GitHub users are currently being targeted by a phishing campaign specifically designed to collect and steal their credentials
GitHub accounts stolen in ongoing phishing attacks
Category: Microsoft
News collection from Microsoft world. What’s new with .NET and Windows? New features on Azure? New projects around the world
Windows 10: The new hidden features found in preview builds
With the latest Windows 10 Insider build, new hidden features have been found that add long-awaited media controls to the volume flyout and a new settings page that shows a ‘What’s New’ section for the current Windows release. As Microsoft developers work on new features for Windows 10, they hide them from being used by users. These features, though, can be enabled by the developers as needed for testing. These hidden features can be enabled using tools like Mach2 or ViVe (ViVe is a C# library you can use to make your own…
Microsoft News Bar beta now available
Microsoft launched a new app for newshounds on the Microsoft Store today, dubbed Microsoft News Bar. The app is essentially a persistent news ticker for your desktop, serving up the latest headlines as they happen. There’s also a fair bit of customization to get the right fit for your desktop setup. On launch, News Bar takes up a portion of the right side of your screen with a list of images for each news story. Hovering over each image will give you a preview of the story’s headline and a…
Windows Subsystem for Linux is making inroads with developers
Last week, Microsoft and Canonical (the company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution) were scheduled to host a developer conference focused on the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) at Microsoft’s Redmond campus. Ars was invited, and I had plane tickets in hand—but the physical conference was canceled at the last minute due to the coronavirus. Note that I did say the physical conference was canceled—WSLconf itself went on, with 22 speakers and 21 talks given. Virtual attendees were reportedly more than double the (sold out) physical attendee registration and included developers…
Facebook is moving to Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code for internal development
Facebook is adopting Visual Studio Code for all of its software engineers, and is currently in the process of finishing the migration from its mix of Nuclide and Emacs for internal development. As part of the partnership with Microsoft, the company will also help improve remote development extensions, which is ultimately going to benefit many more developers around the world.
Amazon’s own Echo Buds may have revealed a future fitness tracking feature
Amazon’s truly wireless Echo Buds earbuds are excellent for their $130 price, to the point that they were the elephant in the room when we reviewed Apple’s new AirPods Pro. And they managed that resounding feat without one of their biggest rumored features — the ability to double as a fitness tracker and measure the calories you’ve burned. But don’t rule out fitness tracking just yet, because CNBC and The Verge both spotted a new “Fitness” tab in the Echo Buds section of the Alexa app today. You can see…
Apple is quietly working on the perfect iPhone
iPhone owners know that Apple only refreshes the handset’s design every once in a while, usually when it has something significant to say, design-wise.
Microsoft brings PowerToys back to let anyone improve Windows 10 for power users
Microsoft first introduced the concept of “PowerToys” in Windows 95. It was originally a way for Windows engineers to test a prototype feature
GitHub Package Registry
GitHub Package Registry, a package management service that makes it easy to publish public or private packages next to your source code
Microsoft’s Chromium Edge browser is now officially available to test
Microsoft is making its Chromium-powered Edge browser available to developers today. The software giant is releasing its Canary and Developer builds, offering daily or weekly updates to the changes that are coming to Edge. Both downloads are available on Microsoft’s new Edge insider site, and they are designed for developers to get an early look at how Edge is changing. Microsoft has focused on the fundamentals of browsing, reliability, and extension support for this early version of Edge built on Chromium, and the company is looking for feedback about the…
Using dependency injection in a .Net Core console application
One of the key features of ASP.NET Core is baked in dependency injection. Whether you choose to use the built in container or a third party container will likely come down to whether the built in container is powerful enough for your given project. For small projects it may be fine, but if you need convention based registration, logging/debugging tools, or more esoteric approaches like property injection, then you’ll need to look elsewhere. Why use the built-in container? One question that’s come up a few times, is whether you can…
The Windows 3.0 File Manager is now available in the Microsoft Store
Microsoft open sourced the original File Manager that shipped with Windows 3.0, allowing users to make changes and if they want, compile it for use on Windows 10. Now, the firm is making it easier to run the legacy app, as it’s offering the Windows 3.0 File Manager through the Microsoft Store (via Aggiornamenti Lumia) as a UWP app. The app is listed as being available on PC, mobile, Surface Hub, and HoloLens; however, it also requires the device to be installed on Windows 10 build 16299 or newer. Obviously,…
Latest Windows 10 build puts desktop apps in a 3D world
Microsoft has released a new Insider preview build of Windows 10. Build 18329 should be available now to most people who have opted into the fast preview ring. Though it’s not available to everyone because, for some reason, the new build isn’t available in all the languages it’d normally be shipped in. The strangest new feature is that you can now launch and run regular Win32 apps—2D apps built for the desktop—in the Windows Mixed Reality environment that’s used for both virtual reality headsets and the HoloLens augmented reality headset.…
Microsoft’s new Office icons are part of a bigger design overhaul
Microsoft is modernizing its Office icons as part of a broader focus on design for its various Office apps. It’s the first time the Office icons have changed in five years, and they’re designed to be more simple and modern to span across multiple devices and platforms. Office now exists on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android, and Microsoft has been building a single core codebase to make rapid monthly improvements to the apps. These icons are designed to reflect how Office has changed recently, with new AI features, more collaborative…
Microsoft snaps up GitHub for $7.5 billion
