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It's the end of yet another week and the start of a new year. Due to the ongoing holiday season, there hasn't really been an influx of news in the past couple of weeks, but that doesn't mean that nothing eventful happened in the latest news cycle. In fact, this week, we received some interesting pieces of information related to Microsoft Edge, Windows 8, and more. Find out in our digest for December 25, 2021 - December 31, 2021.

Now LastPass says some alerts of unauthorized logins that users received were sent in error
 
LastPass says there’s no evidence of a data breach following users’ reports that they were notified of unauthorized login attempts, as reported by AppleInsider. The password manager maintains that it was never compromised, and users’ accounts haven’t been accessed by bad actors.

Microsoft is adding a new feature to Edge, but you're probably not going to like it. The Chromium-based browser now has a games button, because why not?

The feature hasn't made it to the stable channel yet, but according to reddit user, Leopeva64-2, who spotted the option, is available in the Edge Canary Channel.
 
The person also shared some screenshots on the social website to highlight the feature. The toggle for the Games button is located in the Edge > Settings > Appearance page. It is not enabled by default, which is a good thing. Switching it on adds the button to the browser's toolbar. Clicking the said button, displays a modal that pulls content from MSN Games.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'The Matrix Resurrections' tops the chart, followed by ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home'. 'Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City' completes the top three.

Coffee is very chemically complex; its different components affect us in different ways.
You’ve probably heard it before: drinking coffee is good for your health. Studies have shown that drinking a moderate amount of coffee is associated with many health benefits, including a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. But while these associations have been demonstrated many times, they don’t actually prove that coffee reduces disease risk. In fact, proving that coffee is good for your health is complicated.
 
While it’s suggested that consuming three to five cups of coffee a day will provide optimal health benefits, it’s not quite that straightforward. Coffee is chemically complex, containing many components that can affect your health in different ways.

In September, Microsoft announced that it is working on an improved, faster, reliable, and super modern-looking Skype. After testing the redesigned app for the past few months, Microsoft recently released the updated Skype app for iOS and Android users. Along with the redesign, this update also includes some new improvements, read about them below.

We are at the end of the week and while it was a relatively slow due to the holiday season, there is still some stuff that is worthwhile to recap in case you haven't been keeping up with our daily coverage. This week, we learned some more about Active Directory (AD) troubles, one of Microsoft's name considerations when christening Cortana, and some interesting stuff about Windows 11 too. Find out more in our recap for December 18 - December 24.

'Wandavision' is the most-pirated TV show released in 2021. The popular Disney+ series decrowned 'The Mandalorian' which topped the chart last year. 'Loki,' another Marvel series, is listed in second place and 'The Witcher' completes the top three.
 
At the end of every year, we take a look at the most-downloaded TV episodes among torrenting pirates.
 
For several years in a row the list was headed by Game of Thrones but that reign came to an end last year after the series ended.

Microsoft Edge may send search results from any search that is run in the browser to Microsoft by default. The feature is not limited to Bing Search, it will inform Microsoft about searches on all search engines, including Google, DuckDuckGo, or StartPage, that users of Edge make, if the setting is enabled.
 
If you are using Microsoft Edge, either as the main browser on the system, as a secondary browser, or only when it is open as the default browser for certain links on the system, then you may want to check the settings of the browser to find out if search data is being sent to Microsoft.

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 ‘Venom: Let There Be Carnage'. 'French Dispatch' completes the top three.

Microsoft announced earlier today that it will be hosting an all-new "Windows Wednesday" 30-minute live show beginning next year in 2022 on the 5th of January when the pilot episode will be aired.
 
On the show, Microsoft says that it will discuss mostly topics related to development in the Windows environment, but some other stuff may be covered as well. The company says:
 
Some topics we’ll be covering include Windows Terminal, Windows Subsystem for Linux, Windows Sounds, PowerToys, and Fonts, just to name a few.

Although we are heading closer to the holiday season in many countries, that does not mean that news has slowed down. Far from it, in fact. This week, we'll be recapping Microsoft's continued efforts to make Edge your default browser, some changes to Windows, and a new Windows 11 Dev Channel build, among many other things. Find out about all of this in our weekly digest for December 11 - December 17.

Microsoft today announced the release of Windows 11 Preview Build 22523 to Dev Channel Insiders. In this build, Microsoft has moved a couple of settings from Control Panel into the Settings app. This build also comes with several bug fixes. Find the full change log below.

