It might not get the same kind of attention as Google and Apple, but Microsoft is still one of the biggest and most powerful tech companies operating today. It runs Azure, one of the biggest cloud computing services, and maintains Windows 11 and the whole Office suite of software. It also makes plenty of Surface hardware and has a whole slew of gaming products, including the Xbox Series X. But the company is ever expanding — building new hardware, acquiring new game studios, and making sure that even if Microsoft doesn’t run your phone, it can touch plenty of the apps on it.
Fewer than 1 percent of more than 8 million chat logs regurgitated at least 16 words.
Xbox Cloud Gaming is coming to more TVs, just as Microsoft makes some major changes to its cloud gaming service.
And it’s not because of post-work cocktails. The Trump administration decided to mark 25 years of Xbox with a flagrant disregard for copyright. It would be funny, if not for the fact it’s all a promotion for a website full of mini games for deporting people.
The NBA has announced penalties from its investigation into cap circumvention allegations around the Clippers, Kawhi Leonard, and a string of companies that inked shady “endorsement” deals with the star: Aspiration, Daktronics, Boingo Wireless, and Lockton Insurance, as detailed in a report from the law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
There are also fines ($30 million for the Clippers, $700,000 for Leonard), suspensions for two team execs and Leonard’s uncle, and the investigation is apparently ongoing.
Acer is announcing the Vero 16: a 16-inch laptop with tool-free internal access. The battery and SSD are user-replaceable, and the hinge and ports are also removable. Acer also says the processor can be upgraded for “at least two generations.”
An Acer service center will conduct the upgrades — not the user. And for now all pricing is TBD. The Vero 16 is launching outside North America in Q1 2027.
Text predictions are like Marmite (Vegemite), you either hate them or you love them. It turns out that a lot of people hate them in Word and Outlook, so Microsoft is turning them off by default. The feature was supposed to help you write documents and emails faster by guessing what word you’d type next, but Microsoft’s predictive text could often be more of a distraction. The change is rolling out on Word for Windows, iOS, and Android, as well as Outlook on Windows and Mac.
[TECHCOMMUNITY.MICROSOFT.COM]
It feels like Microsoft adds AI features to Office on a weekly basis, and now one of the company’s main executives in charge of those efforts is getting tired of AI slop generated at work. Ryan Roslansky, who took over leading the Office org at Microsoft last year, posted a warning on LinkedIn last week about AI slop “happening in the day to day of work,” after he received a fully AI-generated document from a colleague. Roslansky also oversees the group responsible for LinkedIn, which recently added an AI slop reporting button that’s proving to be rather popular.
How can Xbox possibly get to a billion users per day while cutting studios? Oh, just by obtaining three more hits as big as Minecraft, Call of Duty and Candy Crush. “We’ve got three billion-dollar annual franchises every year. I think we should have six to eight in the coming years,” she tells BBC News.
She says she will invest: “Last year was a record spend on content and services and we’re going to match that.”
Data center developers typically have to apply for permits to install generators that create local air pollution. The DataOne facility in New Jersey is the latest project accused of violating federal law by running on gas-fired generators without approval.
You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to preorder the $899.99 translucent green Xbox Series X (unless you received an early invitation from Microsoft), but you can preorder the matching controller now for $79.99. The device will begin shipping on October 20th.
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Verge Score
The HP OmniBook 3 16 hits different in an era of expensive laptops.
The Microsoft-owned developer platform was down for hours on Monday, which is becoming a bit of a habit. “If you were trying to ship software that day, we let you down,” CTO Vlad Fedorov says, blaming the outage on a capacity failure after traffic hit “a new peak.”
[The GitHub Blog]
Microsoft and Ikea started teasing a collaboration earlier this month. The pair are teaming up for a co-designed collection of items, including cushions and stools that could pair well with an Xbox fridge. The items will be shown first at Microsoft’s Xbox booth at gamescom next week.
Microsoft loves renaming products as much as Google loves killing them. Now you can relive those reinventions with The Rebrand Registry, a collection of decades of Microsoft branding history for cloud products, including analysis of which product categories get rebranded most often, and a risk index for future renames.
[The Rebrand Registry]
Microsoft’s latest Experimental Windows 11 Insider Preview build introduces support for Emoji 17.0, alongside an updated context menu experience in File Explorer that’s “designed to feel faster, cleaner, and easier to tailor.” A notable personalization feature finally lets you add the “Print” command to the context menu in Windows 11.
The Microsoft-owned developer platform began experiencing issues around 9:40AM ET, impacting a range of features including pull requests, Webhooks, Actions, Copilot AI, and more.
GitHub said it resolved the issue at around 5PM ET, saying “a detailed root cause analysis will be shared as soon as it is available.”
[GitHub]
It’s a terrible time to buy a laptop (sorry), but if you gotta do it, here are some to consider.
Windows Central shared photos showing what appears to be a prototype of a rumored, unreleased Windows phone “that was expected to ship in 2014 under the Surface moniker.” It even has a design similar to a Surface laptop and reportedly included a Qualcomm chip and a 720p display.
Xbox and PC gamers in Australia are reportedly being notified that they’ll soon need to verify their age before purchasing 18+ rated apps and games on both the Xbox Store and Microsoft Store. Existing purchases and downloads won’t be affected. Microsoft has a September 9th deadline to comply with Australian online safety rules, or risk facing an almost AUS$50 million fine (about $34.9 million in US monies).
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Verge Score
Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: Yeeeeeeeeeessssssss.
