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Microsoft "has been quietly lobbying against Right to Repair legislation, which would prevent Microsoft from penalizing customers when they open up their devices," claims MSPoweruser: Jeff Morris, Democratic member of the [Washington state] House of Representatives claims Microsoft has blocked legislation from being passed despite strong bipartisan support. In an interview on iFixit's Repair Radio [YouTube], Rep. Jeff Morris said that "word on the street" was that Microsoft, "marshalled forces to keep the bill from moving out of the House Rules committee." He claimed "there was a tax proposal here ... to pay for STEM education," and that "in exchange for Microsoft support[ing that tax,] having Right to Repair die..." was a condition, as well as another privacy policy Microsoft wanted to advance.
The state representative hedged that "I can't confirm or deny this, because I have not seen a smoking gun."

But he also told his interviewer that to paint a discouraging picture of the landscape after passage of the bill, "Microsoft was going around telling our members that they wouldn't sell Surface Tablets in Washington any longer."

Remember when Microsoft announced they'd be switching to Google's open source Chromium browser for developing their own Edge browser? At the time Google announced "We look forward to working with Microsoft and the web standards community to advance the open web, support user choice, and deliver great browsing experiences."

Now MSPoweruser reports Microsoft has indeed started collaborating on Chromium -- making suggestions like caret browsing and a native high-contrast mode -- and at least one of Microsoft's suggestions is already coming to Chrome. it looks like there is one feature that Chromium approved which will be making its way to Chrome soon. According to a new bug (via Techdows) filing on Chromium, Google is working on bringing text suggestions for hardware keyboard to Chrome soon. The feature will allow users to get suggestions as they type which is currently available on Windows 10 and on Microsoft Edge.

Google has just started working on the feature and has set the priority to 2 which suggests that the feature should be available sooner than later.

Remember when Microsoft announced they'd be switching to Google's open source Chromium browser for developing their own Edge browser? At the time Google announced "We look forward to working with Microsoft and the web standards community to advance the open web, support user choice, and deliver great browsing experiences."

Now MSPoweruser reports Microsoft has indeed started collaborating on Chromium -- making suggestions like caret browsing and a native high-contrast mode -- and at least one of Microsoft's suggestions is already coming to Chrome. it looks like there is one feature that Chromium approved which will be making its way to Chrome soon. According to a new bug (via Techdows) filing on Chromium, Google is working on bringing text suggestions for hardware keyboard to Chrome soon. The feature will allow users to get suggestions as they type which is currently available on Windows 10 and on Microsoft Edge.

Google has just started working on the feature and has set the priority to 2 which suggests that the feature should be available sooner than later.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MSPoweruser: Last year Microsoft released Windows Virtual Desktop, an Azure-based service that delivers a multi-user Windows 10 experience on any operating system. Now Scott Manchester, Group Manager for Microsoft's Remote Desktop Service, has shown off a new feature for the iOS version of the app which makes the client much more powerful on the iPad. Windows Virtual Desktop will soon support mice in the virtual environment. Unfortunately, only specific mice will be supported -- in the video the Swiftpoint GT and eventually Microsoft's own Bluetooth mice. The feature is said to becoming soon.

Microsoft is including Google's mitigation for the Spectre Variant 2 speculative execution side-channel attack in the next release of Windows 10, currently codenamed 19H1. ZDNet reports: Google developed a software-based mitigation for Spectre Variant 2 called Retpoline that constrains speculative execution behavior sufficiently to mitigate an attack. Google's testing found its fix had a negligible effect on performance. Retpoline was implemented by Linux distributions such as Red Hat and SUSE, as well as by Oracle for Oracle Linux 6 and 7. And now, as MSPoweruser spotted, Microsoft's kernel engineers have confirmed that Retpoline will be part of the next version of Windows 10, 19H1, which is due out next year. Google's Retpoline plus Microsoft's own kernel modifications have reduced the performance impact to "noise level", according to Mehmet Iyigun of Microsoft's Windows and Azure kernel team. "Yes, we have enabled Retpoline by default in our 19H1 flights along with what we call 'import optimization' to further reduce perf impact due to indirect calls in kernel-mode. Combined, these reduce the perf impact of Spectre v2 mitigations to noise-level for most scenarios," wrote Iyigun.

