Microsoft this week released 139 updates affecting Windows, Office, .NET, and SQL Server (though there were no updates for Microsoft Exchange Server). Despite the absence of zero-days, the May Patch Tuesday update still requires Patch Now recommendations for Windows and Office.
The combination of three unauthenticated network RCEs (Netlogon, DNS Client, and SSO Plugin for Jira and Confluence), four Word Preview Pane RCEs, the large TCP/IP vulnerability cluster, and the carry-over BitLocker recovery condition (still active on Windows 10 and Windows Server) warrants an accelerated deployment release schedule. The Readiness team suggests that testing start with internet-facing services, domain controllers, and Office endpoints. The May 2026 Assurance Security Dashboard breaks the cycle down by Microsoft product family for deployment risk assessment.
(More information about recent Patch Tuesday releases is available here.)
Known issues
Patch Tuesday arrived this month with a clean bill of
Microsoft's LinkedIn CEO, Ryan Roslansky, took on an expanded role at the company as head of Office last year, and he's now getting more responsibilities as part of the latest leadership reshuffle inside Microsoft. Sources tell me that the Microsoft Teams organization is moving to report to Roslansky, who will now lead a new Work Experiences Group at Microsoft.
The changes are part of a broader reshuffle triggered by Rajesh Jha, executive vice president of Microsoft's experiences and devices group, retiring from Microsoft after more than 35 years. Jha was responsible for the teams behind Windows, Office, Copilot, and Microsoft 365, and Micr …
Read the full story at The Verge.
Microsoft has beefed up Copilot’s capabilities in Word, Excel and PowerPoint, claiming its Agent Mode will help speed up workers’ output.
The new features, announced last year, mean that Copilot can work more efficiently with Office applications, for example, understanding the richness of a pivot table in Excel or the use of animations in PowerPoint.
In tests with customers and researchers, Microsoft has learned a few things about how to improve the way Copilot is deployed, and laid out some of them in a post to a company blog. Now, it said, Copilot takes action rather than just suggesting steps — although ensuring that users maintain control. Other improvements include the ability to work with different models and better integration of Work IQ to deliver higher quality output.
Further developments are in the pipeline, Microsoft said, including improved editing for complex workflows such as finance spreadsheets and legal documents, more visibility on changes, and a more seamless integr
Microsoft is rolling out a new Agent Mode inside Office apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint this week. Previously described by Microsoft as "vibe working," the Agent Mode is a more powerful version of the Copilot experience in Office that Microsoft has been trying to sell to businesses.
"When we first shipped Copilot, foundation models were not powerful enough to use Copilot to command the applications," admits Sumit Chauhan, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Office Product Group. "This meant Copilot was a passive partner in documents: it could answer questions but missed the mark when it was asked to take action on the canvas direc …
Read the full story at The Verge.
Meta employees' activity at work is now being used to train the company's AI agents. As reported by Reuters, Meta is installing a tool it calls Model Capability Initiative (MCI) on US-based employees' computers that runs in work-related apps and websites, recording mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, and occasional screenshots.
The data from this tool will be used to train the company's AI models to get better at interacting with computers the way humans do, including automating work tasks like those Meta's employees perform on the job. According to Reuters, the data from MCI won't be "used for performance assessments."
"If we're buildin …
Read the full story at The Verge.
For all the fancy-schmancy things our modern-day technology promises to do for us, one thing Google has yet to give us is a simple and reliable way to sync the clipboards on our Android phones and computers.
It’s such a powerful feat to have at your fingertips, when it works well — ’cause you can just copy something in one place and then paste it immediately in the other, without any thought or effort. At its best, it’s like your two work surfaces share the same clipboard and work harmoniously to make your life easy.
What’s most frustrating is that Google actually had a super-simple system for this years ago, within Chrome — a single switch you could flip that’d just make your clipboards sync seamlessly and automatically, across any two devices where the browser was installed — but then, in typical Google form, the company gave up on the concept and killed it off at some point along the way. (Sigh.)
Since then, we’ve been left with a mishmash of overly complicated workarounds and compr
