Tech News Weekly: Issue 26
Firefox and Steam support, Microsoft Edge Workspaces, and Windows 12 rumors
News
Operating Systems
Microsoft has published new virtual machine images for Windows 11. The latest version includes the Moments 2 update and is available, as usual as VMWare, Hyper-V, VirtualBox and Parallels images. They expire automatically on June 14, 2023.
Will Microsoft release Windows 12 in the second half of 2024? There is no official confirmation on that, but it is certainly a possibility. As far as system requirements would be concerned, they will certainly match those of Windows 11 or be even stricter.
The latest rumor suggests that Microsoft could increase RAM requirements to 8 gigabytes, but keep everything else as is under Windows 11.
Microsoft, again, recommends to uninstall user interface customization apps before installing the latest updates for Windows 11. These apps may cause explorer.exe errors. Microsoft mentions the apps ExplorerPatcher and StartAllBack specifically.
Microsoft released preview updates for Windows 10 and 11 earlier this week. The update for Windows 11 version 22H2 introduces “notifications" for Microsoft accounts in the Start Menu according to Microsoft. They promote backups to OneDrive, and may be considered advertisement because of that by some users.
Any Ubuntu users here? Ubuntu Cinnamon is now recognized as an official flavor of the popular Linux distro.
Mobile
Google’s Threat Analysis Group discovered several exploit chains on Android, iOS and in Chrome that were used to “install commercial spyware and malicious apps” on devices. Reports suggest that the attack used more than 1000 malicious domains to spoof media websites in several countries.
Interesting article on LineageOS and the option to extend the life of older Android devices by installing the mobile operating system.
Here is the U.S. Senate bill to ban TikTok.
Browser
Microsoft Edge 111 includes a new option to hide the Bing icon in the main Edge toolbar. The new discover icon can now be disabled under edge://settings/sidebar in the browser. Previously, users had to make a change to the Registry or use the Group Policy Editor to do that.
Vivaldi added a new Workspaces features as a preview for the web browser. Workspaces is a tab management feature to work with different tab sets. When a workspace is selected, only the tabs of that workspace are shown in the tabbar. Move, remove and other options are included.
Opera Software added AI Prompts and ChatGPT support to the browser in the most recent update. AI Prompts are context aware prompts to help the user with research or provide a summary of content.
Mozilla plans to support Firefox on Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 until at least the third-quarter of 2024. Firefox 115 ESR, out in late August 2023, will support the operating systems, and it will be supported for 15 release cycles (each 4 weeks).
Push notifications are now supported cross-browser.
Privacy and Security
Microsoft released updates for the native screenshots tools of Windows 10 and 11 to address a data leak issue. It could, under certain circumstances, be exploited to display parts of an image that were no longer visible after cropping.
Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS, Ubuntu, Tesla, VMWare and other products were successfully cracked during the Pwn2Own 2023 Vancouver event.
Microsoft announced a new security feature for Microsoft Teams this week. Called Collaboration Security, it is integrated into the unified security operations (SecOps) experience of Microsoft 365 Defender.
Available as a preview for Microsoft E5, Microsoft E5 Security, or Microsoft Defender for Office 365 customers, it is bringing email environment protections to Microsoft Teams. Besides that, Microsoft is introducing a new report suspicious message option in Teams, which alerts the organization’s security team.
Another new feature is zero auto purge (ZAP), which “protects end-users by analyzing messages post-delivery and automatically quarantines messages that contain malicious content to stop the actor from compromising the account”.
Microsoft is also adding proactive tools to “hunt for threats” to Microsoft 365 Defender to improve Teams security.
Flexible access to data enables SecOps teams to hunt across and correlate data from email, endpoints, identities
PayPal added support for passkeys on Android, but only for its website on Android. The feature requires Chrome next to that and is only available to users from the United States. The company plans to integrate support into its apps at a later point.
Android app from China executed 0-day exploit on millions of devices. ArsTechnica has the details.
Software Updates
Microsoft released its monthly What’s New in Excel post this week, highlighting the changes to the various Excel products. Excel for Windows and Mac get a new @mentions option to assign a task. The web version checks the performance of a workbook and may suggest a “check performance” option to improve it.
Thunderbird 102.9.1 is a security update that addresses a potential denial of service attack vulnerability in the Matrix chat protocol. The new version of the open source browser includes a fix for opening file URLs from the command line.
Gaming
Valve Software won’t support the Microsoft operating systems Windows 7 and 8/8.1 anymore in 2024. Valve explains that it uses Chromium in Steam, and that Google ended support for the Windows platforms in January 2023. Valve also wants to integrate security and non-security features that are only supported by Windows 10 or newer versions of the Windows operating system.
Windows 7 and 8 gamers have two main options: upgrade to Windows 10 or switch to Linux, provided that they want to retain access to their Steam library without buying a new device.
