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Microsoft’s Surface account briefly posted a promotional image touting the Surface Pro as a “research buddy” powered by built‑in Copilot — then deleted the post after users noticed the device’s on‑screen interface looked unmistakably like iPadOS rather than Windows 11. This small, highly visible misstep — captured in screenshots before the post disappeared — sparked a wave of mockery and quick comparisons to previous brand social‑media gaffes, while also reopening a debate about the use of...

Microsoft Azure warned customers of higher‑than‑normal latency after multiple undersea fiber‑optic cables in the Red Sea were cut, forcing traffic onto longer detours while carriers and cloud operators rerouted traffic and prepared for complex maritime repairs. Background / Overview The global internet — and by extension modern cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure — depends on a small number of high‑capacity submarine fiber systems. A narrow maritime corridor through the Red Sea and the...

Microsoft is reportedly planning to block fresh installations of Outlook Lite starting in October 2025 as it prepares a broader retirement of the app, forcing users who rely on a lightweight, battery-friendly client to either remain on an aging build or move to the full Outlook for Mobile experience. Background / Overview Outlook Lite launched in 2022 as Microsoft’s deliberately minimal, low-footprint version of Outlook for Android devices. Built to serve users with older phones, limited...

The countdown to October 14, 2025 is real: when Microsoft stops shipping security updates and technical support for Windows 10, millions of functioning machines will face a binary choice—move to Windows 11, pay for temporary extended security, or run a different operating system entirely—and for budget-conscious buyers the 2025-era Acer Aspire Go 15 is being floated as a pragmatic, low-cost alternative for everyday productivity. Background / Overview Windows 10 reaches official end of...

Undersea fibre links in the Red Sea were cut in early September 2025, producing measurable internet slowdowns and elevated cloud latency across South Asia, the Gulf and parts of Africa as operators scrambled to reroute traffic while investigators and repair crews worked to identify the physical faults and plan maritime repairs. Background / Overview The global internet’s long-haul backbone depends on a relatively small number of high-capacity submarine cable systems. A narrow maritime...

Microsoft’s Azure cloud showed fresh fragility this weekend after multiple undersea fiber-optic cables in the Red Sea were cut, forcing traffic onto longer detours and causing higher-than-normal latency for customers whose traffic traverses the Middle East corridor. Background The global internet is physically anchored by submarine fiber-optic cables that carry the vast majority of intercontinental traffic. A narrow stretch of sea — the Red Sea, the Suez approaches and the Bab el‑Mandeb...

Microsoft confirmed that parts of Azure are seeing higher‑than‑normal network latency after multiple undersea fiber‑optic cables in the Red Sea were cut, forcing traffic onto longer detours while carriers and cloud engineers reroute, rebalance capacity, and schedule repairs. Background The global internet depends on an interwoven, largely invisible web of submarine fiber‑optic cables that carry the vast majority of intercontinental traffic. A narrow maritime corridor through the Red Sea and...

A prominent tech writer has publicly abandoned the Windows 11 Start menu in favor of Flow Launcher, an open‑source, keyboard‑first app launcher — and in doing so rekindled a long‑running debate about how Windows should expose search, system commands, and shortcuts to power users. The transition described in the MakeUseOf piece is more than a stylistic tweak: it’s a practical assessment of speed, extensibility, and control versus the convenience and integration of a first‑party Start...

Microsoft’s Azure cloud experienced measurable performance degradation after multiple undersea fiber‑optic cables in the Red Sea were cut, forcing traffic to detour around the damaged corridor and producing higher‑than‑normal latency for flows that traverse the Middle East between Asia and Europe. Background The global internet depends on a relatively small number of high‑capacity submarine fiber‑optic cables to carry intercontinental traffic. A narrow maritime corridor through the Red Sea...

Multiple undersea fiber‑optic cables in the Red Sea were cut on September 6, 2025, triggering widespread latency and connectivity problems for traffic between Asia, the Middle East and Europe and forcing cloud operators — most visibly Microsoft Azure — to reroute traffic while repair and investigative work begins. Background The global internet depends on a dense, but physically finite, mesh of submarine fiber‑optic cables that carry the lion’s share of intercontinental traffic. A narrow...

