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Microsoft’s operating system has always been a mix of pragmatic engineering, bold experiments, and occasional overreach — and some of its most interesting contributions were simply ahead of their time. A recent roundup of five Windows features — Briefcase, MSN Gaming Zone, Windows CardSpace, Cortana, and Zune — highlights how Microsoft repeatedly planted seeds that only later ecosystems, devices, and cloud services were ready to harvest. The list is more than nostalgic: it’s a prompt to...

Microsoft is quietly testing a macOS‑style handoff for Android apps in Windows 11 — a controlled Insider preview that can surface a “Resume from your phone” prompt on the taskbar and, with a single click, continue an active Android session on your PC (Spotify is the first partner) as Microsoft refocuses its mobile‑to‑desktop strategy after the Windows Subsystem for Android era. Background / Overview For the past several years Microsoft experimented with multiple ways to bring mobile...

Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) is the built‑in Windows tool for repairing the Windows component store and servicing images — and when used correctly it’s the most reliable first‑line fix for persistent Windows 11 stability problems that never quite go away after normal troubleshooting. This feature guide walks through the purpose of DISM, the exact commands to run, offline source options, common failure modes and practical troubleshooting steps — all written for technicians...

Windows Server 2016 has reached a pivotal point in its lifecycle: mainstream support ended years ago and extended support will stop on January 12, 2027, leaving systems that remain on the platform exposed to unpatched vulnerabilities, compliance gaps, and growing compatibility problems. This article lays out the precise dates, the practical risks for running Windows Server 2016 after support ends, verified upgrade paths (and their trade-offs), short‑term mitigation strategies, and a...

Atturra’s rise through Microsoft’s partner ranks has been rapid and highly visible, with multiple outlets reporting that the Australian integrator has secured a significant new recognition in the hybrid and private cloud space — a development that, if fully verified, would strengthen its positioning for customers that require onshore, sovereign cloud capabilities and tightly governed hybrid estates. The announcement that Atturra is now being described as Microsoft’s first Private Cloud...

FFmpeg 8.0 is out — a landmark upgrade that folds OpenAI’s Whisper transcription into the filter chain, expands Vulkan-based video processing across encoders and decoders, and modernizes the build and optimization stack with broad CPU and GPU-focused improvements. Background FFmpeg remains the invisible workhorse in almost every modern multimedia pipeline: editors, transcoders, streamers, and archival tools use it either directly or indirectly. The 8.0 release — codenamed “Huffman” — is one...

FFmpeg 8.0 "Huffman" lands as a sweeping, technically ambitious release that folds AI transcription, broad Vulkan compute support, dozens of native decoders, and notable hardware-acceleration improvements into the project’s core — a release the developers call one of their largest to date and that will materially change how creators, archivists, and developers build media workflows. (ffmpeg.org, patches.ffmpeg.org) Background FFmpeg’s 8.0 release, codenamed Huffman, was announced by the...

FFmpeg’s new assembly lessons have turned a niche skill into a teachable path: a compact, practical curriculum aimed squarely at developers who want to write the kind of hand-optimized SIMD code that still powers the highest-performance media pipelines. The lessons, published as a public repository and accompanied by examples and tooling, explain why FFmpeg still hand-writes assembly, how its contributors validate correctness and performance, and what it takes to go from C-level...

FFmpeg is adding a built-in transcription capability powered by OpenAI’s Whisper model: a new whisper audio filter (af_whisper) that brings automatic speech recognition (ASR) directly into FFmpeg’s libavfilter stack and can emit plain text, SRT subtitles, or JSON metadata — all without leaving the FFmpeg command line. This change, merged ahead of the planned FFmpeg 8.0 release, integrates the whisper.cpp implementation as a prerequisite, exposes options for GPU acceleration and...

FFmpeg 8.0 lands as a major milestone for open-source media tooling, introducing Vulkan-based video processing, a native AV1 Vulkan encoder, an OpenAI Whisper transcription filter, expanded VVC and ProRes support, and a raft of security and build changes that together reshape how creators, developers, and infrastructure teams will encode, decode, and analyze video going forward. Overview FFmpeg is the ubiquitous media engine behind countless tools and services — from desktop editors and...

