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Microsoft News
Arstechnica
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Microsoft surprises MS-DOS fans with remake of ancient text editor that works on Linux
- Microsoft released a modern remake of its classic MS-DOS Editor, called 'Edit,' built with Rust and compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux.
- Users are delighted to run Microsoft's text editor on Linux after 30 years, offering a nostalgic experience.
- The original MS-DOS Editor introduced full-screen interface, mouse support, and navigable pull-down menus, setting a new standard in text editing.
- Microsoft addresses the need for a default CLI text editor in 64-bit Windows by creating 'Edit,' a lightweight tool with modern features.
- Developers have shown mixed-to-positive reception towards Microsoft's new open source 'Edit' tool, praising its cross-platform usability.
- The new 'Edit' editor offers Unicode support, regular expressions, and can handle gigabyte-sized files, a significant upgrade from the original MS-DOS Editor.
- Users can download 'Edit' on GitHub or through an unofficial snap package for Linux, emphasizing its broad accessibility.
- The lightweight and efficient nature of 'Edit' highlights a newfound appreciation for fast and simple tools in software development.
- Despite 34 years of tech evolution, Microsoft's 1991 design philosophy with MS-DOS Editor still resonates in 2025, signifying the enduring principles of text editing.
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The Verge
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Microsoft’s Xbox UI update lets you pin games and customize your homescreen
- Microsoft is introducing a new Xbox Home UI update allowing users to pin apps and games on the homescreen.
- Users can pin up to three recently launched games or apps to the homescreen, maintaining them at the front of the recently used section.
- The update includes customization options such as hiding system apps and adjusting the number of apps and games displayed in the most recently used section.
- Users can now turn off system apps like Settings and the Store from appearing on the Xbox Home UI.
- Additionally, users can choose to display between four and up to the default nine recently used tiles.
- These customizations are part of the June Xbox dashboard update accessible through Settings > General > Personalization > Games & apps.
- Microsoft initiated testing of these customizations last month, and the rollout to all Xbox users is swift this week.
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Medium
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The Game Is Rigged: Microsoft Isn’t a Gaming Company Anymore — It’s a Data Empire with a Controller…
- Microsoft's gaming division, particularly Xbox Game Pass, is designed to harvest data and control user behavior under the guise of providing affordable gaming access.
- The shift towards a subscription model focuses on perpetual engagement and data collection rather than quality game production.
- Game Pass uses psychological triggers like dopamine anticipation, variable rewards, price anchoring, and loss aversion to keep users engaged.
- It serves as a behavioral surveillance tool tracking every aspect of user interaction within its ecosystem to inform advertising and product development.
- Microsoft's acquisitions and Game Pass environment aim to retain users by offering a frictionless, controlling system rather than focusing on creating great content.
- The subscription model of Game Pass reflects a broader trend of eroding ownership in favor of temporary access, shaping user identity and behavior in the process.
- Game Pass, marketed as empowerment and choice, actually embodies a form of behavioral engineering, directing user decisions subtly yet significantly.
- The platform symbolizes a larger shift towards designed dependence where platforms are crafted to shape and extract value from users rather than serve them.
- Microsoft's Game Pass is strategically engineered to capture user behavior, manipulate decisions, and influence psychology, ultimately prioritizing control over entertainment.
- The focus has shifted from gaming to engagement, containment, and surveillance, with Game Pass acting as a tool for mapping and conditioning user behavior.
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Windows
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Introducing Mu language model and how it enabled the agent in Windows Settings
- The Mu language model has been introduced to power the agent in Windows Settings, providing high-performance natural language input processing efficiently on NPUs.
- Mu, a 330M encoder-decoder language model, offers efficiency benefits by reusing latent representations, resulting in lower latency and higher throughput on specialized hardware.
- Mu's design optimization for NPUs includes weight sharing, hardware-aware operations, and efficient transformer upgrades, enhancing performance on edge devices.
- The Mu model underwent training using advanced techniques like warmup-stable-decay schedules and Muon optimizer, achieving strong accuracy and faster inference within edge-device constraints.
- Mu showed remarkable performance on tasks like SQUAD, CodeXGlue, and Windows Settings agent, demonstrating efficiency despite its micro-size compared to Phi models.
- Model quantization techniques, such as Post-Training Quantization, enabled Mu to run efficiently on Copilot+ PCs' NPUs while maintaining accuracy and reducing memory footprint.
