How Windows is supported and sold is changing. Or should I say ‘sold’?

Before Windows 10, a clean install of Windows only included the bare essentials a user would need to get started using their PC. That included software built by Microsoft, such as Mail, Paint, and its web browser, and it never included "bloatware" or "trialware" that one might find on hardware purchased from a third-party OEM that preloaded all kinds of crapware.

Yet another annoying prompt

Microsoft said Tuesday that it executed a court order to shut down six websites created by a group tied to Russian intelligence that sought to spoof conservative U.S. institutions, the U.S. Senate and Microsoft itself. The fake sites were intended to trick users into thinking they were clicking on sites run by the Hudson Institute, a conservative Washington think tank, and the International Republican Institute, a nonprofit pro-democracy group whose board includes numerous prominent Republican figures, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former Republican National Committee Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf.

Microsoft is introducing a new version of its popular Xbox Elite controller today. While many had been hoping for a second-generation controller with three-level Hair Trigger Locks and an adjustable lock design for the thumbsticks, Microsoft is introducing a robot white design of its existing Xbox Elite controller that matches the company’s Xbox One S console and new Xbox One X in white.

Just over a year after Skype introduced a colorful, Snapchat-inspired makeover which included its own version of “stories,” the company says it’s now going to refocus on simplicity – and it’s ditching stories along the way.

How much are you going to like having Microsoft in charge of your desktop?

Out of Microsoft’s first party titles, Forza Horizon 4 is certainly the most anticipated one right now. The third installment already garnered widespread acclaim and developer Playground Games is looking to build on that by expanding the feature set and delivering a stunning British backdrop to the game. Speaking with GamesIndustry at Gamescom 2018, Aaron Greenberg (Global Product Marketing Manager of Xbox) said that the expectation is for Forza Horizon 4 to become the biggest and best-selling title ever in the Forza franchise.

So you’ve just bought the best Windows laptop, you’ve gritted your teeth through Cortana’s obnoxiously cheery setup narration, and the above screenshot is the Start menu you’re presented with. Exactly how special do you feel as you watch the tiles animating and blinking at you like a slots machine? I’ll tell you how I felt as I was getting to grips with the Huawei MateBook X Pro for the first time: perplexed.

Amid a growing call for governments to rein in the use of the technology, Microsoft became the first tech giant to join the chorus.

Russian intelligence operatives attempted to hack into the online accounts of staffers on three congressional campaigns, a Microsoft executive said Thursday

Starbucks and Microsoft are working on a new cryptocurrency platform called Bakkt.

A few months ago, executives from two of the world’s largest video game publishers suggested that traditional game consoles are on their way out. In separate interviews with Variety, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot and Electronic Arts CTO Ken Moss both argued that instead of buying expensive hardware to play video games, we’ll stream them onto virtually any device, tapping into remote servers for the requisite computing power. And instead of downloading games or buying them on disc, we’ll subscribe to a vast catalog of titles, all of them instantly accessible. In other words, the future of gaming will look a lot like Netflix.

The OS does have its fans, but Win10 is merely good, not great.

Microsoft has been bundling a password manager that features a dangerous flaw with some versions of Windows 10, a Google security researcher has revealed. Tavis Ormandy noticed that his copy of Windows 10 included Keeper, which he had previously found to be injecting privileged UI into pages.

Researchers at the German IT Security company SySS GmbH successfully fooled the Windows 10 facial recognition system by using a printed photo of the user's face. Their spoofing efforts were published on the cybersecurity site Seclists on Dec. 18. The cybersecurity experts bypassed Windows Hello — which is Microsoft's password-free security software — on both a Dell and Microsoft laptop running different versions of Windows 10, which is cause for concern for anyone using this feature to log into their account.

A number of emails from company accounts show communication with brothels and pimps.

Acquired December 1997, Hotmail was the gift that kept on giving—for good or ill.