The Linux kernel's audio stack is showing fresh signs of life across several fronts: a newly submitted, fully featured USB driver for the discontinued but still widely owned TASCAM US-144MKII is queued for the 6.18 cycle; the sound subsystem for Linux 6.17 is being prepared with explicit support for AMD’s next-generation Audio Co‑Processor IP and expanded SoundWire handling; and a long‑running stability problem affecting the classic Creative SoundBlaster AWE32 ISA card has finally been...

Microsoft is changing the Windows 11 out-of-box experience (OOBE) for managed devices so that, starting in September 2025, eligible Entra-joined and Entra hybrid machines can automatically download and install Microsoft quality updates during setup — a move that will make initial device provisioning noticeably longer but aims to deliver a more secure, up-to-date endpoint before the first user sign-in. Background Microsoft has been iterating on the Windows 11 setup experience for several...

Microsoft’s VibeVoice-1.5B marks a bold entry in open-source text-to-speech: a research-grade, long-form TTS model capable of synthesizing up to 90 minutes of coherent, multi‑speaker audio and handling conversations with up to four distinct speakers, released with explicit safety controls intended for research use. Background / Overview Microsoft’s VibeVoice family is positioned as a frontier open‑source text‑to‑speech framework designed to generate expressive, long‑form conversational audio...

Elon Musk’s xAI has quietly converted a social-media tease into a formal trademark filing and a full‑blown strategic salvo at Microsoft: the “Macrohard” project promises a purely AI software company built from cooperating agentic models, powered by xAI’s Grok family and the Colossus supercomputer in Memphis—an ambition that is already generating headlines, market ripples, regulatory questions, and hard technical skepticism. Background / Overview Elon Musk announced the concept publicly on X...

Windows 11’s storage warnings are annoying—and avoidable—if you know where Windows hides junk and which built‑in tools remove it safely and quickly. This feature piece breaks down three fast, low‑risk ways to clear up storage space in Windows 11, explains what each does behind the scenes, and highlights the small trade‑offs and safety checks every user should run before emptying the digital trash. The guidance below synthesizes the practical tips in the Fast Company piece with...

Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS) and its relationship with Windows Server have resurfaced in recent reporting as a nexus of operational pain and security risk — a story that blends a high‑volume patch cycle, at least one serious authentication vulnerability, and persistent configuration pitfalls that continue to trip administrators during WSUS and site deployments. ee default, deeply integrated web server on Windows Server and underpins everything from internal intranet...

Microsoft’s latest push to “harden Azure from silicon to systems” stitches together a clear thesis: security must be built into every layer of the cloud stack — starting in silicon and extending through firmware, host controllers, attestation, and immutable supply-chain evidence. The company’s Secure Future Initiative (SFI) ties together custom silicon (the Azure Boost DPU), a server-local hardware security module (Azure Integrated HSM), confidential computing advances, an open silicon root...

A recent technical feature in International Daily News highlighted some of the most overlooked yet critical components in the Microsoft ecosystem: the interaction between IIS (Internet Information Services) and the Windows Server platform, common post-installation errors in WSUS (Windows Server Update Services), and new scalability and security features introduced in Windows Server 2025. The article, which combines community troubleshooting cases with official information, calls on system...

Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) and its relationship with Windows Server have once again become a focus. Recent reports from Hong Kong and international media, along with practical feedback from community forums, show that as Microsoft continues to release security patches and platform updates in 2025, the attack surface and operational pitfalls of IIS are also expanding. This article compiles official documentation, security research reports, and discussions from practical...

IIS can appear to “refuse” a domain, WSUS post‑install can abort with 0x80070003, and small configuration mismatches in Windows Server often hide behind cryptic error messages—but the underlying causes are usually straightforward to diagnose and fix. This feature unpacks the most common IIS + WSUS failure modes uncovered in recent community reports, explains the technical root causes, verifies recommended fixes against vendor documentation and community experience, and delivers a practical...