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Everyone involved in the watch is keen on developing it for a wider market, but that’s a long road full of trials, data and research papers. It could be many years before a viable product for those with Parkinson’s even emerges from a lab, let alone finds its way to companies who can distribute it and then onto the wrists of those who need it.

Also a bit of a warning: that is a horrible website I linked to. >60MB to just load it... And no date for when the article was written, but I'm guessing this month.

Maybe I'm missing it, but when you look at their main developer page, there is no mention of such limitations. Even when you dig into the documentation a little, you need to counter-intuitively hit the section about UWP API documentation to see the chart of limitations.

Even then, the task of tediously looking through the list of APIs to determine which ones your app is likely to hit is not going to be fun, especially if it is a kitchen sink app like Office.

Maybe I'm missing it, but when you look at their main developer page, there is no mention of such limitations. Even when you dig into the documentation a little, you need to counter-intuitively hit the section about UWP API documentation to see the chart of limitations.

Even then, the task of tediously looking through the list of APIs to determine which ones your app is likely to hit is not going to be fun, especially if it is a kitchen sink app like Office.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-u...

Windows Defender is the No. 1 antivirus on Windows 10, protecting more computers against viruses, malware, spyware, and other threats than any other solution.

For those not aware the vulnerability has already been patched as part of KB4016240 which is already been pushed out on windows update. The details of the issue are fully disclosed.

MS have already pushed a fix for this out; everything should magically auto-update to fix the vulnerability.

More details here.

Good job by all. Responsible disclosure plus super fast response time.

Official announcement: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/4022344

More background / report: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=1252&desc=5

On workstations, attackers can access mpengine by sending emails to users (reading the email or opening attachments is not necessary), visiting links in a web browser, instant messaging and so on. This level of accessibility is possible because MsMpEng uses a filesystem minifilter to intercept and inspect all system filesystem activity, so writing controlled contents to anywhere on disk (e.g. caches, temporary internet files, downloads (even unconfirmed downloads), attachments, etc) is enough to access functionality in mpengine. MIME types and file extensions are not relevant to this vulnerability, as MsMpEng uses it's own content identification system.

Vulnerabilities in MsMpEng are among the most severe possible in Windows, due to the privilege, accessibility, and ubiquity of the service.

The core component of MsMpEng responsible for scanning and analysis is called mpengine. Mpengine is a vast and complex attack surface, comprising of handlers for dozens of esoteric archive formats, executable packers and cryptors, full system emulators and interpreters for various architectures and languages, and so on. All of this code is accessible to remote attackers.

tl;dr: The Javascript engine in Windows Defender (which tries to figure out if it's a virus) has a flaw. Exploit works and can be leveraged if you can force the victim to write something to disk (triggering a scan): eg, sending an email, viewing an image, writing a log entry, etc.

Not a Windows Update, the fix is coming as part of the Windows Defender definitions updates rollout process.

is that there are too many software packages in use by organizations that require legacy support that won't work within many new browsers. My company has software that requires IE9 with outdated plugins that haven't been developed since 2003

That rhetoric used to be true but not anymore. I hate to tell you, your company is the minority and it's becoming more of a minority every day. Several problems with your argument are IE9 runs on which version of Windows again? Oh the one that Microsoft doesn't support anymore. Sources:

http://www.directionsonmicroso...
https://support.microsoft.com/...

I guess you hope you're on Windows 7 and have the extended support. For the rest of us, we're not in the dark ages anymore. It's 2017 for crying out loud. Quirksmode vs. HTML 5, you do the math. How do you deliver a mobile experience with Quirksmode? *cough*

You use BrowserStack for free https://developer.microsoft.co... or you download one of the many VM that Microsoft provides for free https://developer.microsoft.co...

Now, please tell me how to test that "cross-platform" Safari for both Mac and iOS without paying huge amounts to Apple or a monthly fee to BrowserStack

You use BrowserStack for free https://developer.microsoft.co... or you download one of the many VM that Microsoft provides for free https://developer.microsoft.co...

Now, please tell me how to test that "cross-platform" Safari for both Mac and iOS without paying huge amounts to Apple or a monthly fee to BrowserStack

It appears you'll need a subscription fee of $49 to $99 per year in order to make an unlisted app on one PC and install it on a Windows 10 S laptop. And this will remain the case until Microsoft adds Visual Studio to Windows Store.

