Microsoft is discontinuing Visual Studio for Mac, committing to security updates and platform update compatibility for the next 12 months. 9to5Mac reports: "With today's announcement, we're redirecting our resources and focus to enhance Visual Studio and VS Code, optimizing them for cross-platform development," the company said in the announcement. "No new framework, runtime, or language support will be added to Visual Studio for Mac." The company added: "We will also continue to provide runtime and workload updates so you can continue building and shipping applications built on .NET 6, .NET 7, and the Mono frameworks. While not officially supported, we've also enabled rudimentary support for .NET 8 in Visual Studio for Mac for building and debugging applications."

Once the wheels fall off Visual Studio for Mac, Microsoft recommends accessing its IDE through Windows in a machine virtual on the Mac or in the cloud. Otherwise, Microsoft points to cross-platform compatible developer technology that will run on macOS: "The recently announced C# Dev Kit, .NET MAUI, and Unity Extensions for VS Code are available in preview and are intended to augment VS Code's capabilities for .NET and C# developers. These extensions operate natively across all supported platforms, including macOS, and the experience using these will continue to be improved as they move from preview to GA and beyond."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft employees were already expecting lackluster pay rises. In a company-wide email sent earlier this year, the tech company's CEO Satya Nadella warned staff of salary freezes and cuts to the bonusbudget. But despite previous transparency around the cost-cutting measures, employees enquiring about how the budget cuts have impacted their performance review will now be fobbed off. According to leaked guidance, managers are being ordered to dodge such questions in the name of company culture. "It's natural for employees to ask questions about budget given the decisions shared in Satya's email," the guidance reportedly states. "However, it's most important to focus discussions with direct reports on their impact for the past fiscal year and directly tie it to their rewards."

Managers should not use the budget cuts as an "explanation" for compensation decisions for individual employees and instead should emphasize that the employee's own "impact" determines "rewards." "Using budgets or factors besides the employee's impact as an explanation for an employee's rewards will erode trust and confidence within your team," the guide cautions. "Reinforce that every year offers unique opportunity for impact, and we increase our high expectations, regardless of our budget."

A couple months after Microsoft revealed plans to increase Game Pass subscription prices, Sony is getting in on the act. From a report: The company is bumping up the annual prices of all three PlayStation Plus plans on September 6th. An annual Essential subscription will soon cost $80 per year, up from $60. The Extra plan is going up by $35 to $135 per year, while an annual Premium plan will soon cost $40 more at $160. The price changes won't take effect for current PS Plus users on an annual plan until their next renewal date that's on or after November 6th. If you make any changes to your plan between September 6th and then (such as changing tiers), the new pricing will apply. Sony has not announced changes to the monthly ($10 for Essential, $15 for Extra and $18 for Premium) or quarterly ($25 for Essential, $40 for Extra and $50 for Premium) for the time being. It notes that the annual plan is still less expensive than a monthly or quarterly subscription in the long run.

An anonymous reader writes: I thought I had malware on my main Windows 11 machine this weekend. There I was minding my own business in Chrome before tabbing back to a game and wham a pop-up appeared asking me to switch my default search engine to Microsoft Bing in Chrome. Stunningly, Microsoft now thinks it's ok to shove a pop-up in my face above my apps and games just because I dare to use Chrome instead of Microsoft Edge. This isn't a normal notification, either. It didn't appear in the notification center in Windows 11, nor is it connected to the part of Windows 11 that suggests new features to you. It's quite literally a rogue executable file that has somehow appeared in c:\windows\temp\mubstemp and is digitally signed by Microsoft.

"We are aware of these reports and have paused this notification while we investigate and take appropriate action to address this unintended behavior," says Caitlin Roulston, director of communications, in a statement to The Verge. [...] This isn't Microsoft's first rodeo, either. I'm growing increasingly frustrated by the company's methods of getting people to switch from Google and Chrome to Bing and Edge. Microsoft has been using a variety of prompts for years now, with pop-ups appearing inside Chrome, on the Windows taskbar, and elsewhere. Microsoft has even forced people into Edge after a Windows Update, and regularly presents a full-screen message to switch to Bing and Edge after updates.

