Linux, Open Source, & anti Microsoft news

Microsoft has (very quietly) announced that it will be changing the way account sign-ins work in February – and the new system could pose a significant security risk for some users.  If you sign into your Microsoft account to check your emails in Outlook or access your OneDrive on a public computer (or, say, a friend or colleague’s device) you’ll no longer be automatically signed out afterwards, even if you close the browser entirely.

Microsoft aims to provide 1 million people in South Africa with artificial intelligence (AI) and cyber security training opportunities by 2026, Lillian Barnard, President for Microsoft Africa, said on Thursday.

Microsoft’s LinkedIn has been sued by Premium customers who said the business-focused social media platform disclosed their private messages to third parties without permission to train generative artificial intelligence models.

Microsoft was once the exclusive provider of data center infrastructure for OpenAI to train and run its AI models. No longer. Coinciding with the announcement of Stargate, OpenAI’s massive new AI infrastructure deal with SoftBank, Oracle, and others, Microsoft says it has signed a new agreement with OpenAI that gives it “right of first refusal” on new OpenAI cloud computing capacity. That means that, going forward, Microsoft gets first choice over whether to host OpenAI’s AI workloads in the cloud — but if Microsoft can’t meet its needs, OpenAI can go to a rival cloud provider.

Microsoft has shared a temporary fix for a known issue that causes classic Outlook to crash when writing, replying to, or forwarding an email. These problems appear after updating Outlook for Microsoft 365, Outlook 2021, Outlook 2019, or Outlook 2016 to Version 2412 (Build 18324.20168), released on January 7, and will trigger “0xc0000005” exception codes.

Microsoft has fixed a bug that was causing some Windows Server 2022 systems with two or more NUMA nodes to fail to start up.

The Federal Trade Commission said in a staff report issued Friday that there are potential competitive issues in partnerships between big tech companies and generative AI developers — specifically, Microsoft’s backing of OpenAI and Amazon and Alphabet/Google’s partnerships with Anthropic. “The FTC’s report sheds light on how partnerships by big tech firms can create lock-in, deprive start-ups of key AI inputs, and reveal sensitive information that can undermine fair competition,” said FTC Chair Lina Khan in a statement. (President-elect Donald Trump plans to replace Khan as chair.)

If you’ve been trying to somehow avoid the Windows 11 2024 Update, those days are over. Microsoft is now saying that mandatory Windows 11 24H2 updates have begun and the installation is lengthier than prior updates, so plan accordingly.

Microsoft is bundling its AI-powered Office features into Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions, but it’s also raising prices as a result. Previously, Microsoft 365 subscribers had to pay an extra $20 per month to get Copilot inside Office apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint as part of a Copilot Pro subscription, but Microsoft is now adding these AI features to Microsoft 365 apps for an extra $3 per month. Existing subscribers can opt out of the AI features and not suffer the price increase, though.

Microsoft says it will drop support for Office apps in Windows 10 after the operating system reaches its end of support on October 14. “Microsoft 365 Apps will no longer be supported after October 14, 2025, on Windows 10 devices. To use Microsoft 365 Applications on your device, you will need to upgrade to Windows 11,” the company said on Tuesday.