Richi Jennings

Windows has an unfixable security flaw. That’s the frightening conclusion of this researcher, who says he can inject code—at will—into browsers and other Windows apps. It affects all versions of Windows released in the past 16 years, he says. And it can’t be patched, without breaking legitimate desktop apps. It could be bad for containerized server workloads, too…

Microsoft launched its Surface Studio all-in-one desktop at the Windows 10 event yesterday. Here’s what people are saying. Just don’t mention the iMac. In today’s IT Newspro, we mention it once, but we think we got away with it…

Microsoft Research says it’s made a major breakthrough in converting human speech to text. Recognising continuous, conversational speech is really hard to do accurately, but Redmond reports it can do it as well as actual people can. The researchers claim their technology makes far fewer mistakes. That’s a bold assertion, given the 40-odd-year history of…

Microsoft’s fight to keep its European customers’ data private is back in the news. The U.S. Justice Department wants a court to revisit a ruling preventing the government from reading email stored in an Irish data center. Not only is the data stored outside the U.S., but the owner of the data isn’t a U.S….

Microsoft HoloLens is now available in six more countries. Redmond wants more businesses and developers to get going with its augmented-reality Windows headset. As well as the U.S. and Canada, it’s now in four European countries and two down under. That’s where Microsoft is targeting developers next. You can get it in November, if you pre-order now…

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is talking up the company’s cloud chops in artificial intelligence. Azure and Office 365 are chock-full of machine-learning facilities, he says. Over the past few days, he’s appeared on stage in Dublin and London, preaching the gospel of AI and FPGAs. And now Microsoft’s donated Azure credits to a UK research consortium that specializes in data science…

Microsoft updates TypeScript language to 2.0. It’s an open-source superset of JavaScript, but said to be easier to use, more productive, create more reliable code, and compile down to standard JavaScript. Version 2.0 adds features such as non-nullable types and expanded control flow analysis. Plus tagged unions, the never type, this types for functions, and of course glob support…

Microsoft’s cloud: ready for Germany. Two new data centers now open for Azure IaaS/PaaS, with Office and Dynamics SaaS coming soon. Germany is well known for its strict data-privacy laws. And it’s one of the largest economies in the European Union. So it was a sensible location choice after the UK DCs opened earlier this month…

Azure recently experienced a nasty outage, lasting several hours. It seems to have been centered around DNS, but had wide side effects. Microsoft’s cloud platform took something of a beating. By the sound of it, a DDoS could have been to blame. Or not. Redmond isn’t saying…

HP buys 26,500 seats of Microsoft Dynamics, displacing Salesforce and Oracle. It’s a huge deal, cementing Microsoft as the SaaS leader, according to analysts. As goes SaaS, so goes IaaS and PaaS? Scott Guthrie certainly thinks so, arguing that only Amazon stands between Microsoft and the cloud top spot. Who’d a thunk it…

Microsoft is said to be launching a new Surface, codenamed Cardinal. The new device will be a one-box desktop PC—i.e., an all-in-one (AiO), as popularlized by Apple’s iMac. The avian-themed rumor seems credible and well-sourced. And an October hardware event would fit with Microsoft’s previous form. But beyond that, everything is mere speculation. None of which stops us from some amusing Friday musing…

Microsoft Azure and Office 365 hosted in the UK for the first time. Redmond just opened up three new data centers in England and Wales, arranged in two Azure regions. This brings the number of Regions to 28 globally. Among the launch customers are Aston Martin, a regional health authority, and the Ministry of Defence [sic]. This should give a boost to Microsoft’s data-sovereignty story…