Category: Software

Microsoft has attracted a lot of attention after it suspended the account of a well-known LibreOffice developer without warning. He lost access to important services and was unable to restore it. The company's account recovery procedures have again raised many questions and concerns.

Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, has shared insights into the future evolution of Copilot. Accordingly, there is a vision in which the AI assistant develops a distinct personality and sense of continuity over time. He explains that Copilot will eventually exhibit traits akin to aging and personal history, creating a more human-friendly experience.

Microsoft has started a rollout of a newest Link to Windows app for Android, that features a number of major changes and improvements. It is introducing a modernized interface, simplified pairing process, and advanced remote control capabilities. It is a gradual roll-out, with some Insiders already seeing the change.

The Document Foundation, the organization behind the LibreOffice office suite, has publicly criticized Microsoft for designing complex and opaque document formats that hinder interoperability and discourage migration to alternative software. The foundation argues that Microsoft’s use of XML-based structures in its Office suite prioritizes vendor lock-in over open standards.

Microsoft winded down the Movies & TV section of the Microsoft Store. Users will no longer be able to purchase movies and TV shows on both Windows PCs and Xbox consoles.

Google is rolling out a series of significant updates to its search engine, integrating new artificial intelligence capabilities to solve complex tasks. Those include advanced language models, deep search functionality, and AI-powered calling features for local services.

Microsoft has announced a major enhancement to the Xbox experience on both PCs and consoles. Starting today, members of the PC Gaming Preview who hold an active Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription can now stream  console games they own. While the list of supported games is limited, it already includes titles that aren't part of the Game Pass catalog. The new feature comes to 28 regions where Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta) is supported.

Microsoft has released a new small language model called Phi-4-mini-flash-reasoning, the main benefit of which is to enhance logical reasoning capabilities on devices with limited resources, be they smartphones, peripherals or embedded systems.

Security researchers from Secure Annex have identified a growing trend in browser add-on monetization. Developers are embedding a JavaScript library named mellowtel.js into extensions to form a distributed network of user systems for web content scraping. These systems act as proxies and bots that download website content upon receiving instructions from external servers.

This month, Microsoft closed 137 vulnerabilities as part of the periodical Patch Tuesday release. None of these vulnerabilities were under active attack at the time of disclosure. However, one zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft SQL Server became publicly known before the patch was released.