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WinGet has quietly become one of the most practical productivity tools in a Windows 11 power user's toolbox — not just for installing apps, but for managing whole system states, enforcing upgrade policies, and automating maintenance. A recent MakeUseOf piece showed four simple WinGet workflows — using WinGet Configuration files, running a one-line upgrade for every app, pinning packages to prevent unwanted updates, and scheduling WinGet tasks for unattended maintenance — and these small...

Valve’s SteamVR beta has quietly built a safety net for owners of Windows Mixed Reality headsets: the SteamVR Beta (v2.13.1) now automatically prefers and installs the third‑party “Oasis” driver when it detects WMR hardware running on versions of Windows 11 that no longer include Microsoft’s Mixed Reality runtime, restoring practical SteamVR compatibility for otherwise-orphaned headsets. Background Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) was Microsoft’s platform approach to consumer PC VR, introduced in...

Today’s White House meeting of the AI Education Task Force produced one of the most consequential coalition-building moments yet between the federal government and a major tech vendor: Microsoft unveiled a broad package of commitments — from free access to Copilot-infused Microsoft 365 for U.S. college students to educator grants, community-college certifications, and a nationwide LinkedIn Learning push — pledged in support of the Presidential AI Challenge and the Administration’s AI...

Microsoft's effort to let device-driver developers use Rust has moved from research and experiments into tangible tooling and samples, but the path to production-ready Windows drivers written in Rust remains long and cautious — working prototypes and Microsoft-backed crates exist, CodeQL now supports Rust analysis in preview, and parts of the Windows kernel already use Rust, yet critical certification, toolchain and safety-abstraction gaps keep Rust drivers out of mainstream production for...

Microsoft’s push to fold generative AI into everyday file management just moved a major step closer to most Windows users: Microsoft 365’s Copilot is now integrated with OneDrive inside Windows, letting subscribers invoke Copilot actions from File Explorer and the OneDrive Activity Center on the taskbar as well as continuing to use the web experience. This expansion delivers inline summarization, Q&A, and multi-file comparison directly where users already manage files — and it changes how...

Microsoft’s decade-long support run for Windows 10 will end on October 14, 2025, forcing millions of home users and small businesses to choose between migrating to Windows 11, enrolling in a one-year Extended Security Updates (ESU) bridge, or continuing on an increasingly risky unsupported platform. Background Windows 10 launched in July 2015 and quickly became Microsoft’s dominant desktop platform. Over ten years later, Microsoft has set a hard cut‑off: October 14, 2025 is the final day...

Square Enix and TBS Games have confirmed that KILLER INN — the multiplayer murder‑mystery action game first announced at Summer Game Fest — will host a second closed beta on PC via Steam from October 3, 2025 at 3:00 p.m. PDT / 6:00 p.m. EDT through October 13, 2025 at 2:59 p.m. PDT / 5:59 p.m. EDT, giving players another opportunity to test the title’s blend of social deduction and combat-driven mechanics ahead of a full release. (press.na.square-enix.com, gematsu.com) Background KILLER INN...

Mozilla has once again pushed the safety net for users on older operating systems, confirming that Firefox ESR 115 will continue to receive security patches on Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1 and macOS 10.12–10.14 through at least March 2026 — a six‑month extension to the Extended Support Release that keeps the browser patched on platforms that vendors no longer protect. Background: why ESR 115 exists and who it helps When Mozilla shipped Firefox 115 in July 2023 it simultaneously designated that...

The move from legacy BIOS/MBR rigs to UEFI/GPT systems — and the mandatory flip of Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 switches — has leapt out of corporate IT and into mainstream PC gaming and pro-grade Windows workflows, creating a new compatibility baseline players and professionals must meet to run the latest Windows 11 features, AAA titles, and certain high‑trust applications. This shift is not hypothetical: a recent industry dispatch summarized the change, explained the supported conversion path...

Microsoft has published the assembly source for “BASIC for 6502 Microprocessor — Version 1.1” on GitHub under a modern permissive license, making the exact code that powered a generation of home computers readable, buildable, and reusable by anyone — hobbyists, historians, educators, and commercial developers alike. Background Microsoft’s BASIC was the company’s first commercial product. The original Altair/8080 BASIC (1975) — written by Bill Gates and Paul Allen — was quickly ported to...

