Featured content

Artificial intelligence has gone from boardroom buzzword to an urgent operational question: executives know AI matters, but too many organisations are frozen at the starting line — unsure how to prioritise use cases, estimate costs, or keep data and compliance under control. Chris Badenhorst of Braintree argues that the cure for this “AI paralysis” is clarity: start small, tie pilots directly to measurable business outcomes, and bake governance, data readiness and FinOps into projects from...

This week’s channel headlines make one thing clear: vendors are sharpening routes to market for managed service providers, packaging flexibility and automation into partner programmes, subscription platforms and AI-first security products that are explicitly aimed at shrinking the gap between enterprise-grade capability and the SME/MSP market. Background / Overview The channel has been evolving from transactional hardware and licence deals into a services-first economy for several years...

Microsoft has quietly handed Windows 10 users a one‑year safety valve — but only if you act before October 14, 2025 and meet a short checklist to enroll in the consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) program. This move buys eligible PCs a single additional year of security‑only updates through October 13, 2026, but it comes with trade‑offs, account requirements, and a hard deadline that should sharpen, not delay, your migration planning. Background / Overview Microsoft set Windows 10’s...

KMSpico is a widely mentioned but legally fraught program: it emulates Microsoft’s Key Management Service (KMS) to make Windows and Office think they are legitimately volume‑activated, and while that promises “free activation” it carries clear legal, security, and operational downsides that make it a poor choice for individuals and organizations alike. Background / Overview KMSpico and similar “KMS activators” rose to popularity because they exploit a legitimate enterprise activation...

Generative AI has arrived in the boardroom and the break room alike — but the difference between headlines and hard outcomes is leadership, disciplined execution, and the work of adoption that too many organizations still underestimate. A recent event preview and podcast discussion that spotlights the 365 Leadership Summit crystallizes that message: Microsoft Copilot and agentic AI can deliver substantial productivity gains, but real transformation requires more than buying licenses — it...

The White House’s latest tech summit ended not with a policy white paper but with a photograph: senior executives from Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, Apple and other Silicon Valley heavyweights gathered at a dinner hosted by First Lady Melania Trump to endorse a national AI education push, pledge skilling and product-access programs, and publicly signal willingness to cooperate on data‑center permitting and infrastructure — even as big headline numbers and the political optics drew immediate...

Artificial intelligence is no longer a boardroom novelty; it is a strategic frontier most companies feel they must cross — yet too many remain stranded at the shore, gripped by a mix of enthusiasm and uncertainty. In a recent opinion piece, Chris Badenhorst, Head of Azure Core, Data and AI Services at Braintree, captures this precise tension: leaders agree AI matters, but they are unsure how to begin, worried about cost, data readiness, and governance. Badenhorst’s prescription is pragmatic...

ESET researchers have uncovered a compact but sophisticated campaign — tracked as GhostRedirector — that has secretly turned at least 65 Internet‑facing Windows servers into a stealthy SEO‑fraud network while simultaneously installing a resilient native backdoor for long‑term access. Background / Overview GhostRedirector was publicly disclosed by ESET Research after telemetry and targeted scanning revealed intrusions on IIS‑hosted Windows servers observed between December 2024 and April...

Microsoft’s long‑running experiment to make Android feel like an extension of the PC — rather than a separate device you constantly pick up — first promised native-like access to mobile apps on Windows 10, and over the years that promise evolved into a practical streaming model under the Your Phone / Phone Link umbrella. The initial October‑update announcement that Windows 10 “would eventually let you mirror your Android phone’s apps” marked the start of a multi‑year march toward true...

Microsoft has quietly given Windows 10 users a lifeline: you can keep receiving security patches for one more year after the official end‑of‑support date — but only if you act before October 14, 2025 and complete Microsoft’s new enrollment flow. The company’s consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) program delivers security‑only updates through October 13, 2026, and can be obtained either for free by meeting one of two non‑cash conditions or by paying a modest one‑time fee. This article...