"The bad news is that Microsoft didn't include the Retpoline fix in the latest Windows 10 October 2018 Update Redstone 5, or RS5, release, even though, according to CrowdStrike researcher Alex Ionescu, it could have," reports ZDNet.

An anonymous reader quotes MSPowerUser: Nearly every Linux distro is already available in the Microsoft Store, allowing developers to use Linux scripting and other tools running on the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Now another distro has popped up in the Store, and unlike the others it claims to be specifically optimised for WSL, meaning a smaller and more appropriate package with sane defaults which helps developers get up and running faster.

WLinux is based on Debian, and the developer, Whitewater Foundry, claims their custom distro will also allow faster patching of security and compatibility issues that appear from time to time between upstream distros and WSL... Popular development tools, including git and python3, are pre-installed. Additional packages can be easily installed via the apt package management system... A handful of unnecessary packages, such as systemd, have been removed to improve stability and security.
The distro also offers out of the box support for GUI apps with your choice of X client, according to the original submission.

WLinux is open source under the MIT license, and is available for free on GitHub. It can also be downloaded from Microsoft Store at a 50% discount, with the development company promising the revenue will be invested back into new features.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MSPoweruser: Today, Microsoft announced that it is releasing 124 Million building footprints in the United States to the OpenStreetMap community. Bing Maps team used Microsoft's CNTK Unified Toolkit to apply its Deep Neural Networks and the ResNet34 with RefineNet up-sampling layers to detect building footprints from the Bing imagery. OpenStreetMap currently has 30,567,953 building footprints in the U.S., thanks to editor contributions and various city or county wide imports. Using DNNs and Bing Imagery, Microsoft has extracted 124,885,597 footprints in the United States and making it available for download free of charge.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Earlier this year, Google was rumored to be working on a built-in ad blocker for its Chrome browser. The new ad blocker inside Chrome won't block every ad you see on the web -- instead, it'll only block ads that are considered intrusive and go against the standards set by the Coalition for Better Ads. Google has started testing the new built-in ad blocker for Chrome today on the desktop and Android devices. The latest canary release for Google Chrome includes a new option under Chrome's Settings where you can enable the new ad blocker inside Chrome. Users can enable the new feature by going to the Content options inside Chrome's settings page (chrome://settings/content/ads). The built-in ad blocker should automatically block ads that are considered "intrusive." But Google Chrome also lets you strictly block ads on certain sites, and you can also choose to allow ads on certain sites if you'd like.

According to MSPoweruser, the London Metropolitan Police are still using around 18,000 PCs powered by Windows XP, an operating system Microsoft stopped supporting in 2014. What's more is that the police force is upgrading its PCs from Windows XP to Windows 8.1, instead of Windows 10. Only 8 PCs at the police force are reportedly powered by the "most secure version of Windows right now." From the report: From the looks of things, the London Metropolitan Police will continue to upgrade their systems to Windows 8.1 at the moment. Windows 8.1 is still being supported by Microsoft, although the mainstream support for the OS is set to end on the 9 January 2018. Microsoft will offer extended support for the OS until 2023, which means Windows 8.1 is still a much more secure alternative for the Metropolitan Police than Windows XP. Windows 10 still would have been the best option in terms of security, however. Microsoft is releasing security updates for the OS every month, and the new advanced security features like Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection makes PCs running Windows a whole lot more secure. The spokesman of the 0Conservative London Assembly said in a statement: "The Met is working towards upgrading its software, but in its current state it's like a fish swimming in a pool of sharks. It is vital the Met is given the resources to step up its upgrade timeline before we see another cyber-attack with nationwide security implications."

