Microsoft is working on significant updates to its Surface Pro and Surface Laptop lines. According to Windows Central, new devices "will be announced in the spring and will be marketed as Microsoft's first true next-gen AI PCs." From the report: For the first time, both Surface Pro and Surface Laptop will be available in Intel and Arm flavors, and both will have next-gen NPU (neural processing unit) silicon. Sources are particularly excited about the Arm variants, which I understand will be powered by a custom version of Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Series chips. Internally, Microsoft is calling next-generation Arm devices powered by Qualcomm's new chips "CADMUS" PCs. These PCs are purpose-built for the next version of Windows, codenamed Hudson Valley, and will utilize many of the upcoming next-gen AI experiences Microsoft is building into the 2024 release of Windows. Specifically, Microsoft touts CADMUS PCs as being genuinely competitive with Apple Silicon, sporting similar battery life, performance, and security. The next Surface Pro and Surface Laptop are expected to be some of the first CADMUS PCs to ship next year in preparation for the Hudson Valley release coming later in 2024.

So, what's changing with the Surface Laptop 6? I'm told this new Surface Laptop will finally have an updated design with thinner bezels, rounded display corners, and more ports. This will be the first time that Microsoft's Surface Laptop line is getting a design refresh, which is well overdue. The Surface Laptop 6 will again be available in two sizes. However, I'm told the smaller model will have a slightly larger 13.8-inch display, up from 13.5 inches on the Surface Laptop 5. Sources say the larger model remains at 15-inches. I'm told Surface Laptop 6 will also have an expanded selection of ports, including two USB-C ports and one USB-A port, along with the magnetic Surface Connect charging port. Microsoft is also adding a haptic touchpad (likely with Sensel technology) and a dedicated Copilot button on the keyboard deck for quick access to Windows Copilot.

The next Surface Pro is also shaping into a big update, although not as drastic as the Surface Laptop 6. According to my sources, the most significant changes coming to Surface Pro 10 are mostly related to its display, which sources say is now brighter with support for HDR content, has a new anti-reflective coating to reduce glare, and now also sports rounded display corners. I've also heard that Microsoft is testing a version of Surface Pro 10 with a slightly lower-resolution 2160 x 1440 display, down from the 2880 x 1920 screen found on previous Surface Pro models. Sources say this lower-resolution panel is only being considered for lower-tier models, meaning the more expensive models will continue to ship with the higher-resolution display. Lastly, I also hear Microsoft is equipping the next Surface Pro with an NFC reader for commercial customers and a wider FoV webcam, which will be enhanced with Windows Studio Effects. It should also be available in new colors. I've also heard we may get an updated Type Cover accessory with a dedicated Copilot button for quick access to Windows Copilot.

An anonymous reader writes: If you've ever performed a fresh reinstall of Windows 11, you'll know how long it takes and how much effort you need to make to get it started. Fortunately, Microsoft is taking note. As spotted in a recent update to the Windows 11 beta branch, the company is working on a way to reinstall your operating system through Windows Update, and no files are lost in the process.

The newest update to the Windows Insider beta branch has added a new feature titled "Fix Problems using Windows Update." The feature is still a work in progress, so it doesn't work as it should right now. However, if you're on the Windows 11 Insider beta branch, you can see the button for yourself on the Recovery page, among the Windows 11 backup settings.

"10 years later, the demise of Google Reader still stings," writes PC Magazine. But "Time marches on and corporate priorities shift. Here are the products and services that took a final bow in 2023..."

Some of the highlights? 'Clubhouse' Clones
In the early days of the pandemic, when Zoom happy hours and sourdough starters proliferated, Clubhouse burst onto the scene with an app that facilitated audio-only chats between groups large and small. Tech giants quickly churned out their own Clubhouse clones, but these party-line throwbacks were not long for this world. Facebook was the first to go, ditching its Live Audio Rooms in December 2022, but 2023 also saw the end of Reddit Talk, Spotify Live, and Amazon's live radio DJ Amp app. [X Spaces is still around]

Amazon Smile
Launched in 2013, AmazonSmile saw Amazon donate 0.5% of the price of eligible purchases made through smile.amazon.com to charity, with consumers able to choose from over a million charitable organizations to support. On Feb. 20, however, the program shut down because it "has not grown to create the impact that we had originally hoped," Amazon said at the time.

