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Microsoft’s plan to let Teams automatically detect when an employee is “in the office” by watching network and peripheral signals has turned a routine product update into a flashpoint for debates about trust, privacy, and how far workplace monitoring should go in the hybrid era. The capability—built on Wi‑Fi SSID/BSSID mapping and peripheral plug‑in detection—aims to solve real operational problems such as desk booking accuracy and spontaneous collaboration, but its rollout and potential use...

The University of Cincinnati has launched a coordinated, campus-wide push to become “AI-ready,” rolling together tenant-contained model hosting, faculty training, classroom pilots and operational automations under a program branded Bearcat AI Ready!. The initiative expands the campus BearcatGPT pilot into an enterprise-grade, Azure-hosted gateway for supervised generative AI use, pairs a four-tier AI Fluency Framework with applied workshops and certifications, and will introduce AI-driven...

Microsoft’s first public preview of the Copilot‑powered taskbar search box delivers a clean, polished experience that blurs the line between classic Windows Search and an AI assistant — but early testing shows the tradeoffs are real: convenience and discovery come at the cost of fragmented interfaces, the same flaky search reliability under the hood, and a hand‑off model that still feels unfinished. Background Microsoft has begun rolling out an opt‑in taskbar pill called Ask Copilot in...

Microsoft is quietly testing a native Windows 11 feature that lets a single PC stream the same audio to two Bluetooth headsets, earbuds, speakers or hearing aids at once — a capability Apple users have enjoyed for years — but the catch is significant: it’s currently limited to a narrow set of Copilot+ Windows 11 laptops and depends on Bluetooth LE Audio, updated drivers and compatible accessories. Background / Overview Windows 11’s new Shared audio (preview) arrives as part of the Windows...

FlyOobe’s developer has issued an urgent security alert after an unofficial, official-looking website began offering downloads of the popular Windows 11 requirements bypass tool — a move that exposes desperate Windows 10 users to the classic supply‑chain trap of tampered installers and potential malware at the moment they are most likely to take risky shortcuts. Background Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025, creating a sudden spike in demand for ways to...

Microsoft has quietly reversed one of its newest Windows Update UI experiments: after removing month‑and‑year prefixes from update titles and provoking an immediate backlash from IT administrators, the company confirmed it will restore the date (month and year) to update titles shown in Settings and Update history. Background: what changed and why Microsoft tried it In late October, Microsoft introduced a simplified naming scheme for many update types — monthly security updates, preview...

ChatGPT’s dominance in Ireland — a near‑monopoly in referral telemetry — and the parallel, fast‑moving story of people turning conversational AI into a form of everyday therapy have become two of the defining tech narratives of 2025. New public telemetry shows ChatGPT is responsible for roughly four‑in‑five chatbot‑to‑website referrals worldwide and more than eight‑in‑ten in Ireland, while a separate and rapidly expanding body of clinical and technical literature documents both promising...

Microsoft’s October Patch Tuesday left a small but vocal swath of Windows administrators staring at a blunt, alarming notice in Settings: “Your version of Windows has reached the end of support,” even on machines that remained legitimately entitled to security updates — including systems in the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program and Long‑Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) builds that Microsoft documents as supported through 2027 or later. Background / Overview Windows 10’s mainstream...

Oakland’s new AI pilot solicitation signals a decisive shift from internal policy-setting to real-world experimentation, offering no-cost, 16-week pilots to vendors and researchers on a slate of 30 city‑identified use cases aimed at improving access, efficiency, and transparency across municipal services. The announcement — framed by the cross-departmental AI Working Group (AIWG) and anchored to an explicit AI Equity Statement and automated data‑classification protections — promises rapid...

Microsoft’s decision to place a new Azure cloud region — Southeast Asia 3 — in Johor Bahru signals a deliberate push to densify AI‑ready infrastructure in Southeast Asia and to lock in lower‑latency, in‑country compute for regulated and AI‑heavy workloads. Background / Overview Microsoft first announced a major multi‑year investment in Malaysia in 2024 and delivered the Malaysia West cloud region (Greater Kuala Lumpur) earlier in 2025 as its initial in‑country footprint. The new Johor Bahru...

