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You can install any Linux that uses the shim, or you can install your own KEK key. I not sure if you can take control of the PEK though and entirely block microsoft software from the device though. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-.... But the suface is largely business class, having a TPM that you can use to verify the boot chain.

All in all replacing consumer firmware with mu, may actually provide more control on average, giving more options than such M$ key on or secure boot off.

I fully agree with Microsoft that UEFI has a forking problem. But that is caused by the fact that BIOS vendors take tianocore as a baseline and extend it. The root of the issue is that tianocore itself does not provide a complete UEFI firmware implementation, it gets about 40% of the way there and expects the Silicon vendors (Intel, AMD, NVidia, Qualcomm, etc.) and BIOS vendors (AMI, Phoenix, Insyde, Biosoft, etc.) to fill in the rest with proprietary code. This problem is actually almost identical to the Android fragmentation problem. But really what Microsoft has done here is create another fork for their Surface products.

The good thing is that Microsoft has open sourced a lot of that fork and have pushed the percentage forward from 40% to maybe 50 or 60%. If you look at what they have released though it is very customized for Surface... they have come up with their own answers for a lot of stuff that the UEFI specification already has answers for; the BIOS setup menu/HII database being the most notable. The percentage gained could be much higher if they didn't insist on duplicating code already in tianocore just because they think they know better. Separately, the tianocore guys are also trying to solve the fragmentation problem. A complete open source UEFI firmware implementation is under development right now: https://github.com/tianocore/edk2-platforms/tree/devel-MinPlatform I am one of the active contributors to tianocore. It is my hope that if Microsoft is truly interested in trying to solve the fragmentation problem that they are willing to work with tianocore and contribute to it instead of building their own competing open source community.

The one thing that all of us should keep an eye on is the potential for a Microsoft attempt to use the Windows Hardware Compatibility Program to force every PC on the planet to use MU. Creating a firmware mono-culture would give Microsoft much more control over the PC industry than Windows itself already affords them. They could turn every PC into nothing more than a Surface with a different OEM logo on the lid. It's certainly one way of solving UEFI's forking issue, but it would significantly strengthen the walled garden they are trying to build with Windows 10 at the same time.

On the virtual GPU is it based on your card? or is it some low end basic card?

The Windows Kernel Internals descriptions say that 'windows sandbox' is put on top of the previous 'windows containers' software, which basically uses Hyper-V.
With virtualization options enabled in the CPU, it uses "RemoteFX vGPU"

I didn't know what RemoteFX was but there was a reference link to here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/remote/remote-desktop-services/rds-remotefx-vgpu

From the description this is the same virtual GPU sharing used in the remote application part of remote desktop.

I'm not sure how similar it works behind the scenes, but vGPU with Hyper-V actually seemed to be designed in a sane way.
So you now how Intel CPUs have VT-D instructions in them? Nvidia cards have something similar called vPC (gtx series) or vDWS (quadro series)

Hyper-V uses that to virtualize all the GPU processing cores, and it can partition video ram.

So it all depends on your hardware really. Most people using or playing with Hyper-V tend to spec out the hardware it runs on at the server level specifically for running VMs.
I guess if you put this sandbox feature on a high end gaming rig level PC hardware it should be near native speed.
If you put it on a 6 year old laptop with a non-vt core i3 and on-board intel graphics though, everything GPU related will be done in software and likely be super crap.

"Active directory came out with Windows 2000."

Yeah, but NT domain controllers did much of the same things prior to AD; including managing accounts and groups and permissions. So that's what 80% now?

Oh, and NT4 was available as a terminal server in 1998. So it even actually had some true multiuser back then. Guess technically, that edition at least, is even a 'network operating system' by your own preferred definition.

https://news.microsoft.com/199...

