The Hot Take: Software development world is condensing fast with Ai....
Microsoft is expected to announce another round of layoffs soon. Less than 2.5% of the company's workforce will be affected, according to sources that spoke with Business Insider. Due Microsoft's size, even that small percentage means thousands of people will be affected.An SEC filing from June 30, 2025 showed Microsoft had about 228,000 employees. That figure has fluctuated since then, but it gives a gauge of the size of Microsoft's full-time workforce.Division cuts & AI infrastructureThis round of layoffs will affect thousands of roles across sales, consulting, and within the Xbox division. Microsoft is expected to announce the layoffs next week, though plans are subject to change.July layoffs have become commonplace for Microsoft because the company's fiscal year starts on July 1. Over 9,000 layoffs were made by Microsoft last July. Microsoft also lays off workers during other times of the year, such as the 6,000 layoffs made in May 2025.Microsoft is one of many tech giants looking to reduce head count and lower expenses in certain areas. Increased AI spending and the rise of AI has affected jobs at several levels.Voluntary retirements lowered the impactThis July will reportedly have fewer layoffs because several employees took voluntary retirement. Microsoft offered buyouts to employees level 67 and below in the United States who had 70 or more combined years of service and years of age (for example, someone who was 50 years old who had worked for Microsoft for 20 years).Roughly 9,000 Microsoft employees were eligible for that buyout and around one third of those eligible took the buyout, according to Business Insider.Xbox restructuringLayoffs have been expected, and not simply because they've become an annual occurrence. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is overseeing a restructuring of Xbox, much of which will occur within a 100-day reset.As is the case with all layoff-related stories, I understand the business decisions that lead to layoffs but feel bad for the employees affected.Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.
The Hot Take: Interesting features, we'll see if they pull me from eM Client which has all these now. Minus .pst files.
Outlook âNew,â which is based on Outlook.com, is far from a decent email client. While it has come a long way, the new Outlook doesnât feel as good as the Classic version, and it still lacks many features most users want. Microsoft now says itâs adding advanced support for Mail Merge, .PST, and a new single view for all accounts to the new Outlook app.
Outlook for Windows and web is getting the All accounts view in August 2026
I asked Microsoft for more details, and it told me that Outlook on Windows 11 (and 10) will get support for a feature called âAll accounts view,â similar to a Gmail feature that lets you see emails from all your accounts in a single inbox.
This feature is handy for those who manage their personal and professional inboxes in the Outlook app.
The all-accounts view is also called Unified Inbox, and when it rolls out to Outlook for Windows or web in August 2026, youâll be able to see emails from all your accounts in a single view. That means you donât have to switch back and forth between different inboxes, as long as you pay attention to the labels.
It also means you no longer have to merge mailboxes to see everything in one place.
Outlookâs All accounts view has advanced controls too, so itâs not just about viewing your emails or responding to them. Youâll be able to interact with emails as youâd do in their dedicated inbox. This means you can also delete, archive, move, or mark messages as read across all your mailboxes.
You donât have to repeat these actions in their respective mailboxes.
Windows Latest also found that the All accounts view will have Copilot integration too, and it could be a bit useful. For example, when youâve enabled All accounts view and use Copilot to search emails, the updated immersive search experience will surface content from the All accounts view.
At the moment, you cannot add a shared mailbox to the All accounts inbox, and itâs also not possible to use cross-account search. These features will be added to the All accounts inbox later this year.
As mentioned at the outset, Microsoft plans to ship the All accounts inbox to everyone in August 2026, but given the companyâs track record, it can also get delayed.
New Outlook is making it easier to access Favorite folders
New Outlook always had the ability to set folders as âFavorite,â but you canât switch between Favorite folders without opening the full folder pane.
With a new update, you can now view the favorite folders in a vertical list and access folders you use most with just a single click. Also, counts appear directly, so you can see which folder needs your attention.
âItâs a familiar experience for anyone who loved favorites in classic Outlook, now built right into the new Outlook,â Microsoft noted in a document.
This feature is stated to arrive in September, 2026.
More control over the unread count for the folder pane
Microsoft is testing a new toggle that gives you greater control over the unread count in your folder pane for each folder. Youâll be able to choose whether each folder should have the unread count visible in the folder pane. You can also choose to show the total item count instead, so itâs totally up to you.
Right now, Outlook can display the count for each folder, but it canât tell you the total count for all folders. To use the new feature, you just need to right-click any folder and choose between the total or unread count.
New Outlook is adding Mail Merge support
Microsoft is finally testing advanced Mail Merge support in New Outlook for Windows and the web after a long delay.
In an update spotted by Windows Latest, Microsoft said itâs improving Mail Merge so that each recipient will receive an individual email with only their address in the recipient field. Microsoft will also allow you to personalize emails by replacing fields with recipient-specific values, such as the personâs name.
