An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft's adoption of Rust continues apace if a posting on the IT titan's careers website is anything to go by. Although headcount at Microsoft might currently be down -- by two percent compared to the previous year -- recruitment persists at the Windows giant. In this case, the company is forming a team of Rustaceans to tackle a platform move away from C#.

The job, a principal software architect for Microsoft 365, has responsibilities that include "guiding technical direction, design and implementation of Rust component libraries, SDKs, and re-implementation of existing global scale C# based services to Rust." According to the post, the job lurks within the Substrate App Platform group, part of the Microsoft 365 Core Platform organization. The Substrate does the heavy lifting behind the scenes for Microsoft's cloud services, making a rewrite into Rust quite a statement of intent. Microsoft said: "We are forming a new team focused on enabling the adoption of the Rust programming language as the foundation to modernizing global scale platform services, and beyond."

Google has confirmed to Cord Cutters News that you can now customize what games you can watch in your Multiview window. The keyword here is "games" because this feature is still limited to just sporting events at this time. From the report: One of YouTube TV's best features is the ability to offer the option to watch up to four sporting or news events at once on the same screen. The only downside has been the fact that customers have been unable to pick what games are in these windows. Instead, YouTube TV gives you a number of premade multiview options to pick from. Now, though, YouTube TV seems to be testing your ability to pick what games you want on your TV.

Yesterday, YouTube TV started to give some NBA League Pass subscribers the ability to pick which games they want to watch from a handful of games in a list. From there, YouTube TV would create a multiview channel for you to watch the games you pick. Google says this feature is coming to all devices that support multiview and you can only create these channels from preselected NBA games. Sadly, you can't pick any channel you want but only from a list of preselected games to create your own multiview channel.

For the first time, Microsoft's Q2 earnings report includes the impact of the company's $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition. "While Microsoft isn't breaking out specific numbers, it says that its overall gaming revenue increased by 49 percent, 44 points of which came from the 'net impact' of the Activision deal," reports Engadget. From the report: Microsoft's More Personal Computing division, which includes Xbox, Surface and Windows, was up 19 percent ($16.9 billion) since last year. The company says the Activision deal accounted for 15 points of that increase. It's a huge change for a division that's been severely impacted by dwindling PC sales (which affects Windows licenses and Surfaces) and struggling Xbox consoles. PC device revenues were down 9 percent for the quarter, while Xbox hardware sales were up 3 percent. Xbox content and services revenue is also up 61 percent since last year, 55 points of which comes from Activision. Overall, Microsoft reported revenues of $62 billion, up from $52.7 billion a year earlier. Microsoft's cloud division posted revenue growth of 28%, with its intelligent-cloud revenue up 20% to $25.9 billion. Meanwhile, its productivity and business-processes segment generated $19.2 billion.

Tom Warren, writing for The Verge: Last week, I turned on my PC, installed a Windows update, and rebooted to find Microsoft Edge automatically open with the Chrome tabs I was working on before the update. I don't use Microsoft Edge regularly, and I have Google Chrome set as my default browser. Bleary-eyed at 9AM, it took me a moment to realize that Microsoft Edge had simply taken over where I'd left off in Chrome. I never imported my data into Microsoft Edge, nor did I confirm whether I wanted to import my tabs. But here was Edge automatically opening after a Windows update with all the Chrome tabs I'd been working on. I didn't even realize I was using Edge at first, and I was confused why all my tabs were suddenly logged out.

After the shock wore off, I looked to make sure I hadn't accidentally allowed this behavior. I found a setting in Microsoft Edge that imports data from Google Chrome on each launch. "Always have access to your recent browsing data each time you browse on Microsoft Edge," reads Microsoft's description of the feature in Edge. This setting was disabled, and I had never been asked to turn it on. So I went to install the same Windows update on a laptop, which actually resulted in it failing and my having to do a system restore. Once the system restore was complete, the same thing happened. Edge opened automatically with all of my Chrome tabs. I haven't been able to replicate the behavior on other PCs, but a number of X users replied to my post about this saying they have experienced the same thing in the past.