Basically under reach by apple vs. over reach by MS. I used to think MS's big failure was 3rd party drivers by folks who didn't know what they are doing then I spent a little time with surface and realized that even ms can't seem to write working drivers for modern windows.

I'd be surprised if Microsoft actually wrote the drivers rather than the vendors who supplied the components. It would be a different story if the components were all manufactured by Microsoft but they sourced them from 3rd parties like any other computer.

You can get the Surface drivers at the links in the article below. I haven't had any problems with the Surface Pro 4 drivers since the December update.

https://www.microsoft.com/surf...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-u...

Basically under reach by apple vs. over reach by MS. I used to think MS's big failure was 3rd party drivers by folks who didn't know what they are doing then I spent a little time with surface and realized that even ms can't seem to write working drivers for modern windows.

I'd be surprised if Microsoft actually wrote the drivers rather than the vendors who supplied the components. It would be a different story if the components were all manufactured by Microsoft but they sourced them from 3rd parties like any other computer.

You can get the Surface drivers at the links in the article below. I haven't had any problems with the Surface Pro 4 drivers since the December update.

https://www.microsoft.com/surf...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-u...

VIrtual ring routing appears to solve some of these problems.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us...

I've been reading about this kind of stuff recently, and I'm considering attempting to implement it.

Right now though, I'm writing a test harness to compare various routing algorithms and see how many nodes they can scale to before they fail (also, how much churn they can support, how they handle partitions, etc)

Ya, cause that's a awesome strategy. Windows 7 is end of life support wise. Moron.
https://support.microsoft.com/...

First Google result for "windows hardlink":
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-...

Without this FUD starts about keyloggers and web tracking that may or may not be happening in reality.

"Send Microsoft info about how I write to help us improve typing and writing in the future"
(Sure, keyboard vs touch-screen possible.)
May just be for dictionary, but anyway:
"As part of that service, we also collect information from the user dictionary created on your device. This user dictionary stores unique words like names you write, which helps you type and ink more accurately. Both the voice data and the user dictionary are used in the aggregate to help improve our ability to correctly recognize all usersâ(TM) speech."
https://privacy.microsoft.com/...

From the same page:
"If youâ(TM)ve allowed Cortana to do so, Microsoft also collects information about your Calendar and People (also known as contacts) to help personalize your speech experience, and to help Windows and Cortana better recognize people, events, places, and music when you dictate messages or documents. The information Cortana collects will help personalize your speech experience on all your Windows devices and Cortana apps when you sign in with the same Microsoft account."

"Microsoft Edge saves your browsing history, which is made up of info about the websites you visit, on your device. If the Diagnostics and usage setting is set to Full, this browsing history is sent to Microsoft, which helps us find and fix problems and improve our products and services for all users."
https://privacy.microsoft.com/...

Without this FUD starts about keyloggers and web tracking that may or may not be happening in reality.

"Send Microsoft info about how I write to help us improve typing and writing in the future"
(Sure, keyboard vs touch-screen possible.)
May just be for dictionary, but anyway:
"As part of that service, we also collect information from the user dictionary created on your device. This user dictionary stores unique words like names you write, which helps you type and ink more accurately. Both the voice data and the user dictionary are used in the aggregate to help improve our ability to correctly recognize all usersâ(TM) speech."
https://privacy.microsoft.com/...

From the same page:
"If youâ(TM)ve allowed Cortana to do so, Microsoft also collects information about your Calendar and People (also known as contacts) to help personalize your speech experience, and to help Windows and Cortana better recognize people, events, places, and music when you dictate messages or documents. The information Cortana collects will help personalize your speech experience on all your Windows devices and Cortana apps when you sign in with the same Microsoft account."

"Microsoft Edge saves your browsing history, which is made up of info about the websites you visit, on your device. If the Diagnostics and usage setting is set to Full, this browsing history is sent to Microsoft, which helps us find and fix problems and improve our products and services for all users."
https://privacy.microsoft.com/...

At least have an exhaustive list of what they collect

You mean something like this and this?

More details at https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/04/05/windows-10-privacy-journey-continues-more-transparency-and-controls-for-you.

Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft.

At least have an exhaustive list of what they collect

You mean something like this and this?

More details at https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/04/05/windows-10-privacy-journey-continues-more-transparency-and-controls-for-you.

Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft.

