Newsletter Archives

• Microsoft removes Win10 File Explorer features without notice

  Posted on January 8, 2024 at 02:45 CST by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 21.02 • 2024-01-08

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  Microsoft’s updates for Windows 10 in November and December 2023 made significant changes to the File Explorer interface and its search functionality. But the Redmond software giant has posted no written information about the differences or how users can configure them.

  Some of the modifications revert File Explorer to the configuration it had in Windows 10 19H2, the version that existed way back in November 2019.

  Ironically, you may find that you actually prefer the old behaviors to the new ones.

  But that isn’t the point. The point is that changes of this magnitude cry out for written explanations from Microsoft.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.02.0, 2024-01-08).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  Public Defender Digital Markets Act, EU, European Union, File Explorer, KB5032278, KB5033372, Newsletters, Regulation, Search, Windows 10

• EU is going to fund a bug bounty program for 7-Zip, KeePass, Notepad++, VLC Media Player and more

  Posted on December 30, 2018 at 08:23 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Bug bounty programs — where software bug catchers get rewarded for identifying security holes and disclosing them to the manufacturer — have proven popular and worthwhile, although they do have some downsides.

  Bug bounty programs are usually carried out by software manufacturers, who pay to have a chance to fix their mistakes before the bad guys have a chance to clobber their products.

  Folks who make open source software don’t have the same presumably-deep pockets as their commercial counterparts. When it comes to bug bounty programs, there’s no bounty to tap.

  Enter the European Union. As part of the Free and Open Source Software Audit project, EU will offer bug bounty programs for several Windows products I use all the time — 7-Zip, KeePass, Notepad++, VLC Media Player — and a bunch of products that I may use indirectly, including Apache Kafka, Apache Tomcat, Digital Signature Services (DSS), Drupal, Filezilla, FLUX TL, the GNU C Library (glibc), midPoint, PuTTY, the Symfony PHP framework, and WSO2.

  As Catalin Cimpanu explains on ZDNet:

  Starting with January, security researchers and security companies can hunt vulnerabilities in these open source projects and report them to the bug bounty programs… in the hopes of a monetary reward, if the bug report is approved and results in a patch.

  Other bug bounty, EU, open source

• EU Anti-Trust investigation hits Google with biggest fine yet

  Posted on June 27, 2017 at 15:30 CDT by Kirsty • Comment in the Forums

  Google has been fined $2.7 Billion US, in its European Union anti-trust ruling, after a 7 year probe.

  From Financial Times:

  “Google’s strategy for its comparison shopping service wasn’t just about attracting customers by making its product better than those of its rivals. Instead, Google abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results and demoting those of competitors. What Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules”, said EU’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager.

  Google is understood to be considering appealing the ruling. Other reports say that even if the fine is paid, it is unlikely to cripple Google/Alphabet financially, but Alphabet’s share price has dropped since the ruling was announced.

  You can read the European Commission press release here

  Other Anti-trust, EU, Google