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The UK government’s five‑year Strategic Partnership Arrangement 2024 (SPA24) with Microsoft has crystallised into one of the most consequential technology procurement decisions of the decade: roughly £1.9 billion a year in public‑sector software and services, approaching £9 billion across the contract’s term, with Microsoft Copilot added to the mix for the first time. This is a deal that promises scale and integration, but it also raises immediate and profound questions about value for...

Microsoft’s August 2025 Patch Tuesday brings mandatory security rollups for Windows 11 and Windows 10, advancing multiple servicing branches to new OS builds, patching a swath of vulnerabilities, and introducing a handful of notable UX and recovery features — including an AI-driven Settings agent, a Quick Machine Recovery tool, and what outlets are calling a redesigned “Black Screen of Death.” Background / Overview Microsoft published the August 12, 2025 cumulative updates as part of the...

Microsoft’s optional July preview (KB5062660) and the August cumulative that rolled its fixes into mainstream channels have produced a repeatable Event Viewer error — CertificateServicesClient (CertEnroll) Event ID 57 — that logs “The ‘Microsoft Pluton Cryptographic Provider’ provider was not loaded because initialization failed.” Microsoft’s public triage describes the entry as cosmetic (no impact to certificate processing), but the noise has landed on the desks of administrators and...

Microsoft’s Xbox app is shedding a major limitation for Arm-powered Windows PCs: Insiders can now download and run selected ARM64-compatible games locally, moving Windows on Arm from “cloud-only” convenience closer to legitimate local gaming capability for the first time in years. Background Windows on Arm has long been two things at once: an attractive option for thin, light, battery-friendly laptops and tablets, and a frustratingly limited platform for gamers because the vast majority of...

A single‑plaintiff lawsuit filed in San Diego is attempting to turn Microsoft’s scheduled October 14, 2025 retirement of Windows 10 into a court‑enforced policy debate — asking a judge to compel the company to keep delivering free security updates for Windows 10 until the OS’s market share falls below a plaintiff‑defined floor (reported around 10%). Background / Overview Microsoft has publicly set October 14, 2025 as the official end‑of‑support date for Windows 10. On that date Microsoft...

Microsoft's decision to end mainstream support for Windows 10 has ignited a high‑stakes legal and policy debate: a California resident has filed suit seeking to force Microsoft to continue issuing free security updates, arguing the sunset constitutes forced obsolescence that disadvantages millions of users, tilts competition toward Windows 11 and Copilot‑centric hardware, and creates foreseeable security and environmental harms. Background / Overview Microsoft set October 14, 2025 as the...

Microsoft is giving Windows 11 users more control over OneDrive’s nagging prompts and the operating system’s inbox apps—but the headlines need unpacking: a new File Explorer option lets you snooze or turn off the “Start backup” reminder, a provisioning policy in 25H2 gives IT teams a first-party way to strip many default Store apps during setup, and you still have the familiar manual options to unlink or uninstall OneDrive—each approach carries trade-offs that matter if you value privacy...

Chainlink’s recent price action and an unusually emphatic analyst narrative have thrust the oracle network back into the mainstream crypto debate, with some market commentators now arguing LINK is this cycle’s “most obvious” large‑cap crypto jackpot — a claim framed by a provocative comparison to the valuation story of today’s cloud giants. (blockchain.news, coingecko.com) Background / Overview Chainlink (LINK) is not a DeFi yield farm or an NFT play; it’s an oracle network that supplies...

Microsoft’s August 2025 patches have once again filled Event Viewer with a noisy, but harmless, error tied to the CertEnroll (CertificateServicesClient) subsystem — an Event ID 57 reading that “The ‘Microsoft Pluton Cryptographic Provider’ provider was not loaded because initialization failed,” which Microsoft says is a cosmetic artifact of an in-development feature and can be safely ignored. ows Update telemetry and release notes show a short but familiar pattern: an optional preview update...

Google’s Gemini is rapidly evolving from a research showcase into a multi‑headed commercial engine in the United States — a hybrid revenue strategy that mixes direct consumer subscriptions, enterprise API and cloud billing, and indirect value capture through advertising and commerce — and the shape of that playbook matters to advertisers, CIOs, publishers, and regulators alike. Background / Overview Google built Gemini as a general‑purpose large‑model platform and has systematically folded...