NFTs on Facebook and Instagram
Remember non-fungible tokens (NFTs)? Somehow, crypto bros convinced people to spend big bucks on what are essentially JPEGs. (Don't try to convince me otherwise.) Meta got in on the action in 2022, allowing Instagram users to create NFTs and Facebook users to share them. It didn't exactly set either social network on fire and Meta said in March it would be "winding down digital collectibles."

Cortana on Windows
In June, AI claimed its latest victim by coming after Microsoft's Cortana. The voice assistant never really made a splash compared to Amazon's Alexa or Apple's Siri, and with the launch of Bing Chat (now Copilot), Microsoft removed Cortana as a built-in app on Windows.
Also on the list are Blizzard's Overwatch League, third-party Reddit clients, and Venmo as a payment option on Amazon (effective this January 10).

Looking further into the future, Gmail's Basic HTML View disappears in 2024, while Wordpad will eventually be removed in an unspecified future release of Windows.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: In recent years, tools such as Figma, TLDraw, Apple's Freeform and Arc browser's Easel functionality have tried to sell the idea of using an "infinite canvas" for capturing and sharing ideas. French startup Kosmik is building on that general concept with a knowledge-capturing tool that doesn't require the user to switch between different windows or apps to capture information. Kosmik was founded in 2018 by Paul Rony and Christophe Van Deputte. Prior to that, Rony worked at a video production company as a junior director, and he wanted a single whiteboard-type canvas instead of file and folders where he could put videos, PDFs, websites, notes and drawings. And that's when he started to build Kosmic, Rony told TechCrunch, drawing on a prior background in computing history and philosophy.

"It took us almost three years to make a working product to include baseline features like data encryption, offline-first mode and build a spatial canvas-based UI," Rony explained. "We have built all of this on IPFS, so when two people collaborate everything is peer-to-peer rather than relying on a server-based architecture." Kosmik offers an infinite canvas interface where you can insert text, images, videos, PDFs and links, which can be opened and previewed in a side panel. It also features a built-in browser, saving users from having to switch windows when they need to find a relevant website link. Additionally, the platform sports a PDF reader, which lets the user extract elements such as images and text.

The tool is useful for designers, architects, consultants, and students to build boards of information for different projects. The tool is useful for them as they don't need to open up a bunch of Chrome tabs and put details into a document, which is not a very visual medium for various media types. Some retail investors are using the app to monitor stock prices and consultants are using them for their project boards. Available via the web, Mac, and Windows, Kosmik ships with a basic free tier, though this has a limit of 50MB of files and 5GB of storage with 500 canvas "elements." For more storage and unlimited elements, the company offers a $5.99 monthly subscription, with plans in place to eventually offer a "pay-once" model for those who only want to use the software on a single device.

According to Canalys Research, Microsoft's plan to end support for Windows 10 could result in about 240 million computers being sent to landfills. "The electronic waste from these PCs could weigh an estimated 480 million kilograms, equivalent to 320,000 cars," adds Reuters. From the report: While many PCs could remain functional for years post the end of OS support, Canalys warned demand for devices without security updates could be low. Microsoft announced a plan to provide security updates for Windows 10 devices until October 2028 for an undisclosed annual price. If the pricing structure for extended Windows 10 support mirrors past trends, migrating to newer PCs could be more cost-effective, increasing the number of older PCs heading to scrap, Canalys said.

Microsoft has announced that it is deprecating Windows Mixed Reality, with plans to remove the feature in an upcoming release of the OS. From a report: Windows Mixed Reality was Microsoft's attempt at building out a VR ecosystem for Windows PCs, but unfortunately this effort has been mostly inactive for a number of years. While there have been several VR headsets built for Windows Mixed Reality, most of them launched between 2017 and 2021. It's been a long while since OEMs released new VR headsets for Windows Mixed Reality, likely because SteamVR is a much more successful platform with a much wider selection of games. Unfortunately, Microsoft says the deprecation of Windows Mixed Reality also includes support for using a Windows Mixed Reality headset with SteamVR, along with the dedicated Mixed Reality Portal app which acted as a launch environment for VR apps and games built for Windows Mixed Reality.

