After the last major update to Minecraft earlier this year, players found a significant decrease in Diamond Ore out in the wild. It wasn't just your imagination: Minecraft 1.17 (the first major Caves & Cliffs update), kicked down the amount wild-generated Diamond Ore in a major way. Another pair of resources were relatively out-of-whack with the update too: Diorite and Andesite - they've been reduced this week.
Windows users should install Microsoft's emergency patch for the "PrintNightmare" vulnerability, the software giant is recommending, after acknowledging last week that the critical software flaw was being actively exploited. At the time, Microsoft admitted, it had no simple fix for the problem, which could allow hackers to remotely take control of a PC, install their own code, and delete legitimate user data.
There's a new song out in the world today by the 90's R&B group All-4-One. This new single is a parody of a song released decades ago, appearing here via Xbox All Access Records, itself a parody of the actual Xbox All Access gaming system. The group, the actual All-4-One music group, came together to record a brand new music video for the song "It's All There (I Swear Remix)" to promote Xbox All Access for gamers.
Microsoft has revealed the next batch of games hitting Xbox Game Pass this month. This round of games is slightly smaller than what we're used to, but there are still some big names in the lineup. These games are joining the titles that were added on July 1st to comprise the Xbox Game Pass additions for the first half of July, and it looks like cloud players are the big winners with this round of incoming games.
Microsoft has issued an urgent warning over a Windows vulnerability, known as "PrintNightmare," which could allow hackers to remotely run code on your PC. The exploit relies on a flaw in the Windows Print Spooler service, and Microsoft says it's already aware of active exploits taking advantage of it in the wild.
Over the years, there've been many iterations of the Windows operating system. One of the worst errors that Windows users could see on their computers was the so-called Blue Screen of Death or BSOD. The screen got its name from the blue background color and, in recent iterations, had a frowning face warning users that the computer ran into a problem and had to restart.
Windows 11 doesn't seem to have many heavy changes in the architecture under the hood, and many see it more as Windows 10.5. Microsoft, however, is making a few changes to the operating system's requirements that would make Windows 11 incompatible with PCs that run Windows 10 perfectly well. It isn't just hardware requirements that could be a breaking change for new Windows 11 systems, though. Even the way you create a new computer's first user has an essential new requirement, at least for Windows 10 Home.
Windows 11's minimum system requirements have become sort of a mess to the point that Microsoft pulled out its tool for checking PC compatibility. For now, Microsoft seems to be bullish on the TPM 2.0 as a requirement to keep Windows 11 users secure and safe. That said, it does seem that the company is willing to bend the rules to accommodate other markets such as China and Russia. A promise just made by Parallels to eventually bring Windows 11 to Macs could once again raise the question of how essential that TPM security requirement is anyway.
Microsoft has long exited the smartphone rat race and, save for the lone Surface Duo, it is letting others make the phones that it then integrates with its Windows platform. That hasn't stopped others from trying to make Microsoft's old promises come true, even without Microsoft (or potentially against Microsoft's policies). With the announcement of Windows 11 and its native support for ARM64, it's no surprise that some enterprising developers are taking the OS to places and devices Microsoft would never approve of.
We already knew that July is going to be a big month for Microsoft Flight Simulator thanks to its incoming launch on Xbox Series X|S, but today we learned that it'll be even bigger than we initially imagined. Asobo Studio has revealed that it's shipping new performance optimizations to the PC version of Microsoft Flight Simulator in Sim Update 5, which will be landing alongside the Xbox version on July 27th.
With the announcement of Starfield's release date at E3 2021, there's no doubt some Bethesda fans out there who are now hoping that we'll start to hear more about The Elder Scrolls VI. The highly-anticipated Elder Scrolls entry was first revealed back in 2018, and ever since then, we haven't received any new details about the game itself. Bethesda, however, has said in the past that The Elder Scrolls VI will be coming after Starfield, so now that Starfield is on the horizon, maybe some new information about The The Elder Scrolls VI is on the way as well?
The next big leap for Windows 11 is already starting on the wrong foot, and it hasn't even launched yet. Microsoft's inconsistent and unclear requirements have left people scratching their heads. The final word on existing PCs with Intel and AMD processors is still up in the air at this point, but the story for ARM-based devices is so much simpler. It seems that only Qualcomm Snapdragon chips are officially supported, but that hasn't stopped some developers from making Windows 11 run on other ARM devices, including an old Lumia 950 XL.