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Mozilla’s quiet move to add a native “Search Image with Google Lens” entry in Firefox’s context menu closes a long-standing usability gap with Chrome and Edge while reopening familiar privacy and platform questions for Windows users and IT administrators alike. The change—visible today in Nightly builds—adds a one‑click visual-search pathway that sends images to Google Lens in a new tab, mirrors behavior users already expect in Chrome and Edge, and reflects broader pressure on browsers to...

You can absolutely create a bootable USB for Windows 11 without using Microsoft’s Media Creation Tool — and for many users that’s the smarter, faster, and more flexible path. This feature walks through the practical alternatives, explains why you might want to skip the official tool, verifies key technical details, and gives tested, step‑by‑step options for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It also flags common pitfalls — including file system limits, UEFI quirks, and the support implications of...

Microsoft has confirmed that the August 12, 2025 cumulative update for Windows 11 (KB5063878, OS Build 26100.4946) is failing to install on managed endpoints delivered through WSUS and SCCM, producing the download/install error code 0x80240069; the company is offering a temporary Known Issue Rollback (KIR) via Group Policy as a workaround while it prepares a permanent servicing fix. (support.microsoft.com, neowin.net) Background / Overview KB5063878 is the August 2025 cumulative update for...

I tried to fetch the McDuffie Progress event page you linked, but I couldn't reach the page: the site returned a “Too Many Requests” response (client_ip: 104.196.9.116, request_id: 9447248202). I also ran a web search for the event and didn’t find a reliable copy of the listing to cite. Because you asked me to use web.run and the uploaded files to validate the source, I don’t want to produce a 2,000+ word feature that claims to quote or summarize that specific event page until I can actually...

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...