Longtime Slashdot reader UnknowingFool writes: Microsoft has released a new software tool to remove printer software from HP that was installed without user permission or system need. A few weeks ago, users noticed that Windows Update installed HP printer software even if they did not have HP printers or printers at all. Affecting Windows 10 and 11, consumers reported that this update sometimes caused problems as it could rename their non-HP printers as HP printers causing some printing features to be inaccessible. Microsoft has not disclosed the root cause of the issue. The fix released by Microsoft requires users to download and run a dedicated troubleshooting tool available from Microsoft's support site. "There are four different versions of the troubleshooter, depending on whether you have the 32- or 64-bit version of an Arm or x86 version of Windows," notes Ars Technica. "Microsoft will also release an additional recommended troubleshooting tool 'in the coming weeks' that will fix the problem in Windows 11 upon a user's request without requiring the download of a separate tool."

Amrita Khalid reports via The Verge: Proton has released a desktop version of its Proton Mail app that will give users full access to both Proton Mail and Proton Calendar and (eventually) the ability to view your emails offline. The desktop app is available in beta is optimized for both Windows and macOS, and encrypts sent emails end-to-end just like with the browser version, according to the Swiss company, while offline access to emails will be available "soon." [...] It's important to note that you'll still need internet access to both send and encrypt your emails on Proton. But the offline feature will let you view and draft emails while traveling, during a power outage, or any other situation where you don't have access to the internet.

Proton is also bringing encrypted auto-forwarding to paid users, both on its desktop and browser versions, though the encryption for forwards will only apply when the forwarded emails go to other Proton users. The company says it has made improvements to Proton Calendar, too, including a fully searchable web version. Not everyone will be able to access Proton's desktop app right away. Proton is restricting access to its paid "Visionary" tier for legacy users at first (though the company is reopening subscriptions to that tier through January 3rd, 2024). The plan is to make the desktop app available to all users in early 2024.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Thirty years ago, a botanist in Germany had a simple wish: to see the inner workings of woody plants without dissecting them. By bleaching away the pigments in plant cells, Siegfried Fink managed to create transparent wood, and he published his technique in a niche wood technology journal. The 1992 paper remained the last word on see-through wood for more than a decade, until a researcher named Lars Berglund stumbled across it. Berglund was inspired by Fink's discovery, but not for botanical reasons. The materials scientist, who works at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, specializes in polymer composites and was interested in creating a more robust alternative to transparent plastic. And he wasn't the only one interested in wood's virtues. Across the ocean, researchers at the University of Maryland were busy on a related goal: harnessing the strength of wood for nontraditional purposes.

Now, after years of experiments, the research of these groups is starting to bear fruit. Transparent wood could soon find uses in super-strong screens for smartphones; in soft, glowing light fixtures; and even as structural features, such as color-changing windows. "I truly believe this material has a promising future," says Qiliang Fu, a wood nanotechnologist at Nanjing Forestry University in China who worked in Berglund's lab as a graduate student. Wood is made up of countless little vertical channels, like a tight bundle of straws bound together with glue. These tube-shaped cells transport water and nutrients throughout a tree, and when the tree is harvested and the moisture evaporates, pockets of air are left behind. To create see-through wood, scientists first need to modify or get rid of the glue, called lignin, that holds the cell bundles together and provides trunks and branches with most of their earthy brown hues. After bleaching lignin's color away or otherwise removing it, a milky-white skeleton of hollow cells remains. This skeleton is still opaque, because the cell walls bend light to a different degree than the air in the cell pockets does -- a value called a refractive index. Filling the air pockets with a substance like epoxy resin that bends light to a similar degree to the cell walls renders the wood transparent.

The material the scientists worked with is thin -- typically less than a millimeter to around a centimeter thick. But the cells create a sturdy honeycomb structure, and the tiny wood fibers are stronger than the best carbon fibers, says materials scientist Liangbing Hu, who leads the research group working on transparent wood at the University of Maryland in College Park. And with the resin added, transparent wood outperforms plastic and glass: In tests measuring how easily materials fracture or break under pressure, transparent wood came out around three times stronger than transparent plastics like Plexiglass and about 10 times tougher than glass. "The results are amazing, that a piece of wood can be as strong as glass," says Hu, who highlighted the features of transparent wood in the 2023 Annual Review of Materials Research.

During a Wells Fargo summit last month, Microsoft Gaming CFO Tim Stuart suggested Xbox is seeking to bring Xbox Game Pass to competing platforms, such as PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. One of the scenarios for Xbox Game Pass expansion may include offering access in exchange for viewing advertisements. Windows Central reports: "For models like Africa, or India, Southeast Asia, maybe places that aren't console-first, you can say, 'hey, do you want to watch 30 seconds of an ad and then get two hours of game streaming?'," Stuart continued. "Africa is, you know, 50% of the population is 23 years old or younger with a growing disposable income base, all with cell phones and mobile devices, not a lot of high-end disposable income, generally-speaking. So we can go in with our own business models and say -- there's millions of gamers we would never have been able to address, and now we can go in with our business models."

