An anonymous reader quotes a report from XDA Developers: One of the founding members of The Document Foundation and handler of LibreOffice's PR and media relations, Italo Vignoli, took to the LibreOffice blog to call out Microsoft's practices with its Office application. The last time we saw Vignoli take to the stage, we saw him accusing Euro-Office of being just as bad as Microsoft with its practices. Vignoli's new post focuses entirely on Microsoft's strategy. He says that "the dominant format for office documents" is owned by Microsoft Office, particularly the DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX formats. The problem with these formats, Vignoli states, is that they "belong to Microsoft, are controlled by Microsoft and serve Microsoft's interest." This makes it difficult for other formats to take hold. Vignoli explains his point by stating that open document formats don't hide anything. People developing their own apps can use the format to both read and write the document format with perfection. Meanwhile, proprietary formats such as Microsoft's "contain undocumented features, private extensions or behaviors" that developers can't fully adapt to. That means that a presentation that looks great in the source software comes out strange when rebuilt in a third-party app. This, Vignoli says, is a huge issue [...]. Vignoli claims this creates a huge issue with document preservation. If a Word document was saved in one version of Office, will it still be readable in 20 years? Microsoft has added legacy support to its software before, but the company can one day decide that it's not worth the effort anymore and cut it out. When that happens, you have old documents that are either jumbled or unable to be opened at all.

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This week Slashdot reader joshuark found the story of exactly how in 2025 ProPublica reporter Renee Dudley confirmed Microsoft was running tech support for the U.S. Defense Department through China, America's biggest cybersecurity adversary — and how that investigation ultimately changed U.S. government policy. The reporter first found an ad offering $18 to $28 to hire Americans as "digital escorts" for China-based tech support, then just searched LinkedIn for people who apparently had answered the ad. They discovered that at the time "Behind the scenes, unseen by the users at the U.S. government, it's not just one person who responds," explains ProPublica's podcast. "It's two people... The China-based engineer is the one who knows how to fix the problem. On their end, they produce a block of code to solve it and send it over to the digital escort in the U.S. The digital escort then just copy-pastes it... All of this so that they can follow the government's rule: that you have to be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident to handle sensitive data." But amazingly to confirm it, ProPublica's researcher just had to input "Microsoft" and "escort" into the U.S. Patent Office search bar, and actually found patents related to digital escorts — along with names of the current and former Microsoft employees listed as inventors. Had the government signed off on the practice? "I could see what Microsoft actually told the government," the reporter says on the podcast, "And there was no mention of foreign engineers being used, and definitely no mention of China." ProPublic's story was published on a Tuesday, according to the podcast, and by Friday "Microsoft said it had stopped using China-based engineers to support Defense Department cloud systems." And America's Defense Department "also opened up an investigation, looking into whether any of Microsoft's China-based engineers had compromised the government's national security.

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Thursday the union that helped organize thousands of workers across numerous Microsoft-owned video game studios filed unfair labor complaints against Microsoft over the layoffs of 1,600 employees. The gaming news site Aftermath says the complaints allege unlawful action: "Xbox management is required to bargain with the union over the decision of layoffs prior to implementing them during the status quo period, and we are pursuing every available avenue to protect our members," a Communications Workers of America spokesperson said in a statement to Aftermath... Speaking to Game Developer, CWA Canada president Carmel Smyth elaborated on the unions' misgivings... "Basically the employer cannot arbitrarily change working conditions while it is engaged in negotiating with the union. We will continue to file legal challenges if necessary, and do all we can to defend the rights of Bethesda Game Studios workers...." "I'm very proud of the hard work the bargaining committees and CWA staff have put in to evaluate the legality of how the layoffs were conducted," a current id Software employee and union member told Aftermath. "It's important, even for the world's largest and most profitable companies, that there are consequences for violating federal labor law. If we hadn't explored this avenue to hold Microsoft accountable, it would be a sign to all other game executives that they can break the law and get away with it." Legal action is just one part of unions' larger effort to hold Microsoft accountable for its decision to lay off thousands of workers. This week, CWA also hosted a series of "Save Our Devs" demonstrations outside the offices of affected studios like Zenimax, id Software, Bethesda, and Obsidian.

