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Milwaukee County is already using artificial intelligence in small but concrete ways — and a county supervisor has pushed the question into the open by asking for annual, board-level reporting on what systems are in use, how they’re implemented, and what outcomes they produce. The request, introduced by Sup. Shawn Rolland, aims to create a transparent baseline so supervisors and the public can assess benefits, costs, equity impacts, privacy trade-offs, and workplace effects as adoption...

Okta’s new Agent Discovery capability brings identity-first visibility to a problem that has quietly become an enterprise-scale risk: employees and automation builders creating unsanctioned AI agents that bind to corporate data using OAuth and service credentials, often outside IT governance. Background / Overview Okta announced Agent Discovery as part of its Identity Security Posture Management (ISPM) toolkit, positioning the feature to detect, map and help remediate “shadow AI” agents that...

TechPowerUp’s GPU‑Z has received another incremental but materially important update with the release of version 2.69.0, a maintenance-and-compatibility refresh that extends hardware recognition to several newly shipping GPUs, tightens kernel‑mode driver behavior, and fixes a handful of persistent detection and stability issues that have tripped up system inventory and benchmarking workflows. Background / Overview GPU‑Z is the compact, single‑window utility longtime enthusiasts and IT teams...

Microsoft shipped a set of behind‑the‑scenes Windows 11 dynamic updates on February 10, 2026 — KB5077178, KB5077180, KB5076124 and KB5077374 — that target the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) and setup binaries, and one of those setup updates includes a consequential Secure Boot signing change you need to plan for now. Background Microsoft uses Dynamic Updates to patch the components that run before the full OS boots or that are used during feature upgrades: the Windows Recovery...

I stopped relying on a third‑party antivirus suite and leaned on Microsoft Defender’s behavior‑monitoring features instead — the change wasn’t just about trimming bloat, it was about shifting to a real‑time, behavior‑centric defense model that’s built into Windows and powered by cloud intelligence. hift from signatures to behavior Antivirus software has historically depended on signature databases: vendors collect samples, classify threats, and push signature updates to millions of...

Microsoft’s February cumulative, KB5077181, has surfaced as a high‑impact regression for some Windows 11 devices running 24H2 and 25H2: affected machines can fall into repeated restart cycles, fail interactive sign‑in with System Event Notification Service (SENS) errors, and lose network connectivity entirely — problems that, in many reported cases, are cleared only by uninstalling the troublesome package and pausing updates until a confirmed fix is available. Background / Overview KB5077181...

The Hosts file is a tiny plain‑text system file that punches well above its weight: by mapping human‑readable hostnames to IP addresses, it can short‑circuit DNS lookups and control which servers your PC talks to. When the Hosts file is altered—intentionally for testing, by security software, or maliciously by malware—it can silently block websites, redirect traffic, or break Windows services. Resetting the Hosts file to its default state is one of the fastest, safest first steps you can...

City Colleges of Chicago’s upcoming “AI in 45” workshop promises a compact, practice-oriented briefing for faculty that pairs an AI Enablement framework with hands-on use of Microsoft Copilot and free generative-AI tools—framing adoption explicitly through accessibility (Universal Design for Learning) and academic-integrity safeguards. Background / Overview The session description published by City Colleges of Chicago presents three tightly coupled goals: introduce an AI Enablement Manifesto...

Microsoft’s new Security Dashboard for AI aims to give CISOs and IT administrators a single, operational control plane for the messy, fast-growing world of enterprise AI — consolidating identity, detection, and data signals into a single pane of glass and tying that visibility to prescriptive remediation and Copilot-driven investigations. (learn.microsoft.com) Background AI is no longer a pilot project in many organizations; it’s increasingly embedded in line-of-business apps, productivity...

Reddit’s favorite round-up of “Best 8 Azure cost management tools” is a useful conversation starter — but it’s not the whole story. In this feature I take the BBNTimes list as a launching point and validate the claims, cross-check major features and caveats, and provide a practical playbook for selecting the right FinOps and cost-intelligence tools for Azure-heavy environments. What follows is a balanced, evidence-backed deep dive into each vendor named in the list, with strengths...