Google is making some big changes to Google Chat, its answer to Slack and Microsoft Teams. The messaging app -- aka the product formerly known as hangouts -- is getting a new design, some features that will feel distinctly familiar to Slack and Teams users, and a lot of Google's new Duet AI collaboration tools. From a report: Most of the new features are rolling out later this year and early next, but they add up to a much more useful and competitive Chat platform. Duet is the flagship new feature and potentially a reason for a lot of Workspace users to start using Chat. You can use Duet to search and ask questions about all your stuff in Drive and Gmail and summarize both documents and conversations. You'll also be able to use AI-powered autocorrect in Chat, and thanks to Smart Reply, you might never have to manually talk to your co-workers again. You'll be able to talk to Duet in a one-on-one chat or invoke it in a group chat or a space to help get stuff done. "You essentially have a co-worker who has infinite memory and amazing recall at your fingertips," says Vamsee Jasti, Google's product lead for Chat.

Outside of the AI integrations, Chat is also getting a facelift. The app has, until now, looked like a fairly barebones messaging app, with a list of conversations on the left and the active chat on the right; now, it's going to have a lot more going on. (And, yes, it will look a lot more like Slack and Teams.) There will be a new home view with all your recent conversations, plus dedicated ways to see all your starred conversations and mentions. For now, everything will be reverse-chronological, but Google says it plans to start more intelligently organizing and ordering things next year. The interface as a whole is getting a bit of cleanup, too, with larger buttons and aesthetics borrowed from Google's Material You design language.

When employees leave Google to join the artificial intelligence startup race, the search giant still has a way to benefit -- by keeping those former workers as cloud customers. From a report: More than half of venture-backed generative AI startups pay for Google's cloud computing platform, Alphabet, Google's parent company, said Tuesday. Of the startups valued at over $1 billion, 70% are Google Cloud customers, and about a third of those are helmed by former employees, including Anthropic, Character.ai and Cohere, the company said. That gives Google a way to extend its influence in the field even when it sheds talent.

Google's cloud unit, which reported a profit for the first time this year, has emerged as one of the company's best bets for growth as its core search business matures. Google still trails Amazon's AWS and Microsoft's Azure in the market. But startups in the field of generative AI -- programs that can spin up images, text and video from simple prompts -- are increasingly turning to the company, said James Lee, Google Cloud's general manager for startups and AI. "We're seeing strong momentum in our business, and we see Google Cloud as the preferred choice for startups building generative AI," Lee said in an interview. Google Cloud customers have the option to use AI models from Google itself as well as other companies, a degree of flexibility that appeals to startups, Lee said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Seeking to capitalize on ChatGPT's viral success, OpenAI today announced the launch of ChatGPT Enterprise, a business-focused edition of the company's AI-powered chatbot app. ChatGPT Enterprise, which OpenAI first teased in a blog post earlier this year, can perform the same tasks as ChatGPT, such as writing emails, drafting essays and debugging computer code. But the new offering also adds "enterprise-grade" privacy and data analysis capabilities on top of the vanilla ChatGPT, as well as enhanced performance and customization options. That puts ChatGPT Enterprise on par, feature-wise, with Bing Chat Enterprise, Microsoft's recently launched take on an enterprise-oriented chatbot service.

ChatGPT Enterprise provides a new admin console with tools to manage how employees within an organization use ChatGPT, including integrations for single sign-on, domain verification and a dashboard with usage statistics. Shareable conversation templates allow employees to build internal workflows leveraging ChatGPT, while credits to OpenAI's API platform let companies create fully custom ChatGPT-powered solutions if they choose. ChatGPT Enterprise, in addition, comes with unlimited access to Advanced Data Analysis, the ChatGPT feature formerly known as Code Interpreter, which allows ChatGPT to analyze data, create charts, solve math problems and more, including from uploaded files. For example, given a prompt like "Tell me what's interesting about this data," ChatGPT's Advanced Data Analysis capability can look through the data -- financial, health or location information, for example -- to generate insights.

Advanced Data Analysis was previously available only to subscribers to ChatGPT Plus, the $20-per-month premium tier of the consumer ChatGPT web and mobile apps. To be clear, ChatGPT Plus is sticking around -- OpenAI sees ChatGPT Enterprise as complementary to it, the company says. ChatGPT Enterprise is powered by GPT-4, OpenAI's flagship AI model, as is ChatGPT Plus. But ChatGPT Enterprise customers get priority access to GPT-4, delivering performance that's twice as fast as the standard GPT-4 and with an expanded 32,000-token (~25,000-word) context window. Context window refers to the text the model considers before generating additional text, while tokens represent raw text (e.g. the word "fantastic" would be split into the tokens "fan," "tas" and "tic"). Generally speaking, models with large context windows are less likely to "forget" the content of recent conversations. Crucially, OpenAI said that it "won't train models on business data sent to ChatGPT Enterprise or any usage data and that all conversations with ChatGPT Enterprise are encrypted in transit and at rest," notes TechCrunch.

