Microsoft at its Build conference today announced one of the better use cases for AI yet: to empower those with disabilities. Dubbed the AI for Accessibility Initiative, this Microsoft program will see $25 million dollars being deployed across five years to further research and development to specifically target challenges faced by people with disabilities in three key areas: human connection, employment and modern life. The $25 million budget will be used by Microsoft as seed grants for developers, universities, institutions and other Microsoft partners, with the Redmond-based Microsoft pledging to also further invest - and scale up - development for key promising ideas that are birthed from this project. The AI bit comes from its implementation in inclusive design scenarios, scaling it up through platforms, services, and different solutions.

Further, Microsoft will help partners include accessibility solutions on their products, which could allow for a base model for accessibility technologies on families of products. Microsoft President Brad Smith said there are about a billion people around the world with some kind of disability, either temporary or permanent, and it's for these people, and those that will come after, that Microsoft is committing to this investment.

Remember that time where the FTC announced they were cracking down on illegal, predatory warranty conditions? You know, such as those "warranty void if removed" stickers that don't really have any legal base towards their implementation - and eventual refusal of an actual warranty claim? Well, the gong has now sounded, and it will reverberate some 30 times: the amount of days the FTC has given companies to cease and desist on putting those stickers in newly shipped products.

Microsoft began rolling out Windows 10 April 2018 Update. This isn't an ordinary "patch Tuesday" update, but a major update akin to "Fall Creators Update," which updates the build of the operating system to 1803. With it, Microsoft is introducing four major features to Windows 10 - Timeline, Focus Assist, Dictation, and a new and improved Edge web-browser. Timeline is essentially a time-linked file manager that organizes your files (and versions of them), e-mails, web-browser favorites, and search results, by time, so you can go back up to 30 days in time to find your stuff.

Focus Assist is a feature that lets you keep your focus on work (or productive tasks), and prevents you from being sucked into endless scrolling through social-media or other trivial activity, when you're supposed to be working. You set it to turn on in specific times of the day and days of the week, or even arbitrarily, and it keeps giving you visual or auditory reminders that pull you away from your trivial activity. The third major feature is Dictation, which is natural voice input as somewhat grammatically correct text. Microsoft made improvements to Edge that include the ability to mute tabs, maximize Reading Mode or PDFs into full-screen, secure payment options storage, and in-built Grammar Tools besides spell-checkers, so you no longer need to pay for services such as Grammarly.

Today, Intel is taking another step forward, with two new technology announcements: Intel Threat Detection Technology (Intel TDT), a set of silicon-level capabilities that will help the ecosystem detect new classes of threats, and Intel Security Essentials, a framework that standardizes the built-in security features across Intel processors. We are also announcing a strengthened academic partnership with Purdue University, to help accelerate the development and availability of cybersecurity talent.

Intel Threat Detection Technology leverages silicon-level telemetry and functionality to help our industry partners improve the detection of advanced cyberthreats and exploits. Today we are announcing the first two Intel Threat Detection Technology capabilities, including implementation plans by Microsoft and Cisco.

The first new capability is Accelerated Memory Scanning. Current scanning technologies can detect system memory-based cyberattacks, but at the cost of CPU performance. With Accelerated Memory Scanning, the scanning is handled by Intel's integrated graphics processor, enabling more scanning, while reducing the impact on performance and power consumption. Early benchmarking on Intel test systems show CPU utilization dropped from 20 percent to as little as 2 percent.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming industries and changing how data is managed, interpreted and, most importantly, used to solve real problems for people and businesses faster than ever.

Today's Microsoft's Bing Intelligent Search news demonstrates how Intel FPGA (field programmable gate array) technology is powering some of the world's most advanced AI platforms. Advances to the Bing search engine with real-time AI will help people do more and learn by going beyond delivering standard search results. Bing Intelligent Search will provide answers instead of web pages, and enable a system that understands words and the meaning behind them, the context and intent of a search.

