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This was one heck of a busy week due to not one, but two Microsoft events on the same day. Top that up with Patch Tuesday as well and that means that we have lots of stuff to go through in this week's edition of Microsoft Weekly. Find out more in our latest digest covering October 8 - October 14!

Microsoft has released the latest Patch Tuesday updates for Windows 11 21H2 and 22H2. The update is KB5018418 on Windows 11 21H2 and KB5018427 on Windows 11 22H2. The updates also comes with Windows 11 servicing stack updates, which ensure future Windows updates can be delivered reliably.

It's the second Tuesday of the month, which means it's Patch Tuesday time again. As such, today Microsoft is rolling out the monthly security update (also called "B release") for October 2022 on Windows Server 20H2, and Windows 10 for the latest versions, 21H1, 21H2.

Microsoft has released its Patch Tuesday updates for Windows 8.1 (KB5018474) and Windows 7 (KB5018454). To get the Windows 7 update, you will need to be a customer that has purchased the Extended Security Update (ESU).

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Bullet Train' tops the chart, followed by ‘Hellraiser'. 'Top Gun: Maverick' completes the top three.
 
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

Intel has confirmed that a source code leak for the UEFI BIOS of Alder Lake CPUs is authentic, raising cybersecurity concerns with researchers.
 
Alder Lake is the name of Intel's 12th generation Intel Core processors, released in November 2021. 
 
On Friday, a Twitter user named 'freak' posted links to what was said to be the source code for Intel Alder Lake's UEFI firmware, which they claim was released by 4chan.

Remote employees seem to have it made: They can avoid in-person small talk, work from the sofa instead of a cubicle, and skip the office bathroom. But like candy corn or a fondant cake, remote work isn’t always as good as it looks.
 
More than half (55%) of remote employees are highly anxious about their finances, according to a recent survey conducted by MetLife, which interviewed 1,000 full-time workers. That’s more than fully in-person or hybrid employees, 46% of whom feel similarly.

As reports had suggested, Microsoft begun rolling out Windows 11, version 22H2 last month. And as one would expect, it hasn't been a complete smooth sailing.
 
For example, many users reported that the update was failing with an error code "0x800f0806". Interestingly, one of our Neowin members managed to figure out a workaround for the problem. Then there are the usual suspects, like printer problems, where a new printer policy was leading to printers being not detected post the 2022 Update. Another related issue led Microsoft to block the update altogether on affected devices. Following that, Microsoft issued a word of warning to IT admins as it discovered that provisioning is currently broken for Windows 11 22H2.

If you're not paying for your VPN service, you could be putting yourself at risk. But there are limited-service free VPNs provided by reputable companies you could try out, such as ProtonVPN. Here's why there isn't one best free VPN, but there are options we like.
 
"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." That phrase has actually been around since the days of Old West saloons. If you bought a drink, the saloon would provide you with a free lunch. There was a catch, of course. The lunches were so salty that patrons wound up buying more and more drinks, to slake their thirst.

Windows 11 2022 Update has spent about a year in the Windows Insider program, allowing users to report as many bugs as possible for Microsoft to fix before shipping the thing to the general public. Still, some bugs have managed to slip under the radar. The software giant has already confirmed problems with printers, crippled SSDs, and broken provisioning. Now Microsoft is looking into complaints about botched Remote Desktop connections.
 
According to reports from regular customers and IT admins published on Microsoft's forums and other social media, Windows 11 has a hard time connecting to remote desktops after upgrading to version 22H2. Symptoms vary from case to case and include problems with connecting, random disconnections, and freezes.

In a perfect example of there being no honor among thieves, a threat actor named 'Water Labbu' is hacking into cryptocurrency scam sites to inject malicious JavaScript that steals funds from the scammer's victims.
 
In July, the FBI warned of scam 'dApps' (decentralized applications) that impersonated cryptocurrency liquidity mining services but, in reality, stole a victim's crypto investments.
 
Liquidity mining is when an investor lends their crypto to a decentralized exchange in exchange for high rewards, commonly generated through trading fees.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Bullet Train' tops the chart, followed by ‘Vesper'. 'Hocus Pocus 2' completes the top three.
 
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

Microsoft rolled out Windows 11 Dev Channel build 25211 a few days ago, and it's a significant update not because of the new features it packs, but arguably, for returning a basic functionality that people have been clamoring for since Windows 11 became available. This is the ability to open the Task Manager by right-clicking the Windows 11 Taskbar.
 
