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IO Interactive’s long‑teased James Bond origin game, 007 First Light, arrives as a cinematic, single‑player espionage thriller that recasts a younger James Bond into a modern, playable origin story — and it will be available on Windows (via Steam and Epic), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2 on March 27, 2026. Background / Overview 007 First Light is IO Interactive’s first original James Bond title since the franchise returned to new custodians, and it represents a...

Microsoft has quietly planted a new flag in the Windows roadmap: a device‑targeted platform baseline labeled Windows 11, version 26H1 — a plumbing‑first release (internally observed as the “Bromine” platform) that Microsoft is using to ready the OS for a new generation of Arm and AI‑centric silicon rather than to ship consumer features to the entire Windows install base. Background / Overview Microsoft published a Canary‑channel build that surfaces the version string Windows 11, version 26H1...

Microsoft’s one‑year lifeline for Windows 10 — the Consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) program — is now rolling out to eligible PCs, and the enrollment process is deliberately simple: open Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update and click “Enroll now,” then choose whether to link your Microsoft account, redeem Rewards points, or make the one‑time $29.99 purchase. Overview Windows 10 reached its official end of support on October 14, 2025. That retirement means Microsoft stopped...

Secure Boot is the firmware-level gatekeeper that stops unsigned and tampered code from running before Windows starts — enabling it is one of the single most effective steps you can take to harden a Windows 11 PC at boot time. Background / Overview Secure Boot is part of the UEFI firmware specification and enforces digital-signature checks on early-boot components such as UEFI drivers, bootloaders, and the OS loader. When Secure Boot is active, the firmware will refuse to start components...

Microsoft’s Exchange Team has confirmed that there are no security updates for any version of Exchange Server in November 2025, including Exchange Server Subscription Edition (SE) and Exchange Server 2016/2019 instances covered by the one‑time Extended Security Update (ESU) program; the team also said it will continue to issue explicit announcements each month through the ESU period (which runs through April 14, 2026), even when there are no releases to deliver. Background Microsoft set a...

Microsoft has published the November 2025 cumulative for Windows 11 — rolling out as KB5068861 — and it’s available now through Windows Update, the Microsoft Update Catalog (offline .msu installers), and enterprise distribution channels; the release bundles the latest servicing-stack components and a set of quality and UI refinements while retaining Microsoft’s staged, server‑gated delivery model. Background / Overview Windows servicing in 2025 continues to use a hybrid model: monthly...

Microsoft has issued an out‑of‑band update (KB5071959) for Windows 10, version 22H2 to fix a consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) enrollment failure and to make sure affected machines can complete enrollment and begin receiving critical security updates via Windows Update. The patch, published on November 11, 2025, is a cumulative package that embeds the October 14, 2025 security fixes and a servicing stack update, and Microsoft is urging impacted consumer devices to install it as soon...

Microsoft’s latest push to treat AI as a first‑class member of the enterprise — provisioning autonomous, identity‑bearing AI agents that can attend meetings, send mail, edit files, and act on behalf of teams — represents one of the most consequential shifts in workplace technology since the arrival of cloud productivity suites. Background / Overview Microsoft has moved rapidly from embedding language models into single‑user helpers to designing agentic systems — multi‑step, stateful actors...

Upgrading your Exchange estate to the latest Cumulative Update (CU) is no longer a benign maintenance task — it’s an operational imperative tied to hybrid security, enforced service changes, and survival of rich coexistence features. This battle-tested, friendly guide walks you from inventory to validation, with clear sequencing, practical checklists, and hard lessons learned from recent enforcement windows and hotfix rollouts that affected hundreds of enterprise environments. Background...

FreeXP isn't a prank, a virus, or a nostalgia-only gimmick — it's a carefully built, Debian-powered pathway out of the Windows ecosystem that dresses a modern Linux stack in a familiar Windows skin so convincingly many users will swear they're still on Microsoft’s desktop. What started as an XP-like theme package has become a shippable live image (and installer option) that packages Q4OS and the XPQ4 theme tooling into a ready-to-run environment called FreeXP — with a sibling image, Free10...