Microsoft added a new known issue for Windows 11 version 21H2, which is the release version of the operating system. It is for the game Red Dead Redemption 2, which may not open on devices after installing the preview update released on March 28, 2023. Microsoft suggests to upgrade to Windows 11 version 22H2 to address the issue. It is working together with Rockstar Games to create a permanent fix for the issue.
Other
Ruffle, a project to conserve Flash apps and games by creating a modern Flash Player, has reached a major milestone recently. More ActionScript 2 games are now supported, and work is ongoing on introducing ActionScript 3 support.
Microsoft is now using AI to generate content on Bing for user queries. It displays a slideshow on certain queries, e.g., Impressionism, and may also enhance the Knowledgegraph, which it displays on the side, with AI generated content.
Plugin support is the next big thing for OpenAI’s ChatGPT feature. It is the starting point for commercialization of the feature, as users may use plugins for all kinds of features, including the booking of flights or restaurants, or ordering. Not all plugins have commercial intent.
Amazon has started to add a frequently returned notification to some products on its site, hoping that it may lead to fewer returns.
Google is adding result verification options to its Search engine. All users should see a three-dots icon next to results, which, one activation, displays information about the publication plus additional information.
Apple Pay Later is a new financial service by Apple that allows customers to pay for purchases over time and with zero interest and no fees.
Article(s)
A look at Microsoft Edge’s Workspaces feature
Microsoft announced Workspaces during Ignite 2022 and described it as a tool to browse collaboratively in Microsoft Edge. Now, with the release of Microsoft Edge 111, comes the option to take the feature for a test ride.
An invite link is required, here it is, which needs to be opened in Microsoft Edge to get an invitation to the Workspaces preview (thanks Neowin)
Edge Workspaces Preview highlights three core features of the product:
Accomplish more online — You and your group can browse the same set of tabs on different devices and be in sync at all times.
Stay up-to-date — Updates to tabs and favourites within an Edge Workspace happen in real-time so everyone can stay on the same page.
Focus on what matters — Remain focused while working on specific tasks or connecting with different groups by separating your open tabs into unique Edge Workspaces.
A click on “get started” launches the preview in Microsoft Edge and a prompt to create the first Workspace. Workspaces may have unique names and colors. The preview is limited to 5 invites across all workspaces.
Microsoft Edge displays a new Invite button in the interface that displays a share link. This link needs to be launched by others to join the workspace and access the same set of tabs.
Once at least one user has been invited, open tabs and the sites they contain are shared with that user. Changes are reflected for all users in real-time.
Workspaces is an interesting collaborative feature. While aimed at business and education users first and foremost, it may prove useful to Home users as well.
Families could use it to coordinate activity, e.g., the next family vacation or trip, friends could use it for recommendations or tips, and everyone could use it for project coordination.
Microsoft published a support page that provides additional details on the feature. The company highlights what Edge Workspaces shares with other users, and what it does not share.
As far as sharing is concerned, tabs, favorites and history is shared in real-time. Group member profiles are also shared, as they are used to highlight a user’s active tab.
The list of what Edge Workspaces does not share is considerable longer:
logins, passwords, downloads, collections, extensions or cookies.
personal browser settings.
tabs open outside of Edge Workspace.
website content that requires authentication.
the screen.
Edge Workspaces is available as a preview currently. It is an interesting collaborative feature that allows multiple Edge users to work on a set of tabs in real-time.
The Last of Us Part 1 bombs on PC
The long awaited first part of the previously PlayStation exclusive Last of Us game has been released on March 28, 2023 on Steam. The remastered version of the game has received praising reviews for PlayStation, but when you check the Steam ratings one day after release, you notice that they are mostly negative on the site.
In numbers, more than 4200 of the 5740 reviews are mostly negative, and this leads to the question how this could have happened. From Game of the Year to one that sits at the bottom of Steam’s ranking charts.
When you read user reviews, you notice that complaints center around a few key issues. First, that users experience crashes when playing the game. Second, that the initial loading, and especially the building of shaders, may take hours to complete. Third, that the performance, especially on Steam Deck, is not great.
All of these issues are indicators of a bad port of the game. Nothing that can’t be fixed with patches, but if you look at how other companies who fell into the same hole have recovered, it might take more than a year to get things right.
CD Project, maker of Cyberpunk 2077, experienced a similar disaster with the release of the game. Not so much on PC, but on consoles. The game was not a port, but it was buggy and had performance issues, especially on the older console systems.
PC gamers who have not bought the game yet may want to postpone the purchase until the major issues are addressed. This might not happen before the Holiday season or even early 2024, depending on how dedicated Sony is to resolve this mess.
Links
Hate How Hard It Is to Cancel Subscriptions? The FTC Feels You
Microsoft Research Paper Claims Sparks of Artificial Intelligence in GPT-4
Nvidia Speeds Key Chipmaking Computation by 40x
NVIDIA Unveils cuLitho: A “Breakthrough in Computational Lithography”
The Ancient Indian Buddhist Monk Buried in Athens
The Real Reasons For Big Tech Layoffs At Google, Microsoft, Meta, And Amazon