Microsoft

Microsoft has launched some new features in its Excel spreadsheet software that will boost its power. But will that only be for the benefit of users?

In its blog post about the new functionality, Microsoft says that there are “many reasons” why people might be interested in writing JavaScript custom functions, and gives the following examples:

• Calculate math operations, like whether a number is prime.
• Bring information from the web, like a bank account balance.
• Stream live data, like a stock price.

Microsoft’s May Patch Tuesday fixes include two critical remote code-execution vulnerabilities, both of which are under active attack.

The most serious of the two is tied to a Windows 10 VBScript engine and can be triggered when a victim visits a malicious website.

Since Microsoft and Amazon announced plans to integrate their respective personal digital assistants last summer, there's been almost no official update on the status of the partnership.

It seems, however, like there's finally movement happening. An April 27 update to the Cortana support page mentions "Cortana and Alexa."

"Cortana and Alexa are still getting to know each other. Soon you'll be able to ask Alexa to buy things, add items to your shopping list, access your Alexa skills, and more," says the brief update on the page. Yes, "soon" is vague. But it's something....

Microsoft today started to push out the free Windows 10 April 2018 Update. As always, this will be a gradual rollout, meaning not everyone will get the latest and greatest Windows 10 update on day one. Microsoft will slowly ramp up the release via Windows Update starting next week, but there’s no guarantee on the timing of when you will get it. If you don’t want to wait, you can get the latest and greatest update today.

Microsoft has posted the results of the third quarter of its 2018 financial year, running up until March 31, 2018. Revenue was $26.8 billion, up 16 percent year on year; operating income was $8.3 billion, up 23 percent; net income was $7.4 billion, up 35 percent; and earnings per share was $0.95, up 36 percent.

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.