Microsoft will stop using China-based engineers to support U.S. military cloud services after a ProPublica report revealed their involvement, prompting backlash from Senator Tom Cotton and a two-week Pentagon review ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. In response, Hegseth announced an immediate ban on any Chinese involvement in Department of Defense cloud contracts. Reuters reports: The report detailed Microsoft's use of Chinese engineers to work on U.S. military cloud computing systems under the supervision of U.S. "digital escorts" hired through subcontractors who have security clearances but often lacked the technical skills to assess whether the work of the Chinese engineers posed a cybersecurity threat. [Microsoft] told ProPublica it disclosed its practices to the U.S. government during an authorization process.

On Friday, Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw said on social media website X the company changed how it supports U.S. government customers "in response to concerns raised earlier this week ... to assure that no China-based engineering teams are providing technical assistance" for services used by the Pentagon.

LibreOffice has accused Microsoft of intentionally using "unnecessarily complex" file formats to lock in Office users, claiming the company weaponizes its Office Open XML schema to create barriers for competitors. The open-source office suite argued that Microsoft's OOXML format includes deeply nested structures with non-intuitive naming conventions and numerous optional elements that make implementation difficult for developers outside Microsoft.

LibreOffice compared the situation to a railway system where tracks are public but one company's control system is so convoluted that competitors cannot build compatible trains.

Microsoft has shut down its Movies & TV storefront on the Microsoft Store, ending the ability to purchase new entertainment content on Windows PCs and Xbox consoles. The company announced that as of July 18, users can no longer buy or rent movies and TV shows through Microsoft.com, the Microsoft Store on Windows, or the Microsoft Store on Xbox.

Customers who previously purchased content from the Microsoft Store can continue accessing their libraries through the Movies & TV app, which remains available for download. Microsoft will not offer refunds for recent purchases. US customers can use the Movies Anywhere service to sync their purchased content to other compatible platforms.

An anonymous reader shares a column: I can't open LinkedIn without seeing a new post from a Microsoft employee who lost their job in the company's latest round of layoffs. Around 15,000 jobs have been eliminated at Microsoft over the past couple months -- the biggest cuts at the company in more than a decade.

I've spoken to more than a dozen Microsoft employees in recent weeks, and everyone is concerned about the company's direction in this AI era. Morale is at an all-time low, and employees are worried that regular layoffs are simply the new normal.

Sources tell me that Microsoft's leadership team had the choice between reducing investment in AI infrastructure for the upcoming financial year or deeply cutting its headcount and operating expenses. It's very clear what route Microsoft chose.

OpenAI has added Google Cloud as a provider for ChatGPT and its API, expanding beyond Microsoft to address growing demand for computing power. CNBC reports: OpenAI has added Google to a list of suppliers, specifying that ChatGPT and its application programming interface will use the Google Cloud Platform, as well as Microsoft, CoreWeave and Oracle. The announcement amounts to a win for Google, whose cloud unit is younger and smaller than Amazon's and Microsoft's. Google also has cloud business with Anthropic, which was established by former OpenAI executives. The Google infrastructure will run in the U.S., Japan, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom.

Microsoft employs engineers in China to help maintain Defense Department computer systems, with U.S. citizens serving as "digital escorts" to oversee the foreign workers, according to a ProPublica investigation. The escorts often lack advanced technical expertise to police engineers with far more sophisticated skills, and some are former military personnel paid barely above minimum wage.

"We're trusting that what they're doing isn't malicious, but we really can't tell," one current escort told the publication. The arrangement, critical to Microsoft winning federal cloud computing contracts a decade ago, handles sensitive but unclassified government data including materials that directly support military operations. Former CIA and NSA executive Harry Coker called the system a natural opportunity for spies, saying "If I were an operative, I would look at that as an avenue for extremely valuable access."

Microsoft is testing a new adaptive energy saver mode in Windows 11 that automatically turns energy saver on or off based on system workload instead of battery percentage, aiming to extend laptop battery life without dimming screen brightness. The feature is currently available to Windows Insider testers and expected to roll out later this year. The Verge reports: The energy saver mode in Windows 11 typically dims a display brightness by 30 percent, disables transparency effects, and stop apps running in the background. Non-critical Windows update downloads are also paused, and certain apps like OneDrive, OneNote, and Phone Link may not sync fully while energy saver is enabled. This new adaptive energy saver mode, which will only be available on devices with a battery, will automatically enable or disable without affecting screen brightness. That will make it less noticeable on devices like laptops, tablets, and handhelds.

"Adaptive energy saver is an opt-in feature that automatically enables and disables energy saver, without changing screen brightness, based on the power state of the device and the current system load," explains Microsoft's Windows Insider team.

"A Nintendo Switch 2 user reportedly got his brand-new console banned by Nintendo after buying used Switch 1 games and patching them on his console," reports Tom's Hardware: According to Reddit user dmanthey, they purchased four used titles off the Facebook marketplace, inserted them into the Switch 2, and had them all updated. When they turned on their handhelds the following day, they received a message saying that they were restricted from Nintendo's online services and that they couldn't even download the games they had already bought...

