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Microsoft’s Paint has quietly shed its toy status and picked up features that turn it into a genuinely usable, session‑aware image editor: Windows Insiders are now seeing a new .paint project file that preserves layers and session state, a per‑tool opacity/ transparency slider for brushes and pencils, and expanded export options that include modern image container formats — changes documented in the Windows Insider flight for Paint (app version 11.2508.361.0) and corroborated by independent...

As Windows 10 approaches its October 14, 2025 end-of-support deadline, researchers and industry observers are forecasting a concentrated surge in PC gaming hardware spending even as broader PC shipments show mixed signals — a shift driven as much by Microsoft’s strict Windows 11 hardware requirements as by a patchwork of economic forces, tariffs, and changing gamer priorities. Background: the deadline, the requirements, and why it matters Microsoft has set October 14, 2025 as the date when...

The August cumulative update for Windows — most notably KB5063878 (Windows 11 24H2, OS Build 26100.4946) and companion rollups for Windows 10 — has been identified as the root cause of a wave of streaming and system problems that emerged in mid‑August and persisted into September, producing severe stuttering, dropped frames, and audio drift in multi‑PC NDI workflows used by Twitch and YouTube broadcasters. Microsoft has acknowledged the regression and vendors including the NDI tools and...

Microsoft is expanding the reach of AI inside Teams with a public preview of Project Manager agent skills that aim to turn meeting chatter and channel conversations into tracked, actionable work — but the feature brings licensing, governance, and operational caveats that IT teams must weigh before flipping the switch. Background Microsoft has been shifting Copilot from a personal assistant model to an agent-first collaboration strategy: a set of persistent, context-aware AI agents that live...

Microsoft’s IBC 2025 partner showcase made one thing clear: AI and cloud are no longer experimental addons for media workflows — they are the scaffolding for the next generation of production, distribution, and audience intelligence. Background IBC 2025 was widely framed as a turning point for media and entertainment technology, with Microsoft positioning an integrated platform stack — Azure cloud, Azure AI Foundry, Agent Services, Azure OpenAI, and the Copilot family — as the core...

Microsoft’s new Image Customizer for Azure Linux promises to shrink what used to be a lengthy, VM-driven image build process into a predictable, chroot-based workflow that operators can run in minutes — while integrating integrity protections such as dm-verity and code-integrity controls intended to complement Azure Linux’s new “OS Guard” hardened host model. Background / Overview Azure Linux has evolved from an internal Microsoft minimal distribution into a purpose-built host for...

Microsoft’s decision to end support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025 has turned a calendar note into a business‑critical deadline: organizations that continue to run Windows 10 after that date will stop receiving security patches, feature updates, and official technical assistance — and the practical consequences for risk, compliance and continuity are immediate. Background / Overview Windows 10 has been the dominant desktop OS for a decade, and many businesses — from single‑site shops to...

Microsoft’s push for Copilot+ PCs has moved from product launch to full‑throttle migration messaging as Windows 10 approaches its October 14, 2025 end‑of‑support deadline, with Redmond now framing Arm‑based, NPU‑equipped laptops as the recommended path for consumers and organizations that want “AI‑first” Windows devices. The company’s public materials emphasize a hardware requirement—a turbocharged NPU capable of 40+ TOPS (trillion operations per second)—a growing Arm‑native app catalog that...

Microsoft’s message to Windows 10 users is changing: instead of simply telling people to upgrade or accept the risk of running unsupported software, Microsoft appears to be offering practical exit ramps — a one‑year Extended Security Updates (ESU) program and a visible trade‑in/recycle pathway that can turn an old machine into cash or a responsible recycling option — all presented inside Windows itself and the Microsoft Store. Background / Overview Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 10...

Microsoft has quietly turned one of Windows’ simplest tools into a practical entry point for everyday generative AI: Notepad on Windows 11 can now write, rewrite, and summarize text using on‑device AI on qualifying Copilot+ PCs — and Microsoft is offering that on‑device path for free without a subscription for eligible hardware. Background / Overview Notepad has not been immune to the AI wave sweeping desktop software. What began as a modest preview of a single “Rewrite” action has evolved...