"OpenAI says that its future plans for ChatGPT Enterprise include a ChatGPT Business offering for smaller teams, allowing companies to connect apps to ChatGPT Enterprise, 'more powerful' and 'enterprise-grade' versions of Advanced Data Analysis and web browsing, and tools designed for data analysts, marketers and customer support."

A blog post introducing ChatGPT Enterprise can be found here.

Microsoft has made some of its certification exams open book affairs, allowing access to its learning portal while candidates sit tests. From a report: "On August 22, we will begin updating our exams so that you will be able to access Microsoft Learn as you complete your exam," wrote Liberty Munson, director of psychometrics at Microsoft's Worldwide Learning organization. Microsoft Learn is a portal that links to product documentation, tutorials, code fragments, and other technical material.

Much of that content will be available during exams, although a technical Q&A service will remain hidden. The open book exams will be offered to candidates sitting exams for the role-based certifications Microsoft offers for job titles including Azure Administrator, Developer, Solutions Architect, DevOps Engineer; Microsoft 365 Modern Desktop Administrator, and Enterprise Administrator. Exams at Associate, Expert, and Specialty levels of competency will all offer access to the Learn portal. The material will become available for all role-based and specialty exams, in all languages, by mid-September 2023. Looking up material on Learn won't stop the clock during an exam, and the experience of taking the test will remain unchanged -- other than allowing candidates to open a window in which to view the educational portal.

Slash_Account_Dot writes: Hackers are able to grab a target's IP address, potentially revealing their general physical location, by simply sending a link over the Skype mobile app. The target does not need to click the link or otherwise interact with the hacker beyond opening the message, according to a security researcher who demonstrated the issue and successfully discovered my IP address by using it. Yossi, the independent security researcher who uncovered the vulnerability, reported the issue to Microsoft earlier this month, according to Yossi and a cache of emails and bug reports he shared with 404 Media. In those emails Microsoft said the issue does not require immediate servicing, and gave no indication that it plans to fix the security hole. Only after 404 Media contacted Microsoft for comment did the company say it would patch the issue in an upcoming update.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: During the U.S. presidential campaign of 1928, a circular published by the Republican Party claimed that if Herbert Hoover won there would be "a chicken in every pot". Times change. When talk turned to education at Wednesday night's 2024 Republican U.S. Presidential Candidate Debate, candidate Asa Hutchinson promised there will be 'CS in every school' if he wins (YouTube).

"Look at Arkansas," the former Arkansas Governor explained. "We have to compete with China. I built computer science education. We led the nation in Computer Science education, going from 1,100 students to 23,000 students taking it. This is how you compete with China. As President of the United States, I will make sure we go from 51% of our schools offering computer science to every school in rural areas and urban areas offering computer science for the benefit of our kids and we can compete with China in terms of technology."

In his last year in office, Hutchinson served as Chair of the National Governors Association (NGA) and rallied the nation's Governors around tech CEOs' demands for more K-12 CS education to culminate his year-long CS evangelism initiative, which the NGA noted enjoyed the support of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Hutchinson's pitch to the Governors included a video challenging them with a question. "Will it be American students who learn to code," Hutchinson asked, "or will industry be required to go overseas to find the talent that we need here in the United States of America?"
Later in the debate former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said entrepreneur/candidate Vivek Ramaswamy "sounds like ChatGPT."

Microsoft's August 2023 preview updates for Windows 11 and Windows 10, labeled as KB5029351 and KB5029331 respectively, have led to blue screen errors citing an unsupported processor problem. BleepingComputer reports: "Microsoft has received reports of an issue in which users are receiving an 'UNSUPPORTED_PROCESSOR' error message on a blue screen after installing updates released on August 2," Redmond said. The company also added that the problematic cumulative updates "might automatically uninstall to allow Windows to start up as expected." Microsoft is investigating the newly acknowledged known issue to find out whether it stems from a Microsoft-related cause. The company also urged users encountering these BSOD errors to file a report using the Feedback Hub.