Microsoft is kind enough to offer Surface Laptop users the option to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro for free until later this year if they don't like Windows 10 S, which is installed by default and is only able to run apps or games that are in the Windows Store. The company is taking that generosity one step further by letting users revert back to Windows 10 S if they installed Windows 10 Pro and aren't happy with the performance and battery life. The option to revert back to the default OS wasn't available until now. MSPoweruser reports: Microsoft recently released the official recovery image for the Surface Laptop which will technically let you go back to Windows 10 S on your device but you'll be required to remove all of your files which is a bit frustrating. The recovery image wasn't available a few days after the Surface Laptop started shipping, but it is now available and you can download it to effectively reset your Surface Laptop. The recovery image is 9GB, so make sure you have a good internet connection before downloading the file. It is quite interesting how Microsoft isn't letting users go back to Windows 10 S from Windows 10 Pro without having to completely reset their devices, as the company would want more users to use its new version of Windows 10 for many reasons. Maybe this is something Microsoft will be adding in the future, but for now, we'll just have to do with the recovery image. If you own a Surface Laptop, you can find the recovery image here.

Mozilla has confirmed that Firefox 52, the new version of its browser it made available earlier this week, will be the last major version to support two legacy operating systems - Windows XP and Windows Vista. The company said future versions will require Windows users to be on a machine that has at a minimum Windows 7 running on it.

Microsoft is planning to introduce a new feature to Windows 10 that will allow a user to prevent installation of desktop apps. The latest Windows Insider build comes with an option that allows users to enable app installations only from the Windows Store. From a report on MSPowerUser: Once enabled, users will see a warning whenever they try to install a Win32 app -- they will get a dialog saying apps from the Windows Store helps to keep their PC "safe and reliable." This feature is obviously disabled by default, but users can enable it really easily if they want.

jmcbain writes: Are you a software programmer who voted in a recent Slashdot poll that a robot/AI would never take your job? Unfortunately, you're wrong. Microsoft, in collaboration with the University of Cambridge, is developing such an AI. This software "can turn your descriptions into working code in seconds," reports MSPoweruser. "Called DeepCoder, the software can take requirements by the developer, search through a massive database of code snippets and deliver working code in seconds, a significant advance in the state of the art in program synthesis." New Scientist describes program synthesis as "creating new programs by piecing together lines of code taken from existing software -- just like a programmer might. Given a list of inputs and outputs for each code fragment, DeepCoder learned which pieces of code were needed to achieve the desired result overall." The original research paper can be read here.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Neowin: Last week, details emerged of Microsoft's plans to develop a single, unified, 'adaptive shell' for Windows 10. Known as the 'Composable Shell', or CSHELL, the company's efforts were said to be focused on establishing a universal Windows 10 version with a standardized framework to scale and adapt the OS to any type of device, display size or user experience, including smartphones, PCs, tablets, consoles, large touchscreens, and more. Today, Petri reported that Microsoft is working on a new shell for Windows known as 'Cloud Shell'. According to internal documentation referred to in that report, Cloud Shell is described as a "lightweight version of Windows designed for the modern computing world." It also hints at plans to introduce the Cloud Shell sometime in 2017 -- but little else is known about the new shell besides that. Cloud Shell is said to be connected, in some way, with the Windows Store and Universal Windows Platform app framework, and the report speculates that it may also be related to Microsoft's plans to bring the full version of Windows 10 to mobile devices with ARM-based processors, which it announced in December. However, the cloud nomenclature, and the reference to this being a 'lightweight' version of Windows could hint at a 'thin client'-style approach, in which the Windows 10 shell could be streamed from Microsoft's Azure platform to any device with an internet connection, while its cloud servers remotely handle all of the processing and storage requirements of each users' tasks.

