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Thread 'Agroz OS: Azure AI for Groz Wall vertical farming'
Agroz’s announcement that it has launched an AI-driven food-production platform — Agroz OS, built on Microsoft Azure and tied to a commercialized vertical-growing product called the Agroz Groz Wall — is a clear signal that one class of AgTech companies is trying to move vertical farming from an R&D novelty into a standardized, cloud‑first infrastructure offering. Background / Overview Agroz Inc., a Malaysia‑based controlled‑environment agriculture (CEA) company, completed an initial public...
Thread 'Azure Storage Mover GA: Cloud-to-Cloud Migration from S3 to Azure Blob'
Microsoft has made it significantly easier for organizations to move large object stores from Amazon S3 into Azure by announcing the general availability of Azure Storage Mover’s cloud-to-cloud migration capability — an agentless, server-to-server transfer path that preserves metadata, supports incremental syncs, integrates with Azure governance and monitoring, and is designed to handle multi-terabyte and multi-petabyte workloads with minimal scripting or third‑party tooling. Background...
Thread 'Remove Default Microsoft Store Apps with Windows 11 25H2 Policy'
Microsoft has finally given IT admins a supported, first‑party way to remove select preinstalled Microsoft Store apps from managed devices — a device‑level policy for Windows 11 Enterprise and Education (version 25H2) that replaces brittle removal scripts and complex imaging workflows with Group Policy or MDM controls. This change reduces operational overhead, improves image hygiene, and integrates app removal into standard provisioning and management pipelines — but it also requires careful...
Thread 'Microsoft Copilot Mico Avatar: A Warmer Voice AI with a Clippy Easter Egg'
Microsoft’s new Copilot avatar arrived with a wink: an animated, emoji‑like companion called Mico that’s designed to make voice interactions on Windows and in Edge feel warmer, more human, and easier to navigate — and yes, it hides a modern Clippy easter egg for anyone nostalgic (or wary) enough to prod it. Background Microsoft rolled out a consumer‑facing Copilot “fall release” that bundles a dozen headline features into a single push to make Copilot more personal, social and...
Thread 'Stop Browser Notifications on Windows 11: A Practical Three Tier Guide'
Browser notifications are useful when they announce the things you care about — but they become a productivity tax the moment they arrive uninvited, break your flow, and pile up in the corner of your screen. A focused Windows 11 setup starts with controlling what can interrupt you: from system‑level Do Not Disturb to site‑level permission nudges in every browser. This deep, practical guide walks through the why, the how, and the hardening steps IT pros and power users should apply to stop...
Thread 'Simpson Associates Secures Beech Tree PE to Scale Microsoft Data and AI'
Simpson Associates has taken a decisive step toward scaling its UK data and AI services business by accepting private equity backing from Beech Tree Private Equity, a move designed to accelerate organic growth, broaden capabilities in emerging technologies such as agentic AI, and pursue strategic acquisitions to expand sector-specific products and managed services. The transaction—announced by Simpson on October 24, 2025—reaffirms the company’s positioning as a Microsoft-aligned data...
Thread 'Windows 10 End of Support: Choosing Windows 11, ESU, or Linux for Your Fleet'
Microsoft’s deadline has turned a familiar upgrade debate into a hard choice for IT teams, small businesses and power users: with Windows 10’s free mainstream support ending on October 14, 2025, organizations face a three-way decision—move to Windows 11, buy time with Extended Security Updates (ESU), or migrate off Windows altogether—and the fallout is exposing the limits of incremental OS transitions, hardware politics, and user tolerance for forced change. Background / Overview Microsoft...
Thread 'Windows 10 End of Support 2025: Windows 11 Migration and Linux Alternatives'
The end of free security updates for Windows 10 has forced a familiar cycle on IT teams: upgrade, patch, repeat — only this time the upgrade carries stricter hardware gates, new security promises from Microsoft, and a visible migration of some users to alternatives such as Linux. Microsoft’s October 14, 2025 end-of-support deadline for Windows 10 removed the safety net for millions of devices and crystallized a practical choice for organizations and home users alike: move to Windows 11 (if...
Thread 'Windows 10 End of Support 2025: ESU and Migration Tips'
Microsoft’s short answer is blunt: Windows 10’s free, routine support stops on October 14, 2025 — and while there’s a one‑year consumer safety valve available, clinging to the older OS past that date has real security, compatibility and cost consequences that many users are underestimating. Background / Overview Pocket‑lint’s recent piece arguing “4 reasons people are holding onto Windows 10 (and why I think they’re wrong)” captures a common mindset: hardware incompatibility, comfort with a...
Thread 'Cortana Xbox Live integration 2015 cross device gaming hub'
When Microsoft quietly flipped the switch in October 2015 allowing Cortana to link directly with an Xbox Live account, it marked a deliberate step beyond simple voice commands — turning a desktop assistant into a cross-device gaming companion that could surface activity, offers, friend availability, and even event countdowns tied to a player’s Xbox identity. This small UI change — found under Cortana > Notebook > Connected Accounts and pairing services such as Xbox Live, LinkedIn and Office...
