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Microsoft’s Exchange Online team is deprecating the long-standing -Credential parameter in Exchange Online PowerShell — a change that administrators must treat as urgent rather than optional. The company’s guidance (and the wider MFA/ROPC narrative) makes clear that the legacy Resource Owner Password Credentials (ROPC) style of authentication cannot meet modern Multi‑Factor Authentication (MFA) and Conditional Access requirements; as a result, the Exchange Online PowerShell modules released...

Microsoft's latest earnings call gave investors something they had been demanding for months: concrete numbers for its Copilot family. What followed was less a triumphant reveal than a Rorschach test — the same figures that management framed as proof of momentum also exposed a set of uncomfortable realities about adoption, monetization, and capital intensity that investors and IT leaders will be parsing for months. Background Microsoft's Copilot branding now covers a broad, deliberately...

Microsoft’s security team has issued a blunt warning: a growing wave of websites and marketing tools are quietly embedding instructions into “Summarize with AI” buttons and share links that can teach your AI assistant to favor particular companies, products, or viewpoints — a tactic Microsoft calls AI Recommendation Poisoning and that security frameworks identify as a form of memory poisoning. The upshot is simple and unsettling: one click on a deceptively helpful AI share link can seed an...

Big Tech’s 2026 AI spending plans are not a gentle ramp — they are a once‑in‑corporate‑history infrastructure buildout that, by most estimates, pushes annual hyperscaler capital expenditure into the low‑hundreds of billions and creates a concentrated, high‑stakes market for chips, data centers, power and specialized services. Background The past three years have seen cloud giants shift from incremental AI experiments to programmatic, multi‑year engineering campaigns. What began as model...

Microsoft’s February 10, 2026 cumulative for Windows 11 — KB5077181 (OS Build 26200.7840 / 26100.7840) — is intended to deliver a routine bundle of security fixes, servicing‑stack improvements and non‑security refinements, but within days of release a growing set of field reports tied the update to severe post‑install failures: infinite boot or restart loops, a login failure that throws a System Event Notification Service (SENS) error, DHCP/network outages and a handful of update...

It is a bizarre, unapologetically delightful piece of maker theatre: someone has put a retro Windows 98 desktop inside a consumer smart toaster and wired the toaster’s controls to a pair of Raspberry Pi boards so you can launch a program called toast.exe and, in effect, make breakfast from a 1990s desktop. Background / Overview For anyone who remembers the late-80s/90s PC era, the image lands immediately: winged toasters from the After Dark “Flying Toasters” screensaver and the tactile drama...

Microsoft has issued a coordinated warning: the original Secure Boot certificates that have underpinned Windows platform integrity since 2011 are reaching the end of their lifecycle, and a deliberate, ecosystem-wide refresh is required before mid‑2026 to avoid a progressive loss of firmware‑level protections. Background / Overview Secure Boot is a firmware‑level trust anchor built into the UEFI specification that prevents unsigned or tampered pre‑OS software from executing during the...

The decision to bar Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from an Aston Villa Europa League match in Birmingham last November has detonated into a test case for how police forces use—and scrutinise—the outputs of generative AI, with a fabricated football fixture traced to Microsoft Copilot and subsequent legal and transparency fights over the AI chat logs that helped shape operational decisions. (theverge.com) Background The Safety Advisory Group (SAG) for Birmingham recommended that Maccabi Tel...

Custom e‑commerce stacks promised control and differentiation—but for many brands that promise slowly calcified into a recurring drain on time, talent, and cash. What began as strategic advantage often becomes a maintenance tax: security updates, bespoke integrations, infrastructure overage, and firefighting that pull developers away from revenue-driving work. This article examines the claims behind Shopify’s “move off custom” case, verifies the most important technical and commercial...

The moment a SUSE executive closed a Brussels policy panel with the throwaway line “We’ll give you three minutes back, as they say on Teams meetings” did more than draw a chuckle — it punctured a central narrative of Europe’s Open Source Policy Summit and raised hard questions about who actually runs on open source. Background: the summit, the line, and why it landed like a stone The EU Open Source Policy Summit 2026 convened policymakers, foundation leaders and industry executives under...