According to Windows Central, Microsoft might be bringing AI capabilities to a handful of Windows 11 apps, including Photos, Snipping Tool, and Paint. "Some of this functionality will require dedicated hardware, such as an NPU (neural processing unit) or VPU (vision processing unit,) while others may not," notes the report. From the report: For the Photos app, Microsoft is working on an AI functionality that would allow the app to identify objects or people in photos and enable the ability to cut out and paste those elements elsewhere. This is a functionality that iOS and Android have had for some time, so it's no surprise to hear that Microsoft is also working to bring it to Windows.

Regarding the Snipping Tool, my sources say the company wants to incorporate OCR (optical character recognition) technology to enable Windows to identify text in screenshots for faster clipboard copying. Microsoft is also working on bringing OCR to the Camera app, allowing users to select text in a photo taken on the device.

Lastly, my sources say Microsoft has also been experimenting with bringing generative AI to the Windows 11 Paint app. Users could ask Paint to create a canvas based on criteria set out by the user, similar to how Bing Image Creator currently works. Sources say the Paint AI integration will be based on that same Bing technology.

A decade after data analytics promised to revolutionize agriculture, most farmers still aren't using data tools or specialized software, and of those who do, many are swamped in a deluge of data. From a report: In 2013, seed and pesticide giant Monsanto acquired agriculture-data firm Climate Corporation for $1 billion, helping spur the industry's mania for data-driven farming. The hope was that by outfitting farmers with software and tools capable of ingesting and analyzing troves of data on things from weather patterns to soil conditions, they could more efficiently use their land. Many are still waiting for the technology to pay off. In the U.S., less than half of farmers surveyed by consulting firm McKinsey are using farm management software, and 25% are using remote-sensing and precision agriculture hardware. That software is a foundational technology in enabling the autonomous machinery and AI-enabled equipment of the future, analysts say, and unless farmers start using it, some will be left behind in the next decade of farm innovation. At the moment, 3% of American farmers said they plan to adopt software or precision agriculture hardware over the next two years, according to McKinsey.

Certain tools can automatically gather data from internet-connected farm equipment, but others require farmers to manually enter the information. For a specific field, for instance, that could total over a dozen crop-protection products and multiple seeds. Even those who are using the tech say they can find it difficult to draw useful conclusions from it. "We're collecting so much data that you're almost paralyzed with having to analyze it all," said David Emmert, a corn and soybean farmer in West Central Indiana who works about 4,300 acres. [...] The first generation of digital farming tools also wasn't easy for farmers to use. Software was slow, interfaces were complex and difficult to manage. "The industry does need to step up a little bit on continuing to improve the customer experience," said David Fiocco, a McKinsey partner focused on agriculture. In recent years, big tech vendors like Microsoft, Amazon and Google have begun tailoring their cloud-computing, data and artificial-intelligence services to agriculture, bringing along expertise that could help address complications that have long plagued farm data management and analytics.

Microsoft is restructuring its proposed Activision Blizzard deal to transfer cloud gaming rights for current and new Activision Blizzard games to Ubisoft. From a report: The transfer of rights is designed to appease regulators in the UK that are concerned about the impact Microsoft's proposed $68.7 billion deal will have on cloud gaming competition. The restructured deal has triggered a new regulatory investigation in the UK that could last until October 18th. "To address the concerns about the impact of the proposed acquisition on cloud game streaming raised by the UK Competition and Markets Authority, we are restructuring the transaction to acquire a narrower set of rights," says Microsoft president Brad Smith. "This includes executing an agreementâeffective at the closing of our merger that transfersâthe cloud streaming rights for all current and new Activision Blizzard PC and console games released over the next 15 years to Ubisoft Entertainment SA, a leading global game publisher. The rights will be in perpetuity." This restructured deal means that if Microsoft does close its proposed acquisition, then it will not be able to release Activision Blizzard games exclusively on Xbox Cloud Gaming.

theodp writes: On Tuesday, Microsoft announced the Public Preview of Python in Excel, which "runs securely on the Microsoft Cloud".