Microsoft appears to be quietly reworking how it charges businesses for Copilot — moving role-based Copilots for Sales, Service, and Finance into the core Microsoft 365 Copilot offering, reorganizing teams around an “agent-native” strategy, and shifting how custom agents are metered. If implemented as reported, the change would lower the headline price for most of Microsoft’s top business Copilot features to $30 per user per month (from an effective $50 when the add-ons are purchased...

Samsung’s new IFA lineup lands as a careful, incremental push to make flagship features more attainable: the Galaxy S25 FE tightens the S-series value proposition, the Galaxy Tab S11 family presses thinner and lighter into tablet territory, and the Galaxy Buds3 FE brings a Buds3‑style audio experience down to FE price points — all with One UI 8 and a heavier emphasis on Galaxy AI. This early hands‑on reveals sensible engineering choices, a few surprising trade‑offs, and clear signals about...

Microsoft revealed a compact but meaningful set of Cost Management updates for July and August 2025 that aim to reduce friction for partners, trim logging costs, simplify multi-cloud migrations, and strengthen the programmatic access story for Enterprise Agreement (EA) indirect partners—changes that matter for FinOps teams, MSPs, and IT leaders trying to keep Azure spending predictable and under control. Background / Overview Azure cost control continues to evolve from simple billing...

Microsoft’s August security hardening that patched a Windows Installer flaw has closed a real attack vector — but it also introduced a compatibility headache that is prompting UAC credential prompts and outright failures in environments that rely on per‑user MSI repair and advertising flows. The result is that many standard (non‑admin) users now see unexpected User Account Control (UAC) dialogs or experience installer errors such as MSI Error 1730 when launching otherwise correctly installed...

Mozilla’s decision to keep Firefox 115 ESR alive for older machines is the latest twist in a multi-stage, pragmatic approach to supporting users who remain on end-of-life operating systems — the Extended Support Release for Firefox 115 will now be maintained for Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1 and macOS 10.12–10.14 through March 2026, with Mozilla promising a re-evaluation in early 2026. (ghacks.net, wiki.mozilla.org) Background When Mozilla shipped Firefox 115 in July 2023 it also designated that...

Microsoft’s PowerToys is about to solve one of Windows 11’s longest-running little annoyances: a Theme Scheduler that can automatically flip between Light and Dark modes on a timetable, and the feature is being shipped as a new PowerToys module in the update cycle following the v0.94 release. This change was explicitly teased by the PowerToys team in the v0.94 announcement and has been picked up by multiple outlets reporting that the scheduler is expected to arrive as part of the v0.95...

Microsoft is quietly testing a Windows 11 feature that pushes whatever you copy on a PC directly into a linked Android phone’s keyboard — making paste-ready text appear almost instantly in Gboard, Samsung Keyboard and other Android IMEs. Background Microsoft has been expanding clipboard capabilities in Windows for several releases: clipboard history (Win + V), cloud-backed sync tied to a Microsoft account, and an earlier Android pathway driven by Microsoft SwiftKey’s Cloud Clipboard. The new...

Satya Nadella’s five-line AI playbook — the short, repeatable Copilot prompts he says power his day — is less a CEO flex and more a practical blueprint for how enterprise copilots can rewire leadership, compress decision cycles and shift where human judgment is applied. Background In late August 2025 Microsoft publicly positioned a next-generation Copilot as a “new layer of intelligence” across Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel and Windows, and shortly afterward Satya Nadella demonstrated five...

Satya Nadella’s short public playbook — five repeatable prompts he says he uses inside Microsoft 365 Copilot — is more than a CEO productivity trick: it’s a clear demonstration of how next‑generation copilots can become an executive’s persistent, context‑aware chief‑of‑staff. Background Microsoft’s rollout of GPT‑5 into the Copilot family in August 2025 marks a major platform shift: rather than a single conversational model, Copilot now routes requests across a family of GPT‑5 variants and a...

Samsung’s Vision AI Companion converts the television from a passive entertainment appliance into an active, conversational hub that can identify what’s on screen, translate dialogue in real time, tune picture and sound, and surface cloud‑backed generative answers and third‑party agents — all from a single, remote‑invoked interface. Overview Samsung used its IFA 2025 stage to unveil Vision AI Companion, a consolidated AI experience that folds the company’s on‑device perceptual features and...