Microsoft has quietly added a first‑party command‑line client for the Microsoft Store to Windows: a built‑in Store CLI surfaced as the store command that lets you browse, search, install and update Store content from the terminal without opening the GUI. This is a small change on the surface, but it matters — especially to power users, IT professionals and administrators who want faster, scriptable access to Store‑hosted apps. The feature was announced as part of Microsoft’s February 11...

Safe Mode — the understated emergency exit for Windows 11 — remains the quickest, least-destructive route to diagnosing and repairing a system that refuses to behave, and understanding how to use it properly will save you hours of panic and potentially prevent a full reinstall. Background / Overview Safe Mode is not a magic cure, but it is a crucial investigative environment: Windows starts with only core drivers and essential services, a minimal GUI, and without third‑party autostart...

Microsoft’s February Patch Tuesday closed a dangerous loophole in the modern Windows Notepad app that could let a deceptively simple Markdown (.md) file become an engine for remote code execution when a user clicked a crafted link. Background / Overview Notepad’s recent transformation from a tiny, local-only text editor into a modern, Microsoft Store–distributed application has been controversial and consequential. Microsoft added Markdown preview, clickable links, tabs and richer formatting...

Microsoft’s blunt deadline for Windows 10 users — upgrade before June or accept a “degraded security state” — is not hype: it reflects a real, measurable change in how the Windows boot chain will be trusted going forward, and it forces consumers and IT teams to choose between upgrading, enrolling in a time‑limited Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, or accepting increasing exposure to boot‑level threats. Background / Overview Secure Boot was introduced as part of the UEFI standard to...

Microsoft released the February 2026 Patch Tuesday cumulative updates for Windows 11 — KB5077181 for Windows 11 versions 25H2 and 24H2, and KB5075941 for 23H2 — delivering this month's security fixes, servicing stack updates, and several quality improvements. These packages do not introduce headline consumer features but are important: they bundle January preview fixes, include updated AI component binaries for Copilot-capable devices, and — critically — continue a phased rollout that...

Microsoft’s latest security pivot for Windows 11 signals a major change in how the operating system will ask for — and enforce — user consent, bringing smartphone-style permission prompts and a stricter runtime integrity posture to the desktop in ways that could reshape end‑user experience, developer workflows, and enterprise policy settings. Background Microsoft’s Windows Experience blog this week introduced two headline initiatives: Windows Baseline Security Mode (BSM) and User...

Microsoft’s decision to ship Windows 11, version 26H1 as a device‑first, Arm‑only release marks a clear break from the post‑2021 cadence of a single, broadly distributed H2 feature update — and it forces a fast‑moving set of practical choices for buyers, developers, and IT teams that don’t show up in the UI but live deep in the OS plumbing. m]) Background / Overview Since the Windows 11 era began, Microsoft has largely followed a predictable release rhythm: one major H2 feature release each...

Microsoft has announced a major shift in Windows 11’s default trust model: a new Windows Baseline Security Mode that will enable runtime integrity safeguards by default and a companion User Transparency and Consent system that brings smartphone‑style app permissions and clearer prompts to the desktop. Overview Microsoft frames this change as part of a broader Secure Future Initiative and Windows Resiliency work to make Windows “secure by default,” while preserving the platform’s historic...

National Poop Day landed on my calendar the way most odd holidays do: as a cartoonish, slightly embarrassing curiosity that suddenly demands a moment of attention because it touches something universal and stubbornly human. What began as a children’s museum referendum in 2016 has quietly become a small annual prompt to talk about bowel habits, the gut microbiome, and how ordinary food choices—especially in the United States—shape daily digestion. The day after the Super Bowl is fitting: it’s...

ESW’s MissionReady365™ arrived on February 12, 2026 as a purpose-built staffing offering that promises to shorten the time it takes federal, state, and local agencies — and their prime contractors — to field experienced Microsoft 365 talent for mission-critical programs. Background / Overview Government IT modernization projects routinely stall on one problem above most others: people. Recruiting, vetting, and onboarding Microsoft 365 architects, Intune engineers, Power Platform leads, and...