A new report from Windows Central suggests Microsoft is currently testing the Career system in Xbox Live. If that is the case, it could point to the company debuting the system alongside Redstone 4. The next major Windows update is due to drop this spring, giving Microsoft time to finalize the Career concept. Xbox Corporate Vice President Mike Ybarra hinted towards the Career direction last summer. He said the company was working on changing the Achievement system....

When there is no alt text on an image, a screen reader will describe the image as an “unlabeled graphic” to users. The is hardly useful. In Microsoft Edge, the browser now has an update for its screen reader that will boost its functionality on images without alternative text: “When a screen reader finds an image without a label, that image can be automatically processed by machine learning (ML) algorithms to describe the image in words and capture any text it contains,” says Travis Leithead, a program manager on Microsoft’s Edge platform team....

A team at the JavaScript security firm otto-js were testing script detection when they found the unusual activity. Furthermore, if users access the “Show Password” option when entering their password, this information is also sent to the companies. It seems anything put into a form when the spellcheckers are active will be sent. However, the researchers say Google only receives the information temporarily: “The text typed by the user may be sensitive personal information and Google does not attach it to any user identity and only processes it on the server temporarily....

This is a major addition for the web version of the Office app, giving users the ability to analyze data from major sets. Microsoft’s Excel desktop application has had this ability for some time, but this is new for the browser version. Users can build PivotTables and analyze and filter to gain insights on data from large sets in Power BI. In a blog post announcing the feature, Microsoft details how the integration works for Power BI users: “For example, you can get up-to-date insights by refreshing the PivotTable, or conduct explorations by manipulating the PivotTable fields all in a browser....

Now the initial hype is over, we have some more details about what exactly the Fluent Design System is, how it will start, and how it will grow. The first thing to understand is that Fluid is closely tied to AR and VR. As we switch from 2D to 3D, more efficient ways of doing interface arise. However, the technology isn’t mainstream yet, and people aren’t going to want a headset on their face 24/7....

With the additional Extended Support, Windows Server and SQL Server customers now get 16 years of total support. Microsoft points out that normal support is five years for Mainstream and five years for Extended support. Microsoft says it introduced Windows Server and SQL Server Premium Assurance to offer more flexibility. The company launched Windows Server Premium Assurance back in December, albeit for a scheduled release in early 2017. “This helps you continue to meet compliance requirements and ensure security on systems you aren’t ready to update....

According to reports, August Patch Tuesday includes a fix for a Windows 10 zero-day flaw that was first reported way back in 2018. Specifically, in the CVE-2020-1464 fix, Microsoft plugged a hole across Windows versions to solve improper handling of file signatures. Microsoft confirms this fix in its release notes: “A spoofing vulnerability exists when Windows incorrectly validates file signatures. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could bypass security features and load improperly signed files....

The Windows 10 October 2018 Update has been plagued by problems, including Task Manager issues and deleting personal files through manual updates. Microsoft was forced to pull the update from release. It is recovering now through the Insider program in preview form, which is where the ZIP fix was issued. We reported last week Windows 10 October 2018 Update users complained of issues when extracting files from a ZIP archive....

Quick Poll is available on Microsoft Forms as an add-in. As the name suggests, the tool allows users to create real-time polls quickly. When typing an email in Outlook, the Quick Poll add-in button can be used to generate poll questions with answer options. Recipients who receive the email can vote directly within the mail or click the link to see the question open in a separate window. Poll results are also showed on the voting car in the email....

1 Two’s Company, Three’s a Crowd2 Blame Game Gates describes missing out on buying Android when Google acquired the company was one of his “greatest mistakes ever”. While he admits the result has not particularly harmed Microsoft as the company’s other divisions thrive, he says missing out on mobile meant Microsoft is competing instead of dominating: “It’s amazing to me that having made one of the greatest mistakes of all time, and there was this antitrust lawsuit and various things, that our other assets like Windows and Office are still very strong, so we are a leading company,” says Gates....