After the world was introduced to the Microsoft and NVIDIA partnership to bring real time raytracing solutions to DirectX 12 via NVIDIA's RTX initiative, we now have confirmation of what is expected to be the first game studio - and AAA game experience - to feature the technology. In a post from their official Twitter account, 4A Games has announced that they are collaborating with NVIDIA to bring RTX's effects to their upcoming Metro: Exodus open-world video game.

The company further warned users to keep at attention towards the impending release of a proof of concept video to be released during GDC. 4A Games is one of those companies that has been delivering incredible experiences through and through, and has already dabbled with NVIDIA's technologies in the past (particularly with their first game, Metro 2033). Here's hoping that AMD can work its drivers into great performance levels in supporting this DX12 technology on their graphics cards as well.

DirectX Raytracing (DXR) is a new feature in DirectX 12 that opens the door to a new class of real-time graphics techniques for games. We were thrilled to join Microsoft onstage for the announcement, which we followed with a presentation of our own work in developing practical real-time applications for this exciting new tech.

Accurate real-time reflections with DirectX Raytracing
Rendering accurate reflections in real-time is difficult. There are many challenges and limitations when using the existing methods. For the past few months, we've been exploring ways of combining DirectX Raytracing with existing methods to solve some of these challenges. While much of our presentation went deep into the math for our solution, I would like to show you some examples of our new technique in action.

On March 12, 2018, AMD received a communication from CTS Labs regarding research into security vulnerabilities involving some AMD products. Less than 24 hours later, the research firm went public with its findings. Security and protecting users' data is of the utmost importance to us at AMD and we have worked rapidly to assess this security research and develop mitigation plans where needed. This is our first public update on this research, and will cover both our technical assessment of the issues as well as planned mitigation actions.

The security issues identified by the third-party researchers are not related to the AMD "Zen" CPU architecture or the Google Project Zero exploits made public Jan. 3, 2018. Instead, these issues are associated with the firmware managing the embedded security control processor in some of our products (AMD Secure Processor) and the chipset used in some socket AM4 and socket TR4 desktop platforms supporting AMD processors.

Rare's latest (and first in a long time) original, full fledged video game has just been made available. Done under the umbrella of Microsoft, Sea of Thieves promises to bring back the fun in games, with a ludicrous setting and an entire design philosophy that just speaks "fun". The first-person, multiplayer co-op and player vs. player game has both sea and land fights, treasure and player hunting, so there's enough there to sate the tastes of different players altogether.

Sea of Thieves is part of Microsoft's Game Pass subscription, which means that for $9.99 monthly, users have the chance of trying out the game and playing it, no holds barred, with no additional payment (you can always purchase it for the usual asking price of $59.99/£49.99/€69.99 - and don't you just love the price differences across currencies?) This "Games as a Service" is being hailed as one of the solutions for triple-A game development, bringing companies like Microsoft steady streams of revenue they can then re-inject into their in-house game studios. Furthermore, Sea of Thieves is part of Microsoft's Play Anywhere program - meaning a digital purchase on either Xbox or PC will grant you the ability to play it on both platforms. So go out there and walk the plan, drink rum, shoot some cannons, and drink some gallons of salt water, you old sea dog!

In a blog post, Microsoft has announced that it has decided to take the matter of finding critical bugs of similar nature to the Spectre/Meltdown flaws into its own hands - at least partially. Adding to its bug bounty programs, the company has now announced that a new pot of up to $250,000 is up for grabs until at least December 31st of this year.

The new bug bounty program is divided into four different severity/compensation tiers, with tier 1 flaws (New categories of speculative execution attacks) granting up to $250,000 in rewards for the "coordinated disclosure" of such vulnerabilities. The idea here is Microsoft is employing the knowledge and will of the capable masses that might find ways of exploiting vulnerabilities, and would choose to disclose them to Microsoft - getting the prize money, helping the tech industry in providing a timely, coordinated defense against these exploits, and saving vast amounts of funding (and time), by not having to do the bug bounty themselves.