Microsoft is testing out a new way to access Cortana, its digital assistant, from the Android lock screen, with just a swipe. It's a new feature that's clearly designed to replace Google's own quick access, and to convince Android users to switch to Cortana. According to MSPowerUser, Cortana on the lock screen doesn't replace existing lock screens, so you can still use a custom one or the default experience that ships with your Android device. Cortana is activated simply by swiping left or right on the floating logo. Microsoft is currently testing this new feature, and any Android users can opt-in to trial the new beta features over at the Google Play Store.

Microsoft may have plans to give Windows 10 users the ability to purchase ebooks directly from the Windows Store. According to a report on MSPowerUser, Windows 10 Creators Update will feature a new book store interface that will support the purchase and viewing of books in the Microsoft Edge browser. The report claims that this feature will be coming to both Windows 10 Mobile and other Windows 10 variants on PCs and tablets. It's worth mentioning that Microsoft made EPUB support a feature of Microsoft Edge as part of its Windows 10 Creators Update Insider test builds last year.

Microsoft has started officially testing a new Game Mode feature in Windows 10. From a report: Traces of the new option were found back in December, but the most recent test build of Windows 10 (15007) includes Game Mode in the Xbox app. MSPoweruser has supplied some screenshots of how you can enable the option, but Microsoft has not yet officially unveiled Game Mode for everyone to test. Microsoft's description lists the feature as a mode to let a PC make gaming the "top priority to improve your game's quality." It's still not clear exactly how Game Mode will improve gaming performance, but it's likely that Windows 10 will simply suppress system processes and other apps from taking too many CPU, GPU, and RAM resources away from the primary game being played.

Microsoft plans to revamp the user interface on Windows with an upcoming update called Project Neon. Chatter about this new update has been doing rounds for quite some time, but now first images of where Microsoft is going with the design changes are here. According to MSPowerUser, Microsoft will introduce a new component dubbed "Acrylic" to the overall Windows 10 design, which will serve as a method for developers to further customize the appearance of their universal apps. Project Neon also focuses on Microsoft's efforts with 3D and HoloLens, tweaking UI elements in places where you interact with a mouse pointer.

Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 835's specs have leaked ahead of its CES reveal. An anonymous reader writes: According to the leaked press release, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 sports the Qualcomm Kryo 280 CPU (quad-core), Qualcomm Adreno 540 GPU, and Qualcomm Hexagon DSP to manage the different workloads. All of this combined together will result in a 27% increase in performance when compared to the previous generation. Qualcomm is also making significant improvements with the Snapdragon 835 when it comes to power consumption. To be precise, the Snapdragon 835 consumes 40% less power than the older generation which is supposed to offer the following: "1+ day of talk time, 5+ days of music playback, and 7+ hours of 4K video streaming. Should your phone need more power, Qualcomm Quick Charge 4 provides five hours of battery life for five minutes of charging." Qualcomm stated in the press release that the Snapdragon also comes with substantial improvements to the graphics rendering and virtual reality. According to the company, the Snapdragon 835 includes "game-changing" enhancements to improve audio, intuitive interactions, and vibrant visuals. The processor also offers 25 percent faster 3D graphic rendering and produces 60X display colors than the Snapdragon 820.

An anonymous reader writes: Ahead of tradeshow CES 2017, Lenovo today announced major changes coming to its ThinkPad lineup of laptops and PCs. First, Lenovo has decided to ship 2017 ThinkPad models with Microsoft's Signature Edition Windows 10 right out of the box. So, users don't have to worry about bloatware anymore. Signature Edition PCs are clean, fast and protected. The second big announcement is that Lenovo is now offering optional Intel Optane 3D drives on select ThinkPad models. Due to the small capacity, initial Optane M.2 drives will be used for caching in the ThinkPad T470p, L470, L570, T470, and T570. Third, Lenovo is moving to the Microsoft Precision TouchPad drivers for consistent touchpad experience across ThinkPad devices. The Windows Precision Touchpad drivers provide high precision pointer input and gesture functionality.