Xbox One had very few high-profile releases in 2017, but the roadmap for 2018 looks pretty great if these discreet rumors are to be believed. One known leaker cited Fable and a Forza Horizon 4 set in Japan as possible future additions to the lineup. The user, Klobrille of ResetEra, phrased each of these predictions as hypothetical questions. However, given the pedigree of the source, some fans believe there may be more to it. Here’s a recap of what’s implied.

News spread Monday of a remarkable breakthrough in artificial intelligence. Microsoft and Chinese retailer Alibaba independently announced that they had made software that matched or outperformed humans on a reading-comprehension test devised at Stanford. Microsoft called it a “major milestone.” Media coverage amplified the claims, with Newsweek estimating “millions of jobs at risk.”

Microsoft today is unveiling new artificial intelligence technology that’s something of an artist – a “drawing bot.” The bot is capable of creating images from text descriptions of an object, but it also adds details to those images that weren’t included the text, indicating that the AI has a little imagination of its own, says Microsoft.

Two of Microsoft’s official distributors in Russia have imposed restrictions on sales of Microsoft software to more than 200 Russian companies following new U.S. sanctions, according to notifications circulated by the distributors.

"Minecraft" continues to be one of the most popular games ever made. The creation/survival indie game that Microsoft purchased back in 2014 for $2.5 billion has now sold 144 million copies, and enjoys a monthly userbase of 74 million players. The latest numbers were revealed in an interview with Helen Chiang, the new head of Microsoft's "Minecraft" group, at PopSugar.

Microsoft is planning to bring its own exclusive Xbox games, published through Microsoft Studios, to the company’s Xbox Game Pass subscription. Future games, including Sea of Thieves, will be available via subscription on the same day they’re available to purchase at retail stores or through the Microsoft Store. “The number one request from our customers... was to get new blockbuster games into Game Pass,” explains Microsoft’s games chief, Phil Spencer, in an interview with The Verge.

Well, that didn’t take long. While Microsoft claims that Windows 10 S is now a Windows 10 “mode,” the truth is that this attempted counter to Google Chrome OS has floundered.

I’m getting sick of Windows 10’s auto-installing apps. Apps like Facebook are now showing up out of nowhere, and even displaying notifications begging for me to use them. I didn’t install the Facebook app, I didn’t give it permission to show notifications, and I’ve never even used it. So why is it bugging me?

Lundgren wanted to provide buyers of used computers a restore disc of Windows, so they wouldn't throw their computers away. Microsoft, and the government, objected.

Researchers create a machine translation system that translates sentences of a test set of news articles from Chinese to English as well as a human.

In a laboratory in Copenhagen, scientists believe they are on the verge of a breakthrough that could transform computing. A team combining Microsoft researchers and Niels Bohr Institute academics is confident that it has found the key to creating a quantum computer. If they are right, then Microsoft will leap to the front of a race that has a tremendous prize - the power to solve problems that are beyond conventional computers.

A young, Harvard-educated tech entrepreneur goes before Congress and gets a grilling about his company’s business practices. Sound familiar?

"After 43 years, this is the first day that we are announcing, and will be distributing, a custom Linux kernel," said Microsoft President Brad Smith.

For the first time, Microsoft has released its own Linux kernel in a new Linux-based product: Azure Sphere.

A California man is headed for a 15-month stay in federal prison over “restore CDs” — disks that reinstall Microsoft’s Windows operating system after a failure — after a ruling two weeks ago by a federal appeals court. In his 2017 trial in federal district court, Eric Lundgren, 33, was found to have infringed Microsoft’s intellectual property by $700,000 for ordering and importing the restore disks, which a witness told the court were nearly worthless. Lundgren...

Microsoft kicked off its annual developer conference, Build 2018, on May 7 with the announcement of a new program designed to invest in accessibility technologies built using artificial intelligence and machine learning -- with a $25 million endowment and a five-year mission.

Microsoft is launching a $25 million initiative to use artificial intelligence to build better technology for people with disabilities such as autism, deafness or dyslexia.