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Flyoobe is the newest, most complete tool in the growing toolkit that lets you install Windows 11 on machines Microsoft deems “incompatible” — and it does more than just bypass TPM and Secure Boot checks: it also lets you strip out built‑in apps, customize the Out‑Of‑Box Experience (OOBE), and run scripted setup extensions so the first boot looks and behaves the way you want. Background / Overview Windows 11’s strict hardware rules (TPM 2.0, Secure Boot, recent CPU families and instruction...

Visual Studio 2026’s first Insiders build lands as a clear statement: Microsoft intends to make AI the connective tissue of the IDE while simultaneously modernizing Visual Studio’s foundation for the .NET 10 era. At VSLive! San Diego Microsoft unveiled Visual Studio 2026 (internal version 18.0) in the new Insiders Channel, pairing deep GitHub Copilot integration — from adaptive paste to an AI-powered profiler — with a refreshed Fluent UI, faster solution and build performance, and...

Microsoft’s surprise agreement with Nebius to supply large blocks of AI compute to Azure marks a strategic pivot: rather than racing to open more hyperscale data centers itself, Microsoft is contracting external “neocloud” capacity to close short-term gaps in U.S. availability while it rebalances how and where it invests in AI infrastructure. Multiple financial and industry reports place the headline value at roughly $17.4 billion over the initial term, with tail value and optional services...

Microsoft’s latest internal reset marries a stricter return‑to‑office mandate with tighter controls on employee speech — a move that recasts the company’s post‑pandemic workplace policies as a strategic lever in its high‑stakes push into artificial intelligence. The company has closed or curtailed long‑standing open forums used by employees to question senior leadership, tightened campus access after an on‑site sit‑in, and ordered many staff who live near Microsoft offices back to the...

Microsoft’s September 2025 Patch Tuesday shipped a wide-ranging set of fixes addressing 80 CVEs across Windows, Office, virtualization, and platform components — with eight rated Critical and 72 rated Important — and included several high-profile fixes for SMB, NTLM, NTFS, Office, SharePoint, and Hyper‑V that require rapid attention from administrators and security teams. Background Microsoft’s monthly security cadence continues to be the primary mechanism for shipping fixes for...

Ralph Lauren has quietly embedded a branded AI stylist into its mobile app — Ask Ralph — a conversational, shoppable assistant developed with Microsoft on the Azure OpenAI platform that delivers brand‑curated, head‑to‑toe outfit recommendations and in‑app purchase actions to U.S. shoppers. Background Ralph Lauren’s Ask Ralph arrives at a moment when conversational AI is moving from experimental lab projects into consumer‑facing commerce. The brand frames the feature as the digital equivalent...

Microsoft’s September Patch Tuesday arrived with a broad set of fixes and a matching set of detection updates from Cisco Talos — including a new Snort ruleset — aimed at the most likely-to-be-exploited flaws this month. The update package contains dozens of CVEs spanning Windows core components, Office, the graphics stack, SMB/SMBv3, NTLM and virtualization subsystems; Talos called out several elevation-of-privilege and memory‑safety issues as priorities, and published Snort rules to detect...

More than a third of New Zealand retail investors now say they use generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot to inform their investment decisions — and a large majority report being satisfied with the outcomes — a shift that is simultaneously pragmatic and precarious for markets, advisers and regulators. Background The findings were reported after Chartered Accountants Australia & New Zealand (CA ANZ) released its annual investor confidence work, which surveyed retail...

Racing to meet a design deadline with zero budget is a familiar panic for creators, and the NewsBreak piece that went viral — claiming easy, legal ways to “get Windows & Photoshop for free” — captured that desperation with click-ready simplicity. The reality is messier: there are legitimate, low-cost and free paths to the tools you need, but they come with limits, trade-offs, and important legal and security considerations. This feature unpacks the NewsBreak claims, verifies the technical...

