Microsoft

Microsoft is continuing to roll out more application programming interfaces (APIs), which enable developers to add customizable AI features to their applications.

On March 1, Microsoft made available a paid public preview of its Custom Vision service; increased the set of recognizable faces to one million in its Face API; and made generally available in the Azure portal its Bing Entity Search service.

Google's Project Zero team has disclosed another Windows 10 security flaw after Microsoft failed to patch it within the standard timeframe of 90 days. As first spotted by Neowin, the bug is one of a pair that was initially reported to Microsoft in November. The company apparently fixed one of the bugs with its February Patch Tuesday fixes, but left the other untouched.

The project to run Windows 8 RT on the Lumia 640 XL has been progressing really well, but in many ways that is simply replacing one dead operating system with another.

The Holy Grail is running Windows 10 for ARM on a Windows 10 Mobile handset, and according to one of the lead hackers for Windows RT project Ben Imbushuo, it would be very hard but may be possible.

When asked if it would be possible to run Windows 10 for ARM on the Lumia 950 XL he said it would be possible, and confirmed that he was doing research on the issue.

Microsoft has added Windows 10 Pro support for palm-vein authentication, as part of its Windows Hello facial and fingerprint-recognition system.

The palm-vein authentication comes by way of a collaboration with Fujitsu, a Windows 10 enterprise hardware partner that is in the process of deploying its own palm-vein biometric technology to 80,000 employees in Japan.

Microsoft is trying to kill the password, and it’s about time. This week, the company said the next test version of its stripped-down Windows 10 S operating system will strip out passwords as well, by default. If you go through setup as recommended, you’ll never get a password option.

But killing the password altogether will take more work and time — and the problem may get worse before it gets better.

Microsoft has released a major update for Office for Mac. Update 16.9.0 finally brings long-anticipated real-time collaboration features and automatic cloud saving. Notably, the Mac version of this software is now built from the same codebase as the Windows version, which means that Office shares a codebase across all platforms for the first time in 20 years.

Since its inception, Skype has been notable for its secretive, proprietary algorithm. It's also long had a complicated relationship with encryption: encryption is used by the Skype protocol, but the service has never been clear exactly how that encryption was implemented or exactly which privacy and security features it offers.

It's been clear for a while that the fixes for the Meltdown and Spectre memory vulnerabilities would slow down PCs, but just how bad is the hit, really? Microsoft has run some benchmarks, and it's unfortunately bad news if your system is less than fresh. While the patches for Meltdown and one variant of Spectre will have a "minimal performance impact," fixing a second Spectre variant through low-level microcode imposes a tangible speed penalty -- and it's particularly bad on systems released around 2015 or earlier.

The once-hyped Kinect camera for Xbox One hasn't exactly been alive and kicking for years - but today came the last nail in the (one imagines) shiny green coffin. Microsoft has confirmed that it's no longer making the adapter needed to hook Kinect up to your Xbox One S, Xbox One X, or any other Windows box.

Although the issue has been patched through Microsoft's Fall Creators Update, outdated versions of Windows 10's Hello facial recognition can be spoofed with a photo, a German security firm said this week.

With some extra work as little as a low-resolution, laser-printed photo taken with a near infrared camera can be used to trick a Hello-capable PC, SySS explained. It demonstrated the problem in a series of YouTube videos.