Last time I checked, which admittedly was a few years ago, file locking and some other basic functions still don't work reliably on NTFS

lol, Is this where i complain about the power management failures of linux on my old laptop? Or not... because I've never said Windows made the best fileservers... and probably never will. :)

BTW: The web version of Microsoft "Teams" runs fine with Chrome on Linux, but only if the "UserAgent" is faked to indicate a Windows-based browser. Exactly the same evil strategy, used as of today, by Microsoft.

LibreOffice and Google Docs, while excellent, do not have perfect compatibility with Office, and occasionally it matters.

Personally I use Microsoft's Office Starter, which you can still download for free in various places. It's a stripped down Word and Excel package, and you can always do you real work in a full wordprocessor and then finalize the look in the official Microsoft application. But not many people are aware of Office Starter's existence (or where to download it) (nor the patch needed to make it install and run on Windows 10)

We are all Microsoft Beta testers

Or are they saying that if the person gains access by guessing or brute forcing the password then the files themselves are un encypted?

Doesn't even need to be that -- if I gain physical access to your laptop, there's nothing stopping me bypassing your password entirely by simply removing your laptop's hard drive and plugging it into my own system. Which is likely what happened in this case. Your password controls access to the operating system and everything running on it, but when it comes to the underlying file system, it does sweet fuck all.

Thankfully, there are plenty of tools to do that in this day of age. All non-Home editions of Windows since Vista come with BitLocker, which provides full disk encryption, and the Lenovo-issued corporate laptop would likely have had this tool available (not having it, or an open-source equivalent, enabled is a monumental failure of Lenovo's internal IT policies). There's also VeraCrypt for the open-source world (people I know who have used it speak of it highly), and Wikipedia has a lengthy comparison of disk encryption software if you're interested further.

The default shell is cmd.exe, but there is built-in support for Powershell and Bash.

Although I suppose one could just launch whatever other shell they want from the cmd prompt.

You're wrong. Windows is a tradermark - see http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNum.... And before saying that this is only related to the specific logo - no: "Standard Character Claim: Yes. The mark consists of standard characters without claim to any particular font style, size, or color." And Microsoft does not claim "Microsoft Windows" to be a trademark, even unregistered: https://www.microsoft.com/en-u... (and they don't need to, since that is just two registered trademarks in a row).

See SSD Failures in Datacenters: What? When? and Why?.

Failures include retention errors caused due to leakage current, which worsens with time when not acted upon. Second, they also suffer from phenomenon such as read disturb and program disturb errors, where read or program of a row or block of cells affects the threshold voltage of untouched cells in its vicinity. data retention, program disturb, read disturb, endurance, and power faults.

Flash controllers have proactive and reactive mechanisms in place, to prevent the flash error propagation to higher levels in the system stack. Consequently, not all of the above-mentioned failures propagate to upper layers. But, ones that do propagate can result in fail-stop failures.

Indeed Microsoft *was* forced to provide security updates for Windows 7 when nobody wanted to downgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8 or 10.

If you do go to Windows 10, MMicrosoft says your new OS will be supported for 18 months.
https://support.microsoft.com/...

Redhat provides security updates directly from them for at least 10 years.
https://access.redhat.com/arti...
After 10 years, updates would be from upstream.
One could back port Linux security patches for 20 years if you needed to. Ten years from Red Hat is probably enough.

I had missed the whole new "Fluent" design thing from Build (I normally try to pay attention to what they talk about but was too busy this year).

So I dug down a bit and finally found the Fluent design guidelines. There are some interesting things going on there, like use of light and focus in different ways depending on screen distance (viewing something on a TV screen vs. on a screen right in front of you), probably worth going over to incorporate good ideas into your own UI work...

Isn't that the spec that's 6,000+ pages of gems like, "blah blah blah: Display this the way Office 98 did; blah blah blah: Display it the way Office 2K did;..."

It was. It no longer is.

ISO/IEC 29500 is indeed several thousand pages, and older drafts indeed deferred to the opaque behavior of other proprietary software when describing compatibility elements:

To faithfully replicate this behavior, applications must imitate the behavior of that application, which involves many possible behaviors and cannot be faithfully placed into narrative for this Office Open XML Standard. If applications wish to match this behavior, they must utilize and duplicate the output of those applications.