Microsoft has previously surveyed Xbox users on the Xbox Insider Program and via other avenues about the possibility of offering Xbox Game Pass time in exchange for viewing advertisements. And recently, security researcher Title_OS shared some code snippets from the Xbox OS that described systems that would provide access to Xbox Game Pass via on an "Earned Time" basis, complete in 15-minute blocks.

The Browser Company's Chromium-based Arc browser, which aims to rethink the whole browser UI with a sidebar for tabs and lots of personalization options, is finally coming to Windows. In a post on X, the Browser Company says it's sent out the first Windows beta invites. It's currently only available for iOS and Mac users. Slashdot reader dokjest shares the email they received: Hey there,

Hursh here, CTO at the Browser Co, with some exciting news! A little while ago, you signed up for a brand new browser, Arc -- one that The Verge called "The Chrome replacement I've been waiting for" and Shopify's CEO named as "the best browser." Well, starting today, we're onboarding our very first beta testers to Arc on Windows. And you're next!

Over the coming weeks, our team will be onboarding hundreds of beta testers to Arc. And come January, we'll be welcoming 1,000s of you from the waitlist every week. If you don't mind a few bugs and some rough edges, sign up as a beta tester and we'll prioritize your invite to Arc! For us, this period leading up to our Windows release is about crafting the very best version of Arc that we can. And that means learning from you -- what you love, what's missing, what doesn't feel quite right. It still feels surreal to say, but it really does all begin today. Follow along for some fun on isarconwindowsyet.com -- And we'll see you very soon!

- Hursh and The Browser Co Crew

P.S. If you have a friend on Windows with one too many tabs, who could use a better browser -- forward this on to them, too! If you want to get on the beta waitlist, you can sign up here.

TechSpot remembers that Turbo Pascal "stands out as one of the first instances of an integrated development environment (IDE), providing a text-based interface through which developers could write their code, compile it, and finally link it with runtime libraries." The early IDE, written in Assembly, eschewed the use of floppies, instead building the code directly in RAM for an unprecedented performance boost.

The language demonstrated superior speed, greater convenience, and a more affordable price compared to its competition. Philippe Kahn, Borland's CEO who initially conceptualized turning the new language into an all-in-one product, decided to sell the software via mail orders for just $49.95, establishing a market presence for the then-newly founded company.
It was called "Turbo" because its use of RAM made it considerable faster, adds the Register: Anders Hejlsberg, who would later go on to join Microsoft as part of the C# project, is widely credited as creator of the language, with Borland boss Philippe Kahn identifying the need for the all-in-one tool...

Version 1 had limitations. Source code files, for example, were limited to 64 KB. It would only produce .COM executable files for DOS and CP/M — although other architectures and operating systems were supported. It would also run from a single floppy disk, saving users from endless swapping in a world where single drives were the norm and a hard disk seemed impossibly exotic — and expensive... However, it was with version 4, in 1987, that Turbo Pascal changed dramatically. For one, support for CP/M and CP/M-86 was dropped, and the compiler would generate .EXE executables under DOS, lifting the .COM restrictions...

For this writer, 1989's version 5.5 was peak Turbo Pascal. Object-oriented programming features turned up, including classes and inheritance, and a step-by-step debugger. Version 6 and 7 brought in inline assembly and support for the creation of Windows executables and DLLs respectively, but version 7 also marked the end of the line as far as Borland was concerned. Turbo Pascal for Windows would turn up, but was eventually superseded by Delphi.

However, the steamroller of tools such as Visual Basic 3 ensured that Borland never had the same success in Windows that it enjoyed under DOS. As for Turbo Pascal, several versions were eventually released by Borland as freeware including version 1 for DOS, 5.5, and 7.
I once took a computer programming course taught entirely in Pascal. (Functions, subroutines, and procedures...)

Any Slashdot readers have their own memories to share about Pascal?

