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Microsoft’s Copilot Studio has added xAI’s Grok 4.1 Fast to its model picker, delivering a high‑speed, large‑context, tool‑enabled text model into the platform Microsoft uses to build and govern enterprise agents—a move that widens model choice while raising fresh questions about governance, data flows, and operational controls for IT teams. Background Copilot Studio is Microsoft’s low‑code/no‑code environment for designing, testing, and deploying AI copilots and agentic workflows across the...

Sidley Austin’s newest London hire is not just another lateral move — it’s the latest headline in a sustained, high-stakes talent raid that has reshaped the City’s finance and capital markets bench over the past 18 months and forced rivals to adapt their retention, pay and conflicts procedures accordingly. (thelawyer.com) Background The story begins with a pattern rather than a single transaction: a concentrated campaign of lateral recruiting by Sidley Austin that has targeted Latham &...

The labor market is not retreating from AI — it’s rotating into a new shape, and LinkedIn’s data-driven view from Davos makes one thing clear: the fastest-growing jobs right now are those that either teach AI, build the infrastructure that runs it, or translate it into business value, while human skills like curiosity and communication are becoming the critical differentiators for career resilience. Background / Overview Over the last two years the skill requirements attached to many roles...

Perplexity’s decision to forgo in‑chat advertising and double down on subscriptions and enterprise sales has turned a long‑running debate about how to monetize AI assistants into an explicit industry fork — one path led by OpenAI toward ad‑supported scale, another led by Anthropic and now Perplexity toward a premium, ad‑free experience built on paid customers and enterprise contracts. rview OpenAI announced in January 2026 that it would begin testing clearly labeled ads inside ChatGPT for...

Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer says it wants to prove that the era of BigLaw — with its complex partnership structures, global practices and conservative risk instincts — can also be AI-native: a firmbuilt from the inside out to make generative AI part of everyday legal work rather than a series of pilots and experiments. Background / Overview The firm behind the push, Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer (branded in most coverage as HSF Kramer), is the product of a transatlantic merger that...

Microsoft has confirmed a logic error in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat that briefly allowed the assistant to read and summarise email messages organizations had explicitly marked as Confidential, bypassing Purview sensitivity labels and configured Data Loss Prevention (DLP) controls — a lapse tracked internally as service advisory CW1226324 and patched with a server-side configuration update. Background / Overview Microsoft 365 Copilot is positioned as an embedded productivity layer inside...

Installing Microsoft SQL Server 2025 is straightforward if you plan the edition, hardware, and security choices up front — follow the steps below to get a working, secure instance fast, then harden and update it so it stays reliable in production. Background / Overview Microsoft shipped SQL Server 2025 as the next major on‑premises release, positioning it as an AI‑ready, cloud‑integrated database engine with targeted engine optimizations, security defaults, and new workload accelerations...

Microsoft’s AI pivot isn't a marketing slogan anymore — it’s the architecture of the software you open every morning, the cloud that runs your company's tools, and a major thesis shaping portfolios on Wall Street. Overview Microsoft has moved from incremental AI features to making artificial intelligence the default interaction layer across Windows, Office, Azure, GitHub, and Xbox. That transition — driven by product bundling, datacenter buildouts, deep OpenAI ties, and aggressive...

VPS hosting remains the pragmatic middle ground for 2026: powerful, affordable, and flexible enough to run business sites, developer apps, and growing e‑commerce stores without the heavy cost of dedicated servers — but only if you choose the right plan, operating system, and support model for your needs. Background: why VPS still matters in 2026 Virtual Private Servers (VPS) combine the resource isolation of a dedicated machine with the cost-efficiency of shared infrastructure. A properly...

Installing Microsoft SQL Server doesn't have to be intimidating — with the right preparation and a clear, step‑by‑step approach you can go from zero to a healthy, secure SQL Server instance on Windows in under an hour. Background / Overview Microsoft SQL Server is the industry‑leading relational database engine used by developers, IT pros, and enterprises for everything from small development projects to mission‑critical production systems. It ships in several editions that target different...

