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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...

The snap layouts flyout that appears when you drag a window to the top of the screen can be useful — but for many multi‑monitor users it’s an irritating interruption; Windows 11 exposes a single checkbox that removes that top‑of‑screen UI while leaving snap functionality intact, and this article explains why you might want to turn it off, how to do it safely, and what alternatives and caveats to consider. Background Snap Layouts is a core multitasking enhancement in Windows 11 that surfaces...

If you opened Microsoft Teams this morning and discovered channels that used to live in your team have vanished—or the Teams button and channel lists simply aren’t where they used to be—don’t panic. This is a common, usually reversible issue that has two broad roots: deliberate UI changes Microsoft is rolling out (the new combined Chats-and-Channels experience) and local/client-side problems (cache, filters, or app corruption). This feature-long guide explains what’s happening, verifies the...

The largest technology companies are weathering a volatile market not because the case for them is uncomplicated, but because the economics of artificial intelligence have tilted the strategic balance in their favor: giant, cash-rich platforms can underwrite the infrastructure, talent and product integration required to turn AI from a headline into a durable revenue engine. The near-term noise — regulation, tariffs, chip shortages and the usual execution stumbles — will persist. Still, the...

A quietly radical idea—don’t put another screen on your face; put intelligence in your ears—has surfaced from inside Microsoft’s design ranks and, in doing so, reopened a long-running debate about how AI should meet the world. The Copilot Veja concept, an unofficial design study by Microsoft principal designer Braz de Pina, imagines a HoloLens successor that abandons the heads‑up display in favor of ear‑worn, audio‑first “stems” with stereoscopic cameras, microphones, and tactile controls...

The Shiva 2 / YEAH MAGIC listing on teamduval.org reads like a mash-up of every buzzword a prebuilt‑PC shopper is conditioned to crave: an AMD Ryzen CPU, 16GB DDR5, a 1TB Gen4 NVMe, ARGB fans, Windows 11 Home, and — most provocatively — an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti with 16GB GDDR7. The copy then folds in a separate Skytech Azure product blurb, alternating between Ryzen 5 8600G and Ryzen 5 9600X, and promises “Ultra settings” 1440p gaming across a laundry list of AAA titles. It’s an...

Microsoft has quietly pushed a significant tool into public preview that aims to simplify one of the messiest tasks in datacenter life: converting and migrating virtual machines from VMware vCenter/ESXi to Microsoft’s Hyper-V infrastructure using a built-in Windows Admin Center extension called VM Conversion. The extension promises agentless, CBT-backed replication, automatic boot-type mapping (BIOS → Generation 1, UEFI → Generation 2), and the ability to synchronize and migrate up to 10 VMs...