From the Home Office in Redmond: "Python is one of the most popular programming languages today, loved by businesses and students alike and Excel is an essential tool to organize, manipulate and analyze all kinds of data. But, until now, there hasn't been an easy way to make those two worlds work together. Today, we are excited to introduce the Public Preview of Python in Excel -- making it possible to integrate Python and Excel analytics within the same Excel grid for uninterrupted workflow. Python in Excel combines Python's powerful data analysis and visualization libraries with Excel's features you know and love. You can manipulate and explore data in Excel using Python plots and libraries, and then use Excel's formulas, charts and PivotTables to further refine your insights...We're partnering with Anaconda, a leading enterprise grade Python repository used by tens of millions of data practitioners worldwide. Python in Excel leverages Anaconda Distribution for Python running in Azure, which includes the most popular Python libraries such as pandas for data manipulation, statsmodels for advanced statistical modeling, and Matplotlib and seaborn for data visualization....While in Preview, Python in Excel will be included with your Microsoft 365 subscription. After the Preview, some functionality will be restricted without a paid license."

Python creator Guido van Rossum, now a Microsoft Distinguished Engineer, helped define the architecture for Python in Excel and had this to say: "I'm excited that this excellent, tight integration of Python and Excel is now seeing the light of day. I expect that both communities will find interesting new uses in this collaboration, amplifying each partner's abilities. When I joined Microsoft three years ago, I would not have dreamed this would be possible. The Excel team excels!"

Microsoft is discontinuing the Kinect, again. The Verge explains: The company officially stopped manufacturing the depth camera and microphone in 2017 and brought it back in a new form in 2019 as the Azure Kinect Developer Kit. Now, Microsoft is ending production of that, too, but it has partnered with some outside companies to provide options available for people who need similar types of devices.

If you want to get one of the remaining Azure Kinect Developer Kits, they'll be available to buy through the end of October or "until supplies last," Microsoft's Swati Mehta said in a post on the company's website. If you already have one, Mehta promises that you can keep using it "without disruption." "As the needs of our customers and partners evolve, we regularly update our products to best support them," Mehta wrote. "From time to time, this includes introducing new opportunities, as well as retiring products. We have made the decision to end production of Azure Kinect Developer Kit, but this is far from the end of this technology as it will continue to be available through our partner ecosystem." One alternate suggestion from Mehta is Orbbec's Femto Bolt, which uses the depth camera module found in the Azure Kinect Developer Kit.

Microsoft took down a string of articles published by "Microsoft Travel" last week that included a bizarre recommendation for visitors to Ottawa to visit the Ottawa Food Bank and to "consider going into it on an empty stomach." From a report: The now-deleted article that included that recommendation -- "Headed to Ottawa? Here's what you shouldn't miss!" -- went viral after writer Paris Marx shared it as an example of an AI flop. The online chatter about the article, and the clearly offensive nature of the food bank recommendation, prompted Microsoft to issue a statement. The statement blamed a human.

"This article has been removed and we have identified that the issue was due to human error," a Microsoft spokesperson said. "The article was not published by an unsupervised AI. We combine the power of technology with the experience of content editors to surface stories. In this case, the content was generated through a combination of algorithmic techniques with human review, not a large language model or AI system. We are working to ensure this type of content isn't posted in future." It wasn't the AI that was the problem, it was the human. There was a "content editor" and they made a mistake. We all make mistakes, right? I might be more persuaded by that stance if that article, however egregious it was, were the only one. In fact, it was not. There were at least a handful of articles that made equally absurd if less offensive travel recommendations.

An anonymous reader shares a column: You can still do a clean install of Windows, and it's arguably easier than ever, with official Microsoft-sanctioned install media easily accessible and Windows Update capable of grabbing most of the drivers that most computers need for basic functionality. The problem is that a "clean install" doesn't feel as clean as it used to, and unfortunately for us, it's an inside job -- it's Microsoft, not third parties, that is primarily responsible for the pile of unwanted software and services you need to decline or clear away every time you do a new Windows install.

The "out-of-box experience" (OOBE, in Microsoft parlance) for Windows 7 walked users through the process of creating a local user account, naming their computer, entering a product key, creating a "Homegroup" (a since-discontinued local file- and media-sharing mechanism), and determining how Windows Update worked. Once Windows booted to the desktop, you'd find apps like Internet Explorer and the typical in-box Windows apps (Notepad, Paint, Calculator, Media Player, Wordpad, and a few other things) installed. Keeping that baseline in mind, here's everything that happens during the OOBE stage in a clean install of Windows 11 22H2 (either Home or Pro) if you don't have active Microsoft 365/OneDrive/Game Pass subscriptions tied to your Microsoft account:

(Mostly) mandatory Microsoft account sign-in.
Setup screen asking you about data collection and telemetry settings.
A (skippable) screen asking you to "customize your experience."
A prompt to pair your phone with your PC.
A Microsoft 365 trial offer.
A 100GB OneDrive offer.
A $1 introductory PC Game Pass offer.

