Microsoft’s new Edge browser started randomly crashing when users typed into the address bar tonight. The issues appear to have affected Edge users who have selected Google as the default search engine. Microsoft investigated the problem and now says it’s believed to have been resolved.

Microsoft recommends turning off Search Suggestions in edge://settings/search. The Verge has tested this workaround and it solves the problem if you have Google set as your default search engine.

Since WannaCry and NotPetya struck the internet just over three years ago, the security industry has scrutinized every new Windows bug that could be used to create a similar world-shaking worm. Now one potentially "wormable" vulnerability—meaning an attack can spread from one machine to another with no human interaction—has appeared in Microsoft's implementation of the domain name system protocol, one of the fundamental building blocks of the internet.

As part of its Patch Tuesday batch of software updates, Microsoft today released a fix for a bug discovered by Israeli security firm Check Point, which the company's researchers have named SigRed. The SigRed bug exploits Windows DNS, one of the most popular kinds of DNS software that translates domain names into IP addresses. Windows DNS runs on the DNS servers of practically every small and medium-sized organization around the world. The bug, Check Point says, has existed in that software for a remarkable 17 years.

• Microsoft to pull support for PHP: Version 8? Exterminate, more like...

  Born-again open-source fan Microsoft is celebrating 25 years of PHP by, er, pulling its support for the scripting language that is beloved (or dreaded) by server operators the world over.

  Microsoft engineer Dale Hirt confirmed the change on the PHP mailing list, warning that the Windows behemoth was not "going to be supporting PHP for Windows in any capacity for version 8.0 and beyond."

  Current versions, 7.2, 7.3 and 7.4, will continue to receive support as per the community's cadence, which sees around two years of bug squashing followed by a year of security fixes. PHP 7.4 emerged last November, so Microsoft's benevolence should last until 2022 at which point the plug will be pulled.

  Register reader Alain Williams, who tipped us off to Hirt's posting, remarked: "I suspect that it means that Microsoft will not provide any resources to make PHP 8 work but expect others to do so instead."

  After thanking the Microsoft gang for its work over the years, PHP 8.0 Release Manager Sara Golemon said: "I won't say I'm not bummed," before expressing the hope that some sort of alternative might be worked out by the end of the year, when version 8 is due to drop.

• [PHP-DEV] Microsoft Support of PHP on Windows

  Hello PHP Internals,

  My name is Dale Hirt and I am the project manager for PHP inside Microsoft.

  We currently support PHP with development and build efforts for PHP 7.3, and PHP 7.4. In addition,
  we help with building PHP 7.2 on Windows when security fixes are required..

  However, as PHP 8.0 is now ramping up, we wanted to let the community know what our current plans
  are going forward.

  We know that the current cadence is 2 years from release for bug fixes, and 1 year after that for
  security fixes. This means that PHP 7.2 will be going out of support in November. PHP 7.3 will be
  going into security fix mode only in November. PHP 7.4 will continue to have another year of bug
  fix and then one year of security fixes. We are committed to maintaining development and building
  of PHP on Windows for 7.2, 7.3 and 7.4 as long as they are officially supported. We are not,
  however, going to be supporting PHP for Windows in any capacity for version 8.0 and beyond.

• mesa 20.1.3

  Hi all,

  I'd like to announce Mesa 20.1.3, the third bugfix release for the 20.1 branch.

  There's a lot in there, but more than half of the commits are just updates to
  our testing infrastructure; nothing out of the ordinary in the driver changes.

  The next bugfix release is planned for 2 weeks from now, on 2020-07-22.

  Cheers,
  Eric

• Mesa 20.1.3 Brings More Fixes To The Open-Source Vulkan / OpenGL Drivers

  Mesa 20.1.3 is out as the newest bi-weekly point release for this stable Mesa3D series.

  Mesa 20.2 continues building up a lot of feature work and should ultimately see its first official release around the end of August, but for now Mesa 20.1.x is the greatest when it comes to stable material. Mesa 20.1.3 is now the newest routine update for users of these predominantly OpenGL/Vulkan drivers.

• Deep dive into OpenGL over DirectX layering [Ed: Microsoft is attacking OpenGL again, the EEE way]

  Earlier this year, we announced a new project in partnership with Microsoft: the implementation of OpenCL and OpenGL to DirectX 12 translation layers (Git repository). Time for a summer update! In this blog post, I will explain a little more about the OpenGL part of this work and more specifically the steps that have been taken to improve the performance of the OpenGL-On-D3D12 driver.

• Progress Being Made On OpenCL+OpenGL Over Direct3D 12 [Ed: Microsoft pays Collabora to promote proprietary vendor lock-in; see comments]

  That OpenCL/OpenGL-over-D3D12 initiative was announced earlier this year only for it then to become public later that it's principally for the Direct3D 12 support coming to WSL2. With that there can then be the OpenGL graphics and OpenCL compute within the Linux WSL2 instances that in turn end up using the native D3D12 drivers of the host. Besides this layering library being developed with Collabora, Microsoft has also been working on a Wayland compositor as part of the GUI app support and the DirectX Linux kernel driver and Hyper-V DRM driver.

  Collabora for their part have published an update on their engineering effort of translating OpenGL and OpenCL for DirectX 12 consumption. They are making good progress and even have a Doom 3 time demo working. Obviously the resulting performance has been a big concern and focus.

• Welcoming five new Collaborans!

  With over 15 years' experience in working remotely, Collabora was, and continues to be, uniquely prepared to support our customers and our teams during these challenging times. Despite the many obstacles brought on by the pandemic, we have continued delivering services to our clients, and continue to build and strengthen our engineering and administration teams for the road ahead.

  Based in Canada, India, the United Kingdom, Brazil and Cyprus, these newest Collaborans join our worldwide team of highly skilled engineers, developers and managers who all share a common passion for technology and Open Source.