The U.S. House of Representatives has moved from prohibition to experimentation with generative AI: leadership announced a managed, year‑long pilot that will place Microsoft’s Copilot assistant inside House systems and issue up to 6,000 one‑year licenses to staff—an institutional test with profound technical, legal, and political implications. Background / Overview The House’s announcement at the bipartisan “Congressional Hackathon” represents a dramatic reversal of policy that began in...

Cluster Reply and Riverty this week unveiled an accelerated, Microsoft-backed omnichannel customer service platform that Riverty says was built as an AI‑first, human‑centric solution and delivered in just 100 days—a production deployment that consolidates voice, chat and email into a single Dynamics 365 agent experience and stages Microsoft Copilot Studio automation for advanced voice and chatbot capabilities. Background / Overview Riverty is Bertelsmann’s fintech arm, providing flexible...

If you launch the same commands every time you open a PowerShell session, a properly crafted PowerShell profile will save time, reduce repetitive errors, and make your shell feel tailored to the way you work. Background / Overview PowerShell’s profile is nothing more than a PowerShell script that runs automatically whenever a given PowerShell host opens (unless the host is started with -NoProfile). That script can set environment variables, import modules, define functions and aliases...

OpenAI and Anthropic now sit on the public stage while Microsoft and Amazon wage a quieter, higher‑stakes contest for the cloud and compute hegemony that will shape the AI decade ahead. Background: how we got here The current alignment — OpenAI with Microsoft and Anthropic with Amazon — is the product of mutual dependence: startups need capital and hyperscale compute; hyperscalers need models and go‑to‑market velocity. That dynamic accelerated in 2023–2025 as generative AI moved from...

Microsoft has made Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Automatic generally available, offering an “opinionated” — but fully Kubernetes‑compatible — managed mode that stitches together autoscaling, node lifecycle management, observability, and security defaults to deliver production‑ready clusters with minimal setup. This move is explicitly aimed at teams that want Kubernetes power without the traditional operational tax: startups with limited DevOps headcount, product teams that need fast...

Steam will stop supporting 32‑bit versions of Windows on January 1, 2026 — a narrowly targeted but important platform change that affects a vanishing fraction of Steam users and formalises the final phase of Valve’s shift to a 64‑bit‑only Steam client. Background The news that Steam will drop support for Windows 32‑bit comes at the tail end of a wider, industry‑level migration from 32‑bit to 64‑bit desktop computing. Microsoft itself has scheduled the end of mainstream security updates for...

The Arm app ecosystem for Copilot+ PCs is no longer a niche experiment — it is now a mainstream platform strategy backed by Microsoft’s App Assure and Arm Advisory Service, hardware partners shipping NPUs capable of more than 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS), and a growing catalogue of native Arm apps that cover the apps people actually use every day. This shift matters because it changes the calculus for IT shops planning device refreshes, for independent software vendors (ISVs)...

Google has quietly turned the Chrome toolbar into a direct gateway for Gemini — rolling out what the company calls the “biggest upgrade in its history,” a sweeping set of AI features that embed Gemini natively into the browser, surface an AI Mode in the address bar, and promise future “agentic” automation that can act on users’ behalf across tabs and Google services. The rollout begins in the United States on desktop (Windows and macOS) and expands to other devices and regions later, and it...

Microsoft’s timing is deliberate: with Windows 10’s end-of-support deadline looming, Redmond is using the upgrade window to reposition Copilot+ PCs — and in particular Arm-powered machines such as the Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 — as not just optional refresh buys but a strategic migration target for mainstream users and businesses alike. Background: why the moment matters Microsoft has set a hard lifecycle date for Windows 10 that creates a practical deadline for millions of PCs and...

Minecraft’s education wing quietly rolled out a clever new way to teach children and young people how to spot AI-driven disinformation: Reed Smart: AI Detective, a noir‑themed, interactive lesson world that uses mystery gameplay to train information literacy, lateral reading, and deepfake awareness for learners and families. Released on September 16, 2025, the experience is available as a free Marketplace world for Bedrock players and as a demo lesson (with full licensed content) in the...