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Microsoft restored streamer Joshua Khane's 25-year-old Xbox and OneDrive account after it was compromised by a hacker and then suspended, putting years of personal data, baby photos, and thousands of dollars in games at risk. IGN reports: While he was "extremely happy" and thanked Microsoft for its help recovering his account and all the invaluable information therein, he levied some criticisms toward the brand for its initial response, claiming it had told him the suspension was "irreversible" at first. "It's unfortunate that such a big company can bring back your account if you ask them to," he said. "The way it all went, to me, is a little bit shady, because it's not that they can't bring back your account -- they won't bring back your account if you're a nobody." Khane credited the community for making his story go viral and bringing it to Microsoft's attention, but felt that without their help, he would have been up a creek without a paddle. He also tied the situation to the growing conversation surrounding digital ownership, comparing it to Sony's decision to stop printing physical game discs starting January 2028.

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"I have been trying to find something meaningful to say about the Id Software layoffs," John Carmack posted Thursday to his 2.8 million followers on X.com: My "Microsoft will probably be a good steward of the brand" statement isn't aging well, and this is certainly going to dampen the mood of the founder reunion at QuakeCon next month. I'm saddened, but I can't muster anger or outrage over it. I don't have access to the books, but I suspect that Id Software was a marginal business from Microsoft's perspective. I believe the reports that Minecraft revenues have been carrying several other studios. To continue being produced long term, games need to succeed, not just be beloved. Games are competing with every other option for spending your leisure time and money, and the competition is brutal. You can't rule out the possibility that executives are idiots, but that shouldn't be your default belief. I don't think there is any obvious path that would have doubled the revenue from Id games. Could they have gotten more with a different pricing strategy? Could they have created more things for fans to buy? Could they have cost effectively marketed in a way that reached more players that would have loved and bought the games? Could they have changed the game designs and broadened the appeal to more players without alienating existing ones? Could they have produced the games at a lower cost, faster or cheaper? I really don't know. The game isn't over yet, and I hope the studio rallies through. Id Software co-founder John Romero also shared his thoughts on X.com: I'm so sorry for everyone at id Software affected by these layoffs. I know what it feels like to leave id while id goes on. It's a strange and painful thing to step away from a place that holds so much of your work, friendships and history. The people at id have done a great job moving that legacy forward. DOOM, Quake, and Wolfenstein are not easy names to carry on, especially in today's industry. The last few games showed real care, skill and respect for what those worlds mean to people. Romero also expressed his hope for "digital preservation" of Id's ongoing history (including code and assets). "I'm thinking of everyone at id today, and everyone else affected by yesterday's layoffs. Romero Games was there a year ago. I know how devastating it is, and my heart's with all of you. "Four Xbox studios are already out the door," noted IGN, but shared some thoughts about the future: Some have expressed concern that id Software would be unable to lead development on any new games in its current state, and that it might be relegated to support studio status. But in a new statement [posted to id Software's page on X.com] id Software said it was now at the staffing level it was back when it made the much-loved 2016 Doom reboot — and insisted it was still capable of making "great games." "While our studio was impacted, those changes were spread across teams. We still have the crew we need to build the games and tech we're known for... We're going to keep building the great games and tech that have defined us for the past 35 years, and we're looking forward to seeing you at QuakeCon this August."

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Microsoft plans to disable and remove OWA Light, the lightweight Outlook Web Access client for Exchange Server, in an upcoming update expected in August 2026. The company says retiring the two-decade-old legacy interface will reduce attack surface and engineering complexity, pushing users to the modern Outlook on the web experience instead. BleepingComputer reports: "OWA Light was an important compatibility experience when the web needed it. Today, the full Outlook on the web experience is the right place for us to focus," the Exchange Team said on Wednesday. "Retiring OWA Light will help reduce legacy surface area, simplify ongoing engineering work, and allow us to continue improving the experience customers use every day." Microsoft introduced OWA Light roughly two decades ago as an alternative to OWA Premium, offering a simplified web interface for systems that didn't have Internet Explorer 6 or later installed or ran older web browsers. At the time, the company said that OWA Light offered a cleaner look, faster logon times on low-bandwidth Internet connections, and worked in locked-down browser modes (such as kiosks). Microsoft deprecated OWA Light as of August 19, 2024, and announced this week that the OWA Light experience will likely be removed from Exchange Server (on-premises) next month. "In an upcoming Exchange Server update (estimated in August 2026), we plan to disable and remove the OWA Light experience. After that change is introduced, users will no longer be able to choose or be redirected to OWA Light and should use the modern Outlook on the web experience instead."

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