This process is annoying enough the first time, but at some point down the line, you'll also be offered what Microsoft calls the "second chance out-of-box experience," or SCOOBE (not a joke), which will try to get you to do all of this stuff again if you skipped some of it the first time. This also doesn't account for the numerous one-off post-install notification messages you'll see on the desktop for OneDrive and Microsoft 365. (And it's not just new installs; I have seen these notifications appear on systems that have been running for months even if they're not signed in to a Microsoft account, so no one is safe). And the Windows desktop, taskbar, and Start menu are no longer the pristine places they once were. Due to the Microsoft Store, you'll find several third-party apps taking up a ton of space in your Start menu by default, even if they aren't technically downloaded and installed until you run them for the first time. Spotify, Disney+, Prime Video, Netflix, and Facebook Messenger all need to be removed if you don't want them (this list can vary a bit over time).

In 2022, the Financial Times reported: Wildfires have depleted almost all of the carbon credits set aside in reserve by forestry projects in the U.S. to protect against the risk of trees being damaged over 100 years, a new independent study has found.

As a result of fires, six forest projects in California's carbon trading system had released between 5.7mn and 6.8mn tonnes of carbon since 2015, the non-profit research group CarbonPlan estimated. That was at least 95 per cent of the roughly 6mn offsets set aside to insure all forest projects against the risk of fire over a century-long period.
This month Oregon Public Broadcasting remembered what happened in Oregon, where The Green Diamond timber company promised to slow logging on 570,000 acres. "In exchange, the company received millions of dollars in payments from Microsoft and other companies seeking to offset their carbon dioxide pollution from fossil fuels by paying to grow more wood on this land."

Then came 2021's Bootleg Fire: In burning through nearly 20% of the company's Klamath project lands, it also has helped to stoke a broader debate about the ability of the multibillion-dollar forestry offset markets to deliver the carbon savings that are supposed to happen from these deals... During the fire, Green Diamond lost live trees that stored some 3.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. That is equivalent to the greenhouse gases produced through the course of a year by more than 785,000 cars driving 11,500 miles.

A small portion of Green Diamond's lost carbon went directly into the atmosphere through combustion as the fire swept through the forest. The vast majority now resides in dead trees. They will eventually release this carbon as they topple to the ground and begin the decades-long process of decay, or perhaps more quickly should another fire sweep through this land. Fires also have caused big losses in two other Pacific Northwest forest tracts that had been used to offset fossil fuel pollution. In Northeast Washington, wildfires have repeatedly buffeted a large carbon offset project on the lands of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville. In Central Oregon, the Lionshead Fire torched most of the acreage of a carbon offset project developed by the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs. That project — like Green Diamond's — is likely to be terminated.
It's not just happening in the U.S. In June Bloomberg reported that "Canada's explosive wildfire season has already pumped millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Some of that carbon is coming from vegetation burned at a carbon offset project, highlighting the fragility of a tool the world is relying on to fight catastrophic climate change." (Though an executive running one project said "About 100 hectares of our 40,000 hectare project was involved in this fire," or about 0.25 per cent of the project.)

Oregon Public Broadcasting points out that there's currently 149 forest carbon projects on 5.5 million acres in 29 U.S. states...

Friday Microsoft told Bleeping Computer "that they have fixed the issue and Hotmail should no longer fail SPF checks."

But earlier in the day the site reported that "Hotmail users worldwide have problems sending emails, with messages flagged as spam or not delivered after Microsoft misconfigured the domain's DNS SPF record." The email issues began late Thursday night, with users and admins reporting on Reddit, Twitter, and Microsoft forums that their Hotmail emails were failing due to SPF validation errors... The Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email security feature that reduces spam and prevents threat actors from spoofing domains in phishing attacks... When a mail server receives an email, it will verify that the hostname/IP address for the sending email servers is part of a domain's SPF record, and if it is, allows the email to be delivered as usual...

After analyzing what was causing email delivery errors, admins noted that Microsoft removed the 'include:spf.protection.outlook.com' record from hotmail.com's SPF record.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Archangel Michaelfor sharing the news.