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Microsoft has sparked alarm with an upcoming Outlook for Windows feature relating to links in emailsclick on them, and they will open up a new tab in Microsofts Edge browser, even if your default browser is Googles Chrome or Mozillas Firefox. The same feature will be coming to Microsoft Teams.

As system administrators have been repeatedly noting in afiery Reddit thread(reported on byThe Verge), this disrespecting of users browser choices is a real blast from the past.

Back in 2007the year Apple released the first iPhone, though it was still very much a PC-first worldthe Norwegian browser firm Opera complained to the EU antitrust authority about Microsoft bundling its internet Explorer browser with every copy of Windows. Microsoft had recently had anexpensive run-inwith the regulator over its bundling of Windows Media Player with Windows, so, in 2009, it settled the browser criticism by agreeing to give people a choice of browsers that they could set up as their default when firing up a new copy of Windows.

The Microsoft that kept getting nailed for anticompetitive practices was meant to be gone nowa relic of the combative Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer days. Satya Nadellas Microsoft wassupposed to be a cooler, calmer entity. But the company is increasingly giving off retro vibes.

The most obvious indicator of Microsofts new phase is its aggressive,arguably impetuousbehavior in the A.I. space, where its become locked in a desperate race against Google that the latter companydoesnt seem to wantto be part of, just yet. But there are also signs of Redmond returning to its old, anticompetitive ways.

British regulators aresniffing around both Microsoft and Amazon, worried that their terms for cloud customers are designed to discourage switching to other providers. The U.K.s antitrust authority justnixed Microsofts $69 billion takeover of Activision-Blizzardbecause it thought Microsoft would use the deal to dominate the nascent cloud-gaming market. The European Commission is reportedly considering a fresh antitrust probe over Microsofts bundling of Teams with its Office suite (Slack complained) and is also looking into aseparate complaint(from Amazon and others) about Microsofts terms for running its software on non-Microsoft clouds.

On its own, Microsofts move to shove Edge down the throats of Outlook and Teams users is annoying, but perhaps defensible if you consider that it enables a new side-by-side experience that lets users see the emails or chats that contained the opened link in an Edge sidebar. However, in the overall context, its another small blow to the notion that Microsoft is a different, friendlier beast these days.

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David Meyer

Data Sheets daily news section was written and curated by Andrea Guzman.

Senior TikTok official to leave company. Just months after a promotion, Eric Han, the leader of TikToks U.S. trust and safety operations for years, will depart this month. The Verge reports that in December, TikTok combined its global trust and safety team with its U.S.-based trust and safety group, which Han had led from Los Angeles. Han had wanted a role leading that combined team, former employees say. Instead, he was given the role of head of trust and safety for the new U.S. data security team. The team was made to address national security concerns, but Han reportedly felt it left him vulnerable to being a scapegoat.

Amazon Web Services installs hiring controls. All potential hires for Amazons cloud business must now be filtered through Roster, a headcount management system that ensures they are matched with a specific open position. And in a separate internal recruiting tool, Amazon is enabling more features aimed at preventing offers unless theres a match in Roster, a memo viewed by Fortune says.The move comes as Amazon faces its lowest level of sales growth in years and CEO Andy Jassy looks to A.I. for a boost of the cloud division.

DeepMind CEO shares optimism on AGI. Computers with human-level cognitive abilities could be achievable within a few years, says Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis. Some top A.I. executives such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have shared their aims to develop the technology while others dont see a possible route to achieving it. But during an event held by the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Hassabis said its possible it could happen within the next decade with cautious development using the scientific method, where you try and do very careful controlled experiments to understand what the underlying system does, Hassabis said.

Using Zillow and any assumptions you need to make, find me the best place where I can renovate a house to add a Giant Mech Fighting Battle Dome. These will be really giant mechs fighting with giant rockets.

Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania professor Ethan Mollick, who was one of the select users to try out ChatGPTs new plug-ins, which include the real estate website Zillow. ChatGPT gave Mollick three sites in rural Nevada.

Cheggs shares tumbled nearly 50% after the edtech company said its customers are using ChatGPT instead of paying for its study tools, by Prarthana Prakash

DeepMind cofounders new A.I. chatbot is a good listener. And thats about it. Is that enough? by Jeremy Kahn

Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak isnt scared of A.I.but he believes itll be used by horrible people to do evil things,by Eleanor Pringle

Charles Schwabs daughter thinks Americans need to know more about moneyand is cautious of crypto, by Anna Tutova

The top 3 lessons Bill Gates taught this former Microsoft VP, by Eleanor Pringle

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel wiped out over $10 million in student loans for an entire graduating class. A year later, 3 grads share how it changed their lives, by Jane Thier

Google rolls out passkeys. Everyone with Google accounts can now use passkeys, which allow users to sign in to websites and apps using biometrics or codes used to unlock devices. It comes a year after Google, Apple, Microsoft, and the FIDO Alliance announced theyre teaming up so that users can log in without passwords.

Its been an aim for Google long before then. In a release announcing the news, Google said the launch is a big step in across-industry effort that we helped start more than 10 years ago, and we are committed to passkeys as the future of secure sign-in, for everyone. While passwords are still optional, passkeys work so that devices can only share a signature with Google websites and apps, and not with phishing intermediaries. That way, users dont have to be as watchful with where theyre used as people are with passwords or SMS verification codes. The data shared with Google is the public key and the signature, which dont contain biometric information.

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Microsoft is shoving Edge down peoples throats, like its the bad old days again - Fortune