Microsoft

Windows 10 is in a rut. The platform has been hit with multiple problems in recent weeks and partners have been making things even worse. But now an important new Windows 10 warning (and the failure behind it) falls squarely on Microsoft’s shoulders.  

Picked up by the ever-excellent Ghacks, Microsoft has issued a warning to all its 800M Windows 10 users that a serious and long-running bug in the platform is not actually a bug at all. Instead, the problem was introduced “by design”. And it’s worrying on multiple levels.

After an extremely brief tease at last year's E3 presentation, Microsoft revealed the first details of the successor to the Xbox One today, called "Project Scarlett" for now. The hardware will launch in the 2020 holiday season, the company said.

It has been nine days since Microsoft patched the high-severity vulnerability known as BlueKeep, and yet the dire advisories about its potential to sow worldwide disruptions keep coming.

A security researcher and exploit seller going by the name of SandboxEscaper has published today new Windows zero-days for the third day in a row.

On her GitHub account, the researcher published proof-of-concept code for two zero-days, but also short explainers on how to use the two exploits.

These two new exploits mark the seventh and eight zero-days the researcher has published in the last ten months. To summarize, over the course of the last three days, she also published:

A glitch in Microsoft’s Windows 10 update is causing systems to freeze after users tried to use the System Reboot function. Luckily, workarounds exist.

Microsoft has acknowledged that a Windows 10 bug is causing some users’ systems to freeze after using their System Restore feature.

At its Build 2018 developer conference a year ago, Microsoft previewed Visual Studio IntelliCode, which uses AI to offer intelligent suggestions that improve code quality and productivity. In April, Microsoft launched Visual Studio 2019 for Windows and Mac. At that point, IntelliCode was still an optional extension that Microsoft was openly offering as a preview. But at Build 2019 earlier this month, Microsoft shared that IntelliCode’s capabilities are now generally available for C# and XAML in Visual Studio 2019 and for Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, and Python in Visual Studio Code.

Microsoft is warning that the Internet could see another exploit with the magnitude of the WannaCry attack that shut down computers all over the world two years ago unless people patch a high-severity vulnerability. The software maker took the unusual step of backporting the just-released patch for Windows 2003 and XP, which haven’t been supported in four and five years, respectively.

Recent Microsoft security patches are causing older machines running Sophos or Avast software to freeze or fail to boot entirely after they're applied, both companies report.

The problem affects Windows 7, 8.1, Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, Server 2012, and Server 2012 R2 PCs with "any Sophos Windows endpoint or server product," except Sophos Central Intercept X. It does impact Intercept X Advanced and Intercept X Advanced with EDR. PCs fail to boot when the newest monthly and security-only updates are applied and the computer is restarted.

Women at Microsoft have been sharing reports of sexual harassment by both fellow coworkers and external partners that were often ignored by managers and human resources alike, according to a report by Quartz.

With Windows enthusiasts awaiting the public release of the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser, Microsoft reportedly made it available in an unlikely place. According to reports, some users of Windows 10 Insider build 18865 have found that Microsoft is testing the Edge Insider build withing the Windows Sandbox feature.