That represents a 22% increase year-on-year. Microsoft also confirmed its operating income for FY22 Q1 was $20.2 billion, up 27% from the same period a year ago. Elsewhere, the numbers continue to make good reading for Microsoft investors. For example, net income reached $20.5 billion, up 48%. As has often been the case in recent years, Microsoft’s cloud business is the primary reason for the significant gains. Office Commercial and Cloud revenue increased 18%, Office 365 Commercial jumped 23%, and Office Consumer grabbed a 10% growth....

In its announcement, Microsoft says finding specific content in an email inbox is not easy. This is especially the case for enterprise users who may receive multiple emails per day. While searching an inbox will bring up relevant results, sometimes there are hundreds of emails to hunt through. Email Insights intuitively finds the specific content, which takes the load off the user. The app searches connected inboxes and displays the top three most relevant results....

Though Excel has had localized functions for some time, that doesn’t fix the problem completely. The majority of tutorials are still in English, and many have been taught US functions, despite the language barrier. Translating them manually can be time-consuming and a huge headache. Danish employee Martin Ørsted noticed this very quickly, and vowed to solve the problem during Microsoft’s Hackathon. The result is a new Garage project accurately named Functions Translator....

Windows animated features for Start Menu tiles is a nice OS touch that lets updates arrive on the Windows Live Tiles. As the name suggests, the subdomain was a compartment of buildmypinnedsite.com, which Microsoft launched alongside Windows 8. The service allows website to create and show live updates inside Windows Start menu tiles. For example, Microsoft Edge users could pin a web page directly into the Start menu on Windows 10 (Start Page on Win8)....

This announcement brings several important changes to Ignite. Firstly, Microsoft is moving Ignite 2020 back to the usual September schedule for the conference. Last year the event was moved to November. Clearly that change was not meant to last. Many speculated November would become the default time for Ignite because it moved the conference out of hurricane season. The event is the company’s largest conference and would cause major problems if it was cancelled....

“With hundreds of millions of Augmented Reality capable mobile devices in the hands of business users, every maker will be able to leverage the power of mixed reality to extend their Power Apps with the ease of drag-and-drop development,” said Microsoft of the addition. “With these new capabilities, makers can start to digitize workflows in physical space in new and innovative ways using tools they are already familiar with.” PowerApps have already proven popular with many businesses, allowing them to provide modern functionality with less overhead....

Usually, Microsoft handles security patches with its month Patch Tuesday rollouts. However, if a flaw is problematic enough, the company will break out of this cycle to issue out of band emergency updates. With August Patch Tuesday been and gone, this latest patch is one of those out of band releases: “An out of band security update has been released for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2,” Microsoft notes....

Other changes coming to Azure App Service on Azure Stack include improvements to Admin and Functions portals, .NET Core 2.0 support and general fixes. Regarding support for highly available deployments, Microsoft explains workloads can now be deployed across fault domains. “Therefore App Service infrastructure is able to be fault tolerant as it will be deployed across fault domains. By default all new deployments of Azure App Service will have this capability however for deployments completed prior to Azure Stack 1802 update being applied refer to the App Service Fault Domain documentation....

Joining Microsoft in the Open Source Security Foundation (OSSF) are Red Hat, Google, JPMC, IBM, NCC Group, and OWASP Foundation. Microsoft’s own GitHub is also a part of the group. Announced Monday, the collective of tech companies are also joined by the JPMorgan Chase banking firm. All of the foundation is hosted at the Linux Foundation. In the announcement, the group said the intention is connect and secure software by leveraging the Linux Foundation....

Because Microsoft Launcher 6.0 was a ground-up build, it lacked some features of the full app in Microsoft Launcher Preview. Now the new version is coming to users of the Beta app. It seems Microsoft will maintain three Launcher apps on Android signaling three levels of development (Preview, bets, and full release). According to Dr. Windows, the beta version is a couple of builds behind the preview version. That makes sense for the three-tiered approach....