Hot on the heals of .NET 8 Preview 1 comes Preview 2! This monthly release cycle will continue until .NET 8 is released probably in November. Preview 2 includes some changes including new System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations extensions for RequiredAttribute.DisallowAllDefaultValues, RangeAttribute exclusive bounds, LengthAttribute, AllowedValuesAttribute, DenyValuesAttribute and Base64StringAttribute. Also there is new introspection support for function pointers in System.Reflection. This is the ability for reflection to obtain function pointer metadata. Be sure to read the announcement blog here.

It’s the most wonderful time of year! It’s time for Build registration and this year Build will be hybrid. Some lucky people get to go in person and everyone else can attend virtually. Microsoft Build is the premier developer conference of the year. It’s sometimes compared to WWDC and whatever Google’s dev conference is called (Google I/O - I had to look it up), but really it’s better than both of those combined.

There must have been some backlash over the Windows Insider Program’s channel updates because there was an E-mail sent out to Canary users offering a USB Memory Stick if they don’t already have one. This would be used to create a bootable drive with which to reinsall Windows. I got the code, but when I attempted to enter my address for them to send me the USB stick, the form didn’t have any values in the State drop down.

FREE Software # In an amazing announcement on Monday, Microsoft said that Outlook for Mac is now free to use! All you need to do is use it. There’s no need for a Microsoft 365 account, subscription, or license required. It’ll work with just about any E-mail account from Yahoo!, GMail, iCloud to anything with an IMAP endpoint. Outlook for Mac is built for Apple Silicon. It is a native app designed for macOS.