American technology giant Microsoft Corporation will set up a development center in Kenya. Speaking at a meeting hosted by President Uhuru Kenyatta at State House, Nairobi, on Monday, the firm’s top executives led by Vice President for Gaming Phil Spencer said the Africa Development Centre will serve the East African region. The technology center, the seventh globally, will not only be Microsoft’s gateway to the region but will carry huge potential for jobs and business opportunities for tech-savvy Kenyan youth. Mr. Spencer said the firm will absorb 100 local engineers. President Kenyatta welcomed the initiative and assured Microsoft of his full support. “You can count on my 100 percent support. I want this to be a transparent partnership that benefits Microsoft and Kenyans. We want you to make Kenya your African home," President Kenyatta said. The President said Kenya is the best place to host the new development site. “You will not find another country with the same capacity as Kenya," he said. According to Microsoft, the Africa Development Centre will be a premier hub of engineering for the US technology company and its affiliates. The center will leverage the diversity of the regional landscape to build world-class talent capable of creating innovative solutions for global impact. Further, the center is expected to establish a collaborative engineering springboard for new technology investments in Kenya. Besides Nairobi, Microsoft has earmarked Nigeria as the other beneficiary of a similar facility on the continent to serve West Africa. He said the new development sites carry great potential for job creation, talent development, and technology transfer among Africa's youth especially in countries with good ICT literacy ratings such as Kenya. President Kenyatta said the new initiatives by Microsoft is in line with the government’s Big 4 development agenda. The Head of State called for openness in the partnership and challenged Microsoft to ensure intellectual property rights of Kenyans involved in their projects are adequately protected. Further details can be found on OUR FORUM.

The Windows 10 May 2019 Update offers many improvements and subtle changes that may improve performance to some extent. Microsoft’s Windows 10 version 1903 offers much-needed improvements to Windows Update, a new search experience, a proper light theme, and even performance improvements. Windows 10 May 2019 Update comes with two important changes that could address reliability problems on some PCs. Microsoft’s latest Windows update brings more robust protections for Spectre and Meltdown. Microsoft’s previous attempts at patching these vulnerabilities have resulted in performance issues, but the May 2019 Update should make things better. Microsoft is bringing Retpoline patches to Windows 10 which should finally address performance issues and still deliver robust protections for vulnerabilities. Microsoft describes Retpoline as a performance optimization for Spectre Variant 2. The software maker says that the new technique improves performance of Spectre variant 2 mitigations to noise-level for most scenarios. Start menu is getting subtle changes in Windows 10 May 2019 Update. It now comes with an expandable navigation bar, and the power button has been also updated with a new indicator to remind users when updates are pending a system reboot. But the most important change is a new process for Start. With Windows 10 version 1903, Microsoft is moving Start into its own app (process). In older versions of Windows 10, Start was part of the broader Shell experience which resulted in reliability issues. If a problem occurs with the main Shell process, the Start menu would remain responsive as it has its own process and this change will also contribute to the overall performance of the system. Follow this discussion on OUR FORUM.