Microsoft’s January patch cycle quietly widened protection for a pair of aging platforms that many organizations still rely on: the company delivered cumulative security updates for Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB 2016 (version 1607) and Windows Server 2016, a move that has prompted IT teams to reassess their post‑end‑of‑life strategies. The updates — shipped as cumulative packages in mid‑January — bring fixes for several high‑severity vulnerabilities and infrastructure changes, and they expose...

Windows 11 is quietly adding a one‑click network speed test to the taskbar, Mozilla is finally winding down Firefox ESR support for Windows 7 and 8, Blizzard has shipped a surprise Diablo II expansion more than two decades after the original, Valve warns of intermittent Steam Deck shortages thanks to memory and storage constraints, and Apple has seeded the rumor mill with a March 4 “Apple Experience” that could include an iPhone 17e and a slate of low‑cost Macs and iPads. These items...

If you want a distinctly different Windows 11 desktop without risking your installation, start here: choose tools that don’t patch protected system files, take a restore point, and build your look piece-by-piece with Rainmeter, ExplorerPatcher (for shell tweaks), and WindowBlinds (for full skins) rather than one-click “transformation” packs that rewrite uxtheme.dll and leave you with an unbootable PC when the next cumulative update arrives. ows theming and “skin packs” have always walked a...

The switch at the top of Microsoft’s gaming empire — with longtime leader Phil Spencer retiring and Asha Sharma stepping in as Executive Vice President and CEO of Microsoft Gaming — has set off one of the loudest, most polarized moments in Xbox history: a mix of cautious optimism inside the industry and a visceral, often vitriolic backlash from parts of the gaming community that loudly declare “Xbox is dead” and warn of an AI-first future that will crush consoles and creative craft alike...

Microsoft’s quiet policy shift this January has quietly but materially changed how Windows 11 handles printer drivers: the operating system will no longer automatically publish new legacy V3 and V4 printer drivers to Windows Update, and Windows is being reconfigured to prefer Microsoft’s modern, standards-based printing stack instead. ([learn.microsoft.cosoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/print/end-of-servicing-plan-for-third-party-printer-drivers-on-windows) Background / Overview For...

Microsoft’s gaming leadership just changed course: Phil Spencer, the executive who shepherded Xbox through acquisitions, Game Pass expansion, and the cloud era, has retired after 38 years at the company, and Microsoft has tapped Asha Sharma — an executive best known for leading CoreAI and large consumer product teams — to be the new CEO of Microsoft Gaming. In her first memo to the organization Sharma laid out three priorities — great games, a renewed commitment to Xbox hardware, and a...

Microsoft’s cloud-first posture is unmistakable, but the story of on‑premises Microsoft services is not over: companies can — and in many cases must — continue to run core Microsoft platforms in their own datacenters, provided they understand the tradeoffs around licensing, lifecycle, and innovation cadence. Background / Overview Igor’sLAB and other industry observers make a simple but important point: while Azure, Microsoft 365, and cloud‑native security services receive the lion’s share of...

Microsoft’s gaming arm turned a page this week as long‑time Xbox leader Phil Spencer stepped away and Microsoft moved an artificial‑intelligence product executive, Asha Sharma, into the top job — a change that immediately signals a strategic reset for Xbox, a renewed emphasis on console players, and a fresh bet that the next phase of gaming will be shaped by AI‑driven platforms and tools as much as by blockbuster exclusive titles. Background / Overview Xbox’s leadership handoff closes a...

Microsoft has quietly pushed a focused set of quality-of-life updates to Windows Insiders this week, delivering small but meaningful refinements to the context menu, the Settings “Device info” card, taskbar behavior, File Explorer stability, Nearby Sharing reliability—and even the Paint app’s long-requested freeform rotate control—across the Dev, Beta, and Canary channels. Background Microsoft’s Insider program continues to be the lab where incremental UI and usability changes are trialed...

Microsoft’s gaming organization entered a consequential new chapter on February 20, 2026, when long‑time Xbox leader Phil Spencer announced his retirement and Satya Nadella installed Asha Sharma — a senior Microsoft AI executive — as the new CEO of Microsoft Gaming, a leadership change that promises to accelerate the company’s embrace of artificial intelligence while explicitly rejecting what Sharma called “soulless AI slop.” Background Microsoft’s Xbox and broader gaming business has been...