Windows 11 has been available for almost a year, and it has become very obvious to its users that while it is aesthetically pleasing, Microsoft has cut a lot of functionalities. One such feature was the ability to open the Task Manager by right-clicking the Taskbar and selecting the option from the associated context.

KB5017389 is the first preview cumulative update for the recently released Windows 11 2022 Update. It does not contain security improvements and fixes, and Microsoft does not require installing it as soon as possible. KB5017389 introduces Widgets notifications, patches for the Microsoft Store, daylight saving time improvements in Chile, and other enhancements.

We are at the end of another busy week, which means that it's time to recap everything important that happened in the Microsoft-verse in the past few days. This time around, we have items related to issues and new features in the Windows 11 2022 Update, recent capabilities in Microsoft Teams, and some news related to apps, including the death of SwiftKey for iOS.
Windows 11 2022 Update... and printer issues

A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft restored the redesigned system tray in Windows 11 preview builds from the Dev Channel. Back then, we called this redesigned a "half-improved and half-crippled" job due to improvements mixing with removed features, such as the ability to drag icons in and out of the taskbar. Microsoft promised to continue improving the system area to address customer feedback, and the company has delivered in a short period.
 
Windows 11 build 25211 has brought a much improved system tray with better visuals and the previously missing features. Icons now have a rounded focus area that matches the rest of the buttons on the taskbar, the overflow menu appears with "delightful" animations, and the tooltips follow the system theme. Although visual changes and consistency are great additions that Windows 11 need a lot, many users seem to care more about arranging icons by dragging them. That feature is also back, and it has a modern-looking divider helping you to place an icon in the right spot. Neat.

Just like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge gets new major releases roughly every four weeks. While Chrome 106 arrived yesterday, Edge 106 is yet to become available. Ahead of its release, Microsoft has now detailed a new API in Edge 105 that makes desktop web apps feel more native.
 
Window Controls Overlay is a new Progressive Web App (PWA) feature that Microsoft initially talked about in January 2020. The company then started working on an early implementation in March 2021 through the Chromium project followed by an Origin trial, with Chrome actually adopting it with version 102 in May 2022. It has now become the default experience on Edge 105 too with a formal specification being published too.

High-end chips have more cache and cores; laptop and mid-range CPUs come later.

An overview of the improvements coming to Intel's 13th-gen desktop chips.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Thor: Love and Thunder' tops the chart, followed by ‘Top Gun: Maverick'. 'Three Thousand Years of Longing' completes the top three.

Ryzen 7000 CPUs use a new platform—with plenty of changes.
AMD's Ryzen 7000 launch is bigger than just the processors. The processor architecture is changing, but it's also being accompanied by changes to everything from the chipset to the physical socket that the chips plug into. The last time this many things changed at once was back in 2017, when the first-generation Ryzen chips originally launched.

Windows 11 22H2 was just released, and with it comes a new security feature called Enhanced Phishing Protection that warns users when they enter their Windows password in insecure applications or on websites.
 
Windows login credentials are valuable to threat actors as they allow them to access internal corporate networks for data theft or ransomware attacks.
 
These passwords are commonly acquired through phishing attacks or by users saving their passwords in insecure applications, such as word processors, text editors, and spreadsheets.

It's that time of the week again, where we recap everything important that went on in the world of Microsoft in the past few days. This was quite an eventful week in the Redmond camp due to the rollout of the Windows 11 2022 Update, a significant Dev Channel build, and some news about upcoming Surface devices. Without further ado, let's dive in to our weekly digest for September 17 - September 23.

As reports had suggested, Microsoft released Windows 11 version 22H2 to the general availability channel on September 20. You can read all about the new exciting stuff in these articles here. A few days before that, some users received the 2022 feature update early with new devices. The machines were shipping with build 22621.521 (KB5017321) which was indeed the 22H2 update as confirmed later by Microsoft.
 
Since release, many, however, are reporting of problems and issues when trying to update to Windows 11 22H2. According to these reports, the update is failing with an error code "0x800f0806". This is apparently happening when trying to do an in-place upgrade via Windows Update in Settings due to some compatibility issue or something similar. A clean install though is seemingly working fine.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Thor: Love and Thunder' tops the chart, followed by ‘Top Gun: Maverick'. 'Three Thousand Years of Longing' completes the top three.

The day is finally upon us. Windows 11 is receiving its first major update in the form of Windows 11 2022 Update. That's correct, Microsoft is seemingly getting rid of its "year-half" naming convention - at least publicly - which would have dubbed this release as "version 22H2". It does make sense considering Microsoft shifted to an annual update cadence with Windows 11 so it doesn't need to signify which half of the year an update was released in.