Linux, Open Source, & anti Microsoft news

Google, Microsoft and Apple are battling for dominance in classrooms. They all want their devices in the hands of the next generation of consumers. The U.S. education-tech market is expected to hit $43 billion this year, with much of the growth coming in K-12 education, according to a study by Technavio.

Among a total of 64 CVEs, including 17 rated ‘critical’, is a second zero-day affecting all Windows versions identified as CVE-2019-0797, believed to have been deployed by middle-eastern APT groups.

Microsoft announced a slick new Skype for Web yesterday,integrating most of the features it had brought to the desktop over the past year. In what seems to be a puzzling omission, the web app no longer supports Chrome OS or Linux. That is to say, users aren’t simply prevented from using the new web skype interface, they are disallowed from using Skype for the web, period.

Microsoft has officially become the first major cloud service provider to open data centers in Africa. The company announced on Wednesday that two of its Azure cloud data centers have gone live in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa.

Last week the Linux Foundation, which maintains the Linux operating system and other enterprise-focused open source projects, announced the launch of a new project to make sure Linux-based systems and applications are up to snuff when running in safety critical systems.

Google security researcher finds secret whitelist that lets Facebook run Flash content despite Edge’s normal security policies.

The Microsoft Security Response Center published yesterday a security advisory about a denial of service (DOS) issue impacting IIS (Internet Information Services), Microsoft’s web server technology.

The Windows 10 April 2019 Update boasts many improvements, not least of which is Windows Subsystem for Linux’s new ability to let you access Linux files safely from Windows.

Microsoft’s collaborative Slack-alike, Teams, is having a difficult start to the week, with users unable to log in to share their hopes, dreams and Word documents with their co-workers.

Patch Tuesday Microsoft and Adobe have teamed up to give users and sysadmins plenty of work to do this week. The February edition of Patch Tuesday includes more than 70 CVE-listed vulnerabilities from each vendor – yes, each – as well as a critical security fix from Cisco. You should patch them as soon as it is possible.