducing Hyper-V integrated scheduler support into the Linux kernel for enhancing vCPU scheduling behavior for virtual machines running within Microsoft’s virtualized environment… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Admits Windows 11 Has a Trust Problem, Promises To Focus on Fixes in 2026
Microsoft wants you to know that it knows that Windows 11, now used by a billion users, has been testing your patience and announced that its engineers are being redirected to urgently address the operating system’s performance and reliability problems through an internal process the company calls “swarming.”

” … ⌘ Read more

Xbox Hardware Revenue Craters 32%
Microsoft’s Xbox hardware revenue fell 32% in the final quarter of 2025 and overall gaming revenue declined 9% year-over-year, according to the company’s latest quarterly earnings, released as part of results showing Microsoft’s total revenue exceeded $80 billion.

Xbox content and services revenue, which includes Game Pass, dropped 5%.

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Windows 11 Has Reached 1 Billion Users Faster Than Windows 10
An anonymous reader shares a report: Windows 11 now has one billion users. Microsoft hit the milestone during the recent holiday quarter, meaning Windows 11 has managed to reach one billion users faster than Windows 10 did nearly six years ago.

“Windows reached a big milestone, 1 billion Windows 11 users,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on the compa … ⌘ Read more

There’s a Rash of Scam Spam Coming From a Real Microsoft Address
There are reports that a legitimate Microsoft email address – which Microsoft explicitly says customers should add to their allow list – is delivering scam spam. ArsTechnica: The emails originate from no-reply-powerbi@microsoft.com, an address tied to Power BI. The Microsoft platform provides analytics and business intelligence from various source … ⌘ Read more

FreeType Speeds-Up ClearType-Like LCD Filter Rendering By 40%
The widely-used FreeType library used for rendering text onto bitmaps has landed a significant optimization for its LCD filtering code path for Microsoft ClearType-like rendering. Thanks to the improvement, the rendering can be around 40% faster… ⌘ Read more

France To Ditch US Platforms Microsoft Teams, Zoom For ‘Sovereign Platform’ Amid Security Concerns
France will replace the American platforms Microsoft Teams and Zoom with its own domestically developed video conferencing platform, which will be used in all government departments by 2027, the country said. From a report: The move is part of France’s strategy to stop using foreign … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Was Routing Example-Domain Traffic To a Japanese Cable Company for Five Years
Microsoft has quietly suppressed an unexplained anomaly on its network that was routing traffic destined for example.com – a domain reserved under RFC2606 specifically for testing purposes and not obtainable by any party – to sei.co.jp, a domain belonging to Japanese electronics cable maker Sumitomo E … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Is Refreshing the Xbox Cloud Gaming Web Experience
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Thurrott: Microsoft is testing a refresh of the Xbox Cloud Gaming web experience in public preview. “This preview is a first look at our new web interface on your browser and lets you try the updated design and product flow before it is rolled out broadly,” Microsoft’s Patrick Siu explains. “Players who opt in to … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft’s Latest AI Chip Claims Performance Edge Over Amazon and Google
An anonymous reader quotes a report from GeekWire: Microsoft on Monday announced Maia 200, the second generation of its custom AI chip, claiming it’s the most powerful first-party silicon from any major cloud provider. The company says Maia 200 delivers three times the performance of Amazon’s latest Trainium chip on certain b … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft 365 Endured 9+ Hours of Outages Thursday
Early Friday “there were nearly 113 incidents of people reporting issues with Microsoft 365 as of 1:05 a.m. ET,” reports Reuters. But that’s down “from over 15,890 reports at its peak a day earlier, according to Downdetector.” Reuters points out the outage affected antivirus software Microsoft Defender and data governance software Microsoft Purview, while CRN notes it also imp … ⌘ Read more

PowerShell Architect Retires After Decades At the Prompt
Jeffrey Snover, the driving force behind PowerShell, has retired after a career that reshaped Windows administration. The Register reports: Snover’s retirement comes after a brief sojourn at Google as a Distinguished Engineer, following a lengthy stint at Microsoft, during which he pulled the company back from imposing a graphical user interface (GUI) on adminis … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Gave FBI a Set of BitLocker Encryption Keys To Unlock Suspects’ Laptops
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Microsoft provided the FBI with the recovery keys to unlock encrypted data on the hard drives of three laptops as part of a federal investigation, Forbes reported on Friday. Many modern Windows computers rely on full-disk encryption, called BitLocker, which is ena … ⌘ Read more

