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Microsoft has taken a major step toward making passkeys truly practical for everyday Windows users by adding cloud sync for passkeys in Microsoft Edge via Microsoft Password Manager, allowing passkeys created on one Windows device to follow you across devices signed into the same Microsoft Account. Background / Overview Passkeys are the FIDO2- and WebAuthn-based replacement for traditional passwords: instead of a shared secret you type, your device creates a public/private key pair and the...

Windows includes a built‑in diagnostic that can tell you, in plain numbers, whether your laptop battery is merely tired or truly failing — and it’s one command away. Background Laptop batteries are consumable parts: they age, their usable capacity falls, and the moment they stop holding charge can arrive sooner than you expect. Windows exposes a powerful, no‑install tool — the battery report generated by the powercfg utility — which writes a human‑readable HTML file showing usage history...

Shopify is betting the future of commerce on AI agents: the company told investors and the press that traffic from AI tools to Shopify storefronts has jumped sevenfold since January, and that purchases attributed to AI-powered search are up 11×, while announcing deeper integrations with ChatGPT and other AI assistants as part of a broader push toward what it calls agentic commerce. Background Shopify’s message came during its third-quarter results and earnings commentary, where executives...

Shopify’s latest public briefing paints a clear picture: AI is no longer a boutique experiment for discovery — it’s becoming a primary commerce channel, and the company is already seeing traffic and order signals that insist merchants prepare for a very different e-commerce stack. Background / Overview Shopify closed its most recent quarter with revenue near $2.84 billion, a roughly 31–32% year‑over‑year increase, and used its earnings narrative to frame AI integrations and agentic commerce...

Microsoft has quietly resolved one of Windows’ most quietly irritating UX mismatches: the Start menu option “Update and shut down” now behaves like it says, after Microsoft shipped a servicing correction in the optional preview package identified as KB5067036 for Windows 11 versions 24H2 and 25H2. Background / Overview For many Windows users the difference between Update and restart and Update and shut down has always been straightforward: one should reboot to finish updates now, the other...

Microsoft and AMD’s co-designed EPYC 9V64H — the CPU at the heart of Azure’s new HBv5 virtual machines — changes the calculus for memory‑bound HPC in the cloud by bringing HBM3 directly to an EPYC‑class CPU and delivering an order‑of‑magnitude uplift in sustained memory bandwidth for real‑world applications. Background / Overview Microsoft’s HBv5 family targets the narrow but high‑value segment of HPC and memory‑bound workloads: computational fluid dynamics, weather and climate modeling...

Windows users have long envied the tactile precision and gesture-friendly surface of Apple’s Magic Trackpad — and now a crowdfunded contender claims to deliver that same feel plus Windows-focused features: the HyperSpace Trackpad Pro, launched on Kickstarter by Hyper, pledges full-force sensing, contextual piezo haptics, a 240 Hz response rate, and deeply customizable app profiles via its Hydra Connect software. The campaign hit its funding goal within minutes, early-backer pricing undercuts...

A veteran tinkerer has released a bootable Windows 7 x86 image that measures just 69.0 MB on disk — a headline-grabbing proof‑of‑concept that boots to a desktop but deliberately strips so much of the userland that “virtually nothing can run” without manually restoring missing system files. Background / Overview Windows enthusiasts have long pushed the boundaries of what the operating system can tolerate when pared down. Recent community efforts such as Tiny11 and container-focused...

Microsoft has quietly corrected one of those small, long‑running Windows annoyances: the Start‑menu command “Update and shut down” now behaves as labeled in recent Insider preview builds and an October 28, 2025 optional preview package, addressing an intermittent issue that sometimes left PCs powered on instead of truly shutting down after updates. Background The problem was simple to describe and hard to fix: when users selected Update and shut down they expected Windows to apply pending...

Microsoft has quietly corrected the maddening “Update and shut down” behavior that for years sometimes left Windows machines powered on after updates — the October 28, 2025 preview cumulative update (KB5067036) and related Insider builds now include a servicing change that ensures the system honors a user’s choice to install updates and then power off. Background For a surprising number of Windows users the Start menu’s Update and shut down option became unreliable: you would select it, go...

