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PowerToys 0.97 lands with a focused, user‑facing refresh of the Command Palette, a practical new mouse utility called CursorWrap, expanded command‑line controls for several modules, and a collection of polish and safety tweaks that make the suite more customizable and more scriptable for power users and IT pros alike. Overview PowerToys has quietly become one of the most useful productivity toolkits for Windows power users. Version 0.97 continues that trend by turning the Command Palette —...

The tidy, confident prose of mainstream AI assistants still hides a messy truth: when pressed with “trick” prompts—false premises, fake-citation tests, ambiguous images, or culturally loaded symbols—today’s top AIs often choose fluency over fidelity, producing answers that range from useful to dangerously fabricated. The findarticles.com test that put six well-known assistants through a battery of such traps captured this variability in sharp relief: flashes of correct context and nuance...

Qatar’s public sector quietly accelerated its AI agenda this week with two complementary moves: the Ministry of Education and Higher Education ran an introductory, hands‑on workshop to place Microsoft’s Copilot tools into the daily workflows of ministry directors and department heads, while the National Planning Council framed a Davos panel around “Governance with Foresight”, arguing for institutionalized predictive analytics and data‑driven planning as pillars of long‑term national...

Dynatrace’s AI-powered observability platform has received Cloud Service Provider (CSP) certification from the Dubai Electronic Security Center (DESC), clearing a major regulatory hurdle that positions Dynatrace on Microsoft Azure UAE to serve Dubai’s government and semi‑government organizations with DESC‑aligned cloud observability, application security, and data residency assurances. Background: what DESC certification means and why it matters Dubai’s DESC is the emirate’s central...

Visionet’s confirmation as a Microsoft Azure Expert Managed Services Provider (AEMSP) is the kind of industry credential that carries real operational weight for enterprise buyers — and it arrived with clear strategic timing as organizations move from experimentation to production with cloud and AI. On January 19, 2026, Visionet announced successful completion of Microsoft’s AEMSP audit, placing the company among an exclusive group of partners worldwide and signaling deeper engineering...

Dynatrace’s SaaS observability platform has won formal certification from the Dubai Electronic Security Center (DESC), clearing a key regulatory hurdle for the vendor’s UAE Microsoft Azure deployment and opening the door for broader adoption across Dubai’s public sector as the emirate accelerates cloud-first, AI-enabled digital transformation. Background Dubai’s Digital Government agenda has made cybersecurity and cloud governance central to how public services are modernized. The Dubai...

Microsoft abandoning Windows for a Linux-based, Wine-backed “Windows-themed” distribution inside 15 years sounds like noise — until you trace the technical, economic, and social signals that make the scenario less fanciful and more strategically plausible. Background / Overview The claim began as a provocative prediction from an independent game‑engine developer calling himself Mason: Microsoft will retire Windows as an in‑house kernel and ship a Windows‑branded Linux distribution that...

Microsoft has issued emergency, out‑of‑band (OOB) Windows updates to correct two disruptive regressions introduced by the January 2026 Patch Tuesday rollout: a Remote Desktop sign‑in failure that broke credential prompts for some modern remote clients, and a shutdown/hibernate regression that caused certain Windows 11 devices with System Guard Secure Launch enabled to reboot instead of powering off. Administrators should prioritize these OOB packages for affected fleets to restore reliable...

NVIDIA’s GeForce Game Ready Driver 399.07 is an official, WHQL-signed Windows 10 (64‑bit) release — published on August 27, 2018 — and it is available in both desktop and notebook variants; the package includes targeted game fixes and a broad supported‑products list that explicitly covers many GeForce 700/700M series entries, including the GeForce GT 740M. Background / Overview The GeForce Game Ready Driver 399.07 was issued by NVIDIA as a WHQL‑certified Game Ready package designed to...

Minecraft Realms can and does go down — sometimes for planned maintenance, sometimes because of authentication hiccups, and occasionally because of large cloud-network failures — but there are clear, verifiable ways to check the Realms status and proven troubleshooting steps to get you back in the world quickly. Background / Overview Minecraft Realms is Mojang’s official hosted server service that offers a simple, private multiplayer experience without the setup or maintenance overhead of...

