developer tools

Mastercard’s latest push into artificial intelligence marks a clear inflection point for payments: the company has moved from embedding AI into detection systems to enabling agentic commerce—where AI agents can negotiate, authorize and execute purchases on behalf of users—backed by new developer...

Paul Thurrott’s Windows Weekly episode continues the show’s long-running mix of practical Windows tips, industry gossip, and ecosystem-level analysis — this week touching off from Patch Tuesday and a surprise Windows 11 ISO release, then threading through Microsoft’s return‑to‑office policy...

Microsoft's decision to remove the registration fee for individual developers publishing to the Microsoft Store is more than a pricing change — it's a clear signal that the company intends to make the Store a lower-friction, broader distribution channel for independent Windows software creators...

Files 4.0 is the first major rework of the community-built Files file manager that truly feels like a single‑package answer to many of File Explorer’s long‑standing UX gaps — a unified Omnibar with a built‑in command palette, a sharpened split‑pane workflow, a clarified search vs. filter model...

Microsoft’s latest AI push — framed by Satya Nadella as an effort to “empower people” and spotlighted during a high-profile White House engagement on September 4, 2025 — signals a fresh phase in the company’s long-term strategy to marry cloud scale, developer tools, hardware, and public policy...

Files v4.0 arrives as a major rework of one of the most polished third‑party File Explorer replacements for Windows 11, introducing a unified Omnibar, a refined Dual Pane workflow, expanded cloud drive support, and built‑in cryptographic verification tools — changes that push Files from a...

When a single AI service becomes central to millions of workflows, a short outage stops more than casual conversation — it exposes systemic fragility and forces users to choose alternatives they may previously have ignored. Recent market shifts and intermittent service interruptions have pushed...

Windows developers and administrators who depend on client-certificate (mTLS) workflows will need to keep using workarounds: a structural limitation introduced by TLS 1.3 and the way Windows handles TLS in kernel (http.sys / Schannel) means IIS Express on Windows 11 cannot reliably request a...

Elon Musk’s xAI has quietly escalated its play for the developer tooling market with Grok Code Fast 1 — a model explicitly tuned for agentic coding that promises rapid tool calls, low-latency edit loops inside IDEs, and pricing that aims to make continuous, agent-driven development economically...

Elon Musk’s xAI has stepped into the agentic coding ring with Grok Code Fast 1, a new model the company is pitching as a speed-focused, budget-friendly assistant for real-world developer workflows — one optimized to call tools, edit files, and iterate inside IDEs with minimal lag. The...

Windows Subsystem for Linux has quietly become one of the most consequential developer features in Windows 11 — not because it’s flashy, but because it removes long-standing friction between two operating systems that many of us need to use every day. What used to require dual‑booting, slow...

Windows ships with a competent baseline of tools, but for users who prefer transparency, control, and long-term maintainability, the open-source alternatives on this How‑To Geek roster are worth considering — this article examines the nine apps the original author installs on every fresh Windows...

Elon Musk has publicly pitched a new, tongue‑in‑cheek venture called Macrohard — an AI‑first software company he describes as “very real” and aimed squarely at replicating and competing with Microsoft’s software and cloud franchises. The reveal combined a recruiting signal, a sweeping U.S...

Elon Musk’s Macrohard announcement is less a polished product launch than a deliberate provocation — a public wager that agentic, AI-first software factories can be built at scale and will ultimately reshape how enterprise applications are created, tested, and maintained. The concept is...

Microsoft has started testing a native Android-to-PC handoff in Windows 11—beginning with Spotify—so you can start a song or podcast on your phone and continue with a single click on your desktop, complete with a one‑click app install if Spotify isn’t already on your PC. The preview is rolling...

Google’s Gemini is quietly testing a set of new experimental modes — Agent Mode, Gemini Go, and an Immersive View — that together signal a deliberate shift from single‑turn chat toward agentic, creative, and visually driven workflows inside the Gemini workspace. Early UI discoveries reported by...

Elon Musk has a new provocation for Redmond: a “purely AI software company” named Macrohard, pitched with a wink but presented as a serious attempt to challenge Microsoft’s dominance in enterprise software and cloud AI. Announced on X with a recruiting call to AI engineers, researchers, and...

Elon Musk says he wants to build a purely AI-run software company—cheekily named Macrohard—to take direct aim at Microsoft’s dominance, and he picked August 22, 2025 to make the promise public. The pitch is audacious even by Musk standards: assemble a swarm of specialized AI agents that can...

Microsoft’s push into artificial intelligence is no longer an experiment — it’s a full-scale platform strategy that is reshaping productivity, enterprise operations, and the very architecture of the cloud, with the Copilot family, Azure AI services, GitHub Copilot, and a suite of industry...

OpenAI’s GPT‑5 has landed inside Microsoft’s Copilot family, but the change feels more like a careful upgrade than a dramatic reinvention — a set of real-world refinements that tilt Copilot toward deeper reasoning, longer context, and smarter routing rather than a radical, immediately...