Microsoft’s Surface account posted a photo of a Surface Pro this weekend — and the screenshot on the device was unmistakably running iPadOS, complete with the iPad status bar — an embarrassing misstep that has been mercilessly trolled online and has reignited wider criticism about Microsoft’s consumer marketing and product stewardship. Background The social post in question promoted the Surface Pro as the “ultimate research buddy,” showing a Surface Pen and Type Cover alongside a photo of...

Artificial intelligence would have told Pete Carroll to hand the ball to Marshawn Lynch. The verdict — blunt, repeatable and nearly universal among modern analysts — is now being echoed by the same generative models that pundits and teams are experimenting with at the edge of NFL operations. Yet the larger, more consequential story is not whether an AI agrees with fans who still flinch at Super Bowl XLIX; it’s how the NFL and Microsoft are packaging AI for game-day use, what those tools can...

Microsoft’s announcement of an “urgent” external investigation into allegations that Israel’s Unit 8200 used Azure to store and process recordings of millions of Palestinian phone calls crystallizes a larger, underappreciated shift: the world’s leading cloud providers are not just vendors — they are gatekeepers of state capacity and, increasingly, arbiters of digital sovereignty. Background The immediate trigger for Microsoft’s review was investigative reporting that alleges Unit 8200...

Microsoft Azure customers worldwide experienced elevated latency and intermittent slowdowns after multiple undersea fiber‑optic cables in the Red Sea were damaged, forcing traffic onto longer detours while Microsoft rerouted and rebalanced network flows and coordinated with carriers and cable operators to schedule repairs. Background The global internet depends on a relatively small number of high‑capacity submarine fiber systems to carry most intercontinental traffic. A narrow maritime...

Penn State this week announced a focused, weeklong professional-development push — Learning Tools for Teaching: Explore, Engage, Elevate — that brings campus-supported learning platforms into one place for hands-on demonstrations, pedagogical conversation, and practical workshops designed for faculty and staff eager to deepen digital teaching practices. The event runs Sept. 29 through Oct. 3 in the Dreamery (Shields Building) and pairs vendor specialists with Penn State instructional...

This week’s Windows news cycle offered a dense mix of operational updates, surprising bugs, and quietly consequential releases: Microsoft pushed Windows 11 version 25H2 into the Release Preview channel as an enablement package, then quietly edited its blog to say the promised ISOs are “delayed and coming soon”; storage alarms around August updates escalated into a broad investigation that vendors and Microsoft now say shows no widespread bricking, even as anecdotal failures persist; and a...

Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered reintroduces one of the franchise’s most beloved arcade racers with contemporary polish—updated textures, cross-platform multiplayer via Autolog, and all previously released DLC bundled into a single package—while also surfacing the practical trade-offs Windows users should weigh before choosing where and how to download the game. Background Need for Speed Hot Pursuit originally launched in 2010 and was widely praised for its high-octane...

Microsoft confirmed that Azure continued to serve customer workloads after multiple undersea fiber-optic cables in the Red Sea were cut, but the cloud giant warned of higher-than-normal latency for traffic routed between Asia and Europe as engineers rerouted and rebalanced traffic across alternative paths. Background The global internet runs on a web of submarine fiber-optic cables that carry the overwhelming majority of intercontinental traffic. A narrow maritime corridor through the Red...

Microsoft Weekly: what happened with the SSD scare, the 25H2 ISO delay, and what you should actually do now Summary (quick) A widely shared set of social-media reports in August 2025 claimed the August cumulative security update for Windows 11 (KB5063878 / 24H2 servicing stream) was causing SSDs and HDDs to disappear, show I/O/SMART errors, or even suffer permanent corruption after large write operations. Major vendors and Microsoft investigated and — as of late August / early September...

Windows 11’s 25H2 update arrives as a purposeful whisper rather than a shout: a compact enablement package that flips on functionality Microsoft has already staged throughout the 24H2 servicing stream, adds modest polish and manageability controls, and retires a couple of long‑deprecated management utilities—all while prioritizing stability and low‑impact upgrades over headline new features. Background / Overview Microsoft’s servicing model for Windows has matured into what it now calls a...