New submitter betso.net shares a report: A German railway firm posted a vacancy for a Windows 3.11 Administrator just before the weekend. In addition to skills in wrangling Windows for Workgroups on the 30-year-old operating system, the recruiter would look upon a candidate more fondly for possessing MS-DOS experience. The admin would purportedly oversee systems with 166MHz processors and a whopping 8MB of RAM. It might seem slightly worrying that modern railways are still running on such ancient systems, but mission-critical systems often adhere to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy.

Benj Edwards reports via Ars Technica: In a move that marks the end of an era, New Mexico State University (NMSU) recently announced the impending closure of its Hobbes OS/2 Archive on April 15, 2024. For over three decades, the archive has been a key resource for users of the IBM OS/2 operating system and its successors, which once competed fiercely with Microsoft Windows. In a statement made to The Register, a representative of NMSU wrote, "We have made the difficult decision to no longer host these files on hobbes.nmsu.edu. Although I am unable to go into specifics, we had to evaluate our priorities and had to make the difficult decision to discontinue the service."

Hobbes is hosted by the Department of Information & Communication Technologies at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. In the official announcement, the site reads, "After many years of service, hobbes.nmsu.edu will be decommissioned and will no longer be available. As of April 15th, 2024, this site will no longer exist." The earliest record we've found of the Hobbes archive online is this 1992 Walnut Creek CD-ROM collection that gathered up the contents of the archive for offline distribution. At around 32 years old, minimum, that makes Hobbes one of the oldest software archives on the Internet, akin to the University of Michigan's archives and ibiblio at UNC.

"As important as its historically underhanded business dealings were for its success, Microsoft didn't have to cheat to win," argues a new article in the Register.

"The Unix companies were doing a great job of killing themselves off." You see, while there were many attempts to create software development standards for Unix, they were too general to do much good — for example Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) — or they became mired in the business consortium fights between the Open Systems Foundation and Unix International, which became known as the Unix wars.

While the Unix companies were busy ripping each other to shreds, Microsoft was smiling all the way to the bank. The core problem was that the Unix companies couldn't settle on software standards. Independent Software Vendors (ISV) had to write applications for each Unix platform. Each of these had only a minute desktop market share. It simply made no business sense for programmers to write one version of an application for SCO OpenDesktop (also known as OpenDeathtrap), another for NeXTStep, and still another one for SunOS. Does that sound familiar? That kind of thing is still a problem for the Linux desktop, and it's why I'm a big fan of Linux containerized desktop applications, such as Red Hat's Flatpak and Canonical's Snap.

By the time the two sides finally made peace by joining forces in The Open Group in 1996, it was too late. Unix was crowded out on the conventional desktop, and the workstation became pretty much a Sun Microsystems-only play.
Linux's GPL license created an "enforced" consortia that allowed it to take over, according to the article — and with Linus Torvalds as Linux's single leader, "it avoided the old Unix trap of in-fighting... I've been to many Linux Plumbers meetings. There, I've seen him and the top Linux kernel developers work with each other without any drama. Today's Linux is a group effort... The Linux distributors and developers have learned their Unix history lessons. They've realized that it takes more than open source; it takes open standards and consensus to make a successful desktop operating system.
And the article also points out that one of those early Unix desktops "is still alive, well, and running in about one in four desktops." That operating system, of course, is macOS X, the direct descendent of NeXT's NeXTSTEP. You could argue that macOS, based on the multi-threaded, multi-processing microkernel operating system Mach, BSD Unix, and the open source Darwin, is the most successful of all Unix operating systems.

Apple's longest-running product is an increasingly small part of the company's business. And yet, it's never been more successful. Jason Snell, writing for The Verge: Twenty years ago, on the Mac's 20th anniversary, I asked Steve Jobs if the Mac would still be relevant to Apple in the age of the iPod. He scoffed at the prospect of the Mac not being important: "of course" it would be. Yet, 10 years later, Apple's revenue was increasingly dominated by the iPhone, and the recent success of the new iPad had provided another banner product for the company. When I interviewed Apple exec Phil Schiller for the Mac's 30th anniversary, I found myself asking him about the Mac's relevance, too. He also scoffed: "Our view is, the Mac keeps going forever," he said.