As with a lot of annoying Microsoft things these days; the fact that you can't is more of a licensing issue than a technical one.

On the desktop, Windows 10 LTSB is the de-crapified version you actually want; but haha, volume-licensed enterprise SKUs only!

If you have the appropriate Windows Server version license; you can install "server core" or "nano server"; which have even more cut out; but while that can at least be purchased in single units; it's a fairly expensive way to declutter a workstation.

It took a while; but Microsoft did manage to disentangle a lot of the formerly mandatory bits and pieces; it's just that they seem loath to actually sell that to you unless they've exhausted all the alternatives.

As with a lot of annoying Microsoft things these days; the fact that you can't is more of a licensing issue than a technical one.

On the desktop, Windows 10 LTSB is the de-crapified version you actually want; but haha, volume-licensed enterprise SKUs only!

If you have the appropriate Windows Server version license; you can install "server core" or "nano server"; which have even more cut out; but while that can at least be purchased in single units; it's a fairly expensive way to declutter a workstation.

It took a while; but Microsoft did manage to disentangle a lot of the formerly mandatory bits and pieces; it's just that they seem loath to actually sell that to you unless they've exhausted all the alternatives.

Yes, you would be illegal. It's the same in my province and they actually enforce it.

Big lawyers? Microsoft also had big lawyers and they lost.

https://www.oiq.qc.ca/en/media...

They updated their web site and now use the term Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE) instead of Engineer.

https://www.microsoft.com/fr-c...

My impression is that functional programming comes from Lambda calculus which was introduced in the 1930's.

Mostly correct. The Lisp family of languages borrow the lambda notation, but they're not based on lambda calculus in the Church/Tarski sense.

The differences (and the differences between functional programming and the theory of sets-and-functions that we teach to high school students) don't really matter at a basic level.

How are functional programs translated into machine code?

Here you go. This book is 30 years old, but the basic principles are the same.

That same complex algorithm that is simplified thanks to lambda calculus techniques might be so difficult to translate to machine code that the resulting program is less efficient.

For what it's worth, the same is true of any high-level language. CPUs don't understand virtual dispatch natively, either.

Don't know what axe you have to grind with MS and Dynamics, but the online version has its backups accessible from the Admin Center. If you want to grab ALL your stuff from CRM Online and put it in a SQL server in your basement, there's instructions here:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.c...
If you're using on-premises version of Dynamics and SQL, you'll have specific instructions to follow. Finding them in MSDN or Technet is not really difficult.

I'm under the impression you're too keen to bash Dynamics to actually tell the whole story, or any consistent story. Exporting Contacts is beyond Microsoft's capabilities? - very strange. Between Advanced Find and Power Query in Excel you should get what you need.

What you are describing is not remotely how state is handled in functional languages today. What's done is there is a stateful monad (either State, Read, Writer, IO or State&IO) which allows for an imperative style language. That imperative language handles stateful objects and makes function calls to an engine. The engine is stateless. No one is passing around the entire state of the world.

Here is a classic paper from a quarter century ago that summarizes this approach: https://www.microsoft.com/en-u...

I get it, you hate Microsoft, that's fine. But don't pretend MS SQL server isn't widely used, and it's widely used for good reason - it's a good product.

Geez, man, get a hold of yourself. I didn't "pretend" anything, nor do I "hate Microsoft". For example, I think the Linux community should have adopted C# and Mono widely and have argued extensively for that here.

SQL server for Linux is open source,

Really? Where is the source? Where is the open source developer community? As far as I can tell, there are just binary package installations.

the whole point being that it's easy to migrate to. ... The reality is most companies would rather pay for something solid and reliable like MS SQL server

Where are the benchmarks that are showing that MS SQL Server is actually more reliable, faster, etc. than other servers?

As far as I can tell, MS SQL Server on Linux only exists as binary packages from an unofficial repository, with no consistent distribution support, almost no user community, few language drivers, and little tool support, and those limitations carry over into any kind of cloud usage of MS SQL Server. In terms of functionality, it seems to be behind FOSS databases in terms of available plug-ins, data types, and distributed features.

So, the only substantive argument so far I have heard you make for MS SQL Server is that it comes from Microsoft and interoperates well with Microsoft products, something so totally obvious that I thought it should have been clear that I wasn't asking about that.