The Go team conducted a survey of Go Developers in August — and has just released the results. Among the findings: "90% of survey respondents saying they felt satisfied while working with Go during the prior year," while 6% said they were dissastified. Further, the number of people working with Go continues to increase; we see evidence of this from external research like Stack Overflow's Developer Survey (which found 14% of professional developers worked with Go during the past year, a roughly 15% year-over-year increase), as well as analytics for go.dev (which show an 8% rise in visitors year-over-year). Combining this growth with a high satisfaction score is evidence that Go continues to appeal to developers, and suggests that many developers who choose to learn the language feel good about their decision long afterwards...

As in prior years, the majority of survey respondents told us they work with Go on Linux (63%) and macOS (58%) systems... We do continue to see that newer members of the Go community are more likely to be working with Windows than more experienced Go developers. We interpret this as a signal that Windows-based development is important for onboarding new developers to the Go ecosystem, and is a topic our team hopes to focus on more in 2024...

While x86-compatible systems still account for the majority of development (89%), ARM64 is also now used by a majority of respondents (56%). This adoption appears to be partly driven by Apple Silicon; macOS developers are now more likely to say they develop for ARM64 than for x86-based architectures (76% vs. 71%). However, Apple hardware isn't the only factor driving ARM64 adoption: among respondents who don't develop on macOS at all, 29% still say they develop for ARM64.
The most-preferred code editors among the surveyed Go programmers were VS Code (44%), GoLand (31%), Vim/Neovim (16%), and Emacs (3%). 52% of the survey's respondents actually selected "very satisfied" for their feelings about Go — the highest possible rating.

Other interesting findings:

• " The top requests for improving toolchain warnings and errors were to make the messages more comprehensible and actionable; this sentiment was shared by developers of all experience levels, but was particularly strong among newer Go developers."

• "Three out of every four respondents work on Go software that also uses cloud services; this is evidence that developers see Go as a language for modern, cloud-based development."

• The experimental gonew tool (which offers predefined templates for instantiating new Go projects) "appears to solve critical problems for Go developers (especially developers new to Go) and does so in a way that matches their existing workflows for starting a new project. Based on these findings, we believe gonew can substantially reduce onboarding barriers for new Go developers and ease adoption of Go in organizations."

• And when it comes to AI, "Go developers said they are more interested in AI/ML tooling that improves the quality, reliability, and performance of code they write, rather than writing code for them."

Microsoft's Notepad app on Windows 11 is getting a character count at the bottom of the window. "When text is selected, the status bar shows the character count for both the selected text and the entire document," explains Microsoft's Windows Insider team in a blog post. "If no text is selected, the character count for the entire document is displayed, ensuring you always have a clear view of your document's length." The Verge reports: This is the latest addition in a line of changes to Notepad this year, with the app recently getting a new autosave option that lets you close it without seeing the pop-up save prompt every time. Microsoft has also added tabs to Notepad, a dark mode, and even a virtual fidget spinner.

Alongside the Notepad changes in this latest Windows 11 test build, the widgets section of the OS is also getting some improvements. You'll soon be able to just show widgets and hide the feed of news and articles that appear inside the widgets screen.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Windows' infamous "Blue Screen of Death" is a bit of a punchline. People have made a hobby of spotting them out in the wild, and in some circles, they remain a byword for the supposed flakiness and instability of PCs. To this day, networked PCs in macOS are represented by beige CRT monitors displaying a BSOD. But the BSOD is supposed to be a diagnostic tool, an informational screen that technicians can use to begin homing in on the problem that caused the crash in the first place; that old Windows' BSOD error codes were often so broad and vague as to be useless doesn't make the idea a bad one. Today, version 255 of the Linux systemd project honors that original intent by adding a systemd-bsod component that generates a full-screen display of some error messages when a Linux system crashes.

The systemd-bsod component is currently listed as "experimental" and "subject to change." But the functionality is simple: any logged error message that reaches the LOG_EMERG level will be displayed full-screen to allow people to take a photo or write it down. Phoronix reports that, as with BSODs in modern Windows, the Linux version will also generate a QR code to make it easier to look up information on your phone.

What's next for Windows? Microsoft plans next-gen Windows AI release in 2024, plus details on recent changes to the Windows roadmap. From a report: According to my sources, the new Windows bosses are now returning to an annual release cycle for major versions of the Windows platform, meaning Windows is going back to having just one big feature update a year instead of multiple smaller ones throughout. Microsoft may still use Moment updates sparingly, but they will no longer be the primary delivery vehicle for new features going forward.

