One of the main concerns regulators have over the deal is Microsoft will keep Activision Blizzard franchises exclusive to Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Cloud Gaming. While major properties like Candy Crush and Warcraft are included in the acquisition, Call of Duty is the center of the debate. Sony has described the franchise as unreplaceable on PlayStation. — Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) December 7, 2022 Microsoft has confirmed it has offered Sony the same 10-year license that Nintendo has agreed to....

On Monday, Microsoft announced the end of its Groove Music Pass – the service that lets you stream songs. “As we continue to listen to what our customers want in their music experience we know that access to the best streaming service, the largest catalog of music, and a variety of subscriptions is top of the list,” explained GM of Groove Jerry Johnson. “Which is why we’re excited to announce that we’re expanding our partnership with Spotify to bring the world’s largest music streaming service to our Groove Music Pass customers....

Starting September 1, 2022, the Teams Rooms Premium tier will be removed and in its place with be a Pro version. Microsoft says this new level will be more affordable than the current Premium subscription. Customers need to pay to access the virtual conference rooms, with an additional charge on top of the regular Microsoft Teams subscription. The Premium version of Rooms currently costs $50 each month, while the Standard tier is $15 per month....

That means Evernote will be going up against OneNote on the platform, much like it does just about everywhere else. With the integrations, Evernote notes can be introduced into a conversation on Teams without having to leave the service. Additional features include the ability to pin, edit, search, and share notes directly within Microsoft Teams. As part of the announcement, Evernote explained the capabilities available to users: For Improved Organization: Effortlessly catalogue data, research, conversations, and meeting notes so they are easy to find anytime....

However, Microsoft is not slowing down, and Sticky Notes will continue to evolve. Microsoft software engineer for the Windows Insider team, Jen Gentleman announced an upcoming feature release. Taking to Twitter, Gentleman teased the ability to add images to notes. While Gentleman did not expand on details, we guess the feature would work as you would expect. Users should be able to attach images from their personal files on a phone or PC....

If you’re unfamiliar with Xbox Cloud Gaming, it was previously known as Project xCloud. As a game streaming service, Microsoft handles resources through Azure, allowing users to play Xbox games on any device and any platform, in theory. At the moment, Xbox Cloud Gaming is limited to Android smartphones and tablets. However, there have been reports of Microsoft working to bring support for Android TV. According to Spencer, the service could come to all TVs through a USB stick....

Windows Insider Program members are running Redstone 4 (Version 1803) builds in preview. Windows Central reports Microsoft will soon open up Redstone 5 previews in the Skip Ahead feature. You may remember Skip Ahead was launched last year, but only to select Insiders. Microsoft later opened it up to all preview users. It allows Insiders to jump forward in branches and preview features and builds in very early developmental stages....

This is not a new technology, but its implementation is fresh. Indeed, Microsoft Translators first gained neural machine translation (NMT) AI abilities way back in 2016. However, it was limited to online as the computing load for the translation models was too high. Since its launch, Microsoft has been continuing research on NMT implementation offline. One avenue the company explored on an Android device was to use a dedicated AI chipset....

A team used methods known as dual learning, deliberation networks, and joint training to reach the milestone. Microsoft calls its system “next-generation Neural Machine Translation”, and that comes with some advantages. The quality of translations to and from English and Chinese or German increased by 11%. It’s not a giant leap, but it should ensure that the result is less confusing in some scenarios. Microsoft gave some examples of the changes, which are quite impressive: “German into English Source: Jemand hat heute über diese Männer gewacht....

The new Beta release for Xbox One is a patch for build 1704, which of course is the Creators Update. This is the first significant release after Microsoft dropped the feature update last week. Xbox users received the Creators Update before anybody else, it will be released on Windows 10 PCs on April 11. Before getting to the changelog, which is just fixes anyway, it is worth talking about the gamerpics delay....

In the write-up, Microsoft explains that the issue is preventing Windows from installing the recent Security Update for Secure Boot DBX (KB5012170). When someone tries to apply the update, Windows Update surfaces a 0x800f0922 error code. To clarify, this is a bug related solely to the Secure Boot DBX fix. While that was part of the August 2022 Patch Tuesday release, other security updates, feature releases, and monthly rollups are not affected by the bug....

The build has many of the features Microsoft previewed, with automatic shape creation, a ruler, and more. It appears to be a leak of the “Education Preview” of the software, which will be aimed primarily at schools. Whiteboard Release Notes Thankfully, there are some great features to accomodate that. This version also lets users create graphs by writing an equation, as well as easy insertion of images from the web....

One of the biggest challenges amidst the COVID-19 outbreak is easing the burden on health services. Global isolation efforts are as much about buying time for hospitals to catch up with the load of infected people as they are about protecting the population. Making healthcare workers a priority is something we have seen across various sectors, such as travel and retail. So, Microsoft’s plan makes sense and would see emergency services and critical infrastructure ensured of optimum Azure performance....

In its original guidance, the company says legacy CSP subscriptions to Microsoft Cloud services would no longer get automatic updates starting from July 11 2022. With that date fast approaching, customers have been concerned about Microsoft’s plans. They accused the company of simply trying to force users on its own New Commerce Experience subscription model. An announcement on June 27 saw Microsoft roll back its previous decision. According to the company, automatic updates for CSP subs are “extended indefinitely”....

At WWDC this month, Apple announced its own ARM-based processor that will power a new generation of Macs later this year. Ahead of the hardware arriving, Cupertino is giving developers a chance to work with the processor. Dev’s can access a developer kit comprised of a Mac mini with the A12X ARM processor, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. This chipset is what Apple has used in its current generation of iPad Pros....

There are a couple of limitations, however. Firstly, drag and drop on Your Phone will only work for individual files and not folders. Secondly, for now the feature is only available for Samsung smartphones. Furthermore, it’s only possible to transfer up to 100 files at once and individual files are limited to 512MB in size. To start transferring files, open the Your Phone app on your Samsung Galaxy handset and on your Windows 10 PC....

“For as long as I remember I’ve been fascinated with the idea of using light to represent music,” he said in a Twitter statement. “Growing up I dreamed of running lighting for EDM festivals and tours, and I want to pursue that passion in a bigger way.” His departure follows that of Mixer’s other co-founder, James Boehm, on October 2nd. Boehm also said he plans to work on other projects, one of them being his place on the board of Gamer Goo....

Stitch is a backend-as-a-service (BaaS) tool that will integrate with the MongoDB database. It has been created to help developers tie together third-party services. This service is rare for the company as it is away from its core database offerings. Regardless, Stitch is a response to a growing developer trend of writing apps across third-party services. The new feature allows dev’s to connect data from these external services and compile the APIs in MondgoDB....

But what does the future hold? As we reported last month, the Nokia 9 will launch at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018. However, HMD Global is already looking to the future and the Nokia 10, hopefully a flagship that will truly compete with the best on the market. Nokia was once the biggest phone company out there, until the smartphone revolution hit hard. The Nokia 9 is unlikely to put the brand back at the top, but possibly the Nokia 10 could....

Since the attack, known ransomware group Lapsus has confirmed it was behind the breach. Furthermore, the group has now published NVIDIA’s DLSS source code. Lapsus was inside NVIDIA’s servers for a whole week and as able to steal 1TB of data from the company. The group contacted NVIDIA, threatening to release the content if the company did not remover the mining performance limiting feature on the RTX-30 GPU. If you’re unfamiliar with DLSS, it is a tool that allows games to run higher framerates while keeping processing power low....