The final standard, on the other hand, fully defined these behaviors. For example, MSDN quotes the standard as defining autoSpaceLikeWord95 behavior thus:

This element specifies adjustments (detailed below) which should be applied to the spacing between adjoining regions of non-ideographic and ideographic text when the autoSpaceDE (Part 1, 17.3.1.2) and autoSpaceDN (Part 1, 17.3.1.3) elements have a value of true (or equivalent). This algorithm typically results in the following: an increase in the inter-character spacing added between non-ideographic and/or number characters and certain full-width characters; and no inter-character spacing between non-ideographic and/or number characters and certain half-width characters.

Typically, applications apply additional spacing between ideographic and non-ideographic characters/numeric characters when the autoSpaceDE / autoSpaceDN properties are applied. This element, when present with a val attribute value of true (or equivalent), specifies that applications shall apply the following adjustments to this logic:

• Characters in the following Unicode ranges should be treated as ideographic, even though those characters are full-width forms of non-ideographic text: U+FF10–U+FF19, U+FF21–U+FF3A, and U+FF41–U+FF5A. [Note: This results in the unnecessary addition of space. end note]
• Characters in the following Unicode ranges should be treated as non-ideographic, even though those characters are ideographic: U+FF66–U+FF9F. [Note: This results in the omission of the intended additional space. end note]

Similarly, footnoteLayoutLikeWW8 was defined to mean allow the layout engine to place section breaks mid-page even if a page has a footnote. I'm aware the name of the element is not ideal; breakSectionOnFootnotePage might have been preferable. But I find the intended behavior of this element clear.

Isn't that the spec that's 6,000+ pages of gems like, "blah blah blah: Display this the way Office 98 did; blah blah blah: Display it the way Office 2K did;..."

It was. It no longer is.

ISO/IEC 29500 is indeed several thousand pages, and older drafts indeed deferred to the opaque behavior of other proprietary software when describing compatibility elements:

To faithfully replicate this behavior, applications must imitate the behavior of that application, which involves many possible behaviors and cannot be faithfully placed into narrative for this Office Open XML Standard. If applications wish to match this behavior, they must utilize and duplicate the output of those applications.

The final standard, on the other hand, fully defined these behaviors. For example, MSDN quotes the standard as defining autoSpaceLikeWord95 behavior thus:

This element specifies adjustments (detailed below) which should be applied to the spacing between adjoining regions of non-ideographic and ideographic text when the autoSpaceDE (Part 1, 17.3.1.2) and autoSpaceDN (Part 1, 17.3.1.3) elements have a value of true (or equivalent). This algorithm typically results in the following: an increase in the inter-character spacing added between non-ideographic and/or number characters and certain full-width characters; and no inter-character spacing between non-ideographic and/or number characters and certain half-width characters.

Typically, applications apply additional spacing between ideographic and non-ideographic characters/numeric characters when the autoSpaceDE / autoSpaceDN properties are applied. This element, when present with a val attribute value of true (or equivalent), specifies that applications shall apply the following adjustments to this logic:

• Characters in the following Unicode ranges should be treated as ideographic, even though those characters are full-width forms of non-ideographic text: U+FF10–U+FF19, U+FF21–U+FF3A, and U+FF41–U+FF5A. [Note: This results in the unnecessary addition of space. end note]
• Characters in the following Unicode ranges should be treated as non-ideographic, even though those characters are ideographic: U+FF66–U+FF9F. [Note: This results in the omission of the intended additional space. end note]

Similarly, footnoteLayoutLikeWW8 was defined to mean allow the layout engine to place section breaks mid-page even if a page has a footnote. I'm aware the name of the element is not ideal; breakSectionOnFootnotePage might have been preferable. But I find the intended behavior of this element clear.