Microsoft’s consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) for Windows 10 — the stopgap meant to protect devices after the operating system reached end of support — is failing to enroll for a meaningful number of users, producing opaque errors or region‑blocked messages that leave affected PCs at risk of missing security rollups. The problem shows up in two consistent failure modes: a clear “Enrolment for Windows 10 Extended Security Updates is temporarily unavailable in your region” banner for...

For many Windows refugees, the question isn’t whether to leave Microsoft’s ecosystem so much as where to land next — and one often-overlooked runway is FreeBSD. A recent first-person experiment that swapped Windows for a FreeBSD-based desktop (using the GhostBSD project) makes a persuasive, practical case: FreeBSD can be a coherent, lower‑chaos alternative to the endless “which Linux distro?” debate, but the trade-offs — hardware support, closed‑source game clients, and the occasional...

Windows 11’s November cumulative (reported as KB5068861 in press coverage) marks one of the more consequential Patch Tuesday rollouts of the year: a staged feature delivery that flips on a redesigned Start UI for more users, introduces colourful taskbar battery icons with an optional percentage readout, patches long-running reliability issues (including a Task Manager quit bug), and brings a handful of small but meaningful performance fixes — all delivered via Windows Update and downloadable...

Microsoft shipped a tiny, ill-fated experiment in the 1980s — a bespoke build of OS/2 intended to run on the Mach 20 CPU‑upgrade card — and according to a long‑running anecdote from a Microsoft engineer, only eleven boxed copies were ever sold and eight of those were returned, leaving the release as a likely contender for the company’s worst‑selling product ever. Background: the era of upgrade cards and Microsoft’s Mach series Personal computing in the mid‑1980s was a fractured landscape of...

Microsoft’s refreshed Start menu in the Windows 11 November 2025 wave is a deliberate redesign — not just a cosmetic tweak — that returns a scrollable, single-surface launcher to the heart of the OS while adding new views, smarter discovery, phone continuity, and clearer personalization controls. The update aims to reduce clicks, make large app catalogs usable again, and give users control over recommendations, but it also introduces rollout, privacy, and IT-management trade-offs that every...

Microsoft’s latest in‑product marketing tactic — a targeted Bing prompt offering 1,300 Microsoft Rewards points to users who search for “Chrome” while using Edge on Windows 11 — has reignited a long‑running debate over whether an operating‑system vendor can lawfully, or ethically, steer users toward its own browser by leveraging built‑in channels, loyalty programs, and UI affordances. The newly formed Browser Choice Alliance has publicly condemned the move as tantamount to “bribing” users...

Microsoft’s low-friction “email-to-chat” change for Teams — which lets any user start a conversation with any email address and automatically provisions the recipient as a guest in the sender’s tenant — landed as a convenience feature but has immediately rippled through IT operations, security teams, and compliance desks as a high-impact policy change that must be accounted for now, not later. The update is enabled by default, rolls out to clients in a staged fashion beginning in early...

The iQOO 15’s India arrival is shaping up to be as notable for its software promise as it is for raw horsepower: iQOO has signalled a substantial upgrade to its long-term support policy for the new flagship, promising five years of OS updates and seven years of security patches, while shipping the phone with OriginOS 6 (based on Android 16) and a spec sheet that reads like a high‑end play for endurance and photography. Background / Overview iQOO’s 15 will make its India debut later this...

Apple’s software roadmap is quietly pivoting toward a more aggressive, services-driven AI strategy: the company is preparing an AI-powered web search capability and an AI health agent as part of Apple Intelligence, with a staged Siri overhaul that begins in iOS 26.4 and culminates in a larger visual and functional redesign in iOS 27. Recent reporting from industry insiders frames these moves as Apple’s attempt to close an AI gap with competitors while preserving its privacy posture and...

The European Commission is preparing to push member states toward a unified, bloc‑level exclusion of Chinese mobile‑network vendors Huawei and ZTE — a policy shift that would turn the EU’s voluntary 2020 “5G Cybersecurity Toolbox” into enforceable, cross‑border rules and sharply accelerate the continent’s long‑running geopolitical decoupling from Chinese telecom equipment. Background: the 5G toolbox, political context and what’s changed The EU’s 5G Cybersecurity Toolbox was published in 2020...