[T]hey were able to prove their innocence by pulling up the Facebook Marketplace listing for their games and sending the photos of their purchased cartridges. According to the Redditor, the process was painless and fast, and it was "so much easier than getting support from Microsoft or Sony...." Other users warned, though, that this isn't always a guaranteed resolution.

Nintendo is known for being protective of its intellectual property and delivers harsh penalties to anyone caught violating it. We've already had several reports of users getting banned for using Mig Flash, even on their own ROMs. And while it's not true that getting banned turns your Switch 2 into a brick, it will still prevent you from accessing the company's online services, which severely restricts its features and usability.
"Nintendo attaches unique codes to its Switch game cartridges to prevent piracy," notes Engadget. "However, bad actors can copy games onto a third-party device, like the MIG Flash, and then resell the physical game card. Once Nintendo detects two instances of its unique code being online at the same time, it will ban any accounts using it..." This anti-piracy policy isn't new — Nintendo has long had a reputation for fiercely combating any type of piracy — but it has become relevant again thanks to the recently released Switch 2, which offers backwards compatibility with original Switch titles. The company even recently amended its user agreement to allow itself the power to brick a Nintendo Switch that's caught running pirated games or mods.

"Microsoft's Outlook email service malfunctioned for over 21 hours Wednesday and Thursday," reports CNBC, "prompting some people to post on social media about the inability to reach their virtual mailboxes." The issue began at 6:20 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, according to a dashboard the software company maintains. It affected Outlook.com as well as Outlook mobile apps and desktop programs. At 12:21 ET on Thursday, the Microsoft 365 Status account posted that it was rolling out a fix.
Although earlier on Thursday Microsoft posted on X that "We identified an issue with the initial fix, and we've corrected it..."

More details from the Associated Press: Disruptions appeared to peak just before noon ET on Thursday, when more than 2,700 users worldwide reported issues with Outlook, formerly also Hotmail, to outage tracker Downdetector. Some said they encountered problems like loading their inboxes or signing in. By later in the afternoon, reports had fallen to just over a couple hundred...

Microsoft did not immediately provide more information about what had caused the hourslong outage. A spokesperson for Microsoft had no further comment when reached by The Associated Press on Thursday.

An anonymous reader shares a report: HMD Global, the company best known for licensing the Nokia brand for new phones and tablets over the last decade, has announced that it will "scale back" its US operations, and appears to have stopped selling both HMD and Nokia devices entirely.

[...] Based in Finland, HMD was formed in 2016 in order to purchase the Nokia feature phone business from Microsoft, which had in turn bought the ailing brand in 2014. It also secured a license to use the Nokia name on smartphones and tablets, with a focus on affordable and midrange hardware.

European Union officials unveiled new AI regulations on Thursday that require makers of the most powerful AI systems to improve transparency, limit copyright violations and protect public safety.

The rules apply to companies like OpenAI, Microsoft and Google that develop general-purpose AI systems underpinning services like ChatGPT, which can analyze enormous amounts of data and perform human tasks. The code of practice provides concrete details about enforcing the AI Act passed last year, with rules taking effect August 2.

EU regulators cannot impose penalties for noncompliance until August 2026. Companies must provide detailed breakdowns of content used for training algorithms and conduct risk assessments to prevent misuse for creating biological weapons. CCIA Europe, representing Amazon, Google and Meta, told New York Times the code imposes a disproportionate burden on AI providers.

Over 240 browser extensions with nearly a million total installs have been covertly turning users' browsers into web-scraping bots. "The extensions serve a wide range of purposes, including managing bookmarks and clipboards, boosting speaker volumes, and generating random numbers," reports Ars Technica. "The common thread among all of them: They incorporate MellowTel-js, an open source JavaScript library that allows developers to monetize their extensions." Ars Technica reports: Some of the data swept up in the collection free-for-all included surveillance videos hosted on Nest, tax returns, billing invoices, business documents, and presentation slides posted to, or hosted on, Microsoft OneDrive and Intuit.com, vehicle identification numbers of recently bought automobiles along with the names and addresses of the buyers, patient names and the doctors they saw, travel itineraries hosted on Priceline, Booking.com, and airline websites, Facebook Messenger attachments and Facebook photos, even when the photos were set to be private. The dragnet also collected proprietary information belonging to Tesla, Blue Origin, Amgen, Merck, Pfizer, Roche, and dozens of other companies.

Tuckner said in an email Wednesday that the most recent status of the affected extensions is:

- Of 45 known Chrome extensions, 12 are now inactive. Some of the extensions were removed for malware explicitly. Others have removed the library.
- Of 129 Edge extensions incorporating the library, eight are now inactive.
- Of 71 affected Firefox extensions, two are now inactive.

Some of the inactive extensions were removed for malware explicitly. Others have removed the library in more recent updates. A complete list of extensions found by Tuckner is here.