CTS Labs, the Israel-based IT security research company behind Tuesday's explosive AMD Ryzen security vulnerabilities report, responded to questions posed by TechPowerUp. One of the biggest of these, which is also on the minds of skeptics, is the ominous lack of proof-of-concept code or binaries being part of their initial public report (in contrast to the Meltdown/Spectre reports that went into technical details about the exploit). CTS Labs stated to TechPowerUp that it has sent AMD, along with other big tech companies a "complete research package," which includes "full technical write-ups about the vulnerabilities," "functional proof-of-concept exploit code," and "instructions on how to reproduce each vulnerability." It stated that besides AMD, the research package was sent to Microsoft, HP, Dell, Symantec, FireEye, and Cisco Systems, to help them develop patches and mitigation.

An unwritten yet generally accepted practice in the IT security industry upon discovery of such vulnerabilities, is for researchers to give companies in question at least 90 days to design a software patch, harden infrastructure, or implement other mitigation. 90 days is in stark contrast to the 24 hours AMD got from CTS Labs. CTS Labs confirmed to TechPowerUp that it indeed shared its research package with AMD (and the other companies) just 24 hours prior to making its report public, but urged those disgruntled with this decision to look at the situation objectively. "If you look at the situation in the following way: right now the public knows about the vulnerabilities and their implications, AMD is fully informed and developing patches, and major security companies are also informed and working on mitigation."

In a sequence of events perfectly illustrated by the stock image below, Intel is reportedly mulling the acquisition of Broadcom, which is still making efforts to acquire Qualcomm; the Wall Street Journal reported late last week. Shares of Intel fell 1 percent on this report. A successful acquisition of Qualcomm by Broadcom would result in a seemingly-American silicon supergiant that could pose a threat to Intel's position in the industry, observes CNBC. Both Intel and Broadcom spokespersons refuse to comment the WSJ report, terming it as "deal chatter."

Broadcom recently swayed Qualcomm board its way ahead of a crucial vote for the acquisition, prompting a CFIUS investigation, by American regulators, which has the legal power to halt the acquisition if national security implications emerge. Taking advantage of this, and its relatively stable outlook despite the recent CPU vulnerability mess, Intel is looking to mop up a seemingly foreign Broadcom. Other industry giants such as Microsoft and Google have expressed extreme concern with the developments in this deal, particularly with Apple's "sway" over it.

The next Windows 10 service pack major update has been named "Spring Creators Update." Windows Insider Program users toying with Build 17618 of the operating system spotted a listing of all the major updates of Windows 10 known to the build, when running "Get-VMHostSupportedVersion" in Power Shell. The last entry reads "Microsoft Windows 10 Spring Creators Update 1803." The version number (1803 in this case), often coincides with the public release date of the update. The Fall Creators Update 1709, released in 2017-09 (September) to Insiders. Going by that convenion, Spring Creators Update could see a "branded" Insider preview build this month, 2018-03 (March), with a public release usually 3-4 weeks after, presumably before Summer kicks in.

State of Decay 2, the sequel to the multi-million selling State of Decay game, will be making its way to the PC and Xbox One on May 22. The Standard Edition will carry a $29.99 price tag and the Ultimate Edition will set you back $49.99. Consumers who purchase the Ultimate Edition will get receive four days of early access beginning May 18 and the "Independence Pack" and "Daybreak Pack" DLCs. Microsoft will also be rewarding consumers who pre-order State of Decay 2 between now and May 21 with some exclusive in-game goodies. State of Decay 2 is a Xbox Play Anywhere title, therefore, consumers will receive both the Xbox One and Windows 10 versions of the game upon purchase. They can access their game saves, achievements, and progression no matter which platform they game on.

in the first place, State of Decay 2 will only work on a Windows 10 64-bit operating system. The game occupies a mere 16 GB of hard drive space. The minimum system requirements include an Intel Core i5-2500 or AMD FX-6300 processor, 8 GB of RAM, and a GeForce GTX 760 or Radeon HD 7870 graphics card. For the more demanding gamers who enjoy maxing out all the eye-candy, Microsoft recommends an Intel Core i5-4570 or AMD FX-8350 processor, 16 GB of RAM, and a GeForce GTX 960 or Radeon R9 380 graphics card.

