windows – Page 216 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Windows 10 fall update will restore (and improve) OneDrive’s best feature

Microsoft Windows 10 was a big improvement over Windows 8.1 in most important ways, but it made a big change to the way OneDrive syncing worked. In Windows 8.1, you could see all the files you had stored in OneDrive, but the operating system would only actually download and open the file when you needed to open it. At least for PCs that usually have Internet connections, this was a neat way to offer cloud file syncing without consuming gigabytes of space for infrequently used files on every computer you were signed into. But the behavior could be error-prone—apps could attempt to open the placeholder files created by OneDrive rather than the files themselves—and it could create confusion about which files were actually available offline. So in the initial releases of Windows 10, Microsoft changed the behavior to be more Dropbox-esque . All OneDrive files are now downloaded to your PC when you sign in, though as with Dropbox you can choose to only sync selected folders based on what you need to have available at all times. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Windows 10 fall update will restore (and improve) OneDrive’s best feature

Windows 10 hits 500 million devices, growing by two-thirds in a year

SEATTLE—At its Build developer conference, Microsoft has announced that Windows 10 has now passed 500 million monthly active devices. Little over a year ago, the company said that the operating system had reached 300 million systems . As the operating system nears the end of its second full year on the market, it’s clear that it’s going to fall a long way short of the company’s original estimates. At launch, the ambition was to reach 1 billion devices over the first two to three years of availability, but this estimate assumed that Windows 10 Mobile would be a going concern, selling something of the order of 50 million or more devices a year. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Windows 10 hits 500 million devices, growing by two-thirds in a year

Ubuntu Arrives in the Windows Store, Suse and Fedora Are Coming To the Windows Subsystem For Linux

At its Build developer conference today, Microsoft announced that Ubuntu has arrived in the Windows Store. From a report: The company also revealed that it is working with Fedora and Suse to bring their distributions to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) in Windows 10. At the conference last year, Microsoft announced plans to bring the Bash shell to Windows. The fruits of that labor was WSL, a compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables (in ELF format) natively on Windows, which arrived with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update released in August 2016. Microsoft also partnered with Canonical to allow Ubuntu tools and utilities to run natively on top of the WSL. By bringing Ubuntu to the Windows Store, the company is now making it even easier for developers to install the tools and run Windows and Linux apps side by side. Working with other Linux firms shows that Microsoft’s deal with Canonical was not a one-time affair, but rather part of a long-term investment in the Linux world. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New Windows look and feel, Neon, is officially the “Microsoft Fluent Design System”

Enlarge / Project Neon in the Groove Music app. (credit: Tom Hounsell ) SEATTLE—Earlier this year, pictures of a new Windows look and feel leaked . Codenamed Project Neon , the new look builds on Microsoft Design Language 2 (MDL2), the styling currently used in Windows 10, to add elements of translucency and animation. Neon has now been officially announced, and it has an official new name: the Microsoft Fluent Design System. The awkward MDL2 name exists because the original codename for the geometric, text-centric style introduced with Windows Phone 7 and incrementally iterated ever since was subject of a trademark dispute. That look and feel was internally named Metro, but Microsoft had to stop using the Metro name after pushback from a German supermarket chain . The company didn’t initially have any particularly good name to refer to the styling formerly known as Metro, so many people continued to use that term for lack of anything better. It wasn’t until a couple of months after dropping “Metro” that a new name, “Microsoft Design Language,” was settled on. Our understanding is that Neon befell a similar fate; someone out there is using the Neon name, forcing Microsoft to pick a different appellation. This time around, however, the company has recognized that it’s important to have an official name for the style that it can talk about and describe, giving us “Microsoft Fluent Design System.” Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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New Windows look and feel, Neon, is officially the “Microsoft Fluent Design System”

Windows 10 fall update will restore (and improve) OneDrive’s best feature

Microsoft Windows 10 was a big improvement over Windows 8.1 in most important ways, but it made a big change to the way OneDrive syncing worked. In Windows 8.1, you could see all the files you had stored in OneDrive, but the operating system would only actually download and open the file when you needed to open it. At least for PCs that usually have Internet connections, this was a neat way to offer cloud file syncing without consuming gigabytes of space for infrequently used files on every computer you were signed into. But the behavior could be error-prone—apps could attempt to open the placeholder files created by OneDrive rather than the files themselves—and it could create confusion about which files were actually available offline. So in the initial releases of Windows 10, Microsoft changed the behavior to be more Dropbox-esque . All OneDrive files are now downloaded to your PC when you sign in, though as with Dropbox you can choose to only sync selected folders based on what you need to have available at all times. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Windows 10 fall update will restore (and improve) OneDrive’s best feature

