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Sometimes the quickest, safest way to get a job done is to open your browser, use an app that runs entirely in that tab, save your work locally, and close the tab — no installers, no accounts, and no invisible uploads to the cloud. The MakeUseOf round-up of five open‑source browser apps that “don’t touch the cloud” highlights exactly that type of workflow: single‑file personal wikis, hand‑drawn diagramming, in‑browser image editing, a full client‑side video editor, and an offline‑first...

Windows gives you explicit control over which apps can read, edit, and save files in your Pictures, Videos, and Documents libraries — and, importantly, Windows will create an app‑specific folder when you deny broad access so the app can still store its output without seeing the rest of your files. Background Windows stores personal files in a handful of well-known library locations — Documents, Pictures, Videos (and Music, Downloads, Desktop) — and these folders are where most apps look when...

A new independent analysis of corporate climate messaging concludes that the tech industry’s most prominent green AI claims are largely unverified, self-referential, and—by one analyst’s account—amount to systematic greenwashing rather than demonstrable emissions reductions. Background The report, authored by energy analyst Ketan Joshi and released at the AI Impact Summit in Delhi in mid‑February 2026, assessed 154 specific climate claims made about artificial intelligence by major...

Microsoft and Omdia’s new State of the SOC research lands like a warning flare: the operational costs of a fragmented security operations center are not hypothetical—they are quantifiable, compounding, and already driving preventable incidents and defensive drift. Background / Overview The research, released by Microsoft on February 17, 2026 and framed around the White Paper "State of the SOC—Unify Now or Pay Later," paints a picture many SOC leaders already know from daily operations: tool...

Gentoo has quietly begun the long, deliberate task of pulling its contributor-facing mirrors off GitHub and onto Codeberg, a move the distribution frames as a practical workaround for an ethical and operational problem: GitHub’s increasingly aggressive push of Copilot-style AI features into maintainer workflows and the wider community fallout from AI-generated contributions. Background What changed—and why it matters For decades, GitHub has been the default hub for open source collaboration...

Microsoft has quietly moved the next piece of its Brazil strategy into production: during the company’s AI Tour in São Paulo, Microsoft confirmed that two data halls are now in operation at a São Paulo site as part of its previously announced R$14.7 billion (roughly $2.7 billion) investment in cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure for Brazil. The announcement — delivered by Priscyla Laham, president of Microsoft Brasil — is short on technical detail but long on strategic...

CoStar’s Homes AI is live on Homes.com today, and it’s more than a flashy demo — it’s an explicit bet that conversational, voice-enabled AI will replace menu-driven filters as the primary way consumers discover and evaluate homes online. Background: what CoStar announced and why it matters CoStar Group announced the launch of Homes AI on February 17, positioning the feature as a “generational leap” for residential portals: a real-time, two‑way conversational assistant (text and voice)...

Unreal Tournament 2004 is playable again on modern Windows machines thanks to a community-led revival that bundles full installers with a major compatibility patch — a practical, careful rescue mission that makes one of the early‑2000s’ defining arena shooters run cleanly on Windows 10 and Windows 11 while also opening the door for Linux, macOS and ARM builds. Background Unreal Tournament 2004 (UT2004) arrived in the same era that defined fast, twitch-based arena shooters: modular weapons...

The long-promised moment when laptops behave more like smartphones — automatically connecting to the best cellular network, enforcing corporate policies, and staying secure without user fiddling — has taken a major practical step forward today with a formal productization from Ericsson and Microsoft: the two companies announced an integrated 5G management solution built into Windows 11 that pairs Ericsson Enterprise 5G Connect with Microsoft Intune and Windows device features to deliver...

Windows today does many of the things that used to force a fresh Windows install to be followed by a list of “must-have” third‑party utilities — but the reality is nuanced: built‑in tools have improved dramatically, yet they don’t make every third‑party app obsolete. A recent MakeUseOf roundup argues that common categories like compression tools, system cleaners, driver updaters, screenshot utilities, and third‑party antivirus are often unnecessary, because Windows can now handle these tasks...