- Mu was finely tuned for the Windows Settings agent, meeting quality objectives with response times under 500 milliseconds and integrating seamlessly into the user interface for system setting changes.
- The agent in Settings leverages Mu's capabilities to handle a wide range of user queries effectively, focusing on multi-word inputs to provide high precision actionable responses.
- The challenge of managing extensive Windows settings was addressed by refining training data to prioritize common settings and handling ambiguous user queries effectively.
- The model's performance in the Windows Settings agent scenario was optimized through fine-tuning with synthetic approaches, metadata tuning, noise injection, and smart sampling.
- The Windows Insiders program welcomes feedback on the agent in Settings as refinements and enhancements continue to improve user experience.
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The Robot Report
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Hexagon launches AEON humanoid robot for industrial applications
- Hexagon AB has launched its first humanoid robot, AEON, designed for industrial applications to address labor shortages and meet customer needs.
- AEON combines Hexagon's sensor suite with advanced locomotion, AI-driven mission control, and spatial intelligence, making it agile, versatile, and aware.
- The humanoid robot is aimed at improving safety and driving autonomy in sectors like automotive, aerospace, manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics.
- More robotics companies are developing humanoids, with commercial deployments slowly increasing.
- AEON's capabilities include agility, awareness, versatility, and power autonomy through a battery-swapping mechanism.
- Hexagon is partnering with Schaeffler and Pilatus to pilot AEON for manipulation, machine tending, part inspection, and reality-capture use cases.
- The robotics division of Hexagon has partnerships with NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Maxon to bring AEON to the market, with AEON powered by NVIDIA accelerated computing and Microsoft Azure platform.
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The Verge
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Microsoft adds Steam games to its Xbox PC app on Windows
- Microsoft is testing a new aggregated gaming library feature in its Xbox PC app on Windows.
- Xbox Insiders will be able to access their Steam and Battle.net games within the Xbox app.
- The aim is to consolidate PC games into a single launcher through the Xbox app.
- This consolidated library will be available later this year and on new devices like ROG Xbox Ally handhelds.
- Microsoft is aiming to compete with platforms like Steam and SteamOS by merging Windows and Xbox gaming experiences.
- Games installed from supported PC storefronts will automatically show up in 'My library' in the Xbox PC app.
- Support for additional PC storefronts will be added gradually.
- To experience the new feature, users can download the Xbox Insider Hub on PC and join the PC gaming preview.
- Users can manage game visibility by customizing settings in the Xbox app.
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Dbi-Services
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Image Credit: Dbi-Services
SQL Server: New connectivity and Drivers landing page
- Microsoft has launched a new connectivity and drivers landing page for SQL Server supporting .Net, Java, Python, C++, Go, and PHP languages.
- The page provides the ability to download drivers, access quick start guides, and offers code samples for different programming languages such as Python.
- Upon clicking on 'Download' for Python, users are directed to the 'Python SQL Driver' page.
- Further clicks on 'Get Started' and 'Code Sample' provide guidance on connecting with the mssql-python driver and deploying a Python web app to Azure App Service.
- The process is described as straightforward, making it easy to establish a connection to SQL Server from various development tools.
- The author expresses hope for the addition of support for languages like Ruby and Spark in the future.
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Dbi-Services
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SQL Server 2025: Local SQL Server Container without Docker Command
- The latest version of the MSSQL extension for Visual Studio Code offers a Preview feature called 'Local SQL Server Containers' based on SQL Server 2025.
- Users can now create and manage SQL Server containers locally without using Docker commands.
- The extension allows for the default use of SQL Server 2025 with vector and AI-ready features.
- Users can auto-connect with a ready-to-use connection profile and manage containers from the connection panel.
- There is automatic port conflict detection and resolution, along with options to customize container details like name, hostname, port, and version.
- The process involves downloading and installing Visual Studio Code and the MSSQL extension, followed by creating the local SQL Server container.
- If Docker is not installed, users will need to install it to proceed.
- After installation, users can choose the SQL Server image up to version 2017 or select the SQL Server 2025 version.
- A password and profile name need to be set, followed by accepting terms and conditions before creating the container.
- The creation process involves three steps: Creating Container, Setting up container, and Connecting to Container.
- Once online, users can test the connection by executing queries like SELECT @@Version and SELECT @@Servername.
- This new feature simplifies the process for developers, allowing them to use SQL Server 2025 on Linux Ubuntu without needing Docker commands.
