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Microsoft will retire the long-underused Mobile Plans app from Windows and move plan purchases and eSIM provisioning to carrier websites and the built‑in Windows Settings experience, with the in‑OS app scheduled to stop functioning on February 27, 2026; installed cellular profiles will continue to work, but discovery, checkout, and subscription management will shift to operators and Settings-driven provisioning. Background / Overview The Mobile Plans app has existed since the Windows 10 era...

A Proxy Error 429 — the server telling your browser “too many requests” — is one of those transient but productivity-killing problems that can come from either your side (misbehaving scripts, bad proxy configuration, malware) or the server’s side (rate limiting, DDoS protection, load shedding). This guide explains what an HTTP 429 through a proxy on Windows 11 actually means, why it happens, and provides a practical, prioritized troubleshooting path that takes you from fast consumer-level...

Infobip’s expanded integration with Microsoft Azure Communication Services (ACS) pushes global SMS reach into new territory, making carrier-grade messaging available through Azure for well over 100 additional countries and unlocking broader international coverage, two‑way messaging, and partner-managed sender identities for enterprises that build on Azure. Announced across both companies’ channels during mid‑2025, the move pairs Infobip’s deep telco relationships and regulatory tooling with...

Windows has stopped pretending to be merely an operating system that quietly evolves; with Windows 11 Microsoft has made a series of deliberate architectural and policy choices that break long-standing continuity with the past—and those choices are already reshaping the desktop landscape, corporate upgrade cycles, and the political economy of silicon. Background The marriage of Intel silicon and Microsoft Windows—Wintel—was never just marketing shorthand. For decades it defined expectations...

OpenAI and Microsoft have stepped into the fast-moving audio AI arena this week with new voice-capable systems that aim to make spoken interactions far cheaper, faster, and more flexible — and in doing so have raised immediate questions about safety, verification, and the shifting balance of power between platform partners and in‑house AI development. Background / Overview The announcements introduce two distinct but related moves. OpenAI released gpt‑realtime, a voice‑focused variant of its...

Error 0x8000FFFF — the dreaded “Catastrophic failure” — is rarely fatal, but it’s a disruptive Windows error that often appears after an update, during a System Restore, or when a core servicing operation fails; it generally signals corrupted system files, a damaged component store, driver conflicts, or third‑party interference. view Windows reports the numeric code 0x8000FFFF when a low‑level servicing operation cannot complete and Windows detects an unrecoverable condition within its...

Samsung’s move to bake Microsoft Copilot into TizenOS for its 2025 Smart TVs and Smart Monitors represents more than a consumer convenience feature — it rewrites the rules for how displays can be deployed, managed, and monetized in commercial environments. The integration shifts heavy generative work off constrained SoCs and into the cloud, enables conversational, context-aware experiences at scale, and removes a long-standing hardware barrier in digital signage: the dependence on external...

Microsoft’s decision to terminate four employees after on‑campus protests over the company’s ties to Israel crystallizes a larger, unresolved crisis at the intersection of cloud infrastructure, corporate governance, and worker activism. Background / Overview In late August, demonstrators from a group calling itself No Azure for Apartheid staged protests at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, campus that included an occupation of the office of Microsoft President Brad Smith and an encampment on...

Windows 11’s 24H2 servicing update finally removes a long-standing and deeply irritating trade-off for Bluetooth headset users: you no longer have to choose between pristine stereo audio for playback and intelligible voice when the headset microphone is active. Background / Overview For more than a decade, Bluetooth audio on PCs has been split between two competing worlds: high-fidelity, one-way playback using A2DP and two-way telephony using HFP/HSP. When a capture stream opened (voice...

Microsoft is moving routine Windows 11 quality updates into the initial setup flow so that eligible Entra-joined devices can download and install the latest cumulative fixes during the Out‑of‑Box Experience (OOBE), making day‑one systems more secure—and forcing IT teams to rethink provisioning, bandwidth and failure‑recovery plans. Background Microsoft announced a managed OOBE update capability earlier in 2025 and confirmed that the capability will be enabled by default for eligible...