Again, I have an open mind here. If MS SQL Server is indeed a high performance, open source relational database server with useful and advanced features, by all means, I'd love to know about it and see some convincing links, starting with a link to the source code repository and some comparative benchmarks. Right now, all I hear from you is name calling and superstitions.

Actually.. Now I read it again ..

"Starting October 13, 2020, Office 365 ProPlus or Office perpetual in mainstream support will be required to connect to Office 365 services. " (emphasis mine).

You'll be obligated to either upgrade to ProPlus (the evergreen) OR versions of Office that are in mainstream support -- right now, versions of Office outside of mainstream support kinda work -- not 0%, but not 100% either. Come 2020, versions outside of mainstream support will consistently and reliably not work at all.

Reading this, there's a strong chance there will be another Office perpetual release before then, and THAT version will be supported - including for Office 365 access -- for its mainstream support lifecycle (which is five years from release); but not for the extended support lifetime. I think you will be able to upgrade to that new release and continue as you are now; which is something you're probably thinking to do anyway.

Office 2016 started 22 Sept 2015, and mainstream ends 13 Oct 2020; so Office 2016 perpetual will continue to work until at least that date; and the as yet unreleased office "v.next" will have five years of working with Office 365 from its (future) release date.

Given this... what a storm in a teacup.. It's as simple as "from 2020, only office versions in Mainstream support or evergreen will connect to Office 365"

Actually.. Now I read it again ..

"Starting October 13, 2020, Office 365 ProPlus or Office perpetual in mainstream support will be required to connect to Office 365 services. " (emphasis mine).

You'll be obligated to either upgrade to ProPlus (the evergreen) OR versions of Office that are in mainstream support -- right now, versions of Office outside of mainstream support kinda work -- not 0%, but not 100% either. Come 2020, versions outside of mainstream support will consistently and reliably not work at all.

Reading this, there's a strong chance there will be another Office perpetual release before then, and THAT version will be supported - including for Office 365 access -- for its mainstream support lifecycle (which is five years from release); but not for the extended support lifetime. I think you will be able to upgrade to that new release and continue as you are now; which is something you're probably thinking to do anyway.

Office 2016 started 22 Sept 2015, and mainstream ends 13 Oct 2020; so Office 2016 perpetual will continue to work until at least that date; and the as yet unreleased office "v.next" will have five years of working with Office 365 from its (future) release date.

Given this... what a storm in a teacup.. It's as simple as "from 2020, only office versions in Mainstream support or evergreen will connect to Office 365"

Easy to use. Works well. Tons of features. Free to a point. After that, inexpensive.

After that, not so inexpensive... $14k/core for the Enterprise edition at "no level" list price is pretty harsh. You could build a pretty sweet database server for the licensing money. That said, for an organization that doesn't have any OSS culture and thus doesn't understand anything that doesn't answer an RFQ it's okay. If we somehow managed to get approval for a PostgreSQL server with no vendor backing us up I fear that some sales droid would convince some higher-ups somewhere to go Oracle, DB2, SAP/SAS or Teradata.

all Microsoft really wants is to minimize the amount of Win7 support they have to deal with

I really don't understand that reasoning. Microsoft has a fairly consistent support schedule. Mainstream support for a bit more than 5 years (feature and security upgrades). Extended support for 5 more years (security updates only). From a support standpoint, it makes no difference to them how many people are still using Windows 7. They've already committed to supporting it til 2020.

The more likely explanation is that the processor restriction is just a way to coerce users who've already paid for a Windows 7/8 license to pony up again for a Windows 10 license. And for the kickbacks they receive from advertisers who pay for data harvested from Win 10 users. It also trains users to accept subscribing to software instead of buying it outright, since if they could "subscribe" to Windows they wouldn't have to pay for a new copy of Windows 10.

>>Have you read the privacy policy?

Yes, I have. It's at
https://privacy.microsoft.com/...

Your paraphrasing leaves out some important bits. It says, under the "Reasons we share personal data" section:

  Finally, we will access, transfer, disclose, and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails in Outlook.com, or files in private folders on OneDrive), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to:

1. comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process, including from law enforcement or other government agencies;
2. protect our customers, for example to prevent spam or attempts to defraud users of our products, or to help prevent the loss of life or serious injury of anyone;
3. operate and maintain the security of our products, including to prevent or stop an attack on our computer systems or networks; or
4. protect the rights or property of Microsoft, including enforcing the terms governing the use of the services - however, if we receive information indicating that someone is using our services to traffic in stolen intellectual or physical property of Microsoft, we will not inspect a customer's private content ourselves, but we may refer the matter to law enforcement.