The February surge of download failures that left Windows Insiders and power users staring at a terse Microsoft block page has once again put the spotlight on how Microsoft distributes ISO images — and whether the company is intentionally choking off third‑party tooling like Rufus from retrieving Insider preview ISOs. Evidence compiled from developer statements, GitHub threads, community reproductions, and contemporary reporting shows the symptoms are real and repeat a pattern the ecosystem...

Microsoft’s staged push to fold Copilot into the flow of work in Teams has reached the milestone the company set for itself: the new AI Workflows experience in the Teams Workflows app — powered by scheduled Microsoft 365 Copilot prompts and ready-made templates — is now reported as rolling out to general availability with the rollout window scheduled to complete in mid‑February 2026. This rollout brings a new practical vector for automation inside Teams: scheduled, Copilot‑driven prompts...

Microsoft has now completed the worldwide rollout of AI Workflows for Microsoft Teams, bringing scheduled, Copilot-driven automation to licensed Microsoft 365 users and shifting Copilot from a reactive assistant to a lightweight, tenant-aware automation engine that runs in the background. ](https://app.cloudscout.one/evergreen-item/mc1223822/?utm_source=openai)) Background: what changed and why it matters Microsoft’s AI Workflows introduce scheduled Copilot prompts as a native automation...

[SOLVED] KB5077181 Failing at 78–79% — Full Start‑to‑Finish Fix Guide (With ISO Checks + BitLocker Notes) Posting this to help anyone dealing with the same issue I spent days fighting. My system refused to install KB5077181 (26200.7840) and always failed in the exact same way. Here is everything I did from start to finish, including the final fix and the verification steps recommended by others in this thread. --------------------------------------- 1. Symptoms of the Problem...

In mixed-platform workplaces the ability to reach across the Windows–Mac divide without losing performance, keyboard fidelity, or security is no longer a convenience—it's a business requirement, and the right remote access strategy can make the difference between a seamless distributed workflow and a day of frustrated support tickets. Background Modern offices rarely, if ever, run a single operating system. Creative teams favor macOS for color-accurate screens and GPU-accelerated creative...

Dragos’ 2026 Year‑in‑Review makes bluntly clear what industrial defenders have long feared: adversaries are no longer content to merely probe and persist inside industrial networks — they are mapping control loops, handing off footholds to specialized operators, and increasingly engineering ransomware and destructive operations that translate digital access into real‑world disruption. The report, released February 17, 2026, documents a measurable maturation of OT threat ecosystems in 2025...

The leaked files published this week show that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement dramatically increased its use of Microsoft’s Azure cloud during the second half of 2025 — more than tripling stored volumes on Azure in six months and expanding the agency’s consumption of Microsoft productivity and AI tools — raising hard questions about how commercial cloud platforms, resellers and third‑party integrations are shaping a sweeping interior‑enforcement campaign. Background In 2025 the...

Auni’s rapid climb to 3,500 business sign-ups inside three months is a clear signal that Kenyan micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are not just curious about AI — they’re ready to use it as part of their everyday commerce. The Nairobi startup Fastagger built Auni as a lightweight, Microsoft Azure–backed mini app inside Safaricom’s M-Pesa Business Super App. Auni turns M-Pesa PDF statements into structured dashboards with on-device optical character recognition (OCR) and pruned AI...

Windows 10 users who think “it still boots, so I’m fine” are being handed a quietly serious maintenance problem: Microsoft is replacing the Secure Boot certificates that have underpinned Windows’ pre‑boot trust model since 2011, and machines that don’t receive the new certificates will continue to boot but will enter a degraded security state — unable to receive new boot‑level protections, revocation updates, or mitigations for newly discovered pre‑OS threats. com] Background / Overview...

Windows 11 can be maddening, especially when a fresh reinstall still leaves you with hiccups—but with the right safety net and methodical tuning, you can wrest control back and turn Microsoft’s general-purpose OS into a pragmatic, low-noise gaming platform. XDA’s recent walkthrough — a hands-on account of repeated reinstalls, frustration, and eventual tuning — lays out a practical toolkit of tweaks that prioritize responsiveness and consistency over chasing synthetic FPS numbers. Those...