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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...

Microsoft hat eine kritische Sicherheitslücke in der modernen Notepad‑App für Windows 11 geschlossen und gleichzeitig die Debatte darüber neu entfacht, wie weit „leichte“ System‑Apps modernisiert werden dürfen, bevor sie zur Angriffsfläche werden — die Lücke wurde als CVE‑2026‑20841 klassifiziert, mit einem CVSS‑Bewertungswert von 8.8 und einer betroffenen Notepad‑Build‑Range vor 11.2510; das Update wurde im Rahmen des Februar‑Patch‑Tuesday verteilt. Hintergrund / Überblick Notepad galt...

Microsoft’s new Security Dashboard for AI brings the fragmented signals that surround enterprise AI under a single pane of glass — offering visibility, prioritized remediation, and a delegation workflow designed for real-world operations teams while tapping Microsoft Security Copilot for incident investigation and contextual analysis. Background AI is no longer a niche workload: it’s an integrated layer across productivity, cloud services, and custom apps. That proliferation has created new...

Modern MSPs are being pushed to stop treating Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) and Microsoft 365 as separate silos and instead build a unified, multi-tenant cloud practice that treats identity, endpoints, collaboration, and virtual desktops as a single, interconnected Microsoft ecosystem. (rcpmag.com) Background Microsoft’s cloud stack has evolved into a tightly integrated platform where identity (Microsoft Entra), device and endpoint management (Microsoft Intune and Defender), collaboration...

Windows 11’s new Resume capability marks a clear attempt to offer Apple‑style continuity between phones and PCs, but in its current form it is a constrained, developer‑and‑OEM‑dependent experience that still trails the polish, breadth, and two‑way fluidity of Apple’s Handoff. om] Background Apple introduced Handoff as part of its Continuity suite in 2014; the feature has since become a bedrock expectation for users who move work between iPhone, iPad, and Mac with almost no friction. Handoff...

Windows 11 still doesn’t give users a built‑edged way to change the visible size of the Start menu, but community tools — most notably the Windhawk modding platform — now offer a practical workaround that lets you resize the Start menu immediately. What began as a small, repeatable community mod has matured into a straightforward option for power users who want a narrower, taller, or wider Start surface without waiting for Microsoft to add a native control. Background / Overview Microsoft’s...

PeonPing turns your silent AI coding agent into a boisterous co‑worker, playing classic video‑game voice lines — most famously the Warcraft III “Work, work” peon — to signal status changes, permission prompts, and completed tasks so you never lose flow to a quiet terminal again. Background / Overview PeonPing is an open‑source project that attaches sound packs — themed voice lines from games such as Warcraft III, StarCraft, Red Alert 2, Portal, and more — to events emitted by AI coding...

Microsoft is testing a new taskbar entry called Ask Copilot that replaces the familiar Windows Search pill with an AI-aware, multimodal input — but only if you choose to turn it on. The feature arrives in Windows Insider preview builds (Dev and Beta channels), appears as an opt‑in toggle under Settings > Personalization > Taskbar, and blends Windows’ local index with Copilot’s conversational capabilities while exposing one‑click access to Copilot Vision and voice interaction. Background Over...