As we anticipated yesterday, Microsoft has reached an agreement to buy GitHub, the source repository and collaboration platform, in a deal worth $7.5 billion. The all-stock deal is expected to close by the end of the year, subject to regulatory approval in the US and EU. Decade-old GitHub is built on Git, the open source version control software originally written by Linux creator Linus Torvalds. Git is a distributed version control system: each developer has their own repository that they make changes to, and these changes can be propagated between…
Microsoft has reportedly acquired GitHub
Microsoft has reportedly acquired GitHub, and could announce the deal as early as Monday. Bloomberg reports that the software giant has agreed to acquire GitHub, and that the company chose Microsoft partly because of CEO Satya Nadella. Business Insider first reported that Microsoft had been in talks with GitHub recently. GitHub is a vast code repository that has become popular with developers and companies hosting their projects, documentation, and code. Apple, Amazon, Google, and many other big tech companies use GitHub. Microsoft is the top contributor to the site, and…
Microsoft Buys Conversational AI Company Semantic Machines
In a blog post, Microsoft Corporate Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of AI & Research David Ku announced the acquisition of Berkeley, California-based conversational AI company Semantic Machines. The natural language processing technology developed by Semantic Machines will be integrated into Microsoft’s products like Cortana and the Azure Bot Service. On its website, Semantic Machines says that existing natural language systems such as Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana and Google Now only understands commands, but not conversations. However, Semantic Machines’ technology understands conversations rather than just commands. Some of the…
Microsoft turns SharePoint into the simplest VR creation tool yet
Microsoft is sticking with its pragmatic approach to VR with SharePoint spaces, a new addition to its collaboration platform that lets you quickly build and view Mixed Reality experiences. It’s a lot like how PowerPoint made it easy for anyone to create business presentations. Sharepoint spaces features templates for things like a gallery of 3D models or 360-degree videos, all of which are viewable in Mixed Reality headsets (or any browser that supports WebVR). While they’re certainly not complex virtual environments, they’re still immersive enough to be used for employee…
Surface phone: is it the real time?
Surface Phone Rumors: Microsoft to Finally Unveil Mythical Device at the MWC 2018. While some people are resigned to the fact that the long-rumored Surface Phone is nothing more than a figment of the imagination, new reports claim that the long-rumored mythical Microsoft device may finally be unveiled at next month’s MWC (Mobile World Congress). Rumors about the Surface Phone have been in existence for two years now, but no one outside Microsoft cannot really confirm if the device is in the pipeline. However, according to recent reports, the wait…
The Invoke Smart Speaker Brings Microsoft’s Cortana AI to Your Living Room
Cortana virtual assistant already integrates into Windows 10, works on iOS and Android, and will start showing up in cars soon, it’s ready for your home with Invoke. It’s good for work, good for play, even has a cool name. The new Invoke speaker, made by Harman Kardon, is more or less a direct copy of the Amazon Echo – a tall, cylindrical speaker with a blue light at the top that glows when the speaker is listening to you. It can control some of your smart-home devices, set reminders,…
Microsoft release new XAML Controls Gallery app to help developers implement Fluent Design
Microsoft is hoping developers will be updating their UWP apps en masse to support their new Fluent Design language, and to help them along Microsoft has published an app in the store that demonstrates all the controls available. “XAML Controls Gallery” demonstrates all of the controls available in Fluent Design System and XAML. It’s the interactive companion to the Fluent Design System web site which can be seen here. According to Microsoft, the new Microsoft Fluent Design System will deliver “intuitive, harmonious, responsive and inclusive cross-device experiences and interactions” for…
Microsoft Launcher review: A beautiful Android experience
After Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile, Microsoft Launcher is the upgraded version of the Microsoft Garage project Arrow Launcher, and we covered the key changes that came with that upgrade last week. It’s free and can be picked up from the Google Play Store. After some heavy usage over the last few days, we’re breaking down what works, what doesn’t, and where Microsoft should take their launcher from here. As Microsoft Launcher gains more publicity, there have been some rumblings about how it doesn’t look like Windows 10…
Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile
The company’s Windows 10 chief has tweeted that developing new features and hardware for the Mobile version of the OS was no longer a "focus". Joe Belfiore added that he had also switched to Android himself. Windows 10 Mobile tried to attract users by letting them run the same "universal apps" on both their PCs and handsets, but the concept failed to catch on. The OS accounted for just 0.03% of the global market – based on smartphone shipments – between April and June, according to research company IDC. The…
Hey Cortana, open Alexa: Microsoft and Amazon’s first-of-its-kind collaboration
I talk to Cortana every day — at home, work and on-the-go — to get information about my day, to set reminders so I don’t forget things, and to answer my questions. But I don’t just use one digital assistant. I also frequently talk to Alexa to listen to audio books or to add things to my shopping list. Because people use and interact with all kinds of products, we’re very excited to announce a first-of-its-kind collaboration with Amazon between Cortana and Alexa that will offer more choice, value and…
Microsoft says iOS and Android support doesn’t mean Windows Phone is dead
In an interview with Business Insider, Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore spoke briefly about Microsoft’s recent announcements made at Build such as the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update but also took the time to comfort those worried about the small presence of Windows phones at the event and Microsoft’s growing focus on iOS and Android devices. “We’re going to continue to support Windows phone,” Belfiore said before adding that, “Windows is a platform that drives the experience on a whole range of devices. We live in a highly diverse world.” With the…