In 2013, the European Union slapped a massive $731 Million fine on Microsoft for failing to offer users a choice to set a default browser. 8 years have passed since then, has the Redmond company learned its lesson? Vivaldi's CEO/Co-founder Jón von Tetzchner, says no.
 
Tetzchner founded Opera browser along with Geir Ivarsøy in the mid-90s, before leaving the company in 2011. He founded Vivaldi Technologies in 2013, though the browser they created was released a couple of years later.
 
Around the same timeframe, in 2015, Microsoft unveiled Edge, built with the in-house Chakra core engine, as the new default browser in Windows 10. More importantly, this was the first step in replacing/retiring the legacy Internet Explorer.
 
What annoyed users is that Windows 10 complicated the way to set a different browser as the default handler. You need to jump through a couple of hoops in the Settings app, before selecting the application of your choice. This move was heavily criticized, notably by Mozilla. Fast-forward to 2021, and the same applies to Windows 11, though the new Edge is based on the Blink engine, from the Chromium open source project. For reference, Vivaldi, Opera also use the same engine.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Venom: Let There Be Carnage' tops the chart, followed by ‘The Last Duel'. 'No Time to Die' completes the top three.

Windows spotlight is a feature that automatically downloads and displays Bing pictures on your lock screen. The feature is available on both Windows 11 and Windows 10. But in Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22518, the spotlight feature has gotten better as it now takes care of your desktop backgrounds.
 
Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22518 has a new feature called Spotlight collection that changes your desktop background automatically every day. To put it simply, Windows 11 will now automatically change both the lock screen and background of your PC.

Microsoft has updated Edge Stable today to version 96.0.4664.93.
 
The update is part of the monthly security update for Edge and brings fixes for a large number of security issues.
 
The update fixes the following security issues, but Microsoft has unfortunately not assigned them a severity level yet or revealed if they are being actively exploited. On the Chrome blog however most of the issues are listed as High Severity.

We are the close of yet another week, and it's time to recap everything that went on in the Microsoft-verse. This was an exciting week due to some surprise announcements, Halo Infinite's campaign release, and a significant Windows 11 Dev Channel build. Let's dive into all that and more in our weekly digest for December 4 - December 10.

Alexa Internet

Alexa was founded as an independent company in 1996 and acquired by Amazon in 1999 for $250 million in stock. Alexa provides web traffic data, global rankings, and other information on over 30 million websites.[3] Alexa estimates website traffic based on a sample of millions of Internet users using browser extensions, as well as from sites that have chosen to install an Alexa script.[4] As of 2020, its website is visited by over 400 million people every month. Occasional disputes over its claims occur, but it is overall very comprehensive [citation needed]. Alexa Internet, Inc. is an American web traffic analysis company based in San Francisco. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.

Windows 11 is getting a new "Voice Access" feature to control the operating system using your voice and a microphone.
 
While Microsoft has already supported dictation via a microphone, the ability to use your voice to execute commands in Windows has been limited to specific applications.
 
In the Windows 11 preview build 22518 released today, users can now use the Voice Access feature to launch or close applications, switch to the Desktop, minimize and maximize windows, switch applications, select items, scroll, edit text, and more.

Today, Stardock released Fences 4, an app that allows users to automatically organize shortcuts and icons on their PC desktops into custom-sized spaces called fences. Building upon previous versions of Fences that are used by millions of users of Microsoft Windows, Fences 4 introduces new features that will streamline workflows while keeping desktops organized.

The Mozilla Firefox 95 web browser is now available for download ahead of its December 7th official launch for all supported platforms, including GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows.
 
Firefox 95 is here as the last release of the web browser in 2021, coming seven weeks after Firefox 94. It’s not a big update, but it brings a few cool changes to make your web browsing experience more enjoyable and secure.
 
This release further improves the Picture-in-Picture (PiP) feature with a new right-click context menu option called “Move Picture-in-Picture Toggle to Left/Right Side,” which lets you move the Picture-in-Picture toggle button to either the left or right side of a video.

Google announced today that it has taken action to disrupt the Glupteba botnet that now controls more than 1 million Windows PCs around the world, growing by thousands of new infected devices each day.

Windows 11 has brought with it a lot of visual changes and a bunch of exciting new features, but that’s obviously not the end as Microsoft is currently working on many new features and changes that will be available in future Windows 11 updates. One of the features that the company is currently testing is a subtle yet important change in the Network and internet setting.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Venom: Let There Be Carnage' tops the chart, followed by ‘The Last Duel'. 'Ron's Gone Wrong' completes the top three.