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Australia’s electricity sector is being pushed to use AI not merely to serve new data-centre demand, but to manage a fast-changing grid where renewables supplied 47 percent of the National Electricity Market in the first quarter of 2026. Microsoft Asia, citing a new Mandala report it commissioned, argues that Australia’s energy transition has reached the point where software is no longer optional infrastructure. That is the right debate, even if Microsoft is not a neutral observer. The...

Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced launches for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S on July 9, 2026, with Ubisoft listing Windows 10 or 11, 16GB of RAM, DirectX 12, 65GB of SSD storage, and Steam Deck Verified status for Valve’s handheld. The short version is that this is not a museum-piece remaster asking 2013-era hardware to come back on deck. As Radio Times summarized in its requirements roundup, and as Ubisoft’s Steam listing and subsequent coverage from PC Gamer, GameSpot, and...

Microsoft has launched Catch up for Microsoft Teams on Android and iOS, a General Availability mobile feature listed under Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 558108 that gives users one card-based view of directed and followed conversations across chats, meeting chats, channels, and threads. The feature reached worldwide standard multi-tenant customers in the May 2026 release window and was last updated on Microsoft’s roadmap on July 7, 2026. Microsoft’s own support documentation and Message Center...

Microsoft began rolling out Roadmap ID 557189 on July 7, 2026, adding content preview inside Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management alerts so authorized investigators can inspect relevant files from Activity explorer before creating a formal case. The change sounds small because it is expressed as a workflow convenience. In practice, it moves one of the most sensitive moments in an insider-risk investigation—the first look at what a user touched—earlier in the process. That is why this...

Microsoft is adding new summary metrics to Microsoft Purview Content Explorer that will show admins how many files remain unscanned for classification and how classifications have changed over time, with preview targeted for July 2026 and general availability planned for November 2026. The feature, listed as Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 526796 and updated on July 7, 2026, is not a flashy compliance reinvention. It is a dashboard-level change with a sharper message: Microsoft wants Purview...

Microsoft Teams has launched one-time email passcodes for anonymous external presenters in Teams events, a desktop feature listed on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap as generally available in April 2026 and last updated on July 7, 2026. The change gives Teams administrators and event organizers a new identity checkpoint for webinars, town halls, and other managed events where outside speakers are invited without being fully inside the host tenant. Microsoft’s own roadmap entry and Teams admin...

Microsoft added broader targeting controls for Microsoft Purview sensitivity label policies in 2026, allowing admins to exclude modern Microsoft 365 groups and include dynamic and non-mail-enabled security groups, with preview beginning in April and general availability listed for May 2026. The change, recorded under Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 558685 and last updated on July 7, 2026, is not the flashiest Purview feature Microsoft will ship this year. But for administrators who live in the...

Microsoft has placed Microsoft Purview Endpoint Data Loss Prevention roadmap item 562991 in development for September 2026 general availability, adding the ability to include or exclude specific users and groups from Just-in-Time Audit in worldwide commercial tenants. The change is small in UI terms but meaningful in governance terms: it turns JIT Audit from a broad diagnostic instrument into something closer to a targeted compliance control. For security teams already drowning in endpoint...

Microsoft has launched Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management support for using Microsoft Fabric, cloud storage apps, and cloud service activities as triggers in Data leaks policies, with preview availability in June 2026 and general availability in July 2026 for worldwide standard multi-tenant customers. The update, listed as Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 560399 and last updated on July 7, 2026, sounds like a small policy-builder tweak. It is not. It moves Purview’s insider-risk model closer...

Microsoft has launched a Microsoft Purview Information Protection feature that lets Teams meeting recordings, transcripts, and Loop notes automatically inherit the sensitivity label assigned to the meeting, with preview beginning in May 2026 and general availability listed for June 2026 worldwide. The change, recorded under Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 558686 and updated on July 7, 2026, looks modest on paper. In practice, it closes one of the more awkward gaps in Microsoft 365 governance...

