"Starting today, Linux desktops are now officially supported by Microsoft Defender," reports Neowin. A public preview of the threat detection app extends its enterprise security platform beyond servers to developer workstations running distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and RHEL. The offering includes antivirus protection, endpoint detection and response, vulnerability management, threat hunting, and device isolation. From the report: Microsoft is also making it easier to onboard desktops through streamlined methods, offering a unified security operations experience, strengthened security, and improved response times. Organizations that are already familiar with securing Linux servers via Defender should feel right at home securing desktops too, as the experience is exactly the same. Defender knows whether it is securing a device in a data center, the cloud, or that it is owned by a developer and identifies them as such in inventory and security workflows. As stated previously, all Linux server distros are supported via Defender on desktops too. These include RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, SLES, Fedora, and Oracle Linux, GNOME, KDE, and more. That said, you do need Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Plan 2 or a Microsoft 365 E5 and E7 subscription. You can enroll Defender on workstations using the same deployment methods you use for servers, but do check out the prerequisites here.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's been four long years since the last Apple TV 4K was released, and in that time there have been lots of hopes and dreams for features in whatever comes next. A new chip, 4K/120Hz support, audio passthrough, a remote locator, better home control integration - the 2022 Apple TV 4K is a great box, but there's still plenty of room for improvement. With the fourth-gen Apple TV 4K announced on Tuesday, some of those hopes were met, while others were unfortunately left out.

Coloring the announcement is the device's price. Apple eliminated the cheaper 64GB, Wi-Fi-only model, leaving just the 128GB, Wi-Fi and Ethernet model - and bumped up its p …

Read the full story at The Verge.

If you don't get AppleCare Plus for the iPhone Duo, any repairs are going to be pretty expensive. Apple published the estimated repair costs for the iPhone Duo without AppleCare Plus today, as reported by MacRumors, and they can be high: Battery service, for example, will cost $229, inner display damage will cost $999, and "other damage" costs $1,499.

Here's Apple's estimated costs for various repairs if you don't have AppleCare Plus:

Cover layer damage $49

Back glass damage $199

Battery service $229

Rear camera damage $229

Outer display damage $379

Outer display and back glass damage $509

Inner display damage $999

Ot …

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Following a report last week that Netflix was planning to lay off five percent of the company, today the streamer's co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters announced in an email that it would actually be laying off six percent of its workforce, or around 1,000 employees, according to Variety, which obtained a copy of the memo. That makes this Netflix's largest round of layoffs so far, following the company cutting 150 jobs in May 2022, and an additional 300 in June 2022 in an attempt to reduce costs following slower revenue growth.

Today's layoffs will mostly affect staff in Netflix's product, technology, human resources, and legal teams, acco …

Read the full story at The Verge.

In less than four months, Microsoft has added roughly half an Amazon to its market value.

The tech giant’s stock has gained about $1.4 trillion in value since early summer, rising from $352.83 on June 25, its lowest close in more than a year, to a record close of $543.45 on Tuesday, giving it a market value just above $4 trillion. The increase over that period is nearly as much as Tesla is worth.

As stock turnarounds go, it’s extraordinary. In January, Microsoft lost $357 billion in a single day, the biggest one-day drop in its history, as investors worried about the company’s AI spending and its reliance on OpenAI. By midsummer, Microsoft was the worst performer this year among the big tech stocks known as the “Magnificent Seven,” according to Morningstar.

The rebound accelerated in late July, when Microsoft reported that Azure, its cloud platform, grew 43% and topped $100 billion in annual revenue. The stock jumped 15.5% the next day. It has mostly kept climbing since, as Microsoft rolled out a revamped Copilot app, a new AI push for Windows and new AI chips.

Microsoft isn’t rising alone. The broader stock market has also been hitting record highs, led by AI stocks. The S&P 500 closed above 7,800 for the first time last week, even as the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield reached its highest level since 2002.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has been making a broader pitch along the way. In an essay posted on X in July, he warned that companies relying on outside AI labs “pay for intelligence twice, once with money, and again with something even more valuable,” meaning their own knowledge.

He urged businesses to keep control of that knowledge and avoid tying themselves to any one AI model. Microsoft sells access to models from OpenAI, Anthropic and others, along with its own.

Last weekend, he took up a related theme, calling on X for an “emergency brake” on advanced AI models. That means “separating the model from the harness that orchestrates its work,” he wrote. “We must assume a model is compromised and contain it from the start.”

The message also fits Microsoft’s business interests. As companies use AI models from multiple providers, the advantage could shift to companies like Microsoft that run the cloud and workplace software where businesses keep their data.

Microsoft reports its next quarterly results Oct. 28.

While the whispers say that everyone is becoming a generalist, that's not where headcount is going.