- Overall, the installation and initial steps are deemed straightforward and favorable among developers without Docker expertise.
- The feature is expected to be popular among developers wanting to adopt it quickly.
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Dev
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History of Java: evolution, legal battles with Microsoft, Mars exploration, Spring, Gradle and Maven, IDEA and Eclipse
- Java was launched in 1990 by Sun Microsystems with the mission of creating a universal programming language for diverse devices.
- Initially named Oak, the language was later rebranded as Java, inspired by Indonesian coffee.
- Legal battles with Microsoft arose over Microsoft's deviations from Java specifications in their MSJVM.
- Java 1.0 debuted in 1996, marking its emergence as a platform-independent, versatile tool.
- J2SE 1.2 introduced innovations like strictfp, Swing, Collections Framework, and JIT compilation.
- IntelliJ IDEA revolutionized Java IDEs with advanced features and went open-source in 2009.
- Eclipse emerged in 2001 as a modular and extensible IDE for Java, becoming popular in the Java community.
- Spring was introduced in 2004 as a lightweight alternative to Java EE, gaining popularity for its simplicity and flexibility.
- Apache Maven, released in 2008, revolutionized project builds with declarative POM files.
- Gradle, also in 2008, offered a modern build automation tool with flexibility and script readability.
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TechCrunch
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LinkedIn CEO says AI writing assistant is not as popular as expected
- LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky says AI-generated suggestions for LinkedIn posts are not as popular as expected.
- Roslansky mentioned the higher barrier to posting on LinkedIn due to it being an online resume.
- Users may face backlash if their posts appear too obviously generated by AI.
- Receiving criticism on LinkedIn can impact one's economic opportunities.
- LinkedIn has seen a significant increase in job postings requiring AI skills and users adding AI skills to their profiles.
- Roslansky reveals his personal use of AI to sound 'Satya-smart' when communicating with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
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Guardian
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Trump’s plan to ban US states from AI regulation will ‘hold us back’, says Microsoft science chief
- Microsoft's chief scientist, Dr. Eric Horvitz, warns that a proposed ban by Donald Trump on state-level regulations of artificial intelligence could hinder progress rather than accelerate it.
- The Trump administration aims to implement a 10-year ban on US states from creating laws restricting or regulating AI models, systems, or decision-making systems.
- Concerns are raised over China potentially leading the race to human-level AI, prompting the proposed ban.
- Horvitz emphasizes the importance of regulation to address issues like misinformation, inappropriate persuasion, and malevolent activities leveraging AI technology.
- Microsoft is part of a lobbying effort supported by other tech giants to enact a decade-long moratorium on state-level AI regulation.
- Horvitz stresses that guidance, regulation, and reliability controls are essential for advancing AI and ensuring faster progress in the field.
- There is debate surrounding the risks of unregulated AI development, with concerns about catastrophic outcomes due to prioritizing short-term profit over safety.
- Microsoft has a significant investment in OpenAI and is working towards achieving human-level artificial general intelligence (AGI).
- Predictions vary on when AGI will be achieved, with estimates ranging from a few years to decades.
- The Meta chief scientist believes AGI could be decades away, while Mark Zuckerberg announced a $15bn investment to strive for 'superintelligence'.
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Insider
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I was laid off from Microsoft after 23 years, and I'm still going into the office. I feel responsible for my team and customers.
- Freddy Kristiansen, 59, was laid off from Microsoft after 23 years at the Denmark office but still visits to support his team and clients.
- Despite the layoff, Kristiansen feels committed to the products, users, and colleagues at Microsoft.
- He joined Navision in 2002, which was later acquired by Microsoft, leading to his long-term employment with the company.
- Kristiansen worked on various roles within Microsoft, including developing products such as AL-Go for GitHub.
- The layoff came as a relief as Kristiansen had contemplated starting his own business and desired more freedom in work.
- Now focusing on his business plan, Kristiansen plans to offer services like CTO services, project management, and motivational speaking.
- He views the layoff as an opportunity to pursue his dreams and reduce work-related stress by setting his own schedule.
- Despite being laid off, Kristiansen continues to visit the office for discussions, maintaining his commitment to his former team and product users.
- He still assists his former team and plans to host motivational talks for current staff, reflecting on his career at Microsoft.
- Kristiansen acknowledges the silver lining of the severance package and sees it as a foundation to build towards his future plans.