Microsoft already announced at a previous conference that they've actively been working on a x86 binary compatibility layer for ARM https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...

The groundwork for doing this is already there.

SQL Server 2017 for Linux required the creation of a PAL (platform abstraction layer) that allows essential kernel function for SQL Server to run.

It's really interesting stuff.

Add a dash of gdi borrowed from wine and you might have something.

"SQL Server on Linux: How? Introduction":
https://cloudblogs.microsoft.c...

It is not that hard to get up to speed with IPv6.

IPv6 Primers:
Quick 6 minute video on IPv6 addressing and subneting: https://youtu.be/dUmhZOnz_qc
Tech Quickie: https://youtu.be/aor29pGhlFE

Microsoft has a really in depth guide to many aspects of IPv6. It is a really long read, but worth it to get in depth knowledge on the subject.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...

Universal drivers are distributed through Windows Update

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...

Or you could read the fucking article and see that there is a download link on Intel's website.

https://downloadcenter.intel.c...

Oh no Microsoft is doing something, time to shit your pants in terror!

Did you seriously just ask why I am concerned about a process I didn't want to run and I didn't ask to run and isn't vital to the system? Other than the fact that just this March, a Windows update caused the Store app to run at high CPU for some users? It's not like Windows updates are getting better and have fewer issues. MS has had to pull updates 3 times in October alone.

Funny, how at the very same time, Microsoft starts a "petition for digital peace": https://digitalpeace.microsoft...

What they actually want to say is: "Cyber-war should be waged only be the US institutions that we deliver to. We do not want you to compete."

Let me try to guess a plausible lie: Your ISP has your phone number on file, if only for billing purposes. Your ISP sees a device on your network sending suspicious traffic that matches the signature of the Virus of the Month. Your ISP has contracted to refer its subscribers to a tech support shop in India employing technicians who have passed an MCSA exam, which confers the title Microsoft Certified Professional.

That is precisely the reason botnets have become a thing of the past. :-)

I've sure as hell received the calls from "The Microsoft Service Provider" telling me my computer has a virus. Really? How on Earth would I believe that Microsoft has my phone number or that they're calling me to solve a problem?

Let me try to guess a plausible lie: Your ISP has your phone number on file, if only for billing purposes. Your ISP sees a device on your network sending suspicious traffic that matches the signature of the Virus of the Month. Your ISP has contracted to refer its subscribers to a tech support shop in India employing technicians who have passed an MCSA exam, which confers the title Microsoft Certified Professional.

I tried to follow the advisory link in TFS and was redirected to a page asking me to accept a EULA. I have to agree to a EULA before I can read a security advisory? Holy fucking shit. Tell me again how this isn't the same old evil Microsoft. Actually, it isn't; time was, you could read anything on their site even without javascript. Now you need to not only enable scripts, but agree to a contract?

Fuck that. Die of ass cancer in a fire, Microsoft.

I noticed someone replied poo-pooing certs. Every time I've talked to people who say that in order to understand their thinking, it comes down to "entry level certifications don't guarantee expert knowledge".

MTA and MCSA are explicitly entry-level certifications. They are evidence that the person has sufficient knowledge to BEGIN working with Microsoft products in whichever role they are certified in.

MCSD is evidence of "moderate* knowledge.

MCSE, Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert, is the expert certification.

Each of these levels is available for several different knowledge areas. Someone with an SQL Server MCSE may not be an expert in Azure, and vice versa.

So "I have a cert" doesn't mean much. *What level* cert do you have in which *knowledge area*? A SQL Server MCSE probably knows SQL Server pretty well. They may know nothing about Linux.

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

I swear by the Microsoft Natural 4K.
Served me well for almost 13 years.
https://www.microsoft.com/acce...

I'm using the Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic at the moment. Admittedly the looks had a strong influence on my purchasing decision. Had the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, which was okay, but its feel wasn't as good as the original Natural Keyboard in my opinion. Had the Natural Keyboard Pro too, but didn't like it much.

