Featured content

Notepad’s quietly aggressive evolution continues: what started as a bare‑bones text scratchpad has been steadily rebuilt into a full‑featured Markdown writer, and recent insider sightings suggest Microsoft is preparing to add image support — a change that finally positions Notepad as a direct competitor to built‑in note apps like Apple Notes and Google Keep. The move is logical from a product perspective, but it’s also consequential: image rendering changes how files behave, how they’re...

Microsoft has released Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1619 to the Canary Channel, a measured but telling update that expands cross‑device continuity, tightens biometric security for external sensors, and introduces a string of accessibility and productivity refinements that together show the platform moving from proof‑of‑concept to practical rollout. ([blogs.windows.com]s.com/windows-insider/2026/02/20/announcing-windows-11-insider-preview-build-28020-1619-canary-channel/) Background...

Microsoft has pushed two small-but-meaningful Windows 11 Insider updates to the Dev and Beta Channels today, delivering visual polish and a set of targeted fixes that smooth everyday flows — notably tidier context menus, redesigned device/spec cards in Settings, improved taskbar animations, and a handful of reliability fixes that are currently split between the Dev and Beta builds. These updates are rolling out as Build 26300.7877 (Dev) and Build 26220.7872 (Beta) on February 20, 2026, and...

Attackers are buying Facebook ad space to push what looks like an official Windows 11 download page, and victims who click “Download now” receive a 75 MB installer (ms-update32.exe) that plants an Electron-based thief, drops obfuscated PowerShell scripts, and persists via a large registry blob — a campaign that targets real users while cloaking itself from researchers and automated scanners. (malwarebytes.com) Background The campaign, uncovered and published by Malwarebytes on February 20...

Microsoft released a trio of Windows 11 Insider updates today, pushing small-but-important feature expansions and quality polish across the Canary, Dev, and Beta Channels. The changes are focused, practical, and in many cases are continuations of work Microsoft has been rolling out since last year: expanded cross‑device handoff for Android apps and sites, finer control for accessibility tools like Narrator, broader support for Windows Hello Enhanced Sign‑in Security (ESS) with external...

Microsoft has quietly added a one‑click network speed test to the Windows 11 taskbar, surfacing a convenient "Perform speed test" option in the network system tray and Wi‑Fi quick settings that launches a browser‑based measurement without requiring users to remember a web address or install third‑party software. Background Microsoft delivered the new taskbar option as part of the Release Preview wave packaged in update KB5077241, which increments Windows 11 to Builds 26100.7918 (24H2) and...

Australian small businesses have moved decisively past curiosity: a fresh survey from Small Business Loans Australia finds four in five firms are now using AI tools, and many claim these tools are cutting labour time by meaningful margins. The headline numbers are straightforward: of 200 business owners and decision-makers surveyed, 80% report using AI in some form, 41% estimate at least a 25% reduction in total labour time from AI, and 17.5% say AI saves more than half of their labour time...

Arup’s embrace of Microsoft AI is not a marketing gesture — it is a deliberate, data-first overhaul that aims to turn decades of dispersed engineering knowledge into an active, decision-ready asset for every project team around the world. Background: why an engineering giant needed to rethink knowledge Arup is a company famed for grand, technically bold projects — the Sydney Opera House’s sails, London’s Gherkin, major transport systems and complex datacentres. The firm’s long history and...

Enterprise desktop strategy no longer feels like the exercise of weighing user preference and IT convenience — it reads like damage control around vendor timelines, device eligibility lists, and delivery models that quietly constricted real choice long before procurement or IT had a chance to act. m] Background / Overview The calendar moment that made this visible was Microsoft’s scheduled end of support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025. That date turned a long-running migration...

Microsoft hasn’t formally said “Windows 12” yet, but the breadcrumbs are clear: Microsoft’s next major desktop milestone — whether it ships under that name or as an AI-first branded refresh — will almost certainly be an evolution centered on Copilot, on-device AI acceleration, improved Windows on Arm parity, and a long-term push toward a more modular, update-friendly Windows core. Background / Overview Microsoft’s update cadence and corporate messaging over the past three years set the stage...

