Windows 8 is about to get a lot less secure.
After January 12, Microsoft will stop offering security patches for the three-year-old operating system. Users will have to upgrade to either Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 to keep receiving updates.
January 13 is the last day for business and individual users to move off older versions of the Internet Explorer web browser, before Microsoft pulls the plug on support including security patches.
The deadline this week comes 18 months after Microsoft warned that it would cease to support Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10, giving users time to upgrade.
Microsoft unveiled a revised policy to inform users when it believes an account has been targeted by state-sponsored hackers.
The move to notify consumer services product users, including users of Outlook.com email and OneDrive, follows similar policies at Facebook and Twitter.
Software vulnerabilities are a daily event it seems, but some systems just have more of them. When we think of this a couple of names usually spring to mind -- Flash and Java. However, according to the new list being published by CVE Details, they aren't quite at the top, nor is Microsoft's oft-maligned operating system.
Microsoft has announced that it has acquired Metanautix, a startup company that was developing its Quest data compute engine which aims to help large enterprises filter through their vast amounts of in-house data.
Metanautix, which was co-founded in 2012 by Theo Vassilakis and Toli Lerios, was launched in September 2014 after raising $7 million of funding after Quest had been two years in development.
In its first 24 hours of availability, Windows 10 made its way to an impressive 14 million devices, and that number climbed to 75 million four weeks later. It's not clear exactly how many devices are now running the OS, though, as Microsoft's last official figure of 110 million was announced over two months ago.
Whatever the current total is, it seems likely to climb significantly in the weeks ahead, as Microsoft renews its push to get Windows 7 and 8.1 users to upgrade to its latest OS - but it seems the company may just be getting a bit too pushy with its approach.
Microsoft plans to publish the core components of its "Chakra" JavaScript engine to GitHub under an MIT open source license in January 2016.
Company officials announced the plans, which had been rumored for the past few weeks, at the JSConf on December 5.
Windows Server 2016, not likely to arrive until the second half of next year, is going to shake up the way Microsoft licenses its server operating system, moving away from per socket licensing to per core. The change was first spotted by Wes Miller who is, for his sins, an expert on Microsoft licensing policies.
Microsoft said Thursday it aided law enforcement agencies in several regions to disrupt a four-year-old botnet called Dorkbot, which has infected one million computers worldwide.
The Dorkbot malware aims to steal login credentials from services such as Gmail, Facebook, PayPal, Steam, eBay, Twitter and Netflix.
Microsoft’s first purpose-built Windows 10 flagship devices are beginning to arrive in markets worldwide, and despite being the first high-end Windows Phones to come from the firm in recent years, they may not be the 'ultimate' devices we've been waiting for. While the Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL are remnants of its Nokia acquisition, Microsoft has supposedly been working on delivering its first mobile device to originate from Redmond.