Samsung has opened the door between Galaxy phones and Windows PCs: the company launched a region‑gated beta of Samsung Internet for PC on October 30, 2025, bringing cross‑device sync for bookmarks, history and (promised) passwords, plus built‑in Galaxy AI features such as Browsing Assist, to Windows 11 and Windows 10 (version 1809 and later) machines in an initial rollout limited to the United States and South Korea. Background / Overview Samsung Internet began as a mobile‑first browser...

For the first time in years of user grumbling and forum posts, the Start menu’s long‑promised “Update and shut down” command finally does what it says: install pending updates and then power off the PC. Microsoft documented the correction in Insider release notes and packaged the same servicing change into the October 28, 2025 optional preview cumulative update (KB5067036), which produces OS builds 26200.7019 for Windows 11 25H2 and 26100.7019 for 24H2. Background / Overview For many users...

A recent optional preview update for Windows 11 is producing a frustrating and easily reproducible regression: closing Task Manager with the window “X” can leave the underlying taskmgr.exe process running, and each reopen spawns a new visible Task Manager instance while earlier instances persist invisibly in the background — producing duplicate, accumulating processes that can consume memory, CPU cycles, and battery over time. Background Microsoft released the October 28, 2025 non‑security...

Microsoft has begun previewing a built‑in Windows 11 capability that can stream the same audio feed to two Bluetooth devices at once, using Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) Audio to enable simultaneous listening on two pairs of headphones, earbuds, speakers, or even hearing aids from a single PC. Background Bluetooth LE Audio — the modern Bluetooth audio architecture built around the LC3 codec and the Auracast broadcast model — was designed to address long‑standing limitations of classic Bluetooth...

Sky has quietly decided to pull the plug on Sky Live: the Kinect-esque camera that turned Sky Glass into a motion-tracking fitness coach, a motion-controlled games console, a Zoom-capable TV and a “watch together” social screen will stop functioning on 4 December 2025, and Sky says anyone who bought one — either outright or on monthly payments — will receive a refund. The company is also offering purchasers a complimentary 12‑month Mvmnt subscription in the app’s non‑motion‑tracking form...

Sandeep Walunj, the Group Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Director of Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd (MOFSL), has stepped down from his role, with his last working day reported as October 31, 2025 — ending an 18‑month tenure that included a high‑profile brand refresh and intensified digital marketing efforts. Background Sandeep Walunj was appointed Group Chief Marketing Officer of Motilal Oswal Financial Services on April 4, 2024, joining the storied Indian financial-services...

Microsoft has quietly reversed course on one of the more contentious UI experiments in Windows Update: after removing the long‑standing year‑and‑month prefix from update titles, the company says it will restore the YYYY‑MM date token to the visible update names in Settings and Update history. Background For decades Microsoft’s visible update titles in Settings → Windows Update and Update history included a verbose, catalog‑style string that gave immediate operational context — most notably a...

Microsoft Azure has pushed the limits of cloud inference performance: Microsoft reports an aggregated throughput of 1.1 million tokens per second from a single NVL72 rack running the new ND GB300 v6 virtual machines built on NVIDIA’s GB300 (Blackwell Ultra) hardware, a milestone that resets the practical ceiling for large-scale inference in public cloud. Background / Overview Microsoft’s ND GB300 v6 offering is the cloud-exposed packaging of NVIDIA’s GB300 NVL72 rack-scale system. Each NVL72...

Speccy puts a clear, no-nonsense snapshot of your PC in front of you within seconds — and on Windows 11 that simplicity can save time when you’re diagnosing temperature spikes, planning an upgrade, or preparing a support ticket. Background / Overview Speccy is a lightweight system-information utility originally developed by Piriform that collects and displays hardware and operating‑system details in a compact, readable interface. It reports everything from CPU model and per‑core temperatures...

Microsoft has quietly closed one of Windows’ most persistent little annoyances: the Start menu option labeled “Update and shut down” will now, in the scenarios Microsoft targeted, actually power the PC off instead of rebooting it — a fix that arrived first in Insider preview flights and was folded into the October 28, 2025 optional preview cumulative package (KB5067036). Background For many users the Start menu’s Update and shut down command is a simple convenience: apply pending Windows...