Microsoft has pushed a small-but-focused Dev Channel update — Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7877 (KB5077232) — that continues the 26300-series platform work while rolling out a handful of practical user-facing refinements, most notably a tweak to the context menu for executable files, further Settings refinements (the Device info card and a reorganized About page), taskbar and system tray polish, fixes for File Explorer and Nearby Sharing, and a Paint update that introduces freeform...

Microsoft released Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1619 to the Canary Channel today, and while the headline items look familiar—expanded cross‑device continuity, richer accessibility controls, and an update to Windows Hello—the real story is how these incremental pieces fit into Microsoft's broader push to blend security, AI-assisted workflows, and mobile‑to‑PC continuity across a fragmented device ecosystem. Background Canary builds are the most experimental rung in the Windows...

Microsoft released Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7872 (KB5077231) to the Beta Channel on February 20, 2026, delivering a small but focused set of user-facing refinements—most notably a visual tweak to File Explorer’s context menu behavior, a refined Device info card and System > About layout in Settings, and smoother taskbar animations—while reiterating Microsoft’s continued use of an enablement-package model and controlled feature rollouts for Beta-channel Insiders. Background /...

If you’ve been resigned to surrendering your music listening to a feed-driven streaming UI, foobar2000 quietly reminds you that a music player can still be about your files—fast, lean, and utterly configurable in ways modern players forget to be. Background Foobar2000 is a longtime, community-favorite audio player originally created by Peter Pawłowski and first released in December 2002. It was built with a modular design and an audiophile-leaning feature set from day one, and it has kept...

Microsoft has quietly added a one‑click internet speed test to Windows 11’s taskbar for select Insiders — but it’s important to understand exactly what Microsoft shipped, why it matters, and where this small convenience could create outsized security, telemetry, and accuracy trade‑offs. Background / Overview Microsoft’s latest Release Preview / Insider servicing wave (packaged as part of recent cumulative updates) surfaces a new Perform speed test (or Test internet speed) control in the...

Microsoft’s pivot toward building and orchestrating its own foundation models — while simultaneously opening Copilot to third‑party models — has thrust enterprise customers, partners, and regulated industries into a new strategic calculus: hedge your model bets now or risk disruption later. s://microsoft.ai/news/two-new-in-house-models/) Background Microsoft’s Copilot family has evolved from a single‑vendor integration into a multi‑model orchestration layer that increasingly mixes...

Microsoft's enterprise Copilot assistant has been quietly processing and summarizing emails flagged as confidential — including messages stored in Drafts and Sent Items — after a logic error in Copilot Chat allowed those items into its retrieval pipeline, a lapse that raises fresh questions about AI readiness for regulated workplaces and the limits of label- and policy-based governance. Background Microsoft 365 Copilot (commonly referred to as Copilot Chat) is positioned as an AI...

Data strategy is no longer a back-office concern — it is a board-level, revenue-driving imperative that decides who scales, who stalls, and who survives in the next decade of digital competition. Background Across every industry, business processes now produce continuous, high‑velocity streams of data: transactions, logs, sensor telemetry, clickstreams, and AI training sets. Left unmanaged, these datasets fragment into costly silos that increase security risk, complicate compliance, and...

This week’s short, sharp take from First Ring Daily — amplified in a Petri roundup — crystallizes a simple truth the developer world has been living for months: the industry’s most influential engineers are already using AI as part of their coding toolchain, but they’re doing it cautiously and pragmatically. Petri’s coverage of Brad Sams and Paul Thurrott’s episode notes how comments from Mark Russinovich and Linus Torvalds prompted a wide conversation about how elite engineers integrate...

Microsoft's own Copilot Chat briefly overran its guardrails: a code error allowed the service to summarize emails labeled as confidential, processing messages from users' Sent Items and Drafts in ways that violated intended Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and sensitivity-label behavior. Background In late January 2026 Microsoft identified an issue tracked internally as CW1226324: Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat's "Work" tab was unintentionally processing and summarizing email content from users' Sent...