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Genpact’s new Insurance Policy Suite is a clear statement that the vendor and consulting arms of the insurance technology market are moving past proof‑of‑concepts and toward agentic automation: a four‑module, Microsoft‑backed product that promises to automate much of the pre‑bind underwriting workflow, shorten cycle times, and deliver measurable cost savings—if the industry can manage the attendant governance, data and operational risks. Background Genpact announced the Genpact Insurance...

Microsoft’s move to “cease and disable” a set of Azure cloud and Azure AI subscriptions used by a unit inside Israel’s Ministry of Defence has forced a public reckoning about how hyperscale cloud infrastructure and commodity AI tooling can be repurposed into instruments of mass surveillance—and what vendors, regulators, and civil society must do to prevent that outcome. Background / Overview In early August 2025 a coordinated investigative package led by The Guardian (with +972 Magazine and...

Microsoft’s new consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) program gives many Windows 10 users a practical, time‑boxed lifeline — including a free route for eligible users in some regions — letting them keep receiving security‑only updates through October 13, 2026 while they plan upgrades or hardware refreshes. The announcement means Windows 10 will still reach its official end of support on October 14, 2025, but a narrowly scoped one‑year safety net is now available for qualifying consumer...

Microsoft appears to be testing a change that would finally let Windows 11’s taskbar search hand off web queries to whatever browser and search engine you have set as default—rather than forcing results into Microsoft Edge and Bing. The evidence comes from new experimental flags discovered in Microsoft Edge Canary that reference “WSB” and “DSE” behaviors and explicitly mention “NonEdgeDB” and “NonBingDSE,” which strongly imply Windows Search could soon open queries in a non‑Edge browser...

Legacy Update’s latest stable release, version 1.12, quietly rewrites a last‑man‑standing lifeline for unsupported Windows installs—and arrives at an awkwardly strategic moment as Windows 10’s official support window closes next month. The project, a community‑run, open‑source restore of the old Windows Update web app, now ships a rebuilt ActiveX control compiled with MinGW, shrinking the installer, speeding runtime behaviour, and removing a fragile dependency on legacy Visual Studio...

Microsoft’s move to outsource hollow‑core fiber (HCF) production to established glass and fiber manufacturers marks a key inflection point for a technology that has long promised dramatic gains in latency, bandwidth and energy efficiency for cloud and AI workloads. Over the last week Microsoft publicly announced strategic manufacturing collaborations with Corning and Heraeus to scale its HCF output, building on the company’s 2022 acquisition of Lumenisity and a string of laboratory...

Multiple subsea fibre‑optic cable faults in the Red Sea produced a measurable slowdown for Internet users across Pakistan, forcing carriers and cloud operators to reroute traffic, warn customers of higher latency, and expose the fragile link between cloud performance and the physical seabed infrastructure that carries most international data. Background The global internet runs on a physical spine of submarine (subsea) fibre‑optic cables that carry the vast majority of cross‑border data. A...

October 14, 2025 is shaping up to be more than a corporate calendar milestone — it’s a practical deadline that will force many Monster Hunter players to make a clear choice about how they keep playing: upgrade the operating system, accept an unsupported experience, or invest in new hardware. Background / Overview Microsoft has set a hard end‑of‑support date for Windows 10: after October 14, 2025 Microsoft will stop issuing routine security updates, feature updates, and standard technical...

A stubborn little triumph unfolded on the internet this week: an enterprising tinkerer managed to resurrect Windows 7, coerce the Steam client into running on it, and — after a series of creative workarounds — boot Hollow Knight: Silksong on that ancient platform, delivering a textbook example of why the PC modding community will never let legacy systems die quietly. Background: why this matters (and why it’s messy) For most PC users, Windows 7 has been a relic for half a decade. Microsoft...

A stubborn late‑model PC and a patient tinkerer have done what many considered impossible: coaxing modern Steam and Team Cherry’s hotly anticipated Silksong to run on a machine still sitting on Windows 7. The spectacle is less about raw performance than it is a reminder that the PC ecosystem—its games, platform clients, drivers and energetic communities—can be bent, bridged, and sometimes bullied into cooperation. The episode touches on bigger issues: platform support lifecycles, the...