Microsoft’s latest Canary build for Windows Insiders, reported as Build 27982, continues the steady stream of UI and usability experiments in Windows 11 by expanding lock screen personalization, reworking the Widgets board with multiple dashboards and new left-side navigation, and bringing an evolved file-sharing workflow via a drag-to-share tray — changes that aim to make common tasks faster but also raise fresh questions about discoverability, workflow interference, and enterprise...

Microsoft has quietly confirmed what many Windows users have long suspected: the Start menu option labeled “Update and shut down” could, in some setups, install updates and then restart (or return to the lock screen) instead of powering the machine off — and Microsoft now says that behavior was a bug that it has addressed in its October 28, 2025 optional preview update (KB5067036). Background For several years a steady trickle of complaints across forums, support tickets, and help-desk logs...

A misleading “Your version of Windows has reached the end of support” banner began appearing inside Settings → Windows Update on a subset of Windows 10 machines after the October servicing wave, triggering confusion and alarm even on systems that remain eligible for Extended Security Updates (ESU) or are running supported Long‑Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) editions. Microsoft has characterized the message as a display/diagnostic error, not a revocation of update entitlements, and pushed a...

Microsoft’s new e‑book and the surrounding product messaging make a clear, consequential claim: generative AI can shift Security Operations Centers (SOCs) from overwhelmed triage centers into proactive, high‑impact defense teams — reducing wasted analyst time, accelerating investigations, and improving remediation outcomes. That promise is both realistic and measurable in early deployments, but it also carries new operational, governance, and adversarial risks that security leaders must...

Microsoft’s software for macOS has quietly matured from rough ports into a first‑class, often native experience — and for Mac users who need cross‑platform muscle, that matters. What started as Word and Excel running in compatibility mode is now a full productivity ecosystem: Microsoft 365 on macOS supports system Dark Mode, Continuity Camera and other macOS features; OneDrive tightly integrates into Finder with Files On‑Demand; OneNote and Outlook offer robust cross‑device sync; Edge brings...

Microsoft’s update cadence for Windows 11 may be quietly shifting again: a Known Issue Rollback (KIR) connected to the October 2025 Windows 10 cumulative update has surfaced internal metadata that appears to reference a Windows 11 build labeled “version 26H1”, and community reporting links that trace to Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon X2 family and a codename in Microsoft’s internal flight branches. Background / Overview Microsoft moved Windows 11 from a semiannual feature-update cadence to a...

Microsoft Flight Simulator is the rare piece of software that can make a desk-bound user feel the unmistakable hush and throttle of a real cockpit — and yet, in recent years, the franchise has also become a case study in how modern simulation depends as much on cloud infrastructure, live data, and continuous service design as it does on aerodynamics and pixel-perfect scenery. Background Microsoft’s Flight Simulator franchise stretches back to the early 1980s and has evolved from pixelated...

Amazon Renewed marketplaces were quietly listing dozens of refurbished PCs that cannot be upgraded to Windows 11 — a problem Techlicious exposed that forced Amazon to remove listings but left a larger question about how refurbished-device marketplaces police compatibility and protect buyers. The story is straightforward and urgent: Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025, and many low-cost Renewed listings were for machines that lack the hardware baseline...

Microsoft has pushed a fresh Canary‑channel flight — Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27982 — that quietly advances three user-facing experiences (lock‑screen widgets, a redesigned Widgets board with multiple dashboards, and a top‑of‑screen drag tray for sharing) while delivering a small but meaningful set of stability fixes and a couple of noteworthy regressions still under investigation. Background Canary‑channel builds are the earliest public preview of Windows platform work, intended for...

Windows ships with a tidy, low‑noise instrument for spotting the kinds of crashes and driver problems that quietly erode a PC’s day‑to‑day reliability: the built‑in Reliability Monitor. It runs without fanfare, produces a simple 1–10 stability score, and surfaces application crashes, Windows failures, installation events and other markers you can act on — often faster and less painfully than digging through raw Event Viewer logs. This piece examines what Reliability Monitor actually does...