I'm using the Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic at the moment. Admittedly the looks had a strong influence on my purchasing decision. Had the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, which was okay, but its feel wasn't as good as the original Natural Keyboard in my opinion. Had the Natural Keyboard Pro too, but didn't like it much.

I think MacOS ships with some scripts that require that older version of Python, so it's really there to support the system, not user development.

Then it's an implementation detail of macOS, much as msvcrt.dll is on Windows. In any case, it weakens the claim that Apple ships an environment for running downloadable applications written in mainstream Python.

I still don't get why they didn't make the Python 3 interpreter backward-compatible with a switch at the top of the script.

Currently #!/usr/bin/env python launches the legacy (Python 2) interpreter if installed, and #!/usr/bin/env python3 launches the modern Python interpreter if installed. On Windows, the .py extension is associated with py.exe, a short program that reads the shebang line and execs the appropriate interpreter as defined in PEP 397.

You put the headset on and you're there. Gamers like to talk about immersion, well I'd go so far as to say I never actually experienced it until I tried out a vive. Most of the stuff out for it now are crappy little demos, some of which work better than others, but Project Cars alone might be worth it if you have the space where you can set up a force feedback steering wheel and pedals. Turns out I drive like a granny in that scenario -- I hit 80 on the track and that's as fast as I want to go.

What do you think as a service means?

Everything that is outlined here about their update strategy.

Microsoft said THEMSELVES this is the route they are heading. 1 operating system receiving monthly paid updates. That's their goal THEY stated.

Where did "they" state this?

For those asking for citation, The first link is the WAAS (windows as as service is the microsoft name) information for businesses, IIRC business deployment is scheduled for first deployment with retail deployment afterwards. WAAS will follow the same model as office 365, it'll likely start as an optional subscription for a year or two before the only option will be the monthly subscription just like office 2019 is the last standalone version after only a few years of 365 existing.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...

The microsoft windows 365 plan, like office 365 will be the first step in the shift:

https://wccftech.com/microsoft...

Other sources without looking too hard:

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reportedly told financial analysts at the Build conference in the spring, "We are moving from a product that is perpetual to one that is always up to date. In the past we've always had revenue per license. Going forward we'll have revenue per device, and we'll have revenue per device gross margin."

https://www.informationweek.co...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/g...
https://blog.juriba.com/window...

As you'll note in the links most of the information is in the financial press that the bulk of the public doesn't pay attention to, but what Microsoft promises wall street will occur.

For those asking for citation, The first link is the WAAS (windows as as service is the microsoft name) information for businesses, IIRC business deployment is scheduled for first deployment with retail deployment afterwards. WAAS will follow the same model as office 365, it'll likely start as an optional subscription for a year or two before the only option will be the monthly subscription just like office 2019 is the last standalone version after only a few years of 365 existing.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...

The microsoft windows 365 plan, like office 365 will be the first step in the shift:

https://wccftech.com/microsoft...

Other sources without looking too hard:

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reportedly told financial analysts at the Build conference in the spring, "We are moving from a product that is perpetual to one that is always up to date. In the past we've always had revenue per license. Going forward we'll have revenue per device, and we'll have revenue per device gross margin."

https://www.informationweek.co...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/g...
https://blog.juriba.com/window...

As you'll note in the links most of the information is in the financial press that the bulk of the public doesn't pay attention to, but what Microsoft promises wall street will occur.

It is not a service for Windows 10 to steal every possible scrap of data from your computer so that they can sell your computer to advertisers!

Except neither of those things is true, which is why Windows 10 really isn't that big of a deal for the vast majority of people. The insistence of people like you that this overly dramatized thing is indeed happening does the community as a whole a disservice by normalizing the idea you're presenting. Stop trying to normalize problematic behavior!

Microsoft explains what data their telemetry collects and certainly the only advertising is a one-line text "suggestion" in the start menu that you can simply turn off in the settings.

