Linux, Open Source, & anti Microsoft news

Cybercriminals are persistently looking to try and exploit a vulnerability in Microsoft Defender SmartScreen to deliver all kinds of malware and infostealers. The flaw allows the attackers to bypass Windows Defender SmartScreen, a security feature integrated into Windows operating systems and designed to protect users from online threats.

Now it has emerged that Microsoft has blamed the European Union for the outage, due to a 2009 agreement that ensures that Redmond does not operate the ‘walled garden’ approach that Apple utilises. The 2009 agreement reached with the European Commission stipulates that Microsoft could not make security changes that would have blocked the update from Crowdstrike, Redmond said in comments to the Wall Street Journal newspaper.

Several European countries are betting on open-source software. In the United States, eh, not so much. In the latest news from across the Atlantic, Switzerland has taken a major step forward with its “Federal Law on the Use of Electronic Means for the Fulfillment of Government Tasks” (EMBAG). This groundbreaking legislation mandates using open-source software (OSS) in the public sector.

Once, Azure was a cloud platform dedicated to Windows. These days, the company tests over 1,000 Linux distributions a month just to ensure their customer apps run smoothly on Azure.

Microsoft is always finding new ways to disrupt and annoy users—and this time, it comes in the form of an unavoidable pop-up notification. Even while most people are still upset by constant Windows 11 update notifications, Windows 11 has recently started displaying more and more information about cloud backups.

Microsoft has released a recovery tool that’s designed to help IT admins repair Windows machines that were impacted by CrowdStrike’s faulty update that crashed 8.5 million Windows devices on Friday. The tool creates a bootable USB drive that IT admins can use to help quickly recover impacted machines.

Banks, airports, TV stations, health care organizations, hotels, and countless other businesses are all facing widespread IT outages, leaving flights grounded and causing widespread disruption, after Windows machines have displayed errors worldwide.

Microsoft said early on Friday that its cloud services outage in the Central U.S. region was resolved after it led to the grounding and cancellation of several flights.  Frontier cancelled 147 flights on Thursday and delayed 212 others, according to data tracker FlightAware. 45% of Allegiant aircrafts were delayed, while Sun Country delayed 23% flights, the data showed. The companies did not give details on the number of flights impacted.

Nvidia announced Wednesday it is expanding its GPU kernel module open-source transition. Nvidia first released production-ready open-source Linux GPU kernel modules for data center compute GPUs in May 2022. Beginning with its upcoming R560 driver release, Nvidia will transition fully to the open-source GPU kernel modules across all platforms.

UK regulators are now formally investigating Microsoft’s hiring of Inflection AI staff, months after most of Inflection’s staff joined Microsoft’s new AI division. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is now opening up a phase one merger investigation into the partnership, with a September 11th deadline over whether the investigation will progress into a second phase.