Today marks 40 years since Jobs unveiled the original Macintosh at an event in Cupertino, and it once again feels right to ask what's next for the Mac. Next week, Apple will release financial results that will reinforce that Mac sales are among the best they've been in the product's history. Then, a day later, Apple will release a new device, the Vision Pro, that will join the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch in an ever-expanding lineup of which the Mac is only one small part. As the Mac turns 40, it's never been more successful -- or more irrelevant to Apple's bottom line. It's undergone massive changes in the past few years that ensure its survival but also lash it to a hardware design process dominated by the iPhone. Being middle-aged can be complicated.

Mac users -- and I've been one of them for 34 of those 40 years -- have been on the defensive for most of the platform's existence. The original Mac cost $2,495 (equivalent to more than $7,300 today), and it had to compete with Apple's own Apple II series, which was more affordable and wildly successful. The Mac was far from a sure thing, even at Apple: in the years after the Mac was first introduced, Apple released multiple new Apple II models. (One even had a mouse and ran a version of the Mac's Finder file manager.) It took a long time for the Mac to emerge from the Apple II's shadow. And as revolutionary as the Mac's interface was -- it was the first popular personal computer to have a mouse-driven, menu-oriented user interface rather than a simple command line -- it also had to overcome an enormous amount of resistance for being such an outlier. Once Microsoft truly embraced the Mac's interface style with Windows, it took over the world, leaving the Mac with measly market share and diminishing prospects. Further reading:
Apple Shares the Secret of Why the 40-Year-Old Mac Still Rules.
Greg Joswiak on the Mac's Enduring Appeal.
Mac at 40: The Eras Tour.
40 Years Later, the Original Mac is More Amazing Than Ever.
The Birth of the Mac: Rolling Stone's 1984 Feature on Steve Jobs and His Whiz Kids (March 1, 1984).

Microsoft is getting ready to place Teams meeting reminders on the Start menu in Windows 11. From a report: The software giant has started testing a new build of Windows 11 with Dev Channel testers that includes a Teams meeting reminder in the recommended section of the Start menu. Microsoft is also testing an improved way to instantly access new photos and screenshots from Android devices. [...] The Teams meeting reminders will be displayed alongside the regular recently used and recommended file list on the Start menu, and they won't be displayed for non-business users of Windows 11.

In a blog post today, Google announced that WebGPU is "now enabled by default in Chrome 121 on devices running Android 12 and greater powered by Qualcomm and ARM GPUs," with support for more Android devices rolling out gradually. Previously, the API was only available on Windows PCs that support Direct3D 12, macOS, and ChromeOS devices that support Vulkan.

Google says WebGPU "offers significant benefits such as greatly reduced JavaScript workload for the same graphics and more than three times improvements in machine learning model inferences." With lower-level access to a device's GPU, developers are able to enable richer and more complex visual content in web applications. This will be especially apparent with games, as you can see in this demo.

Next up: WebGPU for Chrome on Linux.

Microsoft today made Reading Coach, its AI-powered tool that provides learners with personalized reading practice, available at no cost to anyone with a Microsoft account. From a report: As of this morning, Reading Coach is accessible on the web in preview -- a Windows app is forthcoming. And soon (in late spring), Reading Coach will integrate with learning management systems such as Canva, Microsoft says. Reading Coach builds on Reading Progress, a plug-in for the education-focused version of Microsoft Teams, Teams for Education, designed to help teachers foster reading fluency in their students. Inspired by the success of Reading Progress (evidently), Microsoft launched Reading Coach in 2022 as a part of Teams for Education and Immersive Reader, the company's cross-platform assistive service for language and reading comprehension.