Microsoft’s PowerToys 0.97 lands with a major Command Palette overhaul, a clever new mouse utility called CursorWrap, expanded command-line control for several modules, and a host of polish items aimed at power users and IT professionals alike. Background PowerToys began life as a grab-bag of experimental utilities for power users and has since evolved into a maintained, modular productivity platform for Windows. The project is hosted on Microsoft’s official GitHub repository and is updated...

An ATM in Manchester briefly refused to accept a standard PIN entry and instead presented a full Windows 7 Professional login prompt, exposing the desktop behind the cashpoint and raising a familiar but important set of operational-security questions about legacy operating systems, ATM lifecycle management and the real-world risks of running end‑of‑support software on critical payment infrastructure. Background What happened in Manchester A photograph and short write‑up published by a...

Evernote 11 lands as the most consequential update to the note-taking app in half a decade, folding two years of behind-the-scenes engineering into a release that layers three AI-driven capabilities — AI Assistant, Semantic Search, and AI Meeting Notes — on top of a modernized interface and refreshed brand identity. Background Evernote’s v11 is the product of sustained work dating back roughly two years, during which the company rolled out hundreds of incremental improvements aimed at...

Microsoft moved quickly this month after its January 13 Patch Tuesday roll introduced a set of disruptive regressions in Windows 11 that left some machines restarting instead of powering off, blocked Remote Desktop sign‑ins to Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365, and caused certain Outlook Classic (POP) profiles to hang — and the company issued targeted out‑of‑band (OOB) updates on January 17 to repair the most critical failures while continuing to investigate the Outlook issue...

Microsoft’s latest cumulative updates have once again tripped a familiar wire: in multiple waves across 2024–2026, Windows cumulative updates have been tied to black screens, boot loops, and other display failures that left some users unable to reach their desktops or forced to wrestle with BitLocker recovery screens. The pattern is clear — large, combined servicing packages that include a Servicing Stack Update (SSU) together with an LCU (Latest Cumulative Update) have accelerated...

Windows 11’s recent push to become an “AI PC” has provoked a sharp rebuke from a subset of users — and for those who want a quieter, more private desktop, there are reliable, repeatable options to strip most AI surfaces out of the OS without rebuilding your machine from scratch. Overview Microsoft has layered Copilot, Recall, AI Actions and dozens of smaller inference-driven hooks into Windows 11 over the last two years, positioning the platform as a vehicle for both cloud and on-device AI...

Microsoft has quietly pushed emergency, out‑of‑band (OOB) Windows updates after its January Patch Tuesday rollup introduced two separate, operationally serious regressions: a Remote Desktop/Cloud PC sign‑in failure across multiple servicing branches, and a Secure Launch–linked shutdown/hibernate regression that caused some Windows 11 devices to restart instead of powering off. The fixes were published as cumulative OOB packages on January 17, 2026 and are available through Windows Update...

The January 13, 2026 cumulative update for Windows 11, KB5074109, introduced important security and reliability fixes — and promptly produced a string of configuration‑dependent regressions including brief black screens on some PCs, Classic Outlook (POP) hangs, Remote Desktop / Azure Virtual Desktop authentication failures, and other oddities that have forced users and administrators into cautious mitigation and roll‑back strategies. Background KB5074109 was released as Microsoft’s January...

A critical weakness in Microsoft Copilot Personal allowed attackers to turn a single, legitimate click into a stealthy exfiltration channel that could siphon profile attributes, file summaries and conversational memory — a chained prompt‑injection attack Varonis Threat Labs labeled “Reprompt” that Microsoft mitigated during January 2026’s security updates. Background / Overview Microsoft Copilot has been woven deeply into Windows and Microsoft Edge as a conversational assistant designed to...

Qatar’s Ministry of Education and Higher Education has begun a measured push to introduce Microsoft’s Copilot tools into the school and higher-education ecosystem, running hands‑on workshops that pair product demonstrations with role‑based training and immediate license activation for participants — a move framed by officials as part of wider national digital-skilling objectives. ar’s public-sector AI push has gathered pace in recent months, with government ministries and agencies piloting...