Lisa, Blackpink K-pop sensation, will be joining the cast of ‘White Lotus’

Lisa, a singer and rapper from Blackpink, will make her acting debut in Season 3 of the popular American television series “The White Lotus,” Variety announced.

Variety reported that Lisa will be credited on the HBO series under her full name, Lalisa Manobal, but her role has not been revealed. The show revolves around intrigue at exotic resorts.

According to Variety, “The White Lotus” season three will start filming this month in Bangkok, Phuket, and Koh Samui, Thailand.

Lisa is one of the most well-known women in South Korea because she is a member of the wildly successful girl group Blackpink. Her appearance on the show has the potential to raise her profile among American viewers.

Lisa Loud, a music and entertainment company she founded, made her announcement last week.

Under the name Jennie Ruby Jane, Lisa’s bandmate Jennie appeared in the HBO drama “The Idol” in 2023 with The Weeknd and Lily-Rose Depp.

Late last year, all four Blackpink members extended their contracts with YG Entertainment, a company based in South Korea. This led to a nearly 33% increase in the company’s shares.

Blackpink, who currently has over 90 million subscribers, broke the Guinness record earlier this year for having the most viewed music channel on YouTube.

Microsoft seeks to acquire cybersecurity firm Mandiant

https://www.ciobulletin.com/cyber-security/microsoft-seeks-to-acquire-cybersecurity-firm-mandiant

According to people familiar with the discussions, Microsoft Corporation is considering acquiring cybersecurity firm Mandiant Inc. This deal would increase efforts to protect customers from breaches and hacks.

It is still unsure if the deliberations would result in an offer, said the people associated with the deal. Shares of Mandiant rose by more than 18%, while those of Microsoft were up by 1.1%.

Mandiant became a standalone entity again last year when FireEye Inc sold its product business and the FireEye brand name for $1.2billion to a consortium led by private-equity company Symphony Technology Group.

Adding Mandiant would build up Microsoft’s arsenal of products for protecting customers and responding to cybersecurity threats. The software goliath acquired two smaller cybersecurity companies last year and reported that it had amassed $15 billion in cybersecurity software sales in 2001, up almost 45% from a year prior.

Microsoft last year appointed former Amazon.com Inc. cloud executive Charlie Bell to oversee its security efforts and said it had 3,500 employees working to safeguard clients from semiconductors chips to the cloud.

Mandiant has a market capitalization of about $3.6 billion. The company focuses on cybersecurity testing and cyber-incident response.

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Microsoft’s Xbox unveils backward compatibility program with 76 new games for its 20th anniversary

https://www.ciobulletin.com/gaming-and-vfx/microsoft-xbox-release-76-backwards-compatible-games-for-the-20th-anniversary

Microsoft put its Xbox backward compatibility program on hold two years ago. However, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Xbox, Microsoft is now adding 76 new games to the backward compatibility library today. The list of games added to the backwards compatibility library is surprisingly long, including the entire ‘Max Payne’ series, ‘Skate 2’, ‘Star Wars Jedi Knight II’, and ‘Dead or Alive Ultimate.’

Compatibility program lead at Xbox, Peggy Lo, explained that this new addition of 70+ titles to the backwards compatibility program was only feasible through the feedback and passion from the Xbox community. Ms. Lo also added that the Xbox community’s constant requests for specific titles and enhancements encouraged the backwards compatibility team at Microsoft to partner with the original creators to preserve thousands of games from over four generations of Xbox.

Every original Xbox or Xbox 360 game added to the backwards compatibility program will support Auto HDR on Xbox Series X/S consoles. The original Xbox games will also include a resolution increase. Xbox One X and Xbox Series X owners will observe a 4x resolution increase on original Xbox games, with a 3x bump on the Xbox Series S, and a 2x increase on Xbox One and Xbox One S consoles.

11 of the titles added as part of the backwards compatibility program will also enable the FPS boost feature. FPS Boost is also arriving on 26 existing backward compatible games, including the ‘Gears of War’ franchise, ‘Fallout 3’, and ‘Fallout: New Vegas.’

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Firefox can now bypass Microsoft’s default apps protections on Windows 11

https://www.ciobulletin.com/software/firefox-bypasses-microsofts-default-apps-protections-on-windows-11

Mozilla has reverse-engineered how Microsoft sets Edge as the default browser on Windows and leveraged that to set its own browser as the default.

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‘Microsoft Flight Simulator’ Top Gun game add-on delayed to May 2022

The delay has pushed the game add-on release to on or around May 27, 2022 premiere.

As Paramount Pictures pushed back its much-awaited Top Gun Maverick movie to next year, it has also affected the game add-on for Microsoft Flight Simulator. The developer Asobo Studio announced the delay in a blog post on the Microsoft Flight Simulator website. The delay has pushed the game add-on release to on or around May 27, 2022 premiere.

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Christopher Young Will Lead Microsoft’s Business Development Unit

Microsoft has announced former CEO of McAfee, Christopher Young, as the Executive Vice President of its Business development unit. Young is one of the leading voices in the world of cybersecurity.