Version 9.0 of Wine, the free and open-source compatibility layer that lets you run Windows apps on Unix-like operating systems, has been released. "Highlights of Wine 9.0 include an experimental Wayland graphics driver with features like basic window management, support for multiple monitors, high-DPI scaling, relative motion events, as well as Vulkan support," reports 9to5Linux. From the report: The Vulkan driver has been updated to support Vulkan 1.3.272 and later, the PostScript driver has been reimplemented to work from Windows-format spool files and avoid any direct calls from the Unix side, and there's now a dark theme option on WinRT theming that can be enabled in WineCfg. Wine 9.0 also adds support for many more instructions to Direct3D 10 effects, implements the Windows Media Video (WMV) decoder DirectX Media Object (DMO), implements the DirectShow Audio Capture and DirectShow MPEG-1 Video Decoder filters, and adds support for video and system streams, as well as audio streams to the DirectShow MPEG-1 Stream Splitter filter.

Desktop integration has been improved in this release to allow users to close the desktop window in full-screen desktop mode by using the "Exit desktop" entry in the Start menu, as well as support for export URL/URI protocol associations as URL handlers to the Linux desktop. Audio support has been enhanced in Wine 9.0 with the implementation of several DirectMusic modules, DLS1 and DLS2 sound font loading, support for the SF2 format for compatibility with Linux standard MIDI sound fonts, Doppler shift support in DirectSound, Indeo IV50 Video for Windows decoder, and MIDI playback in dmsynth.

Among other noteworthy changes, Wine 9.0 brings loader support for ARM64X and ARM64EC modules, along with the ability to run existing Windows binaries on ARM64 systems and initial support for building Wine for the ARM64EC architecture. There's also a new 32-bit x86 emulation interface, a new WoW64 mode that supports running of 32-bit apps on recent macOS versions that don't support 32-bit Unix processes, support for DirectInput action maps to improve compatibility with many old video games that map controller inputs to in-game actions, as well as Windows 10 as the default Windows version for new prefixes. Last but not least, the kernel has been updated to support address space layout randomization (ASLR) for modern PE binaries, better memory allocation performance through the Low Fragmentation Heap (LFH) implementation, and support memory placeholders in the virtual memory allocator to allow apps to reserve virtual space. Wine 9.0 also adds support for smart cards, adds support for Diffie-Hellman keys in BCrypt, implements the Negotiate security package, adds support for network interface change notifications, and fixes many bugs. For a full list of changes, check out the release notes. You can download Wine 9.0 from WineHQ.

Microsoft has started testing a change to Windows 11 that will see its AI-powered Copilot feature automatically open when Windows starts on "widescreen devices." From a report: The change is being tested as part of Microsoft's latest Dev Channel preview of Windows 11, allowing Windows testers to provide feedback ahead of a broader rollout. "We are trying out opening Copilot automatically when Windows starts on widescreen devices with some Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel," says Microsoft in a blog post. The company doesn't make it clear what exactly a "widescreen" device is, but the Windows 11 setting itself says Copilot will automatically open "when you're using a wider screen." So I'm assuming this is limited to ultrawide monitors and less traditional desktop resolutions, but I've asked Microsoft to clarify and will update you accordingly.

Karl Bode, reporting for TechDirt: Back in 2019 we noted how the streaming sector risked driving consumers back to piracy if they didn't heed the lessons of the past. We explored how the rush to raise rates, nickel-and-dime users, implement arbitrary restrictions, and force users toward hunting and pecking their way through a confusing platter of exclusives and availability windows risked driving befuddled users back to piracy. And lo and behold, that's exactly what's happening.

After several decades of kicking and screaming, studio and music execs somewhere around 2010 finally realized they needed to offer users affordable access to easy-to-use online content resources. They finally realized they needed to compete with piracy and focus on consumer satisfaction whether they liked the concept or not. And unsurprisingly, once they learned that lesson piracy began to dramatically decrease. That was until 2021, when piracy rates began to climb slowly upward again in the U.S. and EU. As the Daily Beast notes, users have grown increasingly frustrated at having to hunt and peck through a universe of different, often terrible streaming services just to find a single film or television program.

