Linux, Open Source, & anti Microsoft news

Microsoft boss Satya Nadella will earn a wallet-busting $79.1m (£60.9m) this financial year, up 63 percent on his compensation for 2023. The huge boost to Nadella’s pay in both cash and stock, announced by Microsoft last night, comes after a positive year overall for the company’s financial revenues – but a turbulent 12 months for its employees.

Attackers can downgrade Windows kernel components to bypass security features such as Driver Signature Enforcement and deploy rootkits on fully patched systems. This is possible by taking control of the Windows Update process to introduce outdated, vulnerable software components on an up-to-date machine without the operating system changing the fully patched status.

The Data Protection Commission (DPC) has reprimanded and fined LinkedIn Ireland €310 million and ordered it to bring its data processes into line with European law after finding fault with the legal basis the Microsoft-owned social media company relied upon to process its members’ data for advertising and to track behaviours.

Microsoft and OpenAI announced they’re offering a select group of media outlets up to $10 million ($2.5 million in cash plus $2.5 million worth of “software and enterprise credits” from each) to try out AI tools in the newsroom.

Imagine walking into your office to find that your company just hired thousands of new employees overnight – except they’re not human. That’s exactly what Microsoft has made possible with its groundbreaking announcement of autonomous AI agents, marking a fundamental shift in how businesses will operate in the coming years.

The UK Government has signed a major deal with Microsoft which will see organizations across the country get access to more powerful AI tools. Speaking at the company’s Microsoft AI Tour London event, the pair revealed a five-year partnership which they hope will give public sector firms the chance to utilize the latest in Microsoft technology, including the Copilot AI platform.

Microsoft Word has been accused of “censoring” the term “maternity leave” because it is not inclusive enough. Writers using the software are instead advised to type “birth-related leave”, “parental leave” or “childbirth leave” when referring to the time off work that a woman can take after childbirth.

Experts warn of concerns over product agreement with government following the tech group’s UK boss being appointed an adviser on industrial strategy.

Microsoft has notified customers that it’s missing more than two weeks of security logs for some of its cloud products, leaving network defenders without critical data for detecting possible intrusions.

Google is looking to offer a native Terminal app for Android, possibly with Android 16. The Terminal app will allow installation of a Linux VM with full GUI and GPU acceleration along with other sysadmin features including disk resizing, port forwarding, and partition recovery. This is an extension of Google’s earlier project of allowing Chrome OS to run on Android using the Android Virtualization Framework.