Ralph Lauren has quietly embedded a branded conversational stylist into its mobile app — Ask Ralph — a generative-AI feature built with Microsoft on the Azure OpenAI platform that returns shoppable, head‑to‑toe visual laydowns and styling advice drawn from Ralph Lauren’s own catalog and creative assets. Background Ralph Lauren’s Ask Ralph arrives at the intersection of two industry shifts: the retail drive to compress discovery-to-purchase flows, and the rapid commoditization of...

Microsoft’s quiet entry on the Windows deprecation list this summer signals a decisive end to another generation of web integration in the OS: Legacy Web View, EdgeHTML-based web apps, legacy PWAs, and the EdgeHTML DevTools are now officially deprecated, and developers are being pushed toward modern, Chromium-based alternatives. Background Microsoft’s official “Deprecated features for Windows client” page — the canonical list of OS features that are no longer in active development — was...

Microsoft's recent moves to tighten controls on employee speech, restrict building access and cement a three‑day‑a‑week return‑to‑office requirement mark a decisive shift in how the company balances internal safety, operational control and employee expression — and they arrive at a moment when Microsoft is also reshaping its workforce and doubling down on AI-first priorities. (wsj.com, reuters.com) Background Microsoft spent much of the pandemic and its immediate aftermath embracing hybrid...

I dragged my Windows 11 desktop back into the late 2000s, and — to my surprise — the result isn’t just nostalgia porn: it’s a practical, usable environment that keeps modern security and features while restoring the things many people still prefer about Windows 7. The MakeUseOf walkthrough that started this experiment demonstrates how a small toolkit — chiefly Stardock’s Start11 and WindowBlinds — can reproduce the classic Start menu, glassy window frames, and visual consistency of Windows 7...

Microsoft’s September 2025 hardening update for Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) on Windows Server 2025 removes legacy update binaries used by WSUS to service the Windows Update SelfUpdate component, and that change has immediate operational implications for organizations still relying on Extended Security Updates (ESU) for Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2. Background Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) has long been the on‑premises workhorse for centralized Windows update...

Google’s Gemini app now accepts user-uploaded audio — a long‑requested capability that turns recorded lectures, interviews, podcasts, and meeting captures into first‑class inputs for transcription, summarization, and structured research workflows, while tying those media flows into NotebookLM’s expanding multilingual report features and Google’s broader AI product strategy. Background / Overview Google has been explicit about turning Gemini into a multimodal productivity layer that spans...

Microsoft’s decision to fold Anthropic’s models into Office 365 represents a deliberate, high-stakes recalibration of its AI supply chain — one that pares dependence on a single vendor, broadens technical options inside Copilot features, and reshapes enterprise risk calculations for productivity software across the board. Background Microsoft’s relationship with generative AI has been defined by rapid escalation: an early strategic anchor investment in OpenAI followed by years of deeper...

Microsoft’s Copilot in Word for the web now offers a genuine time-saver for anyone who spends hours polishing documents: a one‑click “Fix spelling and grammar” action that applies all suggested corrections to a selected passage, then lets you accept or undo them in bulk or one at a time. Overview Microsoft has added a new Copilot action inside Word for the web that automatically applies spelling and grammar corrections to a highlighted section of text. The workflow is intentionally simple...

Microsoft’s IBC 2025 message is unmistakable: media and entertainment companies must move from experimentation to full-scale deployment of agentic AI if they want to become what Microsoft calls a “Frontier Firm” — organizations that combine human creativity with autonomous AI agents to unlock new storytelling, engagement, and operational models. At IBC, Microsoft framed this as a pragmatic platform play: Azure cloud, Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and a partner...

Microsoft’s latest internal shake-up has collapsed two debates that have run through corporate tech since the pandemic: how much power employers should have over employee speech, and how far the hybrid workplace experiment goes before organizations insist on physical presence as a business imperative. In a cascade of changes that includes shutting long-standing employee forums, tighter building access rules, high‑profile terminations tied to campus protests, and a phased requirement for many...