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TechCrunch
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European leaders worry they’re too reliant on U.S. tech
- European governments are reevaluating their reliance on American technology and services due to recent events, such as Microsoft's actions following President Trump's sanctions on an ICC prosecutor.
- President Trump's sanctions on the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court led Microsoft to turn off his email address, prompting concerns about U.S. tech companies' compliance with U.S. government actions.
- This incident has prompted European leaders to consider alternative options to decrease their dependence on U.S. technology.
- Microsoft's actions have raised concerns in Europe, with some ICC workers reportedly switching to Swiss email service Proton.
- Former diplomat Casper Klynge highlighted Microsoft's actions as a wake-up call for many Europeans.
- Microsoft has since made policy changes to safeguard customers in similar situations and introduced 'sovereign solutions' to protect European institutions.
- The fear is that American companies may be compelled to comply with U.S. administration's actions against specific organizations, countries, or individuals.
- The case involving the ICC prosecutor has triggered a reevaluation of European reliance on U.S. tech services.
- Microsoft clarified that it did not shut down the email accounts of four ICC judges sanctioned by Trump earlier.
- European concerns stem from the perceived vulnerabilities of relying heavily on U.S. technology and services.
- The incident has sparked discussions on the need for diversifying digital infrastructure to mitigate risks.
- European leaders have expressed worries about being too dependent on American tech companies.
- Microsoft has taken steps to address concerns and emphasize its commitment to protecting European institutions.
- The situation highlights the potential implications of political decisions on the tech industry and international relations.
- The issue signifies a broader debate on ensuring digital sovereignty and reducing reliance on specific tech providers.
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Dev
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Azure Fundamentals: Microsoft.RecoveryServices
- Disaster recovery and business continuity are crucial in today's data-driven world, making services like Microsoft.RecoveryServices essential.
- Microsoft.RecoveryServices offers a suite of data protection solutions including backup, disaster recovery, and archive capabilities.
- Key components of Microsoft.RecoveryServices include Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery, Recovery Services Vault, and Azure Data Box.
- Businesses like Siemens and Unilever utilize Azure Recovery Services for critical workload protection.
- Recovery Services addresses challenges of high costs, complexity, scalability issues, and limited testing associated with traditional backup solutions.
- Features like centralized management, long-term retention, instant restore, ransomware protection, and granular restore enhance data resilience.
- Practical use cases range from compliance and business continuity to rapid recovery and long-term archival needs.
- Microsoft.RecoveryServices integrates seamlessly with Azure services like Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery, Azure Monitor, and Azure Key Vault.
- The pricing model for Microsoft.RecoveryServices is based on factors like data storage, backup storage, replication, and transactions.
- Security, compliance, and governance features include encryption, RBAC, MFA, compliance certifications, and Azure Policy.
- Best practices for production use involve implementing RBAC, enabling MFA, monitoring backup jobs, automating tasks, testing DR plans, and ensuring immutable storage.
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Dev
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Azure Fundamentals: Microsoft.Microservices4Spring
- Microsoft.Microservices4Spring simplifies building, deploying, and managing Spring Boot microservices on Azure for organizations aiming for faster development cycles and improved resilience.
- It integrates with Spring Cloud projects, Azure Managed Services, provides developer tools, and automated CI/CD pipelines.
- Companies like Contoso Pharmaceuticals and Fabrikam Clothing are utilizing Microsoft.Microservices4Spring to modernize legacy systems and scale e-commerce platforms.
- The service addresses challenges like infrastructure management, configuration drift, observability, and security concerns.
- Key features include Spring Cloud Config Server Integration, Azure Container Apps Support, Azure Cosmos DB Integration, Azure Monitor and Azure Key Vault Integration.
- Detailed practical use cases range from e-commerce product catalog management to automotive predictive maintenance.
- Microsoft.Microservices4Spring seamlessly integrates with Azure services facilitating loose coupling, independent scalability, and improved resilience.
- It provides a step-by-step tutorial for deploying a Spring Boot microservice using the Azure CLI and insights into pricing and security considerations.
- The service's key benefits include simplified development, integration with Azure ecosystem, enhanced security, compliance, and governance, yet may involve potential cost complexities and Azure vendor lock-in.
- Best practices for production use encompass security, monitoring, automation, scaling, and policy enforcement, with recommendations for implementing observability and avoiding common mistakes.
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