These changes are said to take effect after Hudson Valley launches in 2024, so I'm still expecting at least one more Moment update for the current version of Windows 11, which sources say will ship in the February or March time frame early next year. [...] According to my sources, Microsoft's blockbuster new feature will be the introduction of an AI-powered Windows Shell, enhanced with an "advanced Copilot," that's able to constantly work in the background to enhance search, jumpstart projects or workflows, understand context, and much more.

Sources say these AI features will be "groundbreaking." The company is working on a new history/timeline feature that will let users scroll back in time through all the apps and websites that Copilot has remembered, which can be filtered based on a user's specific search criteria. For example, you could type "FY24 earnings" and every instance where that term was on-screen will reappear for you to see and open. AI will also enhance search in Windows, with the ability to use natural language to find things that you've previously opened or seen on your PC.

"Researchers have identified a large number of bugs to do with the processing of images at boot time," writes longtime Slashdot reader jd. "This allows malicious code to be installed undetectably (since the image doesn't have to pass any validation checks) by appending it to the image. None of the current secure boot mechanisms are capable of blocking the attack." Ars Technica reports: LogoFAIL is a constellation of two dozen newly discovered vulnerabilities that have lurked for years, if not decades, in Unified Extensible Firmware Interfaces responsible for booting modern devices that run Windows or Linux. The vulnerabilities are the product of almost a year's worth of work by Binarly, a firm that helps customers identify and secure vulnerable firmware. The vulnerabilities are the subject of a coordinated mass disclosure released Wednesday. The participating companies comprise nearly the entirety of the x64 and ARM CPU ecosystem, starting with UEFI suppliers AMI, Insyde, and Phoenix (sometimes still called IBVs or independent BIOS vendors); device manufacturers such as Lenovo, Dell, and HP; and the makers of the CPUs that go inside the devices, usually Intel, AMD or designers of ARM CPUs. The researchers unveiled the attack on Wednesday at the Black Hat Security Conference in London.

As its name suggests, LogoFAIL involves logos, specifically those of the hardware seller that are displayed on the device screen early in the boot process, while the UEFI is still running. Image parsers in UEFIs from all three major IBVs are riddled with roughly a dozen critical vulnerabilities that have gone unnoticed until now. By replacing the legitimate logo images with identical-looking ones that have been specially crafted to exploit these bugs, LogoFAIL makes it possible to execute malicious code at the most sensitive stage of the boot process, which is known as DXE, short for Driver Execution Environment. "Once arbitrary code execution is achieved during the DXE phase, it's game over for platform security," researchers from Binarly, the security firm that discovered the vulnerabilities, wrote in a whitepaper. "From this stage, we have full control over the memory and the disk of the target device, thus including the operating system that will be started." From there, LogoFAIL can deliver a second-stage payload that drops an executable onto the hard drive before the main OS has even started. The following video demonstrates a proof-of-concept exploit created by the researchers. The infected device -- a Gen 2 Lenovo ThinkCentre M70s running an 11th-Gen Intel Core with a UEFI released in June -- runs standard firmware defenses, including Secure Boot and Intel Boot Guard. LogoFAIL vulnerabilities are tracked under the following designations: CVE-2023-5058, CVE-2023-39538, CVE-2023-39539, and CVE-2023-40238. However, this list is currently incomplete.

"A non-exhaustive list of companies releasing advisories includes AMI (PDF), Insyde, Phoenix, and Lenovo," reports Ars. "People who want to know if a specific device is vulnerable should check with the manufacturer."

"The best way to prevent LogoFAIL attacks is to install the UEFI security updates that are being released as part of Wednesday's coordinated disclosure process. Those patches will be distributed by the manufacturer of the device or the motherboard running inside the device. It's also a good idea, when possible, to configure UEFIs to use multiple layers of defenses. Besides Secure Boot, this includes both Intel Boot Guard and, when available, Intel BIOS Guard. There are similar additional defenses available for devices running AMD or ARM CPUs."

Liam Proven reports via The Register: One of the best FOSS text editors for Windows, Notepad++, is turning 20, while cross platform Geany just hit version 2.0 as it turns 18 years old. Notepad++'s version 8.6 is the twentieth anniversary release of one of the go-to FOSS text editors for Windows. [...] If you use an Arm-powered Windows machine, such as the ThinkPad X13S, there is now a native Arm64 version. It still supports x86-32 as well, and there are portable versions which work without being installed locally -- handy if you don't have admin rights. There is even a usefully recent version for Windows XP if you are still using that geriatric OS. This release adds multi-select, allowing you to manipulate multiple instances of the same text at once, which looks confusing but very powerful.