The Spectre/Meltdown road is long and pocked with lawsuits and security holes as it is, and Microsoft is one of the players that's trying to put the asphalt back to tip-top, Autobahn-worth shape. The company has already improved users' security to the Meltdown and Spectre exploits on its OS side; however, hardware patches, and specifically BIOS-editing ones are much harder to deploy and distribute by the PC chain. That may be one of the reasons why Microsoft is now again stepping up with software-based mitigations for Intel-based systems, specifically.

The new updates introduce a software-based CPU microcode revision update, and work at the OS-level to plug some security holes on your Intel processors that might otherwise remain unpatched. The reasons for them remaining unpatched can be many: either Intel taking even more time to deploy patches to the still vulnerable systems; your OEMs not deploying the Intel CPU microcode revisions via a BIOS update; or the good old "I forgot I could do it" user story. Of course, being software based means these Microsoft patches will have to be reapplied should users format their Windows system. The update can for now only be manually downloaded and installed, and can only be applied to version 1709 (Fall Creators Update) and Windows Server version 1709 (Server Core), but that's definitely better than the alternative of forcing less knowledgeable users to try and find their way through BIOS updates. Of course, that is assuming OEMs will ever push BIOS updates to their products.

In a LinkedIn blog post, Microsoft Technical Fellow Alex Kipman shared the company's vision for its Mixed Reality ecosystem for this 2018 year. The vision stands on a three-pronged stance: MR +AI, AR + VR, and Immersive Communication. The first is likely the more exciting of the bunch: marrying MR environments and apps with the power of the cloud to render extensive AI workloads. This starts with the inclusion of AI-processing capabilities intro the next version of Microsoft's HoloLens and its HPU (Holographic Processing Unit). With a strong internet connection, this local processing will be joined by Microsoft's cloud AI processing glut to marry the virtual and physical worlds in an increasingly inseparable mix, allowing for the virtual to perfectly overlap the physical.

The second stance on this Microsoft approach is the marriage of the AR + VR environments in a single product, which both allows for virtual overlays in the physical world, and a comprehensive solution for VR-specific workloads that the same AR headset can propel you to - essentially building a HoloLens + VR headset solution. Finally, Immersive Communication is one of the other applications where Microsoft sees extreme potential in this MR world we're about to enter: where the instant messaging and video chats of the world are superseded by an actual VR solution that places people next to their desired public, be it their loved ones or, frighteningly, their boss, from the comfort of their home or another location they see fit. A focus on actual presence can be brought equally to people separated by an inch or a thousand miles.

Age of Empires: Definitive Edition, which was released yesterday, is currently a Windows 10 exclusive. Essentially, what that means is that players can only get the game through the dreaded Windows Store. Microsoft previously blamed Valve for not wanting Age of Empires: Definitive Edition on their Steam platform, but then stated that the move was possible if the platforms pledge their unconditional support for Windows 10. In a recent interview with PC Games Network, Adam Isgreen suggested that Age of Empires: Definitive Edition could possibly arrive on Steam in a near future. As a creative director, Adam has little control over game distribution, however, he fully recognizes that some users suffer from annoying issues with the Windows 10 Store.

