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We are at the close of another week of 2022, which means that it's time once again to recap everything that went on in the world of Microsoft in the past few days. This time, we have a bunch of news related to what's next for Windows 11, some information regarding Windows updates, and a sprinkle of Edge news for good measure. Find out more about this in our weekly digest for April 2 - April 8.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Moonfall' tops the chart, followed by ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home'. 'Death on the Nile' completes the top three.

We are at the end of yet another week, so it's worth recapping everything that went on in the world of Microsoft in the past few days. This was a very, very busy week with lots of news about browsers, continued impressive performance from Defender, and a disappointing offensive move from Google. Find out all the details about this and more in our weekly digest for March 26 - April 1!

Cloudflare DNS’s service has had an important impact on the internet. Here is why it is such a major contributor in the fight for privacy and freedom.

Microsoft has just released a new build 22000.593 (KB5011563) as an optional "C" update for Windows 11. You may remember that this same update was released to the Beta Channel two weeks ago, and although this is an optional update, it will eventually be offered through the Patch Tuesday release cycle in around two weeks time.
 
As such the long list of improvements and fixes, shown below, are unchanged.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' tops the chart, followed by ‘Jackass Forever'. 'Turning Red' completes the top three.

AMD’s next architecture update, the Zen 4 might have a CPU with a TDP of 170W. That is 65W higher than Zen 3’s Ryzen 9 5950X. The core counts remains the same, though.

Although major updates for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge arrive after every four weeks, minor revisions to fix bugs, performance issues, and security vulnerabilities are released outside of this window too. This time, both Edge and Chrome have received an emergency patch to plug a security hole present in Chromium.
 
The issue in question is tagged as CVE-2022-1096, but the interesting thing is that very little about it has been publicly revealed as of now. The Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) has simply described it as "Type Confusion in V8".

Windows 11 version 22H2 aka Sun Valley 2 is set to launch later this year. Unlike the original Windows 11 release, it won't be a massive update with radical design changes.
 
Instead, Sun Valley 2 will be similar to Windows 10 Anniversary Update, so you can expect minor improvements and a few new features.
 
The version 22H2 will contain a number of improvements and it will be offered as a full feature update rather than an enablement package.

We are at the close of the last week of March, which means that it is once again time to recap everything that went on in the world of Microsoft in the past few days. This was a very eventful week due to some cybersecurity warnings and incidents, Windows updates and references to unreleased builds, and some positive news for gamers too. Find out more about all of this in our weekly digest for March 19 - March 25!

Leopeva62-2, an ever-giving source of upcoming features and changes in mainstream browsers (mostly Chrome and Edge), shared their new findings on Reddit. According to a post on Chromium Gerrit, Chrome developers plan to implement a new feature that allows adding comments and notes to web pages.
 
The idea is not something new, and the Chrome Web Store has numerous extensions for the same purpose. Also, Microsoft has already implemented the idea, although currently only for PDF files. It appears that Google wants to make web notes native in Chrome.

As Lapsus$ data extortion gang announced that several of its members are taking a vacation, the City of London Police say they have arrested seven individuals connected to the gang.

The DirectStorage API SDK finally hit Windows recently which means game developers can now begin using the technology for implementation in PC games. Following that, today we have the first demo of a game using DirectStorage, shown off at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2022 event.
 
Luminous Productions' Forspoken, formerly called Project Athia, has gained the feature and the numbers are impressive. A couple of loading scenes were shown in the demo and the improvement using Microsoft's DirectStorage looks big, even when using SATA-based SSDs; and the gap is bigger with faster NVMe SSDs.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' tops the chart, followed by ‘Turning Red'. 'The Adam Project' completes the top three.

A new BitRAT malware distribution campaign is underway, exploiting users looking to activate pirated Windows OS versions for free using unofficial Microsoft license activators.
 
BitRAT is a powerful remote access trojan sold on cybercrime forums and dark web markets for as low as $20 (lifetime access) to any cybercriminal who wants it.
 