It is a staple on all of the Reg FOSS desk's Windows partitions, thanks to its inclusion in the essential Windows post-install setup tool Ninite. Ninite will install -- and update -- a whole swath of FOSS and freeware tools for Windows, making setup of a new machine doable in just a couple of clicks. And if you keep the Ninite installer file around, you can re-run it later and it will update everything it installed first time around. Ninite does offer other programmers' editors, such as Eclipse and Microsoft Visual Studio Code -- but they are behemoths by comparison. VSCode is implemented as an Electron app, meaning that it's huge, embeds an entire copy of Chromium, and scoffs RAM like it's going out of fashion. Notepad++ is a native Win32 app, making it tiny and fast: the download is less than 5MB, one twentieth the size of VSCode.

Sluggish, bloated editors are not just a problem on Windows. Gargantuan Electron apps are distressingly prevalent on Linux and macOS as well. This vulture is guilty of using some, and even recommending them -- because some of them can do things that nothing else can. That's not true in the case of plain text editors, though. You don't have to put up with apps that take a good fraction of a gigabyte for this. Geany is a good example. It straddles the line between a text editor and an IDE: it can manage multi-project files, automatically call out to compilers and suchlike, and parse their output to highlight errors. We last mentioned it nearly a decade ago but the project recently reached voting age -- at least for humans -- and after this milestone in maturity its developers called the latest release version 2.0. It has better support for dark mode, a new tree view in its sidebar, adds a bunch of new supported file types, and can detect if the user changes the type of a file and re-do its syntax highlighting to match.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Windows 10's end-of-support date is October 14, 2025. That's the day that most Windows 10 PCs will receive their last security update and the date when most people should find a way to move to Windows 11 to ensure that they stay secure. As it has done for other stubbornly popular versions of Windows, though, Microsoft is offering a reprieve for those who want or need to stay on Windows 10: three additional years of security updates, provided to those who can pay for the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program.

The initial announcement, written by Windows Servicing and Delivery Principal Product Manager Jason Leznek, spends most of its time encouraging users and businesses to upgrade to Windows 11 rather than staying on 10, either by updating their current computers, upgrading to new PCs or transitioning to a Windows 365 cloud-based PC instead. But when Leznek does get to the announcement of the ESU program, the details are broadly similar to the program Microsoft offered for Windows 7 a few years ago: three additional years of monthly security updates and technical support, paid for one year at a time. The company told us that "pricing will be provided at a later date," but for the Windows 7 version of the ESU program, Microsoft upped the cost of the program each year to encourage people to upgrade to a newer Windows version before they absolutely had to; the cost was also per-seat, so what you paid was proportional to the number of PCs you needed updates for.

One difference this time is that Microsoft told us it would be offering Windows 10 ESU updates to individuals, though the company didn't offer particulars. More details should be available on Windows 10's lifecycle support page soon. Leznek reiterated that Windows 10 22H2 would be the final version of Windows 10 and that the operating system would not receive any additional features during the ESU period.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from XDA Developers: A few days ago, we spotted that the HP Smart App was being installed on people's PCs without their consent. Even worse, the app would reappear if users tried to uninstall it or clean-installed Windows. Now, the cause has finally been identified: a recent Windows 10 and 11 update is renaming everyone's printers to "HP LaserJet M101-M106" regardless of what model it actually is. As reported on Windows Latest, the latest update for Windows 10 and 11 seems to think that people's printers are an HP LaserJet model, regardless of their actual brand. It's believed that the bug appeared after HP pushed its latest metadata to Windows Update, but something went awry in the code and caused other printers to be labeled as HP LaserJet printers.

This explains why the HP Smart App has been sneaking onto people's computers without their consent. A key part of Windows Update is keeping third-party drivers and devices updated, including downloading any apps that the devices depend on. After the printer metadata incorrectly identified everyone's printers as HP LaserJet printers, Windows installed all the software needed for an HP printer to work smoothly, including the HP Smart App. Fortunately, the bug only affects the metadata for the printer. While the printer may show up with a different name on your system, you should still be able to send print jobs to it. Microsoft has since removed the fault metadata from Windows Update, so anyone performing a clean install from now on should get their original printer's name back and stop the HP Smart App from re-downloading. Further reading: HP Exec Says Quiet Part Out Loud When It Comes To Locking in Print Customers