As certain tech companies like Twitter prefer their employees to work from home forever, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has warned that making remote work permanent could have serious consequences for social interaction and mental health for workers as virtual video calls cannot replace in-person meetings.
Nadella said that an all-remote setup would be "replacing one dogma with another dogma".
"What does burnout look like? What does mental health look like? What does that connectivity and the community building look like? One of the things I feel is, hey, maybe we are burning some of the social capital we built up in this phase where we are all working remote. What's the measure for that?" Nadella was quoted as saying.
His comment came after Twitter granted an option to his staff to work from home 'forever' even after the COVID-19 pandemic ends.
Twitter upped the ante after Facebook, Alphabet (Google) and others have asked their employees to work from home till year-end.
Microsoft has extended its work-from-home policy until at least October.
The tech giant's stock price is up 14 per cent this year and the company has nearly $140 billion in cash.
Microsoft spent $10 billion in its most recent quarter on share buybacks and dividends, up more than 30 per cent from the year before.
"We're going to boldly allocate and acquire, build, innovate, partner, whatever," said Nadella.
"We are also going to make sure that we have the ability to do credit for small businesses and other organizations that need that help".
When you try to open the Microsoft Store app, does it immediately close? There are a number of fixes including Re-register Through Command Prompt, Delete Window Store Local Cache, Take Ownership of the WindowsApps Folder, Check Time Zone & Toggle Auto Time Setting but there is a simple fix for those still experiencing this problem. You don't need to create another session. There's an easy fix that worked for me after everything else failed.
Click Start ---> Settings ---> Apps ---> Apps & features ---> scroll down to Microsoft Store and click on it ---> Advanced options ---> then click reset.
Also make sure that Windows updates are enabled.
After the launch of the Microsoft Store App, wait for a few minutes. Don't close it. The Store will work again :)
MS Power User reports on the results of a 2,300-employee experiment by Microsoft with a four-day work week:
In August this year, Microsoft Japan ran an experiment where for one month they had a 3 day weekend, taking Friday off. This was paid leave and did not impact the worker's usual vacation allocation.
Some results were predictable. Workers were happier and took 25.4 percent fewer days off during the month. There were also savings from spending less time at work. 23.1 percent less electricity was used and 58.7 percent fewer pages were printed. More importantly from a bottom-line standpoint, however, productivity went up 39.9%, as fewer and shorter meetings were held, often virtually rather than in person.
Has the number of bugs in Windows updates increased in the past couple of years? If so, what is the reason for the increase in bugs? That's the question that former Microsoft Senior SDET Jerry Berg, better known as Barnacules, answered in a recent video.
Berg worked for 15 years at Microsoft and one of his roles was to design and develop tools and processes to automate testing for the Microsoft Windows operating system. He left the company after Windows 8.1 shipped to the public.
Microsoft changed testing processes significantly in the past couple of years. Berg describes how testing was done in the late 2014 early 2015 period and how Microsoft's testing processes changed since then.
Back in 2014/2015, Microsoft employed an entire team that was dedicated to testing the operating system, builds, updates, drivers, and other code. The team consisted of multiple groups that would run tests and discuss bugs and issues in daily meetings. Tests were conducted manually by the team and through automated testing, and if tests were passed, would give the okay to integrate the code into Windows.
The teams ran the tests on "real" hardware in a lab through automated testing. The machines had different hardware components, e.g. processors, hard drives, video and sound cards, and other components to cover a wide range of system configurations, and this meant that bugs that affected only certain hardware components or configurations were detected in the process.
Microsoft laid off almost the entire Windows Test team as it moved the focus from three different systems—Windows, Windows Mobile and Xbox—to a single system. The company moved most of the testing to virtual machines and this meant according to Berg that tests were no longer conducted on real and diverse hardware configurations for the most part.
Microsoft employees could self-host Windows which would mean that their machines would also be used for testing purposes. The main idea behind that was to get feedback from Microsoft employees when they encountered issues that they encountered during work days. Berg notes that self-hosting is not as widely used anymore as it was before.
The main sources of testing data, apart from the automated test systems that are in place, comes from Telemetry and Windows Insiders. Windows Insider builds are installed on millions of devices and Microsoft collects Telemetry from all of these devices.
The Microsoft File and Folder Troubleshooter can find and fix common problems with file and folder operations, including Windows Explorer and File Explorer in Windows 7, 8, and 10.
Like most Troubleshooters, there's an Advance Options setting that allows you to decide if repairs are made automatically or not. Typically, you would allow repairs to be made automatically.
You are also offered one of four possible problems with the last option if nothing fits or you're not sure. Follow the steps by clicking on Next until repairs are made, or you're told everything is OK.
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When you try to open the 