With his recent history reflecting him as the leader of one of the biggest security companies around, Microsoft is gaining a remarkable leader in its ranks. He had led McAfee to spin out of Intel to become a standalone company. He has previously held senior leadership positions at RSA, AOL, VMware, and Cisco.

As the head of Microsoft’s global business development, Young will be responsible for creating important strategies that will drive the tech giant’s growth. “The pace of change in our world is accelerating, and technology-driven experiences that are more connected, interactive, and intelligent are the drivers,” he said. “It is great to be joining Microsoft, to help lead this transformation in the way we work and live.”

At Microsoft, Young will be reporting directly to the CEO SatyaNadella. In a statement, Nadella said. “We know that for our customers and partners, the next decade of economic growth will be defined by the digital investments made today. With Chris’ leadership, the Business Development team will continue to be a key accelerant for our partnerships and new growth opportunities.”

Young holds an A.B. from Princeton University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. He currently also serves as a member of the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) and sits on the boards of directors of American Express and Snap Inc.

Microsoft to hold its press event on March 30th

The software giant, Microsoft, is planning to go online this year with its Office press event. While the company generally holds press events in the spring in New York City every year, this year the event will be entirely digital an affair due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

The digital press event will start at 8 AM PT/ 11 AM ET on Monday, March 30th. In its press event, the company is expected to share and announce some of its future Office 365 plans, including some new apps and services that are focused on productivity. This will likely involve consumer subscriptions for Microsoft 365, under the “Life” branding. For some time now, Microsoft is working on a “for life” version of Microsoft Teams, which includes features like sending locations, shared family calendars, and document sharing.

In the press event, the software giant will not disclose any details about its new Surface hardware. The company announces some Surface hardware in its press event every year. But this time around, no details about a potential Surface Go successor and a Surface Book 3 is expected to be shared.

Other than the press event, Microsoft also revealed last week that it would hold its upcoming Build developers conference online instead of a physical event in Seattle.

Windows 10 updates will take away Cortana’s consumer skills

Microsoft is bringing some major changes to its personal assistant ‘Cortana’, the latest Windows 10 update will enhance security and bring new capabilities to the assistant, but unfortunately, the same update will also take away its consumer skills.

The software giant is slowly making Cortana productivity-oriented by removing its consumer skills. This will mean that Cortana can’t be now used for music, connected homes, and other third-party skills. There’s also hint that Microsoft will be killing Cortana support for older versions of Windows.

The all-new Cortana will provide an “update experience” and better “personal productivity assistance”, according to the company. Cortana will now have a chat-based user interface in the latest Windows 10 update along with support for input from the keyboard.

Cortana will still be able to carry out voice commands like searching for files and creating and searching for emails, etc. The personal assistant will also be able to access Microsoft To-Do lists, create reminders and even check existing calendars. But as of now, these features will only apply to users in the United States.

Microsoft hasn’t revealed when these features will be available worldwide, the company has only said that certain features like the chat feature and support for searching on Bing will be available outside the US, other productivity features will only be open to global users later in the future.

OneDrive for Android gets a revamp including dark mode

Microsoft is rolling out new features for its Android app OneDrive; the new update will include a dark mode, new icons, and a design.

The software giant has been pushing its Fluent Design aesthetic into many of its services including its Microsoft Office app. Now with the latest Android app, it lets users access some files stored on OneDrive and the company is providing a makeover by adding new features to it.

One of the biggest visual changes in the latest design aside from “golden folders” will likely be the dark mode which has been the most requested feature by users across the Android platform. There’s a revamp in the whole design, starting with the lens icon for scanning documents which has been replaced with a camera icon to make its purpose clear for the users.

Also, tools for annotating PDFs have become seamless and are now located at the bottom of the phone screen to mark up documents easily. There are other updates like “On the day” which will reveal photos that the user took on that day years ago. The same feature is now quite common across most social networking sites and cloud photo storage apps like Google Photos, but the inclusion of the feature in the OneDrive is confusing as users mainly use it for official matters.

Microsoft launches 100X100X100 program for B2B SaaS startups

Indian startups are gaining a reputation in the world of SaaS and Microsoft is backing these companies by launching 100X100X100, a program aimed at business-to-business SaaS startups.

According to the software giant, the 100X100X100 will bring together 100 committed companies and 100 early and growth-stage startups that will offer enterprise-ready solutions. Over a period of 18 months, these committed companies will spend $100,000 over a course.

The startups that are participating in the program will have access to prospective clients of Microsoft and will also be invited to customer events. Microsoft is offering these companies its technology platform and guidance to enhance their business and operations.

The Indian startup ecosystem is quite familiar with Microsoft as the company already runs “Microsoft for Startups” that offer early B2B startups access to the company’s Azure marketplace and enterprise sales team. Microsoft’s core rivals – Google and Amazon are also building their reputation in the Indian startup environment by sponsoring several events and handing out a range of goodies for credit to use their cloud platforms.

Microsoft is spending millions of dollars for these startups because these startups automatically become a customer and their solutions can thus be beneficial to several thousands of other customers. Also, the company is keeping its promise of accelerating the start-up ecosystem in India.