Mail Merge will release in September 2026, while other features could begin rolling out earlier:
Youâll be able to import your calendars and even contacts using a .pst file (July 2026)
You can select non-consecutive dates in the calendarâs mini month using two new keyboard shortcuts, which are Shift+Click or CTRL+Click (July 2026)
Outlook will support basic conditional formatting rules (July 2026).
It is worth noting that the update timeline could always change, and Microsoft has planned several changes for Outlook in June/July. I expect most features to be available to everyone by August 2026.
What else do you want Microsoft to add to the new Outlook for Windows or the web? Let me know in the comments below.
The post Ditch Outlook Classic? Microsoft confirms major New Outlook update with 5 features, all-accounts view, mail merge, .PST, and more appeared first on Windows Latest
Longtime Slashdot reader Dotnaught shares a report from The Register: For the past 90 days, Microsoft has been quietly patching a firmware flaw in Surface devices that allowed the hardware to be bricked with a single packet, though only for those who have disabled Secure Core and Secure Boot. And the company's Copilot AI software inadvertently helped identify the faulty firmware.
According to Jack Darcy, a security researcher based in Australia, his instance of Microsoft Copilot stumbled across the bug after being asked to adjust the screen backlighting on a Surface device. The Copilot-conjured Python script ended up rendering the researcher's laptop inoperable by overwriting the embedded controller firmware. "Copilot autonomously created and executed four progressively aggressive Python scripts during a probe for backlight control values that sent raw SSAM ioctl commands (SSAM_CDEV_REQUEST = 0xC028A501) directly to the SAM microcontroller through the SAM software path," Darcy explained to The Register.
[...] "We appreciate the work of Jack Darcy and The Register for reporting this issue under a coordinated vulnerability disclosure," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. "Our investigation found that a deprecated UEFI interface could trigger a boot loop on some devices. To trigger this loop, the user must have administrator privileges and have already disabled the Secure Boot security feature. We have released updates to address the issue for most impacted devices."
That means managed devices are not at risk. But those using Linux, or Windows users who have disabled Secure Core and Secure Boot for gaming, or who use custom Windows drivers, or who have USB boot enabled, may still be vulnerable if their systems haven't received the update. We're uncertain about the range of Surface devices affected. Our source said it appears to be all of them (Surface Laptops 3-6, Surface Book 1-3) except for Surface Go models. ARM variants, however, have not been tested. The report notes that Microsoft is planning to move the Surface stack to a more secure architecture based on Rust code.
"Our most recent Surface for Business hardware features a major architectural shift in terms of improved reliability and security that spans our embedded controller, UEFI, but also some of our drivers," said David Abzarian, chief architect for Microsoft Surface. "We're investing in the most secure foundation for a PC by building our embedded controller firmware from the ground up in Rust (as part of leveraging and contributing to the Open Device Partnership (ODP)) in addition to a rewrite of the UEFI DXE Core in Rust; these projects are known as Secure EC and Project Patina respectively."
"We're also not only shipping some of our drivers written in Rust, but also helping co-develop the framework Windows Drivers in Rust (WDR) to help enable a broad set of partners in the Windows ecosystem to capitalize on these benefits. I will also note that all of these efforts are open-source promoting one of our key security principles around transparency."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Hot Take: Wondering if this will break more people off into Linux. We'll have to see how/if Microsoft boots him off the board and starts distancing themselves from their pedo founder.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has taken another battering after the Justice Department released files detailing his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
In a February town hall with Gates Foundation staff, Gates admitted to two affairs referenced in Epsteinâs emails. Some people familiar with the matter said they heard about the admission with disbelief, although they should not have been too surprised, as during his divorce proceedings, allegations linked to more than 20 affairs had come up.
The Justice Department files show Epstein knew about some of Gatesâs extramarital relationships. A Gates spokesperson said he was not involved in any illegal activities with Epstein and accepted it had been a mistake to meet him.
âGates has apologised for that mistake and is voluntarily speaking with the House Oversight Committee [in June] to answer questions about his interactions with Epstein. Gates supports the release of all the Epstein files in hopes the victims can get the justice that they deserve,â the spokesperson said.
But according to the Wall Street Journal, Gates has been given the cold shoulder by Microsoft, the outfit he co-founded and still looms over like a corporate ghost.
He usually hosts a dinner at his Washington state home tied to Microsoftâs annual CEO summit. Weeks before the May event, his team was told it would be better not to do it this year.
A Volish spokesman said: âWhile it didnât work out this year, weâve already extended an invitation for Bill to attend the CEO Summit next year.â
There was more awkwardness at TerraPower, the nuclear outfit Gates founded. After the Epstein files release and Gatesâs admission of affairs, TerraPower chief executive told staff he had spoken to Gatesâs private office and âit is clear it doesnât involve TerraPower.â
Several current and former TerraPower employees found that a bit puzzling. One of the women Gates referred to as a past affair, a âRussian nuclear physicist who I met through business activities,â had close ties to TerraPower.