As every last broadcaster, cable company, broadband provider, and tech company got into streaming they began to lock down "must watch" content behind an ever-shifting number of exclusivity silos, across an ocean of sometimes substandard "me too" services. Initially competition worked, but as the market saturated and the most powerful companies started to silo content, those benefits have been muted. Now users have to hunt and peck between Disney+, Netflix, Starz, Max, Apple+, Acorn, Paramount+, Hulu, Peacock, Amazon Prime, and countless other services in the hopes that a service has the rights to a particular film or program. When you already pay for five different services, you're not keen to sign up to fucking Starz just to watch a single 90s film. And availability is constantly shifting, confusing things further.

Dan Goodin reports via Ars Technica: Software maker Ivanti is urging users of its end-point security product to patch a critical vulnerability that makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to execute malicious code inside affected networks. The vulnerability, in a class known as a SQL injection, resides in all supported versions of the Ivanti Endpoint Manager. Also known as the Ivanti EPM, the software runs on a variety of platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux, Chrome OS, and Internet of Things devices such as routers. SQL injection vulnerabilities stem from faulty code that interprets user input as database commands or, in more technical terms, from concatenating data with SQL code without quoting the data in accordance with the SQL syntax. CVE-2023-39336, as the Ivanti vulnerability is tracked, carries a severity rating of 9.6 out of a possible 10.

"If exploited, an attacker with access to the internal network can leverage an unspecified SQL injection to execute arbitrary SQL queries and retrieve output without the need for authentication," Ivanti officials wrote Friday in a post announcing the patch availability. "This can then allow the attacker control over machines running the EPM agent. When the core server is configured to use SQL express, this might lead to RCE on the core server." RCE is short for remote code execution, or the ability for off-premises attackers to run code of their choice. Currently, there's no known evidence the vulnerability is under active exploitation. Ivanti has also published a disclosure that is restricted only to registered users. A copy obtained by Ars said Ivanti learned of the vulnerability in October. [...]

Putting devices running Ivanti EDM behind a firewall is a best practice and will go a long way to mitigating the severity of CVE-2023-39336, but it would likely do nothing to prevent an attacker who has gained limited access to an employee workstation from exploiting the critical vulnerability. It's unclear if the vulnerability will come under active exploitation, but the best course of action is for all Ivanti EDM users to install the patch as soon as possible.

Microsoft has begun ditching WordPad from Windows and removed the editor from the first Canary Channel build of 2024. From a report: We knew it was coming, but the reality has arrived in the Canary Channel. A clean install will omit WordPad as of build 26020 of Windows 11. At an undisclosed point, the application will be removed on upgrade.

The People app is also being axed, as expected, and the Steps Recorder won't be getting any more updates and will instead show a banner encouraging users to try something else. Perhaps ClipChamp? WordPad was always an odd tool. Certainly not something one would want to edit text with, but not much of a word processor either. It feels like a throwback to a previous era. However, it was also free, came with Windows, and didn't insist on having a connection to the internet for it to work.

Little noticed, days before the holiday break, Boeing petitioned the Federal Aviation Administration for an exemption from key safety standards for the 737 MAX 7 -- the still-uncertified smallest member of its newest jet family. Seattle Times: Since August, earlier models of the MAX currently flying passengers in the U.S. have had to limit use of the jet's engine anti-ice system after Boeing discovered a defect in the system with potentially catastrophic consequences. The flaw could cause the inlet at the front end of the pod surrounding the engine -- known as a nacelle -- to break and fall off.

In an August Airworthiness Directive, the FAA stated that debris from such a breakup could penetrate the fuselage, putting passengers seated at windows behind the wings in danger, and could damage the wing or tail of the plane, "which could result in loss of control of the airplane." Dennis Tajer, a spokesperson for the Allied Pilots Association, the union representing 15,000 American Airlines pilots, said the flaw in the engine anti-ice system has "given us great concern." He said the pilot procedure the FAA approved as an interim solution -- urging pilots to make sure to turn off the system when icing conditions dissipate to avoid overheating that within five minutes could seriously damage the structure of the nacelle -- is inadequate given the serious potential danger.