Thread 'Windows 11 October 2025 Patch Emergency: WinRE USB Bug and WSUS RCE Fix'
Microsoft has issued an emergency out‑of‑band update for Windows 11 after the October Patch Tuesday roll introduced multiple regressions that in some cases rendered recovery tools unusable and broke key services for developers and enterprises alike. The patch cycle that began with KB5066835 on October 14 produced three distinct problems—loopback/localhost HTTP failures, smart‑card and certificate handling errors in legacy applications, and a crippling WinRE regression that disabled USB...
Thread 'Windows 11 Snipping Tool Gets Visual Search with Bing for OCR Translate and more'
Microsoft has quietly folded a Google Lens–style capability into the Windows 11 Snipping Tool, letting you take a screenshot and immediately run a visual search in Bing to identify objects, extract or translate text, and even solve math problems — all from the familiar capture workflow. Background / Overview Microsoft added a built‑in Visual Search with Bing pathway into the Snipping Tool as part of a broader push to make screenshots more actionable. The capability first appeared in Insider...
Thread 'Microsoft Copilot Mico: A Human Centered Avatar for AI Assistants'
Microsoft has given Copilot a face: an optional, animated avatar called Mico that debuts in the Copilot Fall Release as part of a broader push to make Microsoft Copilot feel more human-centered, voice-first, and socially capable. Background / Overview Microsoft’s Copilot Fall Release packages a dozen headline changes that together shift Copilot from a single-query chatbox into a persistent, multimodal AI companion across Windows, Edge, and mobile. The most visible change is Mico — a...
Thread 'AI Browsing Goes Social: Copilot Fall Release and ChatGPT Atlas Redefine the Web'
Microsoft’s Copilot has just been pushed into a far more social, agentic, and personality-driven phase — and it arrives less than 48 hours after OpenAI’s ChatGPT Atlas turned the browser into a first‑class surface for AI. The result is an unmistakable escalation: AI browsing has moved from pilot experiment to mainstream product strategy, with competing visions from Microsoft, OpenAI, and startups like Perplexity racing to own how we search, act, and collaborate on the web. Background /...
Thread 'Emergency WSUS Patch CVE-2025-59287: Immediate RCE Mitigation for Windows Update Servers'
Microsoft has released an out‑of‑band emergency update to patch a critical remote‑code‑execution vulnerability in Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) — tracked as CVE‑2025‑59287 — and administrators must treat every WSUS host as a top‑tier remediation priority until it is patched or safely isolated. Background / Overview Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) is the on‑premises update distribution and approval system many organizations use to stage and deliver Microsoft updates to...
Thread 'Foot Mounted IMUs and Azure Kinect Enable Clinic-Grade Gait Analysis'
Florida Atlantic University engineers have produced a rigorous, head‑to‑head validation showing that foot‑mounted wearable IMUs and a single Azure Kinect depth camera can reproduce the fine‑grained, per‑step gait measurements clinicians expect from an instrumented walkway — a result that brings practical, low‑cost gait analysis for clinics, community care, and telehealth markedly closer to reality. Background / Overview Gait is increasingly recognized as a clinical vital sign: subtle changes...
Thread 'Microsoft AI Roadmap: Safety First Copilot and the Erotica Debate'
Microsoft’s AI roadmap just drew a clearer moral line: don’t build erotica-ready companions, even as rival platforms move in the opposite direction and the cloud that powers them fragments into a multi-vendor supply chain. Background The past two months have exposed a widening philosophical rift inside the consumer-AI mainstream: one camp, led publicly by Microsoft’s head of consumer AI Mustafa Suleyman, is pushing for bounded, auditable assistants designed for productivity, health‑aware...
Thread 'Ofcom Reallocates 1900–1920 MHz for FRMCS Rail and ESN Gateways'
Ofcom has launched a formal consultation to repurpose an unused slice of the 1900 MHz band—specifically the 1900–1920 MHz block—and is proposing to allocate 1900–1910 MHz to the rail industry for Future Rail Mobile Communication System (FRMCS) rollout and 1910–1915 MHz to support Emergency Services Network (ESN) gateway coverage, with licences expected to become available from 3 April 2029 if the plan proceeds. Background / Overview The 1900–1920 MHz range was originally assigned to mobile...
Thread 'Windows 11 Full Screen Experience: Memory Savings and Developer APIs'
Microsoft’s new Full Screen Experience for Windows 11 is more than a cosmetic “big tiles” makeover — it quietly trims legacy networking drivers, suppresses startup apps and parts of the Explorer shell, and exposes a developer API so games and launchers can detect and adapt to the mode. Background / Overview The Full Screen Experience (FSE), commonly described in press as “Xbox mode” or “handheld mode,” is a layered shell that boots a Windows 11 system into a controller‑first launcher...
Thread 'Reclaim Windows 11: Opt-in defaults to curb widgets Copilot and promos'
Windows 11 has matured into a polished, secure desktop OS — but some built‑in choices keep driving power users and everyday customers to the same conclusion: Microsoft should drop a handful of default features or at least make them opt‑in, not on by default. Pocket‑lint’s short list of four grievances — the Widgets panel, Copilot’s omnipresence, persistent upsells and tips, and growing reliance on Microsoft accounts/OneDrive — captures a set of practical problems that recur across forums...
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