WhatsApp appears to be rolling out its video calling feature for beta users of the Android app. The arrival of the feature was first spotted by Android Police, which found that an updated app interface caused some users of the beta builds of the application to be able to access video calling. TechCrunch reports: For those on a version of WhatsApp which includes video calling support, you're able to tap the call button or tap on a contact card to kick off a video call. In this case, a new dialog box will appear, offering the choice between a standard voice call and a video call. In addition, the call log will show which calls were made via video by annotating them with the camera icon, instead of the telephone icon. However, there isn't yet a way to call other WhatsApp users who don't also have video calling support. If you try to, WhatsApp defaults to a voice call. Android isn't the only platform where video calling has been switched on. Last week, some users on the WhatsApp beta for Windows Phone were also surprised to find that the feature was now functional. And in this case, it didn't require an app update -- indicating a server-side change could enable it. Some users have also reported seeing the feature on iOS.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MSPoweruser: Microsoft today announced that the company is bringing support for WebVR to Microsoft Edge on Windows 10. With WebVR, users can experience Virtual Reality content from their web browser on a virtual reality headset such as the Oculus Rift. WebVR support on Microsoft Edge may also be useful for the Windows Holographic Shell on Windows 10, which is expected to arrive sometime later this year. For those unfamiliar, Microsoft will be allowing virtual reality headset owners to use Windows Holographic on their Windows 10 PC -- therefore, Microsoft Edge supporting WebVR can turn out to be very useful. WebVR is already supported in browsers like Google Chrome and Firefox, but it'll be coming to Microsoft Edge in the near-future. At the moment, Microsoft isn't sharing many details about WebVR on Microsoft Edge. While there isn't any official info on when the company plans to release this feature, we suspect it'll be coming with Windows 10 Redstone 2 which is expected to arrive in early 2017.

Earlier this year, we heard rumors that Microsoft was interested in purchasing the popular team-chat app Slack for as much as $8 billion. The deal never happened, so naturally, Microsoft has decided to make a Slack-like app. Microsoft-centric news blog MSPowerUser reports: Meet Skype Teams. Skype Teams is going to be Microsoft's take on messaging apps for teams. Skype Teams will include a lot of similar features which you'll find on Slack. For example, Skype Teams will allow you to chat in different groups within a team, also known as "channels". Additionally, users will be able to talk to each other via Direct Messages on Skype Teams. Skype Teams will also feature Threaded Conversations, which is a major feature that's lacking on Slack. With Threaded Conversations, you can simply reply to a message on a channel by clicking on the reply button and anyone else can join the thread whenever they want -- just like Facebook Comments, or Disqus Comments. Microsoft, of course, isn't leaving out some of the core features of Skype on Skype Teams. Similar to Skype itself, teams will be able to make video calls in a channel or privately. To take this even further, the company is adding the ability to schedule online meetings, which can be quite useful for large teams.

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has changed the terms of service for its Bing Ad network to disallow ads which offer computer support service. Its Bing Ads User Safety Policy now reads: Bing Ads disallows the promotion of third party online technical support services to consumers because of serious quality issues that can impact end user safety. These ads mislead users, tricking them to believe that their PC is infected. This is clearly a move to block scammers from making victims of Bing users, but any and all third party tech support ads will be blocked, including, perhaps legitimate ones.

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has hit a major milestone: $1 trillion in all-time cumulative revenue. The finding was first spotted by Jeff Reifman, a tech consultant. According to him, Microsoft hit the milestone in its last quarter. Interestingly, Apple also hit $1 trillion in revenue in 2015. As for profits, Microsoft currently leads the chart with $265.2 billion with Apple trying to close in with $261.6 billion. "You might expect a company to announce a milestone like this and bask in this incredible accomplishment -- but not Microsoft," writes Reifman. "It chose to stay silent as it faces increased public scrutiny for holding $108.3 billion in earnings offshore (an incredible 41% of its all-time profit) and its history of tax dodging at home in Washington State."Microsoft blog MSPowerUser says it independently verified the numbers. According to which, Microsoft's total cumulative revenue as of last earnings call is 1001.569 billion.