I built a single, portable USB rescue toolkit that boots a full Windows-based recovery environment (PhoenixPE) and a collection of specialized ISOs via Ventoy—giving me password resets, malware removal, disk imaging, memory testing, and a working desktop for troubleshooting without touching the host OS. Overview The idea is simple but powerful: instead of juggling a drawer full of rescue disks and single-purpose USB sticks, use Ventoy as a multi‑ISO bootloader and add a PhoenixPE WinPE-based...

I've spent more desktop-hours than I care to admit wrestling with Windows quirks, updates that bork drivers, and the slow creep of "feature" changes that don't feel like improvements — so when I first booted a Linux live USB, selected a completely different desktop environment from the login screen, and then rebooted to pick an older kernel because an update broke my Wi‑Fi, something in my Windows‑leaning brain snapped: why did I never have this level of low‑friction experimentation and...

Windows 10 ships with simple, no‑cost options to capture your screen—but knowing which built‑in tool to use, when to reach for a free third‑party utility, and how to avoid common pitfalls will save time and headaches for everyone from educators and IT pros to gamers and casual users. Background Screen recording has shifted from a niche capability into a mainstream productivity feature. Users record tutorials, troubleshoot remote issues, capture game highlights, and produce bite‑sized social...

Microsoft’s move to make Rust a first-class option for Windows driver development crystallizes a long-running strategy: reduce the class of memory-safety bugs that have dominated high-severity Windows vulnerabilities by shifting low-level, performance-sensitive code toward a language designed for zero-cost abstractions and compile-time memory safety. The company has published an open-source platform of Rust crates and samples (windows-drivers-rs), and is building a Cargo/Visual Studio...

Japan and India’s joint operation to dismantle an India-based fraud ring marks a significant win for cross-border cybercrime enforcement — one that combined traditional policing, nonprofit expertise, and deep technical intelligence from Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit to shut down call centres, seize infrastructure and arrest key suspects in a campaign that targeted elderly residents in Japan. The May 28, 2025 raids, part of what Indian authorities described as Operation Chakra V, removed...

Artificial-intelligence forecasts from multiple platforms lined up behind the Philadelphia Eagles ahead of the NFL’s Week 1 Thursday night opener — and while the models overestimated the margin, they correctly picked the winner as the Eagles edged the Cowboys 24–20 at Lincoln Financial Field. Background The Week 1 showdown between the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles and division rival Dallas Cowboys was one of the most-watched season-openers on the calendar. In the days...

How AI is making companies sound, act, and even strategize the same — and what to do about it Note: I could not load the Fast Company page directly (site protections/paywall), so this piece synthesizes the Fast Company thesis as reported elsewhere, reporting on the academic literature, industry examples, and forum-sourced notes the user provided. Where I relied on a reproduction or reporting of the Fast Company piece I cite that source; where I drew on independent research or primary...

Thanks to OpenAI’s early consumer push, the generative AI era that reshaped work life began in plain sight — and business users have kept voting with their keyboards. What started as a viral consumer tool has become a persistent presence inside enterprises, while legacy software vendors and cloud giants scramble to embed enterprise-grade copilots into core workflows. The result is a three-way contest: consumer-first models (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity), platform incumbents (Microsoft...

The last six weeks have crystallised a new reality for corporate sustainability in the Asia‑Pacific: regulators and standard‑setters are pushing to make climate and sustainability disclosures more consistent, but they are also practically tempering timelines and adding implementation scaffolding to avoid overburdening companies; central banks and financial supervisors are building operational tools to embed climate risk into banking supervision; and governments are actively mobilising policy...

President Trump convened a who’s‑who of Silicon Valley and corporate America for a high‑profile dinner at the White House on September 4, 2025, where CEOs and founders from Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Google/Alphabet, and OpenAI sat across the State Dining Room and publicly discussed sweeping investment pledges, AI education initiatives, and shared operational priorities for national tech infrastructure. Background The evening event followed a White House‑led push on artificial‑intelligence...