Microsoft is developing a Teams and Planner feature, listed as Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 561490 and last updated July 7, 2026, that will let users connect Teams meetings to existing Planner plans when it reaches general availability in August 2026. The change sounds small because it is small, in the way a missing hinge is small until every cabinet door in the kitchen starts sagging. For organizations that run projects through recurring Teams meetings, it fixes one of the more quietly...

Microsoft launched Roadmap ID 558687 for Microsoft Purview in April 2026, adding policy sync status for Microsoft 365 sensitivity label publishing policies in the Purview web portal for worldwide standard multi-tenant customers after a March 2026 preview. The feature sounds small because it is mostly a visibility change, not a new enforcement engine. But for administrators who have lived through label rollouts by stopwatch, PowerShell, and hope, it fixes one of Purview’s most irritating...

Microsoft has launched Microsoft Purview Information Protection sensitivity label support for Viva Engage communities, bringing manually applied labels to the web experience after preview availability in March 2026 and general availability in May 2026 for worldwide standard multi-tenant Microsoft 365 customers. The feature, listed on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap as ID 558684 and updated on July 7, 2026, lets administrators publish labels to selected users and groups so community owners can...

Microsoft has put Microsoft Purview Endpoint Data Loss Prevention Roadmap ID 562993 into development for worldwide commercial tenants, promising by September 2026 a pre-curated file-extension picker for Endpoint DLP’s “file extension” condition instead of today’s free-form text entry. The change sounds microscopic, but it lands in exactly the part of security administration where small ambiguities become large operational failures. Microsoft is not announcing a new DLP engine here; it is...

Microsoft has launched Microsoft Edge’s Intune MAM protected downloads change in General Availability for July 2026, moving protected files downloaded from Edge into the user’s OneDrive path at Documents > Microsoft Edge > Downloads instead of treating the browser download as an ordinary local-save event. It is a small folder change with a much larger management signal behind it. Microsoft is tightening the loop between Edge for Business, Intune app protection, Conditional Access, and...

Microsoft’s Photos app in Windows 11 now sits at the junction of local image viewing, OneDrive and iCloud aggregation, conventional photo editing, and Copilot+ PC-only AI features, as detailed in Paul Thurrott’s July 7, 2026 update to the Windows 11 Field Guide. The deceptively small “Filter” attachment in that guide points to something larger than a menu of visual presets. Photos has become a case study in Microsoft’s current Windows strategy: keep the everyday app familiar enough to avoid...

Windows Fast Startup, enabled by default on many Windows 10 and Windows 11 PCs, can make a shutdown behave more like a partial hibernation, and a recent MakeUseOf account says disabling it fixed Linux mounting trouble, USB dock dropouts, and a stuck update loop. The surprise is not that Fast Startup can cause trouble; Microsoft’s own documentation has long described the feature as preserving the kernel session and drivers instead of closing them. The surprise is that, on modern SSD-equipped...

Microsoft added Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention alert aggregation by user to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap on July 7, 2026, targeting general availability in September 2026 for GCC, GCC High, and DoD tenants. The feature, Roadmap ID 567010, is not a flashy security control so much as an operational admission: DLP programs now generate more signal than many teams can reasonably triage. By grouping related alert events around a common user even when multiple DLP rules are matched, Microsoft...

Microsoft added Microsoft 365 Roadmap item 566859 on July 7, 2026, saying Copilot Studio agents will be able to use SharePoint lists as knowledge sources in preview in July 2026 and reach general availability in September 2026. The feature sounds modest, almost clerical, until you consider where a great deal of Microsoft 365 business data actually lives. This is not merely another connector checkbox; it is Microsoft admitting that enterprise AI cannot live on documents alone. If Copilot...

Microsoft added Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 567313 on July 7, 2026, promising Microsoft Graph access to primary and auxiliary archive mailboxes for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management, with worldwide general availability planned for August 2026. The feature sounds narrow, almost plumbing-level, but it lands at a decisive moment for Exchange Online customers. Microsoft is trying to make Graph the only credible path into mailbox data before Exchange Web Services begins its scheduled...