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Microsoft has quietly moved from partner-dependent experimentation to deploying its own, production‑focused models with the public debut of MAI‑Voice‑1 (a high‑throughput speech generator) and MAI‑1‑preview (an in‑house mixture‑of‑experts language model), rolling both into Copilot experiences and community previews as Microsoft begins to “orchestrate” a mix of proprietary, partner, and open models to balance cost, latency and product fit. Background / Overview Microsoft’s Copilot platform...

Elon Musk’s Macrohard gambit reframes a long-running joke into a formal strategic test: can a coordinated swarm of AI agents, fed by massive model families and hyperscale compute, actually simulate and replace the work of a modern software giant like Microsoft? Musk’s xAI recently surfaced a public proposition—branded cheekily as Macrohard—that aims to assemble agentic AI systems to perform the full software lifecycle: specification, coding, testing, UX, documentation, and even marketing and...

Xbox Game Pass has quietly become one of the most consequential subscription services in modern gaming — not because it’s perfect, but because it keeps expanding like a Swiss Army knife for players who want choice, cross‑device continuity, and an alternative to buying every title outright. What started as a modest library accessory has matured into a multi‑tier ecosystem that blends day‑one first‑party releases, cloud streaming, cross‑platform saves, and periodic publisher licensing deals —...

Starting in September 2025, Microsoft will change how Windows 11 devices are provisioned for enterprise and education customers by installing the latest Windows quality updates during the final page of the out‑of‑box experience (OOBE)—a move that promises stronger security and fewer post‑deployment patching tasks but also introduces new operational trade‑offs IT teams must plan for. Background Microsoft’s OOBE quality‑update capability is an evolution of prior work to make device...

Phison’s lab report and Microsoft’s telemetry have cooled the most sensational headlines about a mass “bricking” event, but the Windows 11 SSD failure story is far from closed: real, repeatable disappearance symptoms were documented by community testers and remain a live risk for certain NVMe workloads until firmware or platform mitigations are proven and widely deployed. Background: what triggered the alarm In mid‑August 2025 Microsoft shipped a combined Servicing Stack Update (SSU) and...

A small, live‑streamed sit‑in at Microsoft’s Redmond campus that ended with arrests and multiple firings has blown open a simmering internal dispute over the company’s government contracts — and crystallized a broader industry reckoning about cloud ethics, sovereign deployments, and the limits of corporate oversight. Background Microsoft’s headquarters have been the scene of recurring employee activism in 2024–2025 around allegations that cloud and AI services provided to the Israeli...

Microsoft’s decision to terminate multiple employees after an on‑campus sit‑in over alleged uses of Azure in Israeli military intelligence operations has turned a workplace protest into a major corporate governance and technology‑ethics crisis for the company — one that raises urgent questions about cloud accountability, employee activism, and the limits of corporate oversight when sovereign customers control critical deployments. was a late‑August demonstration at Microsoft’s Redmond campus...

Microsoft’s long-running Kerberos hardening campaign is entering its final, non-reversible phase: the temporary registry workarounds that allowed administrators to keep weak certificate mappings and “Compatibility” behavior will be removed with the September 2025 servicing wave, forcing everyone to adopt strong certificate binding or implement explicit strong mappings ahead of the deadline. Background Microsoft began this multi-year Kerberos hardening program after researchers and incident...

HP’s latest quarterly results confirm a simple — and lucrative — reality: AI PCs and the Windows 11 refresh are doing heavy lifting for the Personal Systems business, and that shift is materially improving margins even as printing revenues soften. Background / Overview HP reported fiscal third-quarter net revenue of $13.9 billion, with Personal Systems revenue rising 6% year‑over‑year to about $9.9 billion, while Printing fell roughly 4% to $4.0 billion. Executives told investors the two...

Microsoft Teams’ August update is a substantial one: Microsoft rolled out 26 new features across chat, meetings, Teams Phone, workplace Places, frontline scenarios, security tooling, and device certification — blending productivity tweaks, admin controls (notably for Copilot), and several Teams Premium capabilities aimed at hybrid and enterprise deployments. These changes include multiple emoji reactions, tenant-level custom dictionaries for Copilot in Teams, new personal meeting templates...

Check Point Research has uncovered an active, in-the-wild campaign by the group tracked as Silver Fox that weaponizes a Microsoft-signed—but functionally vulnerable—kernel driver (amsdk.sys / WatchDog Antimalware) to terminate protected security processes and deliver the ValleyRAT backdoor across modern Windows systems. Background / Overview Windows has steadily hardened its kernel and driver model—introducing Protected Processes (PP/PPL), Kernel Mode Code Integrity (KMCI)...

Windows provides a surprising number of ways to capture your screen, from the quick-and-dirty Print Screen key to a full-featured Snipping Tool that now includes OCR and video recording — this guide explains each native option, shows when to reach for third‑party tools, and evaluates risks and best practices for everyday and professional workflows. Background Windows has evolved screenshot functionality steadily across Windows 10 and Windows 11. The old single-purpose Print Screen key...

If you’ve spent a decade — or three — inside Windows and the prospect of switching to Linux feels equal parts liberating and terrifying, you’re not alone; recent coverage and community chatter have distilled the crossover into four practical tactics that turn a daunting migration into a manageable project: try live demos, dual‑boot until you’re confident, pick a Windows‑familiar distro to reduce shock, and watch for migration tools (like Operese) that promise to automate heavy lifting...

Microsoft has quietly shipped its first fully in‑house AI models — MAI‑Voice‑1 and MAI‑1‑preview — marking a deliberate shift in strategy that reduces dependence on OpenAI’s stack and accelerates Microsoft’s plan to own more of the compute, models, and product surface area that power Copilot across Windows, Office, and Azure. (theverge.com, investing.com) Background Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI has been deeply consequential for both companies: a multi‑billion‑dollar investment and...

Microsoft’s conversational assistant has moved out of pockets and laptops and onto the couch: select 2025 Samsung smart TVs and Smart Monitors now ship with Microsoft Copilot built in, turning the living-room screen into a voice-first, visually rich hub for entertainment, smart‑home control and light productivity. Background Samsung and Microsoft announced the integration on August 27, 2025, positioning Copilot as part of Samsung’s broader Vision AI strategy that pairs on‑device media...

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...