In a blog post, Microsoft detailed some new features that have become available for Microsoft's Insider Program Fast Ring users, of which the titular "Ultimate Performance Mode" certainly wrings the most attention. The Ultimate Performance Mode is really a performance plan integrated into Windows, which basically throws all power saving features out the Window to make sure that the underlying hardware is always running at its peak performance. Microsoft says that latencies and microstutters should be reduced as much as possible, thus allowing users to wring "ultimate performance" from their systems.

Microsoft says this is focused on the Workstation market, and should be especially deployed in mission critical scenarios where every second counts (wait, doesn't gaming qualify by this measure?) As a result of this re-balancing on idle and power states, power consumption goes up; the main reason why Microsoft isn't making this feature available for battery-powered devices - at least for now. The consumer side of the equation is being left out in the cold, for now, when it comes to this Ultimate Performance Mode; but users should remain optimistic. There's no reason why Microsoft would leave this option to Workstation environments only, so a consumer-focused release (be it in the Insider Fast Ring or on the regular Windows 10 update cycles) is still out in the open.

Microsoft today launches the Surface Precision Mouse. Designed for exceptional accuracy, comfort, and control, the new mouse helps you stay in your flow with flawless scrolling and three customisable buttons. Boasting an ergonomic shape, the mouse allows for either wired or Bluetooth connection and can work and switch seamlessly up to three different PCs. The Surface Precision Mouse is available for purchase now from the Microsoft store for $99.99. Special pricing is also available for eligible students, parents and teachers.

Sea of Thieves is one of the more interesting games coming from Rare since it's been bought by Microsoft. The company, which was previously almost locked in into developing games for the Kinect system, was felt by many as being creatively constrained and underappreciated by Microsoft's management. Well, Kinect is officially dead as a gaming peripheral, and as such, Rare has started developing games outside the Kinect box. Sea of Thieves is the first such, a pirate game with heart, and the company has just outed their system requirements for the game on Windows 10 PC's.

The system requirements are pretty extensive in the amount of configurations you can have for some preset experiences. The game can even be played on Intel's integrated graphics, according to Rare - at 540p with minimum details, though, so I doubt that's what gamers will be looking for as an actual gaming experience. For 1080p and 60 FPS play, Rare is quoting systems with at least an i5 4690 or an AMD FX 8150 (so, an Intel quad core or an AMD "octa-core"), 8 GB RAM, and a graphics card with at least 4 GB of VRAM. A GTX 770 or an AMD Radeon 380X are set as the graphics card requirement,s which Rare is putting on equal footing to the more recent, "modern" GTX 1060 or RX 470. The system requirements seem to scale pretty well with resolution and graphics settings, up to a 4K 60 FPS experience requiring the current top of the line graphics cards in the form of the GTX 1080 Ti or AMD's RX Vega 64.

As reported yesterday, Microsoft changed the way how they license Windows 10 to their OEM partners. But buckle in folks, the changes just keep on coming. In what looks like an effort to push Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 owners to upgrade, Microsoft has officially announced that Office 2019 will only work on machines with Windows 10 and the next LTSC release of Windows Server. That's only the tip of the iceberg though. Unlike previous version of Office that came with 10 years of support, Office 2019's support lifecycle is shortened to five years of mainstream support and two years of extended support. Additionally, the client applications are only available with a Click-to-Run installer. However, Microsoft will continue to provide a MSI installer for the server applications.

As the launch date for Windows 10 Redstone 4 approaches, Microsoft has shared new licensing information with a few of their select partners. According to the information provided, the Redmond giant will be adding five new SKUs for partners to use with their products. The new SKUs include Entry ($25), Value ($45), Core ($65.45), Core+ ($86.66), and Advanced ($101). At present, not much is known about how Microsoft will differentiate one edition from another, other than tying them to specific hardware specifications. The SKUs will be available starting on April 2, 2018.