As such, each buyer follows their own approach to malware distribution, ranging from phishing, watering holes, or trojanized software. 

We are at the end of another week of 2022, which means that it's time yet again to recap everything that went on in the world of Microsoft in the past few days. We have lots of news to cover, ranging from ads in File Explorer, a new Windows 11 Dev Channel build with Start menu improvements, and a reminder from Microsoft regarding Internet Explorer (IE). Read on for more details in our weekly digest for March 12 - March 18!

A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft released another Windows 11 preview build with one feature users miss a lot after moving from Windows 10 to 11: folders on the Start menu, we even took a Closer Look at the new feature. Unfortunately, the first implementation was half-baked at best, but Microsoft promised to deliver improvements in future builds. One of the needed improvements has just arrived in the latest update 22579.
 
Windows 11 build 22579, currently available in the Dev channel and as ISO files for "clean installation," does not contain groundbreaking changes but offers a few exciting improvements. You can now name and rename folders to keep your Start menu tidy and well-organized. To give a folder a name on the Start menu, open the folder and click the "Edit name" text box. Enter a name, then press Enter or click anywhere.

Microsoft has released today a new Windows 11 Dev Channel build 22579 and like the all the recent Dev Channel releases, this one too is packed with new features and changes. And as usual, there are many bug fixes too.

Microsoft is getting one step closer to releasing Edge 100 to all users. The company has pushed the newest feature update to Edge Insiders in the Beta channel, the final testing stage before public rollout.

The latest Edge stable release, version 99.0.1150.46, was released yesterday in order to patch a security vulnerability. Assigned the ID "CVE-2022-26899", the security bug can lead to privilege escalation. You can download it here.
 
The underlying Chromium version 99.0.4844.74 has also got several security patches, one of them being critical. These are given below:

With the working landscape still a challenge for those teams working remotely from home, Google aims to make things convenient and comfortable for anyone. With this, Google keeps on offering business-oriented products to the market together with frequent improvements in them. One we have today is the new Google Docs email draft template the multinational technology company introduced for easier collaboration of team members on an email draft.
 
The idea behind this new feature announced on March 15 is very simple: you compose an email draft via Google Docs and then export it to Gmail when you’re ready to send it. It gives an additional function to the @menu of the online word processor, which is aimed to help users perform actions quickly.

Microsoft announced a new accessibility feature for its browser to improve the user experience for visually impaired people. Edge now automatically generates image captions so that screen readers can describe visual content for those who depend on assistive technologies. Image captions or "alt text" is a crucial part of the accessible web that often gets ignored, and Microsoft wants to fix this problem by providing auto-generated captions.
 
Microsoft uses Azure Cognitive Services to analyze and describe pictures with missing "alt text." When Edge detects an unlabeled image, it sends it to Microsoft's servers for processing. Machine learning algorithms can work with the most common formats, such as JPEG, PNG, GIF, WEBP, and others, to provide descriptive summaries in 5 languages. Besides, Microsoft can analyze text on images in more than 120 languages.

Microsoft appears to be testing a new type of ad inside File Explorer on Windows 11. Microsoft MVP and Twitter user Florian Beaubois discovered an ad in the latest test build of Windows 11, prompting users to check out the Microsoft Editor. While the ads might have appeared for some Windows 11 users, Microsoft says it was a mistake.
 
Microsoft says Windows 11 File Explorer ads were ‘not intended to be published externally’

New AGESA update will add official support for A320, B350, and X370 boards.

New CPUs (and one APU) use Zen 2 and Zen 3 to plug the gap in AMD's lineup.
 
That's changing soon. AMD is releasing a slew of processors priced between $99 and $299 that should be suitable for new budget builds or upgrades to existing PCs. The Ryzen 5000-series chips are all based on AMD's aging-but-still-current Zen 3 architecture, while the cheapest chips re-use the 2019-era Zen 2 architecture to keep prices low.