Godeal24’s Back‑to‑School promotion promising a “lifetime” license for Microsoft Office 2021 Pro for €31.25 (and steep discounts on Windows 11 Pro or bundled Windows + Office packages) landed on several aggregator sites as a time‑sensitive deal aimed at students and budget‑conscious users — but the offer raises a mix of genuine opportunity and real caution for anyone planning to buy productivity software for a new semester or a fresh PC build. The ad copy highlights instant digital delivery...

Samsung and Microsoft have quietly turned the living room into the next front line for conversational AI: starting in late August 2025, Microsoft’s Copilot is rolling onto Samsung’s 2025 smart TVs and Smart Monitors, built into Samsung’s Tizen homescreen and Vision AI ecosystem to offer voice-driven content discovery, spoiler‑free recaps, planning help, and a visually expressive on‑screen assistant optimized for the big screen. Background The integration was publicly announced on August...

Microsoft will remove support for the StrongCertificateBindingEnforcement registry key on Windows domain controllers on September 10, 2025, forcing a permanent switch to stricter, strong certificate-to-account mappings that will break legacy certificate-based authentication setups unless administrators act now. Background Microsoft introduced tighter certificate-based authentication controls after several Kerberos/AD certificate mapping vulnerabilities surfaced in 2022. The changes, shipped...

Microsoft’s decision to terminate four employees after a sit‑in at company president Brad Smith’s Redmond office crystallizes a broader crisis at the intersection of cloud infrastructure, human‑rights scrutiny, and escalating worker activism — a dispute triggered by investigative reporting that alleges Microsoft’s Azure platform was used by Israeli military intelligence to store and analyze mass volumes of intercepted Palestinian communications. Background Employee protests at Microsoft’s...

I switched my gaming desktop to a Linux-based distro two months ago, and the experience was less like a perilous migration and more like finally closing a noisy, intrusive door: games launched, performance was excellent for the titles I care about, and nobody tried to sell me a subscription every time I opened the start menu. Overview The headline claim is simple: the Linux gaming landscape that used to require patience, tinkering, and frequent terminal sessions has matured into a practical...

EA’s PC requirements for Battlefield 6 land as a pragmatic, security-first baseline: you can play the game on mid-range hardware, but meeting the developer’s anti-cheat and platform-security demands will reshape upgrade decisions for a notable portion of the PC audience. rview Electronic Arts and Battlefield Studios published the final PC system requirements leading up to Battlefield 6’s launch, confirming a three-tier approach—Minimum, Recommended, and Ultra—that maps directly to target...

Microsoft’s quiet pivot from partner-dependent innovator to full-spectrum AI builder took a conspicuous turn this week with the public debut of the company’s first in‑house foundation models and voice engines under the MAI umbrella — most notably MAI‑1‑preview and a highly optimized speech model branded MAI‑Voice‑1. The move signals a strategic effort to lower Microsoft’s operational and commercial dependence on third‑party models — especially OpenAI’s GPT family — while knitting tighter...

Microsoft’s longstanding Bluetooth audio headache — the moment your headset’s microphone opens and music or game sound collapses into muffled mono — just got a practical fix on Windows, but the real-world payoff depends on hardware and drivers lining up across the ecosystem. the Bluetooth trade-off persisted For years, Bluetooth audio on PCs lived with a hard architectural compromise: A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile) delivered high-fidelity stereo playback but had no bidirectional...

Microsoft has set a hard stop: Windows 10 will reach end of support on October 14, 2025, and consumers who want to keep receiving critical security fixes after that date must take action now — either upgrade to Windows 11, move to another supported environment, or enroll in Microsoft’s consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, which extends security-only updates through October 13, 2026 for eligible PCs. Background / Overview Windows 10 debuted in 2015 and served as Microsoft’s...

If you’re thinking about escaping Windows 11’s telemetry creep or simply want to test a modern Linux desktop without committing, installing Linux alongside Windows — or replacing it entirely — remains the most practical option for most users. This guide walks a careful, practical path through preparing a Windows PC, creating the boot media, partitioning safely, installing a Linux distribution (with Ubuntu-based examples), and recovering from the most common failures. It combines sensible...