Entry: Intel Atom/Celeron/Pentium ≤ 4GB RAM & ≤ 32GB SSD AND ≤ 14.1" screen size (NB), ≤ 11.6" (2in1, Tablet), ≥ 17" AiO
Value: Intel Atom/Celeron/Pentium ≤ 4GB RAM & ≤64GB SSD & ≤ 14.1" screen size (EM ≤ 4GB RAM & ≤64GB SSD or ≤ 500GB HDD)
Core: Cannot be used on devices that meet the Core+ and Advanced SKU Hardware Specifications
Core+: High end CPU and >4 GB RAM (All Form Factors) ≥8 GB RAM & ≥1080p screen resolution (NB, 2in1, AiO) >8 GB RAM & ≥2TB HDD or SSD storage (Desktop)
Advanced: Intel Core i9 (any configuration) OR Core i7 ≥ 6 Cores (any RAM) OR AMD Threadripper(any configuration) OR Intel Core i7 >16GB (any Cores) or AMD FX/ Ryzen7 >16GB (any Cores) OR ≥ 4K screen resolution (any processor, includes 4K UHD-3840 resolution

Single player games may have entered a perceived decline since their heydays, as increasingly long, costly development times have drawn developers towards experiences that are more easily... monetized. This is typically done by cutting experiences into DLC pieces and adding always-on, recurring ways of recouping developer (or publishers') investment. There's no need in beating around the bush - we all know what these experiences look like, in one way, or another. Though it's true that these may not always have the intended effect, as users and the industry as a whole have been recoiling from particularly aggressive renditions of these monetization practices, which in turn, may lead companies to face considerable losses, be these monetary or in the much less liquid good will.

Square Enix is one of the companies that has excelled in the making of first player games, for one. however, for one reason or another, these may not have translated as the successful commercial releases that the company hoped (thinking of you, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided). As a result, the company has reportedly put the Deus Ex franchise on ice, but has recently made some tentative remarks on how they might bring it back. However, Square Enix themselves have put fears into gamers and fans' minds with their renewed interest in games as a service. which, according to Square Enix President & CEO Yosuke Matsuda, may not mean exactly what we've been told it means.

Well, that didn't take long. Microsoft's Windows 10 S push as a "lite, free" version of its Windows 10 OS that would be available for education environments free of charge has been thoroughly abandoned as a standalone product. instead, Microsoft is now looking to integrate it into existing Windows 10 versions (Home and Pro) as a sort of sleeping, to-be-activated "S Mode" which has access to updates, but only has the same features as Windows 10 S currently does - the most important, limiting of which is that the OS only runs UWP (Universal windows Platform) apps. Thus, this mode will basically limit the Operating System to a version which, according to Microsoft, enables better security and a more friendly environment for the typical usage scenarios of such lite operating systems.

Naturally, Microsoft will still offer users the chance to upgrade to full Windows versions within S Mode - at a price. Moving from Windows 10 Home S to regular Windows Home will be free, but Pro S users who want to switch to the full version of Windows 10 Pro will have to pay $49. There will be Pro S commercial versions for Value, Entry, and Small Tablet models, but not Core+ and Workstations. There has been no official word from Microsoft on these software changes, though these will likely take place on the next partner pricing change announcement hailing form the Redmond company.

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, announces today that Skype is now available as a snap, the universal Linux app packaging format. Available as of today, the release means that Skype can deliver its communication service to a wider range of Linux users, including millions on Ubuntu. Skype is used by millions of users globally to make free video and voice calls, send files, video and instant messages and to share both special occasions and everyday moments with the people who matter most.

Skype has turned to snaps to ensure its users on Linux, are automatically delivered to its latest version upon release. And with snaps' roll-back feature, whereby applications can revert back to the previous working version in the event of a bug, Skype's developers can ensure a seamless user experience. The Skype snap will work natively on all Linux distributions that support snaps, including Linux Mint, Manjaro, Debian, Arch Linux, OpenSUSE, Solus, and Ubuntu. This Skype desktop application is compatible across the wide range of Linux platforms, opening it up to an increased range of devices and to millions of users.