She worked at TerraPower from 2010 to 2012, according to her LinkedIn page, and her name was in the companyâs internal system. She was featured in a 2011 magazine article about her work at TerraPower, including a photo shoot with Gates.
The Gates spokesperson said he did not have âan inappropriate relationship with any employee of TerraPower.â
A person familiar with the matter said the brief affair happened after she worked at TerraPower, so that clears that up.
Bill Gates, Jeffrey Epstein, Microsoft, Gates Foundation, TerraPower, Netflix, Tremolo Productions, Gates Ventures, Justice Department
The Hot Take: Been saying it for years, Microsoft is pulling Linux into windows on bite at a time. This probably I would assume only accelerates.
Microsoft is turning Azure Linux into a general-purpose, Fedora-based cloud distribution available to all Azure customers, while also productizing Flatcar as Azure Container Linux for immutable container hosts. "When Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation, there was this big conspiracy theory that somehow the Linux Foundation was undermining open source in partnership with Microsoft, and now you announce that you're shipping a Linux distribution," Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation's CEO, said in response to Microsoft's surprise announcement. "That's amazing." ZDNet reports: Until now, [Lachlan Everson, Microsoft's Principal Program Manager on Azure's open-source team] noted, "we had Azure Linux only available to third-party customers through AKS specifically, and that was Azure Linux 3.0." Going forward, this will be ACL. Everson emphasized that Azure Linux 4.0 is the culmination of years of internal usage and the evolution of the earlier Mariner distribution. "So we've been running Azure Linux for many years internally, and we got through to 3.0, and we only allowed it on as a container host on AKS. What we've done is make it a general-purpose, so this is all the learnings that we've had in the heritage of Mariner."
Under the hood, Azure Linux 4.0 is based on Fedora Linux and is delivered as an open distribution on GitHub. This code is available now. Yes, Red Hat knows that Microsoft has done this. Everson continued, "So, we made a decision to use Fedora as an upstream, so it's using RPMs in the Fedora ecosystem. Microsoft curates the packages and the supply chain to fit Azure's cloud platform." Microsoft also created "it to be purpose-built for Azure, which integrates vertically into all of our infrastructure to give you the best Azure Linux experience on Azure." While Azure Linux will ship as a VM image, Microsoft is already preparing a developer-friendly path onto Windows desktops: "And as of today, we have it as a VM image for your VM host on Azure. We're going to announce WSL images as well."
While developers will be able to run Azure Linux locally through WSL, Microsoft is not positioning it as a traditional desktop Linux. Asked whether he could run it on his laptop, Everson said: "I will be able to run it on my laptop, or what have you. Yes, on Windows 11." However, when pressed about a desktop experience, Everson was clear that there are "no plans" for a graphical environment. "It's optimized for server-side in the cloud," he said, adding that even on a developer machine, users should expect a lean environment. "Minimal packages, yeah. The idea is that we offer you a consistent experience to do your development on your machine, and that you can take your workloads as you develop them on your machine and run them with VS Code. You can run your applications on that, and know that the platform is the same that you're running on the cloud, so that you have that kind of consistency between environments."
Flatcar itself remains the upstream project, but Microsoft is packaging it for Azure customers. Everson described Flatcar as "purpose-built, immutable, secure by default, production-ready operating system, and Azure Container Linux is the productization of that, but we're still investing in the upstream Flatcar ecosystem and pulling that downstream into a productized exterior experience just for container workloads, so it's a container hosting in AKS." To underscore the immutable model, he added that "Everything's baked in, so there is no package manager. We bake the bits into the immutable, and they're in the immutable version. So Azure Container Linux is the immutable version. So you shouldn't be changing any system packages or any application packages. Anything that you need to change is customer workloads run in containers."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Hot Take: Well that's good, now that seeing Microsoft is going back to discreet applications and not just skins of Microsoft Edge to consume all your RAM. You'd think MS apps would be optimized for each other but I guess the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing.
âMicrosoft has resolved a known issue that rendered the classic Outlook email client unusable for users who enabled the Microsoft Teams Meeting Add-in. [...]
The Hot Take: Green New agenda doesn't fit in with Ai replacement of the plebes for sure. So they push us to Solar & Wind while they get viable power options for a bot?
Microsoft and Nvidia are joining forces to accelerate the construction of nuclear power plants for power-hungry AI data centers. The partnership combines generative AI, digital twin simulation, and Nvidia's Omniverse platform to streamline the nuclear lifecycle from permitting through operations.
The Hot Take: If this proves true ASML better watch out. Their monopoly might come crashing down if they don't get something that competes.
Lace Lithography raised $40 million in Series A funding on Monday to develop a chipmaking tool that uses a helium atom beam instead of light to pattern silicon wafers.