AMD is warning users of a newly discovered form of side-channel attack affecting a broad range of its chips that could lead to information disclosure. Register: Akin to Meltdown and Spectre, the Transient Scheduler Attack (TSA) comprises four vulnerabilities that AMD said it discovered while looking into a Microsoft report about microarchitectural leaks.

The four bugs do not appear too venomous at face value -- two have medium-severity ratings while the other two are rated "low." However, the low-level nature of the exploit's impact has nonetheless led Trend Micro and CrowdStrike to assess the threat as "critical."

The reasons for the low severity scores are the high degree of complexity involved in a successful attack -- AMD said it could only be carried out by an attacker able to run arbitrary code on a target machine. It affects AMD processors (desktop, mobile and datacenter models), including 3rd gen and 4th gen EPYC chips -- the full list is here.

Microsoft is keen to show employees how much AI is transforming its own workplace, even as the company terminates thousands of personnel. From a report: During a presentation this week, Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff said artificial intelligence tools are boosting productivity in everything from sales and customer service to software engineering, according to a person familiar with his remarks.

Althoff said AI saved Microsoft more than $500 million last year in its call centers alone and increased both employee and customer satisfaction, according to the person, who requested anonymity to discuss an internal matter. The company is also starting to use AI to handle interactions with smaller customers, Althoff said. This effort is nascent, but already generating tens of millions of dollars, he said.

Microsoft has pledged more than $4 billion in cash and technology services to train millions of people in AI use, targeting schools, community colleges, technical colleges and nonprofits. The company said it will launch Microsoft Elevate Academy to help 20 million people earn AI certificates.

Microsoft President Brad Smith said the company would "serve as an advocate to ensure that students in every school across the country have access to A.I. education." The announcement follows Tuesday's news that the American Federation of Teachers received $23 million from Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic for a national AI training center. Last week, dozens of companies including Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI signed a White House pledge promising schools funding, technology and training materials for AI education.

Nvidia shares jumped more than 2% on Wednesday, topping a $4 trillion market cap for the first time as investors scooped stock in the tech giant building the hardware for the generative AI boom. From a report: The chipmaker is the first company to ever achieve this market value. Nvidia is the world's most valuable company, surpassing Microsoft and Apple, both of which hit the $3 trillion mark before Nvidia. Microsoft is also one of Nvidia's biggest and most important customers. The California-based company, which was founded in 1993, first passed the $2 trillion mark in February 2024, and surpassed $3 trillion in June.

Nvidia has profited heavily off of growing demand for artificial intelligence hardware and chips since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. The company has positioned itself as the decisive leader in the creating the graphics processing units that power large language models.

Activision removed "Call of Duty: WWII" from Microsoft Store and Game Pass after hackers exploited a security vulnerability that allowed them to compromise players' computers, TechCrunch reported Tuesday, citing a source. The gaming giant took the 2017 first-person shooter offline last week while investigating what it initially described only as "reports of an issue."

Players posted on social media claiming their systems had been hacked while playing the game. The vulnerability was a remote code execution exploit that enables attackers to install malware and take control of victims' devices. The Microsoft Store and Game Pass versions contained an unpatched security flaw that had been fixed in other versions of the game.

An anonymous reader shares a blog post: Version 140 of the Thunderbird mail client has been released. Notable features include "dark message mode" to adapt message content to dark mode, the ability to easily transfer desktop settings to the mobile Thunderbird client, experimental support for Microsoft Exchange, as well as global controls for message threading and sort order.

Thunderbird 140 is an extended-support release (ESR) which will be supported for 12 months. However, the Thunderbird project is trying to encourage users to adopt the Release channel for monthly updates instead. The project is staggering upgrades to 140 for existing Thunderbird users in order to catch any significant bugs before they are widely deployed, but users can upgrade manually via the Help > About menu. See the release notes for a full list of changes.

Microsoft and OpenAI are locked in acrimonious negotiations partly because they cannot agree on what artificial general intelligence means, despite having written the term into a contract worth over $13 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.

One definition reportedly agreed upon by the companies sets the AGI threshold at when AI generates $100 billion in profits. Under their partnership agreement, OpenAI can limit Microsoft's access to future technology once it achieves AGI. OpenAI executives believe they are close to declaring AGI, while Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called using AGI as a self-proclaimed milestone "nonsensical benchmark hacking" on the Dwarkesh Patel podcast in February.

Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic will announce Tuesday the launch of a $22.5 million AI training center for members of the American Federation of Teachers, according to details inadvertently published early on a publicly accessible YouTube livestream. The National Academy for AI Instruction will be based in New York City and aims to equip kindergarten through 12th grade instructors with "the tools and confidence to bring AI into the classroom in a way that supports learning and opportunity for all students."

The initiative will provide free AI training and curriculum to teachers in the second-largest US teachers' union, which represents about 1.8 million workers including K-12 teachers, school nurses and college staff. The academy builds on Microsoft's December 2023 partnership with the AFL-CIO, the umbrella organization that includes the American Federation of Teachers.