Windows 10 hits 500 million devices, growing by two-thirds in a year

SEATTLE—At its Build developer conference, Microsoft has announced that Windows 10 has now passed 500 million monthly active devices. Little over a year ago, the company said that the operating system had reached 300 million systems . As the operating system nears the end of its second full year on the market, it’s clear that it’s going to fall a long way short of the company’s original estimates. At launch, the ambition was to reach 1 billion devices over the first two to three years of availability, but this estimate assumed that Windows 10 Mobile would be a going concern, selling something of the order of 50 million or more devices a year. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Windows 10 hits 500 million devices, growing by two-thirds in a year

Keylogger Found in Audio Driver of HP Laptops, Says Report

An anonymous reader writes: The audio driver installed on some HP laptops includes a feature that could best be described as a keylogger, which records all the user’s keystrokes and saves the information to a local file, accessible to anyone or any third-party software or malware that knows where to look. Swiss cyber-security firm modzero discovered the keylogger on April 28 and made its findings public today. According to researchers, the keylogger feature was discovered in the Conexant HD Audio Driver Package version 1.0.0.46 and earlier. This is an audio driver that is preinstalled on HP laptops. One of the files of this audio driver is MicTray64.exe (C:windowssystem32mictray64.exe). This file is registered to start via a Scheduled Task every time the user logs into his computer. According to modzero researchers, the file “monitors all keystrokes made by the user to capture and react to functions such as microphone mute/unmute keys/hotkeys.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Keylogger Found in Audio Driver of HP Laptops, Says Report

Ubuntu Arrives in the Windows Store, Suse and Fedora Are Coming To the Windows Subsystem For Linux

At its Build developer conference today, Microsoft announced that Ubuntu has arrived in the Windows Store. From a report: The company also revealed that it is working with Fedora and Suse to bring their distributions to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) in Windows 10. At the conference last year, Microsoft announced plans to bring the Bash shell to Windows. The fruits of that labor was WSL, a compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables (in ELF format) natively on Windows, which arrived with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update released in August 2016. Microsoft also partnered with Canonical to allow Ubuntu tools and utilities to run natively on top of the WSL. By bringing Ubuntu to the Windows Store, the company is now making it even easier for developers to install the tools and run Windows and Linux apps side by side. Working with other Linux firms shows that Microsoft’s deal with Canonical was not a one-time affair, but rather part of a long-term investment in the Linux world. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Ubuntu Arrives in the Windows Store, Suse and Fedora Are Coming To the Windows Subsystem For Linux

Windows 10 fall update will restore (and improve) OneDrive’s best feature

Microsoft Windows 10 was a big improvement over Windows 8.1 in most important ways, but it made a big change to the way OneDrive syncing worked. In Windows 8.1, you could see all the files you had stored in OneDrive, but the operating system would only actually download and open the file when you needed to open it. At least for PCs that usually have Internet connections, this was a neat way to offer cloud file syncing without consuming gigabytes of space for infrequently used files on every computer you were signed into. But the behavior could be error-prone—apps could attempt to open the placeholder files created by OneDrive rather than the files themselves—and it could create confusion about which files were actually available offline. So in the initial releases of Windows 10, Microsoft changed the behavior to be more Dropbox-esque . All OneDrive files are now downloaded to your PC when you sign in, though as with Dropbox you can choose to only sync selected folders based on what you need to have available at all times. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Windows 10 fall update will restore (and improve) OneDrive’s best feature

NIST’s Draft To Remove Periodic Password Change Requirements Gets Vendors’ Approval

An anonymous reader writes: A recently released draft of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s digital identity guidelines has met with approval by vendors. The draft guidelines revise password security recommendations and altering many of the standards and best practices security professionals use when forming policies for their companies. The new framework recommends, among other things: “Remove periodic password change requirements.” There have been multiple studies that have shown requiring frequent password changes to actually be counterproductive to good password security, said Mike Wilson, founder of PasswordPing. NIST said this guideline was suggested because passwords should be changed when a user wants to change it or if there is indication of breach. Read more of this story at Slashdot.