AMD Ryzen AI Software 1.7 Released For Improved Performance On NPUs, New Model Support
AMD today released a new version of Ryzen AI Software, the user-space packages for Microsoft Windows and Linux for making use of the Ryzen AI NPUs for various AI software tasks like Stable Diffusion, ONNX, and more… ⌘ Read more

The Microsoft-OpenAI Files
Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: GeekWire takes a look at AI’s defining alliance in The Microsoft-OpenAI Files, an epic story drawn from 200+ documents, many made public Friday in Elon Musk’s ongoing suit accusing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman of abandoning the nonprofit mission (Microsoft is also a defendant). Musk, who was an OpenAI co-founder, is seeking up to $134 billion in damages. “Previously undisclosed emails, … ⌘ Read more

AI Company Eightfold Sued For Helping Companies Secretly Score Job Seekers
Eightfold AI, a venture capital-backed AI hiring platform used by Microsoft, PayPal and many other Fortune 500 companies, is being sued in California for allegedly compiling reports used to screen job applicants without their knowledge. From a report: The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday accusing Eightfold of violating the Fair Credit … ⌘ Read more

Energy Costs Will Decide Which Countries Win the AI Race, Microsoft’s Nadella Says
Energy costs will be key to deciding which country wins the AI race, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said. CNBC: As countries race to build AI infrastructure to capitalize on the technology’s promise of huge efficiency gains, Nadella told the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Tuesday that “GDP growth in any place … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI CFO Says Annualized Revenue Crosses $20 Billion In 2025
According to CFO Sarah Friar, OpenAI’s annualized revenue surpassed $20 billion in 2025, up from $6 billion a year earlier with growth closely tracking an expansion in computing capacity. Reuters reports: OpenAI’s computing capacity rose to 1.9 gigawatts (GW) in 2025 from 0.6 GW in 2024, Friar said in the blog, adding that Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming May Soon Let You Stream Your Own Games for Free - If You Watch Ads
Microsoft appears to be preparing an ad-supported tier for Xbox Cloud Gaming that would let players stream games they’ve purchased digitally without needing a Game Pass subscription, according to a Windows Central report citing sources familiar with the plans. Users last week began n … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Forced to Issue Emergency Out-of-Band Windows Update
The senior editor at the blog Windows Central decries two serious Windows issues “that were not spotted by Microsoft during testing, and are so severe that the company has now issued an emergency fix to address the problems.”

Microsoft’s first update for Windows 11 in 2026 has already caused two major issues that saw users unable to fully shutdown t … ⌘ Read more

To Pressure Security Professionals, Mandiant Releases Database That Cracks Weak NTLM Passwords in 12 Hours
Ars Technica reports:

Security firm Mandiant [part of Google Cloud] has released a database that allows any administrative password protected by Microsoft’s NTLM.v1 hash algorithm to be hacked in an attempt to nudge users who continue using the deprecated function … ⌘ Read more

Patch Tuesday Update Makes Windows PCs Refuse To Shut Down
A recent Microsoft Patch Tuesday update has introduced a bug in Windows 11 23H2 that causes some PCs to refuse to shut down or hibernate, “no matter how many times you try,” reports The Register. From the report: In a notice on its Windows release health dashboard, Microsoft confirmed that some PCs running Windows 11 23H2 might fail to power down properly af … ⌘ Read more

Code.org: Use AI In an Interview Without Our OK and You’re Dead To Us
theodp writes: Code.org, the nonprofit backed by AI giants Microsoft, Google and Amazon and whose Hour of AI and free AI curriculum aim to make world’s K-12 schoolchildren AI literate, points job seekers to its AI Use Policy in Hiring, which promises dire consequences for those who use AI during interviews or take home assignments without … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft is Closing Its Employee Library and Cutting Back on Subscriptions
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft’s library of books is so heavy that it once caused a campus building to sink, according to an unproven legend among employees. Now those physical books, journals, and reports, and many of Microsoft’s digital subscriptions to leading US newspapers, are disappearing in a shift des … ⌘ Read more

Wikipedia Signs AI Licensing Deals On Its 25th Birthday
Wikipedia turns 25 today, and the online encyclopedia is celebrating that with an announcement that it has signed new licensing deals with a slate of major AI companies – Amazon, Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Perplexity and Mistral AI. The deals allow these companies to access Wikipedia content “at a volume and speed designed specifically for their needs.” The Wikim … ⌘ Read more