"You get our attention when you say people might get killed," Tajer said. "We're not interested in seeing exemptions and accommodations that depend on human memory. ... There's just got to be a better way." In its petition to the FAA, Boeing argues the breakup of the engine nacelle is "extremely improbable" and that an exemption will not reduce safety. "The 737 MAX has been in service since 2017 and has accumulated over 6.5 million flight hours. In that time, there have been no reported cases of parts departing aircraft due to overheating of the engine nacelle inlet structure," the filing states.

From a report: According to Statcounter, which should be taken with a pinch of salt of course like any sampling, the Linux share on the desktop hit nearly 4% in December 2023. Last month was a record too and a clear trend over time, as going back a couple of years, it was rarely coming close to 2% but now it's repeatedly nearing 4% so it's quite a good sign overall.

The latest from Statcounter shows for all of 2023 below:

January - 2.91%
February - 2.94%
March - 2.85%
April - 2.83%
May - 2.7%
June - 3.07%
July - 3.12%
August - 3.18%
September - 3.02%
October - 2.92%
November - 3.22%
December - 3.82%

Looking at December it shows Windows rising too, with macOS dropping down. If we actually take ChromeOS directly into the Linux numbers for December 2023 the overall number would actually be 6.24% (ChromeOS is Linux after all).

Microsoft is adding a dedicated "Copilot" key to PC keyboards, adjusting the standard Windows layout for the first time since 1994. The key will open its AI assistant Copilot on Windows 10 and 11. On Copilot-enabled PCs, users can already invoke Copilot by pressing Windows+C. On other PCs, the key will open Search instead. ArsTechnica adds: A quick Microsoft demo video shows the Copilot key in between the cluster of arrow keys and the right Alt button, a place where many keyboards usually put a menu button, a right Ctrl key, another Windows key, or something similar. The exact positioning, and the key being replaced, may vary depending on the size and layout of the keyboard.

We asked Microsoft if a Copilot key would be required on OEM PCs going forward; the company told us that the key isn't mandatory now, but that it expects Copilot keys to be required on Windows 11 keyboards "over time." Microsoft often imposes some additional hardware requirements on major PC makers that sell Windows on their devices, beyond what is strictly necessary to run Windows itself.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Microsoft's MS-DOS (and its IBM-branded counterpart, PC DOS) eventually became software juggernauts, powering the vast majority of PCs throughout the '80s and serving as the underpinnings of Windows throughout the '90s. But the software had humble beginnings, as we've detailed in our history of the IBM PC and elsewhere. It began in mid-1980 as QDOS, or "Quick and Dirty Operating System," the work of developer Tim Paterson at a company called Seattle Computer Products (SCP). It was later renamed 86-DOS, after the Intel 8086 processor, and this was the version that Microsoft licensed and eventually purchased.

Last week, Internet Archive user f15sim discovered and uploaded a new-old version of 86-DOS to the Internet Archive. Version 0.1-C of 86-DOS is available for download here and can be run using the SIMH emulator; before this, the earliest extant version of 86-DOS was version 0.34, also uploaded by f15sim. This version of 86-DOS is rudimentary even by the standards of early-'80s-era DOS builds and includes just a handful of utilities, a text-based chess game, and documentation for said chess game. But as early as it is, it remains essentially recognizable as the DOS that would go on to take over the entire PC business. If you're just interested in screenshots, some have been posted by user NTDEV on the site that used to be Twitter.

According to the version history available on Wikipedia, this build of 86-DOS would date back to roughly August of 1980, shortly after it lost the "QDOS" moniker. By late 1980, SCP was sharing version 0.3x of the software with Microsoft, and by early 1981, it was being developed as the primary operating system of the then-secret IBM Personal Computer. By the middle of 1981, roughly a year after 86-DOS began life as QDOS, Microsoft had purchased the software outright and renamed it MS-DOS. Microsoft and IBM continued to co-develop MS-DOS for many years; the version IBM licensed and sold on its PCs was called PC DOS, though for most of their history the two products were identical. Microsoft also retained the ability to license the software to other computer manufacturers as MS-DOS, which contributed to the rise of a market of mostly interoperable PC clones. The PC market as we know it today still more or less resembles the PC-compatible market of the mid-to-late 1980s, albeit with dramatically faster and more capable components.