The Google Pixel fell to a team of Chinese hackers alongside Apple Safari and Adobe Flash at the PwnFest hacking competition in Seoul on Friday. Mountain View’s latest offering was smashed by white-hat friendlies from Qihoo 360, who used an undisclosed vulnerability to gain remote code execution for $120,000 cash prize. The exploit launched the Google Play store before opening Chrome and displaying a...
As promised, Microsoft has issued a fix for the Windows security flaw that Google disclosed before a patch was ready. The update tackles vulnerabilities in numerous versions of Windows (from Vista through Windows 10) that would let an attacker get control of your system through a malicious app. You’re already safe if you use Windows 10 Anniversary Update and an up-to-date browser, we’d add...
Microsoft is holding an event in New York City on November 2 next week. It’s an Office event, but beyond that, the company hasn’t officially said what it’s about. Microsoft is also building a competitor to Slack, the Web-based IRC-like messaging app that has become the darling of millennial-infested newsrooms and software startups around the globe. It looked like it was originally to be...
Last week, Microsoft announced a speech recognition breakthrough: a transcription system that can match humans, with a word error rate of 5.9 percent for conversational speech. This new system is built on an open source toolkit that Microsoft already developed. A major new update to the toolkit, now called the Cognitive Toolkit, was released today in beta. Formerly called the Computational Network Toolkit (CNTK),...
Microsoft has elaborated on the new patching policy for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 that takes effect Tuesday. In a post to a company blog accompanied by graphics that resembled a periodic table, Michael Niehaus, a product marketing director for Windows 10, fleshed out the massive change in how Windows 7, the standard in business and the most popular OS on the planet, will...
Shares in Twitter fell more than 14% on Monday following reports that all of its rumored potential bidders have lost interest in buying the struggling social media company. The shares, which spiked last month following speculation of a takeover by companies including Google, fell $2.82, or 14%, to $17.03 in early trading after Bloomberg reported that Twitter was unlikely to receive any takeover bids....
It originally started in 2012, known as DVLUP by Nokia. The purpose was a little extra something to reward developers. When Microsoft acquired Nokia the program name changed to TechRewards. Recently Microsoft sent emails out informing developers that the TechRewards program will close on January 6, 2017. With Microsoft TechRewards closing on January 6, there are alternatives that Microsoft offers to developers to further...
Microsoft is building a Windows 10 version of its famous Paint tool. While the software maker has barely updated Paint in recent releases of Windows, the new Paint app will be completely overhauled. Twitter user WalkingCat has discovered video demonstrations of the new app, and it’s clearly designed with Windows 10 in mind. A launch video notes that the new “Paint Preview” app includes all...
For well over a year, Microsoft has tried to position Windows 10 as a new type of operating system — one that’s continually updated without allowing for meaningful customer intervention, with security, driver, and software updates combined together by default and updated on Microsoft’s timeline. Pro customers can delay updates for a period of time, but non-enterprise users aren’t allowed to push them off...
This week, Microsoft pushed out another cumulative update and reports of installation problems are widespread. While I don’t know how many users are impacted, based on comments sent to me, it’s certainly widespread enough that this is well beyond an isolated issue. The update that is causing the problem, KB3194496, is not installing correctly for users. The update, when it does fail, is causing...
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