Windows shortcut (.LNK) files are once again in the crosshairs: researcher Wietze Beukema has publicly documented four previously undocumented ways that crafted LNK files can spoof what users see, hide dangerous command-line arguments, and execute entirely different binaries than the shortcut appears to point to. This isn’t a minor UI quirk — it expands the practical attack surface for phishing, removable-media (USB) attacks, and initial-access operations that rely on user interaction. The...

Paul Thurrott’s “De‑Enshittify Windows 11: Start Fresh with a New Install of Windows 11” chapter lays out a blunt, practical playbook for reclaiming control of a new Windows 11 system by replacing Microsoft’s opinionated Out‑Of‑Box Experience (OOBE) with an installation you actually want — lighter, quieter, less telemetry‑driven, and free of forced cloud nudges. rview Windows 11’s Setup and OOBE are no longer neutral system configuration flows. Over recent releases Microsoft has layered...

If you’ve been annoyed by the oversized Start menu in Windows 11 and longed for the old freedom to make it smaller, taller, or wider, there’s now a practical workaround: a Windhawk community mod that lets you set the Start menu’s width and height in pixels — no Microsoft setting required. //www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/1r3tepd/resize_the_windows_11_start_menu_with_this_new/) Background / Overview Windows 11’s redesigned Start experience prioritized a cleaner, more modern visual...

Microsoft’s preview of Administrator Protection in Windows 11 is a seismic shift in how the platform treats administrator privileges — turning the long‑standing model of always‑on admin accounts into a just‑in‑time, Windows Hello–backed elevation model that isolates elevated sessions, destroys their tokens when finished, and blocks untrusted drivers by default in many configurations...

Microsoft's February Patch Tuesday closes a turbulent month for Windows with cumulative fixes that patch actively exploited flaws, roll forward January's out‑of‑band repairs, and — in a high‑impact operational move — continue a staged replacement of Secure Boot signing material on eligible devices to head off certificate expiries later in 2026. ([support.microsoft.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/february-10-2026-kb5075941-os-build-22631-6649-25716be6-475b-4e2e-9ece-499d218c3b8e) Background...

Windows 11’s Canary build quietly folds a defender’s favorite into the operating system: Sysmon (System Monitor) is now available as an in‑box, optional Windows feature in Insider Preview build 28020.1611 (KB5077221), shipped to the Canary channel as a gated rollout — disabled by default and requiring an explicit enablement step by administrators or users. ([blogs.windows.com]s.com/windows-insider/2026/02/12/announcing-windows-11-insider-preview-build-28020-1611-canary-channel/) Background /...

Adding a Google Chrome shortcut to your Windows desktop is one of those tiny productivity moves that pays back every day: one double‑click, zero hunting through menus. This guide explains three reliable ways to add Chrome (or a specific website) to your desktop on Windows 10 and Windows 11, checks the technical details you’ll want to understand, flags version differences and oddities you may encounter, and shows a couple of advanced options (including how to make a “web app” that opens in...

Microsoft appears to be quietly rewriting a stubborn chapter in its Windows migration story: Insider Preview builds are shipping an option to never combine taskbar buttons and to show labels, effectively restoring a core Windows 10 taskbar behavior that many users have long insisted was essential to their workflow. That change — simple in appearance but substantial in consequence — arrives at a moment of urgency: Windows 10 reached end of support on October 14, 2025, and Microsoft is racing...

Brazil’s antitrust authority has opened a focused inquiry into whether Microsoft used commercial leverage over PC makers to ensure Microsoft Edge ships as the exclusive, out‑of‑the‑box browser on Windows machines — a development that could bring one of the industry’s longest‑running browser battles back into the regulatory spotlight on February 12, 2026. The probe, triggered by a formal complaint from Opera and amplified by a coalition of rival browsers calling itself the Browser Choice...

Accidentally deleted a folder, formatted a USB stick, or watched your precious photos vanish after an OS update? Before you reach for a paid data‑recovery suite or box the drive for an expensive lab job, try the free options first — in many everyday scenarios they work very well. The short version: stop writing to the affected drive, image the disk if it shows signs of failure, and pick the right tool for the job — PhotoRec for raw carving, Recuva for quick Recycle‑Bin recoveries on Windows...