Guess that includes the Cambridge Dictionary, as well as all those fools at Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, HPE, IBM, Pixar, and most of the machine-learning industry, not to mention those well-known charlatan World Go champions at DeepMind.

I'm not sure what about the phrase terrifies you so much.

I tried to stay on 1511 because the 1703 update broke a bunch of my program icons (turned them into generic icons even when I specifically selected the program icon), and for some reason prevented me from reinstalling those programs to fix the icons. I used on of the common tricks to block the update. For the first few months it worked. Then I started getting warnings every day that security support for 1511 had ended and I needed to update to 1703 to continue to get security updates. Eventually, all the tricks I'd used to prevent the update (disable the Windows Update service, set my connection to metered) stopped working. The Windows Update service would auto-enable itself and begin auto-downloading the 1703 update (3 GB) and trying to install it. And every time my program icons were still broken so I'd have to roll it back.

It auto-downloaded so many times that I was in danger of going over my monthly quota from my ISP, and I had to switch to using my phone's hotspot for Internet (where it still downloaded, but slowly enough that it wasn't trying to auto-update every few hours). Eventually I put aside an afternoon, updated, wrote down the name of every program whose icon was broken, rolled it back, reinstalled all those programs, then let Windows update to 1803. That seemed to fix the icons, although i still can't reinstall/repair any of those programs (guess I'll have to wipe and reinstall from scratch if that becomes an issue).

Anyhow, security updates for 1703 ended on October 9. So expect to experience the above strong-arm tactics to force you to upgrade in the coming months.

If you have to use WIndows upgrade to pro under "This PC" and enable Hyper-V. It supports Linux and even FreeBSD at the kernel level without guest tools automatically.

Uh, no. Integration components is MS's term for guest tools and are automatically installed. Linux has its own tools which MS went out of its way to make sure were compatible with Hyper-V. Linux also has native support for its own para-virtualized devices, its term for guest tools, so it supports KVM "natively" since many, many years ago. For Windows, you install guest drivers. In short, you don't get out of using host to guest drivers.

Both KMS and Hyper-V are type-1 hypervisors unlike the shitty VmWare Workstation and virtualbox. No guest tools and run bare metal near native speeds.

Unless you want to be able to use a Windows VM on Windows, move it to Linux, then move it back again. The only reasonable way to get near native speed without guest tools is to do hardware pass-through, and that's generally not worth it for anything but graphics cards and possible network cards. Seriously, argue at least something sensible like standardizing on guest tools across KVM, Hyper-V, VMware, and Virtualbox to make it all pretty moot. Don't spout bullshit.

No.

https://answers.microsoft.com/...

but it's causing chaos in some places -

watermarks all over ... damn you

We are moving from Windows 7 to Windows 10. They are trying to enforce us into only using Edge as our browser. We use SharePoint a lot. From forms being created on mobile devices and transmitted, to other functions. Example of why I say edge SUCKS. If you are in a SharePoint page, and try to open explorer from that SharePoint page. It doesn't work. Hell, this is a hot topic on Microsoft forums. https://answers.microsoft.com/...
What I told the people to do was. When they try to open with explorer, get the url with the location. Hold down the windows key, and press E. then paste in the path. I suggested that in one of our Windows 10 meetings. Not sure if that will be the work around, or IE 11, or what. I hate Edge. IT SUCKS

Oh the shame I feel!
Golly creimer has won the day and put me in my place. I feel like such an idiot for mistaking his sockpuppet for him!!!
Well now that you're triumphant everything I said has changed!!! Microsoft and Amazon aren't going to rob your temp agency of their shitty government contracts. Every local FBI office and government office park around the country will keep an entire backoffice running so that you can fulfill your dream of working until you keel over of old age!!!

Have you seen these headlines:
Amazon now offering (UaaS) Unemployable as a Service to all creimers
Microsoft swears revenge on the obese for deletion of COMMAND.COM in the 1990s

I'm confused. iOS is OS X. I can compile the same code base for both systems with the press of a button.