AI tools that once produced short clips or basic explainer reels are now capable of assembling entire long-form videos from structured, machine-readable prompts — and a new crop of free tools that accept detailed JSON prompts is making that capability far more accessible to creators, marketers, and financial teams that need repeatable, compliant video production at scale. This feature examines the practical mechanics of long-form AI video generation using JSON-driven workflows, evaluates...

Microsoft’s Security Copilot arrives at a time when defenders are drowning in alerts, and the product’s promise is simple but consequential: apply generative AI to compress investigation time, automate routine triage, and translate dense telemetry into actionable decisions for security teams and leadership alike. The recent EdTech review highlights how Security Copilot can summarize incidents, produce leadership-ready briefings, and run agents that perform automated actions and impact...

OpenAI’s ChatGPT can now reach into your Gmail inbox, read your Google Calendar, and look up people in Google Contacts — all from inside a single chat — marking a clear escalation in the product’s push from a conversational assistant toward a full-fledged, context-aware workspace tool. The feature is rolling out in phases (Pro users first, with Plus, Team, Enterprise, and Edu following), and comes alongside an expanded connectors catalogue and new model modes in GPT‑5 that change how and...

A Southern California resident has filed a state‑court lawsuit seeking to force Microsoft to continue issuing free security updates for Windows 10 beyond the company’s published end‑of‑support date of October 14, 2025, arguing that the scheduled cutoff is not just a routine lifecycle decision but a coercive commercial strategy that will leave millions of devices vulnerable, accelerate hardware turnover, and funnel users into Windows 11 and Microsoft’s AI‑centric ecosystem. Background /...

Microsoft has begun pushing three lightweight Microsoft 365 “companion” apps — People, File Search, and Calendar — directly into the Windows 11 taskbar for eligible Microsoft 365 business customers, delivering one‑click access to contacts, documents and meetings without opening full clients and installing by default on eligible devices unless administrators opt out. r showcased the companion concept at its Ignite conference and validated the approach through Insider and preview channels...

Microsoft’s latest update to Python in Excel adds image objects as first-class inputs to Python formulas, letting users drop a picture into a cell and run Python code against it from the worksheet grid — no external tools, no moving files around. This change turns Excel into a lightweight image-processing playground: users can perform quality checks (sharp vs. blurry), extract metadata, adjust brightness or color, overlay watermarks, and prototype visual workflows directly in cells using...

Windows 10 reaches its official end of support on October 14, 2025 — and if you intend to run, repair, or virtualize the OS after that date, downloading and archiving an official Windows 10 ISO today is the simplest, safest hedge against broken links, tampered images, and last‑minute panic. Background / Overview Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 10 will no longer receive technical assistance, feature updates or security updates after October 14, 2025. That date is the formal “end of...

Microsoft’s August Patch Tuesday landed as a heavy, cross‑cutting security package that mixes high‑severity remote code execution (RCE) flaws, a publicly disclosed Kerberos elevation‑of‑privilege issue, and several cloud‑centric patches that were already mitigated on the service side—creating a release that’s both urgent and, in places, procedurally messy. Sophos’ breakdown counts 109 CVEs in this cycle (18 Classified as Critical and 31 with a CVSS base score of 8.0 or higher), and...

A Microsoft engineer’s plainspoken playbook for career acceleration—four promotions in five years—arrives at a moment when artificial intelligence is reshaping what counts as “high impact” work inside big tech, and her clear, repeatable tactics offer a practical roadmap for engineers who want to move faster without gambling their health or reputation. Background: the story and the playbook Ritvika Nagula, a senior software engineer on Microsoft Azure who joined the company in April 2019...

Using the right mix of software has quietly transformed routine PC tasks from friction-filled chores into smooth, reliable workflows that save time, reduce stress, and let you focus on what matters—work, creativity, or play. The handful of apps I rely on every day—Windows 11 Pro, Microsoft Office 2024, CCleaner Professional, Adobe Creative Cloud (now Creative Cloud Pro), and NordVPN Complete—cover the OS, productivity, maintenance, creative work, and privacy/security buckets. Each fills a...