Linux, Open Source, & anti Microsoft news

Microsoft’s new Edge browser started randomly crashing when users typed into the address bar tonight. The issues appear to have affected Edge users who have selected Google as the default search engine. Microsoft investigated the problem and now says it’s believed to have been resolved.

Using Microsoft Teams is about to get a whole lot more personal after the collaboration app revealed a new expansion aimed at life outside the office.  The new version of Microsoft Teams isn’t an entirely new app, but instead uses your personal account to log in and build a new profile within the service. Users can then switch between work and personal profiles, allowing them to seperate work and home usage, with the latter helping you stay in touch with friends and family.

Slack—the now-nearly ubiquitous, purple work-chatting platform—has filed a formal complaint alleging that tech titan Microsoft is unlawfully abusing its power to squeeze newer rivals out of the market—almost the exact same accusations Microsoft infamously faced 20 years ago.

When Microsoft introduced the Surface Duo late last year, it confirmed that it would be using Android as the operating system for the dual-screened device. As the official launch date approaches, Microsoft’s implementation of the popular OS looks ready to pass Google’s compatibility check.

Microsoft just can’t catch a break with all its updates that seem to cause more problems. The company rolled out a Windows 10 update yesterday which fixed a major DNS security flaw (and a few other things), but in the process might have removed Notepad, Paint, or WordPad for some users if they were updating to version 2004 at the same time.

Microsoft Outlook is immediately crashing worldwide when users start the application, with 0xc0000005 errors displayed in the Windows Event Viewer. These crashes started occurring over the last hour, and reports are flooding in from users all over the world.

As part of its Patch Tuesday batch of software updates, Microsoft today released a fix for a bug discovered by Israeli security firm Check Point, which the company’s researchers have named SigRed. The SigRed bug exploits Windows DNS, one of the most popular kinds of DNS software that translates domain names into IP addresses. Windows DNS runs on the DNS servers of practically every small and medium-sized organization around the world. The bug, Check Point says, has existed in that software for a remarkable 17 years.

The monthly security updates for Microsoft products — also known as Patch Tuesday — are out for the month of July 2020. This month, Redmond fixed 123 security flaws across 13 products. None of the security bugs fixed this month have been observed being exploited in the real world.

Android users have discovered that Outlook slips a “Bing search” option into the long-press menu you see when you select text. Tap it and it will open your default browser with a Bing query for whatever words you had selected. It’s helpful, but likely not what you wanted if you live in a Google-centric world.

If I told you that my entire computer screen just got taken over by a new app that I’d never installed or asked for — it just magically appeared on my desktop, my taskbar, and preempted my next website launch — you’d probably tell me to run a virus scanner and stay away from shady websites, no? But the insanely intrusive app I’m talking about isn’t a piece of ransomware. It’s Microsoft’s new Chromium Edge browser, which the company is now force-feeding users via an automatic update to Windows.