There is lots of Open Source software already running on iOS:
https://github.com/dkhamsing/o...

If a full blown Unix like programming environment with full support for C and C++ isn't enough, xamarin is there and provides "Single shared codebase for Android, iOS, and Windows" available under the MIT license.
https://visualstudio.microsoft...

There is also no requirement to use Apple's App Store as long as you have physical access to a device and a free developer account. I expect most people who want to build and develop open source will probably have physical access to an iOS device if they want one.

Mac on ARM makes a lot of sense for Apple.

From a business perspective, they have always believed in vertical integration. Using their own CPUs will also leverage their existing investments in A-series CPUs. If ARM Macbooks can sell for the same price as Intel Macbooks, Apple's profits will increase sharply and they will better control their own destiny.

From a user perspective, ARM Macbooks will likely be quieter, lighter and need to be recharged less often. Old software will need to be recompiled, but all major software packages (Office, Adobe stuff, etc) will become available immediately and smaller software houses will have no option but to offer ARM versions of their code. Besides, most things are done in the browser these days.

The only losers will be people who want to dual boot Windows. Maybe Microsoft will rescue them with ARM Windows, but I doubt Apple cares very much.

MS already has an 64 bit ARM Port of Windows 10, and it even provides for x86 Application compatibility through a JIT Compiler scheme.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...

"The WOW64 layer of Windows 10 allows x86 code to run on the ARM64 version of Windows 10. x86 emulation works by compiling blocks of x86 instructions into ARM64 instructions with optimizations to improve performance. A service caches these translated blocks of code to reduce the overhead of instruction translation and allow for optimization when the code runs again. The caches are produced for each module so that other apps can make use of them on first launch."

Since when can a non-Mac sign apps for testing on a physical device or for submission to the App Store? The free provisioning instructions require Xcode, which is Mac-only.

You can have different link text than the url it goes to. For example, you can have a link like this: Google.com In other words, someone put in an advertisement that looked like the actual Google advertisement, but changed the URL to their malware site set up to look like Google's.

VM?

That's still running Windows: a $199.99 per seat license (source), plus double the RAM to run both the X11/Linux host and the Windows guest, plus time and Internet download allowance spent on keeping each tester's Windows VM updated, especially if the company isn't big enough to subscribe to WSUS or other centralized management.

Who still develops pure Windows applications? Even Microsoft is releasing their tools on Mac and Linux nowadays.

A company that hasn't yet expanded to offer its applications on macOS, which is even more expensive per seat than Windows as you have to use a $500+ dongle (Mac mini) or a $1300+ monitor (iMac). Or do you claim that a company ought to offer its desktop applications to the public exclusively on X11/Linux for some period before expanding to Windows?

why would a software developer port their windows app to UWP but not android?

Desktop Bridge allows a developer to continue using Win32 API (or other libraries that wrap Win32) instead of UWP, so long as the application isn't in a category excluded by Microsoft Store Policies.

Or a developer may have licensed the PC rights in a particular work, invention, or mark, but not the mobile rights. For example, last I checked, EA ported the game Tetris to iOS, Android, and other mobile platforms, and another company handled the PC version.

It was. it was replaced by "Windows 10 in S Mode".

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

Then upgrade it to full blown Windows 10 for free.
https://support.microsoft.com/...

Only drawback is that you can't run x64 apps, and x86 apps run slower since it emulates x86, but devs can recompile for native arm64 and if all you're doing is web browsing and document processing, it should be more than adequate, with almost double the battery life vs an x86 processor.

From the featured article: "You can upgrade to Windows 10 for free, of course, but it’s an emulated experience."

In fact, you need to upgrade to Windows 10 for an emulated experience. The Microsoft Store Policies ban emulators that play retro games: "10.13.10 Apps that emulate a game system are not allowed on any device family."