Web Browsers still allow drive-by-downloads in 2020

It’s 2020, and numerous browsers still allow drive-by-downloads from what is meant to be secure contexts such as sandboxed iframes. For those unfamiliar with the term, a drive-by-download is when a user visits a site, and a file download is initiated without the user’s interaction. This technique can be used to distribute unwanted software and malicious programs in the hopes that users will accidentally or mistakenly execute the downloads and get infected. New research from ad security firm Confiant shows that secure contexts such as sandboxed iframes can be abused to allow drive-by-downloads…

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Microsoft will replace journalists with AI

Microsoft Redmond Office Logo

Microsoft will replace journalists with news-savvy artificial intelligence (AI). Microsoft has announced that it will be axing its team of journalists that work for msn.com. Artificial intelligence will perform these news production tasks, sources told the Seattle Times. The tech giant contracts several dozen journalists to select and curate news stories that appear on MSN. That news is displaying on the home page of Microsoft Edge browser and integrate in the new Microsoft News Bar. But starting in June, these media workers will be out of a job. Their responsibilities will…

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Microsoft Open-Sources GW-BASIC

When I read that Microsoft released open-sources GW-BASIC, I couldn’t resist to take a look at the code on GitHub. I spent my childhood to play with GW-BASIC and Clipper (do you remember that?) These sources, as clearly stated in the repo’s readme, are the 8088 assembly language sources from 10th Feb 1983, and are being open-sourced for historical reference and educational purposes. This means we will not be accepting PRs that modify the source in any way. A little historical context The GW-BASIC source code being published is dated Feb 10th…

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Windows 10 got a built-in network sniffer

Windows10 wallpaper

There are a lot of new features (see this post) coming soon in Windows 10. Microsoft has quietly added a built-in network packet sniffer to the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, and it has gone unnoticed since its release. A packet sniffer, or network sniffer, is a program that monitors the network activity flowing over a computer down to an individual packet level. This can be used by network administrators to diagnose networking issues, see what types of programs are being used on a network, or even listen in on…

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F# 5 and F# tools update

Microsoft F# Fsharp

In the last couple of weeks, I started to create posts about F#. Today, Microsoft has just announced some updates to F# 5 and F# tools update! They shipped a lot of preview features since F# 5 preview 1, and they have all been stabilizing since that release. Today, we’re happy to announce some minor additions to F# 5 and talk about some pretty cool performance work we’ve been doing. Here’s how you get the latest release: Install the latest .NET 5 preview SDK Install Jupyter Notebooks for .NET If you’re using Visual…

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Uno Platform now lets you develop for macOS, Windows, and more using the same code

Uno platform wallpaper

Uno Platform announced today that it now supports macOS as a target platform. This new support means that developers can use a single code base to create apps on Windows, iOS, Android, the web, and macOS. According to Uno Platform, this makes it the first and only cross-platform solution to allow the same codebase to run on all these platforms. Uno Platform allows developers to use C# and XAML code to create native apps on several platforms. Rather than running through Electron or emulation, apps that utilize Uno Platform can…

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