The Privacy FUD towards Microsoft gets old.

And, you know, serial support... https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.c...

I thought MS caved and said they wouldn't support new CPU features on old OSes?

Everyone thought this because the alternative was just too stupid to comprehend even coming from a company like Microsoft. No they actually meant it when they said they won't support windows. Despite the version of windows being within the mainstream support period and running on compatible hardware. It wasn't a typo which every sane person in the world assumed.

https://support.microsoft.com/...

I'm OEM so no third party participation and Win10 is a tiny freaking OS. My Mom had a preference of shopping with out me and bringing home Acers. I missed my games and went Windows 10 Pro and so far 2 Linux Mint OS's, but it's early - Asus's EFI-BIOS will not update

There are mistakes in the TOS (You read it if asked), one being who you get the updates from, MicroSoft and a tightly controlled thirds. If you use Autoruns https://technet.microsoft.com/... you will find a server running, while mayhaps a bad thing, I see it as their plans of sending them out as torrents (and against the TOS).

Having no malware handy other than the stuff I know I have (no you can't touch that), had to use Eciar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and found Defender fairly quick and killed a bit of time hiding the packets :)

Maybe you should stop executing your movies?

First, a lot of people are "executing [their] movies" without even being aware of the possibility of executing a movie. By default, Windows Media Player and possibly other video players supporting WMV digital restrictions management will attempt to automatically acquire a license when playing videos restricted by DRM. This process has been shown to lead to malware installation.

Second, videos can be deliberately mis-encoded, with the purported solution being to download a "codec pack" that turns out to be a trojan.

Third, videos can be deliberately mis-encoded to exploit vulnerabilities in parsing of video streams, audio streams, subtitle streams, or the container that multiplexes them. Not all users are up-to-date on patches, particularly when the patch is buried in a service pack in the hundreds of megabytes to gigabytes.

the first line of your betanews article

It’s been a common Windows malware trick for years

It's also been a common problem for years that Protip: emails saying you've won money don't actually mean you've won money. It's a ridiculous fear because every media player I use asks if I want to download codecs anyway which I always refuse.

Maybe you should stop executing your movies?

First, a lot of people are "executing [their] movies" without even being aware of the possibility of executing a movie. By default, Windows Media Player and possibly other video players supporting WMV digital restrictions management will attempt to automatically acquire a license when playing videos restricted by DRM. This process has been shown to lead to malware installation.

Second, videos can be deliberately mis-encoded, with the purported solution being to download a "codec pack" that turns out to be a trojan.

Third, videos can be deliberately mis-encoded to exploit vulnerabilities in parsing of video streams, audio streams, subtitle streams, or the container that multiplexes them. Not all users are up-to-date on patches, particularly when the patch is buried in a service pack in the hundreds of megabytes to gigabytes.

One reason I would stay away from Edge is because of the people handling the development, especially the devs handling bug fixing.

Here is one about Edge being unable to handle a HTTP redirect unless you include the full hostname too (which works on all other browsers):
"Alexei L. Mar 28, 2017
Hi,
I just fix this bug for Edge, the problem was that because of some rules, while redirect in Edge you cant redirect to /controller/action you have to redirect to www.webstie.com/controller/action, I even didn’t think that it can be because of this but this was the problem. You can mark it like solved."

To be fair though, you should see a lot of the bug requests they get. A ton of "MY MOUSE DOESNT WORK!11", "everything slow, wat do i do?!" Some bug requests are pretty funny with absolutely zero way to reproduce them at all, I'm surprised they even allow some of these to be submitted (could simply add a message to the submission form: "Your submission MUST include ways to reproduce the reported bug."

Here is a recent ongoing bug:
"Steven K. 7 hours ago MICROSOFT EDGE TEAM
Martin,
Thanks for the update.
I still have my testing running. The latest non-public developer release testing did not have any noticeable memory or CPU increases yet. It has been about 18 hours. I did notice the latest insider build was using almost double the memory and had higher CPU as compared to the developer build.
I will let the test run for at least 48 hours.
The MS Edge Team"

The latest build using double the memory of the developer build? Wow what did they do? Battery life or not, they keep introducing weird bugs up and down with Edge.