If you want to power down an Xbox controller quickly and reliably—whether to save battery, reset a stuck connection, or prepare for storage—you can do it in a handful of simple ways that work across Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Windows PCs. This guide walks through four practical methods, verifies the technical details against official and independent sources, explains common edge cases (USB behavior, auto-sleep, firmware quirks), and provides battery-care and troubleshooting advice so...

Microsoft is adding a long-requested quality-of-life feature to Windows 11 via PowerToys: an automatic, schedule-driven switch between Light and Dark themes — a small addition on the surface that closes a glaring usability gap and gives advanced users precise control over how and when the OS and apps change appearance. Background Windows has supported light and dark modes for several years, but the operating system still lacks a built‑in, user‑friendly scheduler that flips themes...

Capcom has quietly moved a new compatibility line into the post‑launch roadmap for its Monster Hunter trilogy on PC: starting October 14, 2025, the publisher will no longer guarantee that Monster Hunter Wilds, Monster Hunter World, and Monster Hunter Rise will run on Windows 10. The change — announced on Steam and reported across gaming outlets — coincides with Microsoft's official end‑of‑support date for Windows 10, and it forces PC players and administrators to reckon with two simultaneous...

Every year I perform a ritual of hardware and software maintenance that restores older Windows laptops to the kind of snappy, reliable performance you expect from a new machine — not with magical upgrades, but with disciplined cleaning, targeted software housekeeping, and a few careful repairs that remove the friction that builds up over time. Background Windows laptops collect two kinds of slowdowns: physical and digital. Physically, dust and grime clog vents and fans, causing higher...

Microsoft has removed a long-running compatibility block that kept certain Intel 11th‑Gen PCs from receiving the Windows 11 24H2 feature update through Windows Update, resolving an incompatibility with specific Intel Smart Sound Technology (Intel SST) drivers and allowing affected systems to be offered 24H2 again without requiring a manual driver update. Background / Overview For more than a year, a narrow but disruptive compatibility problem prevented a subset of Intel‑based systems from...

Google quietly dropped a native, Spotlight‑style search overlay for Windows that brings Google Search, Google Lens and an integrated AI Mode to the desktop — summoned by a single hotkey and gated as an opt‑in experiment in Search Labs. Background Google’s new “Google app for Windows” is an experimental client surfaced through Search Labs that aims to replace a browser‑tab workflow with a keyboard‑first desktop experience. The app places a small, pill‑shaped search bar above whatever you’re...

Lionel Barrow’s short, furious tour of Microsoft 365 — republished and amplified by The Register — reads like a field report from an alien visitor trying to understand a human ritual: a thirty-something engineer raised on Gmail who steps into Exchange, Outlook, SharePoint, and Microsoft’s multi-headed group apparatus and emerges bewildered, amused, and alarmed. Background / Overview The current debate is a familiar one: for many organizations, Microsoft Exchange and Outlook are...

FSLogix 25.09 shipped as a routine maintenance release on September 9, 2025, but community reports over the past two weeks suggest the update may have resolved two particularly disruptive problems in virtualized and Remote Desktop Services environments: the recurring Outlook 365 sign‑in/activation error tagged [58tm1] and a Windows Server 2019 OneDrive behavior that prevented renaming of files and folders inside FSLogix-managed profiles. Microsoft’s official release notes for 25.09 list...

Open‑source software gives Windows users a fast, private, and flexible path away from closed ecosystems — and ZDNet’s compact list of “10 open‑source apps I always recommend Windows users try — and they’re free” is a practical starter kit for anyone ready to swap proprietary defaults for community‑driven alternatives. Background / Overview Open‑source apps have matured far beyond niche utilities; today they cover productivity, backups, local AI, password management, automation, and desktop...

In 2025, connecting your smartphone to a Windows PC is no longer a niche trick—it’s an expected part of a productive workflow, and Microsoft’s QR-based pairing flow at aka.ms/linkphoneqr is the simple, official gateway that makes it happen. The QR flow launches the Phone Link (formerly Your Phone) and Link to Windows ecosystem, letting Android and iPhone users move messages, notifications, photos, calls, and in many cases entire mobile apps between devices. This guide distills what...