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platform/issues/?page=1

If you want an ad blocker, then you should install the proper extension: https://www.microsoft.com/en-u...

> Clearly, communicated, in detail, EXACTLY what each and every update fixes.

Like this one?
https://support.microsoft.com/...

>> Win 10 keeps installing "updated" video drivers which don't work on my laptop.

They've published a procedure to fix that permanently so you don't have to keep fighting it.

https://support.microsoft.com/...

Tldr; device manager, find the device, right-click >> Properties >> Driver Tab >> Rollback Driver.

That should block future updates to that driver.

Related topic: can you send a nastygram to your video card manufacturer and ask them not to publish bad drivers to Windows Update? MS isn't developing these drivers, they are just passing on what the manufacturer provides.

Full disclosure: I work for Microsoft, but this isn't paid shilling. I had the same problem on my personal kit and the above fixed it.

Incorrect. The setting that is only available to Enterprise users is Security.

Basic is available in all Windows 10 editions.

Source: https://technet.microsoft.com/itpro/windows/configure/configure-windows-telemetry-in-your-organization

If you've tried http://winsupersite.com/window... and it didn't work, you're not alone. My guess is MS simply doesn't give a shit and that option never, ever, worked.

Instead, try https://support.microsoft.com/... . Scroll down to the download link to get the "troubleshooter" tool which will let you hide/disable specific updates. This will only help you if the updates are coming in via Windows Update and not some Dell utility.

Yeahhh..... except you're missing the confluence of factors that center around this sale. Twitter is struggling. Their IPO was a failure. They have no compelling products. Their 'profitability' lies in the sale of data. Q1 2015, they basically stopped adding followers and have been flat lining ever since. With no more new users, you can't really just keep selling the same data and be profitable.

Wallstreet knows it. That's why the IPO failed. Their execs know it. Users will continue to use the platform because it's the same twitter it has been, but there's no future there for profitability.

Want to know how important data is? Microsoft took their operating system - arguably their biggest most influential product, and they gave it away for FREE so they could increase the amount of information they gather on you by a factor of 100.

https://technet.microsoft.com/...

> Windows 10 build numbers increase monotonically, but because they're not sequential, it's hard to tell whether someone has skipped an update.

All of Windows 10's updates are cumulative, so you don't skip an update. I.e. if you start with the Win10 1607 media released in July of 2016 and install March's update then the box is up-to-date.

MS is also publishing a running changelog with the build numbers and update info at
https://support.microsoft.com/...

Full disclosure: I work for Microsoft, but this is not paid shilling.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-g...

The files show modified on March 18, 2017 with version numbers 10.0.15063.0. So yeah, looks to be the real deal.

https://technet.microsoft.com/...
Doesn't return content anymore.
What fresh hell is this.
Anyone have a copy of the list before they took it down to scrub/reword?

LTSB is the only branch where you can completely opt out of feature updates. Security updates are still delivered, but you can disable Windows Update if you want. This is about as close to the classic "Release --> Service Packs + Security Patches --> New Release" model that Microsoft is going to let you get to these days. They promise 10 years of support for each LTSB spin of the OS.

Enterprise and Education builds of Windows 10 have a "Security" level of telemetry that limits the collection of data to the basics. Home and Pro don't allow you to set this setting. Here's the link. There are also other Enterprise and Education only features, like the ability to turn off Cortana. LTSB versions also don't come with a lot of the online "apps" because they're not updated on the same cycle as the OS.

Looking at the list of collected data, I can't see any mention of browsing and search history. Care to elaborate on which section contains the info you mention?

- Record what you navigate and search on the internet.
- Record what you watch, listen to, and read.
- Record your purchase history.

Not that it matters though. I believe almost everyone does this nowadays.
At least they are being transparent.

- Record what you navigate and search on the internet.

It sounds like very clear language describing what search providers do with cookies. The Microsoft privacy statement uses the following language:
"We collect data about the features you use, the items you purchase, and the web pages you visit. This data includes your voice and text search queries or commands to Bing, Cortana, and our chat bots."

Google's cookies info:
"For example, we use such cookies to remember your most recent searches, your previous interactions with an advertiser’s ads or search results, and your visits to an advertiser’s website. This helps us to show you customized ads on Google."

I'm not sure if MS's statement indicates they are hoovering up ALL of your browsing (probably only when you use IE or Edge) or if it's just as relates to Bing searches and ad-clicking.